RAID ALERT

I am a W London/Middlesex lad, but I remember a lot from the war. I was 7 in 1940. Thinking about it, I dare say I could write a small book. Filled with the terrible and the funny and the downright hilarious. Brought up on a diet of Aesop's fables and Snow White & the 7 Dwarves, I had started off with some damn weird ideas about war. Hitler soon put me straight. Within a few months I was an expert plane spotter and an avid collector of shrapnel, incendiary bomb bits, cartridge cases and shell caps. My friends and I were also keeping tabs on all the suspicious characters in the village. We were convinced that most were spies. We must have been the founder members of Conspirators Unlimited.

The Day War Broke Out - Anyone remember Rob Wilton? - I was playing on the veranda. It was a lovely day and my tear-filled mum shushed me.
The radio announcer asked those with radios to turn up the volume and throw their windows wide so that those without radios could hear an important
announcement by the Prime Minister. "Oh dear!" wailed me mum, "That bloody Shickelgrubber is going to drop bombs on us."

Bombs were like black cannon balls with fizzy fuses - Funf was always blowing himself up with them in my comics. I immediately had visions of my dad
catching them and throwing them back at the aeroplanes.

When it all started, we used to sleep in the shelter every night, but the novelty soon wore off. It was cold, damp, dark and smelly. Granddad, ex-RSM 4th Bn Royal
Fusiliers, was an air raid warden. He would go on watch when the siren sounded and only get us to the shelter if things came our way.

However, in March 1941, there was no air raid warning siren and we were in our beds when two bombs landed in the street behind us. The curtains were in shreds,
so no lights. The floor was littered with glass, so getting out of bed wasn't easy.

We could hear granddad damning someone's eyes in the next room and when he eventually appeared, he was just in boots and long-johns. His torch, his whistle
and his clothes had all disappeared.

Going down the back path to the shelter, I saw that a house at the back was on fire. Not licking flames, but a great roaring blast of white heat like a blowlamp. T
he walls were red hot and I will always remember the beautiful moving patterns of orange, yellow and red, as the draft randomly cooled the brickwork.

Granddad reported for duty at the local ARP shelter wearing mum's coat. (More of his adventures that night in another episode.) His clothes, which he had left
on a chair with his torch and whistle on top, ready for immediate action, were eventually found up the bedroom chimney. A long way up the chimney. Sucked or
blown there by the vagaries of bomb blast. The blast that had removed most of the roof tiles from some houses while leaving others untouched. All of our downstairs
doors were blown in or out and most of the windows were shattered.

The worst thing about it? Dust. Thick white gritty dust. It was everywhere. We all looked like ghosts, and it wasn't like now with all the fancy shampoos and c
onditioners. We had war-time soap. For days, everyone was complaining that they still couldn't get a comb through their hair.

Council workers were soon on site. They threw tarpaulins over the roofs and hammered sheets of tarred paper over the broken windows. Until it was our turn to get replacement glass, we lived in a permanent black-out. However, we were all still alive. Some people had been injured, but none badly. For most people from that time, September 1940 was memorable for two reasons, the wonderful weather and the Battle of Britain. I have a bonus memory.
I was in my W London garden watching a dog-fight off to the south. Little dots were weaving patterns in the brilliant blue sky. White vapour trails left by the banking, diving, looping aeroplanes engaged in the battle and the black, oily, smoking threads left by those who, their battle over, were dropping from the tourney. All was accompanied by the faint rattle of gun-fire.

I stood fascinated, for the melee appeared to coming my way. The dots became vague shapes and the noise of battle were coming clearer. All the time I was
yelling to my mum, "They got another one, mum. He's on fire! He's spinning!" Then one of the shapes took on the form and then the colour of an identifiable
plane - a Messerschmitt 109 - as it dived gently towards me. It trailed two ribbons of smoke, one white and one black, which curled upon one another to make
yet another pattern.

As it got nearer I could see that it was going to pass very, very low and just a little off to my left. Up very close, I saw it was an extremely lethal looking machine,

but also very pretty. It was eye-catching blues and greens with a bright yellow nose and a red spinner on the propeller. The engine was throttled back and popping
and banging like a well tuned racing car. The hood was gone and I am sure that the pilot's eyes and mine met for a fraction of a second. Just as I was calculating
where it was going to hit the ground, the thin wispy ribbons of smoke increased into massive plumes. Simultaneously, the engine roared deafeningly as the pilot
hauled the nose up into an almost vertical climb. As it went higher it was rolling slowly until, when it was over on its back, the smoke cut off, the pilot fell from the
cockpit and the engine noise ceased abruptly. All this I saw just before they fell out of sight beyond the roof of our house.

I stormed through the house, but by the time I made it to the front garden, nothing was to be seen except a thinning column of smoke. No falling aeroplane, no sign
of a pilot dangling from a parachute. I was all for rushing off on my new 18ins two-wheeler to find it, but mum was adamant.

I never knew for sure what became of that plane or its pilot. Rumours abounded, as they did in wartime. A German pilot, with his parachute gathered up under his arm, was reported to have knocked on a front door in Hounslow, Isleworth, Richmond, Brentford and all stops to Yarmouth (All depending on where the story-teller lived.) and offered his pistol to the lady of the house. She, it was said, had examined it closely and handed it back before declaring that such things were dangerous and should be kept out of sight.

Everyone laughed, and, by golly, we were in serious need of a little humour in those days. And a little 8 year old boy had something to tell all his mates for years
to come.

Ernie Bull
Bristol

Len's  Day to remember

Mr Len Strong (RAF)   WHAT a day to remember, recalls RAF photographer Len Strong of Ripley. His memories of May 8, 1945, are still vivid of the time he joined hundreds of people to celebrate the end of the war in Europe on Black pool Promenade. Said Mr Stong, (Len came to Derby from New Alresford in Hampshire), ‘Following a week’s leave in Ripley with my wife Marie and our newly arrived baby daughter, I had to return to Blackpool on		Mrs Marie Strong (WAAF) May 8, and catch the train from Derby at mid-day. “On Siddals Road, I had to run the gauntlet of a bunch of American GI’s who tried to get me to drink from a chamber pot of ale which they were passing round. “I arrived back in Blackpool and after dumping my kit in the billet, joined my mates and hundreds of people on the prom,’ We all congregated around Yates Wine Lodge, where the drinks were flowing freely and later a bonfire was lit on the sands and people were singing and dancing to the music of Felix Mendellsohn and Harry Lester and His Hay- seeds, who had come out from the theatres.”		‘. East Midlands Mr Strong, who joined the RAF in 1940, met Marie a WAAF while he was serving at RAF Station Castle Donington (now East Midlands Airport. She was a Ripley girl and the couple were married at Ripley Parish Church in September 1943. Before the D-Day landings, Mr Strong was attached to 105 Mosquito Squadron in Cambridgeshire, where they flew many sorties over the French Coast line to photograph the German defences. In May 1945 with the end of the German war in sight, Mr Strong was put on draft for Burma and sent to Blackpool to be kitted out and await date for embarkation. He never did get to Burma, the Americans dropped the A-bomb and VJ-day came along before their draft sailed, so he swapped his khaki-drill shorts for a fur-lined anorak and was sent to Iceland for 12 months until his demob in July 1946.
Kindly contributed by Len Strong, Derby, from a local newspaper to see more about his life visit Len's Corner

MEMORIES OF THE WAR IN HAMPSHIRE

I was 14 at the outbreak of war, remember Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announcing it on the radio at 11am. I was going for a walk with my mate and Mum
said "take your gas-mask" so off we went with our little cardboard box slung over the shoulder. At 14 years of age it all seemed like a big adventure to us, not
realising the terrible consequences that lay ahead. I joined the LDV (local defence volunteers) later called the Home Guard, as a messenger boy and Dad and
other middle aged men formed the local H.G. company and trained at Chilcomb ranges with 22 rifles. We took turns in mounting a dawn and dusk watch for
parachutists on the local water tower armed with a garden fork and wooden cudgel. If we had seen any enemy I would have run a mile!!.
After Dunkirk in 1940-41 the bombing started. Mum was lying terminally ill in bed with cancer and Dad & I used to stand in her bedroom looking across the horizon
at thegunfire and bomb bursts as the searchlights swept the sky over Portsmouth and Southampton. One night a plane came low overhead and dropped a stick of
incendiary bombs in the next avenue and a HE bomb which exploded at nearby Pinglestone. It had jettisoned its load before crashing on Bramdean Common. Next
day some of my pals and I cycled over to look at the wreckage. It was a Junkers 88 and the bodies of the crew were laid out on a tarpaulin guarded by a few
soldiers of the Pioneer Corps. They were later given a full military funeral and buried in Alresford cemetery. It was the first time but not the last I regret to say,
that I had seen dead bodies as the result of war.
My Mum passed away in May 1941, and left alone with Dad
I guess I became a bit of a tearaway, so when two of my mates who were older than I, got their calling up papers I said to Dad "I'm going to join the RAF". He said
I was too young but I found my birth certificate and made a crude job of altering the year from 1925 to 1923 and off I went to Southampton recruiting depot and
signed on. So at 16 I passed for 18 and became a member of HM forces and the rest, as they say, is history, but at 80 years of age I thank God I'm still around
with my memories.
Len Strong.

RHUBARB RHUBARB

Earlier, I mentioned my grandfather, 1151 RSM COOK, Ernest, City of London Regiment, or the Royal Fusiliers.

He joined up in 1894, served in Ireland, S Africa and India in the 2nd Battalion, then in the 4th Battalion stationed mostly at Hounslow Barracks. He served until
1919. He had a very loud parade ground voice and it was said that when he was on parade in the Barracks, he could be heard in Hounslow High Street, well over
a mile away.

His voice lent him further fame during the war. He went on ARP watch at the first wail of the sirens and his stentorian, "Take Cover!" sent many a neighbour bustling to the shelter. Especially in the later years of the V1 doodlebug threat.

According to my mum, a letter to the local paper at the end of the war, was a thank you to the unknown man with the mighty voice who kept such a splendid watch throughout the war

The doodlebugs (VI flying bombs) were a nuisance at first, but once we got to know their nasty habits, we became a little blasé about the damned things. As boys, we would climb up somewhere to get a sight of them, not that they were that exciting to see, but to know where they were headed. If need be, ready to dive for cover if the engine cut.

One was heading our way, one time, when the engine did die, but we could see that it was going to fall short of us, so we watched as it went down behind some
houses. We guessed, into the market garden on the other side of the railway. A big shower of smoke and dirt burst upwards followed by a massive bang. And
then the funniest thing. It was raining rhubarb. Long sticks of it parachuting down on those big leaves. Some were spinning, and so fast that they wobbled violently
until the sticks snapped under the strain.

Then we did what anyone would do in those days. We gathered up as much rhubarb as we could and rushed off home to our mums. Heroes returning with freebees.

We watched another go down, but there was no bang, so we were off on our bikes to look for it. It was hanging in a tree in Crane Park, Just north of the A316
Chertsey Road, Whitton. Its fall had been arrested by several trees by the look of them and the one it was in was badly smashed. We went to a house nearby to
ask them to call the police. The police said that they'd had no V1 reported in the area and the man chased us off for making a fool of him. Our first reaction was
o find some way to set the bloody thing off. Then they'd have their report! We decided that it was far to risky. One of my pals had a policeman dad, so we went
and told him. When we went back, the road was closed off and the army was there.

When my grandfather reported to the wardens' post, he swapped mum's coat for a spare pair of dungarees. I can only imagine how embarrassed he must have
been. This strict disciplinarian had been trained and, indeed, had trained others how to lay their clothes out so they could be donned in total darkness, and there
he was, his dignity relying on an ill-fitting lady's coat.

However, as he told us later that morning, there were other fish to fry. He and the others wanted to set out immediately to assist any trapped and wounded, but
were prevented by their rather overbearing and somewhat pompous chief warden. A short-service officer who, on the strength of an Oxford accent, a few weeks
training and a staff job, was a major and outranked grandfather. He, a career soldier, an RSM with over 25 years service. What rankled him even more, was that
he knew him. He was also a Royal Fusilier whom he had served with for a while in Dover. And he didn't like him one little bit.

Anyway the major ordered them to stay behind until he had, "Done a full recce of the situation. No use all rushing about in all directions at once, don't you know!".
" So they waited while he went off on his bike. And they waited a frustratingly long time before deciding they should go and see what was up.

They found the poor man in a bomb crater. Up to his neck in ice cold water, and unable to climb out. London clay is awfully slippery stuff when it's wet. They
fished him out, but they obviously found it hard not to laugh at the poor man. As it turned out, there were no trapped and injured, just that burned out house.
The walls still glowing red hot, according to granddad, and escaping gas was burning in an enormous yellow flare some 20 feet high. Everyone was concerned that
Jerry would use it as a marker for another stick or two of high explosive.

One bomb had created the water-filled 'warden trap' slap bang in the middle of the road and the second had been a direct hit on the street shelter in the turning circle
at the end of the road. However, by good fortune, it was empty. Had the sirens sounded in time, the story may have ended on a much graver note.

As it was, it ended in guffaws of laughter. A soaking wet and very angry major had gone off home, carrying his battered bike. Someone had purloined his spare
dungarees.

Footnote;
The wardens' post had been on the corner of Hospital Bridge Road and Nelson Road, Whitton. A couple of years ago, gas board contractors excavated the site to
install some new valves and meters. I happened to be passing when they uncovered one wall of the dugout. Amazingly, it still bore the notice board - complete with
a sign. I wanted to get a picture, but the man on the JCB didn't have time. The wall went in the lorry as I watched.

Ernie Bull
Bristol

A SUBMARINERS TALE
I was PO Tel of HMS/M Stratagem; we were on passage to Trincomalee Ceylon
were alongside at Port Said. I was duty PO and was on watch with the usual orders, if no response to the challenge shoot when the intruder approaches nearer than
200 yards from the Submarine.
All was quiet until late evening when there was loud shouting in the local language and this was overshadowed by a duet being sung in English, it was a loud but poor
rendering of the Valentine my grandfather used to sing when coming home from the local pub, "Bluebells I'll gather if you will be mine!"
I challenged and received a response. A few minutes later 'No 1 and the navigator came into view still singing, followed by a local taxi driver demanding payment,
I stopped him and then paid the fare demanded (receiving same from No1 next morning.
We continued down the Suez canal with a pilot at a speed above the 5 knots permitted thereby causing the Dhows moored shore so that a number received broken
masts. The pilot said it was OK they would be paid by the Navy for any damage.
When we reached the Bitter lakes we got a big surprise, because there appeared to be the bulk of the Italian Fleet moored there, as we passed through the middle
of them there were crowds of Italian sailors on the decks cheering and waving their caps!
Later as we were heading down the red sea for Aden I was on the conning tower having a breather and saw a huge black cloud appearing over the mountains on
the starboard side. We had repainted the boat from blue to green in Port Said because blue was too easy for aircraft to spot when we were dived. The cloud turned
out to be a swarm of thousands of Locust from Eritrea, and as soon as they saw the green boat they started to dive on us. The Duty officer ordered crash dive and
as the last man was closing the conning tower hatch the locusts arrived, When we surfaced some time later the hatch was covered with crushed locusts.
Next we sighted a large Dhow heading from South to North ahead of us. Four of the occupants dived over the side and headed for us, the Captain ordered diving
station and after we had cleared the area he told us that he had ordered the dive because it was a boat carrying Lepers. they were being taken to an island.
We had several new members on board and a three badge seaman told them that as we progressed down the red Sea there would be a sudden drop as we passed
the gap where Moses led the Jews from Egypt, he also told them that when we reached Aden to look for the live Mermaid in a large aquarium in the centre of Aden.
We were alongside at Aden only a few Days and were re-provisioning before leaving for Trincomalee and the depot ship HMS Maidstone.
Several locals came with a handcart full of newly killed and butchered Yak meat, we stowed it in the small house sixes fridge, the only refrigeration we had. First day
out the coxswain opened the fridge to get meat for the meal and the whole mess stunk like a sewer, we then had to ditch the lot overboard and were back as before
with hard tack and pilchards in tomato sauce in the large oval cans.
Several days later we were each called to see a huge column of black twisting and turning; about 20 miles away, it actually rained small fish on the boat as the height
and size of the column was so great.
We finally arrived at Trincomalee and the Maidstone and were able to enjoy fresh meat and bread etc

Ben Skeates
An ex Hampshire Lad!

In discussing the war with a cyber-friend recently, I realised that there are a few false impressions out there. For us on the 'home front', war was not a 24/7 thing.
The effects of war were always there, for sure, but the danger and the threats to life and limb came in episodes. Usually signalled by the undulating wailing of the
sirens, and after the Battle of Britain, invariably during the night. In between times we children went to school, housewives went shopping, people went to work. We
went on picnics, swimming, out to play, on bike rides, etc.. Although, come to think of it, not kite flying. That was an arrestable offence.

I rarely, if ever, missed my Friday evening outing to the cinema with my grandfather. (They used to put up a slide from time to time. "Air Raid in Progress. Patrons
wishing to leave the cinema can collect a complimentary ticket in the foyer." Few ever left.) People went dancing and to the theatre and restaurants (If they had the
food coupons to spare.) and to football or cricket matches. They had to decide what to do in the event of a raid, but most chose to do nothing. Going down a
shelter would not preserve one from a direct hit. Most approached it nonchalantly saying, "If a bomb has your name on it, you wont outrun it."

Although I remember VE Day, I never remembered the date. Surprise, surprise! Seems it was 60 years ago today. Watching the newsreels from those heady days,

I am conscious of one more thing. It was all grey.

For the sake of you younger readers and to remind people of my age, let me get something else straight. The sky was just as blue, maybe even a brighter blue than it
is today and the grass was just as green. Ok! We dressed more sombrely and formally in greys and blacks and browns, but make no mistake, while the films you see
may be black & white, we led technicolour lives. (Just look at the contemporary Sunday papers for Britain's favourite reading in those days - the week's saucy stories
from the divorce courts. Brilliant technicolour!)

What was missing from those newsreels from VE-Day, though, were the street parties. We went from one to another, some of them barely 100 yards apart. The beer
and the hoarded spirits flowed all night, there was dancing and sing-songs in the street, usually to the accompaniment of a piano dragged from some poor soul's
front room. They lit bonfires - wars generate lots and lots of firewood - and many shopkeepers hauled out their stocks of fireworks. Kept in steel boxes all through
the war, they still went off. The first friendly bangs in six years. Oh! It was great fun. The bonfire lit in the middle of Whitton's main crossroads left a hole over 6 ins
deep.

Then, a few days later came the Victory parades. Mum gave me 5/- and I went up to London for the big one. I was in the Mall just opposite the small grandstand
erected for the Royal Family and the Ministers. There was a massive march-past of our British and our Allied Forces, (Which included the Free Armies, Navies
and Air Forces from all of our European Allies.) the ARP, Police, Voluntary Services, Nurses, Fire Brigades, Ambulances, St Johns, you name it they were all there.
Most of them led by their own bands. It took hours and we lost our voices cheering them by. And I mustn't forget the fly-pasts. Everything with wings roared overhead. Very low and very noisy.

The people were simply ecstatic. They sung and they danced, and they laughed and they cried, and the crowd just fed on its own emotions. Had I been a little older,
I think I would had a fine old time. As it was, I was grabbed and hugged and kissed by so many ladies of so many sizes and ages, I felt like I'd been beaten up.

I got home very late. So late, a very anxious and angry mum was waiting at the front gate.

Is it the Chinese or the Japanese who say, "May you live in interesting times." I feel doubly blessed to have lived through these last 72 years. I could not have picked
a better birthday.

Ernie Bull
Bristol

THE VE DAY PARTY

I had forgotten the street parties.  I wonder id there was beer. We drank Tizer I expect   I have a picture of ours, which was held outside the shops on Redlands Lane, 
Fareham.  These were a great treat but I suspect
that the parents got as much if not more pleasure out of them, being able after so many years to give their children a special party.  Although the war was over, there 
were still shortages for many years, as Britain helped
feed a devastated Europe. In fact rationing did not completely finish until 1954 when meat was finally de-rationed. Shortly after the war, bread and potatoes were 
rationed for the first time, albeit briefly.
        We had a good size garden, and took the "Dig for Victory" Campaign very seriously, which was back breaking work as the soil was solid Hampshire clay. 
(brickmaking was a local industry)  My main job - I hated it  - was
looking for and killing - by squashing - the cabbage  caterpillars. I would have willing have let them eat all the cabbage.  Horror upon Horrors - every Sunday,  my 
Dad would drink the water in which the cabbage had been cooked .
He said he enjoyed it. The look on my face must have amused him. One wartime recipe was "Hunter's Pudding".  It was magnificent, even better than Lardy Cake.  
But for the sake of my health. I am now forbidden by my Shirley to
eat either
        About 100 yards away from our home was the edge of Tom Parker's Dairy Farm, where we played cricket and football.  I believe we had a rule that if the cricket 
ball went into a cow-pat, it was an automatic four runs.For a while the war stopped our games when one summer the army moved into the field.  Would any one know 
which unit was stationed there?        I do remember my  Dad taking me during the VE Day celebrations to Fratton Park to see Portsmouth (still the FA Cup holders) 
play Arsenal. It was the start of my learning to accept defeat.. Arsenal won 4-1. However if I recall Pompey 
had such players as Reg Flewin, Jimmy Dickinson, and Peter Harris., and three years later Portsmouth beat Arsenal 4-1 and went on win the championship.

David Parker
Canada

Where the Tiber meets the sea.

H. M. Submarine “UTMOST’
The most hair raising experience I had, during all the eight years I was in the Submarine Service, was nothing to do directly with the enemy. Nor was it to do with the war, except it was responsible for us being in that place at that time.

We were patrolling off the West coast of Italy again, nothing ever happened on the East coast of Italy, guess they must have been a left-handed mob. The Utmost’s Capt, Cdr Richard D Cayley. Fondly known as ‘Harmonica Dick’ to the Crew, because he used to do a comic stunt when we went ashore after a patrol, we would take over one of the Sliem pubs, no women, just the crew, and the captains started the evening off by standing on a table, playing a short ditty on his harmonica then he would give the following speech “Gentlemen, I can’t dance and I can’t sing but to show my apprection I will expose my big fat *** which he promptly proceeded to do. (He was sadly lost with all the old Utmost crew (except me, but that’s another story) on the Tutankhamen on their second commission in the Med).

Utmost had done a stint of inshore reconnaissance off Genoa, and we were on our way down to the Messina Straits, to intercept a transport off the Corsican coast.
On the run south, we were not expecting any trouble, and were on passage routine at thirty feet. The skipper always on the look-out for a target. Suddenly, and I do mean suddenly the bow started to dip at an alarming angle.

The Control room duty officer called the skipper, and both fore and after hydroplanes were set to rise at maximum. Main motors went to full-speed ahead ‘group-up’ both Port & Starboard motors (batteries connected in parallel), to raise her, or level her up, but to no avail.

She continued to dive at a frantic speed, all main ballast was blown. 'A' tank for'rd, was transferred into 'Z' tank aft, in an attempt to take the stern down. She still plunged on down, the depth gauge reading continued past maximum to a full stop. Two hundred and fifty feet, and from then on, navigator had to convert the readings from the pressure gauge, to calculate the depth.

All loose items on the deck, tool boxes etc., went careering for'd towards the bow. Finally at three hundred and forty feet, nearly 100 feet beyond her specification (by the builders, Vickers Armstrong), all ballast blown, and both motors still running full ahead group-up, she just as suddenly decided to surface.

All hell was let loose again, trying to stop her from breaking surface too fast. This in order to minimise the possibility of serious damage. With both hydroplanes to dive, flood all main ballast, flood 'A' ‘Z’ and 'Q' tanks, the main motors still set to full-ahead both.

It transpired that we had encountered a fresh water stream, emanating from the river Tiber. The river enters the Tyrranean Sea (Mediterranean west of Corsica) via Rome in Italy. Uncharted, of course, because all of the great rivers are continually changing their course, as they run out to sea, apparently retaining their fresh water content for many miles.

The explanation? We had lost buoyancy, she was built for salt (sea) water buoyancy. Her weight and trim were not designed to sustain her in fresh water. That was one experience that I would be very reluctant to go through again. But it could happen at any time without any warning.

Ben Skeates
Mt Isa, Australia

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Noteable events involving Utmost include:

9 Mar, 1941
HMS Utmost (Lt.Cdr. Cayley) torpedoes and sinks the Italian merchant Capo Vita (5683 BRT) off the Tunisian east coast in position 36.09N, 11.07E.

26 Jun, 1941
HMS Utmost (Lt.Cdr. Cayley) torpedoes and sinks the Italian merchant Enrico Costa (4080 BRT) some 5 miles from Cape Todaro.

28 Jul, 1941
HMS Utmost (Lt.Cdr. Cayley) torpedoes and sinks the Italian merchant Frederico C. (1466 BRT) in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea in position 39.28N, 15.52E.

29 Oct, 1941
HMS Utmost (Lt.Cdr. Cayley) torpedoes and sinks the Italian merchant Marigola (5996 BRT) off Kuriat Island, Tunisia.

2 Nov, 1941
HMS Utmost (Lt.Cdr. Cayley) torpedoes and sinks the Italian merchant Balilla (2469 BRT) off the north coast of Sicily, Italy in position 38.30N, 12.28E.

The HMS Utmost was an U-class British submarine, built in Barrow by Vickers Armstrong during 1939, and launched during 1940. On November 24, 1942, the HMS Utmost was patrolling the Southern Tyrrhenian Sea, when she was spotted and attacked by the Italian destroyer Groppo North to Marettimo Island (Northern Sicily). 
The British submarine was hit by depth charges, and sank at 36°30'N, 12°00'E.

More memories.................