Much
has been written about the Atlantic and Arctic convoys but few people
have even heard of the East Coast convoys even though they were the
subject of continuous action throughout the war. Almost
everything that the South East needed to keep going, particularly coal
and oil for the power stations had to come down the North Sea, by 1939
London alone needed a minimum of 40,000 tons of coal each week, a
quantity which road and rail could not deliver. The First World
War had shown the vulnerability of shipping along the East Coast route
so even before the Second World War began merchant shipping was placed
under Admiralty control which gave them the authority to enforce
merchant ships to travel in convoy whether they liked it or not
(usually they didn’t!). Placing ships in convoy obviously meant
that they needed escorts to protect them and bearing in mind that both
the Norwegian campaign and Dunkirk evacuation had been expensive as far
as losses of destroyers were concerned initially the few available
escorts were thinly spread and worked intensively. At any given
time there were at least two convoys passing up and down the North Sea,
the convoys were labelled FS (Forth South) and FN (Forth North)
followed in each case by a number. Numbers ran up to 100 and then
started again at 1, this may not have confused the enemy but it
certainly confused me during my researches.
The convoys were subject to attack from all directions, from
above by aircraft bombing and machine gunning, above the water from
torpedoes and gunfire by E-Boats and below the water by mines of
various types. If these didn’t provide enough excitement there
was always the danger of collision to fall back on bearing in mind that
there were no navigational aids such as lighthouses, numerous wrecks
and shoals, the notorious North Sea fog and a bit of bad weather thrown
in for good measure. The reports written by the escort’s
commanding officers often show them to have closed up to a buoy to read
its number so as establish just where they were, one destroyer is
reputed to have approached Whitby pier in thick fog to ask for
directions. This was the stage that Worcester
entered in July 1940 having joined the 18th. Destroyer Flotilla based
at Harwich following extensive repairs to damage received during the
Dunkirk evacuation, she was welcomed by a bomb dropped near her while
berthed. The escorts were at sea continually, the normal practice
was to work up to about 28 knots at dusk to be ready for the E-Boat
attacks, unfortunately destroyers were not the ideal tool for the job,
the main armament was too slow to train and follow a rapidly moving
target while the single pompoms were usually of too close a range to be
effective, many reports state that ‘at least we frightened him off’ but
very few E-Boats were sunk or even damaged.
My father was aboard Worcester
at this time and well remembered one night in March 1941 when he
counted at least 15 flashes of torpedoes being discharged, the
Commanding Officer’s Report of Proceedings bears out his memory.
Vic Green
Secretary of the V & W Destroyer Association and son of
Vic Green, Wireman in the Torpedo Branch, HMS Worcester
Hard Lying
Conditions on V & W Class destroyers were so bad in rough weather
that the men who served on them were paid hard-lying money. This brief
annonymous account was first published in Hard
Lying,
the magazine of the V & W Destroyer Association and republished in
2005 by the Chairman of the Association,
Clifford ("Stormy") Fairweather, in the book of the same name which is
now out of print.
One Man's story
...
After making my own way from HMS Victory
I joined Worcester in the
late afternoon of a day in June 1941 and was
taken to see the temporary Officer Of the Day. I was assigned to a mess
and left to my own devices until the bulk of the crew returned about
five days later. When the full time 'Bosun' returned I was given
various jobs and was delegated number three on 'A' gun a low loading
4.7 separate ammunition gun. I stayed with this job for over a year
until I was transferred to the torpedo party awaiting a draft chit to a
torpedo party school. The Leading Seaman in charge of 'A' gun had been
a Petty Officer but had been reduced to L/S for having machine-gunned
Japanese seamen. The crew was made up of about three R.N. Regulars and
23 Hostility Only (HO's) who, like me had been called up. We had at
least four amateur boxers among them, so, we had to be careful who you
quarrelled with or you would soon get a 'right ear full'.
The First Lieutenant was a survivor of theThetis
which had been lost in the Mersey and for some reason the Captain
refused to speak to him, they used a signalman to pass notes from one
to the other on the bridge! During my stay on the Worcester
we took part in all sorts of operations, going round the British Isles
more than once. On the afternoon of the 27 July 1941 we were sent out
in a mad rush to the assistance of HMS
Malcolm damaged during a bombing raid by Junkers 88's; another
of the V&Ws, the Wren had
been sunk in the same raid. We made fast alongside the Malcolm and towed her into Harwich.
We had a number of scrapes during the time I was aboard the Worcester
yet we only had one casualty A.M Farlane who was hit by pieces of an
Oerlikon shell fired from our own gun. I left Worcester in September 1941 to go
to HMS Vernon
at Portsmouth, in the following February she was involved in the
'Channel Dash' operation and was severely damaged. I still wonder sixty
years on, what happened to 'A' gun's crew.
Anonymous
If
you want to find out more about the wartime service of a member of your
family who served on HMS Worcester
you should first obtain a copy of their service record To
find out how follow this link:
http://www.holywellhousepublishing.co.uk/servicerecords.html
If
you have stories or photographs of HMS Worcester you would like to
contribute to the web site please contact Vic Green
