Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "The Sinking of HMS Glorious: An Avoidable Tragedy?" video.
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@larryclemens1850 Glorious, as the time of her last voyage, was being used as a ferry carrier. Of her usual 48 aircraft air group, she had left behind in Scotland all but 12 Sea Gladiators (802 Squadron) and 6 Swordfish ( part of 823 Squadron). Her role was to re-embark 263 Squadron's 10 RAF Gladiators from Norway. In the event, the commander of 46 Squadron, decided to try to save his 6 remaining Hurricanes by attempted to land them aboard Glorious. Ark Royal had a longer flight deck, but at the time was carrying her full air group, and Glorious' lifts were wider, which meant that the larger Hurricanes could be taken into the hangar.
Glorious' normal operations shouldn't have been compromised, although her only offensive capability was 6 Swordfish. These could have been kept at immediate readiness, or even ranged on the flight deck, ready for launch, but they weren't. Indeed, a survivor subsequently reported an 'end of term' atmosphere aboard Glorious, and that torpedo warheads were in the process of being removed and placed into secure storage.
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Well, apart from the River Plate, first & second Battles of Narvik, sinking of the Bismarck, the Barents Sea, North Cape, Battle of the Bay of Biscay, and the Battle of the Atlantic, I can't think of one either. It is difficult to win a major fleet action when your enemy doesn't have a fleet.
Unless, of course, you wish to discuss the Mediterranean?
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In retrospect, you are correct, in that Glorious should have been better escorted. At the time, however, there was no intelligence to suggest that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and Glorious should have been fast enough to out run any threat.
The true problem was her commander, d'Oyly Hughes, who was later described as someone who would have been a superb cruiser captain, but was probably the last man in the navy to have been given command of a carrier. Glorious was an unhappy ship, and there seems to have been an 'end of term' atmosphere aboard her at the time of her sinking. She was actually sailing independently of any other large warship because, astonishingly, d'Oyly Hughes was eager to get back to Scapa Flow to court-martial one of his own officers. d'Oyly Hughes was personally a brave man, who had received the DSO in WW1, but there seems little doubt that he was, at the time of his death, an unstable character. He was, oddly, born in Salt Lake City, by the way.
Even though Hurricanes had been landed aboard, Glorious should have been able to operate CAPs, and indeed should have done when so close to the Norwegian coast. In fact, four aircraft were at 10 minutes readiness, but none was aloft.
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The actual text of the signal, addressed to R.A.A., (Admiral Wells, Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers) was as follows:- 'R. A. A. FROM GLORIOUS (corrupt group, possibly CONFIRM) MY 1615 2 P.B. TIME OF ORIGIN 1640'
The signal of 1615 said, according to a Glorious survivor who was a telegraphist in a Swordfish and heard it on his headphones, 'TWO BATTLESHIPS BEARING 310 DEGREES DISTANCE EIGHT MILES,' followed by a position. It would probably have been sent on the Aircraft Carrier wave, but no British warship or shore station either acknowledged it or even recorded receiving it. More importantly, the B-Dienst team aboard Gneisenau didn't receive it either, even though they were monitoring British frequencies.
Devonshire received the second signal at 1720, but without the first signal it would surely have been meaningless.
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@smokejaguarsix7757 They didn't need to be dive bombers. Swordfish were perfectly capable of dropping conventional bombs, as some did, for example at Taranto. After the second Battle of Narvik, Swordfish regularly attacked enemy targets in the vicinity of Narvik for two weeks, bombing ships, land facilities, and parked enemy aircraft. Read 'The Fairey Swordfish Mks. I-IV' by Ian Stott.
Moreover, whatever you might believe, Flag Officer, Narvik would have disagreed with you, when he asked Glorious to attack German troops on the Mosjoen-Mo road, in a signal of 26 May. Indeed, aircraft from Ark Royal had carried out a similar attack, successfully, only a few days earlier.
The orders as finally issued by D'Oyly- Hughes envisaged the use of five Swordfish, each carrying six x 250lb & four x 20lb bombs, and escorted by three Sea Gladiators to take off at 2000 on 27 May. The air officers, Slessor & Heath, objected to the operation because of the lack of defined objectives, by the way, not because of any feeling that the operation would be suicidal. After Heath refused to produce a plan, he was suspended from duty and confined to his cabin.
Feeling within the aircrew was far from supportive of Heath. When he left the ship, they were asked to cheer him off from the quarterdeck. Apparently, half refused, one saying 'We will not. We don't agree that those Swordfish should not have gone.'
In short, it was not seen at the time, by anyone at all, as a 'suicide mission.' Swordfish had carried out numerous similar operations during the campaign, without suffering any such losses.
In short, your comments do not accord with the facts. Perhaps you might wish to read 'Carrier Glorious' by John Winton, which is far from sympathetic towards D'Oyly-Hughes, but gives an even-handed account of the circumstances surrounding the proposed raid.
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@smokejaguarsix7757 'Apparently you cant or didnt bother to read my first comment. You provide no source for your information which I requested in my original post smart ass.'
I did. In my response I told you what D'Oyly-Hughes intended, and then suggested that you read John Winton's book. Apparently you didn't bother to digest my reply fully. I won't resort to insults, but will simply leave that to others.
'All aircraft are capable of bombing.' I know, which is why your earlier comment 'The aircraft they were flying were Torpedo bombing Swordfish' needed, disappointingly, to be corrected.
As 'German air coverage was excellent,' don't you consider it odd that Fleet Air Arm ground support operations in Norway to date had suffered few losses? Why should this proposed operation be any different? During the whole of her time operating in Norwegian waters, Ark Royal, despite the number of ground support operations her Swordfish undertook, lost a total of five, at least three of which were the result of forced landings.
Indeed, on 2 June, four Swordfish from Glorious, led by a Swordfish & three Skuas from Ark Royal, launched at 0200 to attack General Dietl's HQ at Hundallen, and landed back at 0530. Vice-Admiral Wells, in Ark Royal, evidently did not consider this to be a suicide mission. It wasn't, by the way.
Simply read Winton's book, instead of merely assuming that the orders were 'insane.'
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@smokejaguarsix7757 What is still secret are the events surrounding the loss of the ship, not the events of 26/27 May. Swordfish, by the way, were not simply torpedo bombers. During the course of the war, they carried, in addition, bombs, mines, depth charges, flares, and rockets. History shows them to have carried out a large number of ground attack operations, both in Norway & in the Mediterranean. As has been pointed out, Ark Royal's aircraft had already successfully undertaken a number of such operations. Why should Heath simply assume that Ark's aircraft were in some way better than his own. Incidentally, Stephens, commander of 823 Squadron, was willing to make out the operation order, until, effectively, his feet were cut from beneath him by Heath. That, by the way, explains why he was not disciplined. Heath wrote a letter to Hughes saying that he was unable to act upon the orders given to him by Hughes, who had received his own orders from Admiral Wells. When an officer flatly refuses to obey orders, what alternative does his commander have?
As to what the orders were (which the squadron commander was willing to act upon, when his superior was not, by the way) as given by Hughes to Heath they were that five Swordfish & three Sea Gladiators would take off at 2000 on 27 May and fly to Hemnes. They would then 'bomb any suitable objective that can be found, including troops & transport, on the road between Hemnes & Mosjoen, small bridges or viaducts, and enemy aerodromes' They were to attack nothing north of Hemnes because allied forces might be there. After the attack, any aircraft that failed to locate Glorious at the ETA was to land at Bodin. I suggest that there is nothing here which could be considered 'idiotic.' Ark Royal had been given similar missions on a number of occasions, and successfully carried them out.
Winton, the only source to my knowledge who has written upon these events in detail, and whose sympathies were with Heath & Slessor rather than Hughes, feels that the poisonous atmosphere between the air commanders and the captain had reached a point which had led Heath & Slessor automatically to assume that any order issued by Hughes must automatically be 'ill-advised or even hare-brained.' He suggests that, had Heath been Commander (Air) aboard Furious (Captain Troubridge) or Ark Royal ( Captain Power) and received similar orders, he would have produced an operation order and the mission gone ahead. The reality is that Hughes was simply seeking to obey orders from his Admiral, who in turn was seeking to relieve pressure on hard-pressed Allied troops in the Mosjoen area. Perhaps Heath allowed his feud to cause him to lose sight of this. Certainly, whatever the rights and wrongs, Heath never received a front-line command again.
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@smokejaguarsix7757 'First you have no idea from where they were supposed to launch, how far from land etc. Those planes have limited fuel and bomb load in colder climes.' Yes, I do. D'Oyly-Hughes intended to bring Glorious within 40 miles of the coast. The aircraft would then fly to Hemnes, then 40 miles south to Mosjoen . The sun sets in those latitudes at around 0030, by which time the aircraft would either have returned or diverted. Even then it is still almost daylight. Bad weather is merely an excuse, as in such circumstances the operation would have been postponed or cancelled anyway. How do you know the weather was going to be bad, by the way? Instead of thinking up every imaginative reason under the sun to justify inactivity, why not read the book?
'They had clear orders previously and known mission targets.' really? what is your source for this claim? Please refer me to it. Incidentally, you refer to the open cockpit of Glorious' Swordfish. Were the cockpits of Ark Royal's Swordfish any less open? Moreover, only the Sea Gladiators aboard Glorious had enclosed cockpits. Would you suggest that the Fleet Air Arm ceased operations until the Albacores arrived in November, 1940?
Heath wasn't subsequently court-martialled because his accuser was dead, by the way, as were most of the witnesses. Clearly, you have made up your mind, although I wonder if, given your attitude, the British Fleet Air Arm would ever have been allowed to have taken off from their carriers at all in WW2. Certainly, I assume you would have stopped Captain Maund launching his aircraft against Bismarck in the rough seas of 26 May, 1941, or Illustrious' Swordfish attacking the Italian at Taranto. What! A night attack? Out of the question!
I thought chain of command went something like :- Admiral to Captain to Commander (Air). At what point does the third link in the chain have the right to choose to ignore orders from his superiors?
'Your arguments are illogical but do show that youre one of those people who think rank makes right.' You don't know anything about me, so please don't make unwarranted assumptions, and from your catalogue of imaginative excuses for inactivity it is fairly clear that you have absolutely no knowledge of the Norwegian campaign of 1940. You are actually aware that the British were at war, I suppose?
Finally, a word from Dick Leggott, of 802 Squadron, who survived the sinking, and would have been one of the Sea Gladiator pilots on the mission :-
'I think we should have flown something. I would not denigrate D'Oyly-Hughes as much as many have. When it came to Flag Officer, Narvik sending a signal saying we would like you to try and do something to assist the army ashore, the least we could have done was to send off an armed reconnaissance. Three Swordfish & three Gladiators could have carried out the necessary patrol; it was daylight 24 hours a day. It could have been done. There was only a twenty to one chance of anybody even seeing a Swordfish in that sort of terrain. There weren't German fighters in every square foot of air there. That really to me is where the affair doesn't entirely devolve upon D'Oyly-Hughes. The majority of the pilots in the Swordfish squadron were put out about it. My own squadron C.O. refused to be drawn into it. It was not good enough. Something could have been done. Still, as you said earlier, what would the mere pilots know?
Please don't bother to respond.
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The deciding factor was certainly the erratic behaviour of Guy d'Oyly-Hughes, but that doesn't really have any relevance to the 'Edwardian upper-class system embedded within senior leadership,' given that Guy d'Oyly-Hughes was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and his father was a doctor. He joined the Royal Navy as a Midshipman in 1909, and worked his way up, having a successful and, indeed, courageous, career.
Almost certainly, he would have made a successful cruiser captain, but was utterly unsuited to the command of a carrier.
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There is a full description of the proposed Operation Paul by Peter Hore, entitled 'Operation Paul -The Fleet Air Arm Attack on Lulea in 1940' which confirms much of what you have posted, except for one vital difference. The downgraded attack, using one carrier & 18 aircraft, was to be made by 810 & 820 Squadron, FAA, and launched from Ark Royal. Both squadrons were part of Ark's air group at the time.
The written order was signed by Dudley Pound on 8 June, but obviously Ark Royal, at sea off Norway, couldn't receive it, so an amended order was transmitted by signal at 2033 on the same day. This, of course, was after Glorious had been sunk.
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Really? During the Norwegian campaign, the German navy lost 50% of their total number of destroyers (10 of 20), 2 of 6 light cruisers ( a third had already been crippled in the North Sea in December 1939 and was only fit for use as a training ship thereafter), both battleships were damaged and not repaired until November, 1940 (thus, not available to support a Sealion attempt), one pocket battleship badly damaged, and not repaired until April, 1941 (a second had already been lost), and one (of 2) heavy cruisers sunk by Norwegian shore defences.
By the time the campaign was over, there wasn't really much of a German navy left to mess with!!
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The Royal Navy was 'crushed' was it? The British lost a carrier, 2 light cruisers, 7 destroyers, and 4 submarines. The Kriegsmarine lost 1 heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, 10 destroyers, and 4 U-boats. The destroyers, by the way, represent 50% of the total number of destroyers in service with the Kriegsmarine at the start of the Norwegian campaign. The Kriegsmarine on 1 April, 1940, by the way, had 8 heavy & light cruisers, of which one (Leipzig) had already been so badly damaged as to be unfit for anything other than training purposes. Therefore, Germany lost 43% of their operational cruiser force during the course of the Norwegian campaign.
If you add to these the damaged ships, which consequently could not make any contribution to any potential 'Sealion' (Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Deutchland) then it is clear that your contention is absurd. The reality is that the Norwegian campaign, from the perspective of Admiral Raeder, was a disaster from which the Kriegsmarine never recovered.
As to the British being saved by the French army, certainly French troops made a valiant contribution to the defence of the Dunkirk perimeter, but the reality is that the 10 divisions of the BEF could do nothing other than withdraw once the French & Belgian armies, some 100 divisions strong, had collapsed.
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@JimmyJamesJ Glorious sank at around 1745 on 8 June. No distress signals were received by any British ship or shore
station. Only at 0901 on 9 June did the battleship Valiant receive news from the hospital ship Atlantis that a transport (Orama) had been sunk by 'a battleship & two destroyers,' and transmitted this report. Devonshire, receiving Valiant's transmission, then herself transmitted that she had received a garbled message from Glorious at 1640 on 8 June.
Until receiving Valiant's message, there had been no knowledge of any German battleship in the area. Upon receipt, Forbes, C-in-C Home Fleet, immediately sent orders to Repulse, Sussex, & Newcastle, with six destroyers to join the evacuation convoys, and himself sailed fro Scapa Flow in Rodney, with Renown & several destroyers.
The first actual news of Glorious' sinking came in a German broadcast at 1500 on 9 June, which claimed the taking of 'many prisoners.' By this time, few of Glorious' complement would still have been alive, but aircraft from Ark Royal carried out several searches, without success. Even by the evening of 10 June, the Admiralty still had no idea of Glorious' position when she was lost. At around 0045 on 11 June, Borgund came across the few remaining survivors.
So, your comment that the failure to send rescue ships was a 'crime' takes no account at all of the reality of the situation.
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@Ocrilat Glorious wasn't intended to be the single carrier finally intended for Operation Paul. The much reduced operation was to have involved 810 & 820 Squadrons, FAA, both of which were part of Ark Royal's air group. Moreover, on the morning of 8 June, Ark Royal was off Northern Norway, and Pound, the First Sea Lord, had already issued orders for Ark Royal To carry out the operation. Glorious had already, at 0253 on 8 June, sailed for Scapa Flow.
The reason for Glorious rushing back to Scapa relates to the conflict between her Captain & her Commander (Air) J.B. Heath. d'Oyly Hughes had received orders to carry out an operation in support of the army. He had given orders to Heath, who had refused to carry them out, stating that the orders did not represent a proper use of naval aircraft. Whatever the rights and wrongs (and I personally do not believe that Heath had any right to refuse legitimate orders from a senior officer), it seems clear that d'Oyly Hughes took a number of strange decisions. He should not have requested permission to leave ahead of the main evacuation convoy (frankly, the Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers should not have given it anyway) but, having been released, he should have maintained a state of alert aboard Glorious, and have had aircraft in the air maintaining patrols around the ship or, at the very least, had aircraft armed and ready on deck at immediate readiness.
Squadron Leader Cross, who had previously landed a number of RAF Hurricanes aboard Glorious in an attempt to avoid destroying them, and who was one of the few survivors, later commented that there was an 'end of term' atmosphere aboard the carrier, because Glorious was widely believed to be in an area where she was in no danger.
The fuel reference does not hold water. If Glorious was short, she should have been kept with the evacuation convoy, which would have been steaming at a much more economical speed, as Churchill, when this claim was put forward, was one of the first to point out.
I fear that the truth is that d'Oyly Hughes, though undoubtedly personally brave, was totally unsuited for command of a carrier. He would probably have been outstanding on the bridge of a light cruiser in the Mediterranean, but the appointment to Glorious was a serious misjudgment by the Admiralty, especially since almost all his previous command experience had been within the submarine service. The author of 'The War at Sea,' Captain Stephen Roskill, subsequently questioned Hughes' mental state.
Despite all the above, however, I really cannot believe that there was any 'Operation Paul' cover-up involving Glorious.
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@Ocrilat I never said that Glorious was not part of the original plan. I said that the original plan included three carriers, which were Ark Royal, Glorious, and Furious, using 78 Swordfish. On 6 June, at a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, Pound described the original as 'now impracticable' but went ahead with a much reduced version, using aircraft already available, from Ark Royal.
All this is in Captain Hore's article, and the very fact that he makes this clear is in itself the most obvious refutation of the Glorious/Paul cover-up nonsense. Why, when the possible inclusion of Glorious in the operation had been discounted on the morning of 6 June, would she sail for Scapa Flow two days later to collect extra Swordfish? The only squadrons actually nominated were 810 & 820, and both of these were already aboard Ark Royal.
The suggestion that Glorious was expendable is nonsense by the way, unless you can present supporting evidence. The only carrier still in the area on 8 June was Ark Royal, protected by the Royal Navy units assembling the final evacuation fleet. If Glorious had not, unwisely, been given permission to proceed, she would have had similar protection. You do understand, by the way, that the 'modifications' to the Swordfish were minor, I suppose? Swordfish were designed to carry additional fuel tanks, because they were Fleet TSR aircraft. The fitment of these tanks to Ark's Swordfish was a simple task. Ark also carried the necessary mines, and no particular special training was required for the crews to deploy them. You seem to think that what would have been a fairly simple operation by Ark's experienced crews was a complex one. It really wasn't.
Certainly, the Fuel Shortage explanation for Glorious' loss is improbable, but probably far less improbable than the idea that she, by 8 June, was still involved in Operation Paul. As to your claim that I argued that Captain Hore's article refutes the theory when it does no such thing, how much more definite evidence for the fact that Glorious was no longer part of Operation Paul do you need than the copy of the first page of the Operation Order, signed by Tom Phillips, dated 8 June and addressed to HMS Ark Royal & the Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers do you need?
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@Ocrilat The fact is that d'Oyly Hughes did indeed seek to get back to Scapa Flow as quickly as possible in order to have Heath court-martialled. There is even the evidence of Glorious' signal to Admiral Wells, aboard Ark Royal, witnessed by HMS Diana. The request was for permission to part company and proceed ahead to Scapa Flow for the purpose of making preparations for impending courts-martial. Not a cover story, but a fact for which there were numerous witnesses. There was considerable personal antipathy between d'Oyly Hughes and Heath, but whether this can be taken as evidence of any mental imbalance is not for me to say. Certainly, Glorious was not a happy ship in May-June, 1940.
The probability is that the Admiralty were well aware that the appointment of d'Oyly-Hughes to Glorious had been a mistake, but were not willing to confess it in the circumstances which existed in the summer of 1940.
I have read Barker's arguments and much of his case seems to depend upon his conviction that numerous individuals were drawn into a conspiratorial web, and that certain documents do not mean what they say. The beauty of taking such an approach is that, when convincing evidence is produced to contradict a theory, it can easily be discounted because the source of the evidence must have either been compromised, or the documents doctored. At what point, I wonder, was Captain Peter Hore drawn into this devious web of deceit, when he wrote his account of Operation Paul?
Finally, even if d'Oyly-Hughes had been rushing back to Scapa to collect Swordfish for Operation Paul, does that really excuse him from having no air patrols up, half Glorious' boilers not in service, and no lookouts up top?
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@111076tom Try the early pages of 'The Doomed Expedition - The Campaign in Norway 1940' by Jack Adams. Presumably you weren't aware that, immediately after the Altmark incident, the French government were advocating an immediate landing in Narvik, ostensibly to support Finland, and that, on the very same day that the Altmark incident took place (16 February) the French had created a force 50000 strong, consisting of Chasseurs Alpins, Foreign Legion units, and Polish units, called the 'French Expeditionary Force in Scandinavia?' The Chamberlain government, by the way, refused to participate in the proposed action.
On 21 March, Reynaud demanded more aggressive action by the allies. The allies delivered a note to the Swedish & Norwegian legations in London, protesting about the violation of Scandinavian waters by German vessels, and warning that mines would be laid in Norwegian waters if action was not taken. Reynaud pressed for use of the French force, but the British cabinet turned down the proposal.
Not, of course, that any of this relates to my original question. Why, in your view, were the British the villains here, and the French (and the Poles under their command) excused criticism?
On second thoughts, don't bother to reply, do a little reading up on the facts first.
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