大象传媒

This is the story of my father's war, written shortly before he died in March 2004.

"Whilst in command of HMS Kenilworth Castle the ship was attached to a group commanded by Commander D. H. Rayner, RNVR, the group was working as an independent unit, sweeping the areas in the vicinity of the approaches to the Irish sea in the hope of intercepting or discouraging submarines from approaching convoys.

Commander Rayner, after the war, had a book published entitled "The Enemy Below", which was made into a Hollywood film of the same name, another of his books was named "Escorts".

At one of our conferences usually held by the senior officer before setting out on a submarine sweep commander Rayner had the bright idea of putting to sea in line ahead (Five ships) as a convoy would be and that the ships would show dimmed navigation lights, but in reverse, the forward navigation lights would show aft and the port and starboard lights would be reversed.

he proposition astounded me and I was forced to point out that it would take a submarine commander about five minutes to discover what was happening, he would take a bearing of the leading ship and five minutes later take another bearing and would the know that the supposed convoy was in fact going in the opposite direction to that indicated by the navigation lights, the proposal was abandoned at that point.

Of all the unhappy things which can happen at sea the most terrible must be a man lost overboard, especially in bad weather when the prospect of recovery is almost impossible.

Just such an accident occurred during on voyage from the USA on convoy duty The weather was very bad, strong Northerly gales and very heavy seas, late at night, when a shout from the quarter deck to the bridge indicated that one of the depth charge watch had fallen overboard. I informed the senior officer of the escort what had happened and received permission to reverse course and search for the man, there was little chance of finding the man in the prevailing weather but we commenced a search and after some time it was clear that our efforts were fruitless and we returned to our station in the convoy, which consisted of about forty ships in four columns.

At the inquiry later it became clear what had happened. The young rating, on depth charge duty, was sheltering on the quarterdeck, with his hands in his pockets when the ship rolled heavily to starboard in the heavy sea, he was a very tall lad and the roll sent him to the low bulwark rail. Unable to get his hands out of his pocket in time he went overboard and was lost.

My duty involved sending the sympathy of the ship's company to his family.

A day out at an RAF base North of the Firth of Forth proved to be a very interesting event.

On arrival at the airfield we were required to sign in and one of our group duly signed 鈥淭raprain鈥�. He was asked for his first name which he duly provided as 鈥淰iscount鈥� He incidentally did not stay long in Dovercourt in command of his trawler, he was pulled out to become coal controller of Scotland and after the war, on the death of his father, I presume, he became Earl Balfour.

At the airfield we were each put in the care of a member of the aircrew, my carer being a sergeant pilot. We were told we were going to do a bit of flying, but not what was involved.

The plane my pilot and I were to fly was a Boulton Paul Defiant, a two seater plane. The second man is in the gun turret, this was my position, but what was never mentioned, which was part of the RAF plan, was the fact that we were going up to practice dive bombing the gun emplacements in various parts of the Firth of Forth including May Island which is at the entrance of the Firth. This of course gave the gunners practice at sighting and gun laying.

We flew off and rose to several thousand feet above the Firth. The pilot then put the plane into an almost vertical dive over the gun site; it was not the best feeling I have ever had, my stomach seemed not to belong to me. We did this over several sites and eventually returned to the airfield. The RAF lads thought this was great fun, although we put on a show of not being too upset at the joke at our expense. What the sergeant pilot failed to tell me was, when we were diving earthwards to yell and exhale to avoid trouble with your ears. The result was I was partially deaf for days after the exercise.

My one regret was that we were unable to extend an invitation to them for a day at sea when conditions were a little rough!

However the day was a nice change and they did entertain us later.

Whilst out as an independent group, off the North West coast of Eire, we had long suspected that U-Boats could be making use of Irish Loughs for shelter.
Strictly without authority, on several occasions it was decided to make a search of certain of the Loughs one of which was Lough Swilley, which was quite long. Kenilworth Castle was delegated to carry out these searches , in the hope of surprising a U-Boat, this sort of search would have been impossible without the invaluable help of Radar in the pitch dark conditions.

In the event no sign of German U-Boats was ever found, the searches were not without risk, getting in and out without incident was a bit stressful, however they went without accident and at least we satisfied ourselves that at least the areas we searched were free of U-Boats.

The entrance to Lough Foyle was another point of interest, one side of the entrance was Eire and the other Northern Ireland, it was thought, and I believe it was true that the Germans had agents on the Eire side and that every movement in or out of the entrance to Londonderry was reported to the German authorities.
When large movements of escort vessels were observed it was obvious that convoy movements were under weigh.

Nothing could be done about it.

Even in war time enterprise was not dead. We arrived in Greenock from Gibraltar, berthed alongside and were to enjoy a few days rest. We had not been tied up very long, when taking the air on deck I observed several sacks being carted ashore. Out of idle curiosity I sent for the officer of the deck to enquire what was going on and was informed that the catering staff had discovered a little enterprise which was making the department a little money on the side.
In Gibraltar they had discovered that garlic could be obtained at a very reasonable price and sold on in the UK to various catering establishments. Garlic, of course, was unobtainable at home. No more was said, but mentally I congratulated them on their enterprise.

We seldom had trouble with customs officers when the men were going on leave, but occasionally they were sometimes pushed from above and a random search was carried out either as they were coming ashore or on occasion at the railway station.

On this occasion one of my petty officers had been found to have too many cigarettes and he was brought back to the ship and the customs officer asked to see me. He informed me of the position and requested that I take action. This would have involved stopping the man's leave, pending the man appearing on the Captain's report. I mentioned how serious this was as the man was a petty officer and, while we were discussing the problem, I invited him to have a drink. In a very pompous manner he said he would but of course without prejudice. I had no intention to persuade him other than point out the heavy penalty the man would attract.

After some more talk he agreed that provided I received the excess cigarettes back into the ships bond he would on this occasion overlook the offence. The PO went on leave.

In a naval vessel, one of the largest departments is the radio telegraphy
Office. Whilst at sea escorting a convoy or in a hunting group, all ships guard three German submarine radio frequencies.

On hearing a homing signal from a submarine the ships guarding the frequency
took a bearing which was passed at once to the senior officer of the escort. The senior officer's staff then plotted the bearings received and in this way could, with accuracy, find out the bearing and distance of the target.

The reason for the above paragraph is to explain a situation which occurred during one outward bound Atlantic convoy.

A submarine signal was heard and passed by all the ships, with the exception of my ship, HMS Kenilworth Castle. The explanation was simple, on watch was a very new and inexperienced telegraphist and he missed the signal. The senior officer was not very pleased and on return, at the conference, demanded that the culprit be severely punished, he indicated that a spell in detention was dictated. I strongly disagreed, and got out of it by saying I had already punished him by loss of leave and extra work and I was not prepared to do anything further, Being responsible for the discipline in my own ship there was nothing further he could do.

We were only on loan to the senior officer's group, so I was glad when we were detached.

It so happened we were too far away from the submarine and of course tied to the convoy, the signal was passed to a hunting group which had also received the homing signal, the submarine was hunted and sunk.

The senior officer, as a matter of interest, was a fine career Royal Naval officer, Peter Grettan a commander RN at that time. At the end of the war he had collected a DSO, DSC and bar, OBE and some time after the war received a Knighthood and became Vice Admiral Sir Peter Grettan, 2nd Sea Lord at the Admiralty.

He died some years ago.

On a homeward bound convoy, New York to the UK ,after a U boat attack, a Norwegian tanker was torpedoed and disabled, the crew were taken off and the convoy proceeded on its way.

Some hours after this the senior officer was told by Radio Telephone that the torpedoed tankers charts and confidential papers had been left on board, it was important that they be recovered, it was evident that although the tanker was disabled it was not going to sink.

The senior officer of the escort instructed me to return to the stricken tanker and as the weather was reasonable to put a boarding party on board and recover the charts and document. We put back and soon came up with the tanker. I did a quick Asdic sweep around the tanker, to make sure our friend the U boat was not still in the area, it was unlikely as he was probably still attempting to keep contact with the convoy.

A boarding party was landed on board, and while they were recovering the required documents we continued to search around the ship. After a short spell a message was received that the papers had been recovered, the boarding party was recalled and the boat brought back on board.

I passed close to the stern of the tanker, and under orders, attempted to sink it with a couple of depth charges. Although they exploded quite close to the disabled ship they showed no sign that they were effective and I decided we had done all we could, we proceeded at full speed to rejoin the convoy. The final fate of the tanker I have on way of knowing.

A bonus from this adventure was the items recovered from the tanker as trophies by the boarding party. These include ship's clocks , barometers, and binoculars. A Nelson's blind eye was necessary to cover up these little finds.
Towards the end of the war in Europe the U boats had taken such a battering that ships became available to carry out other duties than convoy escort.

On this particular occasion our four corvette group, under the command of a Lieut. Commander RN was engaged in the English channel on a sweep to try and engage midget submarines which were trying to interrupt the supply of war material to the channel ports. Our instructions were to sweep around Alderney, at a range of twelve miles.

Of the four ships, Kenilworth Castle happened to be the inside ship of the four, we were hunting line abreast one mile apart. This meant that the senior officer, being the last ship of the four was three miles from me and, on checking the position on Decca Navigator, I found instead of being twelve miles from Alderney, we were only eight miles from the nearest shoreline. I was debating the idea of informing the senior officer of our position when there was an almighty explosion across the stern of my ship, at a range of about one hundred yards, it was a salvo or five heavy calibre shells fired from Alderney. Orders were given to make smoke into which I would have turned but something happened in the engine room when making smoke and this had the effect of stopping the main engines. It was not a happy few minutes, however engine power was soon restored and we steamed out of the area.

There was only the one salvo fired so whether it was a gesture of defiance or not I am not sure, because at that point they must have known their position was hopeless.

We never did encounter a midget submarine.

The reason the ships became so out of position was the set of the tide, which should have been monitored by the navigator on the senior officers ship. However, as it happened no harm was done. If the result had been different I am afraid some explanation would have been required of the senior officer."

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