Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A very early Second World War anti-U-boat operations D.S.M. group of eight awarded to Chief Petty Officer E. A. Purdue, Royal Navy
Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (E. A. Purdue, A./L. Smn., H.M.S. Puffin); Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1936-1939 (JX. 137806 O. Smn., R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.VI.R., 2nd issue (JX. 137806, D.S.M., C.P.O., H.M.S. St. Angelo), very fine and better (8) £1600-1800

D.S.M. London Gazette 1 January 1940: ‘For outstanding zeal, proficiency, skill and energy in successfully combating enemy submarines.’

Edward Arthur Purdue was decorated for his services aboard the sloop H.M.S. Puffin on the occasion of the destruction of the U-16. The latter was detected by the St. Magaret’s Bay indicator-loop on 24 October 1939, and Puffin and the anti-submarine trawler Cayton Wyke were sent to investigate. They subsequently delivered a depth-charge attack, during the course of which the U-16 ran aground on the Goodwins - all of her crew members perished, among them Kapitanleutnant Horst Wellner, who had earlier carried out a highly successful reconnaissance of Scapa Flow, his subsequent report leading to Gunther Prien’s devastating attack on the Royal Oak.

On 25 October U-16’s hull was located and a diving boat secured alongside and, notwithstanding a hole in her pressure hull forward of the conning tower, two officers went down and retrieved a number of interesting artefacts. Bad weather then intervened and by the time divers took a second look at the U-16 in early November, she had settled further into the sand and her hull was full of silt - any further prospects of salvage work were abandoned. Meanwhile, since she was the third U-boat to be lost in this area, Donitz forbade the use of the Strait of Dover as a passage through to the Western Approaches for his U-boats.