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.

» 20 Jun 1940: The 1,177-ton Dutch steamer Berenice departed Bordeaux, France at 1330 hours with 22 passengers on board, mostly Dutch and Belgians refugees, among them the poet H. Marsman and his wife and the Dutch painter T. Bottema. The ship sailed together with the Dutch steamer Orpheus, the coasters Nettie and Ary Scheffer and the tug Seine, but they got dispersed in the following night and only the Nettie was in visual range.

» 12 Mar 1940: HMS Sealion (Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Bryant, RN) was detected, hunted and depth charged by a German armed trawler in the North Sea about 25 nautical miles to the north-west of Heligoland.

» 24 Apr 1940: During an air raid near Molde, Norway, the British trawlers HMT Bradman and HMT Hammond were both sunk by German aircraft. Hammond was salvaged by the German Navy in 1941 and commissioned as the Salier. In 1942 she was renamed NT-04, and after various other names she was broken up in 1971.

» 17 Sep 1944: A German Heinkel bomber was lost when 14 of them took off from Varrelbusch, near Bremen, Germany on a sortie to launch V-1 flying bombs over eastern England, United Kingdom. Unteroffizier Hans Jördens ditched into Lake Braassemermeer in southern Netherlands, the crew survived but the aircraft was written off; it had flown into friendly fire. 9 of the returning aircraft were also damaged by the flak around the Dutch coast. These messages were all picked up on Utlra intercepts. A Mosquito aircraft from 96 Squadron brought down a flying bomb after its launch over the Kent coast of southern England.

» 1 May 1943: Four crew and six gunners, survivors of British motor tanker Corbis which was sunk by German submarine U-180 on 18 Apr 1943, were rescued after drifting in their open boat for 13 days by a South African crash Launch. They were taken to East London, South Africa.

» 2 Mar 1940: The British submarine HMS Rover (Lieutenant Commander H. A. L. Marsham, RN) departed Singapore for Hong Kong.

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