HMS Dasher

Living as I once did on the banks of the River Clyde I am surprised that I never heard of this shocking wartime tragedy. Makes you wonder what else the government are hiding from us. I'm not in full David Icke, the Royal Family are all intergalactic lizards assuming human form mode, but there are undoubtedly things that have been squirreled away as being "not in the public interest".

This article was copied from today's edition of The Scotsman.

Echoes of the past as Clyde reveals casualty of war MoD tried to hide
STEPHEN McGINTY

THE grey waters of the Firth of Clyde were calm as HMS Echo inched along, its sonar system probing not just the depths, but a past shrouded in mystery. Just after 9:30 am on Wednesday morning, the Royal Navy's most sophisticated survey vessel, sat on top of a wreck whose fate was once denied, and whose many victims long forgotten.

In the side room, just off the bridge, a computer screen began to construct a 3-D image of what remains of HMS Dasher, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier which sank in a matter of minutes on 27 March 1943, with the loss of 379 crewmen, the largest loss of life outwith combat in Britain during the Second World War.

In the murky waters, at a depth of almost 500 feet, the rusting hull reflected the sonar pings, and drew a picture of itself, one that revealed the large hole in the hull through which an explosion had torn. As the Royal Navy's team of hydrographers and oceanographers calibrated their systems on the wreck, which revealed that the top of the sunken vessel sat at 124 metres, they remembered the hundreds of men for whom it remains a coffin.

As the vessel's executive officer, Ltd Commander Bruce Badrock explained: "You do think about what took place and those men who lie below."

The new sonar pictures of the wreck of the HMS Dasher, the most detailed ever taken, will be examined by experts and enthusiasts in an attempt to finally answer the question: what actually happened to the HMS Dasher?

Peter Rowlands, the producer of a documentary, The Tragedy of the HMS Dasher, yesterday said he welcomed the survey: "This could be the final piece of the jigsaw. The only previous sonar pictures of the ship were almost unrecognisable, it was just a blur, but today's technology is so much better."

The aircraft carrier was originally built for the US Navy but passed into service with the Royal Navy in July 1942. After a spell in the Mediterranean, she returned to the Clyde in March 1943. Although she set out for Russia, engine trouble forced her to turn back. As she sailed up the Firth of Clyde, a massive explosion tore through the middle of the vessel below the water line.
The explosion was so powerful that the aircraft lift, which weighed two tons, was blown sixty feet into the air. In just eight minutes the ship had sunk, drowning hundreds. Those blown into the water fared little better. As rescue boats set out from Ardrossan 75,000 gallons of fuel ignited, incinerating many of those in the water. Among all the bodies recovered just 23 were identifiable, 13 were buried in Ardrossan Cemetery, seven in Greenock, while three were returned to their families, as requested, for private burial.

Then there was the single body which was removed for a secret mission, to which we will come shortly.

The cause of the explosion has remained a matter of great debate. The official verdict was that petrol vapour had ignited, possibly by a carelessly discarded cigarette. Other theories included a plane crashing on landing and the accidental discharge of a torpedo by a passing submarine. The reason alternative theories began to abound was that the fate of the HMS Dasher was made a national secret.

The government was concerned at the public's reaction to the tragedy and also did not wish to alert the enemy. Newspapers were silenced, while survivors were sworn to secrecy. When Lionel Godfrey, a pilot who had been waiting to land on the Dasher and witnessed the sinking, later visited the Admiralty and repeated what had occurred to a Commander, he was informed that this was: "nonsense".

It was not until decades later that an alternative reason for such a cover-up emerged. Operation Mincemeat was a covert mission to trick the German High Command into believing that allied forces planned to invade Sardinia and the Balkans, while they actually had their eye on Sicily. To achieve this a corpse was dressed up as a fictitious major "William Martin", who was dumped into the sea off Spain with a briefcase containing "secret" invasion plans chained to his wrist. The plans were obtained by the Germans, who promptly redeployed thousands of men away from Sicily to strengthen Sardinia.

The ingenious plot later became a film, The Man Who Never Was. It was claimed for many years that the corpse was that of an alcoholic who died of consuming rat poison. Yet historians now believe that it was a crew member of HMS Dasher, John Melville. In October 2004 relatives of Mr Melville were invited to a memorial service in Cyprus where the Royal Navy finally paid tribute, as a spokesman said: "to the Man Who Never Was."

Yesterday John Steele, the author of The Secrets of HMS Dasher was anxiously awaiting his first glimpse of the new scans of the ship. Mr Steele, who lives in Ardrossan, has pieced together what he believes is the ship's fate, following the paper trail through bundles of declassified documents. He believes that the ship was sunk, not by a petrol-vapour explosion, but by a torpedo, accidentally launched by a passing submarine.

"I think there were two explosions, an external explosion, caused by the torpedo and an internal explosion. I think it was a cock-up, a case of friendly fire and that was the reason for the whole cover-up. I'm looking forward to examining the images."

In the map room of HMS Echo, Lieutenant Commander Adam Muckalt, the operations officer peered at a digital image of HMS Dasher. It is his role, and that of his team, to map the sea-floor, highlighting impediments and dangers for shipping and submarines on exercise. The nature of objects, be it rock formation or wreck, is almost inconsequential.

"We're not historians," he explained. "We don't get involved in interpreting what we find. We can see the gap in the hull in the middle, but I don't know what caused it. We're just happy to pass the information along."