Supermarine Walrus

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: H.M.S. Achilles
Surname/tag: Willis-3087

The Supermarine Walrus was an amphibian-reconnaissance aircraft on loan from the Fleet Air Arm, carried by both HMS Leander and HMS Achilles.The two Walrus aircraft on Achilles and Leander were fitted with ASV (aircraft to surface vessel) radar; a new and highly secret technology closely guarded by the RAF.

As an AC1 on 1st September 1938, “on the strength of his wireless telegraphy certificate”, Bernard George Willis (RNZAF 37179) was attached to the Navy for three years as a Radio Mechanic. He joined 720 Catapult Squadron and was posted to HMS Achilles as Radio Mechanic, one of the mixed crew of seven required to fly and service the Walrus amphibian on board. Bernard replaced RAF Corporal Freddie Pitts who was transferred to the RNZAF Electrical and Wireless School at Wigram “for instructional duties”.

HMS Achilles was a British Royal Navy ship on loan to New Zealand. This is Bernard's story of life on board HMS Achillies as she sailed from New Zealand to England for a refit in 1938. Bernard was ships photographer with a darkroom onboard Achilles.

Nicknamed “Pusser’s Duck” the Supermarine Walrus was an amphibian-reconnaissance aircraft on loan from the Fleet Air Arm, carried by both HMS Leander and HMS Achilles. The Walrus was powered by a Bristol Pegasus VI 775 hp. radial engine – without mufflers! No wonder Bernard was a little deaf. It had a maximum cruising speed of 217 kmh and could fly to 5000 metres. It had a 13.97 metre wingspan, height 4.65 metres, carried sufficient fuel to fly for about 5 hours or 1000 kilometres, and was supposedly able to land in a two-meter swell. The Walrus had two Lewis guns (7.7mm MG) mounted in the forward hatch and could carry two 100pound bombs.

Air Force crew for the Walrus were volunteers who answered advertisements placed on an Air Force notice board, supplemented by borrowed Fleet Air Arm personnel on loan from the Royal Navy. There were three air crew and four deck crew; a pilot, a navigator and a wireless operator, an armourer and writer to keep the aircraft records, a rigger (airframe), an engine mechanic and a wireless mechanic. The parachute packer was a naval rating. (Bernard’s position as wireless operator was in the forward cockpit, along with the aircraft camera.) Regulations required a signed and recorded aircraft inspection each morning before flying. As the Walrus’ flying hours mounted, additional inspections were required until the scheduled time for a complete overhaul. For running repairs, a spare engine and floats etc. were carried on board HMS Achilles.

The aircraft was carried in a cradle on a catapult platform aft of the ship’s funnel. While the Walrus could be lowered into the water by crane for surface take off, it was most often launched by catapult. The procedure for a catapult launch was to position the aircraft to the rear of the catapult, which was then swivelled across the ship and fully extended in three sections. The engine would be revved at full revolutions, seven pounds of cordite fired to send it off the catapult at 80 miles per hour with everyone praying that the plane would have sufficient speed to be airborne as it left the ship. The aircraft had to be flying as it reached the end of the catapult because the legs of the catapult collapsed automatically as the aircraft was launched.

When Pilot Officer Johnnie McGrane replaced Flight Lieutenant Henry Higgins as pilot of the Walrus in 1941, the only training experience was “a push off the catapult” with the outgoing pilot for advice and Engineer Eric Ford aboard to hook on return, while Achilles was alongside Devonport Wharf. “All went off O.K. – a credit to a 20-year-old pilot.” All the Air Force crew flew in the Walrus at some time or other – even if just for sight seeing. Eric Ford remembered the Walrus as “a very versatile and reliable machine, useful for sneaking ill-gotten gains ashore (grog and cigarettes) dodging Customs, delivering the mail and even for fishing.”

Eric Ford remembered “What a dangerous job it was to recover the aircraft under sail in rough weather. The procedure was for the ship to turn sharply, causing a flat water slick, which the aircraft would land in and then power alongside the ship. The crane would be luffed out ready to lift on board. This is where the excitement would come in, with quite a large gallery watching. The procedure was for the crane driver (who had to be a wizard at the controls) to drop a light cable down to the person on top of the wing ready to hook on to a sling. You had to put a safety belt on, but there was nowhere to hang on to! You’re all adrift. Once hooked, a much heavier cable would slide down the lighter cable and automatically grab the sling. Think of the poor soul trying to hook up with the aircraft bobbing up and down and hoping that attached safety belt would take charge and not allow his feet to get tangled with the still running propeller. The guy on the crane was very clever. He up and threw you over the catapult, he’d lower you down to the catapult. Once safely out of the water the next job was to try and catch the aircraft as it is swung backwards and forwards over the catapult. Imagine the ship rolling (as it always seemed to do) and the aircraft dangling on the end of the crane. Once caught, six small block-and-tackles would be quickly attached criss-cross to steady it and pull it onto the cradle on the catapult.” The crane swung the Walrus on board with barely a 2meter clearance between wing and the ship.

In October, barely a month after Bernard Willis joined her, Achilles left Auckland for a visit to Lyttleton, Dunedin and Wellington before heading overseas to Britain. Bernard’s action station was as aircraft lookout on the port funnel searchlight. Bernard wrote “ I hope they never see any aeroplanes. The muzzle mouths of the two port anti-aircraft four-inch quick firers are about a foot or so below the platform where I and another chap stand. The concussion of firing splits the steel plates around the platform sometimes.” We flew over to the aerodrome at Otaiere one day (to do a minor repair and wash the machine). Dunedin is the prettiest city of them all when seen from the air. (Bernard had now seen all four cities from the air). Some of the girls are very pretty too. The city turned on free trams and free pictures and a good time was had by all.(War ships in the harbour was still a novelty for Dunedin.) As there are over five hundred in the ship’s company it is a bit crowded on board.

The trip up to Wellington was fine. Our plane carried out an exercise and three Baffins from Rongotai attacked the ship. I spent the morning in the sun sitting on the search light platform watching the planes above and the gun crews below.”

Until 1941, the New Zealand Navy was a Division of the Royal Navy. In November 1938, after a Civic farewell and dance in the Town Hall, Achilles left for England to exchange Royal Navy personnel for fresh sailors volunteering to serve for three years attached to New Zealand ships and to leave New Zealand Fleet Air Arm trainees for courses and postings in England. They travelled via Fiji and Tahiti, crossing the equator at midday on Boxing Day with much merriment as those sailors crossing for the first time received their initiation from Father Neptune and his helpers. They arrived in Panama early in the morning of December 31st to find the city vibrant with carnival crowds preparing to celebrate the New Year. Shore leave enabled Achilles’ crew to unwind a bit, join in the festivities and ring in the New Year with gusto.

A few days later, having negotiated the Panama Canal they arrived in Kingston, Jamaica where an Achilles soccer team played the sailors from a German Cruiser and beat them 2-1.

On the 10th of January 1939 they left the warmth of the Caribbean for Portsmouth and the cold of an English winter. Two days out, they ran into a deep depression and on the night of 18th January, Achilles was running before a rising sea. By afternoon, swells were breaking on their quarterdeck, breaking portholes and flooding the officers’ cabins. Everything aft of the funnel was under water. Great following waves reared high over their stern until they lifted Achilles, tossing the cruiser like a toy or holding her balanced on the crest of a breaking wave with propellers racing before rolling away beneath her, leaving Achilles with aft-decks awash but in the relative calm of the trough before the next wave began to lift her again. The storm lasted two days and many distress calls were picked up on their wireless. Reaching the English coast, they anchored off Spithead to spruce up after their Atlantic battering before sailing into Portsmouth harbour on the 24th January 1939. There was ten days leave, which Bernard spent exploring London by tube and venturing as far as Yorkshire by fast train. He found there were two classes of train travel in England, “1st Class for top hats and 3rd for everybody else”.

Bernard was supposed to undertake further training in England however, as he said, the RAF did not know what to do with a Fleet Air Arm officer on a temporary posting. He had time on his hands and bought his first slide rule. Bernard sat all day in the corner of a hangar of the Coastal Command in the Fleet Air Arm Depot at Lee on Solent near Portsmouth, teaching himself to work the slide rule. It was winter and bitterly cold. He could see the sun shining and sit all day in front of the hangar in the sun with the sun shining full on him "and never feel a ray of warmth".

Bernard was the only New Zealander in the FAA on the Achilles for the return trip. “The RAF could not spare a WOM to take my place”. On the 23rd February 1939, Achilles left England for the Mediterranean, punching across the Bay of Biscay in heavy, uncomfortable weather. The seas were quietening as they ran through the Straits of Gibraltar and as they swung into the calm of the Bay of Gibraltar the crew gathered on the decks to drink it all in. Almost sixty years later, Bernard remembered the warmth of Gibraltar. After frozen England, Gibraltar "was lovely" with spring in the air and bougainvillaea in flower. There was leave ashore, and then on 28th February they were at sea again for exercises followed by two days of fleet manoeuvres before returning to Gibraltar. Bernard wrote to his mother “The last month has been very busy. The day we left from England until today has been one rush of jobs. As we had four only FAA personnel on board we had plenty of jobs. For a month I was running around not knowing if the plane was flying tail first or not.”

In a letter to his Mother 18.3.1939, Bernard Willis writes It was a really impressive sight at night, to climb a little way up the Rock and see the Mediterranean and British Home fleets anchored together and lit up. “No other country in Europe can turn on a sight like it.” Bernard Willis, a typically self reliant colonial, had grown up on a North Taranaki farm, he wrote “The Moki training has stood me in good stead at Gibraltar. For a number of days at a time we were left on several occasions to our own devices ashore with the aeroplane. No accommodation other than a large canvas hangar, no water to speak of, no facilities for eating to speak of either, in fact it was a regular picnic. The two new English chaps wondered what had struck them for a while; they are just beginning to find out they have responsibilities all on their own now, no NCOs to fall back on now – the awakening is quite amusing at times.”

18th March 1939, Bernard wrote “Clem, our corporal, after a night of joviality and good fellowship decided he would like a trip to Algeciras, which is across on the other side of Gibraltar Bay. He had made friends with the coxswain of the Captain of the Fleet’s motorboat and this coxswain expressed also a desire to sample Spanish good cheer. The wind known locally as a ‘Levante’ was churning up the straits into a boiling sea making things unpleasant for a small boat. This however, did not deter Clem and co. for by now there was a fair sized party of about five, from making the run. The boat was spotted leaving the harbour in a highly erratic manner at a time when no respectable boat should be leaving. Messages were sent but fortunately or unfortunately the Captain’s – Captain of the Fleet mark you – boat was the speediest in the harbour so all that was done was a ceaseless hour-long search of the tossing waters with high powered searchlights. The little band of adventurers, now sobered by a harrowing run under unpleasant conditions cheered up immensely as the lights of Algeciras hove in sight, making fast to a fishing boat tied alongside the well floodlight jetty they scrambled ashore. There they were met by a warm welcome, not exactly what they expected for in a brace of shakes they were marching through the streets with a tough crew of Spanish soldiers guarding them. The moment they stepped ashore some nasty looking Spaniards with nasty rifles on the end of which were still nastier bayonets arrested them. After spending the night in a cell and Franco wartime cells are cells, they were escorted back to the boat and sent home. Of course they were immediately arrested on arrival at their respective ships. The coxswain lost his badges and rank but the others were let off. They were extremely lucky to get back as a number of British sailors have just disappeared or served long terms of imprisonment over there in Algiceras.”

The 20th of March saw them leave Gibraltar for Malta where Bernard and the crew were allowed a night’s leave ashore. From Malta they then went on to Aden and then Egypt. Bernard was often up with the ship's aircraft as photographer and wireless operator and enjoyed unique opportunities to appreciate the countries they visited. After Malta, their route would take them through the Suez Canal via Port Said, Suez, Aden, Colombo, Singapore and then to Auckland.

On the 1st of April, they lost their Walrus in the Red Sea.

Bernard remembered that on this occasion, Pilot Officer Nichols was to fly with Peter Trent. The launch seemed to go smoothly as usual then the rudder engaged unexpectedly for some reason, swinging the Walrus around, damaging a float and digging her lower wing into the water until she filled with water and slowly sank. Jack Harker in his book HMS Achilles wrote “Pilot Officer Nichols, his observer, and Peter Trent had already manned the Walrus, whose motor was burbling relatively quietly after its first rowdy warm-up, and now they went outboard on the long thin crane-wire, slumped slightly when Peter released the grab and tricing wires, and drifted astern of Achilles, which was still moving slowly ahead. Everything went smoothly until Skip asked if the aircraft had taken off, and our senior RAF ground-crew corporal came racing up on to the bridge to report what he’d seen through the binoculars: ‘The plane’s going over on its side, sir.’ Not enough reaction for the RAF corporal, who yelled: ‘This is the quickest way I’ve ever seen to lose an aircraft and three men! Why don’t you get your ship over there and rescue those people? Perhaps it was inter service protocol, or was it perhaps the urgency of the moment? Either way, his remarks went unpunished. Achilles came about quickly, closed the distance and slipped the cutter, which could, do no more than rescue the three crew from their inflated dinghy and pull clear as L2241 slowly sank.

Such Colonial independence and insubordination was not unusual in New Zealand forces and largely accommodated by Superior Officers who valued their reliability during the Second World War. Though attached to Fleet Air Arm and theoretically in the Navy, Walrus crew remained RNZAF airmen on board ship, wearing RNZAF uniform. They remained under RNZAF jurisdiction, not subject to Naval regulation. They worked regular hours while on board, were not required to stand night watches and returned to base at Hobsonville airfield when Achilles was in Auckland. As Jack Harker noted, sinking the Walrus meant that there was no need now to man the 2nd W/T office reconnaissance-wave radio receiver, and Bernard’s Morse-key skills could be pressed into service sending the crews’ extra long ship-to-shore telegrams.

Achilles with her Walrus aircraft safely on its cradle beside the main funnel.

Sources

• A YouTube movie of the Supermarine Walrus in Action [1]
• Wikipedia Supermarine Walrus [2]
• Index of Naval Aircraft [3]
• History & development of Vickers Supermarine craft [4]
• HMNZS Achilles by Jack S. Harker
• Well Done Leander by Jack S. Harker
• An interview with Eric Ford NZ401057 by Webmaster David Homewood for his Web page Wings Over Cambridge [5]
• Letters from Bernard Willis written to his family while serving on HMS Achilles