Walker and The Gallant Starling

Capt. F J Walker CB DSO*** (IWM collection)

One battle of the Second World War that lasted from the first day of hostilities on September 3rd 1930, when the Donaldson liner s.s. Athenia was torpedoed and sunk by U-30, commanded by Fritz Julius Lemp, to almost the last day when U-881 and U-683 were sunk in American waters, was the Battle of The Atlantic.

Churchill described it as the only thing during the entire war that ever truly frightened him and whilst there may be an element of exaggeration in that statement, the prospect of Britain's supply lifeline being cut was a truly appalling one. Whilst the British public suffered the hardships brought about by the Blitz and rationing, the men of the Merchant Navy and their escorts of the Royal Navy along with their Canadian and American allies suffered hardships as well as the prospect of a lonely and freezing death in hostile waters.

At the beginning of the war, the Royal Navy, despite it's pre-eminent position as the World's largest and most powerful navy, suffered from a great shortage of vessels suitable for convoy escort work and the men who had chosen to specialize in anti-submarine warfare, as opposed to what was seen as the more glamorous and important gunnery branch, were derisively known as 'Pingers' from the sound made by the then top secret British invention of ASDIC, what we now know as Sonar but then acronymically named after the Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee.

The shortage of both ships and men took time to rectify; apart from the existing hard-pressed destroyers and escort sloops, the first escorts to appear were the Flower Class corvettes. Adapted from a commercial design of whale catcher, these little ships were not really suited to the rough waters of the North Atlantic but armed with a four inch gun and heavy depth-charge armament, these vessels formed the backbone of the escort force during the first half of the war and indeed many of them served throughout the conflict. Nicholas Monserrat, the author of 'The Cruel Sea', the classic novel of the Battle of The Atlantic, served in one of these ships and wrote that 'a corvette could roll on wet grass' such was their lack of sea-keeping qualities.

A more thoroughbred design of escort was the Black Swan class sloop, of which HMS Starling was a member. Turbine powered, with a heavy gun and depth charge armament, because of their more sophisticated layout, these ships took longer to construct. Some of these vessels had appeared just before the outbreak of war but being an evolving design, the majority of them did not begin to appear until 1943 when the Battle of the Atlantic was approaching it's height.

HMS Starling (IWM Collection)

HMS Starling was built at Fairfield's Shipyard on the Clyde and took about 18 months to build, being completed on April 1st 1943. Her first commanding office was to be the Royal Navy's leading U-Boat killer, Captain Frederic John Walker CB DSO***, who was already becoming a legendary figure at the time of his appointment. 

Walker had been one of the Navy's 'Pingers' and was in peacetime parlance, a 'passed over' Commander, meaning that he had not been selected for promotion to Captain and in normal circumstances, could have expected his naval career to end in a relatively dead end position and never achieving promotion beyond his present rank. Pre-war, he had been Second in Command on the battleship HMS Valiant, but had frequently clashed with her captain, who sent damning reports on Walker to the Admiralty. Walker loathed being on big ships but it looked as if he would never get the chance to prove himself as a leader of men on smaller vessels.

The War changed all of this and Walker was given another chance. He had already made his name commanding another sloop, the peacetime built HMS Stork and had won a notable victory escorting convoy HG76 in which two U-Boats had been sunk. Now after a rest from sea-going duties, Walker was back and in command of the Starling.

Walker's appointment ensure that Starling would be at the very centre of all the action involving the Second Support Group, of whom Walker was Senior Officer, for he was one of those officers who led from the front at all time. Indeed, it was this quality that would lead to Walker's premature death, from overwork, some fifteen months later. Due to Walker's insistence on being involved at all times, as well as the undoubtedly high level of training of her officers and crew, HMS Starling was to become the most successful anti-submarine vessel of any navy, with a staggering fifteen 'kills' to her credit, as well as the involvement of her group in a good many more.

There is not really the space in a blog of this nature to fully describe every action that resulted in the sinking of a U-Boat by HMS Starling but the following brief summary will give readers a good idea of what was involved.

Her first kill came on June 1st 1943 when U-202 was the victim; there were 30 survivors from her 48 man crew. Next to go was U-119 on June 24th, caught on the surface and sunk with a combination of gunfire, ramming and depth-charges at shallow settings. There were no survivors. Starling herself had been damaged in ramming the U-Boat; it was a practice soon to be discouraged by the Admiralty, because sinking submarines in this manner also usually put the escort out of action at a time when the Navy was still desperately short of ships. Ever keen to continue the fight, Walker transferred to HMS Wild Goose, signalling to Starling from his new, temporary command "GOODBYE MY GALLANT STARLING. GOD BE WITH YOU." Walker then promptly sank another U-Boat, this time U-449 being the victim, in an attack in which Walker described the submarine as "not knowing what had hit her." Again, there were no survivors.

Back aboard Starling following repairs, November 6th 1943, saw two more victims fall to the gallant sloop; U226 was detected and sunk on passage from Brest. This time, there were 51 men aboard the U-Boat and once again, there were no survivors. Later the same day, U-842 was sunk after a concerted, hour long, depth charge attack Starling and Wild Goose and yet again, as was often the case in these sinkings, the submarine was destroyed with all hands.

After a short lull in sinkings, Starling and the Second Support Group sailed from Liverpool at the end of January 1944 and were to sink an incredible six U-Boats in one trip.The first victim on this trip was U-592, another victim of a group attack with Magpie and Wild Goose in company. Conditions aboard the submarine, under perpetual depth charge attack do not bear thinking about and once again, the entire ship's company of the U-Boat was to meet an horrific death. Starling was not directly involved in the demise of the next victim, U-762, which was despatched by sister vessel HMS Woodpecker on February 8th but returned to form the following day, when U-734 met her end, sunk by the old team of Starling and Wild Goose, followed by U-238, sunk in conjunction with Kite and Magpie. The fact that nobody escaped the imploding submarines, sunk by depth charges at a depth of 300 plus feet, is a given. The next of the six-in-one-trip was U-424 sunk on February 11th by Woodpecker and Wild Goose, with no involvement this time from Starling. The final sinking of this extraordinary sequence came on February 19th, when U-264 was caught by Woodpecker and Starling. After a lengthy series of attacks, the submarine commander, Oberleutnant Hartwig Looks, could no longer stop the water pouring into his boat and managed to bring his crippled vessel to the surface, where he and his entire crew were able to abandon ship and be picked up by the victorious British. 

The party was somewhat dampened by the loss of HMS Woodpecker to torpedo attack the following day, although all of her crew were rescued. Despite this loss, the Second Support Group returned to a rapturous welcome at Liverpool and Walker's reputation as the Allies' leading U-Boat killer was secure. 

Back at sea, on March 15th, U-653 was sunk by the old team of Starling and Wild Goose, whilst on the 29th of the same month, U-961 was destroyed by Walker's ship alone. This U-Boat was described by Walker as 'a genuine mug' as she took no avoiding action and probably never knew what had hit her. With both of these sinkings, there were no survivors from the two submarines. The final sinking by Starling under Walker's command came on May 5th 1944 when U-473 was sunk by Starling, Wild Goose and Wren after a depth charge attack and a rare gun battle on the surface. Thirty of the U-Boat's crew survived to be picked up and taken prisoner.

Capt Walker's memorial at Liverpool Pier Head (Rept0n1x)

After a short period on patrol guarding the D-Day invasion fleet from submarine attack, Walker and the rest of the Second Support Group were in Liverpool. On July 7th 1944, after watching a film with his wife, Walker complained of giddiness and a violent headache. Walker hardly ever complained of any sort of illness, so to see him admitted to hospital was a shock. Two days later, on Sunday July 9th 1944, 'Johnnie' Walker had died, throwing his own ship and the entire group into a state of shock. They had come to see Walker as simply indestructible and now he was gone.

Walker's second in command, Commander Wemyss from the Wild Goose, whose own ship was in refit, took over the Starling on a temporary basis and in partnership with HMS Loch Killin, sank two more U-Boats on this patrol, U-333 on July 31st and U-736 on August 6th; the spirit of Captain Walker was still very much alive. A further victim followed on August 11th when U-385 was sunk by Starling in conjunction with a Sunderland flying boat of RAF Coastal Command.

HMS Starling remained in commission until the end of the war, when she was converted into a training ship and "Gallant Starling" finally paid off. She was scrapped in 1965.

re-commissioned into the peacetime navy, engaged in the navigational training of young officers, an activity that Walker would have thoroughly approved. On her final voyage in 1959, her very last courtesy visit was, most appropriately made to Liverpool, where she embarked Captain Walker's widow who took passage in her husband's old ship back to Portsmouth, where the

Today, Captain 'Johnnie' Walker is commemorated by a statue on the Liverpool Pier Head. Of the sloops, there are vague 'on and off' hopes that the former HMS Whimbrel, another member of the Second Support Group, sold post-war to the Egyptian Navy may be brought home and preserved in Liverpool but these plans have been continually dashed by political changes in Egypt and continued haggling over the price. It is to be hoped that something can be worked out with the Egyptians as Whimbrel preserved in the former home of the Second Support Group, would make a fitting memorial to all those who perished in the greatest and longest sea battle of them all.

Published Sources:

Sloops 1926-1946 - Arnold Hague, World Ship Society - 1993

Walker RN - Terence Robertson, Evans Brothers - 1956

The War at Sea - ed. John Winton, Hutchinson 1974

San Demetrio, London

mv San Demetrio (Crown Copyright)

In November 1940, although the Battle of Britain had officially ended, the people of Britain's towns and cities were settling down to a long winter of bombing that they would have to endure throughout the long nights of winter right through until the spring of 1941 when at last, Hitler's eyes would begin to turn eastwards to fresh conquests against his erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union.

Apart from the hardships brought about by the Blitz, the British public were starting to feel the pinch of the rationing of all sorts of products from foodstuffs to fuel. This shortage of petrol had already forced the majority of private cars off the roads and what petrol as could be imported was mainly reserved for the war effort. The fall of France in June 1940 had brought the major ports along France's Atlantic coast into the hands of the Germans and the vessels of the Kriegsmarine no longer had to make the perilous and fuel consuming voyage through the North Sea or the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap in order to reach the rich pickings of the Atlantic convoys.

Prior to the fall of France, convoy after convoy had sailed safely across 'The Pond' without ever seeing a submarine or a surface raider but this had now all changed and the supplies to Britain and her Empire, at this time standing alone against the Nazi threat, were suddenly in danger of being cut off. 

Today, when asked about the Battle of the Atlantic, most people would imagine that the threat came solely from the U-Boats and to a great extent, this is true but in the early years of the war especially, there was also a substantial danger posed by surface raiders such as the so-called 'Pocket Battleships' of the Admiral Scheer class. One of these, the Graf Spee, had already been hunted down and destroyed in December 1939 giving the Royal Navy it's first major victory of the War. However, this victory had come after the raider had created havoc and alarm amongst British merchant shipping in the southern sea lanes. 

Now, another raider was at large; Admiral Scheer was prowling the North Atlantic in search of easy pickings in the form of either unescorted merchant ships, or the still woefully under-escorted convoys that were streaming across from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Admiral Scheer (US Naval Historical Center)

One such convoy was HX84, which had sailed from Halifax on 28th October 1940 and by 5th November was well into it's voyage, which was intended to end at Liverpool around the 11th November. For these early convoys of the war, the close escort was pitifully weak and at this mid-Atlantic stage of the convoy, consisted solely of the Armed Merchant Cruiser, Jervis Bay, under the command of Captain ESF Fegen RN, which in spite of it's impressive sounding title, was basically a converted passenger ship of the Aberdeen Commonwealth Line, which had been requisitioned by the Royal Navy and hastily armed with seven 1898 vintage six inch guns as well as a couple of three inch anti aircraft guns from First World War stocks. It was intended to reinforce the escort for the final leg of the voyage into Liverpool but in the meantime, Captain Fegen and the remainder of the convoy waited anxiously in hope that there would be no fireworks on the 5th November.

As darkness fell, these hopes were dashed as the Admiral Scheer discovered the convoy and began approaching in the expectation of easy pickings. Despite being hopelessly outgunned, Fegen ordered the convoy to scatter under cover of a smokescreen generated by the Jervis Bay and took his weakly armed vessel into combat with the raider. It was a hopelessly uneven contest and the Jervis Bay was soon reduced to a blazing wreck by the eleven inch guns of the German raider. Out of a ship's complement of 254, only 65 survivors were later rescued by a neutral Swedish merchant vessel. Captain Fegen was not amongst them and he was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for his gallantry in attempting to save the convoy.

Although the Admiral Scheer then moved amongst the scattering merchant ships and managed to sink five of them, the remaining ships of the 38 vessel convoy managed to reach Liverpool in ones and twos and so Fegen's sacrifice had not been in vain.

One of the merchant ships damaged in the ensuing melee had been the 12,000 deadweight ton tanker San Demetrio, owned by the Eagle Oil Company and carrying a precious cargo of petrol. She was indeed struck by an eleven inch shell and set ablaze, with her Captain wisely ordering the crew to abandon ship, for a blazing tanker was no place to be and in the circumstances, even the North Atlantic of November posed a better option for survival. One of the two lifeboats, the one containing the ship's master Captain Waite and 25 others, was quickly picked up by another merchant ship from the now scattered convoy but the other boat, containing the Chief Engineer Mr Pollard, the Second Officer Mr Hawkins and fourteen others was not so fortunate and spent the night in the cold Atlantic swell. The following morning, a ship was sighted and knowing that this might prove to be their only chance of rescue, the now exhausted men headed for it; amazingly, it turned out to be their old ship San Demetrio, abandoned, still ablaze but also still afloat. The men took the decision to reboard the ship and despite the rising seas, managed to do so. At first, it was intended to be a temporary measure until either the weather abated, or until they stumbled upon another ship but when the lifeboat was washed from the falls by a heavy sea, the men were effectively stranded on board their own ship.

San Demetrio arrives on the Clyde (John Lewis Jones)

An inspection of the engine room by Mr Pollard soon discovered that a diesel generator could be made to work, thus giving a means of providing pressure for the fire hoses and pumping the engine room dry, following which it was decided that the main engines were still serviceable and that the ship could eventually be made to move under her own power. This was a herculean task given the lack of manpower but it was achieved and three days later, the ship resumed her passage. All of the charts, compasses and other navigational equipment had been destroyed in the shelling and the ensuing fire but with the aid of a school atlas discovered in one of the undamaged cabins and some skilful navigation by Mr Hawkins, San Demetrio was soon heading homewards.

Food and drink for the men was also a major problem but some rum was found on board, as well as plenty of fresh water. Some tea being taken home as a present was also discovered and despite the enormous risk of lighting the galley stove - there were still petrol leaks and vapours in the air - the chance of a hot 'cuppa' lifted morale enormously. Hot food was provided by boiling vegetables in the engine room and although not ideal, proved sufficient to keep the men nourished.

There was one further casualty, when John Boyle, who had been injured during the initial battle, died from internal haemorrhaging two days into the voyage home.

 Poster for the film (Ealing Studios)

On 13th November, San Demetrio made landfall at Black Sod Bay, Eire and by now escorted but still under her own power, she at last reached the Clyde on 15th November, where her precious cargo was offloaded and the men who had salvaged their own ship were able to return to their homes.

The men were awarded salvage money as they had re-boarded and salvaged their own vessel without any outside assistance. The cargo of petrol was worth £60,000 at 1940 prices and the ship, being almost new, was valued at £250,000 and the award of salvage money was spread more or less equally around the men who had re-boarded their ship, including a payment to the estate of John Boyle.

San Demetrio herself was repaired and returned to service but in March 1942, the tanker finally succumbed to enemy attack, this time from a U-Boat and was torpedoed and sunk by U-404 whilst sailing independently to the UK from Baltimore. Sixteen of her crew plus DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) gunners were lost, although there were 32 survivors.

The story of the San Demetrio was a heart warming tale of ingenuity at sea as well as a triumph over adversity that was made into a film by Ealing Studios, simply entitled San Demetrio, London that was released in 1943 and which still gets shown on TV from time to time to this day.


Published Sources:

The Battle of The Atlantic - John Costello & Terry Hughes, Harper Collins 1977
The War at Sea - editor John Winton, Hutchinson 1974

Web Resource:

Arnold Hague Convoy Database 

The Battle of The Atlantic: A survivor in London

HQS Wellington today (author's photo)

Last weekend saw the seventy fifth anniversary of the launch of a ship that in more recent years has become something of a London landmark, or rivermark to be more accurate. That ship is the cruiser HMS Belfast which has been a familiar sight in the Upper Pool of London for some 42 years now since her opening as a museum ship in October 1971; in fact she has now been a museum ship for a longer period than she saw active Royal Navy service. We shall look at her career in a future edition of this blog as HMS Belfast has another significant anniversary coming up later in the year.

There is another former Second World War Royal Navy vessel moored a short distance upstream from the Pool of London that is passed by thousands of people every day, without more than a fraction of them realising that the smart little white ship that they see today, is in fact a veteran of the Battle of The Atlantic.

That ship is HQS Wellington, a Grimsby class sloop and the only survivor, at least in UK waters, of the Battle of The Atlantic. Originally one of a class of eight ships for Royal Navy service, HMS Wellington as she was christened, was built by HM Dockyard, Devonport and completed on 24th January 1935. As built, she was armed with two 4.7 inch guns, one 3 inch anti-aircraft and was capable of 16.5 knots. The raison d'etre of these sloops was primarily as patrol and escort vessels, with some vessels being capable of minesweeping duties. In keeping with other Royal Navy sloops of the time, the Grimsby class were all named after British coastal towns and seaports. However, an exception was made for Wellington, the final ship of the class. Destined for service on the New Zealand Station, she was named after the capital city of that country and following her commissioning and working up exercises, she sailed for New Zealand and arrived at her namesake city on 13th May 1935.

HMS Wellington in 1943 (Convoyweb)

The remaining years of peacetime service saw Wellington settling into a routine of patrols around the New Zealand coast and the South Pacific, with occasional visits to Sydney for her annual docking and refit. On the outbreak of war on 3rd September 1939, she sailed from Auckland for her wartime station of Singapore, where she arrived on the 19th of that month. She was then based at Penang until 2nd November, when she sailed for the United Kingdom. En route home, Wellington was diverted to Freetown where she collected convoy SL13 bound for Liverpool. Following safe delivery of the convoy on 6th January 1940, Wellington sailed to Cardiff, where she arrived on 9th January.

On completion of this refit, Wellington joined Western Approaches Command based at Devonport and later at Liverpool, from where she escorted many Atlantic and Gibraltar convoys. In May and June 1940, her escort duties were interrupted whilst she was involved in the evacuation of British troops from Le Havre and St Valery. She then resumed her Atlantic and Gibraltar escort duties until the middle of 1941, when she joined the long distance escorts on the Freetown route. She remained on this route until November 1942, when she became involved in the escorting of the fast troop convoys to and from North Africa following Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, after which she returned to Freetown to escort convoys from there to ports on the Nigerian coast. During this period, one of her commanding officers was John Treasure-Jones, who would become famous as the final captain of the Cunard liner Queen Mary, but then serving as a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve.

Lt.Cdr John Treasure-Jones in 1943

What must have been a welcome respite for the men of HMS Wellington came in May 1944, when she was sent to Bermuda for a two month refit, after which the ship was sent to the Clyde for further work. On completion of the refit, Wellington returned to Freetown in September 1944 and transferred to Gibraltar in January 1945 to serve out the remainder of the war. A satisfying moment for HMS Wellington came right at the end of the war, when the German U-Boat U-541 surrendered to the elderly sloop. Her war over, HMS Wellington returned to the UK in June 1946 and following de-storing, paid off into reserve at Milford Haven on 6th August 1945.

Normally, this would have been the end of the line for Wellington and it could reasonably have been expected that she would join the long line of tired fighting ships heading for the scrapyard but after nearly two years of languishing in reserve, this proud vessel earned an unexpected reprieve when she was purchased by the Honourable Company of Master Mariners to serve as their floating Livery Hall in King's Reach on the River Thames. During a major refit at Chatham Dockyard, her engines and boilers were removed and the large space vacated became the Livery Hall with fine wood panelling and a sweeping staircase, all salvaged from passenger vessels being scrapped. Re-christened HQS Wellington (for Headquarters Ship) this remarkable survivor arrived at her new berth in December 1948 and apart from a drydocking at Sheerness in 1991, has been a permanent feature of the London scene ever since.

On July 1st 2005, the ship's ownership was transferred to The Wellington Trust, a charitable body established to ensure the continued survival of this historic vessel.

As a working ship, HQS Wellington is not normally open to the public but is available to hire for weddings, conferences and parties and is usually a participant in the London Open House Weekend, which this year is taking place over the weekend of 21st/22nd September 2013. An excellent chance to visit the ship outside of this weekend is a special exhibition being held this year to mark the seventieth anniversary of the climax of the Battle of The Atlantic. This free exhibition, entitled 'CONVOY: The Battle of The Atlantic' runs from 12th May to 16th December 2013 and is open from 11:00 to 17:00 on Sundays and Mondays only during this time.

Next time you are walking or driving along Victoria Embankment past this trim white ship, remember the part played in keeping open our sea lanes not only by the Wellington but by all of the ships and men of the Allied navies and merchant fleets.



Published Sources:

BEF Ships before, at and after Dunkirk - John de S Winser, World Ship Society 1999
Sloops - Arnold Hague, World Ship Society 1993
Warships of World War II - HT Lenton and JJ Colledge, Ian Allan 1973

Web Resources:

Arnold Hague Convoy Database
The Wellington Trust Official Website

The Mighty Hood and the pursuit of Battleship Bismarck

I had planned to publish the following entry last weekend but laptop problems precluded this, hence the slightly belated recognition of the anniversary of this action.

KMS Bismarck (Bundesarchiv photo)

Last weekend marked the seventy first anniversary of the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck following an epic six day sea chase following her break-out from Norway, during which time just about every major unit in the Royal Navy was involved in the hunt for this threat to British sea power. During this chase, Bismarck also obliterated the pride of the Royal Navy, the battlecruiser HMS Hood in a short action which saw the loss of over fourteen hundred of her ship’s company leaving just three survivors to be plucked from the icy North Atlantic.

The origins of the Bismarck can be traced to the rise to power of the Nazis. During the Great War, the Imperial German Navy had challenged the Royal Navy for supremacy at sea although following their tactical defeat at Jutland had rarely ventured from their home ports except when proceeding to Scapa Flow for their ignominious surrender in 1918, an event which haunted the officers of this service, including one Erich Raeder, at that time holding the rank of Fregattenkapitan or Commander. By the time the Nazis came to power in 1933, Raeder was an Admiral and the man chosen by Hitler to head the Kriegsmarine as the reconstituted German Navy was to be known. Hitler vowed to build a new High Seas Fleet and although Raeder did not support the Nazis or agree with their ideals, the promise of heading this new fleet was too hard for him to resist. 

 Erich Raeder (Bundesarchiv photo)

At the heart of the ideal was ‘Plan Z’, a scheme for a balanced fleet of battleships, pocket battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and of course submarines designed to challenge the Royal Navy, still at that time by far the largest in the World. The Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were amongst some of the first vessels in this new fleet. To build a new fleet virtually from scratch takes time but there seemed no cause for hurry, for Hitler had assured Raeder that conflict with England would not come before 1945, by which time this new fleet would be virtually complete. Like most of Hitler’s promises, this one was to go seriously awry and when war came in 1939, the fledgling Kriegsmarine, could in Raeder’s own words, do little to the British “except to demonstrate to them how to die gallantly.”

It was against this background in August 1940 that Bismarck was commissioned at her builders, the famous Blohm & Voss yard in Hamburg. Despite their numerical disadvantage, it was planned that Bismarck should form a powerful squadron with her sister and the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and to make a foray into the Atlantic creating havoc amongst the British convoy routes. This mission was planned for April 1941 but this formidable squadron was never to see action. Gneisenau was torpedoed in Brest harbour and subsequently bombed whilst under repair, Scharnhorst needed boiler repairs and Tirpitz was late in being completed by her builders. A scaled down version of this sortie was therefore planned, with the giant battleship teaming up with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen to mount the raid. Hitler, anxious to avoid the loss of his precious ships was wary of the whole idea but reluctantly went along with the plan and the two ships duly sailed from their Norwegian hideout on 21st May under the command of Admiral Gunther Lutjens.

The British had been aware of the vessels hiding away in the fjords and had organised photographic reconnaissance aircraft to capture them on film. Once they had been found to sail, the hunt was on and Admiral Sir John Tovey, commander of the British Home Fleet, ordered the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales to sail from Scapa Flow and intercept the German vessels in the Denmark Strait. Although powerfully armed, Hood was effectively obsolete, having been designed during the Great War and although scheduled for a major rebuild to bring her up to modern standards, the war had come too soon to allow this and she had had to continue in her un-modernised condition. To compound the problem, Prince of Wales was fresh from the builder’s yard and indeed, still had workers from Cammell Laird’s shipyard aboard ironing out snags in her main armament amongst other things.

HMS Hood in 1924 (State Library of Victoria)

At 05:52 on the 24th May 1941, HMS Hood opened fire, closely followed by her consort. Bismarck returned fire; her shooting was remarkably accurate and with only her fifth salvo, struck Hood a mortal blow with her 15 inch main armament. Her thin deck armour penetrated, Hood simply exploded – her magazines detonating and breaking the graceful battlecruiser in two. She sank in seconds and just three survivors were later pulled from the water by the escorting British destroyers. Of the remaining 1,415 men of her ships’s company, not a trace, not a single body was to be found. The pride of the Royal Navy had gone. Bismarck and Prinz Eugen then shifted their fire to the Prince of Wales, which in turn was also heavily hit but not before the British battleship had hit the German vessel hard, piercing one of her fuel tanks, causing her to leave a tell-tale stream of fuel oil in her wake and more importantly limiting her range and scope for further operations.

The secrecy of the mission blown and the German battleship seriously damaged, Lutjens decided to abandon the sortie and make for the French Atlantic port of Brest. Prinz Eugen was detached and slipped away undetected by the shadowing British cruisers, whilst Bismarck forged her way to safety. The British used their huge numerical superiority to bring in ships from all over the Atlantic and even from the Mediterranean. The aircraft carriers Victorious and Ark Royal launched strikes with their venerable Swordfish torpedo bombers and it was a strike from the latter carrier, which was to strike Bismarck what proved to be a mortal blow.

A fortunate torpedo strike hit Bismarck right astern and disabled her steering gear, causing her to steam an erratic and ultimately circular course. She could only await her doom, as almost within touching distance of Brest and air cover but in appalling weather, she was tracked down by the Royal Navy. Tovey’s flagship HMS King George V  had rendezvoused with another battleship, HMS Rodney and prior to this, Bismarck had been harried by British destroyers, attempting to further slow her with torpedoes. Shortly after daybreak on the 27th May, the British battleships opened fire and between them began to pulverise the once proud super-battleship and by 10:00 had reduced her to a blazing wreck, with hundreds of men dead and dying. Tovey called on any of his ships with torpedoes remaining to use them on Bismarck to finish her and shortly after 10:40, having been hit repeatedly by torpedoes fired by the cruiser Dorsetshire, the former pride of the Kriegsmarine slid beneath the waves, leaving hundreds of men in the water.

To paraphrase Lord Nelson, humanity after victory has always been the predominant feature of the British Fleet and following the demise of the Bismarck, the victors set about rescuing the vanquished survivors but in a final tragedy, one of the lookouts aboard Dorsetshire, spotted what he thought was the periscope of a U-Boat. Fearing the worst, the British abandoned the rescue attempt and scattered, having rescued just one hundred and ten men, one of whom later died. There was no U-Boat, although one was soon to arrive and managed to pick up a further three men with a German trawler rescuing another two. Out of a total of two thousand two hundred men aboard Bismarck, there were just one hundred and fourteen survivors.

This article is dedicated to those men of Hood and Bismarck, the pride of their respective fleets, who did not return to their home ports.

Published Sources:

The Battle of The Atlantic - John Costello & Terry Hughes, Collins 1977

Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the Bismarck - Ludovic Kennedy, Cassell 2001

The War at Sea - Julian Thompson, Sidgwick & Jackson 1996 

Enemy Aliens, Internees and the Arandora Star

One aspect of the Home Front of the Second World War that today is often forgotten is the internment of all so called 'Enemy Aliens' at the commencement of the War. At the outbreak of war, there were in the region of 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain, who it was feared could be potential spies or be willing to assist our enemies in the event of an invasion.

Therefore, all Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were interviewed by special tribunals and afterwards placed into three categories - Category 'A' high security risks, numbering about 600 who were immediately interned. Category 'B' numbering about 6,500 were 'Doubtful Cases' who were supervised and subjected to restrictions. Category 'C' numbered about 64,000 who were deemed to be no security risk and of whom about 55,000 were Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression who had escaped from Europe.

The situation was further compounded in the Spring of 1940 with the combination of Italy's entry into the war and the failure of the Allied campaign in Norway, which led to agitation amongst certain elements of the press for more alien internment. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that all of the 19,000 Italians in this country be interned even though many of these people had lived in this country for ages. Many of the additional Germans and Austrians rounded up were the very same Jewish refugees who had months earlier been deemed to have been no threat. Many of these internees were held on the Isle of Man as they had been during the Great War and in one camp on the island, over 80 per cent of those held were Jewish refugees. An outcry in Parliament led to the first releases of internees in August 1940 and by the summer of 1941, only 5,000 of those deemed genuine security risks were left in internment camps.

Apart from those detained in this country and the Isle of Man, over 7,000 internees were deported. Some of these were sent to Australia, where those sent on the s.s. Dunera suffered from appalling conditions and also the humiliation of having their personal possessions either stolen or thrown overboard by the British military guards. The vast majority of those deported were sent to Canada and it was on board one of the vessels destined for that country, the s.s. Arandora Star that tragedy struck.

The Arandora Star was a passenger ship owned by the Blue Star Line which had been built by Cammell Laird of Birkenhead in 1927. Before the war, she had operated mainly in the luxury cruise market to such destinations as South America, Norway, Florida and the West Indies.

Requisitioned as a troopship on the outbreak of War, she had sailed from Liverpool on 1st July 1940 carrying a total of 1,673 people of whom 1,299 were male German and Italian Prisoners of War and internees broken down as follows - 174 Officers and crew of the Arandora Star, 200 British Military Guards, 565 Germans, of whom 86 were military POWs of 'bad character' and 734 Italian civilian internees. The vessel was not marked with a Red Cross, nor had the Admiralty requested 'free passage' for her and to compound the error, she was sailing without an escort.

At 06.15 on the 2nd July, barely one day out of Liverpool, she was torpedoed by the German U Boat U-47, commanded by Gunther Prien, one of the 'Ace' U Boat commanders. Prien supposedly mistook the vessel for an Armed Merchant Cruiser but in all probability thought that he was sinking a loaded troopship, which he was, but not loaded with the cargo he had thought. The Arandora Star sank after less than an hour but in that time, did manage to transmit a distress signal, which guided a Sunderland flying boat to the scene, which in turn guided HMCS St Laurent, a Canadian destroyer which had been escorting the battleship HMS Nelson, to the scene of the sinking.

The St Laurent reached the site of the sinking in the early afternoon and found that the doomed vessel had managed to launch 10 lifeboats and scores of rafts. There were also many survivors in the water, clinging to pieces of wreckage, many of whom were coated in oil and unable to help themselves. In a remarkable rescue, the St Laurent managed to pick up all of the survivors in the boats and rafts, together with all those that could be found in the sea. The numbers saved included 322 Germans, 243 Italians, 163 Military Guards and 119 of the Officers and Crew of the Arandora Star. This left a total of 826 who perished, including the vessel's master, Captain Edgar Moulton and over 470 of the Italians, who bore the brunt of the casualties

Memorial to Captain Edgar Moulton at his home village of Broadhembury, Devon (author's photo)

Once the survivors were picked up, many tales of heroism emerged - Captain Edgar Moulton was posthumously awarded Lloyds War Medal for Bravery at Sea and a German Merchant Navy prisoner, Captain Otto Burfiend was posthumously cited for his heroism in the rescue attempt for staying aboard the sinking ship supervising the evacuation. Commander Harry De Wolf of HMCS St Laurent received a Mention in Dispatches for his supervision of the rescue operation.

When U-47 returned home to Wilhelmshaven, Prien discovered the truth about what he had unwittingly done. Needless to say, the fact the he had been responsible for the death of 713 Germans and their Italian allies on the Arandora Star was kept from the Axis public. Prien himself was lost along with U-47 and the rest of his crew on March 7th 1941, depth charged by HMS Wolverine in the North Atlantic.

The memorial pictured is located at St Peter's Italian Church in Clerkenwell Road, London.

Published Sources:

Engage the Enemy More Closely, Correlli Barnett - Hodder & Stoughton 1991

Hitler's U-Boat War; The Hunters 1939-42, Clay Blair - Weidenfield & Nicholson 1996

The Battle of The Atlantic, John Costello & Terry Hughes - Collins 1977