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)  

7^th 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) 2^nd 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.   

   

 

 An Avenger being taken from its ‘hangar’ in the jungle. Image credit: Imperial War Museums

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) 2^nd 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.  

 

The next post is for MAJOR GEORGE TRISTRAM PALMER (1915-44), of the 12th Airborne Battalion, Devonshire Regiment,  who was killed on 16 July 1944 in Normandy while attached to the 10th Battalion of The Highland Light Infantry. You can read about him at https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/03/ww2-75-16-july-1944-leader-full-of-dash.html