Orders, Decorations and Medals

Seven: Lieutenant-Commander (L.) P. R. Simpson, Royal Navy, whose wartime career included the destruction of at least one U-Boat while employed in H.M.S. Havelock

1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, clasp, France and Germany; Africa Star, clasp, North Africa 1942-43; War Medal 1939-45; Korea 1950-53, 1st issue (Lt. Cdr., R.N.); U.N. Korea 1950-54; Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Near East (Lt. Cdr. (L.)., R.N.) some with contact marks, very fine and better (7) £400-450

Peter Radcliffe Simpson entered the Royal Navy as a Cadet in January 1941 and was appointed a Midshipman in September of the same year. Having then served at the Lyness base Proserpine, on the island of Hoy in the Orkneys, and off North Africa during Operation “Torch”, he was advanced to Sub-Lieutenant in the destroyer H.M.S. Verdun, in which he served on East Coast convoy defence duties in the period May-September 1943.

His final wartime appointment was in another destroyer, the Havelock, from September 1943 until the end of hostilities, when he was employed on the Atlantic run and off Normandy in the 14th Escort Group in June 1944 - a period that encompassed her part in the depth-charging and destruction of the U-767 off the Channel Islands on the 18th, and the finishing off of U-242 by “hedgehog” attack in the Irish Sea on 30 April 1945, on which latter occasion her C.O., Lieutenant-Commander H. A. Stuart-Menteth, R.N., was awarded the D.S.C.

Post-war, he served aboard the aircraft carrier Triumph off Korea in 1950, which ship mounted numerous sorties with Seafires from No. 800 and No. 827 Squadrons, attacking enemy targets at sea and ashore, not least on the occasion of the Inchon landings, and as a Lieutenant-Commander (’L.’ for Electrician) in the Near East operations of 1956. Latterly employed in the office of the Director-General (Dockyards and Maintenance), he retired in August 1963.

Sold with copied photograph of the recipient in uniform wearing his awards, together with a folder containing London Gazette and Navy List extracts and other research.