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Culdrose fliers toast forebears on 80th anniversary of Fleet Air Arm’s greatest strikes
24 January 2025
Naval aviators today toasted their forebears, 80 years to the day of one of the greatest raids in Fleet Air Arm history.
On January 24 1945 – and repeated five days later – fighters and bombers from a formidable force of aircraft carriers struck at oil refineries in Japanese-occupied Indonesia – a devastating example of what today we call carrier strike.
Largely forgotten today, the Palembang raids showed how precision bombing by carrier-based air power could deliver a strategic blow to the enemy, in this case destroying two refineries.
As the Royal Navy prepares for a major deployment of its carrier strike group this spring, today’s fliers at RNAS Culdrose remembered the largest and most successful strike in the history of the Fleet Air Arm.
Palembang is one of 14 battle honours earned by 820 Naval Air Squadron, which operated Grumman Avenger bombers in 1945.
Today its Merlin Mk2 helicopters are integral to carrier strike operations – protecting HMS Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales from submarine threats, providing airborne early warning and vectoring the carrier group’s air power on to targets.
Another Avenger squadron at Palembang – the operation was codenamed Meridian – was 857 NAS, most recently a Sea King squadron based at Culdrose.
Its final commanding officer was Captain James Hall… today the air station’s commanding officer.
“The name ‘Palembang’ is not something most people in this country would be familiar with. It is not one of the great stories which we tell about World War 2,” Capt Hall said.
“It is however proudly remembered by the Fleet Air Arm for its significance as an example of how carrier-based air power was used by the Royal Navy to strike at a strategic target.
“This year, as we prepare for the deployment of our carrier strike group, the importance of what was achieved at Palembang and how it changed the nature of warfare has not been forgotten.
“We recognise the bravery of the aircrews who took part and we remember the sacrifice of those who lost their lives in the attacks.”
Around 220 Royal Navy aircrew in more than 120 bombers and fighters from four carriers were committed against the sprawling refinery complexes.
The two refineries at Palembang – captured from the Dutch in 1942 – accounted for half of Japan’s crude oil output, three million tons a year, and three-quarters of its aviation fuel.
The job of destroying the sites fell to British Task Force 53 with aircraft carriers HMS Indomitable, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Victorious and HMS Illustrious.
Allocated for the raid were 48 three-man Grumman Avenger bombers, each carrying four 500lb bombs supported by more than 70 fighters: Fireflies, Corsairs and Hellcats.
Fighters attacked Japanese airfields across Sumatra while the bombers and fighter escort crossed the central mountains to attack Palembang running the gauntlet of Japanese fighters, barrage balloons and heavy anti-aircraft fire.
The refineries were knocked out for two months and never returned to full production before war in the Pacific ended in August 1945.
Civilian and Japanese casualties are not known, although Allied forces claimed 30 fighters shot down and 38 destroyed on the ground.
Some 41 attacking aircraft and 30 aircrew were killed. Nine more aircrew bailed out, were captured and taken to Singapore where they were executed in the notorious Changi jail shortly before Japan surrendered.
A memorial to their sacrifice can be found at the Fleet Air Arm Memorial Church, St Bartholomew’s, in Yeovilton.
A vivid description of the second attack on Palembang on January 29 1945 was left by Sub Lieutenant Eric Rickman an Avenger pilot with 854 NAS, who was assigned to destroy a pumping station.
The day before the strike, his squadron’s commanding officer Lieutenant Commander Charles ‘Charlie’ Mainprice addressed the aircrew with a startling admission.
“He said: ‘I have to tell you that I consider this a suicide mission. I asked the admiral to send the fighters in first to shoot the balloons down, but he refused because he said it would tell the Japs we were coming. I believe they will know that anyway because there’s no other worthwhile target in the area’.”
The pilot continued: “He [the admiral] suggested we might bomb from above balloon height, which was 6,000 feet, but the CO said: ‘I believe that would result in inaccurate bombing so I said 854 will follow its normal procedure and dive vertically, releasing at 1,000 feet.’
“‘Finally, I consider this strike to be so dangerous that if anyone would prefer not to fly, I shall respect his wishes. I shall not, repeat not, think any the less of him for not going’.”
“I could hardly believe my ears – a senior naval officer saying I need not go if I didn’t want to? Nobody spoke. ‘Right, gentlemen,’ said the CO, ‘tomorrow morning then’.”
Next day the force reached Palembang at 12,000 feet. As the fighters engaged enemy aircraft overhead, the bombers closed in on their targets.
Mr Rickman said: “The CO called, as he always did: ‘Line astern. Go!’. We were a formation of six, having one particular target. We all dropped back to 100-yard intervals.
“I heard my gunner’s Browning (machine gun) chattering and stop. The gunner comes on the intercom: ‘There’s an Oscar (Japanese fighter) on my tail skip’, but my gun is jammed!’
“I was about to say: ‘Oh damn it you bloody fool!’, and I changed my mind and said: ‘Don’t worry. I am going down now. It won’t matter’, and I put the Avenger into a vertical dive.
“Ahead of me I could see three Avengers, then the balloons, and below me – yes – there was the pump house, very small.
“Between us and our target, I could see a balloon cable. I thought Charlie (the CO) would go round it of course - but he didn’t.
“To my horror, he hit it, shearing off most of his port wing - just like a hot knife through butter - then going into a vicious one-wing spin. He was only at 1,000 feet or more, so he blew up in front of my eyes when he hit the ground.
“The second Avenger rounded the cable and made its attack, that’s the senior pilot, and the next just ahead of me, another 854 pilot – I couldn’t believe my eyes when he hit the same cable as the CO with exactly the same result.
“I felt sick and angry: ‘Why the hell didn’t they see that cable?’. I was petrified in a sense – my mind couldn’t work - but I had to jerk myself back to reality because I hadn’t bombed. I thought: ‘Time to bomb! Crumbs! Yes, here’s the cable’, jinked round the cable, and pressed the bomb button, and at about 300 miles an hour started to pull up.
“As I got low, I suddenly found myself looking at a black wall of cloud from the burning oil tanks, with jets and gouts of flame in it all the time, and I was so close to it, I couldn’t do anything but go straight into it.
“The turbulence from that burning oil was so violent that the stick was whipped out of my hand and the seven-ton Avenger was tossed around like a cork.
“When we emerged from the smoke, on our side at about 500-foot I think, I grabbed the stick, got the aircraft level, went down to tree-top height and headed for the coast (the wide Musi River) where we had to rendezvous, blasting away with my two front guns at anything that I saw worth firing at – lorries, houses, whatever.
“I left the coast and was beginning to climb, and I looked back and around - as you always have to keep your eyes open for fighters - and I saw another Avenger, back, down, much lower. It wasn’t trailing smoke. It wasn’t on fire, but I realised it was on a shallow dive. Presumably the pilot had been killed or wounded. It blew up as it hit the sea. Just like that. Three in two minutes, you know? Jeepers.”