Seven: Attributed to Lieutenant J. A. Creed, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, who survived the sinking of H.M.S. Hermes by Japanese aircraft on 9 April 1942

1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Burma Star, 1 copy clasp, Pacific; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Coronation 1953, unnamed as issued; Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Decoration, G.VI.R., 1st issue, reverse officially dated 1946, with Second Award Bar, E.II.R., mounted court-style as worn; together with the recipient’s related miniature awards and miniature-width riband bar, good very fine (7) £200-£240

On 9 April 1942 H.M.S. Hermes, the Royal Navy’s first purpose-built aircraft carrier, was steaming north up the east coast of Ceylon returning to Trincomalee in company with the Australian destroyer H.M.A.S. Vampire when the two ships were spotted by a reconnaissance aircraft from the Japanese ship Haruna. Within an hour Admiral Nagumo launched a force of some 85 dive bombers against Hermes and Vampire which at the time were without any air cover; some 40 bombs hit Hermes in the space of ten minutes. The guns of the ships managed to shoot down four enemy aircraft between them, but the token force of British fighters arrived on the scene too late, and within 15 minutes of the attack starting both ships had been sunk. The hospital ship Vita which was fortuitously in the vicinity picked up most of the survivors. A total of 306 officers, ratings and Royal Marines of Hermes’s crew of some 600 lost their lives, including the ship’s commander, Captain R. F. J. Onslow.

Sold with a H.M.S. Hermes naval cap tally; a copy of the book H.M.S. Hermes 1923 & 1959, by Neil McCart (together with a letter from the author to the recipient); a large photographic image of Hermes having been torpedoed; and newspaper cuttings and other ephemera.