WW2 100 – 9 July 1944 – Death on ‘an island paradise’: Alfred Edwin Clarke (1910-44) Air Mechanic (L) 2nd Class Royal Navy, HMS Ukussa
Continued from 2 July 1944 LANCE CORPORAL FRED ALEXIS BEDFORD (1924-44)
7th Battalion, Royal Tank Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/03/ww2-75-2-july-1944-escaping-from.html
Alfred’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission certificate
Alfred Edwin Clarke’s case contains many contradictions. His name does not appear on Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial but his Commonwealth War Graves Commission record, which I found by searching for Budleigh-linked war dead on its database, lists his wife Elizabeth Anne as ‘of Budleigh Salterton, Devon.’ However, that is the only connection that I have found with the town.
Yet genealogical records tell us that Alfred married Elizabeth Ann née Duckett in 1932, in Chelsea, London. They also tell us that in 1911, Alfred was aged 1, living with his parents, Alfred and Lydia, in Fulham, London. Budleigh parish records of deaths and burials contain no Ducketts. On the other hand they list 23 individuals with the surname Clarke.
Badge of the Fleet Air Arm Image credit: www.royalnavy.mod.uk
The Commonwealth War
Graves Commission (CWGC) lists Alfred as based at HMS Ukussa, a shore-based establishment also known as the
Royal Naval Air Station Katukurunda in the Western Province of Ceylon, known
today as Sri Lanka. This means
that he was a member of the Fleet Air Arm (FAA), formed originally in April
1924 to encompass those RAF units that normally embarked on aircraft carriers and fighting ships.
The British aircraft carrier HMS Hermes, pictured
underway off Yantai, China, in about 1931
Image credit: Wikipedia
That year saw the commission by the Royal Navy of HMS
Hermes, the world's first ship to be designed and built as an aircraft
carrier. Over the following months RAF Fleet Air Arm Fairey IIID reconnaissance
biplanes operated off Hermes, conducting flying trials.
On 24 May 1939 the Fleet Air Arm was returned to Admiralty control and renamed the Air Branch of the Royal Navy.
Grumman
Wildcat fighter aircraft and Supermarine Seafires ranged for take-off on the
flight deck of HMS Formidable.
Image credit: Imperial War Museums
During WW2,
aeroplanes became a key weapon at sea. Flying from carriers, aircraft armed
with bombs or torpedoes could sink ships at distances of hundreds of miles.
At the outbreak of war, the Fleet Air Arm consisted of 20 squadrons with only 232 frontline aircraft, and 191 additional trainers. By the end of the war the strength of the Fleet Air Arm was 59 aircraft carriers, 3,700 aircraft, 72,000 officers and men and 56 Naval air stations, among them HMS Ukussa.
I
have no access to Alfred’s service record, so am unable to say how long he had
been based at Ukussa at the time of his death. The
CWGC record gives his rank as Air Mechanic (L) 2nd Class. His
Service Number was FX.505838.
In
the early era of aviation, the air mechanic was the forerunner of the flight engineer.
One of the first Royal Flying Corps airmen to be killed on active service in
WW1 was Air Mechanic Raymond Keith Barlow, flying on 12 August 1914 in a
Bleriot aircraft piloted by Lieutenant Robin Reginald Skene.
By the time of WW2 air mechanics
were ground crew, and 1939 saw their organisation split into three sections: airframes,
electrical and engines. The L of Alfred’s rank mean that his work was on the
electrical side.
Electrical systems in all branches of the military had become so important during WW2 and the vulnerability to enemy attack of a central training establishment had become so great that specialised centres were set up all over Britain. Naval historian Godfrey Dykes in his survey of Royal Naval electrical training posts lists various places which Alfred could have attended. The RAF Training Establishment at Melksham, Wiltshire, is listed as offering electrical instruction for Air Mechanics (L).
Captain Geoffrey Alexander ‘Hank’ Rotherham DSC, OBE, Commanding Officer of HMS Ukassa during Alfred’s time at the station. Image credit: www.navalandmilitarymuseum.org
HMS Ukussa, located on the coast of Sri Lanka, approximately 43 km (27 miles) south of the capital Colombo, was originally an RAF base but was transferred to the Royal Navy on 1 September 1942 under the command of Commander (later Captain) Geoffrey Alexander ‘Hank’ Rotherham DSC, OBE.
Badge of HMS Ukussa Image credit:
www.royalnavyresearcharchive.org.uk
Ukassa’s name refers to the Brahminy Kite or
Red-backed sea eagle, found in Sri Lanka.
A happy group of Radar WRNS and pilots taken at HMS Ukussa. The ‘Wrens’ normally worked the radar sets at ground stations like Ukassa. Image credit: Imperial War Museums
At the time it was the largest Royal Navy Air Station with a staff of over 302 officers, 3,447 sailors and 132 personnel from the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), including 10 WRNS officers.
The station could accommodate as many as three squadrons of 24 aircraft and one of 21 aircraft. They included the American-built Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers which had entered US service in 1942. They had first seen action during the Battle of Midway, and were used by 15 British naval air squadrons. Grumman designed the Avenger to use the new Sto-Wing patented ‘compound angle’ wing-folding mechanism. Seen in the above photo taken at HMS Ukassa, it was intended to maximize storage space on an aircraft carrier.
Bombing up a Grumman Avenger aircraft on the
flight deck of HMS Ilustrious sailing in the Indian Ocean in readiness for the
raid on Surabaya in May 1944.The air strike against the Japanese-held naval
base was carried out by British, American, Australian, French and Dutch units. Several
of the armourers are stood inside the aircraft's open bomb bay. This is
photograph A 24250 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums. Photo by Royal
Navy official photographer, Lt C.Trusler
Grumman Avengers were the most widely-used torpedo
bombers of World War II, sharing credit for sinking the Japanese super-battleships
Yamato and Musashi and
being credited for sinking 30 submarines.
Barracuda torpedo bombers
in echelon formation. Image credit: Lieutenant
S.J. Beadell and Imperial War Museums
A British-made aircraft at Ukussa was the Fairey
Barracuda, a carrier-borne torpedo and dive bomber designed by Fairey Aviation.
It was the first aircraft of this type operated by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air
Arm to be fabricated entirely from metal.
Squadron of Barracudas lined up at HMS
Ukussa to make practice carrier take-offs. The station had two runways, one of
concrete and one of steel-plank. Image credit: Imperial War Museums
On 21 April 1944 Barracudas of No
827 Squadron aboard HMS Illustrious began operations against Japanese
forces. The type participated in air raids on Sabang in Sumatra, known as
Operation Cockpit. In the Pacific theatre, the Barracuda's performance was
considerably reduced by the prevailing high temperatures; reportedly, its
combat radius in the Pacific was reduced by as much as 30%. This diminished
performance was a factor in the decision to re-equip the torpedo bomber
squadrons aboard the fleet carriers of the British Pacific Fleet with
American-built Grumman Avengers.
Image credit: Imperial War Museums
HMS Ukussa could service more than 100 aircraft at any given time within the Aircraft Repair Yard.
From time to time an aircraft
would crash in the jungle near the air station and would need to be salvaged.
This photo shows men of a salvage party from HMS Ukussa wallowing in the
ooze of a paddy field as they rescue a Fleet Air Arm aircraft which has crashed
in the jungle. They are securing lines with which it will be pulled out.
Aircrews were obviously well aware of how dependent they were on the skills and commitment of the aircraft maintenance personnel. Although Alfred was a member of the ground crew, he may well have been offered the chance of an occasional flight. The son of a veteran air mechanic based at Ukussa, in a 2004 recording in the BBC People’s War series, recalls the moment when his father had finished a service on the engine of a Fairey Swordfish. It was no doubt against all the rules, but being young and eager, he jumped at the pilot’s sudden offer of ‘Come on then, let’s see how she looks!’ The flight was given an extra thrill because the fuselage floor panel had not been fitted; the sight of the Indian Ocean whizzing between his legs at 80 mph became an enduring memory for this lucky passenger.
The island of Ceylon was strategically important, since it commanded the Indian Ocean, controlling access to India, the vital Allied shipping routes to the Middle East and the oilfields of the Persian Gulf. The island held most of the British Empire's resources of rubber, and an important harbour and naval base, Trincomalee, was located on the island’s eastern coast.
Not surprisingly it was a target for Japanese attacks. The best known was the Indian Ocean raid, a naval sortie carried out by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) from 31 March to 10 April 1942. It damaged port facilities, sank one carrier and two cruisers, destroyed a third of enemy ground-based fighters and nearly all of the British ground-based strike aircraft. In addition, 23 merchant ships were sunk.
However Alfred did not lose his life to enemy action. How he died is yet another puzzle because of contradictions in the records.
Naval historian Gordon Smith, creator of the online Naval-History.Net, lists Alfred as DOW (Died of wounds) at HMS Ukussa on Sunday 9 July 1944, following the Casualty Lists of the Royal Navy and Dominion Navies, World War 2 compiled by the American researcher Don Kindell.
The same source
records the death, ten days later, of a second ground crew serviceman based at Ukussa.
This was Air Mechanic (E) 2nd Class Kenneth Norman Cox, who is
listed as DOWS on 19 July 1944, aged 19.
Liveramentu Cemetery, Colombo. Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission
I imagined an accident in the Aircraft Repair Yard,
perhaps involving the two men, who are buried in the same cemetery at Liveramentu
on the outskirts of Colombo.
However the massive Aircrew Remembered website, edited by Norfolk-based researcher Kelvin. T. Youngs, notes simply that Alfred ‘died’ on 9 July 1944.
Could he have died from a disease
caught during his time in Ceylon? Ailments such as malaria or what was referred
to as ‘tropical typhoid’ were common in this part of the world.
A salvage
party at HMS Ukassa at
stand-easy, eating bananas having worked for hours in a swamp to render first
aid to a crashed aircraft. Image credit: Imperial War Museums © IWM A 26087
Despite tropical diseases, many
WW2 servicemen have fond memories of their time in Ceylon. Veteran Petty
Officer ‘Lofty’ Fagan, who was based at HMS Ukussa, told his son in a
2005 recording in the BBC People’s War series that he remembered it as ‘an
island paradise, Hawaii with none of the mod cons’.
Another veteran, Royal Marine Dennis Small, in a 2006 recording in the same series, recalled his time at Ukussa, and at another more remote station. ‘It turned out to be quite a holiday; we had brick built quarters with a cook and a cleaner. The station was right next to a lagoon, so we were swimming every day, and the sentry would sit under a palm tree. The only problem was we were not allowed off the site. For me that was no problem, it was like having a six-week holiday.’
Deshasthra Kalutara West,
Wadduwa, Sri Lanka. Image credit: Wikimedia
And those hints of the more positive aspects of WW2 tie in with the latest information that I currently have about the death. It comes from my Budleigh friend Carolyn John, who kindly consulted Alfred’s military records for me, and discovered that the cause was accidental drowning at Kalutara Lagoon, Ceylon.
Alfred’s
grave in Liveramentu Cemetery, Colombo. The personal inscription reads: ‘Sadly
missed by your beloved wife and darling children Pat, Vivien and Irene. Image
credit: Findagrave.com
Alfred was
34 years old. Carolyn also discovered that he and Elizabeth Ann had three children:
Patricia L. Clarke (born 1932), Vivien A. Clarke (born 1936) and Irene E. L.
Clarke (born 1938). All were born in London. Perhaps they or their children
will discover what has been written about Alfred and will be able to fill in
the gaps in this profile.
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