J. E. MacDonnell - 028, page 7
Round after round crashed out, with the hot cordite fumes catching your throat, the blast of each broadside setting your head ringing, the ammunition numbers slipping and sliding on the hot cylinders.
On the bridge the Army officers held their hats on with one hand and tried to steady their glasses with the other. One was heard to shout:
"I'm damned if I can see the target!"
He wasn't expected to. It lay, blasted and torn, flat on the ground. Along the dusty track geysers of dirt and stone spewed into the air until a straight line of dust and smoke edged the beach for half a mile. The Army observation post ashore signalled:
"Target demolished. Suggest stop wasting ammunition."
The check fire bell shrilled, we stopped loading, the guns fell silent. For some reason, we've always been pretty good at bombardment.
CHAPTER FIVE
THINGS WERE PRETTY QUIET for a while, with a run or two up the Persian Gulf to ease the strain of Bombay's stench. On return, I requested permission to go to sea in a motor-torpedo-boat on exercise with a destroyer flotilla of which our ship formed the senior unit. Permission was granted. As I hurried along the dockyard wall in Bombay between a red-leaded submarine and a new destroyer, a growling sort of roar came from the basin ahead. They were idling over, and I broke into a run. A white-clad figure waving from the bridge of No. 282 bade me run faster. The sub-lieutenant reached out a hand and I jumped on to the coconut matting. The captain grinned at the sweat and said:
"Sorry, but we've had orders to slip half an hour early."
I would have been sorry if I hadn't made it. I'd thought Nepal was fast...
The captain called an order aft, then spoke into the voice-pipe. There was hardly a change in the note of the engines, but she moved slowly ahead, the spring took the weight, and her broad, squat stern swung out. In half a minute H.M. Torpedo Boat 282 was slipping down harbour past my destroyer at quarter speed, her engines a muted roar.
We were to meet the "enemy" destroyer flotilla at a pre-arranged spot some twenty miles offshore, and make our attack as soon as he was clear of the minefield and able to manoeuvre. The object-to train gunnery director and control crews in engaging a target so fast that new settings had to be set in the minimum of time.
Looking aft past the multiple gun turret, which had once been in the tail of a British heavy bomber, I could see the destroyers clearing the harbour mouth in single line ahead, six of them, lean-looking and speedy. I could imagine Dad's orders on his bridge:
"Lookouts, keep your eyes on those gnats out there. And if they get within ten miles of me without being sighted...!" The young skipper of 282 had his own ideas on the subject. His plan, shouted above the noise of three engines, was to detach three of his craft to attack astern from the quarter, then lead the other two in at full speed from ahead.
A long swell was running, and from ten miles we must have been pretty well invisible. The telescopic wireless mast had been housed, and apart from a small signal mast only her armoured conning tower stuck above water.
Visibility was unlimited, a blue sky shining warmly above us, and the masts and funnels of our targets came into plain view each time we breasted a swell. The skipper watched them for several long seconds, and knew by their altering inclination that they were turning, which meant the minefield was passed.
His hand moved to the revolution lever. I saw the sub. and signalman grip the bridge rail with both hands. As her engine note rose to a throbbing roar I did likewise. And none too soon. In a matter of seconds we were leaping through at thirty knots, the intention to get well ahead of the targets.
The noise from the engine-room was too great to allow of any intercourse other than by signs. But these men were well trained- they had come from the English Channel, where almost every night had brought its fracas with E-boats.
At the captain's nod the signalman braced himself against his tiny signal mast. The brightly-coloured flags stood out like boards in the thirty-knot wind, and in a moment three boats astern turned to starb'd and went spinning away over the sea towards the line of destroyers.
We tore on, her throbbing hull steady on-course under the cox'n's hands. Watching him as she bucked, I realised now why he was strapped with a broad leather belt round his back, and why beneath his feet was placed a six-inch thick rubber mat.
And now we were almost in position, the destroyer line in sight across the blue over our starb'd quarter. The captain moved the engine-room indicator and the mechanic below clutched in the bridge throttles. She was now controlled from the bridge.
Another nod to the signalman and a single flag stood out from the wind-curved halliards. The captain made a clockwise motion with his hand to the cox'n, the wheel twirled in answer, his hand reached out to the throttles. A shout to me which I interpreted rightly as "Hang on with your teeth!" and we were round on the run in. The captain pulled the three silver levers towards him.
I had thought before those engines made enough noise. They'd been almost idling. As the throttles came back a drumming roar filled the sky. The stern sank low in the water as the spinning screws gripped. With nearly two-thirds of her length clear of the water the torpedo-boat shot across the sea, on either side a flying spume of white water curving over in an arch which poured down on the stern abaft the gun turret.
The whole boat shuddered and bucked with power. I was filled with a sense of exhilaration. No wonder these men went in against the concentrated fire of defenders' guns to get at their targets-all you could think of was the tremendous, frightening power with which this thunderbolt imbued you.
The log needle was quivering on forty-four! Over fifty miles per hour. In a matter of seconds the destroyers were in full view, the knifing bow waves at their stems indicated that they, too, were at full speed.
My cap had gone in that last great burst. Bareheaded, I hung there beside the boy-captain, eyes closed to slits against the forceful penetration of the wind. Abruptly, we swerved to starb'd, and I recognised evading tactics-and how once from another ship we'd lobbed a full broadside just where we judged an attacking E-boat would turn. He did.
From then on I was jolted one way and then the other as the boat careered all over the sea. Suddenly from the leading destroyer's (Nepal's) side six flashes of orange flame stabbed at us. Once again I was on the receiving end-but unworried this time about the throw-off.
The black bursts of smoke, just above the water so as to rain a shower of splinters on the attacking craft, were a little behind us. Had the guns been aimed without throw-off the shells would have burst astern.
Next broadside was dead in line. Good old B-gun, I thought. Apparently I wasn't missed...
The skipper snatched a swift look at the two racing boats astern. Then he pulled the locking pins free from two black levels in front of him.
The destroyers were close now, a grand picture with the lines of white reaching from their bows aft. Every glass on their bridges would be on our tubes. I knew what would happen when the fish were fired, and braced myself for the pressure of the full turn.
Our torpedoes were set to run beneath the destroyers' bottoms, their explosive-packed warheads substituted by a practice blowing head which, filled with compressed air, brings the missile to the surface after its run. I had forgotten that we would have to slow down before firing-our speed being so much greater than that of the torpedoes we would run ahead of them, or hit them as we turned- and the sudden drop from forty-five to twenty-five knots threw me forward on to the bridge rail, my nose taking the strain; as it transpired, the only casualty of the action.
The captain loosed both torpedoes in quick succession. With the levers' movement there came a whoosh of compressed air and the two cigars leaped from the tubes and entered the water clearly, screws already spinning.
He opened her up again as we heeled round, and again at full speed we tore out past the other two boats on their run in.
Astern, the parallel roads reached out to Nepal. But she was fast, too, had been built to spin almost in her own length. Rudder hard-over, screws heaving, she whipped round. The big guns had ceased firing, but I could imagine vividly enough the streams of tracer which would have been leaping at us from oerlikons and multiple pom-pom had that red, white and blue flag at our gaff borne instead a rising sun.
And as the two lines of calmed water passed her stern by twenty yards, and we came again in comfortable range of her twin 4.7's, I decided that I was quite happy to be a destroyerman.
We were too far away to discern the results of the following attacks, though a twisting, doubling line of destroyers offered plain indication of a certain amount of trouble. Offered, too, evidence of the superb seamanship of destroyer drivers, for each of those two-thousand-ton ships, moving at thirty knots, was in close order-two hundred yards apart. Still zig-zagging, 282 drew swiftly away from her target, until only the destroyers' thin masts showed above the rim. At last, with a welcome drop in speed, the little ship became steady again, and we turned for home, engines driving her at twenty knots.
We had a long way to go, and now we could talk. The young skipper was patently proud of his gutsy command, keen enough to have studied the history of evolution of the Navy's fastest, and, for their size, deadliest craft. My note-book was out.
Tremendous strides, he told me, have been taken in torpedo and torpedo-boat construction since the turn of the century.
In 1864, a Captain Lupius, of the Austrian Navy, collaborated with a Mr. Whitehead, manager of an engineering firm, in experimenting on a floating torpedo. The manufacturing rights of this weapon were sold to the British Admiralty for œ15,000. My destroyer had Whitehead torpedoes in her tubes.
During the trials of the first torpedoes an average speed of 8.5 knots was reached for a distance of two hundred yards. Ours carry an explosive load of Torpex at forty knots for a distance of eleven miles.
The first seagoing torpedo-boat, the Batoum, was built for the Russian Navy in 1879. Her length was one hundred feet, horsepower five hundred, and speed twenty-two knots. She was fitted with two fore-and-aft fixed tubes in the bow, and fired four Whiteheads from an armoured conning-tower. Masts and sails were provided in case of a breakdown.
Japan brought out the initial first-class armoured torpedo-boat when the British yard of Yarrow, in 1885, built the Kotaka for that country. This vessel, the largest of the type produced up to that time, had a length of one hundred and sixty-six feet, a beam of nineteen feet, and engines which, with fourteen-hundred horsepower, gave her a speed of almost twenty knots. All vulnerable sections were protected by one-inch armour plate, and she mounted four machine-guns and six torpedo tubes. This vessel distinguished herself later in the Sino-Japanese war.
The period between 1890 and 1916 was devoted to producing a counter measure to the rapidly growing numbers of torpedo-boats. France in 1890 possessed 210, Germany 180, Russia 143, and Japan
24. Thus was created the torpedo-boat destroyer with the launching of Yarrow's Havoc. Her trials proved a success, and the Admiralty ordered six more of the same type.
In 1894, Yarrow launched Hornet-the first destroyer ever fitted with water-tube boilers-and on her official trials her mean speed was 27.6 knots, the best so far attained by any vessel. With the turn of the century there has been a slow but steady increase in size, in speed, and in armament.
In the meantime the torpedo-boat was not far behind its natural enemy. England experimented with them in conjunction with the patrol of the Channel. With a trial speed of 33.5 knots they were not much good against thirty-one-knot German destroyers in any sort of a lop. Despite their small size they took too much space to turn in, and since their own torpedo was fired over the stern, headed in the same direction as the torpedo-boat, it was necessary to run at full speed when firing so as not to be over-run by their own torpedoes.
Since then, various other Navies have experimented with motor torpedo-boats. The most notable and well-known of these today are the extremely fast and deadly MTB's and the German E-boats. It has been suggested that the best defence against motor torpedo-boats in large numbers is attack by low-flying aircraft. But, apart from the difficulty of hitting a target weaving all over the sea at forty-odd knots, any plane which comes within range of the concentrated fire of heavy-calibre multiple machine-guns and oerlikons is going to know about it. The MTB is definitely an offensive weapon-against aircraft as well as against subsurface or surface craft.
It is no more a cure-all than the aircraft, my historical adviser told me; it will not replace any other existing surface craft. It will, however, be an important augmentation to any Fleet, large or small. Its operation is limited to its own little sphere, but within that special sphere it can become a destructive weapon of great deadliness.
Lesson completed; the low line of coast was coming up ahead. We entered the swept channel and coasted through the torpedo-net boom at the entrance. Past the empty destroyer berths-they were recovering our torpedoes, very nice of them-we headed for the basin.
A seaman whom I'd last seen in the gun turret heaved his line to a British soldier handy nearby. The stern-fast went out, and the skipper moved his indicator. Below in the fumy engine-room a pointer spun round to "Finished with main engines." Deep in her bowels 282 gave a final throaty growl, then silence.
CHAPTER SIX THE DANCE OF THE OULED NAEL
DANCING GIRLS of the famed Ouled Nael doing their stuff in a moon-drenched circle of palms in the Arabian Desert may seem to possess a very slight degree of relevancy in a story of a fleet destroyer. But let me in with it-the memory will stay with me for years, and, as you will appreciate, we're not on board all the time.
It all started over Cocky's cigarette. The place was Khor Khuaai, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and we let go anchor opposite the tiny stone-built fort with its White Ensign on the rocky promontory, in the blue water of a narrow fjord-if that coldish name can be applied to a place under which the Arabs say Hell lies, keeping it hot.
From the upper-deck you looked out on isolation. Brown hills, absolutely devoid of all living matter, fell steeply to the water. The only sign of life was a dhow making slow way against the tide astern and the occasional flutter of the flag ashore. Cocky wore a lugubrious look on his homely dial.
But all was not lost. A light began flickering from the fort, and idly we read its message:
"Can accommodate forty men for pictures. House With Seven Gables. Bring own seats."
We'd hardly expected to spend our first night in Araby looking at George Sanders and Miss Lockwood, but it was either that or remain on board. We went to the pictures.
Carrying our camp chairs, we stepped from the motor-boat and walked up the sandy path to the fort on the hill. The pictures were shown in the open air, in a rock-strewn place, and we settled ourselves comfortably behind a group of white-burnoused Arabs. They were speaking quietly among themselves, a liquid-sounding sort of dialect, pleasing to hear.
Suddenly, the group rose as one man. I looked round, half-expecting to sight Dad. It was that sort of rising. Instead, we saw a tall Arab approaching. When abreast of us he waved his hand and the mob subsided. He sat down beside us. A sheikh, apparently.
We were not impressed. We'd seen plenty of the rank up the Red Sea and in Alexandria, and any resemblance to Mr. Valentino was purely non-existent.
Cocky produced his cigarettes, handed me one, then without warning he turned to the Arab sitting quietly there.
"Like a burn, cobber?"
To my surprise, the sheikh inclined his head gravely and, reaching out a brown hand, took one of Cocky's fags. Shades of the hookah...
"Thank you," he said in good English.
Shortly afterwards, the pictures started. The show was mediocre, and I was more interested in the incongruity of the real scene-above, the velvet Arabian night, a star-dusted bowl, all around the ageless desert, and in front Arab tribesmen clapping and laughing as Miss Lockwood's trained lips did their stuff on the hero.
Then suddenly there came a brilliant flash of light from the projector, a hiss of sound, the screen was blank, and a puff of acrid smoke lifted from the little hut. The film had caught fire, a not unusual expectation in this sort of entertainment.
Ten minutes later we were still waiting, when the sheikh spoke suddenly to Cocky:
"Perhaps I could show you something when the moon rises? If you would care to come? The mosque is just across the water."
To Cocky's natural and slightly suspicious question as to what could be doing for two sailors in an Arab mosque at moonrise, the native answered solemnly: "Tonight a girl of the Ouled Nael dances."
