HMS Quorn

HMS Quorn (L 66)

Tel. Richard Mayers A/B Frank McInally

Contributed by Tom McInally.

Navy:	Royal Navy
Type:	Escort destroyer
Class:	Hunt (Type I)
Pennant:	L 66
Built by:	J.S. White & Co. (Cowes, U.K.)
Laid down:	22 Aug, 1939
Launched:	27 Mar, 1940
Commissioned:	3 Aug, 1940
Complement:	146
Lost:	3 Aug, 1944 Sunk by a a German "Linsen" explosive motorboat or a German "Neger" manned torpedo off the invasion area.Le Havre,off the Normandy coast in 1944.

History:	This is an eye witness account by Norman Ackroyd (a survivor) of the events of the night of 3rd August 1944: " The ship had been part of the beach head defence force for some nights before, on the night of August 3rd we sailed as normal just before dusk and went to all night action stations (I was part of No 3 guns crew on the quarterdeck) again as normal, this time however we were accompanied by an American radar ship and we were informed over the tannoy that at dawn we were going in close to Le Havre in order to bombard the e-boat pens. The American ship was to control the shelling. Just before midnight however there was a massive explosion amidships and I understand she had been hit in the boiler rooms, broke in two, and sank in a few minutes. I personally was blown overboard by the blast and found myself in the water fully dressed. A large number of my shipmates must have gone down with the ship but there were quite a lot of us in the water. The American ship left the scene at full speed which caused a lot of resentment at the time but it was explained to us later that if she had stayed she would possibly have sustained the same fate as the Quorn. A lot of those with me in the water did not last the night but quietly slipped away, I was in the water for eight and a half hours before we were picked up by an armed trawler looking for us, by that time we were only a small band. We were informed after that the ship had been sunk by a German human torpedo on which the pilot sat on a type of torpedo which had an explosive torpedo slung underneath and that the German pilot had been picked up by another of our destroyers of the defence force. We were also told that we had run into a number of these torpedoes which were being carried into the beach head by the tide but as a result of the Quorn being sunk the alarm had been raised and the other torpedoes had been dealt with.