HMS CRICKET - LOST AND FOUND
by G.K. Brown

DISCOVERY - PART III

In January 1987 I visited Paul Kemp of the Imperial War Museum to discuss the project. I also took the opportunity to visit the Naval HISTORICAL SECTION of the MINISTRY OF DEFENCE where with fascination I read the war diary of HMS CRICKET. Alas though they couldn't tell me why she was in Cyprus. During this period I also contacted the Wreck Officer of the Hydrographic Department informing him of our findings.

On 10 February 1987 I received a letter from MOD stating that their records were unable to help me any further and if we could get a positive identification they would use it to annotate their records. At last we were near the end. To date we estimated the project had only cost the team £80 net including our flights to and from the UK which had been holidays.
BR 1738
The War At Sea Vol II 1941

At 0445 on October 21 the gunboat GNAT was torpedoed by a U-boat in 32.06 N., 24.30 E., while returning from Tobruk, where she had carried out night bombardments of enemy batteries. Her bows were blown off, but she reached Alexandria in tow after good work by the destroyer GRIFFIN and effective fighter protection. It was decided to reconstruct the GNAT by using the bow of H.M.S. CRICKET, which had been damaged by aircraft off Tobruk on June 30.

Extract from the book “Armed with Stings” by A. Cecil Hampshire...
While her sisters were busily engaged along the North African coast the Cricket, after her adventurous voyage from Singapore, was still in harbour at Port Said. The urgent necessity for her to be docked there to repair the damage caused by the shaking up she had received in the Arabian and Red Seas unfortunately coincided with the arrival of the stream of British warship casualties from the Greek convoys and subsequently the battle of Crete. Since these larger vessels - cruisers and destroyers for the most part - were far more important than a mere gunboat the Cricket's refit was delayed for some three and a half months. During the period the bulk of her ship's company spent their time serving in various hoppers and dredgers which had been fitted out for the purpose of sweeping up mines dropped by German aircraft in the Suez Canal.

At last, however, a dry dock became available and workmen began to restore the Insect to a seaworthy condition. Since her own 3-inch gun had vanished into the fog of war she was rearmed with a collection of Italian weapons. These included a 75 mm gun originally designed to be mounted on a lorry, two 30 mm Dredas, and a dozen 8 mm Fiats. Impressive though these may have looked when mounted in the little warship they subsequently proved to be almost useless, due to the ill effects upon them of the sand-laden air of North African waters. Carnduff, who had had a succession of officers since leaving Shanghai, was now given Lieutenant A H Diack as first lieutenant. Until his ship was sunk in Tobruk Diack had held a similar appointment in the Ladybird and therefore a veteran of the Inshore Squadron.

In May General Wavell had attacked and captured Sollum, but Halfya Pass and Fort Capuzzo remained in enemy hands. A month later Wavell opened a second offensive with the object of probing Rommel’s strength and linking up with the defenders of Tobruk. This attack was to be aided by gunboats of the Inshore Squadron. The Gnat was to be one of these, the Aphis having temporarily replaced her at Tobruk; the other was to be the newly repaired and rearmed Cricket. Their task was to ferry a Commando from Mersa Matruh to a point behind the enemy front line and land the men by means of Murekas, canvas boats, which could be easily slipped over the side of the gunboats with their low freeboard.

But Wavell’s thrust was checked, and the Eureka operation was cancelled. The Gnat was then ordered to Alexandria for a short rest period; the Cricket remained at Mersa Matruh to work up her gunnery ready to co-operate with the army in any flank bombardments that might be required. Then, towards the end of June, Carnduff was sent for by the Naval Officer-in-Charge at Mersa Matruh and detailed to form part of the escort for a convoy of two Greek ships destined for Tobruk.

The convoy, the first and the last that the Cricket was to accompany, was a painfully slow one since the maximum speed of the merchantmen was in fact only four and a half knots. These vessels were the Antiklia, a 950 ton steamer built in 1892, and the Miranda, an ex-Brazilian owned tramp of some 1,180 tons and 1907 vintage. Escorting them, in addition to the Cricket, were the sloop Flamingo, and the South African-manned whaler Southern Isle of 340 tons. Fighter cover would be provided by Nos 73, 250 and 274 Squadrons of the Royal Air Force and No 1 Squadron of the South African Air Force. With her six 4-inch guns only the Flamingo boasted an ack-ack armament worth of the name, although even these weapons were of little use against dive-bombers except in throwing up an intimidating barrage.

The five ships left Mersa Matruh on the afternoon of June 29th, and proceeded on their way without interference until about two-thirty the following afternoon when they were nearing Tobruk. Between that time and sunset they were attacked by no less than sixty Ju 87s and Ju 88s, escorted by numerous ME110s and G50s. Relays of RAF and SAAF fighters took on the attackers, but there were not enough of the defenders present to prevent some of the dive-bombers from getting through to the convoy. Yet considering the ridiculously snail-like crawl of the ships it was surprising that the Luftwaffe pilots failed in the end to accomplish their purpose.

There were four separate attacks in all, during the first of which the Flamingo was near-missed. The concussion of the exploding bomb damaged her machinery and reduced her speed. The Southern Isle was not hit in these attacks but she sustained a number of casualties through being sprayed with machine-gun fire by some of the Ju 88s. Due to her high degree of maneuverability the Cricket managed to dodge everything flung at her. Carnduff’s tactics were to wait for the bombs to leave the belly of the attacking aircraft, watch their flight path, and if any looked like hitting, jam the Insect's helm hard over so that the missiles fell either to one side or the other. But in the fourth and final attack not even the gunboat's maneuverability could save her.

Evading the British fighters, a Stuka came in at the Cricket from the beam, and at the same time a Ju88 attacked from ahead. As before, Carnduff watched tensely for the bombs to fall, but avoiding action was practically impossible, since if he turned away from dive-bomber he would present the ship's beam to the oncoming Ju88, and vice versa. But a slight alteration of rudder at the last minute might yet avert disaster. The Stuka missed altogether, but a thousand-pound bomb from the Ju88 plummeted right alongside and exploded beneath the surface. The impact of the explosion jerked the little ship clean out of the water with such force that several of the ratings in her engine-room sustained injuries to their legs and ankles.

But it was the splash from the bomb that brought the Insect to a standstill. Where the normal warship with a deepwater hull and high freeboard would have suffered comparatively little inconvenience from a cataract of water tumbling down on her, the effect in the case of the shallow-draught, flat-bottomed Cricket was practically to swamp her. Water flooded the engine and boiler rooms while the shock of the explosion depolarized the dynamo. Although Carnduff did not learn the full extent of the injuries to the gunboat until later, the ship's frame was in fact badly buckled and the stern had dropped about a foot. A section of the ship's bottom was also buckled, and beneath the boiler room the thin steel plating had been rippled into corrugations like a piece of cardboard packing paper. All her machinery was extensively damaged, and she was leaking copiously and down by the stern.

The convoy plodded on while the Cricket lay where she had been stricken, and the limping Flamingo cruised slowly around her while her crew attended to their own damage. The sun was rapidly sliding over the lip of the horizon, and the sky was now empty of aircraft save for a couple of circling British fighters. Honours were even in the air battle, two Hellos having been shot down for the loss of one Tomahawk and one Hurricane. The bombers did not return and, unscathed, the Antiklia and Miranda safely reached Tobruk with their one remaining escort ship.

As darkness cloaked the sea the Flamingo took the damaged gunboat in tow, and by morning the two ships arrived back at Mersa Matruh. Here Carnduff was provided with a portable petrol-driven pump bearing the engaging name of “Coventry Climax Godiva” to aid his leaking craft to remain afloat, and in tow of the naval tug St Issey she was hauled into Port Said without further incident. But the unfortunate Cricket was out of the war for good, and soon she, too, would reach the official end of her long, incident-packed life.


Our reference: H4035/44

Date: 30 January 1987
Dear Warrant Officer Brown

Thank you for your letter of 14 January and for the very interesting photographs. When we spoke on the telephone, I was referring to our reference card for the wreck on which you have been researching. I have found the original authority for inserting the symbol for a wreck in position 34° 57'42"N, 33° 48'06"E on chart 851. It was Mediterranean Hydrographic Notice No 61T/44, issued by SNOLA (Senior Navel Officer L..... A.....?) on 19 September 1944. It states simply that the symbol for a non-dangerous wreck should be charted in the shore position.

The second reference on the card was to some private correspondence received by one of our staff, in which reference was made to this wreck - stating that local divers estimated that the wreck was 220 ft long, 36 ft beam and lay with a least depth of 30 meters over it. Regrettably the actual letter has long been destroyed.

I shall amend our records to show the results of your research to date and I will be grateful if you will let me know if you ever manage to identify this wreck positively.

Thank you again.

Yours sincerely


J D PUGH
Lieutenant Commander RN
Wrecks Officer


Our reference: D/NHB/3/3/363 BF

Date 4 February 1987
Dear Mr. Brown,

Thank you for your letter of 14 January 1987; David Ashby has asked me to reply since I deal with matters post-1939.

According to the Hydrographer’s Department the wreck in the position you quote is “HMS CRICKET (probably)”.

On 30 June 1941 the CRICKET, in company with HMS FLAMINGO, was escorting two supply ships to Tobruk when she was heavily bombed. Her boiler room flooded, the bulkhead and stern dropped about one foot and the bottom buckled and corrugated under the boiler area. She arrived at Alexandria in the tow of the ST ISSEY on 2 July. On docking, examination revealed the structural damage and, with the additional extensive machinery damage, the time assessed to repair her was six weeks in dock and eight weeks in all. It was not considered economically justified to repair the ship and she was unfit to go elsewhere; built in 1915 she had been on the Sales List for breaking up when the War started.

Later in July, the CRICKET was at Mersa Matruh, though I know not the circumstances. It was proposed in August, however, that she be broken up at Alexandria and full use be made of her armament and fittings. It was next proposed that she be used to reconstruct the gunboat GNAT, which had had her bows blown away by a German torpedo, and both sips duly arrived at Suez. In March 1944, however, the job had still not been done and the conclusion was that the work involved to make either ship seaworthy was not justified in view of the pressure on docking and repair facilities. It was then proposed, and approved, to beach the two and use them for live bombing in the Mediterranean.

Thereafter, our records are silent but should you make a positive identification I would be grateful to know so that we can annotate our records.

Yours sincerely,


M McALOON


The last known photograph of HMS Cricket landing troops on the North African coast. Taken by a “war photographer” in 1941...
One of the Insect class gunboats being built in October 1915 at Barclay and Curle...
HMS Cricket lying upside down in Ormidhia bay Cyprus, a breeding place for fish...October 1985...
Then...
And now...
The bow of HMS Cricket before she received her anchors...
And after she had lost them, seventy years later...
The tunnel and balanced flap designed in order to accommodate the in-turning propeller which gave this ship its 14 knots and more...
A rudder and mounting...
A view of the rear gun mount. Notice the rudder and bronze propeller waiting to be fitted...
A view of the upper deck showing the two distinctive funnels waiting to be fitted...
The ships superstructure now beyond repair...
The entrance to the small sickbay. The Heads which are situated directly above the rudders...
Scuttles to the rear Magazine and Shell room situated aft of the engine room. Then...
And now...
Supports to the rear upper gun platform. Then...
And now...

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