The Unsung Heroes of World War 2
excerpt from a substack illustrated article by James Holland
I was aboard HMS Belfast the other day, permanently moored on the River Thames near Tower Bridge in London, and every time I’m visiting I’m always in awe of its solid vastness and immense comlexity. Just look at those twelve 6-inch guns, or the technical efficiency of the magazines and shell hoists. Or take a look in the engine and boiler rooms with their snaking array of interconnected pipes and tubes. They’re almost fantastical - like something from Willy Wonka’s factory. Yet Belfast wasn’t even a particularly large warship. Rather, she was a light cruiser and one of just forty-one in the Royal Navy’s arsenal in September 1939 with a further nine under construction in shipyards around Britain at that time. Just think about this: at the start of the Second World War, the Royal Navy had 15 battleships, 7 aircraft carriers,15 heavy cruisers in addition to those 41 light cruisers, 181 destroyers, of which 113 were modern types, 65 submarines, 44 minesweepers, 54 escorts such as corvettes and other warships. There were plenty of other vessels besides, as well as the Royal Navy Patrol Service, better known as Harry Tate’s Navy, which was made up from hastily armed trawlers and other vessels and which swept and laid mines and helped keep watch in our home waters.
This immense force ensured that Britain’s Royal Navy was the largest of its kind in the world, despite being half the size it had been in 1918. What’s more, as the Second World War began, a further 9 battleships, 6 carriers, as well as the 9 light cruisers, 24 destroyers and 80 corvettes were also under construction. It was a force befitting an island nation with immense global assets, both imperial and extra-imperial. Its Home Fleet alone was large enough to place Nazi Germany under an immediate economic blockade. There were warships in the Far East and an entire fleet in the Mediterranean, based variously at Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria. HMS Hood, a giant 860-foot-long heavy cruiser, was the world’s largest warship and also by some margin the most famous vessel in the world. The Royal Navy was Britain’s Senior Service for a reason and the country’s naval power – and the projection of that power – lay at the very heart of Britain’s identity and even culture. Nelson, Trafalgar, the dreadnoughts, Britannia ruling the waves and superior seamanship was hard-wired into Britain’s core: its defence, its power, its wealth, its national pride, all lay in the hands of the Royal Navy.
Today, our slant on history takes us to the battlefields and even the skies more than the seas and oceans, yet naval personnel remained absolutely critical to Britain’s war effort. After all, it was seas that ultimately defended the British Isles and it was because of the oceans that Britain was able to remained supplied throughout the war. It was also only by sea that Britain could take the fight back to the enemy; alongside her Allies, all operations were necessarily amphibious.
The men and women who served in the Royal Navy did so across the globe and often in in conditions so gruelling it’s hard to comprehend. There was a reason the Atlantic was known as the cruel sea. The destroyers, corvettes and other escorts protecting the vital convoys heading back and forth through the Atlantic had open bridges and often rising swells and storm conditions raged in summer was well as winter, hurling sea and spray across the decks, lashing the men striving to keep the ships under their care cutting through the water. Many of the men spent much of their time permanently soaked, often freezing. Back in late 1940, Peter Gretten, then a lieutenant, found himself in a storm on the tribal-class destroyer, HMS Cossack, when one of the lifeboats sprung free from its davit. With three ratings he attempted to try and fix it only for a giant wave to crash over them and sweep all four men out to sea. A moment later, a second wave flung him back on deck but the other three were instantly lost to the icy winter waters. Battered, bruised, freezing cold and soaked through, Gretten reported to Captain Philip Vian’s, Cossack’s commander, who promptly chastised him for leaving ship without permission. On their return to Scapa Flow in Orkney, Gretten then spent more than a week in hospital recovering from hypothermia.
continued
https://open.substack.com/pub/james1940/p/the-unsung-heroes-of-world-war-2