to attack Istanbul.
The German navy in 1939 was not ready for war. It was still small, with only five battleships – three of which were pocket battleships – plus five cruisers, some destroyers and fifty-six U-boats, not all of which were suitable for service in the Atlantic. By contrast, the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet alone had five battleships, two battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, and sixteen cruisers, destroyers and submarines. Also stationed in British home waters were a further two battleships, four cruisers and over sixty destroyers. There were yet more British ships in the North and South Atlantic commands. Although this sounds a huge numerical superiority, many of the ships were old, veterans of the First World War, and not fast enough to catch the recently built German ships. And although the British also had aircraft carriers, the aircraft that flew from them were obsolete, and the Fleet Air Arm remained starved of modern aircraft throughout the first years of the war.
The war at sea had started on 3 September – the very day war was declared – when the cargo/passenger liner Athenia was sunk in the North Atlantic, just west of Ireland, with the loss of over 100 lives. She had been hit by two torpedoes from U-30, commanded by Fritz Julius Lempe. Exactly two weeks later the aircraft carrier Courageous was sunk by U-29 in the Bristol Channel, with a loss of over 500 of her crew. A month later, the U-47, commanded by Gunter Prien, managed to find its way into the Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow and sink the battleship Royal Oak. Over 800 were killed. The U-boat made a successful escape. The third major naval loss in the autumn of 1939 was that of the Rawalpindi, an armed merchant cruiser, which encountered the two German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau whilst on patrol in the Denmark Strait. The lightly armed Rawalpindi stood no chance, with her elderly 6-inch guns pitted against the 11-inch guns of the Scharnhorst. Only 38 of the Rawalpindi’s complement survived.
Much to the Admiralty’s relief, the tables turned somewhat in December, in the South Atlantic. HMS Achilles, HMS Ajax and HMS Exeter, under the command of Commodore (later Rear Admiral Sir) Henry Harwood, were trying to locate the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. She had been attacking merchant ships in the South Atlantic, with some success. Harwood considered that the numbers of British merchant ships entering and leaving the River Plate, many of them fast, modern ships carrying chilled meat to the United Kingdom, would be an attraction to the Graf Spee. He was proved right, as she was spotted on 13 December, and the three cruisers went into action against her. Cumberland, one of London’s sister ships, was also part of the squadron, but at the time was at the Falkland Islands for repairs. Although the cruisers were heavily outgunned – their main armament was only 6-inch guns, against Graf Spee’s 11-inch guns, which inflicted significant damage on them – the Graf Spee broke off the action, turned away and took refuge in the port of Montevideo, in Uruguay, on the north side of the estuary of the Plate. Four days later, on 17 December, Graf Spee sailed out into the muddy waters of the Plate, where she was scuttled, settling on a sandbank. Captain Langsdorff, her commanding officer, committed suicide three days later.
The Admiralty was jubilant. After the losses of Athenia, Royal Oak and Rawalpindi, it was a triumph, and ended 1939 on an altogether more cheerful note for the Allies.
The Graf Spee episode was not completed until February 1940. The Altmark, which had been the Graf Spee’s supply ship, then arrived in Norwegian waters, and anchored in Josing Fjord. The Royal Navy had been tracking her progress, and soon after her arrival she was boarded by sailors from the destroyer HMS Cossack, under Captain Philip Vian. The 299 merchant seamen held prisoner on board, who had been captured by the Graf Spee and transferred to the Altmark, were set free. This incident was followed by the German invasion of Norway and the battle of Narvik, in which a small force of destroyers entered the Port of Narvik and encountered a much larger force of German destroyers. Two of the British ships were sunk and two more heavily damaged. The commander of the British force, Captain Warburton-Lee, was killed, and was awarded the first posthumous VC of the war. Revenge came shortly afterwards, when the battleship Warspite, with supporting destroyers, steamed into Narvik and destroyed all German warships that were in port there.
The winter of 1940/41was particularly cold, so when Fred joined London at Chatham, where she was being refitted in the dockyard, he found her cold and unwelcoming and definitely not cheerful, as none of her services were operating:
I joined her in December 1940. We were getting her all prepared while she was in the dockyard. Her captain was Captain R.M. Servaes. I joined as a boy seaman, and they kept us on our toes. There were about 35 of us all in one mess, the lower mess, two decks down, right forward. We were then sleeping in hammocks; I found them very comfortable. You made your stretchers out of pieces of wood with a bit cut out at each end. We were still under instruction from a petty officer, as well as work, mostly cleaning, polishing and scrubbing. We scrubbed the decks with long-handled brushes and hoses. We were in three watches – four hours on, eight hours off – even though we were in the dockyard. There was the middle watch, 12 to 4, then there were two dog watches and then the first watch, from 8 to 12; and then there was a 4 to 8 in the morning and evening. We had a few air raids while we were there. On occasions we used the 4-inch anti-aircraft guns. At that time the only other guns we had were the 0.5 machine guns and 2-pounder pom-poms. Later on, we went into dock and had the 0.5s taken off and several Oerlikons installed. We never had Bofors. They kept the pom-poms instead. I was a sight-setter on one of the 4-inch guns and communications operator to the director who directed the fall of shot.
The London’s refit was completed towards the end of January 1941, and she was commissioned on 7 February. She sailed from Chatham on 5 March and, after anchoring overnight in the Thames, sailed for Scapa Flow the next day, out into a North Sea gale, which taxed the sea legs of the newly joined ship’s boys. After she arrived at Scapa Flow, she went out into the North Sea to undertake exercises, including with her main guns. She also acted as a target for gunnery director practice for some of the battleships that were based there.
Fred was one of about 60 boy seamen on board. Not all were like Fred; some had come from borstals or had had very tough upbringing. Some of the boys did not accept naval discipline – and their more serious offences were punished by caning.
After working up and being found fit to join the fleet, London sailed from Scapa Flow on 2 April to escort the aircraft carrier HMS Argus through the Bay of Biscay and as far south as Lisbon. Argus was ferrying fighter aircraft to the Mediterranean. London stayed in warmer waters, as after joining the blockade of Brest with the battleship HMS King George V, to keep the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau out of action in port, she was then sent to convoy escort duties, based on Freetown, in Sierra Leone.
In May she was part of the escort for a convoy leaving Gibraltar for the United Kingdom, which included the Union Castle Line’s ship Arundel Castle, which had on board civilian evacuees from Gibraltar. Whilst on passage they received the news that HMS Hood had been sunk by the Bismarck. Hood was an iconic ship, and her loss was a major blow which was felt throughout the Navy. Only 3 of her crew of over 1,400 survived the sinking. Later that day London received orders to leave the convoy and join the hunt for the Bismarck, which had been found by aircraft from Ark Royal. Their torpedo attacks damaged her steering; this enabled the battleships Rodney and King George V to come up with her on 27 May. Her final destruction came from torpedoes fired by HMS Dorsetshire, a ship of the same class as London.
London was diverted from her part in the Bismarck operation after only 24 hours, and was dispatched to find and destroy the supply ships that were to have supported her, and some other German warships and submarines operating in the South Atlantic. London found the German tanker Esso Hamburg on 4 June. The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, which had been with Bismarck but had escaped before the final battle took place, had been refuelled by Esso Hamburg shortly before she was sighted by London.
Esso Hamburg was sunk and her crew abandoned ship to lifeboats. As she was burning, a huge plume of black smoke from her cargo of fuel oil made a beacon for U-boats for
