1 the Battle for CRETE by Clive Sharplin (Associate Member)

The Battle For CRETE By Clive Sharplin (Associate member) "There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory." Sir Francis Drake 1587 - Vice Admiral and celebrated navigator of the first Elizabethan era 1540-1596 This article celebrates the 75th Anniversary of the Battle for Crete recognised by the Admiralty as having taken place from 15th May to 27th May 1941 (note 3) and attempts to describe the part played in it by HMS Ajax.(note 4) Due to the number of ships involved, their complex manoeuvres and dispositions, their various strategic assignments, the sheer number of actions both singly and as part of specific groups together with eye witness observations this account must because of space restrictions in this journal be severely limited in size and content. The author, however, sincerely hopes that it will at best give an insight or snapshot of one of the Royal Navy’s most iconic ships, HMS Ajax, in what was a very important, desperate battle, actually a campaign, with huge losses of ships and men, an excruciatingly sad battle of World War 2. While technically a defeat because Crete was lost I would argue that no blame should be laid at the Royal Navy’s doormat, the Royal Navy acquitted itself in the finest traditions of its long history and did everything they were asked to do and much more at a great cost which I believe Cunningham similarly argued in his report to the Admiralty. The fleet had carried an army from North Africa to Greece, evacuated it from Greece to Crete, and then evacuated it from Crete back to North Africa fighting every inch of the way. Yes Crete was lost but in this loss they managed to achieve other objectives which lent a positive influence to the allies’ future conduct of the war. As a result Hitler abandoned his plan to invade Malta and Sicily and any future deployment of Parachutist troops as too expensive in men and equipment. Any blame for the loss of Crete I consider should be on the shoulders of the senior military commanders particularly Major General Freberg’s failure as Divisional Field Officer, his men deserved better. For the students of the minutiae of the Crete campaign at sea I can do no better than to refer them to the C-in-C Mediterranean Admiral Sir A B Cunningham’s full report to the Admiralty as published on 24th May 1948 as a supplement to The London gazette P 3103 – 3119. This account refers only to the naval side, for an appreciation of the army’s position there are several excellent books on the subject. (Refer to bibliography). This battle was of a different type to any other that had ever been fought by any Navy before and its form, intensity and ferocity was not to be repeated until that fought between Japan and the western alliance principally the USA in the Pacific theatre of WW2. The significant difference was that a powerful fleet with plenty of sea room to manoeuvre was to fight a virtually impossible war against an almost overwhelming air force comprising both the German Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Royale who between them could muster well over 2000 aircraft. With virtually no allied air cover the axis powers enjoyed total air superiority which put the ships under persistent attack in a battle that was to become a campaign spread over some six weeks. While there were some ship-to-ship actions the major conflict was between the combined German and Italian aircraft and Royal Naval ships who were poorly armed to defend themselves (note 5) and the lack of this defensive capability compounded by almost non-existent allied aircraft. It must be recognised that at this stage of the war nearly all of the Royal Navy’s ships were extremely vulnerable to air attack due to the mistaken belief by the Admiralty that they had been adequately equipped with regard to their armament. The reverse had quickly and horribly become apparent. During the spring of 1940 the effectiveness of German air attacks in all its forms in actions off Norway against ships demonstrated just how completely the Admiralty had grossly underestimated the ability of their ships to defend themselves against aerial attack with a lack of anti-aircraft (AA) guns and their control equipment. As April 1941 opened Ajax was still in the Mediterranean where together with other Fleet units 1 she had been used to carry some 58,000 Troops from North Africa to Greece to bolster the hard pressed Greek Army against an expected invasion by Nazi Germany’s army which had swept through the Balkans like an unimpeded juggernaut and was now targeting Crete. Malta was still under siege and the Royal Naval forces were now mostly operating from a base in Alexandria, a distance of 406.7 Miles (654.5 kms). Intelligence source from Ultra indicated an invasion of the Island of Crete by Nazi Germany in early May 1941 (note 6). In these actions around Crete the Axis air attacks were so vicious in their frequency and numbers of aircraft employed to the point of being on the verge of overwhelming. The British ships expended huge amounts of ammunition such that their defensive firepower was always a major consideration and often became restricted. Even their main armament was used in spite of its insufficient elevation limits. Several ships actually exhausted all of their ammunition and had to resort to firing signal and practice shells. The painting below displays just one of a whole host of such unbridled actions that occurred in the Mediterranean during this period of World War 2 with virtually no air cover protection for Royal Naval forces from the ferocity of the onslaught waged upon them by the German Luftwaffe As Greece fell to the German Army advancing through the Balkans on the night of April 24th the evacuation of allied troops became inevitable. The Royal Navy, including Ajax, started to evacuate about 30,000 troops, principally ANZAC with some British and Greek, carrying them southwards to the island of Crete. It became another Dunkirk. Ajax evacuated, among others, elements of the 6th New Zealand Brigade, 2/3 Australian Battalion and last of all, on April 29th, Rear Admiral ‘Tom’ Baillie-Grohman RN (who was attached to the Staff of the General Officer Commanding Middle East) together with New Zealand’s Major-General Bernard ‘Tiny’ Freberg VC, 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, who would soon take command of all allied military forces on Crete. The allied forces arrived on Crete to be taunted by Nazi radio propaganda broadcasts that they had been landed on the ‘Isle of Doom’. These broadcasts were prophetic as Ajax and the other naval ships found themselves only a few weeks later being called in to evacuate the allied forces they had so recently landed on the island while also being asked to defend it from a German seaborne invasion. On May 20th after four days of continuous bombing German airborne forces began “Operation Merkur”, their invasion of Crete. Admiral A.B. (Andrew Browne) Cunningham, Commander-in- Chief, Mediterranean Fleet, or ‘ABC’ as he became known in the Royal Navy, had on May 19th issued instructions for night sweeps of the Aegean to challenge the expected seaborne invasion. Daylight of May 21st found Ajax, under the command of Captain E. D. (Desmond) B. McCarthy, heading to the South West of Antikithera, beyond the southern tip of Greece, as part of Force D under the command of recently appointed Flag Officer, Rear-Admiral Irvine G. Glennie, in the cruiser Dido, together with the cruiser Orion and four destroyers, Hasty, Hereward, Kimberley and Janus (note 8). Imperial was bombed seven days later on the 28th and so extensively damaged that she was deliberately sunk by Hotspur to prevent her from falling into enemy hands. Having swept the Maleme, Canea and Kissamo Bay areas of the Cretan coast the previous night they had investigated what proved to be false reports of enemy seaborne landings at Heraklion, the squadron was heading to join other ships of the fleet in a major concentration of naval forces to defend the island. On Ajax at 0800 the ships log recorded the weather conditions as 'sea state 11, wind westerly force 3, visibility good, and position 35.27N/22.32E.' The log shows that the sea state would rise to 21, wind strengthen slightly to force 4 west by north-west and visibility to become excellent by noon. In his book “Crete 1941, The Battle at Sea”, David A Thomas wrote: 'The daylight hours of May 21st were to witness violent and prolonged battles between warships and the bombers.' Frank Pearce in “Sea War, Great Naval Battles of World War 2” wrote: '... the air was filled with the 2 drone of approaching aircraft. They came in droves.... it seemed impossible that any ship could survive such a massive attack.' The Admiralty official record described it in “The Med, The Royal Navy in the Mediterranean 1939-45” as “the air attacks reached a crescendo the following day (May 21st) when our ships were bombed in every conceivable way from dawn to dusk”. The Admiralty Account of Naval Operations: April 1941 to January 1943 (from which some of this article is sourced) gives a most vivid description on page 29: 'In this and subsequent bombings, every form of attack was made on the ships; high level, single and formation; massed bombing by Junkers (Stukas) 87s and 88s and Heinkel 111s; high-speed horizontal attacks by Messerschmitts, or shallow dives at a height of a few hundred feet, aircraft returned to their adjoining airfields (in Greece), bombed up, ammunitioned, refuelled and returned independently to the attack.

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