Roll of Honour WW2

The above list is all that was available. The following is an alphabetical list of the men on
our war Memorial followed by details of the ships and information gathered from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the 1939 Register of electors, the Birth, Deaths and Marriages records and other sources.

H M S Hood - May 24th 1941 When war with Germany was declared, Hood was operating in the area around Iceland, and she spent the next several months hunting for German commerce raiders and blockade runners between Iceland and the Norwegian Sea. After a brief overhaul of her propulsion system, she sailed as the flagship of Force H, and participated in the destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. Relieved as flagship of Force H, Hood was dispatched to Scapa Flow, and operated in the area as a convoy escort and later as a defence against a potential German invasion fleet. In May 1941, she and the battleship Prince of Wales were ordered to intercept the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, which were en route to the Atlantic where they were to attack convoys. On 24 May 1941, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded and sank within three minutes, with the loss of all but three of her crew. Due to her perceived invincibility, the loss affected British morale.

H M S Campbeltown - March 28th 1942 The St Nazaire Raid was a successful British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France during the Second World War.
The operation was undertaken by the Royal Navy and British Commandos under the auspices of Combined Operations Headquarters on 28 March 1942. St Nazaire was targeted because the loss of its dry dock would force any large German warship in need of repairs, such as the Bismarck's sister ship Tirpitz, to return to home waters via either the English Channel or the GIUK gap, both of which were heavily defended by British units including the Royal Navy's Home Fleet, rather than having a haven available on the Atlantic coast in Nazi-occupied France

HMS Royal Oak - October 14th 1939 as one of five Revenge-class battleships built for the Royal Navy during the First World War. Completed in 1916, Royal Oak first saw combat at the Battle of Jutland as part of the Grand Fleet.
On 14 October 1939, Royal Oak was anchored at Scapa Flow in Orkney, Scotland, when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-47. Of Royal Oak's complement of 1,234 men and boys, 833 were killed that night or died later of their wounds. The loss of the outdated ship—the first of the five Royal Navy battleships and battlecruisers sunk in the Second World War—did little to affect the numerical superiority enjoyed by the British navy and its Allies, but the sinking had considerable effect on wartime morale. The raid made an immediate celebrity and war hero out of the U-boat commander, Günther Prien, who became the first German submarine officer to be awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Before the sinking of Royal Oak, the Royal Navy had considered the naval base at Scapa Flow impregnable to submarine attack, the raid demonstrated that the German Navy was capable of bringing the war to British home waters.

HMS Gipsy mined 21 November 1939, was a G-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s. She spent most of the pre-war period as part of the Mediterranean Fleet.  The ship was transferred to the British Isles to escort shipping in local waters shortly after the beginning of World War II. Less than a month after her arrival she struck a mine outside Harwich and sank with the loss of 30 of her crew. Her wreck was salvaged and slowly scrapped over the course of the war.

HMS Mohawk - 16th April 1941 Tribal Class Destroyer she was struck by two torpedoes fired by the Italian Navigatori-class destroyer Tarigo as she attacked an Italian convoy and sank off the Kerkennah Islands in eastern Tunisia on the early hours of 16 April, with the loss of 43 of her crew.

HMS Barham - 25th November 1941 was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship built for the Royal Navy during the early 1910s. Often used as a flagship, she participated in the Battle of Jutland. She helped to sink an Italian heavy cruiser and a destroyer during the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and was damaged by German aircraft two months later during the evacuation of Crete.
Barham was sunk off the Egyptian coast on 25th November by the German submarine U-331. As the battleship began to capsize Barham was torn apart by a massive explosion caused by her 4in and 15in Magazines.  Of her crew of 1,311, only 450 would survive.