Secret Scotland

In typical style, an apparently simple page addition eventually managed to gobble up almost two weeks worth of playtime on the Main Site.

Already recognised as a problematic event, the disaster that sank HMS Dasher in the Firth of Clyde on March 27, 1943, should have been a fairly straightforward addition to our content. Instead, the usual criteria of locating at least three independent accounts that related the subject to a reasonable degree of agreement turned into a major exercise, and revealed that the sinking of HMS Dasher, although significant in itself, would play a crucial part in one of World War II’s most important operations, and save some 30,000 Allied lives thousands of miles away.

Although no specific cause was determined, HMS Dasher is known to have been lost to a massive explosion that occurred on board, just after 16:40, as flying exercises for the day were coming to an end, and the last aircraft were being refuelled. The ship was lost in minutes, and 379 of her crew of 528 were lost, leaving only 149 survivors. This was the second greatest loss of British life in home water during the war, following that of HMS Royal Oak torpedoed in Scapa Flow, when 833 were lost from a complement of 1,234.

Finally given official recognition in 2004, the identity of the body used in Operation Mincemeat, popularised in the 1956 film “The Man Who Never Was”, was confirmed to be that of John ‘Jack’ Melville, one of those lost in the disaster on the Clyde. Operation Mincemeat was a deception designed to divert enemy attention from Sicily to Greece, thus diverting their resources from the Allies’ true landing site. This was achieved by planting false documents on a dead body, and arranging for it to be found by an enemy agent operating in Spain.

Thanks to the film, which had a cameo appearance from Ewen Montagu (a key member involved in Operation Mincemeat), and the lack of any official information until 2004, the events of the film have generally come to be taken as accepted fact, and that the corpse of Major William Martin was that of Glyndwr Michael. Although there are inconsistencies in this story, in the absence of anything else, its portrayal in the film, Montagu’s part in the film, no denial (or endorsement) by the authorities, it still remains largely accepted as a true account and explanation for the body used in nearly all the sites giving an account of Operation Mincemeat (our review having taken place in late 2007).

Much has also been made of the secrecy that surrounded the loss of HMS Dasher, and criticism levelled at the authorities for it, however this seems to be something of a sensationalist claim. By comparison with the loss of HMS Royal Oak, lost in home waters to a successful German operation, which would be reported and hailed as a victory, the loss of HMS Dasher, and so many lives (recall, only exceeded by those lost from HMS Royal Oak) in home waters to an accident, would seem to something that could have been seized on as a tremendous propaganda opportunity by the enemy, and the secrecy associated with the event is not only understandable, but essential in time of war, something the later critics may have forgotten was taking place at the time.