on to Royal Navy Ships, August 1939  

For enquiries about access to and working with the original database files. Also any questions on specific sources or information not included, the reader is invited to contact Don Kindell at dkindell1@woh.rr.com.

"Knowledge not shared is lost"

Photographs are mainly courtesy of Steve Johnson of Cyberheritage (CH), Michael Pocock of Maritime Quest (MQ), David Page of  NavyPhotos (NP), Peter Swarbrick of Ships Pictures (SP),  US Naval Historical Centre (US) and their contributors. (Each image is acknowledged by the abbreviation for the main source and name of the individual contributor if appropriate). Naval-History.Net thanks all of them.

Dedication

This work is dedicated to those who have done so much and have gone ahead:

Commander Charles M Stuart R N (retired) who passed away 2l January 1983

David Brindle RN (retired), friend who passed away 2 December 1988

Commander William Edward May RN (retired) who passed away 26 April 1989

John Burgess, friend and mentor who passed away 16 September 1997

J David Brown, friend and mentor who passed away 11 August 2001

George Ransome, friend and mentor who passed away 4 August 2004

In the past, a reader would have to read dozens of books to get even a small amount of data on the early operations of the Royal Navy. This volume is a compilation of thousands of sources, official and unofficial, published and unpublished. These include, to name just a few:  Navy Lists, Pink Lists, Red Lists, Admiralty Officer and Rating Death Ledgers, War Diaries, including the Admiralty War diary, as well  ships logs and reports of proceedings etc, of the Home Fleet, Rosyth, Destroyers, Submarines, Northern Patrol, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Far East.

It is not that every activity, every ship is included. However, a thorough outline of early war activities is presented and will give the reader an idea of just how sweeping and continuous the Royal Navy's activities were. It will also give the serious student a base and hopefully clues for further research.

Some errors will exist. After extensive research, gaps and discrepancies persist despite considerable lengths to resolve them. The years past and destruction or loss of a great many official records and logs make some points impossible to resolve.

The real credit goes to the late Commander W. Edward May, R.N. (retired), Janice Kay, Mary Z. Pain, Allen Cooper, the late Commander Charles M. Stuart, R.N. (retired), CDR Arnold Hague, RNR (retired), and Ken Thomas who gave me innumerable hours at the Public Record Office in Richmond, the late John Burgess and Ken MacPherson for their work on the Canadian Navy and their help and friendship, J. David Brown, Christopher Page, Arnold Hague, Kate Tildersley, Jenny Wraight, and Robert M. Coppock who gave assistance beyond numeration, George Ransome of Old Traffod with his splendid collection of scrapbooks and papers, Pat Best of the Flesh Public Library of Piqua, Ohio, where it all started, and countless others who I hope will not be offended by my not naming them specifically; their assistance invaluable but space prohibits inclusion of them all.

This is the first of two volumes of work (and eventual book), the culmination of a project begun in the 1970s and covering some 4000 pages of text. It started because of my interest in the Royal Navy and its operations in the Second World War. I was always dismayed to find so many sources would mention an operation and a movement describing the forces as “cruisers and destroyers” or “three destroyers.” It was always important to me to find which ships were specifically involved.

In this research work, you will find a very continuous flow of operations, many times giving ships’ day to day activity. My love was always the destroyers and I have tried to include everything of note, and frequently not of note, that involved them. Of course, the main thrust you will find is the Home Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet, but every theatre is covered to the extent it could be researched.

The Fleet lists for August 1939, September 1939 and 10 June 1940 give Commanding Officers of the respective commands and ships, organizations, and locations of the ships for not only British forces, but German, Italian, and USN.

Lost or damaged ships are given with Officers killed named and the ratings shown as number killed or missing. Flight crews of Fleet Air Arm aircraft killed or missing are also named.

Looking back, I have said that years ago I would have given anything to have a fraction of information. Here it is for you to study and enjoy.

Reading Notes

1. Royal Navy (above) includes Dominion and Indian Navy ships

2. Ships lost are in BOLD

3. Whenever possible in the loss of a warship or a merchant ship, the ship responsible for the rescue of survivors of the crew is shown. However, when no rescue ship is shown, this does not infer that there were no survivors, but merely that no information is available.

4. When fully edited, naval events and their locations are listed in the approximate order - Western and mid-Atlantic, Arctic, British Home Waters, NW Europe,  Mediterranean, Central and South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean.

5. In the case of the positions of attacked and sunken ships, frequently you will find a discrepancy between the reported location radioed in haste by the attacked vessel and the location given by the attacking submarine.  This variation could be many miles.  We have attempted to resolve this issue, as much as possible, by giving geographic location as well as latitude and longitude. 

6. All warships and convoys are British and Dominion unless otherwise identified.

7. Times given in the text are Greenwich Mean Time.

8. Ships are listed in the order given in the original source documents.

9. Royal and Dominion Navy officers lost in action are in order of seniority by rank as listed in the Navy List but with regular Royal Navy first, then RNR, followed by RNVR. In this manner a Commander RNVR was technically junior to a Sub Lieutenant RN

10. German destroyer names and longer Italian ship names are generally given in full when first listed in an operation, but abbreviated afterwards with the last name only e.g.LEBERECHT MAAS will appear as MAAS, etc.

11. Merchant ship tonnages are British Registered Tons per Lloyds Register, abbreviated to grt.

13. Equivalent ranks in British & Dominion, French, German and United States Navies:

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revised 6/9/08