大象传媒

This contribution to People鈥檚 War was received by the Action Desk at 大象传媒 Radio Norfolk and submitted to the website with the permission and on behalf Laurence.

After the allies occupied Iceland in 1941, to avoid the Germans doing the same thing and threatening the North Atlantic convoys, the Royal Navy based Corvettes and Destroyers there. However, as Iceland was a fishing nation it only had dry-docking facilities for trawlers, unable to take the naval vessels now based there. Accordingly a large floating dock was sent there and in August 1942. My ship HMS Drangey with two other naval escorts rendezvoused with the floating dock towed by three ocean-going tugs and set sail for Reykjavik at about 3 knots.

We had been at sea for about 12 hours when a severe gale blew up which, not only blew us off course, but resulted in the tows which the tugs had onboard the dock continually snapping. That night on radio watch I received a message addressed to all naval ships to the effect that a German battleship (the Scharnhorst I think), had slipped her mooring in a Norwegian Fjord and was proceeding through the Western Approaches into the North Atlantic, where we were virtually stationary. She would have sighted us long before we had a glimpse of her and blown us all out of the water. The weather deteriorated so that the tugs took the crew off the dock and just followed her as she was blown eastwards. The next night I received a message that the Battleship had in fact had proceeded along the Norwegian coast to another fjord. But still the gales blew, although eventually the tugs got a tow aboard the dock just as we were approaching the high cliffs of the Westerman Islands. They just managed to get it to the leeward of the island, anchored her and waited for the storm to abate. A few days later when the tugs had made the necessary repairs to their cables we proceed along the coast to Reykjavik.

Some forty years later I made contact with another member of the crew of the Drangey, Signalman Phil Aspinall, and had many conversations with him. Mentioning our trip to Reykjavik, he recounted the following story. As an avid reader interested in naval matters he borrowed many books written by both British and German sailors. He remembers borrowing a book in the 1950鈥檚 written by a U-Boat Captain of his trips into the North Atlantic. On one of these he says he was proceeding through the Western Approaches to rendezvous with other U-Boats when he came across a floating dock towed by tugs and escorted by naval vessels. The weather was blowing a full gale and although he was within range it was too rough to use his torpedoes as accurate sighting was impossible. He followed for two days hoping that the storm would abate but he was never in a situation where he could mount an attack. Time ran out for him to meet his rendezvous and he had to proceed into the North Atlantic. In the 1950鈥檚 the book was of interest to Phil but not to the extent that he would note its title and author as he would do now. Latterly both he and I have tried to find that book. I have written to the U-Boat museum and Imperial War Museum without success and I鈥檓 afraid we will never find it now.

However, I look back on that trip to Iceland and realise we had two lucky escapes.

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