Frederick 'Johnnie' Walker - From Stork to Starling (Part 2 - Early 1942 to June 1943)

[Music] [Music] previously on the life story of Johnny Walker we saw how he started out life how he saw through the inter War period and how he managed to take command of the 36th escort group and safely escort the majority of Convoy hg7 6 through some of the heaviest ubot attacks seen on the jalter to UK route thus far now we continue whilst aore after the harrowing experiences of escorting Convoy hg7 6 Walker had made a series of recommendations for future Convoy missions as follows one aircraft are absolutely invaluable for anti-submarine work there should be shore-based Patrol planes for hunting down OTS and carrier born Fighters for destroying the wolf bombers on homing patrols audacity her staff and Pilots put up a matchless performance two every effort should be made to provide convoys with two two protective screens an outer and an inner by day the outer screen sights you boats on the surface further away from the Convoy and can attack in offensive striking forces well clear of the merchantmen By Night OTS are forced to attack from between the screens or at least to penetrate both three by day all escort should be used as striking forces for offensive lunges away from the Convoy attacking you boats detected as far away as 30 Mi four the 30 six escort group's operation Buttercup is a sound plan despite my putting it into operation on the wrong side on one occasion but snowflake illuminant Rockets are a menace in the Convoy I am well aware that Merchant ships are fitted with tins to turn night into day but I feel strongly that there can be no guarantee that snowflakes will not be fired at exactly the wrong moment neither can we legislate for the regrettable tendency of some ships in an emergency real or imaginary to fire everything drop everything an Abandon Ship these recommendations were received with varying levels of welcome the third Point especially about everybody going on the offensive meeting significant opposition largely on the grounds of issues with the second point that being that although more and more escorts were coming online there were still nowhere near enough of them but although not all of these ideas would be implemented widely at least in the short term Walker was of course free free to run as many of them as he could on his own convoys but now with a reduced 36th escort group Convoy HG 82 was heading for jalter expecting a relatively quiet run the uots seemed to all be living it up on the US East Coast in April 1942 but at 21:30 on the 14th that illusion was shattered when a signal came in from the admiralty based on Ultra intelligence a ubo had been signaling in the area that the Convoy was about to pass through stalk had taken up a guard position at the rear of the Convoy which was where OT pretended to prefer to attack but no less than 15 minutes after the warning had been received vetch which was a few miles ahead and to Port picked up a contact on radar At first she thought this was the fellow Corvette Pence stemon which was leading the close in screen for the Convoy but the radar Echo was moving diagonally to the the convoys line of advance and closing in on it schooled in Walkers investigate first and tell everyone about it later school of thought vetch hauled about to investigate and seeing something moving rapidly through the water she fired a star shell to better identify it in the flickering glow of the floating illumination she saw U 252 making best speed toward the merchant ships the submarine was quick Off the Mark scarcely had vet's group recognized the threat than the submarine was diving leaving a pair of torpedoes in her place which were heading straight for the Corvette the escort decided to just charge at the contact Point turning at this stage would just expose more of the ship and the Torpedoes ended up passing down her side close enough that she could have been transferring Personnel or male to another vessel and the motorized explosives would have passed right between them in the rush vetch had partially forgotten the bit about telling everyone else what she was doing she had reported submarine contact a mile away and then she'd reported that the submarine had dived but had given no indication of the submarine's location or what vet was doing to respond to it but one of her machine Gunners had opened up on the submarine as it dived and so stalk had headed for the flashes of Tracer to get a better understanding of the situation Walker ordered vet to fire an illumination rocket and upon seeing it altered st's course to join her the Sloop and the Corvette began a hunt as the rest of the group forged head with the Convoy stalk had just reached her smaller compatriot when for some reason the submarine popped up like a cork less than a mile ahead vet's crew were now like a bunch of overly enthusiastic Terriers and promptly charged well as least as fast as you can charge in a plower class blazing away with their 4-in deck gun of course on the surface the type 7 U 252 was actually a little bit faster than vetch and began to Edge away into the darkness the small profile of an endon type 7even at night at range proved a rather difficult score hit on though and neither stalk nor vet was able to score a direct blow although quite a few shells landed close nearby these near misses seem to have persuaded the submarine to try diving again that proved to be a fatal mistake as with its speeds now significantly reduced vetch was able to rapidly overhaul the submarine and with a contact on its azic dropped a series of depth charges between stalk and vetch a total of 50 depth charges were sent into the sea and during the last run the stalks AIC operator reported that the echo he was looking at was changing it was breaking up and no longer moving forward probably now wreckage soon enough this was confirmed as indeed wreckage began to Bubble Up to the surface showing significant signs of sudden and violent trauma either a depth charge had pretty much nailed the sub dead on or else damage from more distant explosions had sent U 252 plunging below Crush depth either way at least for the crew of the sub it had been quick with investigations wrapping up just before 0100 the two ships now needed to catch up with the Convoy which had been left with just pent stemon gardenia and convolvulus to protect them for the slightly swifter stalk this was a 4-Hour run but poor old vet it was considerably longer still Walker now inaugurated a practice that All Ships under his command would subsequently follow any ship that sank youat was allowed to splice the main brace that is issue an additional rum ration after their success Walker was already writing up a Lessons Learned document amongst other things he emphasized the need for modern radar of the correct type vet had a type 271 unit which had spotted the sub initially at about 4 and 1/2 miles but stalks type 286 P unit hadn't been able to see anything despite having the group's most experienced radar officer working it at a range of 1 and a half miles uh which point the forward gun Crews had been eyeballing their shots in using regular Scopes and binoculars he also recommended that the 50ft depth setting on depth charges not be used on Corvettes vet was now sporting whole leaks of breast six frame from one such charge which she just physically hadn't been able to clear the blast radius off in time that same blast had also temporarily jammed the rudder there was a somewhat odd footnote to this particular engagement over the previous 3 months three uots u82 U 587 and now U 252 had all reported that they were tracking Allied convoys west of the Bay of bisque and then each had promptly gone silent in fact each had been sunk by Allied escorts the Cs Marina couldn't quite decide if this was due to high frequency Direction finding efforts which in theory might just about be augmented by landbased stations at this range if it was some kind of special trap or technology the Allies had set in this particular area of ocean or if it was just bad luck but in any case the pickings on the other side of the Atlantic seem to be much better and so for the next few months OTS will ordered to ignore convoys in this particular part of the ocean and just move on to the mid and Western Atlantic this ended up buying a number of convoys some much needed reprieve but as May turned into June things began to change the convoys off the US East Coast finally began to get their escort sorted out and the losses of OTS in that region therefore began to spike plus of course the Allies were gearing up for Operation Torch and that meant there were some especially Rich convoys running to and from jalter which was acting as the primary forward operating base for the invasion forces this meant that renewed pressure on this particular Convoy route would soon result as submarines were being pulled back from the US Coast and redeployed Walker had achieved his first bar to his distinguished service order for the preservation of hd82 but on June the 9th having run back to the UK and then back to jalter again in the interim the 36th set out to escort Convoy HG 84 back home the group at this stage was further reduced by vet still being in dry do for repairs and so now it was stalk maragold convolvulus and gardenia four ships to escort 20 regular merchantmen the Convoy Commodore aboard the SS Pavo the Empire mour which was a catapult armed merchant ship and as such had a one-hot aircraft available it was a far cry from audacity 6 martlets but it was better than nothing and the SS Copeland which would sail at the back of the Convoy carrying not huge stocks of War supplies but boarding Nets ropes search lights and medical equipment for she was a designated Convoy rescue ship kitted out with a large upto-date medical facility Wards and and accommodation against him though he didn't know it yet Walker faced nine uots five in a picket line and then another four in a second line further north with only four escort ships Walker placed maragold to starboard Gardena to port and stalk up front with convolvulus taking the aern position during the day stalk and convolvulus would then swap places at Night 2 days after s ing the Condors were out in force but Walker kept his one use fighter back for the moment the next day the 12th three more ships joined the Convoy having sailed from Lisbon the Condors continued to Shadow the Convoy over the next two days as they obviously unknowingly closed in on Wolfpack endras the line of five OTS by the 14th Walker judged that based on the condor's pattern of activity and his experience with the enemy submarines had to be close and so around lunchtime he ordered the Catapult armed merchantmen to launch its hurricane trying to time his disruption of enemy air search efforts to best effect this had somewhat mixed results the rising seeds came with clouds and the targeted Condor rather quickly fled into one of them thus escaping destruction as the hurcan only had a chance to get off two quick burst of machine gun fire before he lost his Target but it put a brief pause on Condor activity and happily the pilot was able to dech very neatly alongside a merchant ship and was duly picked up having patrolled the skies for around an hour after driving off the Condor the pilot hadn't even fully dried out yet when at 1600 the Copeland reported an hfdf line of bearing on a ubo that was transmitting off the Convoy Port after quarter as we've already seen Walker had good reason not to send in escorts alone but if he backed up Gardena which was the nearest ship to the contact then half the escort force would be hunting behind the Convoy leaving it very exposed as the two ships would then have to fight to catch up but a high frequency Direction finding fix meant that there was little to no chance the ubot knew it had been detected as there was no plane circling overhead or any ship on the horizon at least just yet and so Walker ordered both stalk and Gardena in immediately it would take a couple of hours for them to reach the recorded position which meant that even with an instant success they wouldn't be back much before halfast 10 in the evening well into the dark hours which was of course submarines preferred hunting time luckily stalks Lookout spotted the rather oblivious submarine on the surface but as the ship then had to close to gun range the submarines crew came alive spotted the oncoming escorts and it was soon just using its surface speed to try and stay out of range and circle past the two incoming vessels stalk freshly refitted had roughly walking pace speed Advantage but this relatively slow rate of closure allowed the ubot to time its actions quite easily and just as stalk got under 14,000 yards away which was almost inter realistic Gunnery Range the enemy vessel dived it would now take about 20 minutes for stalk to reach the position of the dive and in that time the sub could have gone anywhere in an approximately 2 m radius Walker now had to outthink his opponent Dead Ahead continuing on course was unlikely it was far too easy far too obvious the submarine therefore could have tried to cut to starboard closer in towards the Convoy or to Port away from it recent ubot Behavior suggested that the starboard option aggressively cutting in towards the Convoy and inside the escorts was more likely Walker therefore chose to adjust his course to Port of course if he was wrong he just ordered his ship further away from a convoy whose unprotected flank the ubot would now be closing on but in just under half an hour after the ubo had dived he heard that he had an azic contact he had had in fact out guessed his opponent but the enemy of course also had a vote and the sub now twisted and turned under the water five sets of depth charges from stalk went down and the sub was still alive gardenia caught up and launched its own pattern but then one of these Chargers blew up almost immediately upon hitting the water shredding the ship's enen which was of course at her Stern and damaging both her after plating and her engine a Gardena would now struggle to keep up with the Convoy but she was at least still seaworthy after a few more attempts and with only 18 depth charges of his own left Walker directed stalk back to the Convoy as at this point it was already 2200 he decided to leave gardenia to pursue the attack as best he could until either the submarine was sunk or the Corvette also ran low on depth charges out on the starboard side of the Convoy there was also no escort as arag gold had picked up a contact and then headed off to engage following Walker's principles catching the sub on the surface and then depth charging it three times before turning back with an ETA back to the Convoy of around 1 in the morning convolvulus left alone with the entire Convoy to guard had then detected yet another contact on the starboard bow of the Convoy and chased off after that which meant that as midnight approached the Convoy was entirely without a close escort although on the other hand at least three uots had been suppressed and of those two of them almost certainly would not be able to return to attack that Knight as their positions were now far too far off as 1:00 approached it seemed that that might have been enough convolvulus and stalk had managed to regain their stations Gardena would be some time but maragold should also be back any moment but as it turned out she was delayed by about 15 minutes and this proved deadly U 552 had managed to sneak through the Gap left by maragold and within minutes the Pavo the atrib and the slend all went up in Flames with maragold still somewhat after the Convoy doing her level best to catch up and rejoin her station Walker instead directed her and Copeland to rescue survivors Walker then ordered the Convoy lit up but no subs were spotted falling back in fact the German captains were testing out a new nighttime strategy using Superior surface speed to race back ahead of the Convoy instead of falling behind it at 0400 stalk detected a diving OT and dropped half her remaining depth charges but there was no time to stick around and assess if that was actually a kill and then at 04 30 the Germans struck again the ammunition ship tho Vanishing in one Almighty Fireball and then the city of Oxford came to a halt with somewhat more mundane major flooding the merchant ships at this point panicked and started launching flares and Rockets without orders which of course lit themselves up for follow-up attacks but none came as devastating as the five ships sunk had been the work of the overstretched escorts had limited the knights assaults to the exceptionally well-handled U 552 which had put in a second appearance the escorts had managed to see off four submarines and it seemed U 552 was the fifth from that first Skirmish line Walker pondered the wisdom of having ordered maragold to go on Survivor rescue Duty on the one hand that second attack had come in from starboard which is where maragold would have been if she'd kept going in the aftermath after the first attack and so possibly she would have seen the sub coming on radar but on the other hand if left to her own Copeland would likely have had to fall well behind the Convoy picking up all the survivors single-handed and thus risk being sunk herself which would not only dump all those survivors back in the water but also deny the general war effort a very valuable rescue vessel poor Gardena now showed up and as it was just Before Sunrise but her AIC was crippled she had no depth charges left and she was only capable of 10 knots essentially she was now a particularly heavily armed Lookout since she still did at least have her deck gun but she was at least cautiously optimistic that she'd finished off her Target as it happened she hadn't it was just damaged knowing that without Allied air cover the uots would probably spend the next day sailing past and ahead of the Convoy up to the Horizon getting ready to attack again the next evening Walker dropped back to help with the rescuing of survivors maragold was almost overloaded with 172 men pulled out of the water those who needed Medical Aid were gradually sent over to the Copeland whilst stalk took aboard some of the uninjured in order to clear some space on marag Gold's deck this was just as well as a late running ubo was spotted on the surface a Stern maragold rushed off to attack and the ubo made a run for it again on the surface this wasn't an ideal result but at least it was going in the opposite direction to the Convoy which would make it a little bit more difficult for the sub to double back in the remaining daylight hours that evening a liberator appeared overhead shortly thereafter stalk spotted a ubo in front of the Convoy and the bomber was directed to attack it this drove the sub underwater but soon the bomber had to leave it was then a fraught night gardenia had no depth charges left stalk and maragold had one pattern each and only convolvulus had a decent number but of course the subs had no way of knowing that stalk detected yet another ubot to stern this was possibly the one that maragold had run off earlier in the day and around midnight she loosed her last depth charges at it convolva spotted another Sub racing in from the starboard bow of the Convoy and countercharged the ubot retreat Ed and then nothing it seemed odd but the next morning the welcome sight of a Catalina floated into view and as the longrange aircraft orbited Walker took the opportunity to transfer a dozen depth charges from convolvulus by boat two at a time so that he would at least have something to use but still nothing came the afternoon wore on and an old whitly bomber droned by on the lookout to help the Catalina although they didn't know it The Vicious and Rapid attacks by the escorts had convinced the cigs Marina that the Convoy was in fact far more heavily protected than their Intel of four ships suggested and so they called off the entire ubot assault U 552 had to head home to reload in any case but most of the rest of the subs had just wandered off into the Mid-Atlantic to find resupply submarines to refuel and give their hand to go at another Convoy in the future this was probably just as well well stalk was now limping along as she was suffering from condens aritis which reduced her to one engine and nine knots this meant that both gardenia and stalk were only just about capable of keeping up with a convoy let alone doing anything else now however the Germans played one last card a full Squadron of juna's 88 bombers were dispatched with orders to sink the Convoy and or its escorts but now fortune and bravery saved them from further harm in the most unlikely fashion about 50 Mi to the east was the Destroyer HMS wild Swan she was passing through a flotilla of Spanish fishing trollers and in the halflight that was present at about 9:30 that evening on the 16th of June the German bombers thought that this loose mass of shipping was the Convoy they had been sent to attack and so they promptly went after the largest ship they could see the 1100 ton geriatric wild Swan she was a modified wcl class destroyer who had had a keel laid back when World War I was still being fought she'd already served at and survived the Dunkirk evacuation before moving on to several years of Convoy escort work she now came under attack by the entire Squadron of bers which approached in formations of three the poor Destroyer had an aircraft armor that stretched to a single 12 pounder or 3in anti-aircraft gun and a pair of single 40mm pompoms plus any small arms and harsh language the crew might have well surely she just be a speed bump but instead signaling that she'd cited the bombers she hoisted her battle flags and moved to engage a vicious fight developed and whilst inevitably the Destroyer left it in a sinking condition and calling for Aid to pick up her survivors it wasn't before she'd somehow managed to rip half the German bombers out of the sky and send the rest packing with various levels of shrapnel damage completely and utterly ruining what should have been HG 84s cigra most of the survivors would then be picked up by a Sunderland and so the Convoy unknowing of this reached Liverpool without further assault save for a single con who strayed a bit too close to the escort's guns and was forced to run for cover by streams of Tracer rounds Walker himself focused on the fact that he' lost five of the merchant ships he was supposed to protect his superiors on the other hand looked at the fact that the vast majority of the valuable Sailors from those ships had been rescued and the 36th had stood outnumbered more than two to one by uots but managed to turn what should have been an absolute Massacre into merely a thoroughly bruising experience Walker worried he might be dismissed but instead by the end of the month he'd actually been promoted to Captain back at Western approach's command Admiral Noble had pushed for this advancement on two grounds firstly Walker clearly deserved it but secondly Noble and others had noticed that Walker was driving himself to the absolute limit of exhaustion promotion could be expected come with a spell as Shore apart from anything the few remaining ships of the 36th would need refitting and repairs for quite a while and Noble hoped that this would give Walker a chance to relax and calm down a little officially Walker was assigned as Captain D or Captain destroyers Liverpool which was nabal shorthand for a position that meant he was in charge of the admin and training of All Ships based in whatever location suffixed the D in this case the port of Liverpool of course to get him to settle in one place for more than a moment would require that war could be kept in the dark as to the last motive otherwise he'd insist even more strongly than he already was that he should be back out at Sea whilst running a campaign to get him back out there he also applied himself with a will to the task of organizing the escort ships sailing to and from Liverpool he split his time between on the one hand Western approach's command where he poured over reports of Convoy battles coordinated with the women of the western approach's Tactical Unit in developing new tactics and decided which commanders needed help who needed promotion and rewards and who needed to be relieved and sent Elsewhere on the other hand you could also find him down in the dockyards inspecting ships cutting through red tape seeing new equipment installed and giving a significant amount of off- the record advice to various officers and and Men it soon became known amongst the escort ships based in Liverpool that if you acted decisively and with a degree of Common Sense Walker would have your back even if your actions didn't end too well dithering however would likely be the end of your efforts commanding escorts in a rare lecture to newly inducted escort commanders on the topics of leadership and morale he espoused the following leadership comes very much easier to those of strong personality commanding presence but don't fall into the mistake of thinking these things are essential they are not Nelson and Napoleon were both Little Squirts and Hitler is in my opinion a figure of fun yet Napoleon led a whole nation for some years all over Europe to eventual defeat and Hitler is doing the same thing now there is a distinction between leadership and discipline an utterly undisciplined Rabel was successfully led to storm the bastile in 1789 leadership without discipline conversely I have watched a magnificently disciplined body of Royal Marines in a big ship expending foot tons of energy in Trivial exercises discipline without leadership a well-led ships company can be recognized in any emergency by their ready and intelligent anticipation of orders and the absence of confusion and shouting I have seen a good many leave break ERS ship jumpers drunks Etc and I have a standard speech for them I tell them what stinking skunks they are for helping the German war effort doing their little best to lose the battle of the Atlantic miserably failing their country in her hour of need most of them are shaken to the core by it some even burst into tears you must get home to your men that there is no excuse for leave breaking that is not merely playing truant from school but letting them mates down badly if a wife is ill or having a baby the man must realize that his duty to his country comes before his duty to his family another cause of low morale is the difference in Pay between the Sailor and the dockyard and Factory workers ashore rub in the honor of being picked for the finest fighting team in the world and that the country would have been in German hands long ago but for that team and his part in it the Summer and Autumn of 1942 had not been kind to Allied escort efforts while the entry of the USA into the war offered that nation's vast industrial resources to the Allied side in the short term this had also expanded the area that needed to be covered to include the US east coast and the entirety of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and although that period saw 32 uots sunk 61 had joined the cigs Marina which left the escorts stretched thin at about half the numbers that the projections indicated were needed for their new areas of responsibility us yards were spooling up their production but it would be a few months before the results were seen unsurprisingly almost 400 Merchant ships went to the bottom in this time period also during this time Admiral Noble was sent over to Washington to work with the US Navy his replacement at Western approaches Admiral Sir Max Horton iMed immediately sought out Walker for his opinions and ideas encouraged Walker wrote up a series of reports pointing out that while a number of new escort carriers were coming online there weren't enough to escort every Convoy but as Autumn turned into winter and the combined output of British Commonwealth and American Yards was making a dent in the demand for escort ships of all flavors with the ability to provide a parable escort screen for any given Convoy Walker argued that an irre regular use of escort carriers in close attendance with maybe an additional Corvette or frig scattered here or there might do some good but it would be far better to take some of these new ships and form special groups which could roam freely or reinforce heavily pressed convoys at will relatively unencumbered by the need to screen a slow Convoy and thus able to hunt down OTS wherever they happen to be unless the OTS happened to be at the Convoy these groups could then be sent where the concentration of enemy Subs was known to be the strongest instead of wolf packs calmly Gathering and preparing setpiece ambushes the escort commanders had to grimly wait for Walker wanted the submarine crews to be around ragged from Pillar To Post from the moment they cleared the range of LT waffer fighter cover to the moment they either run back underneath it up to the French Coast or they were sent on their final Dive by a barage of depth charges the ramming of an escort vessel or perhaps the splash of the new Hedgehog mortars anywhere the uots felt safe Walker declared is where he wanted these hunting groups to be by the start of 1943 with some input from other officers the admiralty had broadly approved this idea but it was still anticipated that 1943 was going to be a grim one dernitz was now in charge of the cigs Marina and the surface Fleet had almost been scrapped thanks to its dismal performance of the battle of the baron sea this would no doubt see far more resources poured into the ubot Walker could read the writing on the wall so well you might as well have renamed him from Johnny to Daniel and pressed Horton for a seagoing command realizing he was at best fighting a holding action foron acquiesced and he directed that the crew of stalk be largely transferred to a new vessel which Walker would then take command of upon commissioning and so it was that in mid-February 1943 an advanced party of stalk crewman took a ride in an overnight unheated and overc crowded train up to Glasgow where they were introduced to job number SL 111701 tucked away behind the much larger hle of a cruiser that was fitting out next to it they began fine tuning the setup of the ship's equipment in accordance with their experience and over the next 6 weeks what looked for all the world like a somewhat shattered rusting Hulk that dredged up from some forgotten corner of the world went through her final startling transformation into a Sleek Sloop of War hatching if you like on the 1st of April 1943 into HMS Starling Walker gave a short commissioning speech and Starling then headed south originally headed for Liverpool Walker had actually spent his last days as Captain D Liverpool drafting up a speech inspired by the support he'd received from his wife eileene who'd come up to join him there some months previously this was intended for an audience of Navy wives mothers and sweethearts but the admiralty had ultimately decided against broadcasting it fearing that it implied that some men were laxidasical or deserting luckily most of Walker's planned speech survives in typed format Walker of course was no less blunt asore than he was at Sea one of the paragraphs for example reading we Sailors all know that beastly moment when leave is over and how it would be tempting to sees on some trivial excuse to stay a little longer I am glad to say that most wives see to it that their husbands return to their ships in good time I have this to say to those who have wavered never forget your influence on your man and keep him up to the mark send him back from leave itching to get at Hitler's throat not unhappy worried and anxious about his home your Paramount duty is to help your husband or son or sweetheart grind the Nazi face back into the dirt from which it sprang as Starling headed south she conducted various exercises speed Gunnery sensors Etc to help meld the large number of EX stalk crew with the levy of new arrivals into a single cohesive and coherent Mass they were also in receipt of a signal from Admiral Horton he intended to form five support groups the rather understated designation for Walkers hunting parties although escort carriers were not immediately available Starling and Walker would lead the second support group formed of similar classmates Wild Goose Ren kite Signet and woodpecker who were themselves already headed out to sea and would meet the Starling off London Derry before heading off into the Middle Atlantic Walker issued his group operating instructions typically in escort groups orders would open with a standard objective the safe And Timely arrival of the Convoy Walkers however read in part the object of the second support group is to destroy OTS our job is to kill and all officers must fully develop the spirit of vicious offensive no matter how many convoys we may Shepherd through in safety we shall have failed unless we can Slaughter OTS all energies must be bent to this end the first Patrol picked up a convoy that was incoming from Nova Scotia the appearance of second support group seemed to have had a chilling effect on the uots but none appeared after the six sloops took up their defensive formation their charges safely delivered to Liverpool the group turned around and after a brief period of Shor leave they headed out again on the 21st of May 1943 they departed from Iceland after after a quick stopover heading roughly in the direction of another Convoy that had signaled it needed help the 1st of June 1943 dawned clear and sunny of course that day 149 years earlier had marked the great victory of the Glorious 1st of June when Admiral how who now had a namesake Battleship sailing the Seas had taken his 25 ships of the line into battle capturing six enemy vessels and sinking another but as the sun rose it seemed that it was going to be a fairly calm start to the month for 1943 and then at 0930 the telephone on the bridge rang the high frequency Direction finding operator had detected a ubot transmitting about 20 M away with a grim smile on his face Walker arrived on the bridge to find the whole second support group heading at increasing speed in the direction of the contact starling's First hunt was about to begin that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pin post for dry do questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 63,783

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Flower class corvette, HMS Stork, WW2, Royal Navy, Kriegsmarine, U-Boat, Battle of the Atlantic, FW 200 Condor, U-552

Id: KNXURu7GgT8

Length: 39min 38sec (2378 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024