Gun crew on the British merchantman SS Clan Murdoch in 1940-1. Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins, second left, Second Officer and Gunnery Officer on the ship, was the Gun Captain, and the other men were ship’s officers with the exception of the Royal Marine at the back. The gun is a Quick-Fire 12-pounder 12 hundredweight on a High Angle mount. The man on the right wears the Merchant Navy lapel badge, issued by the government in January 1940 for merchant seamen to wear while ashore in civilian clothes in order for their war work to be recognised (Photo: Collection of Captain L.W. Gibbins).
A photo from a sequence in the Admiralty Official Collection in the Imperial War Museum entitled ‘DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships and Service), Gunners Training. Liverpool, 14-16 October 1942,’ showing Royal Navy personnel at the shore establishment HMS Wellesley. This one is entitled ‘From training at the sights of an anti-aircraft mounting, the second step is training at an actual gun.’ The gun is a QF HA 12 pdr 12 cwt identical to the one in the Clan Murdoch photo above (Photo: Lt J.A. Hampton, © IWM A 12362).
Revised 12 April 2020
This photo above was taken in 1940-1 on board SS Clan Murdoch, a British merchant ship that brought essential goods from Africa and India to ports in England and Scotland during the Second World War. The man second from left is my grandfather, Captain Lawrance Wilfred Gibbins, who was the ship’s Second Officer and Gunnery Officer. This picture is a rare image of a Merchant Navy gun crew during the early part of the Second World War, when the guns on merchant ships were manned mainly by merchant seamen. Later they were augmented by DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) gunners from the armed services who were specially trained and deployed for this purpose.
I knew my grandfather well and talked to him about this photo and his experience using this gun during the war. Because I know in some detail when and where this crew was in action against German aircraft - off the north-east coast of England in February 1941 - I’ve decided to divide this blog into two parts, the first dealing with the gun and Merchant Navy gunnery in general during the war and the second on the circumstances of that action in 1941.
The gun is a naval QF 12-pdr 12 cwt gun (3-inch) on a dual-purpose HA (High Angle)/LA (Low Angle) mount for use against aircraft as well as surface vessels. 12 pounds was the rounded-off projectile weight of 12.6 pounds filled and fuzed, and 12 cwt (hundredweight) referred to the weight of the barrel and breech. It was QF (Quick Fire) because a good crew could fire 15 rounds a minute. It was introduced in 1894, and in its Mark 1 and Mark 2 variants saw extensive use at sea in the First World War, mainly on destroyers as armament against submarines and E-boats and also as a submarine deck gun. Many of these guns were in storage and brought back into use at the outbreak of the Second World War. The Mark V variant, with a barrel made from a single ‘monobloc’ casting rather than built up of layers of steel, was manufactured in large numbers during the Second World War with the HA/LA mounting, and many of those went on merchant ships. It is impossible to tell from the photo whether the Clan Murdoch gun is a refurbished gun of First World War vintage or a newly built Mk V, but at this early stage in the war the former is more likely (new Mk V guns are more likely to have been mounted with a gun shield, as seen in several of the photos below).
A photo from a sequence in the Admiralty Official Collection taken in Liverpool in 1942 showing Naval DEMS gunners training ‘to use the various types of guns used on merchant ships for protection’. This one is entitled ‘Before being allowed to handle live ammunition each man under instruction learns his gun drill at guns mounted in a yard at the Instructional School.’ The gun is a QF HA 12 pdr 12 cwt identical to the one in the Clan Murdoch photo above (Photo: Lt H.W. Tomlin, © IWM A 8027).
A photo in Admiralty Official Collection in the same sequence as the photo above, taken in Liverpool on 14-16 October 1942 showing Royal Navy DEMS gunners training and also entitled ‘From training at the sights of an anti aircraft mounting, the second step is training at an actual gun..’ The gun is a QF HA 12 pdr 12 cwt identical to the one in the Clan Murdoch photo above (Photo: Lt J.A. Hampton, © IWM A 12361).
A Ministry of Information book published in 1944 gives a good account of the arming of British merchant ships and the training of merchant seamen as gunners. As early as 1937 gunnery and convoy courses for officers were underway at various ports, and in the months preceding the outbreak of war ships were strengthened to take guns. Many ship’s masters and other seamen over the age of 40 were veterans of the First World War at sea, easing the transition to a war footing. Naval reservists, including Royal Marines, were called up to act as gun layers. By the end of 1939, some 1,500 guns had been mounted on British merchant ships, with some 3,400 ships armed by the end of 1940. On large ships such as the Clan Murdoch the ship’s Second Officer was generally appointed Gunnery Officer, with the other gun crew drawn from among the ship’s officers. The Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships (DEMS) organisation provided Royal Navy, Royal Marines and Army gunners for merchant ships, their numbers rising from fewer than 2,000 at the end of 1939 to some 35,000 in 1944, 22,000 of then from the Royal Navy and 13,000 from the Royal Artillery Maritime Regiment. Even so, guns continued to be manned by merchant seamen to the end of the war, with over 100,000 merchant seamen having taken a two-day gunnery course and ‘merchant seamen gunner’ being an established rate with extra pay.
The initial objective was to arm as many ships as possible with a single low-angle gun against submarines, with many guns in the 3 to 6 inch range that had been stored in ports since 1918 being used for that purpose. The plan was based on the First World War experience, but ‘… what was not foreseen was the manner in which ships would become targets for air attack’ (Ministry of Information, 1944). This was an issue from early in the war for convoys around the coasts Britain and in the Bay of Biscay and Mediterranean, and also for Atlantic convoys within range of the Focke-Wulf Condor. To begin with anti-aircraft defence was provided by .303 Lewis guns and Hotchkiss and Marlin machine guns, which were eventually replaced by much more effective 20 mm Oerlikon cannon. For a larger anti-aircraft weapon, stocks of 12 pdr 12 cwt guns were converted to high-angle mounts, and Mk V guns on HA mounts were newly made for the purpose. By 1943-4 the standard armament of a British merchant ship was one 4-inch anti-submarine gun at the stern, one 12-pdr at the bow and four or six 20 mm Oerlikons. This is seen particularly clearly in ships of wartime manufacture such as SS Clan Campbell (1943), my grandfather’s fourth ship of the war, which had tubs for the guns. Late in the war merchant ships were also armed with 40 mm Bofors guns, which along with the Oerlikons gave ships a very credible anti-aircraft defense.
SS Clan Murdoch (7,375 grt) before the war. The gun in the photo above would have been mounted in the forecastle. My grandfather was her Second Officer from 1937 until April 1941 (source: Clan Line Illustrated Fleet History)(Photo: Collection of Captain L.W. Gibbins).
Clan Campbell (9,545 grt), on which my grandfather was Second Officer for a voyage back from India in late 1944. This photo gives an excellent impression of the wartime appearance of a British merchantman, including the grey paint scheme, the skid-mounted Carley life rafts (on the foremast and aft) and the armaments. She had been built to wartime specifications in 1943 with tubs for a 12 pdr high-angle gun forward, a 4-inch low-angle gun aft and 20mm Oerlikon guns on the bridge wings. Her predecessor of the same name was sunk in 1942 on one of the famous Malta convoys (photo: National Maritime Museum P22116, reproduced in the Clan Line Illustrated Fleet History).
A photo from the Admiralty Official Collection in the Imperial War Museum from a sequence entitled ‘The Trawlers play their part. 6 June 1943, aboard HMS Stella Pegasi, Scapa Flow,’ with this photo entitled ‘The Trawler's gun crew manning the 12-pounder on the fo'castle.’ The gun is identical to the one on Clan Murdoch in the photo above, but with an armour shield. (Photo: Lt F.A. Hudson, © IWM A 17176).
Whereas in the early part of the war there might only be one or a small number of service personnel to help man the guns, by 1943-4 ships’ crews might include 12 or more DEMS gunners. They shared in all the hardships and risks of being at sea on a merchant vessel, and were signed on as deck hands because their military status could have resulted in the ships being classed as warships by the enemy, and the crews therefore as combatants rather than civilians (a distinction that meant little in practice, with the Germans attacking merchant ships in the same way they did warships). It is thought that some 24,000 Royal Navy personnel and 14,000 men of the Royal Artillery Maritime Regiment had served as DEMS gunners by the end of the war, and that 2,713 and 1,333 of them respectively had been killed in action or were missing at sea – a casualty rate higher than their ‘parent’ services and in keeping with the Merchant Navy as a whole, in which over a quarter of the men at sea in 1939 did not survive the war.
The effectiveness of armament on merchant ships has sometimes been called into question. Clearly, merchant ships were ‘sitting ducks’ in many convoys, particularly the slow ones early in the war, with engagement of the enemy by the escorts being reactive in most cases. However, there were numerous instances of merchant ships using their forward gun against surfaced U-boats and surface raiders, and their guns and machine-guns against E-boats (particularly off the east coast of England). In addition, the 1944 Ministry of Information book cited above estimates that ‘Our merchant and fishing vessels have by themselves shot down over a hundred aircraft, and probably shot down fifty and damaged over a hundred others. Aircraft which the combined fire of H.M. ships and merchant ships have destroyed in total well over a hundred more.’ This would include aircraft attacking invasion fleets in which merchant ships and Merchant Navy-crewed assault ships formed the main component, for example in the invasions of Sicily, the south of France and Normandy. The guns were only as good as their crews, and the high level of training given to merchant as well as D.E.M.S. gunners is clearly evidenced in the photos included here.
An excellent recollection of gun operation in Merchant Navy service can be seen here. The writer, Philip Dilworth, was a Cadet with the British India Steam Navigation Company from August 1939 to April 1941, when a failed eyesight test ended his career at sea. After several months on the Cadet training ship Waroonga he was allocated in January 1940 to the troopship HMT Talma, which had a single 3.7 inch gun mounted on the stern and a Royal Marines reservist to look after it. This was early in the war when the gunners on merchant ships were mainly drawn from the crew. Dilworth’s account refers to a low-angle gun of larger calibre used against surface vessels, but it explains the roles of the men in the gun crew in the photo on Clan Murdoch:
A photo from the Admiralry Official Collection in the Imperial War Museum in a sequence entitled ‘HM Trawler Lovania shoots down a German aircraft (Ju 88) which attempted to cross the east coast of England. 21 October 1942)’, with this photo entitled ‘The crew of the 12 pounder gun of the Lovania which helped to shoot down the Ju 88.’ The gun is a 12 pdr identical to the one in the Clan Murdoch photo above (Photo: Lt F.A. Davies, © IWM A 12362).
‘Shortly after joining the Talma, Pluto and I were made members of the ship's gun crew. The Marine acted as the gun layer i.e. he set the range on a dial and operated a wheel which moved the gun barrel up or down - he also fired the gun when the horizontal cross-wire of his sight coincided with the target's water line; the third officer was the gun trainer i.e. he set the deflection on a dial and operated a wheel which moved the gun barrel from side to side - it was his job to keep the vertical cross-wire of his sight on the centre of the target; I was the number three, and it was my job to load the shell into the breech and push it as far as I could up the barrel; Pluto was the number four who loaded the cordite case into the breech after priming it with a detonator; and the number five was a sixth engineer who closed the breech block after the gun was loaded - he also opened the breech block to eject the cordite case after the gun had been fired. Second Officer Daly was the Gun Captain who determined and shouted out the range and deflection to be set on their dials respectively by the gun layer and gun trainer; gave the orders to load and fire, and was in overall command. There was also a small team of Lascar seamen who kept the ammunition racks on the gun deck filled, by carrying shells and cordite cases from the ammunition locker on the deck below as required. When the gun was fired, the effect was quite spectacular - a sheet of flame shot out of the breech and for those wearing boiler suits, the bottom of the trouser legs jumped up to knee height before dropping down again. We subsequently learned to tuck the trouser legs into our socks to prevent this happening.’ (Philip Dilworth, ex-Cadet, Merchant Navy, recollections).
A detailed 1925 drill manual for the 12 pdr 12 cwt gun can be seen here. A number of Mk V guns survive in museums and displays, including one in the Long Shop Museum in Suffolk at the former Garretts Works (where many the guns were made) and one in the Royal Artillery Museum in London.
For Part 2 of this blog, click here.
