Leading Seaman D/JX 30326 Harold Buchan TURNER
Royal Navy H.M.S.Kite (U877)
21 Aug 1944 aged 21
Plymouth Naval Memorial, Panel 85, Column 3.
Son of Thomas and Bessie Turner, of Stockport, Cheshire.
On 20 Aug 1944 H.M.S. Kite (Lieutenant Commander A.N.G. Campbell) was escorting the aircraft carriers H.M.S. Vindex and H.M.S. Striker, which in turn were escorting convoy JW-59 to Northern Russia when the convoy was sighted in the Barents Sea by German aircraft. Soon a pack of U-boats attacked the convoy with one U-boat being sunk by Fairey Swordfish aircraft from one of the carriers. Two more were sunk by other destroyers.
At 06:30 on 21 August, H.M.S. Kite slowed to 6 knots to untangle her "foxers" (anti acoustic torpedo noise makers, towed astern). The decision to do so, rather than severing the foxers' cables and abandoning them, was made by her temporary commander, a submariner. At that speed H.M.S. Kite was a sitting duck, and she was hit by two torpedoes from Type VIIC U-344 (Kapitänleutnant Ulrich Pietsch) and sank.
Of H.M.S. Kite's crew of 10 officers and 207 ratings, 60 survived the attack, but from the freezing Arctic water only 14 sailors were picked up alive by H.M.S. Keppel. Five of the rescued died on board, leaving only nine to make it to shore.
H.M.S.Kite (photo from uboat.net)
