WW2 100 - 10 December 1941 - A Casualty of Force Z: Chief Electrical Artificer Henry Harold Gray, Royal Navy, HMS Repulse (1900-41)
Continued from 10 December 1941
A Boy aged 17: Boy 1st Class Peter Anstey (1924-41) Royal Navy
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/09/ww2-75-boy-aged-17-peter-robert-anstey.html
No words can describe the
ugliness and chaos of war. For the families who’ve lost loved ones there’s some
small compensation in the neat orderliness of war cemeteries. On land, all over
the world, 23,000 of them are beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth War
Graves Commission.
And for shipwrecks at sea, most governments with any humanitarian awareness have a policy of treating war graves as protected places. So the recent news that there are parts of the world where scavengers have been stripping WW2 ships for metals such as aluminium, brass and steel is a cause for distress and anger.
Map of the 1941-42 Malaya Campaign. The red arrow indicates the approximate wreck site of HMS Repulse
Image credit: Wikimedia
The Royal Navy’s battlecruiser HMS
Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales are just two of the
wrecks where there has been evidence since 2012 of such illegal activity involving
divers employed by scrap metal businesses. Both ships, alongside Dutch war
wrecks, lie in waters in the South China Sea off the east coast of the British
colony of Malaya, having been sunk by enemy action in 1941.
Like Peter Anstey, whose name appears first in the WW2 list on the Budleigh Salterton war memorial, Henry Harold Gray was lost when Repulse went down on 10 December.
The battlecruiser HMS Repulse leading other Royal Navy capital ships during manoeuvres, circa the late 1920s. Image credit: Underwood & Underwood - Official U.S. Navy photo NH 57183 from the U.S. Navy Naval History and Heritage Command
The ship had been assigned in November 1941 to Force
Z which was supposed to deter Japanese aggression against British possessions
in the Far East. Following the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbour on 7 December
1941, and attacks on Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong, the British government
declared war on the Empire of Japan.
Force Z, consisting of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and four destroyers together with HMS Repulse sailed from Singapore without air support but failed to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet. On their return, both Prince of Wales and Repulse were attacked by 86 Japanese aircraft from the 22nd Air Flotilla based in Saigon.
While 17-year-old Peter Anstey was a mere junior with Repulse, having joined the Royal Navy in the early days of WW2, Henry Gray was a married man of 41. A record in the National Archives states that he was born on 9 December 1900 in the St Margarets south-west district of London, but the 1901 census lists him aged three months living in the City of Westminster.
A Devonian link was through his mother, Clara, who with her sister Florence and brother Frederick William were members of the Fley family, all born in Lympstone. The family go back for generations in the village, with some aged 76 on the 1841 census. They are listed as mariners and owned schooners on the Exe as well as several properties around Lympstone and in Exeter. Frederick William Fley moved to Nicaragua in the 19th century, founding a dynasty of coffee-growing farmers.
Stoodleigh Court
Clara’s husband Albert James Gray came from Great Wishford,
a village near Salisbury in Wiltshire. The pair are recorded on the 1881 census
as single people and had met as kitchen maid and footman while in
service at Stoodleigh Court, Tiverton. Its owner, Thomas Carew Daniel, became
High Sheriff of Devon in 1883, but impoverished his family through the
extensive rebuilding he undertook at his home and at Stoodleigh Church.
Penshurst Place Image credit: GriffP
The pair then worked for the Sidney family, owners of
Penshurst Place in Kent where Clara was probably a housekeeper or cook. Albert also worked as a butler in a London
club, but on 6 January 1902 he was killed in a tragic accident involving a horse and carriage in St George’s Square, London. He was
buried in Nunhead Cemetery, in Southwark.
Mr Westerton and his Indian servant were two of the long-term guests taken in by Clara Gray at 4 Cliff Terrace
Image credit Jane Gray
Left on her own to bring up Henry Harold and
his older siblings Olive, Kate and Frederick, Clara decided to go back to her
roots in Devon, and moved to Budleigh Salterton in about 1904. The family first
settled in rented accommodation at 4 Cliff Terrace, taking in paying guests to
make ends meet.
L-r: Henry Harold, sister Kate, mother Clara and brother Frederick
Later, Clara Gray was able to buy 31 Greenway
and move there with her children. Her sister Florence, who would go on to
become a teacher in Lyme Regis, owned a house nearby in Budleigh, at 14
Frewins.
School children at the ceremony of laying the
foundation stone for their new school on 18 September 1912. The stone was laid by
Lady Alice Louisa Ewing. The school officially opened on 17 April the following
year. Photo credit: Fairlynch Museum collection
Henry Harold is likely to have gone to
school in Budleigh Salterton, where St Peter’s School had been opened in 1913.
He also joined the local Scout Troop, and was awarded a large certificate by Scouts’ founder Baden Powell when he rescued another boy from drowning. Image credit Jane Gray
Budleigh Salterton Association Football Team 1923-24 taken at Moor Lane ground Hooker Album Fairlynch Museum
Could he have been one of the players in this
photograph? His home at 31 Greenway was close to the football ground.
The Penshurst Place connection proved useful when Henry Harold’s sister Olive became a lady's maid there and travelled around Europe with the Sidney family.
In the
garden of 4 Cliff Terrace: Frederick Gray is on the left, next to his mother,
Clara
The outbreak of war in 1914 disrupted everyone’s
lives. Henry Harold’s brother Frederick joined the 8th Battalion,
The Devonshire Regiment.
This celebrated VAD recruitment
poster was designed in about 1916 by Budleigh artist and writer Joyce Dennys.
The other sister Kate became a VAD (Voluntary Aid
Detachment) nurse.
Henry Harold had been too young to fight in
WW1, but in the post-war period he
chose to serve in the Royal Navy. He clearly had the technical skills and abilities
which would in due course lead to his appointment as Chief Electrical Artificer
on HMS Repulse.
The Royal Navy had long recognised the growing need for technicians in its ships’ crews. Three Centres of Excellence for the training of Engine Room Artificer (ERA) Apprentices had been established at Chatham, Plymouth and Portsmouth, the latter housed in a collection of Victorian hulks in the harbour, being designated HMS Fisgard.
Increasingly,
specialist electricians were needed in the fleet, and in 1901 the Electrical Artificer
specialisation was introduced.
All Artificers, or ‘tiffs’ as they were known, were considerably better paid than other trades. An ERA 1st class was paid about twice what a seaman CPO received. Most Engine Room Artificers entered as apprentices and joined a ship at the 5th class level to complete the sea-phase of their training. Electrical and Ordnance Artificers and some ERAs were hired as qualified Artificers and entered at the Artificer 3rd or 2nd Class level. They often had minimum naval background and were mostly valued for their technical expertise.
Image credit Jane Gray
According to his service record, shown above, Henry Harold served on various battleships and cruisers in the 1930s. His service number was D/M 38280. Out of a total of 12 assessments during his time in the Royal Navy his work was almost invariably judged as of superior efficiency.
In September 1933 he completed a Modified Echo Sounding course. During WW1, submarines deployed by Imperial Germany had proved themselves to be a formidable threat to shipping, being capable of striking targets even out in the North Atlantic ocean. Accordingly, many nations embarked on research into devising more capable anti-submarine warfare (ASW) methods, resulting in the introduction of practical depth charges and advances in sonar technology. WW2 would see submarine warfare and ASW alike advance rapidly, particularly during the critical Battle of the Atlantic, during which Axis submarines sought to prevent Britain from effectively importing supplies.
Repulse in Haifa habour 1938. Source: United States Library of Congress's Prints and
Photographs division
Henry Harold also spent three stints in 1931, 1934 and 1937 at HMS Defiance, the Royal Navy’s torpedo training school before he joined Repulse in December 1938.
Repulse and its sister-ship HMS Renown both carried ten torpedoes and mounted two 21-inch (533 mm) submerged torpedo tubes.
Apart from torpedoes, at the outbreak of WW2, Electrical Artificers like Henry Harold would have been responsible for generators, heavy switchgear and gyro compasses.
Image credit Jane Gray
He
was indeed a valued member of the ship’s crew.
At the beginning of the Second
World War, Repulse was part of the Battlecruiser Squadron of the Home
Fleet. She patrolled off the Norwegian coast and in the North Sea in search of
German ships, as well as to enforce the blockade for the first couple months of
the war. Early in the war, the aft
triple 4-inch gun mount was replaced with an 8-barrel 2-pounder mount.
The German battleship Scharnhorst at sea Bundesarchiv, DVM 10 Bild-23-63-12 / CC-BY-SA
3.0
In late October, she was transferred to Halifax
with the aircraft carrier Furious to protect convoys and search for
German raiders. Repulse and Furious sortied from Halifax on 23
November in search of the German battleship Scharnhorst after it had
sunk the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi, but Repulse was
damaged by heavy seas in a storm and was forced to return to port. The ship escorted the convoy bringing most of
the 1st Canadian Infantry Division to Britain from 10–23 December 1939 and was
reassigned to the Home Fleet. In February 1940, she accompanied the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal on a fruitless search for six German blockade runners that had
broken out of Vigo, Spain.
Repulse was assigned to support Allied operations during the Norwegian Campaign in April–June 1940. On 7 April, Repulse, along with the bulk of the Home Fleet, was ordered to sea to intercept what was thought to be another attempt to break-out into the North Atlantic. The ship was detached the following day to search for a German ship reported by the destroyer Glowworm, but the destroyer had been sunk by the German cruiser Admiral Hipper before Repulse arrived and she was ordered to rendezvous with her sister Renown south of the Lofoten Islands, off the Norwegian coast. On 12 April, Repulse was ordered to return to Scapa Flow to refuel and she escorted a troop convoy upon her return. In early June the ship was sent to the North Atlantic to search for German raiders and played no part in the evacuation of Norway.
Accompanied by Renown and the 1st Cruiser Squadron, Repulse attempted to intercept the German battleship Gneisenau as it sailed from Trondheim to Germany in July. Until May 1941, the ship escorted convoys and unsuccessfully searched for German ships. On 22 May, Repulse was diverted from escorting Convoy WS8B to assist in the search for the German battleship Bismarck, but she had to break off the search early on 25 May as she was running low on fuel. The ship was refitted from June to August and received eight Oerlikon 20-millimetre (0.79 in) autocannon as well as a Type 284 surface gunnery radar. Repulse escorted a troop convoy around the Cape of Good Hope from August to October and was transferred to East Indies Command where it was assigned to Force Z.
Henry Harold Gray in tropical uniform Image credit Jane Gray
It was Prime Minister Winston Churchill who in late 1941 decided to send a small group of fast capital ships, along with one modern aircraft carrier to Singapore, to deter expected Japanese aggression. In November, Repulse which was in the Indian Ocean was ordered to Colombo, Ceylon to rendezvous with the new battleship Prince of Wales. The carrier Indomitable, which was assigned to join them, was delayed when she ran aground in the Caribbean.
HMS
Repulse sailing from Singapore on her last operation, two days before she was
sunk by Japanese aircraft along with HMS Prince of Wales. Photograph A 29069 from the collections of the
Imperial War Museums (collection no. 4700-01)
Prince of Wales and Repulse and their escorting destroyers comprised Force Z, which arrived in Singapore on 2 December 1941. On the evening of 8 December, Force Z departed for an attempt to destroy Japanese troop convoys and protect the army's seaward flanks from Japanese landings in their rear.
Force Z was spotted during the afternoon of 9 December by the Japanese submarine I-65, and floatplanes from several Japanese cruisers spotted the British ships later that afternoon and shadowed them until dark. Admiral Sir Tom Phillips decided to cancel the operation as the Japanese were now alerted. Force Z turned back during the evening, after having tried to deceive the Japanese that they were heading to Singora. At 00:50 on 10 December, Admiral Philips received a signal of enemy landings at Kuantan and correspondingly altered course so that he would arrive shortly after dawn.
The crew of I-58 spotted Force Z at 02:20, reported their position, and fired five torpedoes, all of which missed. Based on this report the Japanese launched 11 reconnaissance aircraft before dawn to locate Force Z. Several hours later 86 bombers from the 22nd Air Flotilla based in Saigon were launched carrying bombs or torpedoes. The crew of a Mitsubishi G3M reconnaissance bomber spotted the British at 10:15 and radioed in several reports. The pilot was ordered to maintain contact and to broadcast a directional signal that the other Japanese bombers could follow.
Japanese bomber Mitsubishi G3M Nell of Genzan Air Group, based in North Korea during WW2 Image credit: Wikipedia
The first attack began at 11:13 when 250 kilograms
(551 lb) bombs were dropped from eight G3Ms from an altitude of 11,500 feet
(3,505 m). The battlecruiser was straddled by two bombs, then hit by a third
which penetrated through the hangar to explode on the armoured deck below. This
inflicted a number of casualties and damaged the ship's Supermarine Walrus
seaplane, which was then pushed over the side to remove a fire hazard.
Anti-aircraft fire damaged five of the Japanese bombers, two so badly that they immediately returned to Saigon. In the ensuing attacks, Repulse was skilfully handled by her captain, Bill Tennant, who managed to avoid 19 torpedoes as well as the remaining bombs from the G3Ms. However, Repulse was then caught by a synchronised pincer attack by 17 Mitsubishi G4M torpedo bombers and hit by four or five torpedoes in rapid succession. The gunners on the Repulse shot down two planes and heavily damaged eight more, but the torpedo damage proved fatal.
It was clear that she was sinking, and her Captain, Bill Tennant, gave the order to abandon ship. At 12:23, Repulse listed severely to port and within minutes capsized with the loss of 508 officers and men, among them Henry Harold Gray and Peter Anstey. The destroyers Electra and Vampire rescued the survivors, including Captain Tennant.
The recent unhappy news about the state of wreck sites such as those of Repulse and Prince of Wales has been matched by views of historians and many other people on the responsibility for this Royal Navy disaster of WW2. Both issues feature on the website set up for the members of the Survivors’ Association and their families and friends. https://www.forcez-survivors.org.uk/
The author argued, for example, that Churchill was guilty of using the ships of Force Z as ‘live bait’ to antagonise Japan and thereby cement the Anglo-American alliance against the Axis powers.
Repulse and Prince
of Wales were left, in Alan Matthews’ words, as ‘sitting ducks’ after war
had erupted in the Far East with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7
December and the USA’s entry into the conflict.
Memorial
to HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse at the National Memorial Arboretum Image credit: Steve Bowen
Henry Harold is remembered on the Plymouth Naval Memorial and at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire as well as on Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial. I have read that it is currently traditional for every passing Royal Navy ship to perform a remembrance service over the site of the Force Z wrecks.
I am grateful to Jane Gray for providing much helpful information about her grandfather.
The next post is for Able Seaman Franklin Bristow (1913-41), who died on 19 December 1941 while serving on HMS Neptune
You can read about him at https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/12/ww2-75-19-december-1941-sacrificed-for.html
These ‘orphans’ are listed on Budleigh Salterton War
Memorial, but have not been identified. Their first names,
date of death and service numbers are not known.
They are recorded on the Devon Heritage website as
'Not yet confirmed’
If you know anything which would help to identify them,
please contact Michael Downes on 01395 446407.
J.S. Harris
F.E. Newcombe
P. Pritchard
A.G. Watkins
F.J. Watts
Comments
Post a Comment