Thanks Jim.
I also lost my maternal grandfather at the Seige of Malta during Operation Pedestal.
Able Seaman WILLIAM GEORGE GILPIN
F2141, Royal Australian Naval Reserve
who died age 31 on 13 August 1942, KIA
Son of Arthur and Violet Gilpin; husband of Louisa May Gilpin, of East Fremantle, Western Australia.
He was a Navy AA gunner attatched to the MV Melborne Star, the ship survived the Air Attack and made it to Malta, but his body was never recovered and was lost at sea.
Quote:
The Melbourne Star carried all the ingredients for creating a minor earthquake. Her cargo included 1350 tons of High Octane Spirit, 700 tons of Kerosene, 1450 tons of High Explosive Shells and Cartridges and several thousand tons of Heavy Oil.
This convoy of August 1942 was the hardest fought of the many convoys through to Malta. Despite the heavy protection provided by their formidable escort and the fact that the merchant ships in the convoy were themselves the largest, fastest and the most modern British and American cargo liners and tankers, the loss of ships was enormous.
Nine of the fourteen merchant ships were lost. Among those was the Waimarama, carrying a cargo of Ammunition and Octane Spirit in cans, the ship was an inferno within seconds of a direct hit from enemy aircraft. Immediately astern was the Melbourne Star.
Melbourne Star's Captain DF MacFarlane already a veteran of Malta Convoy 'Operation Substance' recalls:-
“At 8.10am 13th August 1942 a covey of dive-bombers suddenly came screaming out of the sun and a stick of bombs fell on and around the Waimarama which blew up with a roar and a sheet of flames with clouds of billowing smoke, to disappear in a few seconds.”
“We were showered with debris from this ship,” Captain MacFarlane wrote. “a piece of plating five feet long fell on board. The base of a steel ventilator half an inch thick and 2½ feet high which partly demolished one of our machine gun posts, a piece of angle iron, at the same time, narrowly missing a cadet. The sea was one sheet of fire, and as we were so close we had to steam though it. I put the helm hard to port and had to come down from where I was on the monkey island to the bridge to save myself from being burnt. It seemed as though we had been enveloped in smoke and flames for hours, although it was only minutes, otherwise the ship could not have survived. The flames were leaping mast high, indeed, air pilots reported that at times they reached 2000 feet.”
“The heat was terrific. The air was becoming drier every minute, as though the oxygen was being sucked out of it, as, in fact it was. When we inspected the damage afterwards we found that nearly all the paint on the ship’s side had been burnt away and the bottoms of the life boats reduced to charcoal.”
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I never had the honor of knowing my grandfather or great uncle, its just the way things turned out, but I will never forget their sacrifices.
Lest we forget.