info needed royal navy world war 2... can you or someone you know help me?

[tweenyb]

Hi all, I am hoping you can help me fill in some gaps. At long last I have recieved my grandfather Royal Navy Service records.

His name was Arthur, George Butcher and he was born in 1922 Poole, Dorset.

His service records are as follows.

HMS Collingwood 1st Dec 1941-8th Feb 1942 Ordinary Seaman
HMS Victory 9th Feb 1942-30th Nov 1942 Ordinary Seaman
HMS Victory 1st Dec 1942-7th Dec 1944 Acting Able Seaman
LST 315 8th Dec 1944 7th Feb 1945 Acting Able Seaman
Victory 8th Feb 1945-1st March 1945 Acting Able Seaman
Vernon 2nd March 1945-26th June 1945 Acting Able Seaman
Whitesand Bay 27th June-25th Jan 1946 Acting Able Seaman
Berry Head 26th Jan 1946 -4th April 1946 Acting Able Seaman
Victory 5th April 1946- 21st June 1946 Acting Able Seaman

Did you or someone you know serve with my grandfather or do you have any information regarding the ships and the tours they went on?
maybe you have some photographs of the ships and/or their crew?

thanks in advance

Tweeny x

[dundurn]

Tweeny

Collingwood, Victory and Vernon are or were at the time your grandfather served there, shore establishments. Collingwood was a training establishment at Fareham, Hants. Victory and Vernon are/were part of the Portsmouth naval base.

LST 315 was a landing ship (tank) - designed to land tanks on enemy beaches but capable of many other activities. LST315 was involved in the Normandy landings (among others) but I think in early 45 was in the far east (Malaya?). Whitesand Bay was a Bay Class frigate and was depolyed to the far east. Berry Head was a support vessel. It provided machine shop facilites in support of naval operations where there were no or insufficient port facilities.Berry Head also was deployed in the far east.

If you google the names of these three ships you will get a lot more detail.

[tweenyb]

thank you so so much for your help it really is appreciated, it is hard starting off but im sure i will find loads.
Thank you once again

To any one who might have sereved or knows someone who served at these places at this time it would be great to hear stories etc

xxxxx

[dundurn]

Sorry Tweeny, I've been away from home - ships very often have considerable history on sites - If you follow them up through a search engine you may very well find that former shipmates have associations whose members, between them, have an almost complete history of the ship. The only problem from your point of view is that the ships often outlast the sailors, so to speak, so many of the people you may contact may have served in the ship long after your grandfather transferred out of the crew.

I know a bit about the Bay class - my father-in-law was in two of them the Veryan Bay and the St Austell Bay. One tip when looking up the ships is to use the full name "HMS" whatever - otherwise you may get hits on the geographical feature after which they were named, rather than the ship itself.

One final point, HMS Collingwood was an initial training depot for "hostilities only" ratings. These were recruits whose period of service in the Navy was to be for the duration of the war, and no longer i.e. only for as long as hostilities lasted. This was in contrast to existing members of the Navy and those called back from Reserve status.

Best of luck in your search.

[dundurn]

http://www.navsource....ives/10/16/160315.htm

will give you some history of LST 315 and a couple of pictures - it started out and finished as American and for a few months was in the Royal Navy.

[tweenyb]

thank you so much you are a fountain of knowledge and very helpful
thanks again x