British and World Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

“Great as is our loss in the Hood, the Bismarck must be regarded as the most powerful as she is the newest battleship in the world, and the striking of her from the German Navy is a very definitive simplification of the task of maintaining the effective mastery of the Northern Sea and the maintenance of the Northern Blockade.”
Winston Churchill to the House of Commons, 27 May 1941

A fine Second World War Bismarck action D.S.M. awarded to Shipwright 1st Class T. J. R. Richards, who was decorated for his gallant deeds in H.M.S. Prince of Wales, which ship sustained several direct hits from her mighty German opponent: he was subsequently killed in action on the occasion of the Prince of Wales’s loss to Japanese aircraft in the Far East in December 1941

Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (M. 3318 T. J. R. Richards, Shpt. 1, H.M.S. Prince of Wales), in its original card forwarding box addressed to the recipient’s widow, ‘Mrs. E. M. Richards, 54 Lovelace Crescent, Exmouth, Devon’, the side of the box further annotated, ‘DNA/W 5098/42’, official correction to ship’s name, extremely fine £2000-2500

D.S.M. London Gazette 14 October 1941:

‘For mastery, determination and skill in action against the German battleship Bismarck.’

The original recommendation states:

‘He initiated the first counter measures against flooding due to damage in the after part of the ship. Subsequently, under the direction of Mr. Murch, Commissioned Shipwright, he was one of only five men who worked with untiring energy in compartments which were filled with fumes, partially flooded and lit only by torches.’

Thomas James Rewartha Richards was born in Truro, Cornwall in March 1893 and entered the Royal Navy in August 1911. Rated as Leading Carpenter’s Crew aboard the cruiser H.M.S. Blake by the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he remained employed in the same ship until taking up an appointment in Vivid II in November 1916 and thence, in August 1917, the Cornwall. Finally, in terms of wartime service, Richards served in another cruiser, the Leander, from December 1917 until the end of hostilities - the probable fate of his related campaign awards being explained by his subsequent loss in the Prince of Wales.

The exact date of his joining the latter ship is not known, other than the fact he was certainly serving in her as a Shipwright 1st Class by early 1941, for in May of that year he won his D.S.M. for the above related deeds in the cruiser’s flooded compartments after her punishing clash with the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen on the 24th. On that date, in close proximity to the Hood, Prince of Wales was called to action stations in the early morning hours, Captain Leach’s address to his crew being followed by that of the ship’s chaplain - ‘O Lord thou knowest how busy we must be today. If we forget thee, do not forget us.’ Shortly afterwards, Prince of Wales witnessed one of the greatest calamities of British naval history, the appalling explosion - likened to a ‘pulsating sun’ - that tore apart Hood with a loss of over 1400 lives: in fact so close was Prince of Wales at the time that Captain Leach had to order the helm over to avoid colliding with the wreckage.

Yet an equally big shock was to follow, for immediately after the loss of the Hood, Prince of Wales attracted the full attention of Bismarck’s guns, in addition to those of her consort Prinz Eugen, Ludovic Kennedy’s Pursuit vividly describing the ensuing carnage:

‘Before the blowing up of Hood, Prinz Eugen had already been ordered to shift her fire to Prince of Wales and now Bismarck had to make only the smallest of adjustments to find the range too. On Prince of Wales’s bridge they saw the burst of black smoke from Bismarck’s cordite and the long ripple of orange flashes from her guns, and knew this time without a doubt where they were aimed, what they were capable of doing. Yet Captain Leach was not despondent. His own guns had found Bismarck with the sixth salvo, straddled and hit. If everyone kept a cool head, they might win a victory yet.

The salvo fell and then there was chaos. A 15-inch shell went clean through the bridge, exploded as it went out the other side, killing everyone except the captain and the Chief Yeoman of Signals, and the navigating officer who was wounded. Young Midshipman Ince was among the dead, aged eighteen and full of promise, at his prep school voted the boy with the best influence. On the deck below, the plotting officer, unable to distinguish between the hits from the Bismarck and the firing of Prince of Wales’s own guns, was unaware anything had happened until blood trickled down the bridge voice pipe, dripped onto his chart.

The same shell did for Esmond Knight too. He remembered hearing the salvo, ‘like a great crushing cyclone’, then everything went hazy and he was having a dream about a band playing in Hyde Park, there was a high, ringing noise in his head and he came to, thinking he was dying, feeling sad about it, nothing more. He heard the crash of another salvo and cries of “Stretcher-bearer!” and “Make way there!” He was conscious of a weight of dead men on him and screams and the smell of blood, and the dreadful thin noise some men make when dying. “Get me out of here,” he shouted weakly, and strong hands pulled him to his feet. “What the hell’s happened to you?” a voice said, and Esmond turned and looked at him and saw nothing. The man whose delight in life was visual things, painting pictures, watching birds, was already among the ranks of war-blinded, would now never see the Harlequin Duck or Icelandic Falcon, or anything but dim shapes again.’

Yet, still, the enemy’s accurate salvoes arrived at an alarming rate:

‘Now the two German ships turned back, confident, assertive, weaving in and out of the Prince of Wales’s shell splashes, dancing and side-stepping like boxers who suddenly sense victory in the blood. Bismarck’s salvoes thundered out every twenty seconds, Prinz Eugen’s every ten, the shell splashes rose around Prince of Wales like clumps of whitened trees. Now the British battleship was within range of Prinz Eugen’s torpedoes; but just as Lieutenant Reimann was about to fire, she turned away.



For after only another twelve minutes of battle, Prince of Wales had had enough. She had been hit by four of Bismarck’s heavy shells and three of Prinz Eugen’s. The compass platform, echo-sounding gear, radar office, aircraft recovery crane, fore secondary armament director, all the boats and several cabins had been wrecked. The shell that hit the crane landed just as the Walrus aircraft was about to be launched to spot the fall of shot, the launching officer’s hand was in the air: the wings were peppered with splinters, pilot and observer scrambled out, the plane was ditched over the side to avoid the risk of fire. The same splinters that blinded Esmond Knight also pierced a fresh-water tank, loosed a flood of water on to survivors of the bridge and men on the signal deck below. One 15-inch and two 8-inch shells hit the ship below the waterline, let in 400 tons of sea water. Another 8-inch shell found its way into a shell handling room, whizzed about several times without going off or hitting anyone, took two men to throw it over the side.’

Captain Leach had rightly concluded that it was better to withdraw and save a valuable ship, rather than continue in an unequal contest in which his battered command was unlikely to have a telling effect on the enemy. Pursuit concludes:

‘So after having fired eighteen salvoes, Prince of Wales made smoke and disengaged to the south-east. As she turned, the shell ring of Y turret jammed, rendered four guns in it inoperable. Her casualties were two officers and eleven men killed, one officer and eight men wounded. The time was 6.13 a.m., just twenty-one minutes after Admiral Holland in Hood had so proudly led his squadron in to battle.’

Richards was awarded the D.S.M., one of four crew members of Prince of Wales so honoured. But, as fate would have it, he would shortly be killed in the next biggest calamity to befall the Royal Navy in the 1939-45 War - the loss of his ship and the Repulse in the Far East in December 1941. Meanwhile, he would have been present in Operation “Halberd”, an important Malta convoy, and on the occasion Prince of Wales conveyed Winston Churchill to Newfoundland for his secret meeting with Roosevelt, from which emerged the Atlantic Charter, signed on 12 August 1941.

The loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse to sustained attack by over 80 Japanese aircraft in December 1941 needs no further elaboration here, except to say Richards was one of around 750 officers and men who lost their lives on that occasion. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Plymouth Memorial and, as verified by Seedie’s Roll of Naval Honours & Awards 1939-1959, his D.S.M. was sent to his next of kin - his widow, Elizabeth; sold with copied research, including Captain Leach’s official “Damage Report” following the Bismarck action, with accompanying copied images of some eye-opening scenes of said damage.