Elli
1945 95
MAY 9, 1945, when the lights of Britain blazed in 0N celebration of peace, three sailors died and 19 were wounded when two Japanese suicide aircraft crashed on to the flight deck of HMS Victorious. Another of the kamikazes spread flame and destruction across HMS Indomitable's deck. It was the second time in five days that she had been hit; on May 4 an enemy fighter-bomber had torn into her deck just as the carrier was about to launch aircraft. The deck had been crowded with aircrew and aircraft handlers. Eight had been killed and 47 wounded 13 suffering serious bums.
On VE Day one of the pilots caught in that inferno lay dying in the hospital ship Oxfordshire Except for the bereaved relatives - for whom the laughter and singing in the streets must have rung hollow indeed - the savage incidents on the other side of the world went virtually unnoticed by the British public. The Big News for them was, understandably,
the end of the dangers, hard-
ships, heartache and drab tedium of war on the doorstep. It is also understandable that the British Pacific Fleet and the East Indies Fleet are regarded by the men who served in them as forgotten, just as veterans of General Slim's 14th Army in Burma describe themselves as The Forgotten Army, using the term these days with as much pride as regret.
Publicity
In a sense, the 600 vessels and 250,000 men which Britain and the Commonwealth despatched to the Far East, as the last embers of the European war burned, were forgotten - for a number of reasons. Although they formed the largest and most powerful naval forces that Britain had ever sent to war, the US Navy's 3rd/5th Fleet in the Pacific was much larger and more experienced in theatre. Publicity of the role of the BPF had its difficulties. Operating under US orders and with lines of supply and communication stretching up to 2,500 miles, there were serious physical obstacles to transmission of the BPF's activities for home consumption. And unhappily the relationship between the senior commanders afloat and the embarked press often left much
1941-42, and until ate in 1944.
" 'I AM not certain that those at home have any idea of what these lona ooeratina periods mean, nor of the strain put on those in the ships, so mans of whom, both officers and men, are mere children. When I look back on that hich this untrained youth has managed to accomplish and to stick out, then I have n o fear for the future of the Navy .. .' - Vic Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings, commander afloat of the British Pacific Fleet. to be desired. In contrast to the US Navy's polished treatment of the press, on British ships there were - at first no facilities for the transmission of press copy at sea.
by Anton Hanney This resulted in immediate friction between the fleet's commander afloat (Vice Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings) and embarked pressmen. The admiral's renowned sense of humour failed him with regard to journalists, his attitude to the news media being encapsulated by this (later) comment from his flag lieutenant: "No brighter red was ever shown to a fiercer bull."
Apart from those problems, there was a conscious effort by the Americans to allocate subsidiary roles to the BPF, at first because of the fleet's relative inexperience, but finally to ensure that no other nation shared in what they saw as their right alone to exact revenge for the May of Infamy" - the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Though relations between the British and US commanders were close throughout, and founded on mutual respect and personal friendship, the British were excluded from the high-profile raids which specifically targeted the major elements of the enemy fleet which remained in Japanese ports. Since Japan's onslaught in
British naval presence in the Pacific was thinly spread with only weak forces of the Eastern Fleet covering the Indian Ocean and East Indies for much of that time.
All the decisive bathes to regain ascendancy in the central Pacific had been planned and fought by the USA, and although Churchill's offer of a "fast, powerful and balanced naval force" was accepted with alactrity by President Roosevelt at the Quebec conference in 1944, the commanders of the new British Pacific Fleet were involved in a struggle - initially at least - to prevent the BPF being sidelined away from the campaign's main axis, which rested on the Japanese mainland itself.
Unforgettable
While weak publicity, and subsidiary roles contributed to the feeling, which persists today, that the British Pacific Fleet and the greatly strengthened East Indies Fleet were forgotten, in reality the part played by the Royal Navy in the last 12 months of the war in the Far East is, paradoxically, unforgettable. It is remembered, of course, by the hundreds of thousands of British families who were directly affected, several of whom were bereaved in the moment of victory; it is re-
membered by the Americans, old men now, from whom the British won respect and admiration. More lasting, however, is the historical contribution that the BPF made towards the development of today's Navy. It was to a large extent forged 50 years ago in the violent heat of a campaign in which distances were measured in thousands of miles by fleets projecting naval air power at its wartime zenith. The scale of the British Pacific Fleet was remarkable. Its hundreds of ships included aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers, which depended on another fleet .- of supply and repair ships of every kind. It was not only the largest fleet that Britain had ever sent to war, but it had the longest lines of supply of any major force in Royal Navy history. It was truly Commonwealth in composition, with two cruisers from New Zealand, a Canadian cruiser, and one complete destroyer flotilla made up of Australian ships. There were also many Canadian and South Africans among the aircrews, while some air squadrons were made up entirely of New Zealanders. The great majority of the men who served in the fleet were "hostilities only" personnel. In the escort carrier " Turn to next page