In times of conflict it can be the contribution of apparently insignificant individuals that can make a major contribution to their outcome. The example of a certain Tommy Brown in World War II is an excellent example of such a contradiction.
Tommy Brown had actually joined the British Navy in 1941 aged 15 years – declaring himself to be a year older. He was a very junior member of the crew of the destroyer HMS Petard and assisted in the ship’s galley as a ‘non-combatant’. Captain Mark Thornton of HMS Petard maintained an eccentric rule over the ship’s company which effectively kept the crew in a continuous state of anticipation of his next ploy. The ship’s crew would be subject, for example, to emergency drills devised by the captain at any hour of the day or night. This may have been a source of some tension among the crew but it prepared them for numerous engagements with the enemy. In particular, Captain Thornton’s key ambition was to capture a U-boat and if possible recover components of its Enigma coding system.
After a sighting of a U-boat by an allied plane in the Eastern Mediterranean, chase was given by four Royal Navy vessels including the destroyer HMS Petard. Sonar contact was made around noon on the 30th of October 1942 and standard procedure was followed where three vessels formed a triangle round the contact while one vessel remained in reserve to take any necessary action. In this deployment one of the vessels in the triangle was in action stations actively hunting the target with depth charges. When later in the day HMS Peterd was in ‘active’ mode the Captain Mark Thornton asked Petty Officer Eric Sellars advice regarding the best approach to attack the elusive target. Sellars indicated the U-boat was probably lying on the sea bed beyond the maximum target depth of the depth charges but if soap was loaded in the pressure sensor aperture on the depth charges this could delay detonation sufficiently for the charges to reach the sea bottom before exploding. The sea bed was estimated to be at a depth of 500 feet using the echo sounder on board HMS Petard. This was duly done – and with the charges being rolled off the stern as a group rather then a dispersed pattern. This ploy proved successful and a short time later the damaged U-boat surfaced and came under fire from HMS Petard.
Anticipating capture of the U-boat, the captain ordered cease fire and gave the nod to the first Lieutenant Fasson to lead a boarding party to the stricken vessel. According to Sellars, Tommy Brown had sneaked into the lead ‘whaler’ boat under cover of darkness since he would not have been officially eligible for combatant duties. The distance between the two craft was initially only about 100 feet but progress to the U-boat was slow since the small boat was making its way through the U-boat survivors heading for HMS Petard. At some point Fasson swam over to U-boat with Colin Grazier to get there faster and once at the U-boat they climbed down to the control room to salvage whatever could be extracted. When the ‘whaler’ drew alongside Tommy Brown jumped out and after trying to tie up the boat climbed down the conning tower. A human chain was formed with Tommy receiving items from below and passing them firstly to Able Seamen Lacroix whereupon the items were passed back and stowed safely in the whaler. Initially the items were documents but just before the U-boat began to go under a wooden box was hoisted up from below. By this time a second ‘whaler’ boat arrived at U-559. When it was realised the U-boat was about to sink the command ‘abandon ship’ was given and the recovered box fell into the sea but was recovered by an officer in the first ‘whaler’. At this point Fasson and Crozier were at the foot of the conning tower ladder about to make their way up and Tommy was at the top of the ladder – though only Tommy survived when the U-boat suddenly sank.
The salvaged Enigma Code books in the form of a Short Signal Book and Short Weather Cipher gave future daily code settings for the German Navy Enigma coding machines. There is some variation in accounts as to whether the Enigma machine was actually recovered though the balance of evidence by senior officers such as Sellars suggests that it was since he claimed to have seen it in Haifa where HMS Petard next docked. The recovered material was handed over to British Intelligence officers and the following month delivered to Bletchley Park, in England whose role it was used to to break the Enigma codes. The recovery of the codebooks was highly significant since an extra layer of encryption had been added to the German Naval Enigma codes used in the North Atlantic and for ten months shipping losses had been increasing significantly to unsustainable levels. It was estimated that in a two month period following breaking the codes shipping losses in the Atlantic were reduced by over a million tons. The code books Tommy and his colleagues had recovered proved invaluable in changing the balance of the War of the Atlantic in favour of the Allies. When it was found, however, that Tommy had joined the service at age 15, he was obliged to leave the service, though he enrolled later as a senior catering assistant aboard HMS Belfast. Tragically, Tommy perished while on leave in 1945 in a house fire while his ship HMS Belfast was being refitted. A ‘green’ plaque has been recently placed near the house in Earl Shilton in Leicestershire where he lived for a while with relatives before embarking on his navy career.
A memorial to the three key participants in the U-559 incident Fasson, Crozier and Brown now exists in Tamworth, the home town of Bill Crozier and which was unveiled in 2003. This had largely been achieved through the efforts of Phil Shanahan who had been a deputy editor of the local newspaper the Tamworth Herald. Phil’s book ‘The Real Enigma Heroes’ is essential reading for additional information on the U-559 incident.
As a point of reflection, a key missing and secret document would have been Captain Mark Thornton’s report on the U-559 incident to the Admiralty. This would have acted as the ‘official’ account of the incident and is likely to have clearly indicated the bravery of Fasson, Crozier and Brown, resulting in Fasson and Crozier bring posthumously awarded the George Cross and Brown the George Medal.
