44 NAVY NEWS, JULY 2010


Landing room only


● Wrecked Allied shipping at Åndalsnes in the wake of the abortive attempt to liberate Trondheim


Defi nitive Norway story concluded


WHILE we bask in the refl ected glory of the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain, we rather shove under the carpet the fi asco that is the Norwegian campaign.


To be sure, there’s the naval victory in the first and second battles of Narvik.


But pretty much everything else the Allies did in Norway in April, May and June 1940 was one big lash-up.


Geirr Haarr closed his outstanding first volume on the history of the two-month battle for Norway with the triumph of Warspite and the destroyers in Ofot and Rombak fjords.


The destruction of the German destroyer force was the high point for the


Allies. The remainder of the campaign, charted by


Haarr in The Battle for Norway: April-June 1940 (Seaforth, £30 ISBN 978-184832-0574), was largely a litany of setbacks


WORLD War 2 was a tri- umph of a maritime strat- egy that, after a falter- ing start in Norway and evacuation operations from France, Greece and Crete, progressed through amphibious raids of differing lev- els of success to the fully-fl edged large-scale landings on the coasts of North Africa and Italy


and, fi nally, of France. In all these activities the basic platforms for landing infantry were the small assault landing craft, designated ALC to early 1942 and LCA thereafter, writes Prof Eric Grove of the University of Salford.


The story of these craft has now been excellently retold in Assault Landing Craft: Design, Construction and Operations (Seaforth, £19.95 ISBN 978-1-84832-0505) by Brian Lavery, the distinguished maritime historian who made his reputation in his study of the Nelsonian ship of line and has enhanced it by his recent increasingly-prolifi c work on the Navy of WW2.


principally a naval story, for, believes the author, it is a campaign “won and lost at sea” – won by an inferior navy, lost by a superior one. Once again, the research is astounding – German, French, Norwegian


and British sources (published and unpublished/official and unofficial) have been trawled, as have private and public photo libraries; there are hundreds of images reproduced here. The author maintains the even-handed tone which made the first book such a fair and accurate affair. In the days after the initial German invasion of Norway, the Allies sought to dislodge the invader. They succeeded in Narvik (but subsequently withdrew as the overall situation in Norway and France worsened). They failed abysmally at Trondheim. Allied troops were landed at Åndalsnes and Namsos with the aim of trapping the Germans at Trondheim in a pincer. Instead, both ports were repeatedly bombed and the Allied forces hounded by the Luftwaffe. There was British air power in Norway – carriers HMS Ark Royal and


Glorious had been dispatched to support the ground forces – but the Fleet Air Arm was almost always second best to the Luftwaffe. All three Navy fighters of the day – the Sea Gladiator, Blackburn Roc and Skua – were outclassed by enemy bombers. After his Gladiators were mauled over Norway, 804 NAS Commanding Officer Lt Cdr J C Cockburn told the Admiralty that the Fleet Air Arm’s shortcomings could be solved in an instant: give it Spitfires. As she had done for most of the early months of the war, HMS Ark


Royal came under attack... and survived. Not so Glorious, whose sinking is perhaps the most controversial episode of the naval campaign. Her captain, former submariner Guy D’Oyly-Hughes, remains the


principal villain. His prickly nature and poor appreciation of carrier warfare were compounded by a desire to reach Scapa Flow as quickly as possible... so his Commander (Air) could be court-martialed. That meant Glorious sailed hastily for Britain with an inadequate


escort (two destroyers Acasta and Ardent). Worse, D’Oyly-Hughes didn’t even bother to keep aircraft aloft to scout for danger. And so on the afternoon of June 8, she was pounced upon by the


battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, who sank the three ships in under two hours. For a good decade, there have been suggestions that the carrier and her escorts were sacrificed to allow the Norwegian Royal Family to safely reach Britain aboard HMS Devonshire. Haarr is in little doubt that the cruiser picked up reports about


As with the first volume (The German Invasion of Norway) this is


He traces the development of the LCA from its conception by the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre set up in 1938. Two prototypes were rapidly produced in 1939, one by the lifeboat manufacturer Fleming and the other by Thornycroft, the major shipbuilder. It was decided to put the latter’s craft into production as it would be easier to add necessary armour; 18 were on order by September 1939. It was produced throughout the war to the same basic design and remained in service in the post-war Navy, being used in the Suez landings in 1956. The LCA was made of wood, built with a ‘V’ shaped chine hull and a bow door. The twin screws, recessed in the stern, were powered individually by Scripps V-8 petrol engines, versions of a Ford car engine. As mass production gathered pace, non-marine factories were brought into the LCA programme, notably the Lebus furniture factory which could launch its craft directly into the River Lea in North London. Almost 2,000 basic LCAs


were built, plus related variants used for fi re-support duties. The author calculates that they might have landed as many as half a million troops of various nationalities. They were carried on board Landing Ships Infantry, converted merchantmen of various shapes and sizes operated


Glorious being attacked – or that the senior officer aboard, Vice Admiral Sir John Cunningham, wrestled with his conscience. Cunningham was under strict orders not to jeopardise his ship and its 450 passengers – not just Norwegian royalty but also the country’s government and Allied political and military figures. And he did not. He continued west. It is a decision which may seem cold – and it was a decision which Cunningham evidently hated according to the Norwegian liaison officer aboard Devonshire at the time – but there is every chance the cruiser would have followed Glorious and her escorts to a watery grave. Devonshire’s decision not to intervene also condemned upwards of 900 men to their deaths. Survivors reckon three out of five of the 1,500 men aboard made it into life rafts, but died in the subsequent hours and days. Just 45 men were rescued. All in all, the Glorious affair is, well, less than glorious. The bravery of


the Ardent and Acasta crews – the latter especially, who scored a torpedo hit which severely damaged Scharnhorst – was all-but snubbed by the Admiralty who denied both COs the VC, but did grant posthumous mentions in despatches. But what might surprise English-speaking readers is that the German Admiralty – the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine – was also far from happy with the Glorious affair. It had given the Fleet Commander, Wilhelm Marschall, nebulous


instructions and little intelligence, other than to attack Allied shipping at Harstad. Marschall never got there (he wouldn’t have found any shipping had he done so...). With the Scharnhorst damaged, he made for Trondheim and was promptly sacked for attacking – and sinking – an enemy capital ship rather than sticking to fixed and outdated orders from Berlin. The fleet Marschall had once commanded “never again posed a


decisive threat to the Allies” – the abiding outcome of the Norwegian campaign.


The Grove Review


by both Royal and Merchant Navy crews. More than 50 such LSI were commissioned and most (45) were present at the Normandy landings in June 1944 where they landed American forces as well as British and Canadian. The fi rst four ALCs went into action carrying French Foreign Legionnaires at Bjerkvik – the fi r


st Allied landing of the war – and then in the brief capture of Narvik. Given the signifi cance


these separate operations it is a pity that they are confl ated into one in the author’s brief accounts of his subject’s combat debut.


As the fi st r craft were being used offensively, seven others were being


of


training of the LCA crews. Four men were needed per craft and, as numbers increased, many ‘Hostilities Only’ men were drafted into Combined Operations to man them.


effective system and, for a time, Army personnel lost confi den


crews but by late 1942 an effective system was in place: two weeks’ initial training at the former holiday camps that formed HMS Northney on Hayling Island, followed by six weeks of advanced training at the evacuated Royal Naval College at Dartmouth or HMS Helder at Brightlingsea. Only then were the newly- formed LCA fl otillas ready to be passed north for operational training at Inveraray.


pressed into service to


help evacuate the Allied forces from Dunkirk. In a reversal of their designed function they carried troops out to the larger ships assembled off shore although three brought troops back all the way on their return. Two were lost on the beaches, one was sunk by bombing next to a destroyer and one was towed back when its engines gave out.


The next attempt to use ALCs was in the abortive Operation Menace at Dakar which failed partly through shortage of landing craft.


of each group and an engineer sub-lieutenant running a six- man maintenance section.


In September 1943 policy changed and it was decided to man minor landing craft with personnel from the existing Royal Marines Division; its men were in comparatively-less demand for their traditional big ship duties.


A new training complex was


1941 and 1942 saw a mixed bag of operations, some more successful than others as well as Assault Landing Craft playing key roles in the evacuations from Greece and Crete. There then followed the large-scale amphibious landings. Lavery is very interesting in his account of these, pointing out that considerable diffi culties had to be overcome in operations that rarely went according to plan and were closer-run things than they have seemed in retrospect. The achievement of the LCAs on June 6 in landing through obstacles which had not been cleared as expected was a key factor in the success of the operation, although serious delays could not be avoided. As the author laconically puts it “it would take longer to defeat Germany than planned”. As is to be expected from his important work on personnel and training in this period, the author pays full attention to the


created in Wales and by the time of the Normandy landings two thirds of the LCA crews were Royal Marines. This was an important dimension of the transition of the Corps into an amphibious force.


This fascinating and multi- dimensional story is well told in a short (128 pages) but well- illustrated and enthralling book. The way in which the craft were operated are fully described in a highly seamanlike way. As mentioned above, there


are one or two errors of context here and there, but these do not diminish either the book’s interest or utility. One strength of the work


is its


critical nature; the author is not afraid to give the story ‘warts and all.’ The weaknesses of the ‘Hedgerow’ mine clearance spigot mortars are clearly described as is the initial failure of the Landing Craft Obstacle Clearance Units. I am sure there will be few who do not learn something from this comprehensive and well- written survey.


normally of 12 craft: four groups of three; they were commanded by RNVR lieutenants with a sub- lieutenant in charge


Flotillas were ce in the ill-trained It took time to set up an


Don’s life of changes


DON Murdoch joined the RN as an electrical artificer apprentice in the summer of 1944. Four years later he left Fisgard and subsequently served in eight ships, numerous shore establishments, finally leaving the Service as Mrs Thatcher took office in No.10.


And throughout that


time, it seems he had a smile permanently on his face – certainly from the numerous images reproduced in Don’s Story (Fast Print, £12.99 ISBN 978-184426709-5). Perhaps that smile is because his career spanned what might be termed a golden age for the modern RN (although his first taste of life at sea was with HMS Theseus in the Korean War). His career also offers a window on a changing world, notably the end of empire, the rise of NATO, a multi-cultural Britain (and Navy...). The latter came sharply into focus when HMS Falmouth visited Simon’s Town in South Africa. The then Lt Murdoch had two West Indian sailors serving in his department... at a time when apartheid was in full effect. That policy went against


everything the junior officer stood for: trains were segregated, so too shops, even Table Mountain. Only in church did Don Murdoch refreshingly see apartheid ignored – for we are all equal in the eyes of God... As for his two West Indian


sailors “they did rather better ashore than most of their shipmates”, as they were royally looked after by wealthy non-white South Africans. That visit to Simon’s Town


occurred in the early 70s – by which time Britain was in the grip of an IRA bombing campaign and the Troubles were at their height. Late one November Sunday


Portsmouth dockyard received word of a bomb hidden in Bulwark’s tiller flat. For more than three hours the entire ship was searched. There was no bomb – it was probably a drunken sailor concluded the police and Don, duty officer that night. The story was never revealed – until now “to avoid giving the oxygen of publicity to the hoaxer”. Don’s Story is an extremely comprehensive memoir (500- plus pages) of life in a Royal Navy undergoing huge social and technological changes. The Service Don Murdoch


joined at the age of 15½ was one which was becoming increasingly electrical and hi-tech (the latter word hadn’t been invented then, of course).


The one he left 35 years


later had swapped valves for transistors, then finally chips. But it had also embraced many of the social changes which fundamentally altered the UK. This was an era, says Don,


“that encouraged men from less affluent backgrounds than before to carve out a career without feeling it necessary to hide, deny, or invent their origins, adopt a hyphenated name or assume an affected accent”.


And some things never change.


Naval humour. When HMS Bulwark was


exercising with the German Navy in the late 70s, sailors asked the ship’s German exchange helicopter pilot for some helpful phrases so they could get along more easily on runs ashore. He obliged. “Don’t worry, my friend will pay.” Who says Germans don’t have a sense of humour? As for the author, his last job


was with commando carrier HMS Bulwark, by which time he was the oldest weapons engineer serving at sea. He was charged with bringing


● Royal Navy-manned landing craft LCA 1377 from HMS Prince Baudouin carrying American troops during preparations for Normandy in the spring of 1944


Picture: US National Archives (USA C-1087)


her WE kit out of mothballs with limited funds and with many of the firms who’d produced equipment for Bulwark originally long since gone. “Almost every job needed the skills of an old-fashioned artificer,” says Don. The Navy changes, but there’s


always a need for traditional skills and ‘can-do’ attitude.


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