Editor's Research: The RCN and Overseas Operations (1939 - 1945)

Early 1942, 50 Officers and 300 Sailors Proceeded to Britain

Some were Soon on British Landing Crafts at Dieppe

The Effingham Division, December 1941 at HMCS Stadacona, Halifax

Volume 1 of Canadian Navy veterans' stories about their experiences

in Combined Operations, including the Dieppe Raid.

 Edited by David and Kit Lewis, Len Birkenes

Introduction:

My father, front row and third from the left in the top photo, wrote that most of the Effingham Division  volunteered for Combined Operations in December, 1941 after having a chat with one of their Petty Officers about the posters ("Volunteers Needed!") that littered a few walls in barracks and mess halls at HMCS Stadacona. 

"Almost to the man," he said. Likely for most not because of the pay or promise of "dangerous duties overseas," or opportunity to man "small crafts." Likely because of "nine days leave" thrown in. Christmas was coming and in nine days a sailor could get back to Ontario from Halifax (3 days!), see his family and girlfriend for 3 days before heading back east to Stadacona (3 days)! Slick advertising I say. 

Eventually about 1,000 sailors from across Canada signed on during WWII, and that is about 1% of all Canadians who joined the Canadian Navy during that time. That's not a big turn out so it should come as no surprise to most people that most people don't know very much about the Canadian sailor's role in Combined Ops, where they went and when. How, why, when, where? Even most of the sailors would come up short answering those questions. The officers knew of course. But generally speaking, ratings didn't have to know (just obey orders).

Because I am likely not officer material, when I come across a story or article that shares a bit of information about Canadians in Combined Ops I like to pass it on. At no extra charge.

What follows are three paragraphs from a Government of Canada source, a lengthy piece, mostly about the larger Navy (the 99% section), free to all online under the heading 'The Royal Canadian Navy and Overseas Operations (1939-1945): Stepping Forward and Upward.

(I recommend readers click here to read the full article (about 9,000 words) written by author Donald E. Graves.)

Below I share the three paragraphs - along with added notes of interest, I hope - that pertain to the Canadian sailors who volunteered for Combined Operations not knowing what actually lay ahead other than "dangerous duties overseas aboard small crafts." FYI Al Kirby of Woodstock, Ontario was taking a Torpedo class or course at Stadacona at the time, and thought volunteering would offer him an opportunity to blow up a few German boats with his own personal MTB, so raised his hand. "I'm in!" Please click here to read more about Al Kirby.

Al Kirby aboard an LCM of the 80th Flotilla, prior to Operation HUSKY

beginning July 10, 1943. Property of Al's son, David Kirby

The back of Al Kirby's LCM photo above

Stepping Forward and Upward:

The RCN also made a substantial contribution to the Combined Operations service, the organization created to carry out raids on occupied Europe and develop the specialized techniques required to conduct the large amphibious landings that marked the latter years of the war.

(From The Watery Maze: The Story of Combined Operations by Bernard Fergusson we read that in the early days of Combined Ops (C. Ops) a couple of people, i.e., PM Winston Churchill and the new Commander of C. Ops, Lord Louis Mountbatten) were heavily concerned about two things. Fergusson writes: "Obviously two of the most urgent problems were the provision of landing ships and craft, and the crews to man them... As an illustration of the magnitude of the crew problem, the Joint Planners, in the very month of Mountbatten's appointment (late October 1941), had persuaded the Chiefs of Staff that our requirements in LCTs alone (Landing Crafts for Tanks) for the eventual invasion (of Europe) would be 2,250 - a figure to daunt almost anybody. And where were the crews to come from? (Emphasis mine. GH) Canada made an offer, which was gratefully accepted, of 50 officers and 300 ratings, but this was a drop in the bucket." Page 93)

Stepping Forward and Upward continues:

In early 1942, 50 officers and 300 ratings proceeded to Britain to form two flotillas of landing craft. On 19 August 1942, 15 officers and 55 ratings from this group were with British landing craft flotillas that participated in Operation Jubilee, the ill-fated raid on Dieppe that cost the Canadian army nearly 3,000 casualties, or about 65 percent of the troops that took part. 

(From Al Kirby's account of the Dieppe Raid:

- Tuesday, August 18th, 1942 (one day before "the ill-fated raid")

The morning of Tuesday, August 18, 1942 dawned as bright and full of hope as each day for the previous week had done. After breakfast, we were met at R-135 by Sub Lieutenant Leach and told that we had a busy day ahead of us. "Is this the big day Sir?" I asked, the first time that I had a chance to talk to him, and he replied, "What big day?" "Well....the day of the exercise. What all this fuss is about," I said. "Oh....we have a lot to do yet, but I expect we will be told in good time," was his reply. He seemed to me to be going a long way out of his way to keep something from us. I could not understand why an exercise would have to be so secret.

With the war now three years old, we were quite accustomed to the need for security and you can be sure that we were all quite happy as our ships sailed out of harbour on their various missions, that Naval security was reasonably good. Often, at sea, we would wonder if the enemy knew just where we were and what we were doing, whether we were unknowingly sailing into a trap that was about to spring, sending us all into oblivion, or, worse still, leaving us struggling in the icy North Atlantic, grasping at the flotsam of our sinking ship. I could not help but be impressed by the number of landing craft here. We all seemed to be preparing for something really big. There had been some talk for some little time about a second front, but no one expected anything like that this year.

About mid morning, a Navy lorry arrived on the bank nearest our landing craft, and we were issued a World War I Lewis gun, a brand new Thompson sub machine gun and a case of ammunition for each weapon. Please click here to read Kirby's full account of the Dieppe Raid.)

"Canadians in Combined Operations try out new weapons"

L-R, C. Rose, S. Dewey (?), Lloyd Evans - English Channel

Photo by Lloyd Evans, circa 1942

Al Kirby (far right) meets with other WW2 Combined Ops veterans

Photo from Combined Operations by Clayton Marks, London

Stepping Forward and Upward continues:

In a letter home written shortly afterward, Sub-Lieutenant D. Ramsay, RCNVR, provided a dramatic kaleidoscope of the images he had witnessed that terrible day (August 19, 1942), including:

a German armed trawler blown clear out of the water by one of our destroyers; a five-inch shell right through from one side to the other on the boat next to me without exploding; the boat officer, Skipper Jones, RNR (ex-Trawlerman as you can guess) screaming invectives at the Jerry and coming out once in a while with the famous Jonesian saying, “get stuffed;” a large houseful of Jerry machine gunners pasting hell out of anybody who dared come near the beach; a Ju 88 whose wing was cut in half by AB [Able-Bodied Seaman] Mitchinson of Ontario in the boat astern (see photo directly below);

Marksman (!) AB Seaman Norm Mitchinson (centre oval) at HMCS Stadacona

(Alas! Dieppe fatality Aug. 19 1942, Richard Cavanaugh, 2nd row, 2nd left)

Sub-Lieutenant D. Ramsay's eye-witness account concludes:

a plane swooping down low behind a destroyer and letting go a 2000 lb. bomb, which ricocheted over the mast and burst about 10 yards on the starboard bow; peeking over the cox’ns box and looking into the smoking cannon of an Me 109. I’m here to state that that was close.2

(Please click here to read the full letter from Sub. Lt. Ramsay to his father as found in Combined Operations by Londoner Clayton Marks, pages 63 - 65)

And Stepping Forward and Upward* concludes:

Organized as four distinctly RCN flotillas, Canadian Combined Operations personnel then took part in Operations Torch (the landing in North Africa in November 1942), Husky (the Sicily landing in July 1943) and Baytown (the Italy landing that September). The achievements of the Canadian flotillas were almost unknown in Canada, much to the chagrin of NSHQ, which became determined that the same case would not apply with the RCN’s Tribal-class destroyers when they entered service.

The "four distinctly RCN flotillas" of landing craft (LCAs and LCMs) the author is referring to are likely the 55th, 61st, 80th and 81st Flotillas as listed on the following map re the invasion of Sicily beginning July 10, 1943. My father was a member of the 80th Flotilla and very proud of it.

Map of Sicily, Operation HUSKY, found in Combined Operations pg. 76

Doug Harrison (center) assists American troops from LCA428 at Beach Z,

Arzeu, North Africa in November 1942, Operation TORCH. Photo IWM

*Stepping Forward and Upward was highlighted above because the three paragraphs I have shared here actually comprise 4% of the total article, not the 1% I would have expected. Things are looking upward!

Please click here for more information about the origins, roles and history of the members of the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve who volunteered for Combined Operations during WWII.

Comments or questions can be emailed to me at gordh7700@gmail.com

Unattributed Photos GH