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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 2119.PDF
DECEMBER I6TH, 1948 FLIGHT 709 EXERCISE SUNRISE Simulated Air/Sea Warfare as Seen from H.Q., and Coastal and Bomber Bases Drake played bowls—but at Upwood Bom- ber Command ground crews, their work done, played football while the "Red" r .. ..: Fleet approached. DURING last week, in appalling weather conditions ofalmost continuous gales, the Navy and R.A.F. com-bined in an operational exercise given the—as it turned out—highly inappropriate signal-title "Sunrise." The enemy force (Red) comprised units of the Home Fleet, concluding their Autumn Cruise to the West Indies, under the flag of the Commander-in-Chief, Vice-Admiral Sir Rhoderick R. McGrigor, K.C.B., D.S.O. The defending forces (Blue) were under the command of Admiral Sir Robert ,L. Burnett, K.C.B., K.B.E., D.S.O., Ll.D., C.-in-C. Ply- ; mouth, with the air side of the combined operation com- manded by Air Vice-Marshal F. L. Hopps, C.B., C.B.E., A.F.C., A.O.C., 19 Group (Coastal). Red fleet comprised the battleship H.M.S. Duke of York (flagship), with H.M.S.s fleet carrier Illustrious; light fleet cruisers Theseus and Vengeance; Dido-class 5.25m cruisers Diadem, Sinus and Cleopatra; six destroyers of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, six of the 5th D.F., three of the 6th D.F., and two of the 4th Escort Flotilla. Blue sea forces comprised 16 submarines, ten of the "A" class and six of the "T" class, the former, somewhat curiously, being of the later type, and the Blue air forces comprised Lancasters of 18 and 19 Groups (Coastal) for shadowing and homing, Lincolns of 1 and 3 Groups (Bomber) for heavy attacking, and Hornets of 12 Group (Fighter) for combined high/low level and short-range attack, in conjunction with Sea Hornets and Firebrands of No. 1 Carrier Air Group, Naval Aviation. The naval air- craft for this purpose were under the command of A.O.C., 19 Group, and were supplemented by two Naval Mosquitoes . for shadowing duty during the high /low level strike. The Coastal Lancasters operated from St. Eval, the Bomber Command Lincolns operated from their various . home airfields in East Anglia, and the Fighters were to be . operated from the R.N.A. Station Culdrose. So much for the statement of forces. * To start the ball rolling an "intelligence report" was issued at 0113 hours on Tuesday, December 7th, giving the position of the Red fleet at 0001 hours as having been 15 miles SSE of Terceira Island (Azores) steaming 055 deg. at about 11 knots. This report also gave the composition of the enemy force as one aircraft carrier, one minelayer and one destroyer! The Azores being some 1,200 miles from England, it meant that, even with long-range tanks, the Lancasters .from St. Eval could not search for the enemy at that time; ."..' to mitigate this, an aircraft had previonsly been detached and sent to Gibraltar which, being but 1,050 miles from the Azores, allowed some short time for search at ; the practical limit of range. This Lancaster, F-Freddy, captained by F/L. R. Wise, actually took the A.O.C.-in-C, Coastal Command, Air Marshal J. W. Baker, C.B., M.C., DFC out to Gibraltar on his way to Tunis, and there- inafter did a cracking job of finding and shadowing the enemy. By this foresight, the "M^b." nPrinH m wh,r.h c 3 ' blank'' period in whic the Reds could have headed where they wished to make good evasive use of the advantage they held, was reduced from about 24 hours to 13 hours. F-Freddy reported a first sighting at 1342 hours on Tuesday afternoon and continued giving sighting reports and weather state until 1745 hours. He landed back at Gib. at 2158, having spent over 14 hours in the air in extremely poor weather conditions. A very fine piece of work indeed. Unfortunately, the general level established so well by F-Freddy was not maintained subsequently by the air forces as a collective whole, although in stating this it must at once be emphasized that the Coastal aircraft did a magni- ficent job. In fact, they did everything required of them, and have every reason for feeling somewhat disappointed that their efforts were largely set at nought by the failure of the Bomber aircraft to carry out their allotted tasks. Again we must state in all fairness that this is the per- sonal deduction of the writer, who observed the whole exercise from the Area Combined Headquarters Operations Room at Mount Wise, Plymouth. Further, we can only base our conclusions on the facts at our disposal at the time, and it may well be that later information coming to light in the inquests and analyses now going on may change the perspective of the picture as we see it at the time of writing. Again, it must be appreciated that limi- tations of space make compression of the sequence report inevitable, and we can give only a broad survey of the operation and must pass over the enormous amount of detail work that took place. Submarine Bridge Two Blue force submarines, H.M.S.s Alliance and Anchorite, were detailed for station duty in the path of the fleet at positions broadly NE of the Azores, and some 100 miles off. The shocking weather prevented these ships reaching their planned positions in time and, in fact, caused injury to the crew of Alliance so that she was ordered to put in to Punta Delgada (Azores). Anchorite, however, intercepted the enemy at 1516 hours and shadowed it, giving several reports on the composition, position, course and speed, together with the weather state. Thus contact was kept with the enemy during the air-shadow gap of i6f hours between F-Freddy's leaving and the arrival of Z-Zebra out from England This latter aircraft carried a Flight observer, and was the first home-based machine to contact the enemy ; this at 1032 hours on Wednesday. Shortly afterwards the A.O.C. decided provisionally to lay on a heavy bomber strike of ten aircraft to arrive on target at about 0300 Thursday morning, at which time the enemy should be roughly 500 miles "W of the Lizard. The tempo of life in the H.Q. Operations Room 30ft down in the rock at Plymouth was unflurried and calm. One received a sense of curious remoteness. There were all the familiar things one knew during the war: the huge wall map, the blackboards giving their cabalistic state-
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