Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine Second War submariner’s D.S.O. and D.S.C. group of eleven awarded to Captain Dudley Norman, Royal Navy, who won the D.S.C. when in command of H.M. Submarine H.44 for sinking shipping off the coast of Norway in 1940, and the D.S.O. when in command of H.M. Submarine Upright for sinking the Italian cruiser Armando Diaz in February 1941; he was afterwards the first Commodore of the Malaysian Navy

Distinguished Service Order, G.VI.R., silver-gilt and enamel, reverse officially dated 1941, with integral top ribbon bar; Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., reverse officially dated 1941, hallmarks for London 1940; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; War Medal 1939-45; Coronation 1953; Jubilee 1977; Malaysia, Pingat Khidmat Berbakti; Denmark, silver medal for Galathea Deep Sea Expedition 1950-1952; Netherlands, Red Cross Decoration, silver-gilt and enamels, and Red Cross Medal of Merit, silver, medals unmounted, together with mounted group of eight miniature dress medals and a loose Jubilee 1977, generally good very fine (12) £4,000-£5,000

D.S.O. London Gazette 23 September 1941. Seedie’s Submarine roll confirms award ‘For sinking the Italian Cruiser Armando Diaz off Kerkenah Bank in the Mediterranean on 25 February 1941, and a supply ship.’

D.S.C. London Gazette 1 January 1941.

Edward Dudley Norman was born on 2 August 1910, and went to Dartmouth in 1924. He joined the Submarine service in 1932 and served in submarines at Devonport, Gosport and Portland before undergoing the Submarine C.O.’s Qualifying Course in 1940. His first submarine command in March 1940 was the 1920-vintage H.44, in which he carried out several patrols in the North Sea, sank enemy shipping off the Norwegian coast, and was awarded the D.S.C.

In December 1940, Norman went out to the Mediterranean to take command of Upright in the Malta-based flotilla, later dubbed ‘The Fighting Tenth’. Sailing for his second patrol in February 1941, Upright had to encounter a new hazard: Italian acoustic mines laid in the harbour approaches. Upright’s sailors detonated them by firing machine gun bullets into the water about 100 yards ahead of the boat.

On 21 February, Norman took Upright inside the Tunisian harbour of Sfax to look for targets, but found none. “As we were then scraping along the bottom at periscope depth,” he said, “it seemed prudent to reverse course and retire to the open sea.” Four nights later, Upright was on the surface off Sfax, charging main batteries, when the officer of the watch sighted “a cruiser or a very large destroyer, escorted by two destroyers, one on each bow”.

Norman estimated the target’s course and speed, fired four torpedoes, and then dived. “As I got below,” he said, “the periscope was going up. I got it on the right bearing in time to see the first torpedo hit, in the light of which I considered the target was probably a cruiser.” He had, in fact, sunk the 5,000 ton Italian cruiser Armando Diaz and was awarded the D.S.O.

Invalided home from Malta with dysentery in July 1941, he took command, in October, of the German U-boat U.570, which had surrendered to an R.A.F. Hudson aircraft south of Iceland in August, and was renamed H.M.S. Graph.

U.570’s cryptographic material had been ditched and many instruments smashed, but in a year’s trials under Norman, Graph gave the Allies priceless information about the construction, performance and weaponry of the standard Type VII U-boat. After Graph, Norman commanded Tuna and Alcide, one of the first of the long-range A Class patrol submarines intended for the Pacific.

Norman left the Submarine Service in 1947 and had appointments in the Admiralty, with Nato, as Executive Officer of H.M.S. Heron, the naval air station at Yeovilton, where he learned to fly, and in command of the sloop Nereide on the South African Station. The Royal Malaysian Navy, which formed on independence in 1957, began modestly with the purchase of a handful of ex-Royal Navy minesweepers. But as its first Commodore, Norman laid the foundations of a small but efficient force which played a full part in the confrontation with Indonesia in the 1960s. When Norman retired in 1960, he was awarded the Malaysian decoration, the Pingat Khidmat Berbakti.

In retirement, Norman was secretary of the Royal Malta Yacht Club, and he played an influential role in establishing the first Whitbread Round the World Race. He died in 1998, aged 87.

Sold with original warrant and statutes for D.S.O., award certificates for Coronation Medal and Netherlands Red Cross Decoration (16 January 1959), various correspondence, and an original photograph album compiled by Norman with 16 large black and white photographs of the captured U.570 on later trials as H.M.S. Graph, some captioned and dated 15 October 1941, showing interior images and various detailing around her, together with four larger loose photographs of the submarine.