I Sank The Bismarck by John Moffat Read Free Book Online

in the
countryside. I imagine it did save some lives, although it was
a very unpopular policy. But we had all heard about Guernica
and what the German bombers had done to that town, and
we expected that the same type of destruction would be
visited on all our major cities by the German air force, the
Luftwaffe.
    So St Vincent was now set aside for training officers of the
Fleet Air Arm. I think we were the first batch. The whole
process of training was in a state of chaos, caused not only by
the start of hostilities but by the fact that up until May
1939 the pilots and aircrew of naval aircraft had been trained
by the Royal Air Force. Now it was suddenly the navy's job.
    We were housed in G block, about forty of us, and they
were a great bunch of lads. A wonderful officer by the name
ofLt Commander Arthur Tillard introduced us to naval training.
He was the first officer we saw with the naval wings on
his sleeve. We were extremely lucky to have someone like that
in charge. He was killed in a Walrus aircraft flying out of
Arbroath later on in the war, and it was a very sad loss. Glan
and I soon met up with a few other cadets who were slightly
less English than most of our fellow recruits – they were South
African:Buster May,Eric Margetts andRobert Lawson. For
some reason it was us that Lt Commander Tillard would
round up if there was anything needing doing – he seemed to
realize that we worked well together and would get things
done. After a few weeks we called ourselves the 'Black Hand
Gang', a silly name from a popular comic, but it stuck and
other people started to refer to us by it and continued to do
so throughout the war.
    As members of the Fleet Air Arm we would be officers in
the Royal Navy, as well as pilots and flying crew. We would
be expected when necessary to carry out the duties of officers
on board a ship, so we had to learn to be sailors first. We were
taught naval traditions and the rules of seamanship by timeserved
petty officers, old salts who had spent a lifetime in the
navy and knew everything there was to know about life on
board ship, and the very particular types of etiquette and
behaviour that allowed officers and men in closely confined
quarters to get along and organize themselves efficiently.
These petty officers were the perfect teachers, confident, able
to deal with anything that life threw at them, and by and large
tolerant of our initial mistakes. We were taught the basic
principles of every aspect of war at sea, from navigation,
small-boat handling, gunnery, signals and fleet manoeuvres.
    Instructors would visit from the other naval establishments
dotted around Portsmouth and Gosport. Our gunnery
instructor,Chief Petty Officer Wilmot, was based in the
gunnery school at Whale Island. He was an amazing fellow.
Signals, not only the traditional flags used by the navy but
also Morse code for wireless telegraphy and signal lamps,
were taught byChief Petty Officer Oliver. They stand out in
my memory as being excellent teachers and extremely
amusing, who both enjoyed their tot of rum. It was
hard work, but we learned quickly. There were plenty of
sports as well, with a shooting team, rugby and swimming.
We enjoyed ourselves, but it was serious all the same. The
war had started and, while the expected bombing of
civilians hadn't occurred, there were already casualties at sea.
    One of the navy's aircraft carriers,HMS Courageous, was
hit on 17 September by two torpedoes fired from a GermanU-boat. She had been patrolling in the channel approaches,
south-west of Ireland, using her aircraft to search for submarines.
The U-boat spotted her first. Courageous sank
quickly, taking over five hundred sailors to their deaths, along
with two squadrons of aircraft. We didn't dwell on these
things, but it certainly served to remind us that we too might
one day be on an aircraft carrier in the sights of an enemy submarine.
In addition to Courageous 's sinking, a U-boat
penetrated the fleet's main anchorage atScapa