HMS/M Seraph

The Seraph (Lt. Norman Limbury Auchinleck "Bill" Jewell) rescued General Giraud from France. She was operating from Gibraltar and her job was divided into two parts, separated by a couple of days.

The first part consisted of a preliminary conference in French territory in North Africa. On October 19th 1942, she embarked Major-General Mark Clark and Brigadier-General Lemnitzer, both of the United States Army, three other senior US Army officers, Captain Wright, of the US Navy, and three British Commando officers. She sailed that evening, bound for a point off the coast of Algeria. On October 20th, the whole party practised disembarking from the submarine in small collapsible boats ('folboats') and as soon as they had mastered the art, the Seraph proceeded on her course. Shortly after midnight she reached her destination and the watching officers on her bridge saw a light ashore burning in the window of a house. The Seraph, satisfied, withdrew to seaward and spent the day lying submerged just off the coast.

Lt Jewell at the periscope in Seraph

That night she again approached the shore. This time the light was flashing a pre-determined signal and the Seraph was taken in to within easy reach of the beach. General Clark, the three US Army officers, and the British Commando officers manned the boats and the whole party disappeared in the darkness, paddling shorewards. The Seraph was again taken out to sea and once more spent the daylight hours lying submerged a short distance offshore.

As darkness fell, she came in again. A message was flashed out to her, asking her to approach the beach as close as possible. Jewell took her in to within 400 yards, with less than ten feet under her keel, but the sea was too rough to launch the boats from the beach and a signal to the Seraph told her to lie off until the surf moderated. She put out to sea again and waited.

Later that night she again saw the flashing light, followed by a signal asking her to come in again as quickly as possible. Though Jewell could not know it, the party ashore saw the outline of the Seraph lying off the beach. They made a dash for the boats, tumbled into them and shoved off, paddling hard. They reached the Seraph despite the heavy surf, though General Clark's boat capsized just as it got alongside. The General and the Commando with him were hauled out of the water, sent below hurriedly to dry off, and the Seraph put to sea again. She reached Gibraltar on the 25th and landed her party, the first half of her task successfully completed.

Two days later she sailed again, bound this time for unknown destination on the southern coast of France. For five days she patrolled up and down, submerged by day, until at last a signal gave her the name of the port from which she was to pick up her distinguished passengers. On the night of 5th November, Jewell had brought the Seraph to within two miles of the rendezvous and lay on the surface, letting the submarine drift slowly shorewards. Seraph had come to pick up the French General Henri Honoré Giraud. This was "Operation Kingpin". The French forces at Oran and Casablanca were pro-Vichy and the French General Mast had told General Mark Clark that only one man could enlist their loyalty to the Allied cause - General Giraud. Giraud had escaped from captivity in Germany and was now in Vichy France, where Generals Pétain and Laval were planning to send him back to the Germans in return for certain concessions. Giraud meanwhile indicated to the Allies that he was willing to be smuggled from France to North Africa provided he was given a command in keeping with his status and dignity. Operation Kingpin was therefore mounted to rescue the general but there was one snag: he flatly refused to deal with the British. There was no US boat within 3,000 miles and eventually the RN agreed to appoint Captain Jerauld Wright USN to the command of Seraph for the operation. The boat became 'USS Seraph' and flew the USN ensign. The ship's company assumed American accents which fooled nobody - including Giraud, who had been told of the deception by Wright.

The French General Giraud

For four hours the men onboard watched anxiously for some sort of signal, but the vague outline of the coast remained unbroken by any sort of light. Then, at last, a signal flashed. The Seraph answered with a shaded light and a signal was sent asking for the submarine to wait for one more hour.

At last, out of the darkness, came the faint creaking of oars. A small boat made her way slowly alongside. A password was exchanged and on board the Seraph stepped General Giraud, his son, and three staff officers. As soon as they were onboard, the boat returned to the coast and the Seraph put to sea.

Throughout 6th November she proceeded submerged, making for a pre-arranged rendezvous in the middle of the Mediterranean.

On the following day (7th) at 0830 Seraph was lying on the surface in the correct position. However, the submarine's main radio was defective and she was unable to communicate with Gibraltar for a rendezvous. Jewell decided to remain on the surface, with extra look-outs, and eventually a Catalina was sent out from Gibraltar to search for the now-overdue submarine. Even then there was a problem when the signalman's signalling lamp blew out at the crucial moment of exchanging identities, but all was well in the end. Preparations were made to transfer General Giraud and his staff to the Catalina, but just as they were about to board the collapsible dinghy, another aircraft flew overhead. Those onboard the submarine were unable to identify it and the Seraph prepared to dive in a hurry. But the unknown aircraft - identified as a RAF Hudson - continued its course and made no attempt either to attack or to investigate the submarine below her. The General was put on board the Catalina, followed by his son and staff, and the aircraft took off. A few hours later, in the early morning of the 8th October, British and US soldiers, under the command of General Eisenhower, were landing all along the North African coast, to pin down the Axis forces between themselves and the Eighth Army advancing on their long assault from El Alamein.

General Mark Clark, Captain Fawkes (Captain 8th SM Flotilla) and Lt 'Bill' Jewell take the salute at the march past of the US 5th Army in North Africa

Capt. Jerauld Wright, USN, and Lt. NLA 'Bill' Jewell, RN. Captain Wright later became NATO's Supreme Commander, Atlantic

Meanwhile, HMS/M Sibyl was approaching the rendezvous point off La Fosette, between Nice and Marseille, to meet the shore-boat with ten more members of Giraud's staff. The C.O., Lt Turner, was uncertain of Seraph's location, due to Seraph's radio problem. At 0200 7th November, a boat came out and was challenged, which got the reply, quoting the rhyme of the 'Scarlet Pimpernel', from a woman's voice. There were four passengers in the boat and the woman - who turned out to be attractive and English - asked Turner to wait while the fishing boat returned to the beach to pick up three more passengers and their baggage. The woman introduced herself as the daughter of Lt.Col. Sir Broderick Hartwell and she was now married to Captain Beaufré, Giraud's Chief of Staff, who had left with the General two nights before in an 'American' submarine. She was surprised that Sibyl was British. The three companions and the baggage never made the trip in Sibyl, possibly being captured.

As a post-script to the story, Giraud had no intention of making a political broadcast to rally the French on the lines suggested by General Eisenhower. Although he was eventually to lead the French Division in North Africa (he had expected to be made Allied Commander-in-Chief) the real purpose of his rescue was therefore not achieved. Churchill said later:- "No one was more deceived than he about the influence he had with the French governors, generals and officer corps in North Africa."

Another interesting postscript.... The American Army Colonel Bradley Gaylord was onboard HMS Seraph in 1942 for “Operation Kingpin,” the retrieval of General Giraud from Vichy France, when he noted in his diary “How could you have claustrophobia among these smiling boys whose easy informality was so apparently a thin cover for the rigid discipline in which every man knows his life depends upon the other fellow. It is so completely infectious. You suddenly realize that here is one of the essential points about war: there is no substitute for good company. The boys in the Submarine Service convey a spirit which quickly explains why they would sooner be in submarines than anywhere else.”

Seraph was due for an overhaul and returned to Blyth, UK, for repairs and leave.

Seraph's Crew with her Jolly Roger - and a motley collection of uniforms!

Seraph returns to Blyth, January 28th, 1943

After a few weeks, Jewell was called in to the Admiralty to be briefed for an odd job to be carried out on her return trip to the Mediterranean. This was to be 'Operation Mincemeat', later known as the famous story of 'The Man Who Never Was', a deception plan to mislead the Germans and Italians on the whereabouts of the invasion of Southern Europe, codenamed, grimly enough, Operation 'Mincemeat'. A dead body, dressed as a Royal Marines Major - Major 'Martin' - was put into the sea, from the casing of Seraph (not from a torpedo tube, as had been assumed), to the accompaniment of a short prayer from Jewell, off the Atlantic coast of Spain, near the port of Huelva. The body carried forged papers and documents which had false 'invasion plans'. The body washed up on the Spanish coast and the Spanish authorities, as expected, granted the German abwehr a sight of the papers before returning them to the British. See also "The Secrets of HMS Dasher" below.

After some delay and diplomatic shuffling, the Spanish government eventually returned Martin's briefcase, apparently unopened. Once the documents returned to London, however, microscopic examination of the paper revealed they had indeed been opened, and presumably copied. Major Martin was buried a few days later in Huelva with full military honors, surrounded by floral tributes from his heartbroken fiancée and family. Back in London, the June 4 edition of The Times noted Martin's death in the casualty lists. The Abwehr, of course, took note of all this.

The German intelligence services bought (swallowed?) Mincemeat whole. "The authenticity of the captured documents is beyond doubt," they reported. The German general staff bought it, too. When it finally got to Hitler, he played his part perfectly. On May 12, 1943, he issued an order summarising his estimate of the situation in the Mediterranean. The order concluded, "Measures regarding Sardinia and the Peloponnese take precedence over everything else." Hitler ordered the strengthening of fortifications on Sardinia and Corsica, and he sent an additional Waffen SS brigade to Sardinia. He sent his favorite commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, to Athens to form an army group. He sent one panzer division to Greece all the way from France. Perhaps most damaging to the German situation, he ordered two additional panzer divisions to prepare to move to Greece from Russia--at the same time the Germans were getting ready for history's greatest tank showdown at Kursk.

The plan had some use, in that Sicily was not reinforced for Operation Husky. When the Allies stormed ashore on Sicily they caught the German and Italian defenders almost completely flatfooted. On July 7, 1943, only two days before the start of the landings, the war diary of the German High Command did not even have an entry for the western end of the Mediterranean.

The Allies assaulted the southern tip of Sicily, but the bulk of the island's defenses were oriented along the north coast, facing Sardinia. Many of the Italian divisions in Sicily folded immediately. The Germans, under Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, put up a determined resistance and conducted a classic withdrawal to Messina. By 17 August, however, General George S. Patton's Seventh and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's Eighth armies had taken the island. Operation Mincemeat had been an unqualified success. In Operation Husky, Seraph acted as a navigation beacon for the invading American Western Task Force coming in to land at Cent Beach on 10 July 43. A book was later written, by the man who devised the scheme, Lt. Cdr. Ewen Montagu, a reservist who represented naval intelligence on the inter-service XX Committee (XX for double cross), and a film - "The Man Who Never Was" made. Just for extra details, Lt Jewell was portrayed in the movie by William Squire.

In the intervening years there has been much investigation and speculation into the true identity of Major William Martin. Due to the findings of amateur historian Roger Morgan in 1996, the Man Who Never Was is now believed by many to be Glyndwr Michael, a Welsh vagrant who died after ingesting rat poison and subsequently suffering chemical pneumonia. The markings at his burial place have been updated to show Glyndwr's name on the tombstone, however not everyone is convinced that he really was Major Martin. There are some pieces to the story which don't quite seem to fit, such as the length of time between Glyndwr's death and the execution of Operation Mincemeat. Additionally, the HMS Seraph took a long detour before heading to the Spanish coast, causing some to suspect that it was retrieving a body from elsewhere, possibly one of the victims of an accident onboard HMS Dasher (see below). Considering the deliberate efforts to protect the true identity of Major Martin at the time, and given the number of years that have passed since his death, it is quite possible that we'll never know his real name with any certainty. Whoever he was, his body certainly did an incalculable service for its country.

“The Secrets of HMS Dasher.” Foreword by Brian Wilson. MP Energy Minister

This is the third time I have written a foreword to a version of the book by John and Noreen Steele about the fate of HMS Dasher. That reflects the fact that this is a story which, having been suppressed for so long, continues to grow and grow. The Steeles are correspondingly assiduous in their commitment and researches.

The story of HMS Dasher is, by any standards, extraordinary. Her sinking still stands as second only to the Royal Oak in the league table of British naval disasters which occurred in home waters. Yet it remained a virtual secret for several decades- a mass sacrifice by men of the Royal Navy which many preferred not to talk about.

Even the announcement of the Dasher’s loss, in the Times of London, came a full two years after the event and was conveyed in the tiniest of print. It was not good for British morale, at home or abroad, to advertise an avoidable tragedy which had not even occurred at the hands of the enemy.

The whole process, to which the Steeles have given sustained leadership, of finally recognising the sacrifices of those who lost their lives on board HMS Dasher has been immensely appreciated. This applies both to the families of the victims and also to the survivors who must have wondered if the loss of their comrades was ever going to be properly recognised.

However, it is impossible to release such a tale without sparking the interest of others or, indeed, encountering cross-currents of work which have been going on elsewhere. Thus, as a fascinating appendix to the story of HMS Dasher, we now have a plausible theory about how it tied in with the celebrated story of The Man Who Never Was.

It is a matter of well-recorded history that a body was placed from a British submarine in the waters off the south of Spain in May 1943. This was the centre-piece of a brilliantly successful operation to mislead the Germans into believing that the Allied landings to clear the Axis forces out of Southern Europe would be focused on Greece and not Sicily.

The body had been given a name and an identity in order to equip it with the credibility which would be necessary to persuade the Germans that this had been someone qualified to carry the vital messages contained in the accompanying briefcase. These were the decoy plans which diverted the Nazi effort toward Greece and thus saved thousands of Allied lives.

For students of this classic tale, the true identity of The Man Who Never Was has long been a source of fascination. This account opens up the strong possibility that one of the bodies from HMS Dasher occupied that crucial, if posthumous, role. It is an ingenious piece of detective work on the part of the Steels and their collaborators.

The story of HMS Dasher has long been familiar to many on the Clyde Coast, particularly in Ardrossan and on the Isle of Arran. It was from these communities that the rescue efforts and care for survivors came, and it was on these shores that the wreckage was washed up in the months that followed the explosion and sinking. Since 1993 there has been a fine memorial in Ardrossan to those who perished.

Above all, the story of HMS Dasher is about people and much of it is told in the words of those who were involved, including some from the small number of survivors. It is a reminder of how, in time of war, there are precious few rights even for the bereaved. John and Noreen Steele have performed their own heroic task in reviving the forgotten tale of HMS Dasher and in respecting the memory of the hundreds who went with her to the depth of the Firth of Clyde.

Brian Wilson MP.

Signed copies £11 30 includes p & p from J. Steele. 104 Eglinton Road. Ardrossan. KA22 8NN

Later in the war, Seraph, by now based at Beirut, while operating in the Aegean and other Greek waters, sank a big caique with a hand grenade, stopped a launch and captured the German commandant of the area; torpedoed a loaded caique, gunned down another caique and an Arado seaplane, and bombarded a barracks.

HMS/M Seraph (Lt N.L.A. Jewell, middle) returns to Fort Blockhouse on Christmas Day 1943 after a unique series of special operations. Ferdinand the Bull painted on the bridge signified instructions not to be belligerent while engaged on special duties; this did not prevent Jewell making 12 torpedo and gun attacks.

Seraph was converted, in 1944, to a high-speed target submarine. The conversion was intended to fit her for use as a high-speed target for ASW forces in training, to counter the threat posed by the German Type XXI. The gun and all external fittings were removed from the casing, her engines and motors were upgraded, a high-capacity battery fitted and she was give 'T' class propellers which had a coarser pitch. The result was an increase in her underwater speed from 9 to 12 knots. Sceptre, Satyr and Statesman of the 1941 programme and Selene, Solent and Sleuth of the 1942/3 programme were similarly converted. The use of these craft provided much useful data and pointed the way forward to the modern nuclear submarine. Seraph continued in her role as fast target submarine until 1963.

Seraph after her modernisation and streamlining.