27th August 1943. Remember HMS Egret.

 

The Sloop HMS Egret.

The U-boats out of occupied France made use of Spanish and Portuguese neutrality to hug the coast of the Bay of Biscay to attack, so depth charges were deployed by sloops such as Egret.

HMS Egret was the lead ship of her Class. Built by J. Samuel White at Cowes, she was launched on 31st May 1938, and as with other sloops, used in a convoy defence role. However, sadly, Today in 1943, she suffered the fate of being the first ship to be sunk by air-to- ground guided missile: 198 lives were lost, with only 35 survivors.(1)

The Germans had just started testing a new guided missile, the Henschel Hs 293, (nicknamed by the Navy, ‘Chase-me- Charlie’). It had a range of up to 11 miles, and guided to its target by the pilot.(2)

On board the Egret, which had electronic surveillance, were four RAF technicians involved in discovering more about the missile, which had been used two days earlier against The 40th Support Group, when the Landguard and the Bideford were hit and damaged.(3)

The irony for the Egret, was that it happened on the day when 40th Group had been replaced by that of the 1st Group. which included also the sloops Pelican, Jed, Rother and Spey, as well as the destroyer Evenlode.

One of the two covering destroyers was HMCS Athabaskan (Canadian), whilst another HMS Grenville, commanded by Roger Hill was attacked, but managed to out-turn the missile.

The Egret’s sinking led to anti-U-boat patrols in the Bay of Biscay being suspended, after which the Navy employed smoke screens and short range fire in an effort to reduce the missiles’ effectiveness.

What happened on that tragic day, in the Bay of Biscay was to revolutionize naval warfare, as we saw later in the Falklands’ War, where the Exocet was to cause such damage.

In 2012 the widow of Norman Smith, killed on the Egret, threw a bouquet into the water off Cape Finisterre, in remembrance of the tragedy. back in 1943 she had received the customary terse telegram of his loss: ‘ND Smith, HMS Egret, missing, presumed lost at sea’.

(1) Other ships in the Egret Class were: Aukland (ex Heron), lost 24th June 1941, and Pelican.

(2) The British use a lot of jocular phrases in wartime as in Doodlebug for the VI weapon.

(3) In any total of lives lost it was policy to separate naval personnel from the rest, which in this case included 4 RAF.

Ref: Roger Hill 1975. The Destroyer Captain.

Ref: anti-ship missiles a revolution in naval warfare. Maj. Sim Stephens 1998. mindef.gov.1989

Ref: Milner,Mark 1994 Uni of Toronto Press.

Ref; Pic wikipedia.org HMS Egret.

Next Post Looks at Charles Dickens and his public readings.