In Great Britain we tend not to celebrate the anniversary of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, but over this weekend of the 250th anniversary celebrations, I will celebrate a largely-forgotten American WW2 hero, one Lieutenant Draper L Kauffman RNVR. Kauffman joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in September 1940 and volunteered for training for hazardous service as a Rendering Mines Safe (RMS) officer. So, what has this to do with the US? He was later th

One of the more interesting characters I had to research for my latest WW1 novel, The Suicide Club, was Frank Brock. Brock was a director of the famous, family firework manufacturing company, C T Brock and company. Forever interested in chemistry and explosives, he is reported to have blown up a stove in an experiment at his school, Dulwich College. On the outbreak of WW1, he initially joined the Royal Artillery, but within a month was personally poached by Churchill, the F

Ashe Lincoln was a barrister prior to and following WW2. Having been educated initially in Plymouth, he developed a love for the sea and joined the RNVR in 1937. Called up on the outbreak of war, he initially served in minelayers, but within weeks he was summoned to the Admiralty to use his analytical skills to try to solve the mysterious sinkings of and damage to several British merchantmen and warships from underwater explosions. He quickly confirmed the Admiralty’s susp

Today is the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings. Whilst I note that Normandy is hosting a whole host of events today to celebrate the achievement, celebrations in this country seem rather muted. Accordingly, I wish to pay tribute to a gallant group of men of whom few have heard, the Landing Craft Obstacle Clearance Units or LCOCU, known as the Lock-yews. Long before D-Day itself, the planners recognised that Hitler’s formidable Atlantic Wall defences extended beyond t

In October 1914, the Royal Navy despatched the first pair of a flotilla of E-class submarines to make the perilous journey through the shallows of the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden into the Baltic. Their mission was to stop the German import of iron ore from Sweden, so important for the German war effort, and to support the Russian Navy. Over the summer of 1915, four further submarines attempted to penetrate into the Baltic, but HMS E13 ran aground and was illegally s

'I am an ex RE Major who spent 23 years in service. I specialised in diving and am one a few who have used standard kit in Ostend harbour. I was inspector of diving for the Army. I loved your books but your last two have gripped me. The thought of twenty hours diving scares the life out of me. My admiration for the men you portray is unlimited and I thank you most sincerely for it. Very much looking forward to reading the next one. VMT' The above message made my day, especial

One of the first naval officers to be trained to fly in 1910 was Lieutenant Reginald Gregory. On 1 July 1914, the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was formed and, immediately on the outbreak of WW1, it deployed to France and Belgium under the command of Commander Charles Samson. However, Samson initially had too few aircraft at his disposal for his pilots, so he re-tasked those with their own private cars to mount reconnaissance patrols of the Belgian and French countryside,

Lieutenant George Colmore was the first member of the Royal Navy to qualify as a pilot, receiving his Royal Aero Club (RAeC) ticket in 1910 after paying for his own flying lessons. A few months later, the RAeC offered the navy two aircraft to train further pilots and the Admiralty called for volunteers for flying training. The volunteers had to be single and able to pay their own RAeC membership fees. 200 applications were received and four officers were selected as the na

Was a namesake of mine the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s best-seller, Goldfinger? Prior to the outbreak of WW1, the head of the British section of the German Admiralty's intelligence service, the Nachrichten-Abteilung or ‘N’ division, was one W Lewis, but his real name was Gustav Steinhauer. He had many other aliases, including the one to which I refer in my second novel, Now the Darkness Gathers, Mrs Reimers. He was a German naval officer who had been trained by the Pinkert

Soon after the beginning of WW1, Germany and its Ottoman ally launched a new strategy to destabilise the British Empire in the Near East (principally Persia, Iraq and Afghanistan) and India. By declaring a jihad or Holy War they aimed to foment revolts in the Middle East and encourage Moslem troops of the Indian Army to mutiny, hoping to tie up badly needed troops away from Europe. German propagandists portrayed the Kaiser as a devout Moslem. Persia (now Iran) was seen as

On this day in 1918, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines conducted one of its most daring raids in history, after which eight VCs were awarded. The target was the entrance of the canal from Zeebrugge to Bruges in Belgium. By blocking the exit from the canal with sunken blockships the Admiralty hoped to prevent the German flotillas of U-boats and destroyers based in Flanders from gaining access to the Channel and southern North Sea. 25% of all Allied shipping losses were due t

It is often mistakenly believed that it was the German policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that brought the USA into WW1 on 6 April 1917. Some even think it was the sinking of the Lusitania, but she was sunk on 7 May 1915. Few people are aware of how the pacifist president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, was influenced to declare war by the activities of a department of the Admiralty under the leadership of its wily Director of the Naval Intelligence Division, Ca

In October 1909, Britain’s Secret Service was formed and headed by Commander Mansfield Cumming. Cumming was born on 1 April 1859 and joined the Royal Navy in 1871. In 1889, he changed his surname to Smith-Cumming following his marriage to a wealthy heiress. Unfortunately, his career in the RN was cut short on account of his recurring sea sickness and he settled in Bursledon the River Hamble in Hampshire as a retired officer specialising in boom defence. However, he was re

This month in 1942, Commander Fleming, Naval Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), put forward a memorandum to his boss, Admiral Godfrey, entitled ‘ Proposal For Naval Intelligence Commando Unit ’. He had gained the idea from the success of a similar unit of German Military Intelligence ( Abwehrkommando ). The objective of the new British unit was, ‘to accompany forward troops when a port or naval installation is being attacked and, if the attack is success

This weekend the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) celebrated in Sydney Harbour the 125th anniversary of its formation on 1 March 1901. Throughout its history there have been close bonds with the Royal Navy and the two navies fought together in both World Wars. In my WW1 submarine novel, The Custom of the Trade , I describe the operations of HMAS AE1 in the Dardanelles and I have based much of the first of my WW2 novels on WW2 mine disposal teams, They Have No Graves as Yet , on

The Royal Naval Division fought as infantry and with distinction in Gallipoli and on the Western Front from the first few weeks of WW1 right through to the end. It was regarded as one of the finest fighting units and thus, was often assigned some of the toughest tasks and, accordingly, suffered a higher percentage of casualties than many of the army divisions. 47,000 sailors and marines were killed or wounded during the war. But why were sailors serving in the trenches alo

The first of the E -class submarines was launched in 1913 and the class was to prove to be the backbone of the Royal Navy’s submarine fleet. Unlike their predecessors, these submarines were capable of operating out of sight of land for several weeks and equipped with diesel engines (the petrol engines tended to catch fire!). The boats (as submariners called them in self-deprecation) served in the North Sea, Baltic and Dardanelles. The Royal Australian operated two of the s

This week 109 years ago, on 8 March 1917, the first Russian Revolution broke out. Clearly, it had a devastating effect on the Tsarist monarchy, but, also, on the conduct of the war on the Eastern Front. Less well-known is the impact it had on Britain’s Baltic Submarine Flotilla. Commander Francis Cromie Royal Navy was in command of six E-class and five smaller C-class submarines in the Baltic. The submarines were there to stop the German import of iron ore from Sweden, so

Hugh Syme was born on 20 February 1903 in a suburb of Melbourne. I have posted several times on the subject of Britain’s most decorated WW2 hero, John Bridge, but Syme was the only other officer to be awarded both the George Cross and two George Medals. Syme was a keen yachtsman and, on the outbreak of WW2, he joined the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve (RANVR). He subsequently volunteered to join a contingent of other RANVR personnel sailing to Britain in late 194

A few years ago, I approached Admiral of the Fleet Lord Michael Boyce to request he write a foreword for my second WW1 submarine novel, Where the Baltic Ice is Thin . When I was a junior officer on the staff of Captain Tenth Submarine Squadron, Lord Boyce was Captain Submarine Sea Training in the same building, so our paths crossed. Many years later, when I retired from the Royal Navy to join Goldman Sachs, our paths crossed once more when he was the Chief of Defence Staff