“Around the Suez Canal area we embarked sixty spitfires, I think they were spitfires...they were destined for Singapore. We took them to Singapore and flew them off and to the best of my knowledge we lost the lot. The pilots, some got away before Singapore fell, many I think were imprisoned, some were killed. That was our first operational role.
“We were due to join up with the ‘Prince of Wales’ and ‘Repulse’...we never got that far (as) both were sunk...I had joined ‘Indominatable’ and Bob (Robert Gordon) went elsewhere. Some of our friends and school mates went down on those two ships. “We were ordered home in ’42...the idea being to try and save Malta...We came around the cape and joined up with force H, the naval force protecting a convoy of about 32 merchant ships, carrying all sorts of material to Malta...but the secrecy was blown before we got through the straights of Gibraltar. We went through at night...come daylight we had our first air raid warning and action stations. We stayed at action stations for the whole time we were in there. Suffice to say we suffered heavy losses, both merchant fleet and the Navy. “(Later in the war) I was walking along the flight deck. All of a sudden running parallel with the ship was a torpedo, porpoising. It had almost certainly been fired from a Japanese submarine...I remember it well, it was so close. It was striped horizontally with green and orange...” |