Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Pair: Engineer Sub-Lieutenant J. W. Johnson, Royal Naval Reserve, who was taken Prisoner of War after the ‘Q-Ship’ H.M.S. Paxton was sunk by the German submarine U-46 on 20 May 1917

British War and Victory Medals (Eng. S. Lt. J. W. Johnson. R.N.R.) nearly extremely fine (2) £80-120

James Wilfrid Johnson was born in Sunderland, Co. Durham, on 26 March 1885 and was educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Prior to the Great War he was employed as a Marine Engineer, and latterly as an Inspecting Engineer and Marine Surveyor. He was commissioned temporary Engineer Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve on 20 February 1917, and served as Second Engineer in the Q-Ship H.M.S. Paxton.

At about 9:00 a.m. on 20 May 1917, the Paxton was in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 90 miles west of Great Skellig, Ireland, heading west, when an unknown German submarine surfaced and shelled her with its deck gun, hitting the ship once. Paxton responded by firing back at the submarine with her stern 4 inch gun, this revealing herself as a Q-Ship. The submarine dived to escape. Continuing on a westerly course, the crew changed her disguise by painting the name of a Swedish ship on her side. At 7:15 p.m. on the same day the German submarine U-46 torpedoed her, disabling the engines. A second torpedo fired 15 minutes later broke the ship’s back, and she sank within five minutes. The surviving crew abandon the ship on two boats and two rafts. The U-46 surfaced and took the Captain, Commander George Hewett, and Johnson Prisoners of War. The bulk of the remainder of the survivors were either picked up by Allied shipping or made their way back to the U.K. In all 31 men were killed. Johnson was held initially at Karlsruhe Prisoner of War Camp. He was repatriated on 14 December 1918, and relinquished his commission on 24 June 1919.

Note: A ‘Captain J. W. Johnson, Q-Ships’ is recorded as being an internee of Holzminden Prisoner of War Camp, and is known to have attended the 20th Anniversary Reunion Dinner in 1938 to celebrate the Holzminden Tunnel Escape on 24 July 1918, in which 29 British officers escaped from the camp through a tunnel, the largest such escape in the Great War, with ten eventually making it safely back to Britain.