John Frayn Turner - Service Most Silent

SERVICE MOST SILENT

By the same author

The Bader Wing

VCs of the Royal Navy

Prisoner at Large

Hovering Angels

Periscope Patrol

Invasion 44

VCs of the Air

Battle Stations

Highly Explosive

The Blinding Flash

VCs of the Army

A Girl called Johnnie

Famous Air Battles

Destination Berchtesgaden

British Aircraft of World War 2

Famous Flights

VCs of the Second World War

For Gallantry Awards of the George Cross 1940 2005

The Life and Selected Works of Rupert Brooke

Heroic Flights

The Good Spy Guide

The Yanks are Coming

Fight for the Sea

Fight for the Air

The Bader Tapes

The Battle of Britain

Frank Sinatra

special research credited in

Fight for the Sky by Douglas Bader

In print with Pen & Sword Books Ltd

SERVICE MOST SILENT

The Navys Fight against
Enemy Mines

by
John Frayn Turner

First published in Great Britain in 1955 by George G. Harrap & Co Ltd
Reprinted in this format in 2008 by
PEN & SWORD MARITIME
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright John Frayn Turner, 1955, 2008

ISBN 978 1 84415 726 6

The right of John Frayn Turner to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission from the Publisher in writing.

Printed and bound in Great Britain
By CPI UK

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of
Pen & Sword Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime,
Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe Local History,
Pen & Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics and Leo Cooper.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail: enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

ONE day during the War, on a wild, windswept foreshore of the Outer Orkneys, two naval officers trudged slowly over the mud towards an enemy mine that lay in the wash of the incoming tide. As they approached, while they were still some way off, a wave rolled the mine overand it exploded. The officers were injured; their wounds went untended; with no one near, they died. And the waves broke over their bodies, flattening for ever the footsteps in the sand.

It is now ten years since the War was won. A decade divides us from those dramatic days. Time has flown by on jet-propelled wings, and memory become dulled of the men who matteredand matter still. So before the years crowd them aside, and their records are finally filed, the saga must be sung of the Navys men of the mines, who on the beaches of Britain and far foreign shores dissected the deadliest weapons the enemy could devise, so that counter-measures could be conceived, the seas swept clear, our ships saved. Our lives, too. For the Few of the Navy saved us as surely as did their namesakes above in the air. So many are their exploits that only a cross-section can be chronicled. To those of them who died, officers and men alike, this book is dedicated.

J. F. T.

CONSEQUENTLY this country is at war Mr Chamberlains words echoed emotionally across the drawing-room and through the open window, carrying far down the lawn till they were lost in the haze of a Hampshire landscape. A cloud moved in front of the sun; its shadow sped over the grass; a breeze shivered through the trees, stirring them out of their Sunday stupor. And all at once late summer turned to early autumn.

What do you think it will mean, John, Lorna asked, not just for us, but for every one? The two boys, Robin and Philip, looked over to their father as she spoke.

John Ouvry pulled on his pipe for a moment. We cant really know yet. We seem to have lived through nothing but scares lately, one way and another; so wed better just wait and see.

As it happened, he did not have long to wait. The Prime Ministers voice ended. Ouvry put on his jacket, with the two and a half rings of a lieutenant-commander, and gazed out of the window, hands behind back.

The house, Somerfields, stood on ground gently declining from the country outskirts of Fareham away to the Solent, two or three miles distant. And, by a coincidence, in a straight line beyond the stretch of water lay Osborne, in the Isle of Wight, where Ouvry had served part of his cadetship when only a little older than Robin was now. How old was the boy? Ten already? For a minute Ouvry was back at Osborne more than twenty-five years earlier, with the First War still to come. His mind moved to 1917 and his appointment as mining officer to a cruiser. Twenty-two years, on and off, he must have been looking at mines.

The phone rang, bringing him back to the unreal reality of another war.

Commander M [Mining] here, Ouvry. Can you come down to Vernon? Weve a lot to discuss. It looks as if well have all our work cut out for a while, what with trials of our own stuff and keeping an eye on the things theyll be cooking up for us. And, Ouvryhere Commander Sayer paused, as if loath to go onyou look like being the one most qualified to deal with any Jerry mines that may come our way sooner or later. You know that, dont you? So keep on the top line.

Exactly a week later, at 1725 on Sunday, September 10, the s.s. Magdapur was steaming slowly through the channel between Aldeburgh Napes and Sizewell Bank, up the East Coast a little from Harwich and Orford Ness, when a deep explosion disturbed the afternoon calm of Suffolk coastal villagers. Those who looked eastward out of their windows saw the ship sinking rapidly, her back broken and boiler burst. It was two hours after low water, and she lay in seventy feet on an even keel, with both masts showingan eerie sight which was to be repeated all too frequently round our coasts during the following few years.

Suspicions were at once aroused, as this much used channel north of Harwich had been properly swept for any normal horn mines with sinkers which the Germans might have been able to lay, or for similar mines that might have strayed from British defensive fields. The latter was highly unlikely, as our own minefields at that stage were to a large extent propaganda publications, due to initial shortages of the actual mines and of ships with which to lay them. As the Magdapur was the first loss, nothing more than conjecture was possible, for she might have been sunk by torpedo from a U-boat. Further sweeps for buoyant mines were immediately ordered in the vicinity of the wreck, both by fast shallow-draught minesweepers and by converted trawlers. No mines came to light. Meanwhile there seemed little to do but wait and prepare.

Six days two hours forty-five minutes elapsed without incidentjust long enough a lull to encourage a false sense of security. Then at 2010 on Saturday, September 16, an external explosion occurred to the westward of Aldeburgh Napes which severely shook the s.s. City of Paris as she sailed through. The state of the tide was low water; the depth fifty-two to seventy feet. Violently blasted, the ship seemed to be sinking, and was justifiably abandoned by her crew. Later, however, seeing her still afloat, they returned aboard to find her seaworthy, but with her heavy machinery damaged. Next day she managed to make port at Tilbury under her own steam, where a thorough examination revealed that