Quiet early. Got ropes ashore and warped ship in as close as possible. Beattie pulled over in skiff for paint.
26 big bombers over very high about 1 o'clock. Loosed off on Aberdeen dock.[i] Sunk MTB 08 [Grapnel] & damaged yard. Very badly wounded Engineer Officer of Thracian and Lt. Coles.[ii] Dive bombers attacked us, Cicala, Ebonol, Cornflower.[iv] Lot of bombs on Middle Island[v] and one about 50 yards from us. No dead fish! Cicala claimed to have brought down two.
Ashore 5.15 and walked Aberdeen and back. Lieutenant from Manila urgent signal to Commodore for naval cap.[vi]
USS Arizona lost.
[i] There were two dry docks at Aberdeen (on the south side of Hong Kong Island) at this time. (CD1941, p. A483.)
[ii] Perhaps G.R.C. Coles, whose address it seems is, "Lieutenant of the Yard's Residence, H.M. Dockyard". (FRL1941)
[iv] HMS Cornflower, a mine-sweeper, was lost on 19 December 1941 in an air raid at the fall of Hong Kong. See: <http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?156896>.
[v] Middle Island (熨波洲, Tong Po Chau) is located 100 m off the southern coast of Hong Kong Island, between Deep Water Bay and Repulse Bay. Original diary entry has "Mid Id".
[vi] Sic. An earlier reference explains this: "A lighter moment of the day was the story that a naval officer attached to the U.S. Navy in Manila had made a signal to the Commodore asking that he might be sent a new cap."
Comments
"Lieut Coles"
The "Lieut Coles" mentioned above was G. Cole (no s on the end), a family friend of ours and colleague of my father. He was killed at Aberdeen.
His wife and son Tony were evacuated to Australia in 1940. He lived in a flat in a block within the Naval Dockyard. After my Dad's sudden death in 1940, my Mum and sisters and I had to vacate our flat in Naval Terrace adjacent to the Dockyard, and Lieut Cole kindly let us move in with him until we could find somewhere else to live. His flat looked on Queens Road.
When we arrived back in England after the war, Mrs Cole, then in Devon, invited us to stay with her until we found somewhere to live, but my aunt in Kent had already offered us a home, but we were so grateful for Mrs Cole's offer.
Barbara
Lieut Cole
Dear Barbara,
Thank you so much for this. I will keep this and any other comments and, at some point, update the text in a revised edition of the book.
If you are interested to hear a little bit about how the book, "In Time of War" came to be compiled and published, you may like to visit the facebook page ProversePress, where there is a "Proverse Readers' Club" video featuring this book.
Kind regards,
Gillian