For most of us, the days when there were hostile submarines off the Natal coast are a vague local legend. For Ken Bird of Gillitts, who has just celebrated his 93rd birthday, they were an important part of his growing up.
Story by Robin Lamplough
When Hitler’s war started, Ken lived at Hove, near the English seaside town of Brighton. He immediately enrolled in the Home Guard and spent many evenings patrolling the nearby downs on a motor-cycle looking out for the enemy.
In 1940, he decided to join the naval reserve and was posted to the elderly battleship HMS Ramillies, with special responsibility for the vessel’s stores. Soon his ship was sent to Cape Town on convoy duty and, a few days after Christmas 1941, he underwent the age-old naval ritual for his first crossing of the equator. From Cape Town, Ramillies was sent in support of Operation Ironclad, an Allied amphibious force assembled to occupy Madagascar, then in the hands of Vichy France, whose government was allied with Germany.
There was also a real Allied fear that Japan might gain control of the Indian Ocean.
The assault force occupied the northern part of Madagascar. The Ramillies, together with several other vessels, entered Diego Suarez harbour. The appearance of a Japanese plane over the area led the battleship’s commanding officer to move to another mooring. What no one in the harbour knew, however, was that a Japanese two-man midget submarine had slipped into the bay behind an Allied vessel and so escaped detection.
The submariners then fired several torpedoes, one of which blew a hole in the side of the Ramillies, while another sank a tanker nearby. Ken remembers feeling the impact and realising that his ship had been hit. Fortunately, she settled in the mud of the shallow bay and remained upright. Soon afterwards, the submarine was destroyed from the air and its operators were later killed in a land engagement with the Royal Marines.
The Ramillies, Ken Bird remembers, had a hole in her side large enough to fit two double-decker buses in. Clearly, she needed more attention than local facilities could provide. So she limped slowly down the coast to Durban’s dry docks, where she filled both berths. The ship remained there for 10 weeks while more permanent repairs were carried out. It was necessary later, however, for her to return to British waters in order to be refitted.
While she was in port, her officers and men were looked after by the Navy League, a special organisation run by the loyal ladies of Durban to care for naval personnel. Ken remembers on one occasion being taken inland to visit a farm near Howick.
Back in Britain, Ken was sent to Scotland for further training and then served on HMS Nelson, which supported the D-Day landings, before joining the Pacific Fleet in time to be part of the relief of Singapore. Back in “civvy street”, Ken entered the British banking service, but as he had acquired a taste for life in South Africa, he returned here in the late 1940s and married Beryl Charlton in the Transvaal. They recently celebrated their 64th wedding anniversary.
I did not ask Ken which was the tensest moment he experienced in those eventful years. But he did recount an awful professional moment, when the ship’s crew complained about the quality of the Australian rum he had bought to replace the traditional but unobtainable smooth Jamaican spirit they were used to. I had the distinct feeling that the reaction of his shipmates to this rough-tasting substitute was worse than anything the enemy had been able to throw at him.