Life onboard a carrier in World War II

From Norman Hanson’s Carrier Pilot:

Illustrious wasn’t merely an aircraft carrier. She was a legend, a ship which, in her short life, had already made history. Built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, she was launched on April 5 1939, commissioned on April 16 1940 and joined the Fleet at Spithead six weeks later. … a brief description of the ship; one of three of her class. The others were Victorious and Formidable. She had a nominal displacement of 23,000 tons, although it was popularly believed that additions and modifications had brought this to something nearer 30,000 tons. Three propellers, driven by turbines each developing 37,000 hp thrust her through the water at 31 knots. The centre propeller was situated directly forward of the rudder, whose action was thereby greatly enhanced. She could turn on a sixpence. The overall length was 740 feet, with a maximum flight-deck width of 95 feet. She was at once a mighty warship, a floating airfield and a seaborne anti-aircraft artillery regiment. Eighteen hundred officers and men lived within her steel walls.

To operate aircraft, the flight-deck was equipped with eight arrestor wires—strong steel hawsers stretched at intervals laterally across the deck. At each end they disappeared round pulleys through the armour-plated deck into the hangar, where they were wound round great spools on which tension, under hydraulic pressure, of varying strength according to the physical weight of aircraft being operated, could be imposed. As a wire was engaged by the aircraft’s arrestor hook, so the self-centring wire was pulled from the spools, decelerating the aircraft to a standstill. The G force exerted on the pilot was between two and three, depending upon which wire was engaged. Some 60 feet forward of the centre of the deck were two safety barriers (a euphemistic term which fooled nobody—to us they were crash barriers). These consisted of hinged steel stanchions at both sides of the deck, which were raised or lowered to allow for the passage of aircraft across them. They were connected by two steel hawsers of enormous strength, about three feet apart; and they themselves were linked together by three or four vertical hawsers, like a huge net. These hawsers, too, were capable of being stretched—though only slightly—under hydraulic tension. Six-ton aircraft at 70 knots appeared to go through No 1 barrier like a knife through butter; but it must have taken some of the way off them, for No 2 always brought them up solid. Forward on the port side was the hydraulic catapult, capable of launching an aircraft to flying speed within a matter of 100 feet.

Slick work, too, is demanded of the flight-deck parties. As soon as an aircraft hooks a wire, members of those parties must rush from the nets to disengage the wire, to allow the aircraft to taxi forward. The wire operator must quickly rewind the wire in readiness for the next landing; and the barrier operators must lower both barriers as soon as an aircraft is hooked and then re-erect them immediately the landed aircraft has taxied across them to the forward end of the deck. With every man concerned doing his job efficiently and with squadrons at peak performance, aircraft in our ship could take off at intervals of 12 seconds and land at the incredible rate of one aircraft every 22 seconds.

As far as aircraft maintenance was concerned, it was naturally the hangar where there was most activity. In temperate latitudes this armour-plated box, capable of holding 30-odd aircraft, was a pleasant enough workshop for the boys. In the tropics it was hell upon earth. In a daytime temperature of anything up to 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit, the slightest movement produced a stream of perspiration. When an aircraft was flown regularly without mishap, its servicing was a straightforward, uncomplicated procedure. Every 30 hours it underwent an ever-increasingly rigorous overhaul culminating—if it lasted long enough!—in a truly major one which was tantamount to taking the whole thing apart and re-building it. It was also subjected to a daily check—tyre pressures, oil, hydraulic and air pressures, the correct functioning of ignition, instruments, radio and guns. If an aircrew was fortunate and their aircraft was in the right place at the right time, this daily check could conveniently be carried out on the flight-deck. If they were not so lucky, however, the daily check had to be done in the hangar, that ill-lit, unbelievably noisy, unbearably hot dungeon where aircraft were lashed down cheek by jowl, surrounded by straining, swearing mechanics clad only in a pair of shorts—wringing wet from perspiration—and gym-shoes. Here they toiled, fuming at obstinate nuts, red-hot pipes and sparking plugs; and with the roll or pitch of the vessel calling constantly for a change of balance. Their hands never ceased to clear sweat from their eyes and within ten minutes their faces were covered in greasy filth and grime, rendering them almost unrecognisable.

Accidents were common:

In the early evening, off Alexandria, we were caught with our pants down when a German reconnaissance Ju 88 flew very high and fast over the Fleet. I cannot now remember if our radar boys had been asleep or if some blind spot in signal reception had caused us to fail to locate him. The fact remains that he was overhead when Wings scrambled the standby Corsair flight; tragically, too quickly for our young man Monteith. In his rush to become airborne, he failed to lock his wings properly in the ‘spread’ position, with the tragic result that, when he retracted his undercarriage as he passed over the destroyer screen, his wings folded and the aircraft plunged into the sea. He was only 20 and had become engaged, whilst at Stretton, to a charming young girl from his native Glasgow, who in that short time had captured all our hearts. It was a sad way to go.

The two main landing wheels of the Corsair were made of aluminium alloy and carried large tyres inflated to a pressure of 120 lb per square inch. To inflate these, our ratings used compressed air bottles of a pressure of 1,300 psi; not the sort of thing for children to play with. One rating—I think in Victorious—in recent weeks had inflated a tyre and had elected to guess its pressure rather than go to the trouble of fetching a pressure gauge. In fact, he had inflated the tyre to such a pressure that the wheel had broken in two under the strain. Half of it flew straight for his abdomen, cutting him neatly into two portions. Not surprisingly, he was very dead before he knew what had hit him. So the gipsy’s warning went out—don’t blow up tyres without having a pressure gauge in hand.

Weather could be unfriendly by Royal Caribbean standards:

Soon after we left Cape Town en route for Ceylon, the weather worsened and our met officer, Norman ‘Schooly’ Jenkins, began to look thoughtful. It seemed that a typhoon lay ahead of us, astride the Equator. Its position was foxing, for he couldn’t decide whether it would turn out to be a ‘north’ or a ‘south’. They have different patterns, according to which side of the Equator they occur. We spent two days and nights trying to dodge it, but it won in the end and on October 26 it hit us with all the force of Nature gone stark, staring mad. It continued to hammer us for three days and I have no desire to experience another. Everything about it was terrifying. The sky, for one thing, was a dull, yellow blanket that covered us from one horizon to the other. The wind: we had 115 knots blowing down the flight-deck. The seas: from my cabin, down aft near the stern of the ship, the waves could be heard hitting the bows like the blows of a sledgehammer. The ship’s speed was pulled down to the minimum, just sufficient to keep her head into wind. We crawled along and took fearful punishment. The sailors up in the forepart were sick in their hundreds; and, as no one could possibly survive on the weather-decks, a breath of fresh air was out of the question. Our deck-park of 14 aircraft required continual vigilance and sailors were held by lifelines as they moved gingerly from the island on to the deck to fix and check extra lashings. The wind was actually turning the propellers of these aircraft—and that against the compression of 18 cylinders! Everyone had to use the starboard passage to reach the island and to stand on the compass platform was an awesome experience. Outside was a mad, mad world of elements gone crazy, where the noise of the wind was that of the endless high-pitched whistle of a steam locomotive. On the evening of the third day the sky began to clear. Next morning we had sunshine, although the sea still retained its gigantic, terrifying swell. Two off-duty Petty Officers, sitting on the forward round-down in the agreeable sunshine after being so depressingly cooped up in the bowels of the ship, were swept away by a gigantic wave of 50 or 60 feet. One was never seen again. The other one, luckier, fetched up in the forward starboard gun turrets with broken ribs and limbs.

True heroism is not always appreciated:

One act of cold-blooded courage must be recorded. When the Kamikaze appeared, we had two Corsairs ranged on the centre line, all set for take-off. Churchill was leading, Parli astern of him, both with engines turning and ready to go. Suddenly the after 4.5-inch guns commenced to fire, simultaneously with a red warning over the Tannoys. The two pilots ‘baled out’ and, together with the mechanics who had been holding the chocks, ran to the island for cover. The steady, shattering thump of the 4.5s, ear-splitting in the painful explosions from their muzzles, and the whip-like crack of the Bofors and Oerlikons on all sides made incoherent all thought and speech. Parli, on leaving his aircraft, had found time to pull the mixture control back to ‘automatic cut-off’ which stopped the engine instantly. Churchill hadn’t lingered and the engine of his Corsair was still ticking over at about 300 revs. Now the engine’s vibration, the tremor of the deck as the gunfire shook the ship and, finally, the ship’s leap into the air as the suicider exploded—all these proved sufficient to dislodge the aircraft’s chocks; and the Corsair slowly moved forward and slightly to port. In a matter of seconds it would reach the port nets and plunge over them into the sea. £ 75,000, apart from any injuries it might cause on its way. There might be Kamikazes about, although I couldn’t see any as I emerged on to the flight-deck. All I could see were shells exploding at a great height and a strung-out flight of Hellcats tearing upwards towards a bank of cumulus way up above us. A tug on my sleeve brought me back to ground level. From the door to the island, where he had sought shelter, came Demaine, our high-diving electrician, running swiftly towards the moving Corsair, completely disregarding Kamikaze and gunfire. He leapt on to the wing and climbed into the cockpit, where he managed to hit the foot-brakes in the nick of time, just as the wheels reached the three-inch deck-edge. He switched off the engine and sat there, cool as a cucumber, until two lads ran across with sets of chocks. I tried in vain to get a DSM for him, for his was a deed of true bravery in the middle of an action. He was, however, mentioned in despatches which showed at least that his courage had been recognised by the hierarchy.

The financial destruction of war (and wealth transfer to military contractors) was apparent to the young aircrews. A verse from one of their songs:

When the batsman gives ‘Lower’ I always go higher;
I drift off to starboard and prang my Seafire.
The chaps up in goofers all think I am green,
But I get my commission from Supermarine!

More: read Carrier Pilot.