ATLANTIC CONVOYS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 July 1941, Page 6

ATLANTIC CONVOYS

TRIP THROUGH DANGER AREA ADVENTURES. ON VOYAGE. JOURNALIST’S STORY. Two convoys of British and Allied ships safely escorted through the danger zone, and two U-boats sunk by sister destroyers, was the encouraging record of a 2000-mile voyage made by a London journalist in a destroyer which in several days ranged far out into the wilderness of the vast Atlantic battlefield. As escort vessel and submarine chaser this ship is helping to fight a way through the German counter-blockade of the north-western approaches to Britain, now ruthlessly prosecuted by U-boats and surface raiders. In a few days he saw over- 200 ships sailing safely in convoy, an antidote to the figure of shipping losses. Alarms and scares were plentiful, but the two convoys were not attacked once. Condign punishment of U-boats which imprudently made an attempt on a convoy ahead probably explained the immunity.

After some minor adventures the testing moment of the voyage came on the sixth day. Late the previous night the officer of the watch had observed a great flash. Wireless reports established that a merchant ship had been torpedoed more than 50 miles away. The following morning they passed a patch of oil, possibly a relic of the torpedoed ship. Shortly afterwards came news of the approach of a Nazi plane followed by an S.O.S. from a ship torpedoed off the west coast of Ireland. The air raid did not materialise, but the weather began to worsen, causing the ship to pitch violently. Next came a big thrill. A sister destroyer escorting the convoy ahead wirelessed that she had sighted an enemy submarine on the surface. Adding to these preoccupations were messages saying that German warships were out in the Atlantic.

TENSE VIGIL. Look-outs scoured the gloomy sea with their long glasses; the Asdic detector explored the depths. The strain sustained for hour after hour was intense, until finally the sunless day was replaced by impenetrable night. Üboats, like the assassin, wait for darkness, and the task of finding them is desperately difficult. Eventually they saw the dim shapes of the convoy ahead. Ho made a perilous way down the slippery steel ladders to his cabin, to wait for morning, fully clothed, as always, and with a lifebelt on. Next morning, at action stations, the weather was still depressing, and he made a suitable comment to the 28-year-old captain. “A jolly good day, you mean,” he retorted. “Two submarines sunk.” They had

just picked up the wireless message. The news spread like wildfire. There was great jubilation in the wardroom and also disappointment that they themselves had not been the lucky ones. The spirits of the ratings rose. U-boats had been attacking protected convoys with determination, and now had had a sharp lesson.

WRECKAGE AND SURVIVORS.

As the convoy weaved its slow zigzag they saw of the flotsam of this terrible battlefield —empty rafts, baulks of timber, and once a body lashed to a spar. ■ On the third day out a corvette accompanying the convoy signalled that she had picked up three survivors from a raft and a boat, a Norwegian and two Icelanders. The Norwegian had been adrift for 12 days and medical attention was urgently needed. The captain agreed to send their sur-geon-lieutenant—in peacetime assistant to a country practice in Lincolnshire. They hove to in a surging sea which caused the ship to heel to an acute angle. The corvette approached as close as she dared and lay bobbing and rolling in the roughest sea the journalist has seen. Then came the ticklish operation cf lowering a boat with a crew of five. The doctor alone among those in the boat wore no oilskin. Huge waves threatened to engulf them. They lastsaw him facetiously waving his cap and making a paddling motion with his hands. Afterwards we heard that the perilous mid-ocean trip had been highly successful and that the patient! recovered, but the doctor did not rejoin his ship for the rest of the voyage.]