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I was on an escort carrier HMS Tracker on a Russian convoy in 1944. I had been on watch and was fast asleep below — on Russian convoys you did 4 hours on and 4 hours off. Most times you were too tired to undress to go to bed, you just laid down and went to sleep. I was woken by the alarm gongs going and a series of explosions. I found myself the only one on the mess deck. I ran up to the hangar deck and it was full of smoke and flames were coming from the rear end of the ship. I was on my way to action stations which was situated underneath the bridge. I was horrified to see a figure in flames running out from the smoke. I could not stop because other people were there to deal with any situation that might occur.

What had happened was that an aircraft had come in to land and had crashed into the end of the flight deck. The fire and explosions were from the fuel on board and the ammunition that was on the rear of the ship. The person that was in flames was the pilot who later died from his injuries. The ship being on fire in the convoy was a danger to others as it was highly explosive because the aviation spirit, depth charges, shells and bombs were directly underneath the fire! We turned out of the convoy and hoped for the best as we were a sitting target for any German submarine. Eventually the fires were brought under control and within a few hours we rejoined the convoy.

The cause of the accident was faulty release mechanism on a depth charge which caused it not to be discharged from the aircraft but to hang underneath and therefore caused an imbalance when coming in to land on our ship.

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