- Contributed by听
- 大象传媒 Birmingham @ The Mailbox
- People in story:听
- Charles Winters
- Location of story:听
- North Atlantic
- Background to story:听
- Royal Navy
- Article ID:听
- A3554994
- Contributed on:听
- 21 January 2005
I joined the Royal Navy in 1936 and served on convoy blockade duties during Spanish Civil War.
During the Second World War, I was on Russian convoy duty in North Atlantic to Murmansk after Russia joined war. We accompanied ships carrying cargoes of planes, engineering equipment etc. I served on board HMS Anson, part of PQ17 convoy as a gunner on Y turret (14鈥 gun aft). Our ship had four guns: A & B gun forward and X & Y gun aft. The ship was about 880 ft long.
Whilst on convoy, we picked up 1 aircraft, a Blom Voss Reconnaissance plane, on the radar. We fired one 14鈥 shell at him, as high up as we could, and we didn鈥檛 see him again. However he must have alerted German command of our presence.
Message came to the ship from Portsmouth that two German battleships had been sighted leaving port towards us. A signal was sent across the convoy by flag 鈥楥onvoy to scatter鈥. We used the flags, not radio, because of submarines listening. So the Royal Navy ships headed east to intercept the battleships leaving the merchant convoy unguarded. The U-boats (presumably alerted by the recon plane) converged on the merchant convoy sinking 30 ships, meanwhile the two German battle ships sailed straight into port in Norway. They put up no fight.
As a result of this action, Commodore Brown, commander of the convoy, was arraigned in England in 1960 and charged with failure to do his duty. I think it scandalous that he was charged.
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