Admiralty records concerning Operation Dynamo and the evacuation of troops from Dunkirk, covering 1940–1941.
Source: The National Archives, Kew, ADM 199/792. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
1 matching pages. OCR may contain transcription errors.
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235 |
Unformatted machine-generated OCR for document page 186.
235 -2- 233 (7). At about 0700 H.M.S. Gossamer came alongside to deliver a bottle of chloroform required for some wounded who had been embarked. (8). Except when boats were alongside Skipjack circled round at full speed using full wheel to avoid attacks. Opportunities were found in the lull between attacks to embark troops from the boats. 53 (9). At 0800 it was reported that 4" ammunition was nearly X expended, only about 12 rounds a gun being left. Orders were, therefore, given not to open fire till the commencement of the dive. June (10). At 0845 Skipjack had embarked 250-300 troops. A flight of 10 Junkers 88 were seen to be about to attack. Fire was opened with all guns and full wheel put on. The leader of 0845 the flight dropped his bombs, two of which hit the ship, one on each side abreast the whallers davits. The ship way immediately lost weigh and took a strong list to port. About a minute later a second plane made his dive and three more bombs hit the ship, one through the bridge, one on the fo'castle, and one in the foremost boiler room. The Lewis gun on the rangefinder platform, however, never relaxed fire and the plane never came out of her dive but went straight on into the sea. (11). One minute after the ship was hit the second time, the order was given to abandon ship and two minutes after this she turned turtle. She remained floating bottom up for some 20 minutes before she finally sank. (12). A further bombing attack was made on the survivors in the water. P.T.O.