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NAVY NEWS, FEBRUARY 2011


41


A doyen of naval fl ight


LIEUTENANT Commander Roy Baker-Falkner was a major fi gure in the Fleet Air Arm over which the Royal Navy took sole


Trekkers of


rekkers of the last Ark


NAVY News readers in the West Country will probably know the name Mike Critchley – he regularly appears on the telly and in local newspapers commenting on current Naval affairs. But long before he was a commentator (he’s been in the dark world of journalism for nearly 40 years now), he was a junior officer. Critchley served in what with hindsight were halycon days of the RN in the post-WW2 world: the mid-1960s. This was an era when a career


was much more varied than today, thanks to the myriad of overseas postings and global commitments – Far East, Mediterranean, Cod Wars, the withdrawal from Empire. The first five years of the


The Grove Review


control in May 1939. A brilliant pilot and a capable


leader, his career culminated in leading the Operation Tungsten strike against the German battleship Tirpitz, writes Prof Eric Grove of the University of Salford. Baker-Falkner played a key role in ironing out suffi cient of the problems with the troubled Barracuda aircraft for it to be the effective dive bomber that infl icted serious damage on the enemy capital ship on April 3 1944. After Tungsten his luck began


Canadian Dominion Dartmouth cadet decided to join the ‘Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Air Force’ is an interesting case study of contemporary Naval training and FAA entry in the period of dual control.


It is also interesting to see the effects of the change to full Royal Navy control, eg giving observers command of squadrons.


, eg giving and of


to run out. Follow-up attacks on Tirpitz miscarried and just after one of these, Operation Mascot, Baker-Falkner was lost on an emergency anti-submarine patrol; he was about to be posted back to test fl ying.


author’s service are covered in the breezy Britannia to Beira and Beyond (Maritime Books, £6.99 ISBN 978-1-904459-422), with the emphasis not on ‘tedious’ things like operations and deployments, but observations and the quirkier side of naval life. Hence with Beira patrol on


HMS Ark Royal IV coming to an end, the great carrier knuckled down to more important matters: a camel trek. For weeks the anticipation


Falkner’s nephew. He has clearly developed a great interest in both his distinguished uncle and the FAA in general, having become Director of the Fleet Air Arm Archive 1939-1945 website. He has certainly built up a remarkable wealth of material that he has used to compile this considerable biography, Wings Over The Waves (Pen and Sword, £25 ISBN 978-1- 84884-305-9). It runs to almost 400 pages and is a comprehensive personal account based on extensive contacts with its subject’s family; numerous friends and colleagues. The list of those who have assisted with the author’s research runs to almost fi ve pages!


was built up via Ark’s onboard TV show PanArkorama – an even more laboured pun than you’ll find in these pages... A lottery was held to pick the 20 lucky trekkers, the sickbay offered advice on fending off tropical diseases, and the navigator explained how to guide the ‘ships of the desert’ and offered, should any of the riders become lost, to belch black smoke high above the horizon like some guiding star. Having been whipped up into a


frenzy, the lucky trekkers arrived with their ship at the entrance to Suez, versed in local customs and sayings, vaccines topped up... and not a camel in sight. It had all been an elaborate hoax. Such fun is part and parcel of RN life, but what about honeymoon cruises? The midshipman was


work of family piety than a critical historical account, but it is no mere hagiography.


material that is of considerable interest to students of the history of British Naval aviation. The example of how a


Indeed it contains a wealth of The book is clearly more a Graham Drucker is Baker-


Baker-Falkner served in the carrier Glorious in the Mediterranean and the book makes some interesting contributions to the controversy about the character and abilities of Captain D’Oyly- Hughes.


nean akes ng e


or ser Falkner had left the ship -


by the time she was sunk and he spent most of 1940 operating Swordfi sh from land bases, fi rst in support of the Dunkirk evacuation and then against the invasion threat with many minelaying and bombing sorties.


sunk and 940 opera db


ship i


This often-ignored and gruelling dimension of the Battle of Britain is frequently forgotten, as are the offensive operations later carried out by the Swordfi sh against German naval bases on the coast of France. Baker-Falkner did not serve


Happily Baker-


812 fi nally got a carrier in July 1941 , the old hard-worked pioneer, HMS Furious,


together with HMS Victorious, struck at Petsamo and Kirkenes in the far north – a raid expensive in casualties and more useful in terms of Anglo-Soviet relations than operational results. Baker-Falkner was transferred Victorious to replace her depleted air group as Furious was short of fuel, a problem with the converted old ‘large light cruisers’ that had had its impact on the earlier HMS Glorious debacle. Baker-Falkner


to pg


with the ‘larg th it


period he starred in an Ealing Studios RN information fi lm Find, Fix and Strike.


Studios RN in Find Fix andStr


r


Down as a test pilot, where, among other aircraft, he helped solve many of the problems of the


none-too-satisfactory Barracuda. This led to command of a


again at sea until April 1941 when he was part of an anti-submarine warfare fl ight in the old carrier Argus, transporting Hurricanes to Gibraltar for onward passage to Malta.


He rejoined 812 Squadron which had just been redeployed to the Orkneys. The author raises the interesting possibility of what might have been achieved,


if


Barracuda squadron, 827, which had just suffered a number of fatal accidents with the tricky aircraft. While building the effi ciency of this unit he was also chosen to re- write Fleet Air Arm doctrine – the Naval Air Fighting Instructions – an infl uential and key duty which demonstrated the value placed on him by his superiors. He was a natural choice to lead one of the new Torpedo Bomber Reconnaissance Wings, the Eighth, which grouped 827 with 830. This led to the attacks on Tirpitz and other operations against Norway to keep the Germans


He then moved to Boscombe


deck landing training school where he would be an instructor with 767 Squadron,


was now posted to HMS Condor at Arbroath, deck lan school wh


to HM th


u was


Glo B


then the during which th t of which


these experienced aircrew had been transferred to Victorious for the Bismarck chase, as requested by the squadron commanding offi cer.


guessing as to where the Allied blow against western Europe might fall in 1944. The book clearly demonstrates the enormous strain under which Baker-Falkner and the other aircrew were working. This is a major strength of the book. The constant loss of colleagues and friends to accident as much as, if not more than, to enemy action, was an unfortunate and all-too-common feature of Fleet Air Arm life, one which it is all too easy to overlook. It is signifi cant to see in the excellent illustrations how Baker-Falkner, still in his twenties, visibly aged at this time.


The circumstances of his tragic and needless death are considered without coming to a fi xed conclusion. Some say the Commanding


Offi cer of HMS Formidable, Captain Ruck-Keene, demanded that special patrols be fl own against a reported U-Boat trap. Other trustworthy fi rst-hand sources assert that it was Baker- Falkner who insisted he fl ew. Perhaps he thought that if


patrols had to go up at all, he should fl y one of them. There had been celebrations in the mess after the day’s operations seemed to be over and ‘B-F’ thought the senior offi cers were in the least bad condition to fl y. Sadly an aircraft with defective equipment was chosen and the stage was set for disaster.


The book holds one’s attention. No reader will put it down without feeling they have truly experienced the dynamics of life in the Fleet Air Arm during the war and the strains it put on both the personnel and their families. Unfortunately,


there are


rather too many surprising and unfortunate mistakes and gaps in historical context. These do not, however,


from an interesting,


seriously detract absorbing


and worthwhile book, which gives Baker-Falkner the retrospective recognition he clearly deserves.


When admirals thought gym’ll fi x it


RIGHT about now several hundred sailors and Royal Marines should be hitting the slopes of the Alps at the annual winter sports


dispatched to Greek minesweeper Salaminia as an interpreter on NATO exercises (the failure to speak any Greek evidently not a hindrance to this liaison job...). The Salaminia was WW2


vintage. ‘Old tub’ would have been a kind description, hygiene was non-existent, stew comprised ‘icebergs of fat’ floating around and security was non-existent. RN vessels guarded top secret


NATO material fervently in a ship’s comms centre. The Greeks strapped a garden shed on deck and allowed anyone to wander in as they pleased. Not a few top secret NATO key cards were sucked out of the structure in bad weather and drifted on the surface of the Med. Discipline raised a few


eyebrows too (the steward’s uniform was covered with more than two dozen patches...). Still at least the captain could be expected to set an example. A bad one.


Medsweepex, he embarked his new wife... and took her on honeymoon to Corfu in the warship. For several days Allied forces scoured the Adriatic and Ionian seas. A flying boat finally located the missing Salaminia, the captain was arrested, court martialled, jailed, then released a few days later because the ship was needed on the exercise and no-one else could take charge. You couldn’t make it up...


In the middle of a NATO


gathering. Sport – and adventurous training – is one of the big selling points of a career in the 21st Century Senior Service, the ‘life without limits’ that the recruiters sell.


And it’s not a new fad, as Tony Mason and Eliza Riedi show in their intriguing history Sport and the Military: The British Armed Forces 1880-1960 (Cambridge University Press, £18.99 ISBN 978-0-521-70074-0). Ninety years ago, with the guns


of the Western Front barely silent, the recruiting posters were trying to entice men to join the Forces, proclaiming that life in uniform “isn’t all work”. Sport came to the military in


earnest – as it did in Victorian society as a whole – in the last couple of decades of the 19th Century as a wave of social reforms swept through the Army and Navy: less brutal punishments, better living conditions, better pay. And as in the rest of British


society, sport was a divisive affair: ratings played football, officers cricket, engineer officers rugby union.


A century on, those class and rank barriers are long gone, but in many respects little has changed when it comes to RN sport. Wherever a ship went in the world at the turn of the 20th Century, its sporting teams were quickly in action against local opposition. And at home the Navy often


struggled to field sides because of “exigences of service” (operational commitments in modern parlance); as a result the Army was the


dominant force in Services sport in the pre-1914 era. But given time to prepare a squad, however, the odds were rather more even. The RN football team was g


days to practise ahead of the annual Army-Na fixture in 1908. They achieved the first Senior Service victory in the competition’s historyory. The RN is often credited with introducing sport (football especially) to far-flung corners of the world such as Brazil and Korea.


my Se


enior the


en h


board new sports from distant lands; martial arts is not a post- Bruce Lee phenomenon – ju-jitsu was introduced in the Navy in 1906.


But it also took on


ea o f


ook on fdi


from distant is not a post-


Although Mason and Riedi’s


work will be classed as ‘academic’ (they are professor and lecturer respectively and the publisher is a university press), this is not a hard read – thanks not least to the use of many contemporary newspaper accounts. The writers show that sport has


played a key moral role in Service life, especially during wartime. Admiral Jellicoe, wary of the


dreariness of long stints at Scapa Flow waiting for the Germans to ‘come out’, ordered comprehensive sports facilities provided for the men of the Grand Fleet. A golf course was built (for


officers), a football pitch laid (although sailors complained it was too boggy) and a boxing ring was even installed on a canteen ship; title bouts were watched by hundreds of sailors who lined the sides of the ship. No prize was more cherished than the Silver Cockerel, the


a.


n.. The RN given ten ahead of y-Navy


Fleet rowing trophy, contested particularly furiously between the wars by capital ships.


world to sa


to su a


urpa ctio whe co –


w Theatre-of-War’


“There is nothing in the world to surpass the heartfelt satisfaction and delight when the Cock comes on board – it is a moment worth living and


limits’ limits’.


running a ship. But the authors also show that there was more to sport in the Navy than encouraging fitness or offeriing that ‘life without


than enc ff


more to


runni But w


wro bible


e o ng


ng th


tha spo cou


Up to the 1930s, sport was


viewed by the upper echelons of the RN especially as something vital to morale and, above all, discipline, Mason and Riedi argue, to the detriment of other welfare, social and economic issues. However much sailors enjoyed


sport, however much it drilled fitness and discipline into them, it couldn’t stop mutiny at Invergordon. That aside, for the most part


sport has been as much a part of Naval life as in civilian society. As early as 1922, the Reuters agency wired the results of football matches in Britain to the Mediterranean Fleet – a service maintained to this day (although e-mail and internet have replaced the news wire). Back then, of course, football


was played by ordinary folk, not today’s pampered, overpaid ‘heroes’.


this world might wish to take note of guidelines provided for participants at the 1919 ‘Inter-


The Rooneys and Tevezes of th


Rory O’Conor, who wrote the inter-war bible on the art of


Ro


ent Hoo ory ote


H wo


when sportsmen from the Army, Navy and newly-formed RAF met.


championships


The ruling sporting bodies compiled ‘eight commandments’ which they expected their athletes to follow. A good sportsman was, they declared, someone who


working for,” enthused HMS Hood’s XO Cdr


■ ■ ■


■ ■


■ ■ ■


plays the game for the game’s sake; plays for his side and not for himself;


is a good winner and a good loser, ie is modest in victory and generous in defeat accepts all decisions in a proper spirit is chivalrous towards a defeated opponent is unselfish as a spectator, applauds good play on both sides never interferes with referees or judges, no matter what the decision.


and women still abide by these guidelines by and large. Whither the rest of the sporting world?


Ninety years later, Servicemen


The art of war(ships)


The art of


BY FAR the most visually- impressive volume to arrive at Navy News Towers this month is Ship (Conway, £30 ISBN 978- 1844-860760), a skip through seven millennia of nautical history – as represented in paintings, posters and photographs. The bulk of the vessels depicted in the book, edited by the ever-reliable and astute Prof Andrew Lambert, hail from the last 250 or so years. The result is a smörgåsbord


of maritime history: ships famous and not so, warships and merchantmen, well-known images (the sinking of the Prince of Wales, Invincible wrecked at Jutland, Vanguard aground in Portsmouth Harbour, HMS Hood at Scapa Flow – as seen from HMS Rodney) and uncommon ones (HMS Ocean arriving at the breakers, the wacky circular Russian gunboat Novgorod... which spun out of control when its guns fired). It’s the visual representation of ships which really catch the eye, however, from the striking art deco poster for the Hamburg- America Line (as seen on the book’s cover) and a rather loose interpretation of the first aircraft landing on a carrier (drawn in true Boy’s Own-fashion), to the present-day work of the great Geoff Hunt, Britain’s leading marine artist, such as HMS Dragon being built in Portsmouth and International Fleet Review at anchor in the Solent in 2005. And then there’s ‘an accurate representation’ of a French invasion barge from 1805, powered by wind and water mills, featuring a castle (with keep) midship, and able to carry 60,000 men and 600 cannon.


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