“All the way down we swept the banks and made up our minds to knock out the field guns at the mouth if we possibly could. We tried our best, but I don’t think we touched them. They fired on us till we were out of range. They did not hit—but I saw one fragment about six inches by one inch picked up on the boat deck.
“Two tugs were waiting over the bar, and after giving us a cheer took us on tow to help us back to Trent. The Weymouth, with the Admiral on board, came round and then passed us at speed; all hands lined the ship and, led by the small white figure of the Admiral on the bridge, gave us three splendid cheers. It was one of the finest sights I have ever seen. We answered back—and what a difference there was to our cheers of Tuesday last. We made about three times the noise....
“I went to the Captain’s cabin for half an hour to copy out the notes I had taken. From the very first shot we fired I kept a record of every shot fired by the 6-inch guns, and all I could see or hear round about, writing something every minute, i.e. 12:37 2 guns. H.T. J.M. 12:38 2 guns. H.T. 12:38½ (Koenigsberg firing 2). Column of smoke; aeroplane hit and coming down, etc.
“I ought to explain that ‘J.M.,’ ‘B.F.,’ ‘F.20,’ ‘G.15,’ ‘H.T.,’ and so on are signals from the aeroplanes. ‘H.T.’ means ‘a hit.’ In order to make sure of the right letters having passed the man shouts not ‘H.T.’ alone, ‘H. for Harry, T for Tommy,’ and then there can be no confusion. The man at the voice pipe in the conning tower simply roared out ‘H. for Harry, T. for Tommy,’ each time it was signalled. Well, when I was making my copy in his cabin on the way back, the Captain came in for a moment. He leaned his hand quietly on my shoulder and with a huge sigh said, ‘If ever I live to have a son, his name shall be Harry Tommy!’ I firmly believe he meant it too, at the time!”
If the people in Severn and Mersey had had a narrow squeak for it, not once but a dozen times, from Koenigsberg’s salvoes, the spotting party in the aeroplane must have had just as exciting a time. And, as we have seen from the foregoing account, with them Koenigsberg was more fortunate. On July 11th everything was against Lieutenant Cull, the first pilot to go up, and Flight-Sub-Lieutenant Arnold, who was acting as observer. To begin with it was a cloudy day, and the machine had to be kept dangerously low if the observer was to do his work. The aeroplane got over the target at about 12:20, while Mersey was firing hard. But this fire of the Mersey had nothing to do with the organized effort to destroy the enemy. It was merely a blind—an effort to get the enemy’s observer on land to deflect the fire on that ship on to Mersey, while Severn got ready for the real work. The aeroplane, therefore, paid no attention to Mersey’s fire and telegraphed no observations. Ten minutes later Severn opened fire and Mersey ceased. Mersey’s diversion did for a time bring Koenigsberg’s guns in her direction. But no sooner did Severn open fire than she got the full benefit of Koenigsberg’s salvoes of four, which followed each other at intervals of about a minute. Five minutes after Severn opened at 12:30, Koenigsberg’s salvoes began to straddle her. Nine minutes after Severn opened fire the aeroplane signalled first hit. And less than ten minutes after that Lieutenant Arnold telegraphed ‘We are hit; send boat.’ In point of fact, it is probable that the aeroplane’s engine had been slightly injured earlier. For, dangerously low as the machine had to fly at the beginning, it was found impossible to keep even at that height, and as it got lower and slower, it obviously became an easier mark for the Koenigsberg’s 12-pounders. At 12:46 a terrific bump was felt in the machine, and shortly afterwards the engine broke up with a rattle and a crash, and there was nothing for it but to start sliding down. Imagine the situation! The machine, between 3,000 and 4,000 feet in the air, nearly three miles from the monitors; the only possible hope of safety to make this long glide and then to land—if the bull may be permitted—in a narrow strip of river bordered by impenetrable bush—the bush dotted with lofty trees! If the machine missed the river and hit the trees, it was certain death wherever it landed. If it missed the trees and hit the river, there was palpably no safety unless it was within a very short distance of the monitors. For nowhere else did the pilot and observer stand the faintest chance of rescue. A situation more absolutely desperate could hardly be imagined.
It was certainly not one in which the seemingly doomed occupants could have been blamed if they had thought of their safety and of nothing else. But while the pilot was, quite properly, concentrating his attention on performing as nice a feat in flying as can be imagined, Flight-Lieutenant Arnold, content to leave this matter in the skilled hands of his comrade, continued imperturbably to carry on his duties.
Severn, having got the range, naturally continued firing. Flight-Lieutenant Arnold, having been sent up to observe, continued observing, and each shot that he observed, on what must have seemed his last glide to certain death, was signalled to the control parties on board the monitor. The gist of this was that six out of ten shots were hitting, and apparently were hitting steadily, but all were striking Koenigsberg in the bows. Arnold’s last achievement as an observer was to deflect this fire amidships and to the stern. And he had hardly succeeded before the ‘plane crashed into the water 500 yards from the Mersey. Mersey had her motor-boat ready and it was sent full speed to the rescue. Arnold had no difficulty in getting himself free, but Lieutenant Cull was not so fortunate. In the excitement of his task he had forgotten to loosen the straps that held his belt and feet, and was fairly under water before he realized his predicament. How he wrenched himself free of these impediments is somewhat difficult to understand, and it is not surprising that his apparel suffered somewhat severely from his efforts. When he came to the surface he found Arnold scrambling about the wrecked machine in search of him, and both were got safely into the boat. The machine, smashed and waterlogged in the river, was of course past saving, and there was nothing for it but to demolish it. Take it all in all, few prettier pieces of work in the air—whether we look at the flight craftsmanship of the thing, or the practical use that the last moments of flight were put to—have yet been recorded.
A PROBLEM IN CONTROL
There are several features in these operations that are of great interest. To begin with, the destruction of a ship by the indirect fire of another ship had not, so far as I know, been systematically attempted before. There was indeed a story of Queen Elizabeth having sunk a Turkish transport by a shot fired clean over the Gallipoli peninsula. In the case of the Queen Elizabeth’s victim the target was not only incredibly far off but actually under way. But this must be regarded as amongst the flukes of war, if indeed that may be called a fluke when the right measure had been taken to ensure success. Still, it was more probable that the attempt might be made a hundred times without a hit being made than that the first shot fired should have landed straight on the target. But here on the Rufigi the monitors had gone up after making ample preparations and after full practice, to achieve a particular object. It was to destroy a very small ship at a range which, for the gun employed, must be considered extraordinarily great. Ten thousand yards is relatively a longer range for a 6-inch gun than is, say, 18,000 for a 15-inch. But while in this respect the task proposed was extraordinarily difficult, there was one element present that would distinguish it from almost any other known use of naval guns. In engaging land forts, both on the Belgian coast and off Gallipoli, there had been ample experience with a stationary target engaged by a stationary ship. But here the firing ship was not only stationary in the sense that it was moored, but was practically at rest in that it was lying in smooth water with no roll or pitch to render the gun-layers’ aim uncertain. The current did cause a certain veering, but not a sufficient movement to embarrass laying. But if in this respect the conditions were easy, they were extraordinarily difficult in every other. The monitors, for instance, were as much exposed to Koenigsberg’s fire as was Koenigsberg to that of the monitors, and whereas Koenigsberg’s guns could be spotted from a position on shore the monitors’ fire had to be spotted by aeroplane. The whole of the operations of Severn and Mersey then were not only carried out under fire, but under an attack that on the second day as well as the first was extraordinarily persistent and extraordinarily accurate. That in the course of two days only one of our ships was hit, and that one only once, must be considered a curiosity, for so good were the gunnery arrangements of Koenigsberg that each monitor when under fire was straddled again and again by salvoes, and when not straddled had the 4.2 shells falling in bunches either just short or just over them. The explanation of her having failed to get more hits than she did, while ultimately Severn’s was completely effective, does not lie in any inferiority of skill, but almost entirely in the fact that the range, if exceptionally great for a 6-inch gun, was almost fabulous for a 4.2, and next that Koenigsberg was a much larger target than either Severn or Mersey. Koenigsberg was probably aground, and therefore showing from three to four feet more of her side than she would at sea. Monitors are a craft with a very, very low freeboard, with a comparatively small central house built up amidships. As a point-blank target Koenigsberg would probably be more than twice the superficial area that either Mersey or Severn would present. The contrast between them as virtual targets, that is, the target that would be presented to the shell as it descended from a height upon the ship, would not, of course, be so great, because the monitors were each of them wider than the German cruiser, but even as a virtual target the Koenigsberg was much more favourable for the British guns.
But the master difficulty of the situation was for the men on the spot, without previous experience of indirect fire, and unaided apparently by any advice from headquarters as to the result of service experiments elsewhere, to extemporize all the processes for finding and keeping the range of a target invisible from the ship. The two essential elements in these processes were (1) for the observer in the aeroplane to note where each shot fell, and (2) to inform the ship that fired it exactly what the position of the impact was, whether to the right or to the left, over or short, and an approximate measurement in yards of its distance from the target. No one of those concerned had ever engaged in any similar operation. The aviators had not only never carried observers to spot naval gunfire, they had none of them ever even flown in the tropics, where the conditions of flight differ altogether from those in more temperate zones. The observers were even more new to the work than the aviators. Apparently some of them had never been in flying machines before. They not only had to learn the elements of spotting, they had to become familiar with the means of sending communications. There seems at one time to have been considerable doubt as to the best means to employ for communication. The means would have to include not only a system of sending messages, whether by wireless, by lights flashing a Morse code or otherwise, but the production of a code as well. When these points were settled, the preliminary practices of Mafia Island gave what appeared to be sufficient experience to show that right principles were being followed. Only when this practice had given satisfactory results was the first attempt of July 6th made.