WWII Ambusman George Gregory from Hailsham Sussex,
In 1944 we were oiling up in the Clyde when we had a call to proceed to sea. Off we went into the Atlantic to a location around the north Irish coast.
There had been u boat action in the area and we started asdic sweeping with other ships. The Hurst Castle* was starboard of us, after a period the Hurst Castle was fished (torpedoed) and we were detailed off to pick up survivors.
HMS Ambuscade landed them in Ireland at a place called Movil and went back to the search. I don’t think the sub was found. Some weeks later the ship received a letter from a 12 year old girl thanking Ambuscade for saving her daddy.
After the end of the war we stripped everything off Ambuscade and sailed her to a loch in Scotland with a skeleton crew to be collected by the scrap dealers, which was her last trip.
George Gregory Jan 2007
* HMS Hurst Castle (K416) was a Castle –class Corvette
She served as a convoy escort during the Second World War and was sunk by the German submarine U482 on 1st September 1944 northwest of Ireland whilst part of the escort for convoy CU-36. The submarine fired a single T-5 "Gnat" acoustic homing torpedo. 16 of the ships company were killed, the youngest being only 16 years of age.
Source http://en.wikipedia.org
Other Ambuscade Convoy rescue
At 22.39 hours on 7 Dec, 1940, U-99 fired a torpedo at the Dutch Merchantman Farmsum, a straggler from the convoy OB-252, in heavy seas. The torpedo was a surface-runner and struck the ship above the waterline at the stern, blowing the stern gun overboard. A second torpedo was fired on the bow of the ship but also struck the stern. The next torpedo hit amidships and causing the ship to sink within three minutes.
19 survivors abandoned ship in lifeboats and were eventually picked up by the British destroyer HMS Ambuscade with severe signs of frostbite, four of them died.
Source http://uboat.net/
