https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/s...aled-vlx9680rp
Secret history behind HMS Glorious disaster during Second World War revealed
Britain’s worst naval disaster in the Second World War resulted from an ambitious secret mission rather than the folly of the main warship’s commander, a new investigation by the grandson of one of the victims has concluded.
Eighty years ago tomorrow, on June 8, 1940, the UK’s largest and fastest aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, and its two destroyer escorts HMS Ardent and HMS Acasta, were sunk in a devastating assault by German battleships. In total 1,519 men died, making it the biggest single loss of life at sea for the UK during the war. Just 41 seamen survived, rescued when Norwegian fishing boats found them three days later.
In recent decades Captain Guy D’Oyly Hughes, commander of the Glorious, has been cast as an arrogant villain and held responsible for the disaster.
However Ben Barker, whose grandfather Lieutenant Commander J. F. “Ben” Barker commanded the Ardent and died in the battle, has uncovered fresh evidence that leads to a rival theory. It holds that Captain D’Oyly Hughes was not indulging a petty feud, but pursuing a courageous mission devised by Winston Churchill.
The three Royal Navy ships had initially been part of an operation to evacuate British forces from Norway, almost simultaneous with the retreat at Dunkirk, and had rescued two squadrons of RAF Hurricane and Gladiator fighter planes. Instead of waiting to travel back home with the larger, well-fortified convoy, the trio of ships set sail independently, with only light protection, across the Norwegian sea. Here they were intercepted and attacked by the formidable German battlecruisers
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, after warnings from Bletchley Park and Norwegian intelligence about their suspected presence had gone awry.
All three British ships were hit and sunk in an explosion of flames and smoke – captured on German newsreel. The tragedy prompted myriad questions about what the trio of ships had been doing and why they had been sailing alone without better protection. The Admiralty Board of Enquiry made a swift assessment and sealed its findings until 2041 – making it the only aircraft carrier loss to be subjected to a 100-year period of secrecy.
Public interest in the controversy refused to subside, however, and in 1946 the government was forced to publish a brief account of what had happened. It stated the aircraft carrier had been short of fuel and therefore had decided to speed home ahead of the convoy. The account made no sense and was roundly regarded as implausible. It left a vacuum for alternative explanations and one was put forward in 1980 by the navy’s official historian.
This account, published in
The Sunday Times, blamed the episode on the supposedly foolish, tyrannical behaviour of Captain D’Oyly Hughes, claiming he decided to rush home to refer a senior aviator, with whom he was embroiled in a feud, to court martial.
In 1997 Mr Barker examined the circumstances around the sinking of the ships for a documentary and came to a similar conclusion. He felt he had not got to the bottom of matters, however, and continued to investigate. He has since uncovered a compelling trail of evidence linking HMS Glorious to Churchill’s “Operation Paul”, a secret plan to attack neutral Sweden and stop the export of iron ore to Hitler’s Germany.
A month before the sinking of the Glorious, Captain D’Oyly Hughes had lunched with Admiral Reggie Drax, an operational commander of the navy and mine-laying expert, in London before the pair attended a meeting with Churchill at the Admiralty. Captain D’Oyly Hughes then played a senior role in a dry run for Operation Paul, practising the daring plan for Swordfish aircraft to lay mines in the strategic Swedish port of Lulea.
In early June Churchill gave instructions for the secret operation to commence. While some paperwork noted that HMS Ark Royal, also in Norway to evacuate British forces, was earmarked to lead the mission, other evidence found by Mr Barker suggested that HMS Glorious was substituted in – and that was why the ship had sailed independently the day it was sunk. Cryptic references were made to the Glorious in the aftermath by senior mandarins and Churchill himself, but further inquiries into the episode were shut down.
German naval war reports shed some light on the battle that destroyed the British aircraft carrier group, recording the extraordinary courage of the ships’ crew as they were under attack. Ardent laid smoke to disguise Glorious, while Acasta hit the enemy battlecruiser Scharnhorst with a torpedo that killed 53 German sailors. The captain of the Scharnhorst noted the “audacity and pluck” of the destroyers even though “success was impossible from the start”. However, Victoria Cross recommendations for their commanders were turned down in what Mr Barker argued was a further bid to block scrutiny of why they had been at sea that day.
Although extensive details about Operation Paul are recorded in war cabinet minutes, Churchill omitted to mention the plan in his memoirs – perhaps disinclined to draw attention to an abortive mission to attack a neutral player during the conflict.
Drawing together the pieces of the jigsaw, Mr Barker argued a “discernible picture has emerged” of the participation of the Glorious, Ardent and Acasta in Operation Paul, a role that was then covered up in Whitehall. He told
The Times: “In covering their tracks, the Admiralty painted a picture of incompetence but to my delight I discovered the opposite was true. The reality is a story of great courage and bravery that deserves its place amongst the Navy’s greatest feats.”
Leading naval historian Andrew Lambert, of King’s College London, threw his support behind Mr Barker’s theory, saying the evidence was compelling and “too high to be mere coincidence”. It suggested “a great injustice has been done by maintaining secrecy on an operation of such audacity, and a battle in which the Royal Navy displayed its characteristic skill and daring in adversity”, Professor Lambert added.
The new account has also been welcomed by Jannie Sayer, daughter of Captain D’Oyly Hughes, who said: “It has been a long haul — of nearly 80 years — to live with the ignominy that has been dealt out to my father and it has given us much joy and relief to see such firm evidence that he was only obeying orders.”