Royal Navy remembrance 2023. We will remember them.
As we pay tribute to those who have given their lives in service of their country, here we look at one example from the thousands of sacrifices made by the sailors of the Royal Navy.
HMS Holcombe was a Hunt class destroyer ordered as part of the war emergency construction programme and launched in Glasgow in April 1942. She is the only RN warship to have carried the name and had a career lasting less than two years, one of 132 British destroyers lost during the Second World War.
On 12th December 1943, a Sunday afternoon, almost 80 years ago, HMS Holcombe and her gallant crew were in action in the Mediterranean. She was one of six naval escorts for a slow convoy of merchant ships that had departed from Gibraltar on 9th December 1943 bound for Egypt. Her sister ship HMS Tynedale, part of the same convoy escort, had been torpedoed with the loss of 7 officers and 63 men earlier that day.
While north-east of Bougie, Algeria and hunting for the submarine that had conducted the attack, Holcombe signalled she had an ASDIC contact and was altering course. A minute later the ship was struck by a Gnat (homing torpedo) fired from a German U-boat, U-593. An explosion blew her stern off and a second magazine explosion accelerated her sinking. She went down rapidly stern-first with her bow sticking up vertically. It took just 4 minutes and 17 seconds for HMS Holcombe to disappear taking 81 men with her. The 87 surviving crew were rescued by American destroyer USS Wainwright.
The names of those lost on the Holcombe are recorded on the Plymouth Naval Memorial and are listed here, the youngest three sailors being just 19 years old.
The following day, USS Wainwright and HMS Calpe located U-593 and depth charged her to the surface. The crew of the U-boat were extremely fortunate as all 51 on board were rescued, becoming prisoners of war. Overall the casualty rate for U-Boat crews was something like 75%. Of around 37,000 German submariners who served, 28,000 were lost and 5,000 were taken prisoner.
In an act of friendship and reconciliation, the survivors of HMS Tyndale invited the CO of U-593, Kapitänleutnant Gerd Kelbling and one of his former crew to the 50th-anniversary commemoration of the sinking held in 1993 in Hexham, England.