World War II Database

ww2dbaseEver since his school days in the United Kingdom, Hugh Martyr had been interested in history, particularly naval history. His interest in history later expanded to cover the American Civil War and the German V-weapons campaign against London. He is also an re-enactor and organizer of major re-enactment events, including the 200th anniversary of Waterloo event where over 8,000 were on the field. He joined the WW2DB team in 2018.

Timeline Contributions

Hugh Martyr has also contributed 881 entries in the WW2 Timeline. A small sample of his timeline contributions is shown below.

» 16 Feb 1940: At the start of the day, 20 miles north of Kinnaird Head, Fraserburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, German submarine U-14 (Oberleutnant zur See Herbert Wohlfarth) sank Danish ships Rhone (killing 9) and Sleipner (killing 13) shortly after midnight; 41 survivors were later picked up by Swedish trawler Standard and HMS Kipling. Toward the end of the day, at 2125 hours, 10 miles north of Kinnaird Head, U-14 struck again, sinking the 1,526-ton neutral Swedish coal ship Osmed, which sank by the bow 2 minutes after the torpedo struck, 10 of the crew were lost, the remaining 7 were picked up by the British trawler Loch Hope and taken to Scrabster, a small harbour in Thurso Bay Caithness, Scotland. 10 minutes later, at 2135 hours, U-14 sank the 1,646-ton neutral Swedish coal ship Liana carrying coal from Blyth to Halmstad, Sweden. She went down within a minute, 10 crew members managed to get off the vessel and these too were picked up by the trawler. Eight of these later boarded the Santos to return to Sweden but the ship was sunk on the 24 Feb 1940 and 6 of them were drowned.

» 11 Mar 1944: The French submarines Pascal and Redoutable were sunk during an air raid. They had been re-floated after being scuttled on 27 Nov 1942.

» 23 Sep 1944: A V-1 flying bomb over flew the town of Newmarket, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom and crashed near Burwell in Cambridgeshire. The pilot, at the rank of flight officer, of the 501 Squadron had been chasing the bomb and had reached overtaking speed when the engine of his Tempest aircraft seized up. He had seconds to gain a little height and turn to the west to avoid the marshlands and bale out. He saw the aircraft crash into a barn and explode whilst he landed in a cherry tree outside the Leather Bottle Inn. It was there that he was rescued by a Royal Engineer Officer before being held in a Police Station for 2 hours awaiting proper identification. The fault in the Tempest aircraft was traced to an air lock when fuel tanks were switched over.

» 25 Jun 1941: The Soviet destroyer Lenin was blown up and sunk by the retreating Soviet forces at Liepaja, Lithuania.

» 30 Jul 1940: The British submarine HMS Oswald (Lieutenant Commander D. A. Fraser, RN) made an unsuccessful attack on a large Italian convoy about 20 nautical miles to the south of Capo dell'Armi in the Liguria region of Italy. The Italian destroyer Grecale which was near the merchant vessel Col di Lana reported being missed. The convoy attacked by Oswald had departed Naples earlier and had, besides the Grecale, an escort of four torpedo boats and the destroyers Maestrale, Libeccio, and Scirocco.

» 7 Oct 1944: More German Heinkel bombers carrying V-1 flying bombs were shot down. One V-1 flying bomb escaped the fighters and anti-aircraft guns and flew into a balloon cable over the village of Fawkham near Gravesend, Kent, England, United Kingdom and demolished several houses. There were 17 fatalities and 54 injured, 20 of them seriously when another fell at the Park Road/Barrington Road.

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