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Mediterranean to End of 1941

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Mediterranean to End of 1941 CHAPTER 1 1 MEDITERRANEAN TO END OF 194 1 RITING after the war of the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean W consequent on the loss of Crete, Admiral Cunningham said : The immediate repercussions were threefold. The supply and hence the safety of Malta were jeopardized ; attacks on the Libyan convoys were made very hazardous; and the route through the Mediterranean was virtually closed . The answer seemed clear. We had lost the northern flank and were unlikely to regain it . Therefore we must try and get the southern flank. If the army could reach, say, Derna, a good deal would have been done to ease the situation.) The British key points on this southern flank were Malta and Tobruk , each of which contributed to the enemy's difficulties in maintaining his communications in North Africa, while the nourishment of each impose d heavy burdens on the Mediterranean Fleet . Events were to show that British success or otherwise in dealing with the Axis sea supply line to North Africa varied in almost direct propor- tion to the naval and air strength that could be based on Malta . As was told in Chapter 7 it was possible to base surface forces there for a few weeks during April and May 1941 ; but these were withdrawn in Ma y to reinforce the fleet in the struggle for Crete, and thereafter surfac e forces were not again based on Malta until October 1941 . Attacks o n enemy convoys had to be left to submarines and aircraft, and for a time Malta had to rely for supplies, including petrol, on two minelaying sub - marines. On the African coast the supply of Tobruk was largely maintaine d by a shuttle service of destroyers from Alexandria and Mersa Matruh. It was instituted in May 1941, and for a considerable time was carrie d on by ships of the 10th Flotilla, becoming the main occupation of the old Australian destroyers for the remainder of their stay in the Mediterranean . Voyager and Waterhen made an initial run on the 5th and 6th May , and Vendetta followed them on the 8th. The three ships were then, how- ever, caught up in the Crete operations, which employed Voyager for the rest of the month and Waterhen and Vendetta until the 19th and 26t h respectively. Vampire entered the service on the 15th May, when she left Alexandria with troops and stores for Tobruk and returned with 180 wounded. She made only two runs . On her return to Alexandria from her second, on the 21st May, her defects had become so numerous an d vibration at speeds over 18 knots so excessive that she was withdrawn from the station for a thorough refit. First of the original Australian destroyers to leave the Mediterranean, she sailed from Alexandria on the 28th May for Singapore, where she arrived on the 19th June . Waterhen began her unbroken series of runs on the 20th May ; Vendetta on the 29th; Voyager on the 5th June and Stuart on the 16th . The ships ' Cunningham, A Sailor's Odyssey, p . 395 . May-Sept 1941 TOBRUK FERRY 39 1 of the "Tobruk Ferry Service " ran to a regular routine. Stuart's diarist briefly described it : The following fits any or all of the runs. Morning of first day, sailed from Alexandria for Tobruk with troops, ammunition and stores . Air attacks at so and so and so and so during the day . Arrived Tobruk in dark, unloaded and took o n so many wounded, 200 troops, and ammunition empties, and proceeded to Mers a Matruh . Air raid at Matruh . Next day embarked ammunition and stores and sailed for Tobruk . Air attacks. Arrived Tobruk, unloaded, embarked wounded, troops and ammunition empties . Tobruk continuously raided throughout stay . (At times also shelled at random by the enemy.) Air attacks on passage . Arrive Alexandria. And then, 36 hours later, the same thing all over again . It was a wearing, wearying routine, with little rest and few occasion s when sleep was unbroken by the call of battle.2 There were, however, brief hours of relaxation, as when, in Mersa Matruh (a peacetime holida y bathing resort ) we were berthed only a few feet from the sandy foreshore, and the water wa s crystal clear. We could see some soldiers bathing from the white sandy beac h a few hundred yards astern of us . The June day was terrifically hot, and very soon most of the ships' companies were bathing. The earlier days of our Inshore Squadron duty came back to us when we found that the S.N .O. Inshore Squadron [Captain Poland] was to be our passenger this trip . How different these days were to that cold and wind-swept January . Today the sea was as calm as it could be , the heat was shimmering off the burning sandy beaches, and it was a relief t o slip from the pontoon early in the afternoon to the cooler atmosphere off shore , when, with Voyager, we set our course for Tobruk.3 In all, the Australian destroyers made a total of 139 runs in and ou t of Tobruk during the period of the regular "Ferry" . Vendetta holds the record with 39 individual passages : into Tobruk, 11 from Alexandria an d 24` 26 28° 30 32° 36 _ 3 4 ._ .— ._ ._ Destroyer s • MEDITERRANEAN SE A Sloe Conooys AustralianT i IOth Flotilla Ships suniton obruk Service 'NTT AR^AMATTA Tobruk 3 2 - E R Bardia• = Salurn Stli Ba rra m Mers a Matru h Bl Cab LIBYA a - E G Y P T , Cairo 30 r Xs o 24° 26° 2~- 3G' 32° 9 from Mersa Matruh ; and from Tobruk, 8 to Alexandria and 11 t o Mersa Matruh . From the end of May until the first week in Augus t z Waller, when he returned to Australia in August 1941, listed lack of sleep as the greatest tria l in the "Tobruk Ferry Service " . s Clifford, The Leader of the Crocks, pp. 193, 196 . t 392 MEDITERRANEAN TO END OF 1941 June-Sept she was without intermission on the Tobruk shuttle service, and carrie d 1,532 troops to Tobruk ; brought 2,951 away, including wounded and prisoners of war ; and transported 616 tons of supplies into the port. 4 The other Australian destroyers were similarly employed for varyin g periods : Stuart from mid-June until the end of July ; Voyager from the beginning of June until the middle of July ; and Waterhen from the last ten days of May until the end of June . Later, when all the Mediterranean Fleet destroyers were given turns on the shuttle service, Nizam served on it for most of August, and Napier for a short period in September . There were other, and even less attractive, methods of supplyin g Tobruk by sea ; by small schooners which crept along the coast; by " A " lighters ; and by slow, escorted convoys . For these convoys there was no night dash through the danger area . Their passage from Alexandria to Tobruk took some forty-eight hours with, on the round voyage, at least two full days of daylight within enemy bombing range, and lacking ai r cover. Among the Australian ships Parramatta was engaged on this work and, later in the year, Yarra. Parramatta reached Alexandria on the 3rd June from the East Indie s Station. On the way she gleaned information of the ordeal through whic h the Mediterranean Fleet had passed . Kipling and Vampire, met at Suez, gave "startling intelligence of actions in the Mediterranean and of damage sustained by the fleet " . The damaged Barham was passed in the Canal , and Dido with "a great crater in her near the bridge . Her crew however went past singing lustily " . Walker was concerned about dive bombing , of which his crew knew nothing "except the evidence of its effects . It was some days before we regained a balanced perspective and I am gla d we were not dive-bombed until this was attained . " There was little time for its attainment. Parramatta spent a few days in Alexandria, then suffering almost nightly air raids. On the 15th June she sailed to Mersa Matruh in connection wit h Operation BATTLEAXE, by which it was hoped to " get the southern flank ". 5 After the failure of that operation she returned, on the 19th June, t o Alexandria. On that day, with the R .N. sloops Flamingo and Auckland, she was transferred to the operational control of the Rear-Admiral, Alex- andria, for escort duties on the Tobruk supply service . On Sunday evening, 22nd June, in company with Auckland (Senior Officer), she left Alexandria escorting the small petrol carrier Pass of Balmaha (758 tons) to Tobruk . The program was to hug the coast for the first day to get fighter protection ; to gain a good offing the following night; and to approach Tobruk on a south-westerly course in the after - noon of the following day . Pass of Balmaha would make the last forty •Rhoades, Vendetta's commanding officer at the time, later wrote that Vendetta made "twenty- four night runs into Tobruk harbour", a record "never beaten, as far as is known, by any other destroyer " . He was possibly including a number of runs she made into the port i n April 1941, before the regular shuttle service was instituted . See H.M .A .S. Mark III (1944), p . 72 . "Operation BATTLEAXE was designed to drive the enemy west of Tobruk and re-establish lan d communication with that fortress, and was launched by General Wavell on the 15th June . Unexpected enemy mechanised strength was met, and the operation failed, the British falling back to near their original positions after a three days' battle.
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