WW2 1939-45 Naval Memorials In The United Kingdom Portsmouth Intro & Part VI

For sale is a WW2 1939-45 Naval Memorials In The United Kingdom Portsmouth Intro & Part VI Booklets. 

The introduction booklet in date order goes over the loses to the merchant navy and Royal Navy losses, due to enemy action, stating the ship, what the ship was doing and how many lives lost. The part VI booklet goes over all the lives lost and a little bit about each fallen soldier.

The first is titled: 

“MEMORIAL REGISTER, 1939-1945, NAVAL MEMORIALS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, Introduction to the Registers, PORTSMOUTH.” Published 1952.

The second titled: 

“MEMORIAL REGISTER, 1939-1945, NAVAL MEMORIALS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, PORTSMOUTH, Part VI.” Published 1953.

The introduction booklet Intro states:

“It has been the British destiny to venture greatly at sea, in peace and in war, and the time is not yet in sight when this long history will be ended. A poet of the period of Nelson, writing an imaginative lyric on the after-lives of an English family of typical children who "grew in beauty side by side", and their widely sundered graves, naturally alluded to the grave of one of them in the deep sea. The same thought persists still and is sure to arise whenever the immense conflicts of the modern world are considered.

Memorials in the United Kingdom at Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Liverpool, Lowestoft and Lee-on-the-Solent express the cost in lives of the war at sea which began at once on the declaration of hostilities and went on without respite until the surrender of Japan in August 1945. This sea war cannot be divided into campaigns like the war on land. A ship might at one time be engaged against U-boats in the Atlantic, soon after in Mediterranean waters, and later in the Indian Ocean or further east. A notion of ubiquity and almost omnipotence might well attend the progress of the naval forces of the British Commonwealth and Empire; and these forces, it is clear, contributed mightily to the ultimate victory.

Their tasks were huge. First, it was theirs to ensure the flow of supplies to Britain, of supplies and troops out of Britain to all theatres of war, of troops from Dominions, Colonies and the United States into Britain and thence again all over the world. Meanwhile they met the menace of German U-boats in the North and South Atlantic, of Italian and German submarines in the Mediterranean, of Japanese submarines elsewhere; they fought off attacks by Germany's surface raiders; and even in mid- ocean they had to be prepared for opposition from the air. These forces, which escorted troop and supply convoys in all directions, were exposed to extreme dangers on two routes especially those from Britain to Northern Russia and to Malta: they delivered abundant supplies to the Russians, and enabled Malta to remain and to thrive as a base for Mediterranean warfare. Some details may make their problems plainer. In 1942, from the English Channel to waters near Brazil and off the Cape of Good Hope, enemy submarines sank six and a quarter million tons of Allied shipping. Even so, in the autumn of 1942, some 350 ships in seven convoys carried the Allied Expeditionary Force to North Africa without loss. By December 1944 ten and a half million troops had been carried to their destinations, less than three thousand had been lost at sea.

This skilful and checkless transportation shed some gleams of comfort on what were for the Allies hours of darkness; such were the evacuations from Norway, Greece, Crete and Dunkirk. Those enterprises and the large-scale invasions made famous news; yet the retrospect equally includes great and difficult duties like the carrying of troops from Britain to the Continent in 1939-40; to the Middle East (which became a matter of the long route round the Cape of Good Hope); to India, Burma and Malaya; from India to Egypt, East Africa and Iraq; from Australia and New Zealand to Malaya and the Middle East; from Canada to Hong Kong, to Britain and away to the Mediterranean and North-West Europe.

Next, the amphibious operations of the war were of a new magnitude. Five thousand ships sailed to Normandy in June 1944. But scores of smaller " combined operations" were called for. A detachment of troops might be borne to the French coast for the purpose of bringing back a single Frenchman with his information. Dieppe was raided, Madagascar invaded, there were descents on the coast of Norway; on all such occasions the Navies co-operated closely with the land and air forces. It was so too in the hunting of submarines with the aircraft of Coastal Command, in supporting land forces on many shores by gunnery from sea, and (to give one more example) in reinforcing and supplying the Eighth Army in Libya.

What then of naval battles? During the war these, in the old style, hardly occurred. The Germans had no real fleet to deploy, and their heavy ships, singly or in pairs, were used as raiders. The Italians, whose one large-scale encounter with the British Fleet (the battle of Matapan) was a defeat, mainly tried to preserve their navy. Even the Japanese usually had that policy, and divided their forces. But while there were no Grand Fleet battles, encounters and skirmishes between light forces were very numerous, involving destroyers, motor torpedo-boats, motor gun-boats, and launches; the fight against the submarine also never slackened. Allied submarines constantly threatened the supply routes of the Germans, Italians and Japanese. Midget sub- marines in September 1943 daringly disabled the Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord, and in July 1945 the Japanese cruiser Takao.

The minesweepers, on whose work so much depended, suffered relatively heavy losses while they kept the approaches to home ports clear, or in each of the major amphibious operations led the way into enemy defences. Their labours were only intensified when actual war ceased, and they tried to make the seas safe at the earliest moment for the shipping of all nations. In all this men of the Royal Naval Patrol Service played an admirable part. They have their own memorial, as do those of the Fleet Air Arm, many of whose exploits are noted in the general survey of the naval war farther on in this introduction. The aircraft-carrier, which proved its importance during this war, was concerned in their actions; but they served in less expected ways and places. Some of their planes, for example, acted as spotters and flare-droppers to mark targets for bombers in the Western Desert; some carried out

low bombing and reconnaissance before the battle of El Alamein. No important naval operation could omit the Fleet Air Arm, and one of its separate strokes was the raid on Taranto in November 1940, a disaster for the Italian Navy. Aircraft from the Victorious and the Ark Royal shared in the extinction of the Bismarck; when the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen were making their escape up the English channel, Swordfish of the Fleet Air Arm boldly attacked them. The seven aircraft- carriers lost during the war were Ark Royal, Avenger, Courageous, Dasher, Eagle, Glorious, and Hermes.

The men of the Merchant Navy, whose annals increased in honour in the contest, will also have their own memorials. It may be remembered that many of them accepted service with the Royal Navy on auxiliary vessels; these men are com- memorated at Liverpool. To mention the Rawalpindi and the Jervis Bay is to recall the sacrifice for freedom of these merchant seamen in general.

No attempt is made to give here a complete list of ship losses, but a summary shows those of the Royal Navy as 1,500 of all classes, apart from 20 landing ships and over 1,300 landing craft and barges: the Royal Canadian Navy lost 22 ships, the Royal Australian Navy 12 (three cruisers among them), the Royal Indian Navy 2, the Royal New Zealand Navy 3 small ships, the South African Naval Forces 4. Aboard H.M.S. Neptune, sunk in 1941, there were over 300 New Zealand officers and men. The losses in all classes of ships sustained by the enemy are added by way of comparison: Germany lost 1,600 and more, many of them scuttled or destroyed in the last days of the war, Italy 613, and Japan 713. In the following chronological table the most noteworthy actions of the sea war are set out.”

These are rare and in excellent condition. 

These will be sent via royal mail tracked 24 and dispatched within two working days.