By 1943 more than 100 RCN officers were serving in coastal forces, commanding small but heavily-armed fast attack craft in the Channel and the Mediterranean. Two branches of the Royal Navy in which Canadians formed a substantial presence were coastal forces and naval aviation-largely because NSHQ permitted Britain to recruit in Canada for these specialties. Wright, RCNVR, as commander of a special operations detachment in central Burma in 1945 whose job was to swim across the Irawaddy River at night to raid the enemy. Perhaps one of the most unusual wartime jobs was that of Lieutenant-Commander B.S. Paxton, RCNVR, was radar officer in the destroyer HMS Venus in May 1945 when it detected the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro at the extreme range of 55 kilometres, a contact that ended with the enemy’s destruction. Grant, RCN, commanded the cruiser HMS Enterprise in 1943-44. Sherwood, RCNVR, was captain of the submarine HMS Spiteful operating in the Indian Ocean in 1945, while Captain H.T.W. Lane, RCNVR, served in the British heavy cruiser HMS Glasgow, Lieutenant-Commander F.H. Sixty Canadian ratings were serving in HMS Belfast when it participated in the sinking of the Scharnhorst in the Barents Sea in December 1943.
O’Brien, RCN, witnessed the massive Allied amphibious landings in Sicily and Italy in 1943. Winthrope, RCNVR, was killed in the daring commando attack on Saint-Nazaire in March 1942. Bonnell, DSC, RCNVR, died in a Chariot “human torpedo” during a raid on Sardinia in December 1941. Five Canadian officers were lost in the cruiser HMS Bonaventure when it was sunk off Crete in March 1941 and Lieutenant C. Paddon, RCNVR, was a radar officer in the battleship HMS Prince of Wales when it fought the Bismarck in the spring of 1941 and survived his ship’s sinking off Malaya seven months later. Strathey, RCNVR, was a radar officer on the cruiser HMS Ajax when it sank three Italian destroyers in the Mediterranean in October 1940. Hayes, RCNVR, survived being sunk in the same evacuation. Timbrell, RCN, received a Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) for his service at Dunkirk in June 1940 while Sub-Lieutenant G.H. To provide just a few examples, Midshipman L.B Jenson, RCN, was in the battlecruiser HMS Renown when it engaged the German capital ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off Norway in April 1940.
#SURRENDER NAVAL ACTIO FULL#
The full story of their activities has never been properly told, but it should be emphasized that Canadian sailors served at sea in every theatre of war in appointments ranging from the conventional to the extreme.ĭonald Connolly, Finale, picturing the action in Onagawa Bay, Japan, 9 August 1945, from which Lieutenant Robert Hampton Gray, VC, DSC, was posthumously awarded the RCN’s only Victoria Cross. During the early part the war, however, many Canadian naval officers and seamen gained valuable experience by serving with the Royal Navy. When the fall of France in June 1940 brought the U-boats to the Atlantic littoral, the RCN became increasingly involved with the North Atlantic but NSHQ never entirely relinquished its ambition to man larger warships.Īs the first of the Tribals would not commission until late 1942, this ambition could not be realized in the short term. Until these ships were completed, NSHQ arranged for the conversion of three large passenger ships-Prince David, Prince Henry, and Prince Robert-as auxiliary cruisers, and while the seven destroyers of the pre-war fleet were employed on convoy duty in the Atlantic the “Prince” ships mainly operated on the Pacific coast. In the winter of 1939-40 an arrangement was made with the Admiralty in London for Canada to produce escort vessels for the Royal Navy in return for British construction of four Tribal-class vessels in the United Kingdom. When war broke out in September 1939, NSHQ viewed the most dangerous threat as being large surface raiders, not submarines, and to counter this threat it wished to obtain powerful fleet destroyers of the Tribal class. The RCN’s participation in surface warfare in these theatres was primarily driven by the ambition of Naval Service Headquarters in Ottawa to build up a “balanced fleet” or “blue water navy” that would be the foundation of a post-war service so strong that never again would it face possible dissolution as it had in the 1920s. What is often over-looked, however, is that the RCN also manned a variety of warships, from light cruisers to landing craft, which carried out many different tasks in European and Pacific waters. The Royal Canadian Navy’s greatest contribution in the Second World War was the role it played in the Battle of the Atlantic, the grim and unrelenting struggle against the German U-boats, which is the subject of the next chapter.
0 kommentar(er)
