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5.7  The second world war

The British Royal Air Force had established eight squadrons in Iraq in the 1920’s as it was clear that air control had succeeded and military costs had fallen. They retained responsibility for the internal and external security of Iraq until the end of the League of Nations’ mandate in October 1932. One squadron, No. 84, was stationed at Shaibah near Basra. The other use of the RAF in policing operations was in Aden. Some aircraft from the Royal Naval Air Service had arrived in Aden aboard HMS Raven II in 1916 and the following year a permanent flight had been established from No. 31 Squadron and No. 114 but returned to India the year after. There was no permament detachment till the arrival of No. 8 Squadron in 1927 which remained till 1942 then returned in 1946 till British withdrawal in 1967.

Britain and France declared war on Germany on the 3 September 1939 and Italy opened hostilities on 10 June 1940. Tom Rogers had been the Vice-Consul in Bushire for a month in 1939 when British forces entered Persia to compel the Persian government to expel German agents. He set up a coast-watching service to look out for German and Japanese submarines (“one was sunk there by the RAF”) and liaised with the Middle East Anti-Locust Unit. He was then sent to re-open the Consulate at the port of Bandar Abbas which had been closed in 1919. He investigated the stoppage of the Jask lighthouse and found two RAF men reconnoitring for a landing strip. The Royal Indian Navy did provide him with a Cutch-built dhow with sails and auxiliary engine in which to patrol the 550 miles to the border with British Baluchistan. “Creagh-Coen, in his book The Indian Political Service, remarked that ‘during World War II nine Political officers and two sloops of the Royal Indian Navy kept the Gulf quiet.’”^[1] Sir Harry Luke accompanied the British Political Agent in Trucial Oman, his godson Christopher Pirie-Gordon, and the Senior Naval Officer in the Gulf, Captain Webb, to Sheep’s Island on board H.M.S. Wild Goose in the 50’s to make a routine inspection of the British Naval Base established for convoy control in 1942 and known as H.M.S. Hormuz. At the time of his visit in April 1954 he states that the base is not now used but is kept in repair.^[2]

Besides the oil tankers leaving the Persian Gulf a variety of ships passed through loading and unloading goods and freight. George Gunn sailed on one such ship or tramp steamer, Baron Renfrew, from the north of England via America, Cape Town, the Persian Gulf, Calcutta, Australia and South America on a trip that lasted from the 2 March 1942 to 5 March 1943. He gives a graphic description of conditions on board ship at the head of the Persian Gulf:

The ship arrived Basra at 1.20 p.m. on 24 June. Sailing up the Persian Gulf was hot. The close confines of the Shatt El Arab were hotter, but when we tied up alongside the berth it was almost unbearable. Our windchutes, made from empty 141b. jam tins sticking out of the cabin portholes, only attracted sand, smells and swarms of large flying insects we never knew existed. Working on deck in the Red Sea and Suez Canal was comfortable, by comparison.

The ship started discharging at six o’clock in the evening; even the Arabs couldn’t work in the afternoon. The chief engineer was taken ashore to hospital the following day, suffering from heat exhaustion, and stayed there for 14 days. Temperatures in the shade often reached 120 degrees. It was almost impossible to walk on the steel decks during the day. Frying eggs on them was more than a possibility.

The Port of Basra, then, consisted of one very long quay. The Renfrew was berthed as far as it was possible to be from the dock entrance. Only dockers and those directly involved with business on board the ship were allowed through the gates. With no refrigerators of any kind on the Renfrew, large blocks of ice were delivered each day. Men carried them on their backs all the way from the dock gates. This was during the hottest part of the day, when cargo wasn’t being worked. The size of the blocks had diminished considerably by the time the cook checked them into the ice box.

Ship’s clusters provided illumination for the hatches and helped to increase the swarms of large flying creatures attracted by the lights. They were more friendly to the Arabs than to us.

After 21 days in Basra, discharging a full cargo with ship’s gear, we were pleased to leave the place, even though it was only down-river to Abadan.

The long time in Basra took its toll. In 120+ degrees and no cold drinks apart from a few beers ashore, in premises devoid of hygiene, where cold food had to be eaten hot, I succumbed to a severe attack of dysentery and was removed to hospital. Water melons were one of the few luxuries readily available in Basra, and in the absence of anything else, we made the most of them. When they were diagnosed as the cause if the dysentery, I never ate another.

Compared to living conditions on the ship, and particularly during he previous three weeks, the BP hospital in Abadan was idyllic. temperatures were maintained at about 65 degrees, the beds were comfortable, and the food seemed superb. ^[3]

 

Gunn then took another ship to catch up with the Baron Renfrew in India:

 

The vessel left Abadan and anchored off Bandar Abbas, at the entrance to the Gulf, to discharge some cargo. It was similar to what the Renfrew unloaded at Basra, consisting of military stores and crated aircraft. The valuable cargo was lowered by derrick into Arab dhows lashed together. The size and weight of one of the large aircraft containers was too much for the dhows, which were cut adrift from one another, allowing the aircraft to sink slowly down into the deep waters of the Persian Gulf.^[4]

 

RAF Shaibah located some ten miles south-west of Basra at the delta of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates was regarded by most airman of the pre-1939 RAF as the “furthest-flung outpost of the Empire”.^[5]

Germany had already deployed naval vessels in the Atlantic and elsewhere and early in 1940 a German raider, Atlantis, was in the Indian Ocean. On 19 June 1940 the naval trawler, Moonstone, on anti-submarine patrol from Aden forced the Italian submarine, Galileo Galilei, to the surface, the crew surrendered and the submarine was towed to Aden.^[6] There was little naval activity in the Indian Ocean until after the entry of the Japanese into the war with the attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. In February 1942 the Johanne Justesen and the Bhima were sunk by submarines to the west of the southern tip of India and in early April the Clan Ross and the Nahadur were lost some 250/300 miles to the west of Bombay. On the 9 April 1942 the Japanese attacked the port of Trincomalee on the east coast of Ceylon and by the end of the month British naval and shipping losses in the Indian Ocean in particular the east and south of India were substantial.

In August the first of the “Monsun” U-boats were being deployed by the Germans in the Indian Ocean. By the autumn of 1942, submarine activity had moved closer to the coast of Arabia with the sinking of the Ocean Honour in the Gulf of Aden in September and Ocean Vintage some 50 miles south of Ras al Hadd in October. Both German and Japanese submarines were deployed in the area over the next two years. On the 24 June 1943 the British Venture was sunk by the Japanese submarine I-27 some 35 miles south of Jask. Built in 1930 by Lithgows of Glasgow, a tanker of 4,696 gross tons, 19 of the crew survided and 42 were lost. Four days later the Japanese submarine commanded by Fukumura also sank the Dah Pu in Muscat harbour.^[7] On the 27 September 1943 the German U-boat U.188 was off Masirah Bay when it sighted a convoy of ten ships, seven of them tankers, proceeding towards Aden. Six torpedoes were fired and failed before an aircraft appeared. Moving  up the coast to the Gulf of Oman, the U.188 torpedoed the 10,000 ton Norwegian tanker, Britannia, which although hit safely reached Bandar Abbas. On 8 October U.188 was ordered back to its base in Penang and was replaced by U.533 commanded by Kptlt. Helmut Hennig which had left France on 6 July. On the 16 October U.533 was sunk by aircraft of 244 Squadron at 25 17 N 56 30 E some 10/20 miles off Khor Fakkan with only one survivor who managed to swim ashore.

Submarines had come within 70 miles of the Straits of Hormuz but it is unlikely that any of them actually passed through. It was safer to pick up vessels in the Gulf of Oman or even further afield and thus avoid aircraft stationed in the area. Although submarines continued to operate in the area, the British Admiralty had suspended convoys in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea as their activity was considered to be minimal.