- Author
- Swinden, Greg
- Subjects
- Biographies and personal histories, Ship histories and stories, WWII operations, History - WW2
- Tags
-
- RAN Ships
- None noted.
- Publication
- June 2013 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)
By Greg Swinden
War at sea has no intermissions, none of the periods of recovery between advances or retreats that land warfare enjoys, no breaks safely behind the lines between air combat operations. For Britain’s Royal Navy the Second World War began on 3 September 1939, and in European waters it ceased on 8 May 1945. There was no ‘phoney war’ for the sailors of Britain and her allies and dominions. Later the fall of Norway and Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France, and the emergence of Italy and Japan as new enemies, all added to the burdens and dangers of keeping the sea lanes open for trade and the transport of supplies and armies.
Richard Hough – The Longest Battle: The War at Sea 1939-45
To many the period before the invasion of France by German forces in May 1940 was the ‘Phoney War’ with little action on land or in the air. But there was nothing phoney about it to the men of HMS Glowworm when they were fighting and dying in the freezing waters off Norway on 8 April 1940. In a fight to the bitter end the 1,350 ton destroyer took on the 16,000 ton German heavy cruiser KMS Admiral Hipper and in the action that followed all but 31 of her valiant ship’s company went to a watery grave. Her action against the German cruiser earned her Commanding Officer a posthumous Victoria Cross, which was recommended to the Admiralty by none other than the captain of the Hipper, and an undying place in Royal Navy history. And as was the case throughout the Royal Navy of World War II a couple of Australians just happened to be part of this story.
Glowworm was a ‘G’ class destroyer commissioned into the Royal Navy in January 1936 and, before war broke out in September 1939, operated mainly in the Mediterranean. She was armed with 4 x 4.7 inch guns and 21 inch torpedoes mounted in two sets of five tubes. Glowworm’s top speed was estimated at 36 knots. Her career was unremarkable except for a penchant to be involved in collisions, one with her sister ship HMS Grenade in night exercises in May 1939 and another with the Swedish merchant ship Rex in February 1940.
In October 1939 Glowworm was recalled to English waters and based at Scapa Flow in northern Scotland. On 5 April she was part of the escort for the battle cruiser HMS Renown which was a covering force supporting mine laying operations in Norwegian waters to counter an expected invasion of Norway (German forces began landing in Norway on 9 April and Norway surrendered on 10 June 1940). On 6 April Glowworm lost a man overboard in heavy weather and her Commanding Officer was given permission to search for him. Glowworm was detached from the main group and began the search for her missing man.
What followed can be best described from the citation for the posthumous award of the Victoria Cross to Glowworm’s Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Com-mander Gerard Broadmead Roope, RN.1
On the 8th April 1940, HMS Glowworm was proceeding alone in heavy weather towards a rendezvous in West Fjord (Norway), when she met and engaged two enemy destroyers scoring a least one hit on them. The enemy broke off the action and headed north, to lead Glowworm on to his supporting forces. The Commanding Officer, whilst correctly appreciating the intentions of the enemy, at once gave chase. The German heavy cruiser, Admiral Hipper, was sighted closing the Glowworm at high speed and an enemy report was sent which was received by HMS Renown. Because of the heavy sea, the Glowworm could not shadow the enemy and the Commanding Officer therefore decided to attack with torpedoes and then to close in order to inflict as much damage as possible.
Five torpedoes were fired and later the remaining five, but without success. The Glowworm was badly hit; one gun was out of action and her speed much reduced, but with the other three guns still firing she closed and rammed the Admiral Hipper. As the Glowworm drew away, she opened fire again and scored one hit at a range of 400 yards. The Glowworm, badly stove in forward and riddled with enemy fire, heeled over to Starboard and the Commanding Officer gave the order to abandon her. Shortly after she capsized and sank. The Admiral Hipper hove to for a least an hour picking up survivors but the loss of life was heavy, only 31 out of the Glowworm’s complement of 149 being saved.
Full information concerning this action has only recently been received and the Victoria Cross is bestowed in recognition of the great valour of the Commanding Officer who, after fighting off a superior force of destroyers, sought out and reported a powerful enemy unit, and then fought his ship to the end against overwhelming odds, finally ramming the enemy with supreme coolness and skill.
The ‘recent information’ referred to in this citation was the testimony by Glowworm survivors only recently liberated from German POW Camps. Amongst them was the only surviving officer, Lieutenant Robert Archibald Ramsay, RN2 who confirmed the details of the action. Ramsay confirmed that Glowworm made smoke so as to obscure her position form the Hipper’s 8 inch guns but to no avail.
Ramsay also stated that, while many considered the ramming of Hipper to be a deliberate action, the destroyer’s steering was damaged and that the turn towards Hipper and actual ramming may have been accidental.3
Either way, Glowworm struck the enemy cruiser and gouged open several holes along 100 feet of her starboard side. The cruiser’s starboard torpedo mounting was destroyed and one German sailor knocked overboard and drowned. The damage to Glowworm however was mortal as her bow was broken off, and as she settled in the water her boilers exploded and she sank quickly with her battle ensign still flying. The entire action from the sighting of the German destroyers until Glowworm sank was just over three hours.
The actions of the Commanding Officer of Hipper, Captain Helmuth Heye, require a special mention as despite the damage to his ship (the cruiser was taking on water through the damaged starboard side) and that he was uncertain as to the location of other British units, he stopped his vessel downwind to allow the Glowworm’s survivors to drift down toward his ship where they were rescued.4 Lieutenant Commander Roope was known to have survived the sinking of his ship but was exhausted and unable to climb the ropes and ladders hung over the side of Hipper and subsequently drowned.5
Heye also later sent a message to the British Government, via the International Red Cross, giving a statement of Glowworm’s last action and that her commanding officer was worthy of high praise for engaging a much superior ship in close action. His statement, and those of Lieutenant Ramsay and other Glowworm survivors, earned Roope a posthumous Victoria Cross and whilst not awarded until 1945 it was technically the first Victoria Cross of World War II.
But what of the Australians in Glowworm? At least two members of the RAN served in the destroyer at her final action. They were Lieutenant Commander (Engineer) James MacLeod and Able Seaman Ronald Bampton. Additionally 39 year old Petty Officer Steward Antonio Portelli was also killed when Glowworm was lost. Portelli had been born in Malta and was a member of the Royal Navy, but his wife Rosaria resided in Girraween, NSW (a western suburb of Sydney) and it is possible he was an Australian citizen serving in the Royal Navy. None of these men survived the action.
Lieutenant Commander (Engineer) James Kenneth MacLeod was Glowworm’s 49 year old Engineer Officer. Born in Warrnambool, Victoria in 1890 he had joined the RAN at Sydney, in December 1913 as a 23 year old Engineer Sub-Lieutenant. During World War I he served in the cruiser HMAS Encounter and saw service in German New Guinea waters and the Pacific Ocean. In 1916 he joined the battle cruiser HMAS Australia which operated in the North Sea and he served in her for the next three years.
After the war, MacLeod stayed on in the RAN and was the Engineer Officer of HMA Ships Sydney (1919-20), Warrego (1920), Stalwart (1920-22), Adelaide (1923-24), Anzac (1925), Melbourne (1925-27) and Sydney again in 1927. He retired from the RAN in October 1928, with the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and became an engineer officer in the Merchant Navy. With the outbreak of war in September 1939, he was recalled for duty and appointed to Glowworm on 14 December 1939. As the ship’s Engineer Officer he would have been below decks in the engine room when Glowworm’s boilers exploded and would have had little chance of survival.
Ronald Edgar Bampton was a 17 year old shop assistant from Lithgow, NSW when he enlisted in the RAN on 8 October 1935. After completing his basic training as a seaman at HMAS Cerberus at Westernport he was drafted to the sloop HMAS Yarra in early 1936. Bampton then served continuously at sea for the next three years in HMA Ships Waterhen (1936-38) where he was promoted to Able Seaman, Albatross (1938) and Hobart (1938-39). In July 1939 he was selected to attend a training course in England, at HMS Osprey, to become an Anti-Submarine Detection, or SD, rating. This would qualify him to operate ASDIC equipment on warships.6
He embarked in the merchant ship SS Largs Bay in late July 1939 and arrived in England in early October; he was dispatched to Osprey, then a base at Portland near Dorset in southern England. Bampton completed his course in early January 1940 and was immediately drafted to join Glowworm which he did on 9 January 1940. Four months later he was dead.
The death of two RAN personnel off the coast of Norway in early 1940 caused barely a mention in the press back home in Australia; yet they were the first members of the RAN, and perhaps the first Australian servicemen, to be killed in action during World War II.
Gone but not forgotten – such is the price of Admiralty.
Footnotes:
1 The gazettal of the Victoria Cross to Roope was not made until 10 July 1945 following the release of Glowworm survivors from German POW camps. These men were able to confirm the information of the ship’s loss which prior to mid 1945 had only come from German sources.
2 Lieutenant Ramsay was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his part in Glowworm’s final action and three surviving ratings were awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal. These men were Engine Room Artificer 3rd Class Henry Gregg, Petty Officer Walter Thomas William Scott, who commanded the last gun still in action and which fired the last round at Hipper after the ramming, and Able Seaman Reginald Thomas Merritt.
3 Some descriptions state that Roope was heard to give the order ‘Stand by to ram’.
4 German records indicate that 31 survivors were later disembarked but that at least six other men from Glowworm had died onboard Hipper due to wounds and exposure and were buried at sea.
5 Heye’s action is typical of the professional mariner – stopping to render assistance to those whose lives were in danger. Glowworm’s crew were ‘out of the fight’ and were now just men needing to be rescued. This case is similar to the sinking by HMAS Sydney of the Italian destroyer Espero in the Mediterranean in June 1940. Captain John Collins stopped his vessel and sent away boat’s crews to rescue survivors. When it became too dark to conduct further rescue he left one of the ships cutters behind, illuminated it with a searchlight and seven Italian sailors were able to get to it and were later rescued.
6 ASDIC was the term for Anti Submarine equipment used from the 1920s until the end of WW II. It stands for Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee and was the forerunner of today’s SONAR.