1. Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), p. 491.

2. HMS Delhi had been sent to America to be refitted as an anti-aircraft gun cruiser. She was unique in having an all-American main gun armament and fire control system. Delhi shipped a powerful anti-aircraft armament of five of the very successful 5-inch 38 calibre dual-purpose guns, 8 x 40-mm Bofor guns and 12 x 20-mm Oerlikon guns.

3. The intelligence provided by the Admiralty’s Operational Intelligence Centre was based on information obtained from signals intercepted from German U-boat command radio transmissions, intelligence provided by convoy escorts and patrolling aircraft, as well as from the U-boats themselves. As for the former, the British were able to successfully break the German Enigma codes.

4. Michael W. Cashman, from a brief five-page memoir of his time in HMS Venomous, found in the papers of Robert E. Moore, author and publisher of the first edition of A Hard Fought Ship (1990).

5. Signal from C in C WA to NOIC Londonderry sent at 1227B/28/6/42.

6. Signal from Capt D Greenock to C in C WA sent at 1414B/5/7/42.

7. This story is from an interview with Robert Back, by then a highly respected marine artist, published in the arts journal Prints, March/April 1984.
 
8. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely.

9. Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani, Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940-1943 (Barnsley: Chatham Publishing, 1998), p. 242.

10. Ibid., p. 231.
 
11. Various accounts give the number of Spitfires carried by Furious as being from 36 to 42.
 
12. Operation Pedestal Order of Battle derived from Peter Smith’s book, Pedestal: The convoy that saved Malta, pp. 251-256.
 
13. The case folder, Reports on Planning of Operation Pedestal (ADM 199/1242), at the National Archives includes the Reports of Proceedings written by Cdr Falcon-Steward RN (HMS Venomous), the commanding officers of the aircraft carriers HMS Eagle, Furious, Victorious and Indomitable, the report by the CO of the rescue tug HMS Jaunty and reports on losses of men and ships. The RoP of Capt L.D. Mackintosh RN, CO of HMS Eagle, was written aboard HMS Venomous on 12 August, the day after Eagle  was torpedoed. A later addition on 14 August acknowledged the help received from the ships involved in the rescue.

14. Smith, Pedestal, p. 64.

15. On 13 December 1943, two US Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean near Oran would sink U-73.

16. Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 518.

17. Bill Loades was mistaken. HMS Eagle sunk on her port side and he must have scrambled down the starboard side of her hull. His description is from his letter to Bob Moore on 9 November 1988. Later, on Arctic convoys, Bill Loades was drafted to a Russian destroyer and “through my own stupidity ended up in one of Stalin’s slave labour camps for six months.”

18. From Convoy Escort Commander by Peter Gretton, the CO of HMS Wolverine (London: Cassell, 1964).

19. Vice Admiral Lachlan D. Mackintosh RN (1896-1957), 29th Chief of the Clan Mackintosh, retired from the Navy in 1950 when he was Chief British Naval Representative of the Control Commission for Germany at the RN base in Hamburg.

20. From the unpublished memoir of Lieutenant Anthony d'Evelyn Trevor Sangster RN (1921-92).

21. Gretton, Convoy Escort Commander, pp. 89-95. John Tucker described his part in the sinking of Dagabur to Bill Forster, Holywell House Publishing, in 2009.

22. Gretton, Convoy Escort Commander.

23. History of the Second World War, United Kingdom Military Series, edited by J. R. M. Butler, War at Sea 1939-1945, Volume II, The Period of Balance, by S.W. Roskill, London 1956, HMSO, p. 305.

24. Ibid., p. 304.

25. Ibid., p. 305.

26. Ibid., pp. 304-5.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., p. 307.

29. This disastrous decision by Admiral Sir Dudley Pound was taken at a time when naval intelligence had not been able to provide positive information that Tirpitz and her battle group had sailed. All he had to offer was ‘negative intelligence.’ For more on the role of intelligence and Pound’s decision-making process that led to the order to scatter Convoy PQ.17, refer to Very Special Intelligence: The Story of the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre, 1939-1945 by Patrick Beesly, pp. 124-41.

30. Admiral Commanding Iceland Command’s signal sent to C in C HF at 2109A/11/9/42.

31. Signal sent from HMS Blenheim to Rear Admiral CS 18 at 2127/14/9/42.

32. Signal from C in C WA sent to Rear Admiral (D) HF at 1853A/16/9/42.

33. Signal from C in C HF to Rear Admiral (D) HF sent at 1017/17/9/42.

34. The objective of the night raid on St. Nazaire was to destroy the outer gates of the large dry-dock and associated pump works to prevent the Kriegsmarine from using the facility to support its large ships. Royal Marine commandoes disembarked from several motor launches and destroyed the pump works, whilst the former US Navy ‘Four Pipe’ destroyer, HMS Campbeltown, rammed the gates of the dock. When the explosives stored in the bows finally exploded, they destroyed the gates, flooding the dry-dock.

35. Signal from Venomous to C in C WA sent at 2017A/28/10/42.