HMS Welshman: The Minelayer That Disguised Herself as a French Warship to Feed Malta

Built for Speed

HMS Welshman was launched in September 1940 and commissioned in August 1941, an Abdiel-class fast minelayer built with speed as her primary defence, initially joining the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow before moving to the 1st Minelaying Squadron at Kyle of Lochalsh that September for mine-laying operations off western Scotland.

Forty Knots Is the Whole Answer

Built with speed as her primary defence is exactly right and it is worth putting a number on it. The Abdiel class could do forty knots. Not forty in a dockyard trial with a clean bottom and no stores, but forty in service, which was faster than any destroyer in the Mediterranean and faster than a good many aircraft of the previous decade.

They had been designed to run into enemy waters at night, lay a hundred and fifty mines and be out of range by daylight, and the whole design is built round the speed: a very long fine hull, machinery taken from a cruiser, no armour, and almost no guns. What that made them, once the siege of Malta began, was the only ships in the Mediterranean that could cross from Gibraltar or Alexandria faster than the enemy could organise anything to meet them. The class and why the Admiralty was reluctant to build it are set out in HMS Abdiel (N21).

A Disguise to Fool the Enemy

From May 1942, Welshman took on one of the most dangerous and vital roles of the Mediterranean war, running high-speed supply missions to besieged Malta.

On 8 May, she sailed from Gibraltar disguised as a French destroyer, carrying 240 tons of stores and RAF personnel, as part of Operation Bowery, a deception that succeeded even after enemy aircraft spotted her, a daring piece of wartime subterfuge that helped keep the island fed and armed.

The Frenchman

The disguise was a family speciality: her sister HMS Manxman did the same thing, and the reason it worked is that the Abdiels genuinely did look French. They were long, low, two-funnelled, very fast ships, and the French navy's big contre-torpilleurs, the so-called super-destroyers, were long, low, two-funnelled, very fast ships too. Nothing in the Royal Navy looked like that.

Welshman went to sea on 7 May 1942 got up as the French destroyer Leopard: a dummy funnel cowl, altered upperworks, French pendant numbers, French colours flying, and her upper deck party dressed to suit. Vichy France was neutral and Vichy warships used those waters, so a Frenchman steaming through the western Mediterranean was unremarkable.

German aircraft looked her over twice. The second one, a Junkers 88, came down and flew past at masthead height, close enough to see faces. Her people, on cue, waved at it cheerfully in the manner of neutral sailors who have nothing to hide. The German pilot waggled his wings and flew away.

It is worth being clear what was riding on that. She was alone, unescorted, unarmoured, inside the range of every German and Italian airfield in the central Mediterranean, with two hundred and forty tons of ammunition and a hundred and five RAF ground crew aboard. If the Junkers had not been satisfied, the next thing over her would have been a squadron.

Why the Tenth of May Mattered

The delivery she made is one of the small events that decided the Mediterranean war, and the reason is what had happened the previous day.

By the spring of 1942 Malta was very close to finished. Air attack had reduced the island to rubble, the fighter defence had been ground down to a handful of serviceable aircraft, and an Axis invasion plan existed and had a date pencilled against it. On 9 May, in Operation Bowery, sixty-four Spitfires were flown off the American carrier Wasp and off HMS Eagle and landed on Malta.

A previous delivery had gone that way and had been destroyed on the ground within three days, because the island had no fuel bowsers, no spare parts, no ammunition and nobody to service the aircraft. This time it was done differently. The Spitfires were refuelled, rearmed and back in the air within minutes of landing, into a defence that had been prepared for them.

What made that possible arrived on 10 May, in the shape of one very fast minelayer painted to look French, carrying the anti-aircraft ammunition, the Spitfire spares and the hundred and five RAF fitters and armourers who did the work. Welshman came into Grand Harbour, unloaded in a few hours under air attack while her own guns fired back, and left again. The Luftwaffe made its heaviest effort against the island that day and lost badly for the first time. The invasion never came.

Running the Gauntlet Repeatedly

Welshman went on to take part in several of the most fiercely contested Malta convoy operations of the war, including Operations Harpoon, Pinpoint and Pedestal through the middle of 1942, and in January 1943 delivered a cargo that included seed potatoes alongside more conventional war supplies, a small but telling reminder of just how close to starvation Malta's population had come.

The seed potatoes are the detail that stays with you. In January 1943, with the siege lifting but the island still not fed, one of the fastest warships in the world made a high-speed run to Malta carrying vegetables to plant. She had a few weeks to live.

Torpedoed Off Tobruk

On 1 February 1943, while carrying stores and personnel to Tobruk, Welshman was struck by a torpedo fired by U-617 under the command of Albrecht Brandi and sank with the loss of 155 lives. She had already proved her worth many times over.

Survivors were rescued by the British destroyers Tetcott and Belvoir, bringing to an end the career of one of the most consistently courageous ships of the Mediterranean campaign.

The man who killed her is worth naming properly. Albrecht Brandi went on to be one of only two U-boat commanders in the German navy to receive the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds, the highest German decoration for valour awarded to fewer than thirty people in the whole war. A good deal of what he claimed has been questioned since. This one was not in doubt: a single torpedo into an unarmoured ship built for speed rather than survival, off Tobruk, on 1 February 1943, and a hundred and fifty-five men died. HMS Tetcott picked up some of those who got clear.