Michael D.Heath-Caldwell M.Arch.

1945

Memoirs of Lt.J.A.Heath-Caldwell R.N.

Now, at the end of the war in Europe, and Japan, it happened that the atomic bomb which brought the war to a very swift close within twelve months of the Germans being surrendering. The war was continued in the Pacific against the Japanese and it was the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which brought the war to a close within fourteen days of that happening.

The Emperor of Japan told his people that the war had gone against them, and they were going to surrender. He had seen his cities in Japan, a lot of them burnt down by incendiary raids by American and British bombers and he saw that the war was over when this new weapon of war was introduced. Nagasaki and Hiroshima saved the lives of thousands of servicemen all over the Pacific, and I think they were as surprised as we were when we were one lunch time at the Royal Navel College up there in Eaton Hall when the Head Cadet Captain announced that some explosive devices had been dropped over Hiroshima and a fortnight later the war came to a close in the Pacific.

The Emperor of Japan’s palace was not razed to the ground in the air raids that the Americans conducted against them, obviously it was forethought, this was, they had had the Emperor’s buildings out of bounds of bombers, they were not allowed to drop their bombs anywhere near it and they didn’t.

Perhaps the Americans had more people who used their brains to do that, but I think it possible that if the military had been totally in control of the lot they would have razed the lot to the ground including the Emperor of Japan, because it was the influence of the Emperor, almost a god, more than in may other religions, and when he said the war was up they all immediately followed him and all the pilots who were earmarked to be Kamikaze pilots, they all survived too. So there were a lot of lives saved, although about 250,000 civilians died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that was a very large amount of people to die just because one airman pressed one button, or two airmen in the case of both cities and this terrible power was unleashed in the world for the first time. 

At the end of the war when German submarines were no longer a menace, we had the chance, and the whole of our term were put on board, or we went on board a destroyer in Liverpool, it could have been a frigate, it was not a very big ship, and each one of us cadets was paired off with a sort of a sea-father, an understudy to each member of the ship’s company.

We went from Liverpool to Bangor, a small seaside port in North Wales and then we crossed the Irish Sea having anchored and spent a night at Bangor Northern Wales we went over we went over to Bangor in Northern Ireland in Ulster. And that was a very successful for us, we saw what happened in a ship, we saw how a ship’s company lived, everything. It was mainly be shown things, but we did actually sink a mine with rods sticking out of it, a contact mine, which was reported, and we went and sunk it by rifle  fire. We hoped it would explode, but it didn’t, it just sank. We hoped we would have a bit of a bang and a bit of a display. 

The next thing was that on our way over we were given a demonstration of dropping depth charges, only one depth charge was used, all of us gathered on the quarter deck on the stern of this destroyer and everything was explained to us what would happen, the main thing was that it would be shot off the end of the quarter deck from the sort of depth charge thrower, then we were told we had to count ten seconds or ten to fifteen seconds for the depth charge to hit the water, sink and then explode.

So all of us were there watching this, the depth charge was shot off and we saw it splash into the ocean astern of us then we all started counting to ourselves, one, two, three, four, five, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and nothing happened, but one voice from the quarter deck, from an ordinary seaman said, an I use a swear word, in a loud voice, he said, “What, no fucking bang!” and that was our demonstration of how a depth charge worked. You had to make certain that it detonated, but that was not the only time in my naval career that that sort of thing happened. 

Up in Londonderry in Northern Ireland when I was a sub-lieutenant or Anti-Submarine Control Officer in a frigate we had, I don’t quite know how, won the fleet fighting efficiency prize and as a result of that, one day we were out at sea giving a demonstration of how  squid worked, these were 22inch mortars, six barrels situated just in front of the bridge on the deck of the frigate and when they fired off, they went about 300 metres ahead of the ship and then they sank down and they were set to explode at whatever depth the ASCO (Anti-Submarine Control Officer) control set on it, and that was my job as Anti Submarine Control  Office I was in charge of the ASDIC team in a small little compartment on the bridge where we picked echoes of things and tracked them and  fired off our projectiles at them.