Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Boy 1st Class R. Rawcliffe, Royal Navy, who was killed in action when H.M.S. Gloucester was sunk during the evacuation of Crete, 22 May 1941

1939-45 Star; Africa Star; War Medal 1939-45, with named Admiralty enclosure, in water-damaged card box of issue, addressed to ‘Mr. John W. Rawcliffe, 23 Cypress Grove, Layton, Blackpool, Lancs.’; together with named Commemorative Scroll, extremely fine (3) £140-180

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to Second World War Casualties.

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Roy Rawcliffe served during the Second World War, first in H.M.S. Ganges, before joining the Town Class Cruiser H.M.S. Gloucester. Nicknamed ‘The Fighting G’, she saw heavy service in the first year of the Second World War, before joining Vice-Admiral Cunningham’s Mediterranean Fleet in late 1940.
In April 1941 H.M.S. Gloucester formed part of a naval force acting against German military transports to Crete with some success. On 22 May 1941, while in the Kythira Strait about 14 miles north of Crete, she was attacked by German "Stuka" dive bombers and sank, having sustained at least four heavy bomb hits and three near-misses. According to accounts of the time, the despatch of Gloucester, along with the cruiser H.M.S. Fiji, into the danger-zone to support the rescue of survivors from the destroyer H.M.S. Greyhound, when both were already low on fuel and anti-aircraft ammunition, was a ‘grievous error’. Fierce air attacks further depleted their ammunition and they were belatedly given permission to abandon the rescue efforts and rejoin the main fleet. It was during their return that Gloucester was sunk. Fiji was sunk later the same day. On 30 May 1941, in a letter to the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, Admiral Cunningham wrote, ‘The sending back of Gloucester and Fiji to the Greyhound was another grave error and cost us those two ships. They were practically out of ammunition but even had they been full up I think they would have gone. The Commanding Officer of Fiji told me that the air over Gloucester was black with planes.’
Of the 807 men aboard the Gloucester at the time of her sinking, only 85 survived. Rawcliffe was one of those killed, and is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial.

Sold together with various individual and group photographs.