The prototype Beaufort first flew on 15 October 1938 and a production contract for 78 aircraft followed in August 1936. The Beaufort was an improvement on the Avro Anson but it was not very fast and not well armed. Faced with the much faster Bf 109, the Beaufort’s defensive machine guns could put up an estimated 11 ounces of .303 calibre bullets as compared with the Messerschmitts 12 lbs of cannon and machine gun fire in the same amount of time. Coastal Command’s standard torpedo-bomber from 1940 to 1943, Bristol Beauforts first entered service with 22 Squadron at Thorney Island in November 1939. The Beauforts, along with the Swordfish of the Fleet Air Arm flew out in secret, deposited their mines in the dark and flew away again without knowing whether their work would prove fruitful or futile. Such work called for strength of spirit and purpose to sustain men for any length of time. The mine-layers laid dozens of minefields on all the coasts from the northern coast of Norway right down the French coast to Bayonne on the border of Spain and German rivers and ports and even in the Kiel Canal itself. On the night of 15/16 April 1940 22 Squadron’s Beauforts carried out Coastal Command’s first mine-laying sortie, in the mouth of the River Jade and on 7 May 1940 dropped the first 2,000lb bomb. Beauforts saw action over the North Sea, the English Channel, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Beauforts also took part in the attack on the German pocket battleships which escaped through the Channel early in 1942.
It was in the ultimate issue just an odd trick of chance
which led Group Captain Finlay Crerar to make history on the night of 10/11
June 1940, by intercepting the first ship which Italy lost in the war. The
wireless told him at 6 o’clock in the evening that Mussolini had declared war
as from midnight and while he sat at dinner in the mess he learned that one of
the afternoon patrols over the North Sea had sighted the big Italian steamer
Marzocco making full speed to the east. It would, he thought, be a pity to let
that ship get back into Italian hands and he accordingly requested permission
to go out to try to intercept her. Permission was not at once forthcoming.
There were conferences in which the naval authorities joined, but at length his
request was granted. There was still a little daylight left when he climbed
into his aircraft with his navigator and took off. The navigator had worked out
the course and estimated the position in which the Italian steamer should be
picked up and along this course Group Captain Crerar flew. The weather could
hardly have been worse. The cloud was practically down to the surface of the
sea. To attempt to intercept a ship on such a night seemed quite hopeless – but
not to Group Captain Crerar. Finding it was impossible to fly below the clouds
because they were down so low, he went up and flew above them at 2,000 feet.
Speeding to the area in which he expected to find the steamer, he dived down to
try to get under the clouds to search the surface. He could not do it and was
forced to climb. Flying a little further, he dived once more to try to get below
the blanketing clouds, but was driven again to climb.
Nature seemed to be conspiring to help the Marzocco to
escape. But the Scottish pilot was a tenacious man. He refused to give up and
dived down for the third time to try to get under the clouds. For the third
time he was defeated. There seemed nothing more he could do. No human power
could overcome that handicap of the clouds. He was cruising round above the
carpet of cloud, loath to return with his mission unaccomplished, when he saw a
dark smudge on a cloud ahead. Gazing at it carefully as he flew in that
direction, he was astonished to see a small black puff rise through the cloud.
To his expert eye that black puff could only be one thing – smoke and
immediately he concluded it must be smoke from the funnel of the Marzocco. He
was right. The master of the Italian steamer must have heard the engines of the
aircraft and in his anxiety to escape made his crew stoke up the furnaces more
than ever, with the result that instead of getting away, he merely gave away
his position by the big clouds of smoke emitted from the funnels. Diving for
the fourth time down into the cloud, Group Captain Crerar discovered that by
some strange fluke the base of the cloud had risen to fifty feet above the
surface so that he was able to fly without endangering his aircraft.
‘I had just been on the point of turning for home bitterly
disappointed at having failed and you can imagine my surprise and pleasure at
seeing the quarry in front of me,’ he reported. ‘She was steaming as fast as
possible due east. I signalled her in international code to stop immediately,
turn and make for Aberdeen, but no notice was taken of my signals. This was
tried three times. Then I decided to open up my front gun as a warning and
flying low across her bows I gave her a good burst, did a steep turn and
repeated the manoeuvre from the other beam. Immediately there-afterwards the
ship hove to and, after some exchange of signal, turned round on a course for
Kinnaird’s Head. We escorted her although it was dark until lack of petrol
forced us to leave.’
Returning to their base, they refuelled and went off again
to pick up the Marzocco and escort her to port. But the weather was so bad that
they were quite unable to find the ship, which the navigator thought must have
turned eastward to try to escape. The pilot, however, thought otherwise and
felt sure that she was continuing on her course to land. His judgment was
confirmed. At his request a destroyer was sent out. But eventually the Italian
master cheated his captors, for he opened the sea-cocks and scuttled his ship.
As she was sinking, a tug managed to take her in tow and get her as far as the
entrance to Peterhead harbour where she touched bottom and was beached. Had it
not been for that smudge of smoke arising from the frantic endeavours of the
master to elude capture there is no doubt that the Marzocco would have escaped.
One of the objects of Coastal Command in attacking fringe
targets was to prevent, if it could, German sailors and airmen who were taking
an active part in the Battle of the Atlantic from obtaining the rest they
needed. Another was to harass the German troops in occupied countries. Finse in
Norway was a well-known winter sports centre. It consisted of a small railway
station with a hotel nearby and a few mountain huts and chalets. The railway
passing through it was protected from avalanches by a number of snow-sheds,
which were wooden tunnels hundreds of yards in length. It was known that the
hotel contained a large number of German officers and Norwegian quislings
enjoying a skiing holiday. There were thus two objectives: to destroy or damage
the sheds, which would interrupt communications of great importance almost
certainly for the whole of the winter and to put out of action a number of the
enemy and of the traitors helping them. Three attacks were made – on 18, 20 and
22 December 1940. So that the crews taking part in them should have as clear an
idea as possible of the nature and look of the place, they had been shown a
pre-war travel film containing excellent shots of the station, the hotel and
the surrounding slopes of snow. The first attack was only in part successful,
for despite the film which they had seen and the special maps which they
carried, several of the crews did not find the target. Two nights later it was
repeated and Beauforts scored direct hits on the snow-sheds and the railway
line. A train in the station took refuge in a shed from which it did not
emerge. In the third attack the hotel was hit. It was subsequently discovered
that two mechanical snow-ploughs had been destroyed in the railway station and
that the line was, in consequence, blocked for many weeks. The leader of the
first attack, carried out by Hudsons, flew up and down above the target with
his navigation lights on, in order to show the way to the rest.
Coastal Command, while not exclusively equipped for bombing,
made 682 attacks on land targets between 21 June 1940 and the end of December
1941. Excluding aerodromes, which the Command attacked 130 times in France, 30
times in the Low Countries, 44 times in Norway and thrice in Germany, there
were during that period 28 attacks on French fuel dumps and electrical power
plants, 36 attacks on Dutch oil installations and eight on Norwegian. There
were also 69 attacks on other miscellaneous targets. The bulk of the effort,
however, was naturally directed against docks and harbours and the shipping in
them. Brest headed the list with 62 attacks; Boulogne followed with 50. Then
came Lorient with 30, Cherbourg with 28, St. Nazaire with 21; Le Havre with 16,
Calais with 13 and Nantes with five. The raids were made mostly at night. They
were harassing operations designed to destroy valuable stores and necessities
for the prosecution of the battle and to interfere as much as possible with the
lives of men on garrison duty in foreign and hostile lands. After the fall of
France, the effort made by Coastal Command was directed against shipping. One
squadron alone made 28 attacks on French ports, involving 136 individual sorties,
in six weeks. In the early days even Ansons, too, played a part before they
were relegated to training Groups. On Monday 23rd September 1940 six Ansons on
217 Squadron carried out an attack on Brest between 0115 and 0415 hours,
dropping their 360lb bomb loads from heights as low as low as 2,000 feet and
then diving to 500 feet to shoot out searchlights. On later raids the Ansons
were often accompanied by Fairey Albacores of 826 Squadron of the Royal Navy
awaiting the completion of the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable which was to be
their home. Lorient, too, came to be important, for it was soon made one of the
main bases for German submarines. The primary target was at first the power
station and later on the submarine moorings. Blenheims attacked both on 8th,
13th and 17th October and again on 7 and 8 November, being accompanied on these
last two raids by Beauforts and Swordfish. The attack on shipping at Flushing
on the 13th by six Blenheims caused large fires. In December German submarines
were discovered further South in the Gironde, near Bordeaux. They were attacked
by Beauforts carrying land-mines on 8 and 13 December. Large explosions and
fires followed.
Inevitably as time went on attacks became concentrated on
Brest, especially after the last week in March 1941, when the Scharnhorst and
the Gneisenau or ‘Salmon and Gluckstein’ (a famous London store) as they were
known throughout the Royal Air Force, took refuge in that naval base on their
return from commerce-raiding in the Atlantic. Coastal Command attacked them,
either alone or as part of an operation by Bomber Command, 63 times in 1941,
including an attack on the Scharnhorst on 23 July when she had sought temporary
refuge at La Pallice. The defences of Brest, always formidable grew stronger
and stronger. On one occasion a Blenheim was forced by the failure of both
engines to glide through them. It circled slowly round above the harbour while
the pilot still tried to get into a good position from which to drop his bombs.
‘It looked as though we should come down in enemy territory,’ he said, ‘so I
thought we might as well drop our bombs in the best place possible.’ The first
attempt did not succeed and before releasing its load the Blenheim glided three
times round the docks, each time going lower and lower. At last a good target
came into the bomb-sight and the bombs were dropped at the very ‘moment when
both the engines picked up simultaneously. The Blenheim reached base unscathed.
22 Squadron of the Coastal Command was not only the first to
be equipped with Beauforts, but among the first to take part in the mine-laying
operations. Under the command of Wing Commander M. H. St. G. Braithwaite, it
also carried out many torpedo attacks on the shipping in the invasion ports.
Its losses in the early days were sometimes due to enemy action, sometimes to
circumstances over which the pilots had no control. For a period the squadron
suffered heavily, which robbed the Royal Air Force of some of its most
highly-trained specialist pilots. Among them was Flight Lieutenant A. R. H.
‘Dicky’ Beauman who carried out thirty operations in all sorts of weather, with
many torpedo attacks on ships by day and by night. On 5 December 1940 he was
last seen off Wilhelmshaven going in to torpedo a big ship in the face of
terrific anti-aircraft fire, but whether he hit the ship before he was hit
himself remains unknown. ‘Dicky’ Beauman was one of the most popular members of
the mess and no finer pilot or braver man ever sat in the cockpit of an
aircraft.
On the moonlight night of 17 September 1940 six Beauforts on
22 Squadron in two flights of three led by Squadron Leader Rex Mack DFC were
detached from North Coates to Thorney Island and detailed to attack shipping in
Cherbourg Harbour at 2300 hours. At that time it was probably the best defended
of all the Channel ports.
‘I decided,’ said Squadron Leader Mack ‘that I would enter
by the Western entrance of Cherbourg harbour. I took this decision because
there was a great deal of wind and I thought that if I were to approach the
Germans with the gale in my face they might not hear me. That indeed proved to
be the case, because when I entered the harbour no one fired at me. I had
hardly got in, flying at about 50 feet, when the Germans opened fire. I was so
close that I could actually see them and I watched a German gunner, one of a
crew of three manning a Bofors gun, trying to depress the barrel, which moved
slowly downwards as he turned the handles. He could not get it sufficiently
depressed and the flak passed above our heads. It was bright red tracer and
most of it hit the fort at the end of the other breakwater on the farther side
of the entrance. At the same moment I saw a large ship winking with red lights,
from which I judged that there were troops on board firing at us with machine-guns
and rifles.
‘I dropped the torpedo in perfect conditions, for I was
flying at the right speed and at the right height. Half a second after I had
dropped it five searchlights opened up and caught me in their beams. I pulled
back the stick and put on a lot of left rudder and cleared out. The trouble
about a torpedo attack is that when you have released the torpedo you have to
fly on the same course for a short time to make quite sure that it has, in
fact, left the aircraft. I remember counting one and two and three and forcing
myself not to count too fast. Then we were away.’
Another Beaufort coming in immediately afterwards seemed ‘to
be surrounded by coloured lights,’ and a third, flown by a sergeant pilot, hit
a destroyer and at the same time lost half its tail from a well-aimed burst of
anti-aircraft fire. It got safely back, however. All the pilots reported that
the opposition was the fiercest they had ever experienced. In this gallant
affair one Beaufort was lost.
Sergeant Norman Hearn-Phillips (later Squadron Leader
Hearn-Phillips AFC DFM) was one of the pilots detailed but although he had
completed twenty operations on Beauforts, he had only dropped torpedoes in practice.
He had joined the RAF in 1936 as a Direct Entry Sergeant pilot and had trained
on Hawker Harts and Audax. The attack was to be a combined attack with eight
Blenheims on 59 Squadron, who were to drop bombs and flares to light the way
for the Beauforts. The moon was at the full and the Blenheims were bombing the
docks when the first flight of Beauforts were led into Cherbourg at no more
than ten feet above the surface. They flew so low that the gun in the fort at
the entrance could not be depressed sufficiently and its tracers were seen
bouncing off the other breakwater. Squadron Leader Mack got his torpedo away at
a steamer of over 5,000 tons just as five searchlights picked him up. The fire
from the breakwater and harbour and ships was so intense that the tracer
bullets cannoned off ships and walls in all directions. Flight Lieutenant
Francis hit a destroyer. Sergeant Norman Hearn-Phillips brought his Beaufort
down to sea-level and headed for the target at 80 feet and 140 knots. As he
released his torpedo at a vessel of over 5,000 tons, the flak was intense and
the aircraft was hot as he turned away. The port elevator had been shot away
and the rudder and hydraulics damaged. Despite this Hearn-Phillips nursed his
crippled aircraft back to Thorney Island where he carried out a successful
belly-landing. One of the Beauforts was lost, but it was a wonder that any
escaped at all in such a heavy barrage of fire.
Soon afterwards, at the beginning of an autumn afternoon on
Friday 4th October, a roving patrol of two Beauforts on 42 Squadron found two
enemy destroyers and six escort vessels off the Dutch coast near Ijmuiden.
These they did not attack, but carrying on soon found a 2,000-ton mine-layer
surrounded by four flak-ships all at anchor in the harbour. They attacked, but
the torpedoes were swept from their course by the tide. The Beauforts were
intercepted by four Bf 109s and L4488 was shot down by Oberleutnant Ulrich
Steinhilper of 3./JG 52. All the crew were taken prisoner. During the
engagement Beaufort L4505 was hit and the elevator controls severed. The pilot,
however, succeeded in flying his aircraft safely home by juggling with the
throttle and elevator trimmer. Surprisingly enough the elevator had a marked
effect on the aircraft’s trim despite the fact that the fore and aft controls
were severed. On reaching base in very bad weather, with clouds down to 50
feet, he was seen to pass over the aerodrome, but he could not turn the
aircraft in its crippled condition enough to regain it. He followed the coast
and after jettisoning his torpedo in Thorney Creek, although the flaps of the
Beaufort were out of action, made a successful landing at Thorney Island with
most of his crew wounded.
Some weeks later, on 8 November three Beauforts launched
their torpedoes at a steamer and not one of them hit the mark. Nevertheless the
master of the steamer swung her about so frantically to avoid them that he ran
aground and his ship became a total loss, so the Beaufort accomplished their
purpose of destroying the ship, although all their torpedoes missed. Two days
later, Wing Commander Braithwaite was about to make a torpedo attack on a
steamer which was steaming at five knots. Circling round, he swept in and got
his torpedo away. It ran perfectly straight for the steamer which was palpably
doomed – or so it seemed. Then, quite unexpectedly, before the torpedo reached
the target, there was a gigantic explosion and a great column of water shot up
in the air. It was very hard luck for Wing Commander Braithwaite that it happened
to be low tide and the torpedo hit the top of a sandbank which lay in its path.
At high tide the torpedo would have sped over the top of the sandbank and the
steamer would have gone to the bottom.
Apart from the torpedo Coastal Command made use of two other
chief weapons dropped from the air in its operations against enemy shipping –
the mine and the bomb. The task of laying mines in enemy waters was shared with
Bomber Command. Each Command has been allotted certain areas along the coasts
of the enemy and of the occupied countries off which mines are laid. The
aircraft used for the purpose were originally Swordfish, of which the open
cockpit added considerably to the discomfort suffered by the crews in winter,
though in other respects it was an advantage, for the pilot could see the
surface more easily. As soon as Beauforts became available they were pressed
into service. The method used is as follows: The aircraft sets out flying at a
height between 1,500 and 2,000 feet. When it approaches near to the place
chosen – a shipping channel, the entrance to a port, the mouth of a fjord, or
wherever it may be – it comes down low in order to pin-point its position. This
is done by picking up some prominent landmark, such as a building, a headland,
a lighthouse, a small island. Arrived there, the navigator sights the landmark
through the bomb-sight and, at the exact moment at which the Beaufort passes
over it, presses a stop-watch, at the same time telling the pilot to fly a
course at a certain speed at a certain height for a certain time. During this,
the run-up, the aircraft must be kept on an absolutely level keel. At the end
of the period, calculated in seconds and fractions of seconds by means of the
stop-watch, the observer releases the mine and the operation is over.
Very rarely did the crew even see the splash when the mine
hit the water. The operation was dull, difficult and dangerous. ‘Creeping like
a cat into a crypt’ is how one pilot has described it. The Germans did their
best to cover all likely landmarks with anti-aircraft fire. More than once the
crews of Coastal Command had seen little lights moving, like strange
fire-flies, along the edges of cliffs. They came from the pocket-torches held
in the hands of German gunners as they ran to man their guns.
Little was heard of these mining operations. Only an
occasional reference was made to them in official communiqués. But they went on
night after night and the crews who carried them out ran risks as great as
those who achieved a result by the use of a more spectacular weapon – the bomb
or the torpedo. Over a period of six months in 1941 seventy per cent of the
mines laid by Coastal Command were placed in the position chosen for them. It
was impossible to do more than estimate the damage they caused. Certain
successes were known to have been achieved. In February 1941 a German vessel of
about 3,000 tons was damaged near Haugesund and beached to prevent her sinking.
A German trawler struck another mine on the same day and sank. The area was
closed to traffic for some time. Later that month a German ship was mined off
Lorient and many corpses were washed ashore on the Quiberon Peninsula. An
aircraft of Coastal Command had dropped a mine in that area a night or two
before. In September of that year two cargo vessels were mined and sunk in the
roadsteads of La Pallice and La Rochelle. In October a 4,000-ton ship was mined
and sunk in the channel leading to Haugesund and the entrance to the port was
blocked for some time.
