Sick Berth Attendant P/SBR/X 7974 Stanley LEAH.
Royal Naval Auxiliary Sick Berth Reserve H.M.S. Acasta (H09)
8 Jun 1940 aged 26.
Portsmouth Naval Memorial, Panel 45, Column 1.
Stanley was a son of Samuel and Ada Burgess who were married at St.Augutine’s on Brinksway in Cheadle Heath. He married Katherine Olive Whiteley at Cheadle St.Mary in 1938 and lived in Cheadle Heath, Cheshire.
H.M.S. Acasta (Commander Charles Eric Glasfurd) and H.M.S. Ardent were escorting H.M.S. Glorious to Scapa Flow on 8 Jun 1940. At 15:46 the three ships were spotted by the German Battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, who were not spotted by the British until 16:00, when H.M.S. Ardent was ordered to identify the ships. The Germans opened fire on Ardent at 16:27 and with the 15-centimetre secondary armament, mostly by Scharnhorst, while both ships fired at H.M.S. Glorious with their main batteries. H.M.S. Acasta remained with the carrier whilst making smoke, opening fire although her guns lacked the range to reach the battleships. The destroyer was struck not long after she began laying smoke, but it had little effect.
After H.M.S. Glorious was hit multiple times and started to list, H.M.S. Acasta left her and closed on the battleships to shorten the range for a torpedo attack. Now more visible to the battleships, she began to be hit more regularly. The first attack was unsuccessful, but one torpedo from the second attack blew a 39-foot hole in Scharnhorst's hull. H.M.S. Acasta was then reduced to a blazing wreck and her captain ordered her crew to abandon ship, with one of the gun crews delayed long enough to fire a shot that struck one of the Scharnhorst's main guns, but inflicted nothing more than shrapnel damage. H.M.S. Acaster sank stern first around 18:20, with most of her crew dying from exposure before the S.S. Borgund rescued two survivors from H.M.S. Acasta three days later, along with 36 men from H.M.S. Glorious, one of the men from H.M.S. Acasta later died of his wounds. All of the men saved by S.S. Borgund were taken to Tórshavn in the Faroe Islands on 13 June. Eight officers and 153 ratings were lost with H.M.S. Acasta or died of their wounds afterwards.
H.M.S. Acasta.
