They Were Just Skulls. John Johnson-Allen

of the 4-inch gun’s crew. We were firing at the torpedo bombers. Although we didn’t get any of those bombers, there was one incident later when we were up in the Arctic and we had a near miss with a bomber. We went up there once more, going up into the Arctic Ocean, but we didn’t go around into Russia but turned round and went back. The convoy after that was the PQ-17. We went back to Scapa Flow, and then they sent us to Newcastle for a refit. There was a problem because she was very unstable because of the extra armour that they had put on, and she rolled a lot. I’d applied to do a sonar course and I left her there.

      The refit in Newcastle was needed because the works that had been carried out just before Fred joined her in Chatham had added additional weight to her superstructure. During her pursuit of the Bismarck and her subsequent time in the Arctic Ocean in her role as a convoy escort, following her trip to Archangel with the Anglo-American Supply Mission, cracks had appeared on the upper deck and on her hull, and various rivets were leaking. This result of her rolling and pitching heavily in the violent seas that she had encountered made it seem that the effect of adding extra weight to her superstructure had not been properly calculated.

      When Fred reached 18 and was rated up to ordinary seaman from boy seaman, he was able to choose the specialisation he wanted to follow in the Navy. Sonar, as he refers to it, was usually called Asdic in the Royal Navy in the war years, and was the means of detecting submarines underwater. Fred was interested in the element of the training course that studied electricity, and as will be seen after he left the Navy, it proved a very good choice.

      The base for Asdic training was at Dunoon in Scotland, at the requisitioned Glasgow and West of Scotland Convalescent Home. The training base had been moved there in 1941 from Portland in Dorset. The base was called HMS Osprey.