This loss always makes my blood run cold.. rip all those who perished especially the brave destroyer crews who sacrificed themselves trying to give the glorious a chance..one of the darkest days for the RN..
My uncle, Marine Alfred Appleyard, was a gunlayer on (I believe) P.8 4.7" mounting on Glorious' quarterdeck. Like the great majority of the crew he did not survive the action, although I've no idea whether he died in the sea afterwards or was killed in the engagement. Lest We Forget.
@@zaxxx1975 And the destroyers did all they could. And were sunk. Where was the combat air patrol? What aircraft carrier doesn't even use its aeroplanes. Good grief.
Thank you for telling us about your uncle Micheal, by letting us know future generations will remember his service and sacrifice...best wishes to you and your family.
@@well-blazeredman6187 Cheers Nicholas. I read this book recently (original title 'Adventure Glorious') I couldn't identify Alf in it but it was a fascinating read.
There is a German book called "Schlachtschiff Scharnhorst" by Heinrich Bredemeier. There you can read about this battle from the German point of view. Very impressive to be able to have detailed insights into both points of view. The most astonishing insight for me is that soldiers on boths sides "just did their duty" and fought their ships to the best of their abilities.
I always enjoy these. It's one thing to know what happened; it's another thing to know what it was like to be there, and this is a window into their world, a glimpse of the human experience in extreme circumstances. Heroes.
The footage and quality of the video is excellent, much of which I have never seen before. The Series is very informative and well structured with a detailed view of both sides.
This video is excellent because the real men are telling the story, but this one is hard to hear. They were up agalnst it, and their leadership failed them.
Excellent as always. But...what a tragedy. I can only marvel at the two destroyers, their leaders and the brave men they commanded should have received much greater recognition.
Indeed, had the Acasta's not damaged Scharnhorst w/ a torpedo. Admiral Marschall's force would have remained active in the North Sea, and potentially could have sunk m ore allied shipping, instead of undergoing repairs in Trondheim.
This is gripping, having just read about the debacle of Operation Paul, and Glorious' part (or non-part) in it. I hope that part 2 mentions the heroic part played by Ardent and Acasta, both of whose captains were recommended for VCs, but were rejected out of hand. Even the surviving crew members of Scharnhorst and Gneisnau, long after the war, said they had never seen such bravery, or expert ship-handling before or since.
The statements of the Germans are merely complimentary with regard to Glorious. She was completely unprepared for both the appearance and the attack of the Germans. The British had no aircraft in the air on patrol, and didn't even have lookouts posted. They were hit early on and repeatedly until the ship was sunk. Without disparaging the officers and crew of Glorious, it's clear enough that the German comments were referring to the destroyers Ardent and Acasta, whose captains and crews did everything possible to protect Glorious.
Finally!!!! A documentary about a battle with the words of the men who were there!!!! Not exposition and supposition by some intellectual talking head!!! Liked and subbed immediately!!!!!! Keep up the fantastic work!!!
Very tragic story and one that could easily have been avoided. The Captain of Glorious failed to send out patrol aircraft to give early warning. He also failed to have aircraft on stand-by ready for launching in case of attack. Even the normal ship look-outs had not been posted and radio's were on the wrong frequency to receive situation reports. No doubt if the German ships had been detected earlier and an attack made by Glorious, the Germans would not have risked loss and headed for home at top speed. You can't help wondering how a Submarine officer, Captain Guy D'Oyly-Hughes was put in charge of an Aircraft Carrier in the first place???
Glorious have very few aircraft of her own on board. Less than a dozen in fact, and only about five Swordfish. Hughes, by the way, was one of few senior naval officers who had learned to fly.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 But even four Swordfish were enough to launch an "inner patrol", at dawn, to guard against submarines. And even a handful of Swordfish would have been enough to make the Germans cautious. The Germans would not have known that the first pair of Swordfish were not armed with torpedoes, and a few dummy torpedo runs would have turned them. That's what the Avengers did to the Japanese battle force off Samar. And then when other Swordfish arrived, bombers carrying torpedoes, the Germans likely would have run. Or at least turned themselves inside out avoiding British torpedoes.
@@redskindan78 I was not trying to excuse D'Oyly-Hughes, simply explaining to those who believe that he should have had a Swordfish strike force ready to launch why that was not possible.
What makes it even more avoidable,is the captain was warned by the admiralty that the Scharnhorst and Gneisnau were in the area and he ignored it.They had gotten their hands on an enigma machine,and were reading the messages from the ships.The captain didn't believe the reports and chose to ignore the warnings.
The Admiralty's refusal to properly honour the captains and sailors of the two destroyers who fought so valiantly, truly well beyond the call of duty, in a lopsided battle to defend the doomed carrier is simply a disgrace of the highest order.
These RN oral history documentaries are outstanding and provide further record of the RN being spread so thin protecting her empire that their carrier's sailed without a real task force to protect them.
It was Captain D'Oyly-Hughes's decision to skip sailing with the convoy from Norway. That was well protected, and included the well-prepared "Ark Royal". It was also his decision not to have a couple of Swordfish scouting, or even to have a couple of "ready planes" on deck. Stupid. The most bizarre out-right blunder in ally allied navy in WW2.
I recorded these interviews in the 1990s and/or 1980s. You can work out how old the informants would have been then. Had the Sound Archive of the IWM had unlimited resources it could have employed large numbers of interviewers and sent people to Germany to try and get eyewitness accounts there. Remember that at any one time there were usually two staff interviewers and that the brief of the Museum is ' war and conflict since 1914'.
This is a great and worthy documentary of those very dark days for Britain and elsewhere notably Norway , France, Holland and Belgium. All involved the Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, Army and RAF units are magnificent - indeed heroic … heroic! All merit our pride and memory….And gratitude. God bless them all, each and every one, the pride of our nation indeed! Deeply sincere thanks for making this documentary available for viewing and compliments for all responsable for the quality of presentation.
Given that it involves 1. A royal family and 2. Winston Churchill, it's one piece of dirty laundry that will not be washed for a very long time. If it was Lt. Cdr. Bloggs, it would have all come out decades ago.
I hope you have seen this: www.hmsglorious.com/name-this-page-ben/2019/3/10/churchill-operation-paul-and-the-sinking-of-hms-glorious-ardent-amp-acasta#comments-5c85181924a694a6a02bf7b1= Worth the read.
The skipper of "Glorious" committed the biggest naval blunder of WW2, as best I can tell. As a counter example, consider what a group of escort carriers did against a Japanese battle fleet in the Battle off Samar. The CVEs carried bombs for their main role -- bombing Japanese infantry -- and depth charges to scare away Japanese submarines. In the case of Samar, USN Admiral Halsey had foolishly left San Bernadino Strait unguarded, taking his Task Force 58 off to chase after a decoy squadron. The CVE's had aircraft circling the task group, and the recon pilot and observer were astounded and horrified to discover the IJN's "Yamato" and supporting battleships driving toward the escort carriers. The CVEs launched torpedo planes --- without torpedoes -- that made imitation torpedo runs to "persuade" the Japanese battleships and cruisers to twist and turn. Even with only five Swordfish, Glorious could have done this if D'Oyly-Hughes had had a brain. (It just occurred to me that if Admiral Byng was executed because he was sluggish, then then captain of "Glorious" would have deserved to have been shot after a court martial.) Here is Drachinifel describing the far different outcome of Samar. ruclips.net/video/4AdcvDiA3lE/видео.html
No he didn't. He never gave himself permission to return. he was operating under a Vice Admiral who in turn answered to teh Admiralty. Glorious movements were controlled by the Admiralty. Whats not mentioned in any of this is the Force 6 conditions that were prevalent until just before thw battle when Glorious crossed a weather front
@@researchvesselservices2202 He was not ordered to sail separately. He chose that, and requested it from the admiral. Let's try imagine that Captain Murray of the Enterprise asking Admiral Spruance, on June 7, 1942, for permission to take the Enterprise and a pair of destroyers back to Pearl Harbor because he wanted to court-martial his commander-air. (A USN Commander, Air, seems much like a RN Commander, Flying). Spruance was a patient and quiet guy, but he probably would have removed -- on the spot -- any carrier skipper who wanted to behave like D'Oyly-Hughes. (I picked the last day of the Battle of Midway, when aircraft from Enterprise and Hornet were still on the alert for the Japanese) Weather? Aircraft flew off in bad weather. Any other carrier commander, or at least US commanders in the Pacific and those British carrier captains I've read about, sent up anti-submarine patrols at dawn or enough before to be over the ship and task force that they were hunting when dawn broke. What was in the head of D'Oyly Hughes? He behaved as if Glorious was on a peace-time yacht-trip. Why not sail with the task force?
How exactly? It would have to show a German victory and that would never do!! Not unless they ( Hollywood ) twisted things so much that it wouldn't really depict the events that were supposed to be portrayed. No doubt having the two destroyers, which would just happen to be American by coincidence, sink the Scharnhorst at the last moment and have the Glorious ( again American ) only badly damaged so that she could limp back to port and live to fight another day.
If the captain had have survived he would have been court martialed for incompetence and cashiered. He had the option of a bigger escort and leaving Norway earlier and he refused it.
I guess we will have to wait 20 more years to find out the real reasons. HMS Glorious is the only aircraft carrier to have had an enquiry closed for 100 years.
And I'll bet that when the file is opened, so much will be missing, particularly signals, made to disappear either by Admiralty or government. The enquiry was an utter farce.
@@geordiedog1749 Files are normally sealed for decades to protect intelligence sources or state secrets. I would hate to speculate as to the real reason though.
These ships were under appreciated by the Royal Navy. British basically invented aircraft carriers just to never understand their usefulness. In USA and Japan carriers and aircraft rapidly supplanted battleships. British all but destroyed the itallian navy at Taronto. Bismark was doomed by a carrier plane, not by battleships. Yet, still with these successes British carriers had to wait for American aircraft to realize there capabilities.
It wasn't mentioned here, but John Winton's "Carrier Glorious" quotes Ken Cross saying that all of the RAF fighters were taken below decks and stowed. There was nothing impeding normal carrier ops by Glorous.
They were. They were landed on Glorious because she had wider lifts than Ark Royal, and could strike the Hurricanes below decks. Glorious at the time, however, had left most of her air group ashore, and carried a small number only of Sea Gladiators & Swordfish. Only about ten or so in total.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Even a Swordfish without a torpedo could have blocked "The Twins" by grooving into torpedo runs that Scharhorst and Gneisenau would have maneuvered to avoid. No reason not to have had a "ready plane" on deck.
This was a classic of Britain at the beginning of WW2. Officers who had their job because they had x amount of service and it was their turn to command. What happened here was no different than in the army up until 1942. People be promoted or moved sideways because they were not any good at modern warfare. It cost us so many lives. My fear is that we still do the same now. With the loss of Glorious, there came a turning point in relations between Bletchley Park and the Admiralty” At least Admiralty learned. It had to as you cannot disguise the loss of ships like you can battalions.
The USN was no different at the start of the war. At Guadalcanal one of the senior officers who walked into a Japanese night action ambush had no appreciation for the value of radar, and he was only in command because he had a tiny bit of seniority over the next guy in line (who DID get radar, of course.)
@@researchvesselservices2202 The commanding officer of glorious at the time, Captain Guy D'Oyly-Hughes, was a former submariner (Wikipedia)? Are we talking of the same person or different ranks? D'Oyly- Hughes had learned to fly and thought he knew more than the flying officer who he was trying to court-martial at the time. He did not believe in CAPs
@@seanwalker6460 Yep, the very same person. He was an ex-submariner, had be seconded to the RAF and had also been on Courgeous. Wiki isn't the source of all information! What makes you think he didn't believe in CAP? He was court martialing his Commander Flying because he didn't undertake a mission. That mission had been requested by the highest ranking officer in Norway (Lord Cook) via the Admiral onboard Ark Royal. ODH then ask Heath to do it and he dragged his heals. Ark Royal had been flying similar missions with Swordfishes. The pilots on Glorious were 50/50 on whether the mission should be flown. This is documented. they suggested an armed recon should be flown or atleast somthing. ODH was in the unfortunate position of telling his Admiral and Lord Cook that his Flying Officer was refusing the mission...... ODH believed in CAP and ran around the clock flights when chasing Graf Spee......Theres a lot more to this!
My father Bob McBride was the telegrapher air gunner who received the message from Admiralty to abandon the mission. D'Oyly-Hughes refused to obey. My father told me that he watched as the captain scrunched the message into a ball, threw it overboard, and demanded that the mission continue. The rest is history. My father was lucky enough to survive.
Brave souls all. What comes through is how ill trained and how little individuals knew about the whole ship. The arrogance of the commanders lost the ships and all these men that were placed in this predicament.
Boy' the Hurricane guys sure had balls. Fancy landing a land based low wing high performance monoplane fighter on a carrier without a tail hook. One slip and it would be the great goodbye, What a horrible turn of fate that nearly all of these guys were killed despite showing so much courage.
In his defence, Glorious had less than twelve of her own air group aboard, as she was being used as a ferry carrier. No-one, by the way, knew Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were in the area. Neither fact, by the way, excuses the decisions Hughes made.
Quite the reverse. He wanted to carry out a Swordfish attack in support of ground troops, but his Commander (Air) refused to undertake one. Hence the impending court-martial. According to a number of sources, many of the air crew disagreed with the Commander (Air).
This is factually incorrect. He wanted to carry out an attack that had come from the senior office (Flag Officer Narvik) via Admiral Wells It wasn't his own idea to attack the target he had been asked by his senior officers. The Air Crew were split on their thoughts. Considering Ark Royal's aircraft had been flying similar missions throughout the campaign the reasoning is not sound. ODH had no choice. As for Kenneth cross' comments he said "The Captain was happy for us but annoyed it took so long".....well he's right. Some of the pilots took two2-3 attempts to make this historic landing while Glorious guzzled fuel at a crazy rate!
Mt uncle Clifford just missed being on the old 'Glorious',but managed to get on to a destroyer instead.Probably on the convoy this bloke mentions,back to Scapa Flow.
I'm sure I read an account somewhere that the captain wasn't a fan of aircraft and made some comment along the lines of if he saw an enemy warship he wouldn't launch aircraft he would steam straight towards her firing all his guns?
I haven’t looked into it far enough to confirm or deny this report. What seems to weaken that argument is that he agreed to the risky idea of allowing 10 RAF Hurricanes - with no arresting hooks - to try to land in order to save them. What supports this idea is he didn’t use any of the 5 Swordfish to patrol …
@@ArmouredCarriers nice to find a channel where the OP responds to comments ⚓️🇬🇧Love to see a video on HMS Unicorn, in the meantime look forward to next instalment!
@@robbielee2148 I plan on doing a video on the operation at Salerno. HMS Unicorn was there, so she will hopefully feature (if I can find audio from people who were on her).
@@ArmouredCarriers The claim that he said this was made by a Telegraphist Air Gunner, David Jolliff, and is in 'Carrier Glorious' , by John Winton. The claim is that D'Oyly-Hughes said, 'If we meet the whole German Navy we go straight at them with all our guns firing.' Glorious was armed with 4.7 inch AA guns only. The odd thing is that D'Oyly-Hughes was not a typical 'Fish Head.' He had worked on secondment with the Air Ministry, and had even learned to fly. Despite what happened, his appointment to a carrier was not, except in retrospect, questionable.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Yes. This is why I find the whole scenario so strange. And it is why we have no choice but to wait another decade before all the remaining documents relating to the catastrophe are unsealed!
Apart from the dreadful loss of the Glorious,there are,I believe,many more aspects to the whole Norwegian debacle that have yet to be revealed.That Churchill had a hand in the proceedings speaks volumes.The bravery displayed by our forces,in the face of a determined and well equipped enemy was exemplary,with the exception of D'oyly Hughes who was a disgrace to the uniform.
I'm sure it speaks volumes .. that you probably think you are kewl and edgey and clever if you had some conspiracy about how bad Churchill was and how this was his fault.....
Great video. The voices of the witnesses will be silent in the near future, so this is an important documentation. There´s only one criticism from me: Why didn´t you ask some German sailors from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau? It would have made the documentation more complete.
I am using whatever archived recordings I can find that are relevant. I’m just a hobbyist. I don’t have the resources to interview those few who remain. I will put some more effort in to finding other national archives, however.
@@anonymusum Not getting you wrong at all!!! I would love to be able to do these better. I'm learning as I go along, and finding new resources also. I hope to find a US audio archive at some point. Then I'll start doing some of their actions.
@@ArmouredCarriers I mean - the whole story was weird. D´Oyly-Hughes did something he shouldn´t have done - let alone the general order that a capital ship always should sail with an escort of at least four destroyers - and on the other hand the German Admiral Marshall ignored his orders to attack Norwegian harbors by taking the only possible solution out of a radio message from a German reco-plane that found the port of Harstad empty. So Marshall changed his course and ran straight into the Glorious formation. Although the German propaganda was celebrating his success Raeder criticized him afterwards for not obeying his orders what led to Marshall´s resignation. And this had even consequences for Lütjens and his Bismarck operation as Lütjens realized that Raeder wanted him to follow his orders word by word. He spoke with Marshall in front of Operation Berlin and it was clear that both men had different ideas about the duty and competence of a commander in action. - So the whole Glorious story had a lot of different perspectives and I´m convinced that it would be great to show them. Anyway, I´m really enjoying your vids. Congrats!
@@ArmouredCarriers This would be fantastic, just as how Robert J. Kershaw pulled together archives, records, personal documents (and yes, managed some interviews too) to write It Never Snows in September - which dealt with the German viewpoint of Operation Market Garden. So much we know of WW2 is written by one side, often we forget that there was the other side as well... Still, this vid is very good work on its own, kudos!
They were converted "large light cruisers". So the hull design - especially the narrow bow - wasn't ideal for a full length flight deck. They were also built with a lower forward "take-off" deck for use by fighters. The idea these smaller aircraft could be rapidly deployed direct from the hangar. The idea didn't take off. The Japanese did a similar thing, but later extended the main flight-deck forward with buttresses. I think the RN was planning to "retire" the vessels instead of rebuilding them. Then war broke out, and both were lost within the first 12 months.
This is arguably a more significant loss than the sinking of the HMS Hood... considering that aircraft carriers actually represented the future of naval combat...
Unfortunately after the fiascos in Basra and Helmand I suspect this still applies. However, we are not unique as all organisations are subject to human foibles, just hope that you and yours are not around when they get it wrong.
Why would you need a battleship to protect a carrier when the whole point of the carrier is that it never gets near enemy surface ships? The real stupidity here was not sending up air patrols even though they easily could have. If they did, Glorious would have seen the Twins and could have evaded them before they even found her.
@@bkjeong4302 There are a myriad possible reasons for Glorious sailing with minimal escort, or for detaching from the main group in the first place to race home to Scapa Flow. However, as you pointed out, the failure to have a CAP in virtually unlimited visibility conditions, calm seas, in a warzone, knowing that Germans are in the theatre (invading Norway nearby as opposed to just being in the middle of the Atlantic) must be *the* single most significant and immediate factor in the loss of Glorious. Apparently accounts indicate that Glorious didn't have its crow's nest manned at the time of the encounter, further losing precious detection time (she could have spotted the Twins from farther out at the elevated height of the nest). As if to underscore how ideal the conditions were for surface warfare at that time, Scharnhorst went on to score one of the longest range naval gunfire hits in history, at about 26km (about 16 miles).
@@DenKHK I’d actually argue that conditions were poor for surface warfare (against a carrier) BECAUSE visibility was good and the carrier would have a massive range and detection advantage.....except the commanding officer was so incompetent he never bothered to make use of this, despite this being SOP for carriers. Seriously why not have any sort of air patrol up?!
@@bkjeong4302 Haha yes you're right, poor against a carrier but the angle I was coming from was the ease of fire control and effects on gunnery :) Particularly the latter - the Twins had a shite experience during the encounter with Renown, and made tracks largely because their turrets were constantly being flooded and shorted out by the rough seas in that action. The Twins' war diaries and after-action reports are equal parts amusing and exasperating.
I hope you have seen this: www.hmsglorious.com/name-this-page-ben/2019/3/10/churchill-operation-paul-and-the-sinking-of-hms-glorious-ardent-amp-acasta#comments-5c85181924a694a6a02bf7b1= Worth the read. It was dumb churchills fault, as usual.
Happy to be corrected on anything I get wrong..... It's now widely known that Glorious was on orders from Churchill - against Navy advice - to carry out operation Paul. It was either Glorious or Ark Royal, so the Navy sent the older ship, on a futile mission to stem the flow of steel from Norway to Nazi Germany - by dropping mines from HMS Glorious's biplanes.......when the fall of France a few days later gave Germany all the steel it needed. The sailors could have been rescued, but the Royal Navy battleship group only 30 miles away, was carrying the Norwegian Royal family - and it was under orders not to break radio silence or stop. A shameful waste of life. My great uncle John Kenneth Brompton - known as Ken, a 20 year old aircraft technician, died on Glorious. They threw the Captain of Glorious to the wolves, he was a personal friend of Churchill and was absolutely carrying out orders. Churchill was only a few days into being PM, the calamity of Glorious's sinking was hidden by the Navy and Churchill behind a smokescreen of lies to save reputations. Understandable at the time, but could have been corrected after the war.
Not just more volume, but having a competent narrator speaking understandable English, rather than these aging veterans with their heavy accents and stilted speech, would have been much appreciated. I have nothing but the highest respect for these vets, but they are not enjoyable to listen to. I have no doubt carrying on a conversation with any of them would be a struggle, as it is with my own 93 year old father.
@@Ponchoman07 I understand your point; but as a native I find the accents of the various speakers easily understandable and interesting. The way we speak has changed over a relatively short period, the regional accents have also changed, the 'RP' of the officer class as opposed to the common man has virtually disappeared. The words we use have changed 'Tannoy' being a brand of loudspeakers used as a generic term for speakers for an announcement. For me it is nostalgic, reminiscent of black and white movies made before I was born. Subtitles might be useful for non British or younger viewers not familiar with this archaic speech.
Well as I’ve said, not only are the dialects difficult to decipher, but the long pauses in these old men’s speech is off-putting to me also. This one video as told "in their own words" has cured me from clicking on any more "in their own words" war stories, (as told by Brits), even as much as I love every one of the tales of the world wars as described by the people who lived through them. Even the stories as told by old American vets often make me want to tear my hair out, and I’m American. Although dialect clouds the stories less frequently, there is the same problem with the age of the speaker causing slow and often soft spoken speech. Thank goodness there is a wealth of these war stories out there with many of them competently narrated; but even a few of those are told with loud artillery in the background overwhelming the speaker’s voice. I know...I bitch a lot
@@Ponchoman07 the pauses and slow speech often annoy me too, even on videos narrated by a young speaker. I will listen at 1.25 or 1.5 times speed, even faster if still intelligible and not too information dense.
Only a bit of the fighter material is CGI (surprisingly hard to find footage of Hurricanes!). Most of the rest of the footage I ran through AI video enhancement software (I first started doing so with the Corsair videos) to reduce heavy noise and enhance the edges of fuzzy footage. I'm still learning the ropes.
@@ArmouredCarriers You are doing really well! It looks as if you used parts of training films, maybe entitled "damage control during combat", or fire control.
@@redskindan78 I cobbled scenes together from a variety of RN and US damage control training films - plus a few tidbits from movies like Battle of River Plate
Poor bloody Glorious those damn Hurricanes shove them over the get a CAP up Hughes you need time, God rest her crew, Ardent Acasta, ohhhh eck we will remember them
@@calebcornelius8669 Good point. Don’t they have to get experience in all areas these days to get an Admiral rating? I used to walk the dog of the guy called Commander Reynor who told me he’d never make admiral ‘cos he couldn’t get in a submarine due to claustrophobia.
@@geordiedog1749 I know Woodward also served on HMS Sheffield in the mid to late 70's after serving on and commanding a couple submarines. After that he got sent for senior shore duty in the early 80's before being put in command of the task force and going south. Not sure about requirements for becoming and admiral in the Royal Navy but that's not how it works in the US navy. The only requirement for command that I can think of is that the skipper of a carrier has to have been a naval aviator.
Yeah this story has grown legs because the the RN/Admiralty didn't do a proper inquiry. The Captain was scapegoated in many way. Everyone talks about CAP but doesn't look at the logs. The majority of ships did not fly CAP in this location when they were traveling to Norway - Furious or Ark Royal. It wasn't standard policy at the time. The 10 minutes notice was better than most and the aircraft were armed with the weapons they needed to use against to known threats - subs and aircraft. Glorious was low on fuel. The fuel calculations that were done for the 1997 are bad to say the least (they used the 1938 peacetime values from the latest refit). Out of 300 data points the Glorious only matched these values on 12 trips when she had a tail wind in flat calm seas - not Norway with a Force 4-6. On the return journey - until just before the combat the weather was a Force 6 as mentioned in Devonshires log - only just at the battle site did they cross the front. The aircraft weren't prepared or ranged on deck for this reason and the ships speed was increased accordingly to make submarine attack less likely. The RN had totally disregarded surface attack after the Battle of Narvik. Everyone. Why does the Admiralty hide the files? Why does everyone want you to look at Glorious....well the day before the Glorious sailed Convoy Group I sailed. You think glorious was lightly armed? Convoy Group I had 15,000 troops in 7 troops ships and one ship protecting her. The Germans realising what was happening headed South to attack them but stumbled on oil pioneer, Juniper and Orama. They never did locate the convoy. but something happened then...Marschall after capturing 250 British realized his supply ship 80nm North was threatened by the "Southampton group" i.e Convoy Group II - how did he know that convoy was traveling that route, was right next to his ship etc. He didn't have recon at the time.....Chances are someone from one of his frightend prisoners may have mentioned that orama was meant to be part of the evacuation force and a participant of Convoy group II but was sent ahead as she had low fuel....... So firstly the admiralty screwed up by nearly killing more troops than were killed during most wwi battles and then its possible a Brit may have inadvertently mentioned Convoy Group II....which lead the Germans to stumble on Glorious while they were heading North to warn their supply ship........ Also, the German battle plots are wrong and this was mentioned by the German's. They have been used by British critics to condem ODH.....but he was at 30kts early on and the GErmans acknowledge this and he did turn away. Heath refused the Captains order....which actuall came from vice Admiral Carrier .....which in turn came from the Flag officer in Narvik.......It wasn't a mad idea that ODH it was an order from the most senior officer in Norway......anyway....ask me questions on it and ill do my best to answer them......Ohh and as of late May 1940 the carriers were fully under Admiralty control....they told FO Narvik and VAA where the ships were heading......Someone in teh Admiralty screwed up
@@samcam8284 the one Man who is trully responsible is Vice Admiral Wells who gave permission to go...he knew that there was a potential German fleet nearby. He shoulders a lot of the blame....also the Admiralty who had direct control of Glorious as per their order at the end of May.....ODH may have been authoritarian but he did t give himself permission to leave Lofoten
@@researchvesselservices2202 In this instance, she had no radar equipped cruiser in escort. HMS Ark Royal had HMS Sheffield in close company -and an innovative signalsman using some applied highschool math.
There are officer that are good at administration and those that are good in combat, never the twain should be mixed. It always costs lives. And the last thing in combat you need is a glory hound that should be sitting behind a desk in an office counting paper clips.
ODH was good in combat....he was well decorated. Its his Flying Officer who refused to carry out the orders. This is at a time when Winston was lamenting about the lack of fighting spirit
Well maybe because it was a Force 6 and none of the carriers operated CAP at this location. This was early carrier warfare and back then the carrier was running fast to avoid U-boats (the more likely threat) and was sufficently far offshore to have aircraft at 10 minutes. Unluckily for them the German fleet had put to sea.....unexpected after Narvik. Nobody in the British command expected this and ODH was scapegoated for it.....
We will never know until 2041 when the files will be made public. HMS Glorious is the only aircraft carrier to have had an enquiry closed for 100 years.
Cryptology, Bletchley Park reported Traffic coming up the Channel. They did not know what precisely but thought Military. It was also not taken seriously.
terrible loss -he should have been more careful and the admiralty should have sent the hood back et al at high speed from the denmark strait-they were too slow to react to the german invasion.the lack of a an airborne patrol was atrocious
Up his gold-plated backside. He had been responsible for some astonishing bravery during WW1, but that does not automatically make you a good leader, in fact quite the opposite, here. D'oyly Hughes was a loose canon.
@@geordiedog1749 Glorious was laid down as a battlecruiser towards the end of the First War and before completion (before turrets etc) was converted to an aircraft carrier. So the base constuction wasn't ideal, but of course in the late 19teens/early 1920s aircraft were slower and the technology was cutting edge for the time. But of course by 1940, she was pretty much obsolete. But any carrier, even brand new, wasn't a match for the Panzerschiffe of the Kriegsmarine. But they may have had some effect with better planes and torpedos, much as the USNavy did in the Pacific.
Glorious and Courageous fought as completed flimsy battlecruisers in WW1, only Furious was stalled in construction as it was obvious that a two turret single 18” gun armament was crazy.
what if the germans instead of sinking the HMS Glorious, capture her? Even an old carrier, in the Kriegsmarine, could protect the Bismarck, the war at sea, must be quite diferent.
The British invented the aircraft carrier and improved many aspects of it but never really understood them, not then and not now. Only the British managed to have a carrier, representing the future, sunk by the past; a bit like the EU membership sunk by BREXIT.
@@annoyingbstard9407 Isn't it sad that, as the events recede, all sorts of people with little knowledge or personal prejudices feel entitled to make inaccurate statements?
Correct Invented the Carrier and used them at Taranto. Glorious was a Carrier in the wrong place. If, as it should have had aircraft up it could could have seen the enemy first and launched a torpedo attack. All this was down to the Captain his choice. He had been advised byOfficers to keep aircraft ready repeatedly.
Guy D'Oyly Hughes gave the go ahead for evangelist James Maw RAF t preach the Gospel on HMS Glorious and 500 men gave their lives to Christ the day before the three ships sank For that I will be eternally grateful.My Grandfather Stoker 1st John Thomas Merrikin class died on HMS Acasta but I don't blame anyone we don't know the truth of what happened that day, and there's nothing we can do about it accept remember our loved ones and their bravery LEST WE FORGET
The whole next part coming soon is really just another step towards the final death of RUclips. Like and subscribe like brainless trained pets. I almost feel dirty watching this now.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
This loss always makes my blood run cold.. rip all those who perished especially the brave destroyer crews who sacrificed themselves trying to give the glorious a chance..one of the darkest days for the RN..
My uncle, Marine Alfred Appleyard, was a gunlayer on (I believe) P.8 4.7" mounting on Glorious' quarterdeck. Like the great majority of the crew he did not survive the action, although I've no idea whether he died in the sea afterwards or was killed in the engagement. Lest We Forget.
Lest we not forget! Indeed..and thank you for your share and your families.
@@zaxxx1975 And the destroyers did all they could. And were sunk. Where was the combat air patrol? What aircraft carrier doesn't even use its aeroplanes. Good grief.
Thank you for telling us about your uncle Micheal, by letting us know future generations will remember his service and sacrifice...best wishes to you and your family.
I've just started reading 'Arctic Rescue' by Ronald Healis, P7 gun-crew. The book is available on Kindle and I would heartily recommend it to you.
@@well-blazeredman6187 Cheers Nicholas. I read this book recently (original title 'Adventure Glorious') I couldn't identify Alf in it but it was a fascinating read.
There is a German book called "Schlachtschiff Scharnhorst" by Heinrich Bredemeier. There you can read about this battle from the German point of view. Very impressive to be able to have detailed insights into both points of view. The most astonishing insight for me is that soldiers on boths sides "just did their duty" and fought their ships to the best of their abilities.
I always enjoy these. It's one thing to know what happened; it's another thing to know what it was like to be there, and this is a window into their world, a glimpse of the human experience in extreme circumstances. Heroes.
Always brilliantly done. Those voices and your editing make for an invaluable historical document.
The brave men living and dead went above and beyond the call of duty for their fellows and Country. Bless the all! R.I.P.
The footage and quality of the video is excellent, much of which I have never seen before. The Series is very informative and well structured with a detailed view of both sides.
Thank you very much!
Great first hand accounts of the tragic and avoidable loss of the Glorious.
Well done! This channel's criminally under subscribe to, seriously
This video is excellent because the real men are telling the story, but this one is hard to hear. They were up agalnst it, and their leadership failed them.
Excellent as always. But...what a tragedy. I can only marvel at the two destroyers, their leaders and the brave men they commanded should have received much greater recognition.
Indeed, had the Acasta's not damaged Scharnhorst w/ a torpedo. Admiral Marschall's force would have remained active in the North Sea, and potentially could have sunk m ore allied shipping, instead of undergoing repairs in Trondheim.
This is gripping, having just read about the debacle of Operation Paul, and Glorious' part (or non-part) in it. I hope that part 2 mentions the heroic part played by Ardent and Acasta, both of whose captains were recommended for VCs, but were rejected out of hand.
Even the surviving crew members of Scharnhorst and Gneisnau, long after the war, said they had never seen such bravery, or expert ship-handling before or since.
Totally agree
Agreed.
The statements of the Germans are merely complimentary with regard to Glorious. She was completely unprepared for both the appearance and the attack of the Germans. The British had no aircraft in the air on patrol, and didn't even have lookouts posted. They were hit early on and repeatedly until the ship was sunk. Without disparaging the officers and crew of Glorious, it's clear enough that the German comments were referring to the destroyers Ardent and Acasta, whose captains and crews did everything possible to protect Glorious.
@@manilajohn0182 Quite.
Finally!!!! A documentary about a battle with the words of the men who were there!!!! Not exposition and supposition by some intellectual talking head!!! Liked and subbed immediately!!!!!! Keep up the fantastic work!!!
Thank you.
Outstanding video… actually one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Very tragic story and one that could easily have been avoided. The Captain of Glorious failed to send out patrol aircraft to give early warning. He also failed to have aircraft on stand-by ready for launching in case of attack. Even the normal ship look-outs had not been posted and radio's were on the wrong frequency to receive situation reports. No doubt if the German ships had been detected earlier and an attack made by Glorious, the Germans would not have risked loss and headed for home at top speed. You can't help wondering how a Submarine officer, Captain Guy D'Oyly-Hughes was put in charge of an Aircraft Carrier in the first place???
Glorious have very few aircraft of her own on board. Less than a dozen in fact, and only about five Swordfish. Hughes, by the way, was one of few senior naval officers who had learned to fly.
The British class system. Meritocracy has often little to do with things.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 But even four Swordfish were enough to launch an "inner patrol", at dawn, to guard against submarines. And even a handful of Swordfish would have been enough to make the Germans cautious. The Germans would not have known that the first pair of Swordfish were not armed with torpedoes, and a few dummy torpedo runs would have turned them. That's what the Avengers did to the Japanese battle force off Samar. And then when other Swordfish arrived, bombers carrying torpedoes, the Germans likely would have run. Or at least turned themselves inside out avoiding British torpedoes.
@@redskindan78 I was not trying to excuse D'Oyly-Hughes, simply explaining to those who believe that he should have had a Swordfish strike force ready to launch why that was not possible.
What makes it even more avoidable,is the captain was warned by the admiralty that the Scharnhorst and Gneisnau were in the area and he ignored it.They had gotten their hands on an enigma machine,and were reading the messages from the ships.The captain didn't believe the reports and chose to ignore the warnings.
The Admiralty's refusal to properly honour the captains and sailors of the two destroyers who fought so valiantly, truly well beyond the call of duty, in a lopsided battle to defend the doomed carrier is simply a disgrace of the highest order.
Well, we honour them here. That is something.
This is a good bit of research and presentation; subsrcibed to see what the rest of your stuff is like. Thank you for putting this together.
Brilliant work! Really appreciate your channel. Tragic event…RHIP but the responsibilities always exceed the privileges.
I love that one of the only ones to damage their hurricane was the squadron leader, I bet he got some stick from the rest of them.
These RN oral history documentaries are outstanding and provide further record of the RN being spread so thin protecting her empire that their carrier's sailed without a real task force to protect them.
It was Captain D'Oyly-Hughes's decision to skip sailing with the convoy from Norway. That was well protected, and included the well-prepared "Ark Royal". It was also his decision not to have a couple of Swordfish scouting, or even to have a couple of "ready planes" on deck. Stupid. The most bizarre out-right blunder in ally allied navy in WW2.
I recorded these interviews in the 1990s and/or 1980s. You can work out how old the informants would have been then. Had the Sound Archive of the IWM had unlimited resources it could have employed large numbers of interviewers and sent people to Germany to try and get eyewitness accounts there. Remember that at any one time there were usually two staff interviewers and that the brief of the Museum is ' war and conflict since 1914'.
The oral history interviews were done by the Sound Archive interviewers of the Imperial War Museum. Not the Royal Navy.
Its amazing but some people had to learn the hard way about air cover in early world war 2. What a waste of brave men.
It seems like everyone interviewed here at some point says, "I had some tea..." British sure do love their tea.
This is a great and worthy documentary of those very dark days for Britain and elsewhere notably Norway , France, Holland and Belgium.
All involved the Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, Army and RAF units are magnificent - indeed heroic … heroic! All merit our pride and memory….And gratitude.
God bless them all, each and every one, the pride of our nation indeed!
Deeply sincere thanks for making this documentary available for viewing and compliments for all responsable for the quality of presentation.
I saw a recent documentary about the loss and it stated the navel records on the loss were still classified? Strange? Oh and great work as always
Yes. It is strange. It indicates more was going on than we know. Was it military, political or personal is the question.
@@ArmouredCarriers
All three, or just the last two?
Given that it involves 1. A royal family and 2. Winston Churchill, it's one piece of dirty laundry that will not be washed for a very long time.
If it was Lt. Cdr. Bloggs, it would have all come out decades ago.
I hope you have seen this:
www.hmsglorious.com/name-this-page-ben/2019/3/10/churchill-operation-paul-and-the-sinking-of-hms-glorious-ardent-amp-acasta#comments-5c85181924a694a6a02bf7b1=
Worth the read.
Almost certainly classified not because of the Captain but because it was Churchills blunder.....
The skipper of "Glorious" committed the biggest naval blunder of WW2, as best I can tell. As a counter example, consider what a group of escort carriers did against a Japanese battle fleet in the Battle off Samar. The CVEs carried bombs for their main role -- bombing Japanese infantry -- and depth charges to scare away Japanese submarines. In the case of Samar, USN Admiral Halsey had foolishly left San Bernadino Strait unguarded, taking his Task Force 58 off to chase after a decoy squadron. The CVE's had aircraft circling the task group, and the recon pilot and observer were astounded and horrified to discover the IJN's "Yamato" and supporting battleships driving toward the escort carriers. The CVEs launched torpedo planes --- without torpedoes -- that made imitation torpedo runs to "persuade" the Japanese battleships and cruisers to twist and turn. Even with only five Swordfish, Glorious could have done this if D'Oyly-Hughes had had a brain. (It just occurred to me that if Admiral Byng was executed because he was sluggish, then then captain of "Glorious" would have deserved to have been shot after a court martial.)
Here is Drachinifel describing the far different outcome of Samar.
ruclips.net/video/4AdcvDiA3lE/видео.html
No he didn't. He never gave himself permission to return. he was operating under a Vice Admiral who in turn answered to teh Admiralty. Glorious movements were controlled by the Admiralty. Whats not mentioned in any of this is the Force 6 conditions that were prevalent until just before thw battle when Glorious crossed a weather front
@@researchvesselservices2202 He was not ordered to sail separately. He chose that, and requested it from the admiral. Let's try imagine that Captain Murray of the Enterprise asking Admiral Spruance, on June 7, 1942, for permission to take the Enterprise and a pair of destroyers back to Pearl Harbor because he wanted to court-martial his commander-air. (A USN Commander, Air, seems much like a RN Commander, Flying). Spruance was a patient and quiet guy, but he probably would have removed -- on the spot -- any carrier skipper who wanted to behave like D'Oyly-Hughes. (I picked the last day of the Battle of Midway, when aircraft from Enterprise and Hornet were still on the alert for the Japanese)
Weather? Aircraft flew off in bad weather. Any other carrier commander, or at least US commanders in the Pacific and those British carrier captains I've read about, sent up anti-submarine patrols at dawn or enough before to be over the ship and task force that they were hunting when dawn broke.
What was in the head of D'Oyly Hughes? He behaved as if Glorious was on a peace-time yacht-trip. Why not sail with the task force?
Such dreadful incompetence with such a tragic result, and two destroyers and crews lost in trying to achieve the impossible and try and save her.
Really wish they would make a modern live action big budget movie about this. One of the craziest wartime naval actions.
How exactly? It would have to show a German victory and that would never do!! Not unless they ( Hollywood ) twisted things so much that it wouldn't really depict the events that were supposed to be portrayed. No doubt having the two destroyers, which would just happen to be American by coincidence, sink the Scharnhorst at the last moment and have the Glorious ( again American ) only badly damaged so that she could limp back to port and live to fight another day.
Fantastic work, please keep it up!
My uncle Basil Waters was a pilot on HMS Glorious. Unfortunately he was one of the those who should never have died.
Alwsys fascinated to hear the true accounts of the people who were there.
If the captain had have survived he would have been court martialed for incompetence and cashiered. He had the option of a bigger escort and leaving Norway earlier and he refused it.
I guess we will have to wait 20 more years to find out the real reasons. HMS Glorious is the only aircraft carrier to have had an enquiry closed for 100 years.
@@asterixdogmatix1073 why is that though? I’ve heard that it’s because they want to ensure relatives are all dead so they can’t sue.
And I'll bet that when the file is opened, so much will be missing, particularly signals, made to disappear either by Admiralty or government. The enquiry was an utter farce.
@@geordiedog1749 Files are normally sealed for decades to protect intelligence sources or state secrets. I would hate to speculate as to the real reason though.
These ships were under appreciated by the Royal Navy. British basically invented aircraft carriers just to never understand their usefulness. In USA and Japan carriers and aircraft rapidly supplanted battleships. British all but destroyed the itallian navy at Taronto. Bismark was doomed by a carrier plane, not by battleships. Yet, still with these successes British carriers had to wait for American aircraft to realize there capabilities.
It wasn't mentioned here, but John Winton's "Carrier Glorious" quotes Ken Cross saying that all of the RAF fighters were taken below decks and stowed.
There was nothing impeding normal carrier ops by Glorous.
They were. They were landed on Glorious because she had wider lifts than Ark Royal, and could strike the Hurricanes below decks. Glorious at the time, however, had left most of her air group ashore, and carried a small number only of Sea Gladiators & Swordfish. Only about ten or so in total.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Even a Swordfish without a torpedo could have blocked "The Twins" by grooving into torpedo runs that Scharhorst and Gneisenau would have maneuvered to avoid. No reason not to have had a "ready plane" on deck.
Getting caught and your ship can do 32 knots is inexcusable...
Glorious could do 30kts on a good day....down hill....wind behind her....She had been down rated since initially entering service....
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were very fast battle cruisers. Glorious could not out run them.
This was a classic of Britain at the beginning of WW2. Officers who had their job because they had x amount of service and it was their turn to command. What happened here was no different than in the army up until 1942. People be promoted or moved sideways because they were not any good at modern warfare. It cost us so many lives. My fear is that we still do the same now.
With the loss of Glorious, there came a turning point in relations between Bletchley Park and the Admiralty”
At least Admiralty learned. It had to as you cannot disguise the loss of ships like you can battalions.
The USN was no different at the start of the war. At Guadalcanal one of the senior officers who walked into a Japanese night action ambush had no appreciation for the value of radar, and he was only in command because he had a tiny bit of seniority over the next guy in line (who DID get radar, of course.)
The captain was an experienced aviator who had some of the highest scores from teh Commonwealth Flying School. He was decorated, a WWI hero etc
@@researchvesselservices2202 The commanding officer of glorious at the time, Captain Guy D'Oyly-Hughes, was a former submariner (Wikipedia)? Are we talking of the same person or different ranks? D'Oyly- Hughes had learned to fly and thought he knew more than the flying officer who he was trying to court-martial at the time. He did not believe in CAPs
@@seanwalker6460 Yep, the very same person. He was an ex-submariner, had be seconded to the RAF and had also been on Courgeous. Wiki isn't the source of all information! What makes you think he didn't believe in CAP? He was court martialing his Commander Flying because he didn't undertake a mission. That mission had been requested by the highest ranking officer in Norway (Lord Cook) via the Admiral onboard Ark Royal. ODH then ask Heath to do it and he dragged his heals. Ark Royal had been flying similar missions with Swordfishes. The pilots on Glorious were 50/50 on whether the mission should be flown. This is documented. they suggested an armed recon should be flown or atleast somthing. ODH was in the unfortunate position of telling his Admiral and Lord Cook that his Flying Officer was refusing the mission...... ODH believed in CAP and ran around the clock flights when chasing Graf Spee......Theres a lot more to this!
@@researchvesselservices2202 Thanks
My father Bob McBride was the telegrapher air gunner who received the message from Admiralty to abandon the mission. D'Oyly-Hughes refused to obey. My father told me that he watched as the captain scrunched the message into a ball, threw it overboard, and demanded that the mission continue. The rest is history. My father was lucky enough to survive.
Thanks ...
great channel, great video, however i´d extremely appreciate subtitles to understand the words of the veterans better.
I’ll look into it.
Brave souls all. What comes through is how ill trained and how little individuals knew about the whole ship. The arrogance of the commanders lost the ships and all these men that were placed in this predicament.
Boy' the Hurricane guys sure had balls. Fancy landing a land based low wing high performance monoplane fighter on a carrier without a tail hook. One slip and it would be the great goodbye, What a horrible turn of fate that nearly all of these guys were killed despite showing so much courage.
Amazing work!
How can the captain of an AIRCRAFT carrier, not have AIRCRAFT in the air for reconnaissance, knowing German Warships are out there somewhere.
In his defence, Glorious had less than twelve of her own air group aboard, as she was being used as a ferry carrier. No-one, by the way, knew Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were in the area. Neither fact, by the way, excuses the decisions Hughes made.
I heard the captain refused to let aircraft patrol's take place, apparently he was not well liked by his air staff
Quite the reverse. He wanted to carry out a Swordfish attack in support of ground troops, but his Commander (Air) refused to undertake one. Hence the impending court-martial. According to a number of sources, many of the air crew disagreed with the Commander (Air).
This is factually incorrect. He wanted to carry out an attack that had come from the senior office (Flag Officer Narvik) via Admiral Wells It wasn't his own idea to attack the target he had been asked by his senior officers. The Air Crew were split on their thoughts. Considering Ark Royal's aircraft had been flying similar missions throughout the campaign the reasoning is not sound. ODH had no choice. As for Kenneth cross' comments he said "The Captain was happy for us but annoyed it took so long".....well he's right. Some of the pilots took two2-3 attempts to make this historic landing while Glorious guzzled fuel at a crazy rate!
Mt uncle Clifford just missed being on the old 'Glorious',but managed to get on to a destroyer instead.Probably on the convoy this bloke mentions,back to Scapa Flow.
Many thanks.
I'm sure I read an account somewhere that the captain wasn't a fan of aircraft and made some comment along the lines of if he saw an enemy warship he wouldn't launch aircraft he would steam straight towards her firing all his guns?
I haven’t looked into it far enough to confirm or deny this report. What seems to weaken that argument is that he agreed to the risky idea of allowing 10 RAF Hurricanes - with no arresting hooks - to try to land in order to save them. What supports this idea is he didn’t use any of the 5 Swordfish to patrol …
@@ArmouredCarriers nice to find a channel where the OP responds to comments ⚓️🇬🇧Love to see a video on HMS Unicorn, in the meantime look forward to next instalment!
@@robbielee2148 I plan on doing a video on the operation at Salerno. HMS Unicorn was there, so she will hopefully feature (if I can find audio from people who were on her).
@@ArmouredCarriers The claim that he said this was made by a Telegraphist Air Gunner, David Jolliff, and is in 'Carrier Glorious' , by John Winton. The claim is that D'Oyly-Hughes said, 'If we meet the whole German Navy we go straight at them with all our guns firing.' Glorious was armed with 4.7 inch AA guns only.
The odd thing is that D'Oyly-Hughes was not a typical 'Fish Head.' He had worked on secondment with the Air Ministry, and had even learned to fly. Despite what happened, his appointment to a carrier was not, except in retrospect, questionable.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Yes. This is why I find the whole scenario so strange. And it is why we have no choice but to wait another decade before all the remaining documents relating to the catastrophe are unsealed!
Great video, bloody war such a waste of life
War, 90% incompetence, 10% heroics.
Apart from the dreadful loss of the Glorious,there are,I believe,many more aspects to the whole Norwegian debacle that have yet to be revealed.That Churchill had a hand in the proceedings speaks volumes.The bravery displayed by our forces,in the face of a determined and well equipped enemy was exemplary,with the exception of D'oyly Hughes who was a disgrace to the uniform.
That's why they made Churchill Prime Minister because he sucked at everything else like getting thousands of Aus, NZ and Eng killed at Gallipoli
I'm sure it speaks volumes .. that you probably think you are kewl and edgey and clever if you had some conspiracy about how bad Churchill was and how this was his fault.....
Great video. The voices of the witnesses will be silent in the near future, so this is an important documentation. There´s only one criticism from me: Why didn´t you ask some German sailors from Scharnhorst and Gneisenau? It would have made the documentation more complete.
I am using whatever archived recordings I can find that are relevant. I’m just a hobbyist. I don’t have the resources to interview those few who remain. I will put some more effort in to finding other national archives, however.
@@ArmouredCarriers Please don´t get me wrong. Your work is amazing!
@@anonymusum Not getting you wrong at all!!! I would love to be able to do these better. I'm learning as I go along, and finding new resources also.
I hope to find a US audio archive at some point. Then I'll start doing some of their actions.
@@ArmouredCarriers I mean - the whole story was weird. D´Oyly-Hughes did something he shouldn´t have done - let alone the general order that a capital ship always should sail with an escort of at least four destroyers - and on the other hand the German Admiral Marshall ignored his orders to attack Norwegian harbors by taking the only possible solution out of a radio message from a German reco-plane that found the port of Harstad empty. So Marshall changed his course and ran straight into the Glorious formation. Although the German propaganda was celebrating his success Raeder criticized him afterwards for not obeying his orders what led to Marshall´s resignation. And this had even consequences for Lütjens and his Bismarck operation as Lütjens realized that Raeder wanted him to follow his orders word by word. He spoke with Marshall in front of Operation Berlin and it was clear that both men had different ideas about the duty and competence of a commander in action. - So the whole Glorious story had a lot of different perspectives and I´m convinced that it would be great to show them.
Anyway, I´m really enjoying your vids. Congrats!
@@ArmouredCarriers This would be fantastic, just as how Robert J. Kershaw pulled together archives, records, personal documents (and yes, managed some interviews too) to write It Never Snows in September - which dealt with the German viewpoint of Operation Market Garden. So much we know of WW2 is written by one side, often we forget that there was the other side as well... Still, this vid is very good work on its own, kudos!
Oh, 4:45 we can see polish Hurricanes from 303 fighter squadron PAF! RF were squadron's code letters :)
why was the flight deck not extended all the way to the bow of the hms glorious?
No, the bow section wasn't strong enough to hold a lengthen flight deck even if they tried
They were converted "large light cruisers". So the hull design - especially the narrow bow - wasn't ideal for a full length flight deck. They were also built with a lower forward "take-off" deck for use by fighters. The idea these smaller aircraft could be rapidly deployed direct from the hangar. The idea didn't take off. The Japanese did a similar thing, but later extended the main flight-deck forward with buttresses. I think the RN was planning to "retire" the vessels instead of rebuilding them. Then war broke out, and both were lost within the first 12 months.
Its gets chilling by the end.
What movie are the scenes in this video cut from????
A mix of training films and newsreels, with the odd bit of movie trailer spliced in.
This is arguably a more significant loss than the sinking of the HMS Hood... considering that aircraft carriers actually represented the future of naval combat...
Why was an important asset like an aircraft carrier allowed to sail without a substantial escort?
excellent use of training film, etc.....
Anyone notice that that the strut on the bi plain had a big bit missing
What film is that footage from?
Ah, vainglorious men and the brave men they rule!
Unfortunately after the fiascos in Basra and Helmand I suspect this still applies. However, we are not unique as all organisations are subject to human foibles, just hope that you and yours are not around when they get it wrong.
Oh crumbs...why was no battleship protecting this carrier?😨 RIP brave sailors. 😢
Thanks for uploading and educating us on this tragic event.
No BBs around plus a carrier and destroyers are much faster than a BB except maybe King George V class.
Why would you need a battleship to protect a carrier when the whole point of the carrier is that it never gets near enemy surface ships?
The real stupidity here was not sending up air patrols even though they easily could have. If they did, Glorious would have seen the Twins and could have evaded them before they even found her.
@@bkjeong4302 There are a myriad possible reasons for Glorious sailing with minimal escort, or for detaching from the main group in the first place to race home to Scapa Flow. However, as you pointed out, the failure to have a CAP in virtually unlimited visibility conditions, calm seas, in a warzone, knowing that Germans are in the theatre (invading Norway nearby as opposed to just being in the middle of the Atlantic) must be *the* single most significant and immediate factor in the loss of Glorious. Apparently accounts indicate that Glorious didn't have its crow's nest manned at the time of the encounter, further losing precious detection time (she could have spotted the Twins from farther out at the elevated height of the nest). As if to underscore how ideal the conditions were for surface warfare at that time, Scharnhorst went on to score one of the longest range naval gunfire hits in history, at about 26km (about 16 miles).
@@DenKHK I’d actually argue that conditions were poor for surface warfare (against a carrier) BECAUSE visibility was good and the carrier would have a massive range and detection advantage.....except the commanding officer was so incompetent he never bothered to make use of this, despite this being SOP for carriers.
Seriously why not have any sort of air patrol up?!
@@bkjeong4302 Haha yes you're right, poor against a carrier but the angle I was coming from was the ease of fire control and effects on gunnery :) Particularly the latter - the Twins had a shite experience during the encounter with Renown, and made tracks largely because their turrets were constantly being flooded and shorted out by the rough seas in that action. The Twins' war diaries and after-action reports are equal parts amusing and exasperating.
What a cockup, Here's to those brave men, and may that Captain fry in hell.
I hope you have seen this:
www.hmsglorious.com/name-this-page-ben/2019/3/10/churchill-operation-paul-and-the-sinking-of-hms-glorious-ardent-amp-acasta#comments-5c85181924a694a6a02bf7b1=
Worth the read. It was dumb churchills fault, as usual.
Amazing story
At 3.28...Is that a design on the strut of the plane or is there a piece missing?
Yes, I spotted that, too. Looks suspiciously like a hit.
Happy to be corrected on anything I get wrong.....
It's now widely known that Glorious was on orders from Churchill - against Navy advice - to carry out operation Paul.
It was either Glorious or Ark Royal, so the Navy sent the older ship, on a futile mission to stem the flow of steel from Norway to Nazi Germany - by dropping mines from HMS Glorious's biplanes.......when the fall of France a few days later gave Germany all the steel it needed.
The sailors could have been rescued, but the Royal Navy battleship group only 30 miles away, was carrying the Norwegian Royal family - and it was under orders not to break radio silence or stop.
A shameful waste of life.
My great uncle John Kenneth Brompton - known as Ken, a 20 year old aircraft technician, died on Glorious.
They threw the Captain of Glorious to the wolves, he was a personal friend of Churchill and was absolutely carrying out orders.
Churchill was only a few days into being PM, the calamity of Glorious's sinking was hidden by the Navy and Churchill behind a smokescreen of lies to save reputations. Understandable at the time, but could have been corrected after the war.
what's the song at the very beginning?
L'Arlésienne Suite No. 2, Op. 23: IV. Farandole
Josep Pons & Orquesta Ciudad De Granada
@@ArmouredCarriers Thank you
More volume would be appreciated.
Not just more volume, but having a competent narrator speaking understandable English, rather than these aging veterans with their heavy accents and stilted speech, would have been much appreciated. I have nothing but the highest respect for these vets, but they are not enjoyable to listen to. I have no doubt carrying on a conversation with any of them would be a struggle, as it is with my own 93 year old father.
@@Ponchoman07 you'd better get to understanding other dialects then
@@Ponchoman07 I understand your point; but as a native I find the accents of the various speakers easily understandable and interesting. The way we speak has changed over a relatively short period, the regional accents have also changed, the 'RP' of the officer class as opposed to the common man has virtually disappeared. The words we use have changed 'Tannoy' being a brand of loudspeakers used as a generic term for speakers for an announcement. For me it is nostalgic, reminiscent of black and white movies made before I was born. Subtitles might be useful for non British or younger viewers not familiar with this archaic speech.
Well as I’ve said, not only are the dialects difficult to decipher, but the long pauses in these old men’s speech is off-putting to me also. This one video as told "in their own words" has cured me from clicking on any more "in their own words" war stories, (as told by Brits), even as much as I love every one of the tales of the world wars as described by the people who lived through them. Even the stories as told by old American vets often make me want to tear my hair out, and I’m American. Although dialect clouds the stories less frequently, there is the same problem with the age of the speaker causing slow and often soft spoken speech. Thank goodness there is a wealth of these war stories out there with many of them competently narrated; but even a few of those are told with loud artillery in the background overwhelming the speaker’s voice. I know...I bitch a lot
@@Ponchoman07 the pauses and slow speech often annoy me too, even on videos narrated by a young speaker. I will listen at 1.25 or 1.5 times speed, even faster if still intelligible and not too information dense.
These British pilots , fighting the Luftwaffe with bi plane String bags , well this was the best of men.
How much of this footage is cgi? Some clips are obvious (the exterior view of the fighters). Other clips seem way too crisp to be from the period.
Only a bit of the fighter material is CGI (surprisingly hard to find footage of Hurricanes!). Most of the rest of the footage I ran through AI video enhancement software (I first started doing so with the Corsair videos) to reduce heavy noise and enhance the edges of fuzzy footage. I'm still learning the ropes.
@@ArmouredCarriers You are doing really well! It looks as if you used parts of training films, maybe entitled "damage control during combat", or fire control.
@@redskindan78 I cobbled scenes together from a variety of RN and US damage control training films - plus a few tidbits from movies like Battle of River Plate
Poor bloody Glorious those damn Hurricanes shove them over the get a CAP up Hughes you need time, God rest her crew, Ardent Acasta, ohhhh eck we will remember them
When you let a submariner lead a Carrier
“Good God! Two German Battlecruisers! Dive the boat, Number One! “
“Er…… This is an Aircraft Carrier, sir!”
“Eh? Oh………. Bugger!”
I mean Sandy Woodward was a submariner before he became an admiral and he made a good account of himself in the Falklands war.
@@calebcornelius8669 Good point. Don’t they have to get experience in all areas these days to get an Admiral rating? I used to walk the dog of the guy called Commander Reynor who told me he’d never make admiral ‘cos he couldn’t get in a submarine due to claustrophobia.
@@geordiedog1749 I know Woodward also served on HMS Sheffield in the mid to late 70's after serving on and commanding a couple submarines. After that he got sent for senior shore duty in the early 80's before being put in command of the task force and going south. Not sure about requirements for becoming and admiral in the Royal Navy but that's not how it works in the US navy. The only requirement for command that I can think of is that the skipper of a carrier has to have been a naval aviator.
he accomplished the task, he submerged the carrier.
Between several cups of tea they managed to win WW2...
James O'Neill sounds like he is from Liverpool.
Yeah this story has grown legs because the the RN/Admiralty didn't do a proper inquiry. The Captain was scapegoated in many way. Everyone talks about CAP but doesn't look at the logs. The majority of ships did not fly CAP in this location when they were traveling to Norway - Furious or Ark Royal. It wasn't standard policy at the time. The 10 minutes notice was better than most and the aircraft were armed with the weapons they needed to use against to known threats - subs and aircraft. Glorious was low on fuel. The fuel calculations that were done for the 1997 are bad to say the least (they used the 1938 peacetime values from the latest refit). Out of 300 data points the Glorious only matched these values on 12 trips when she had a tail wind in flat calm seas - not Norway with a Force 4-6. On the return journey - until just before the combat the weather was a Force 6 as mentioned in Devonshires log - only just at the battle site did they cross the front. The aircraft weren't prepared or ranged on deck for this reason and the ships speed was increased accordingly to make submarine attack less likely. The RN had totally disregarded surface attack after the Battle of Narvik. Everyone. Why does the Admiralty hide the files? Why does everyone want you to look at Glorious....well the day before the Glorious sailed Convoy Group I sailed. You think glorious was lightly armed? Convoy Group I had 15,000 troops in 7 troops ships and one ship protecting her. The Germans realising what was happening headed South to attack them but stumbled on oil pioneer, Juniper and Orama. They never did locate the convoy. but something happened then...Marschall after capturing 250 British realized his supply ship 80nm North was threatened by the "Southampton group" i.e Convoy Group II - how did he know that convoy was traveling that route, was right next to his ship etc. He didn't have recon at the time.....Chances are someone from one of his frightend prisoners may have mentioned that orama was meant to be part of the evacuation force and a participant of Convoy group II but was sent ahead as she had low fuel....... So firstly the admiralty screwed up by nearly killing more troops than were killed during most wwi battles and then its possible a Brit may have inadvertently mentioned Convoy Group II....which lead the Germans to stumble on Glorious while they were heading North to warn their supply ship........ Also, the German battle plots are wrong and this was mentioned by the German's. They have been used by British critics to condem ODH.....but he was at 30kts early on and the GErmans acknowledge this and he did turn away. Heath refused the Captains order....which actuall came from vice Admiral Carrier .....which in turn came from the Flag officer in Narvik.......It wasn't a mad idea that ODH it was an order from the most senior officer in Norway......anyway....ask me questions on it and ill do my best to answer them......Ohh and as of late May 1940 the carriers were fully under Admiralty control....they told FO Narvik and VAA where the ships were heading......Someone in teh Admiralty screwed up
Before radar, CAP was ineffective. But Ark Royal was inventing radar guided fighter interception off Norway even as Glorious bickered ...
@@ArmouredCarriers so why would the Commander Flying of Glorious not fly missions that Ark Royal was flying?
@@samcam8284 the one Man who is trully responsible is Vice Admiral Wells who gave permission to go...he knew that there was a potential German fleet nearby. He shoulders a lot of the blame....also the Admiralty who had direct control of Glorious as per their order at the end of May.....ODH may have been authoritarian but he did t give himself permission to leave Lofoten
@@researchvesselservices2202
I believe he was offered additional escorts, but refused, his hubris lost the RN a carrier.
@@researchvesselservices2202 In this instance, she had no radar equipped cruiser in escort. HMS Ark Royal had HMS Sheffield in close company -and an innovative signalsman using some applied highschool math.
There are officer that are good at administration and those that are good in combat, never the twain should be mixed. It always costs lives. And the last thing in combat you need is a glory hound that should be sitting behind a desk in an office counting paper clips.
ODH was good in combat....he was well decorated. Its his Flying Officer who refused to carry out the orders. This is at a time when Winston was lamenting about the lack of fighting spirit
Bloody Norah we, will remember them
German gunnery just brilliant.... ditto so many engagements WWI WWII
😂😂 The Germans failed at everything in ww1 and ww2 they lost both genius.
@@samcam8284 lol failed at everything….. they conquered almost all of Europe in the 1st 18 months of WWII…. read some books genius
@@Wolf-hh4rv
Hey dim bulb they lost both world wars spectacularly. You read a history book…that’s if you can read. 😂
It’s a shame the captain didn’t live to go into the water and die slowly with the men he condemned to death.
Pretty sick that.....he died for his country aswell
in their own words is about 60 years too late
Why no standing air patrol. Arrogance of the captain caused this disaster.
Well maybe because it was a Force 6 and none of the carriers operated CAP at this location. This was early carrier warfare and back then the carrier was running fast to avoid U-boats (the more likely threat) and was sufficently far offshore to have aircraft at 10 minutes. Unluckily for them the German fleet had put to sea.....unexpected after Narvik. Nobody in the British command expected this and ODH was scapegoated for it.....
Seems dreadfully incompetent to cruise a carrier without any lookouts or aerial reconaissance...
Any evidence of this being due to failures in cryptology?
No, the loss was due to the stupidity of Glorious" captain, who seems to have forgotten that his ship was operating in a war zone.
@@sillyone52062 thank you!
We will never know until 2041 when the files will be made public. HMS Glorious is the only aircraft carrier to have had an enquiry closed for 100 years.
@@sillyone52062 That seems to have been the gist of it, doesn’t it. The man was clearly hell bent on personal glory.
Cryptology, Bletchley Park reported Traffic coming up the Channel. They did not know what precisely but thought Military. It was also not taken seriously.
My uncle Frederick William Owen Apps, only 32.
Shameful.
terrible loss -he should have been more careful and the admiralty should have sent the hood back et al at high speed from the denmark strait-they were too slow to react to the german invasion.the lack of a an airborne patrol was atrocious
At the time of Glorious' sinking, Hood was in Gladstone dock, Liverpool, undergoing a refit.
Hood wasn’t available alas. But you’re totally spot on about the air patrol. That was simply unforgivable. Where was his head?
Up his gold-plated backside. He had been responsible for some astonishing bravery during WW1, but that does not automatically make you a good leader, in fact quite the opposite, here. D'oyly Hughes was a loose canon.
There wasn't even a lookout posted on the mast, according to some accounts.
@@geordiedog1749 The Force 6 wind that he was steaming in?
God! This makes me angry though!
I don't think it was avoidable for a converted battlecruiser from the 1910's to be outmatched and sunk by a ship from the 1930's.
Eh?
@@geordiedog1749 Glorious was laid down as a battlecruiser towards the end of the First War and before completion (before turrets etc) was converted to an aircraft carrier. So the base constuction wasn't ideal, but of course in the late 19teens/early 1920s aircraft were slower and the technology was cutting edge for the time. But of course by 1940, she was pretty much obsolete. But any carrier, even brand new, wasn't a match for the Panzerschiffe of the Kriegsmarine. But they may have had some effect with better planes and torpedos, much as the USNavy did in the Pacific.
It was a 30 plus knots hull, still very useful compared to the decrepit old 24/5 knots Eagle and Hermes.
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 Indeed. Just look at the war record of the third, half sister, who did survive 1940. HMS Furious.
Glorious and Courageous fought as completed flimsy battlecruisers in WW1, only Furious was stalled in construction as it was obvious that a two turret single 18” gun armament was crazy.
"Secret History" Episode HMS Glorious: ruclips.net/video/WkI_5YT4c3E/видео.html
No wonder repulse and Wales got sunk
That’s war they could never get a good aircraft for the carriers they tried enough types shame
narration was horrible, it took eye witness people too long to say anything, bless their hearts, getting old sucks
Our chummy ship.
Lest we forget 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺
what if the germans instead of sinking the HMS Glorious, capture her? Even an old carrier, in the Kriegsmarine, could protect the Bismarck, the war at sea, must be quite diferent.
The British invented the aircraft carrier and improved many aspects of it but never really understood them, not then and not now. Only the British managed to have a carrier, representing the future, sunk by the past; a bit like the EU membership sunk by BREXIT.
😂
'Only the British?' USS Gambier Bay.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Don’t spoil it - he’s enjoying his little anti-Brexit rant.
@@annoyingbstard9407 Isn't it sad that, as the events recede, all sorts of people with little knowledge or personal prejudices feel entitled to make inaccurate statements?
Correct Invented the Carrier and used them at Taranto. Glorious was a Carrier in the wrong place. If, as it should have had aircraft up it could could have seen the enemy first and launched a torpedo attack. All this was down to the Captain his choice. He had been advised byOfficers to keep aircraft ready repeatedly.
Guy D'Oyly Hughes gave the go ahead for evangelist James Maw RAF t preach the Gospel on HMS Glorious and 500 men gave their lives to Christ the day before the three ships sank For that I will be eternally grateful.My Grandfather Stoker 1st John Thomas Merrikin class died on HMS Acasta but I don't blame anyone we don't know the truth of what happened that day, and there's nothing we can do about it accept remember our loved ones and their bravery LEST WE FORGET
The British had no idea about Naval tactics
Really? I wonder if the commanders of Graf Spee, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, the U-Boat fleet, or the Italian navy, would agree with you?
Yeah they did....bating response....im mean look at narvik. They had just destroyed the majority of Germanys destroyers.....your answer in incorrect
The whole next part coming soon is really just another step towards the final death of RUclips. Like and subscribe like brainless trained pets. I almost feel dirty watching this now.
Sorry you feel that way. For me it was simply a matter time.
I can’t understand a word, it’s like listening to Biden explain Climate Change. Old dudes aren’t good narrators.
Ignorate comment.