Lieutenant Hugh Arnold

Hugh Arnold, who has died aged 92, won the DSC during one of the greatest raids of the Second World War, the raid on St Nazaire in 1942, which Churchill called “a deed of glory intimately involved in high strategy”.

On the night 28/29 March 1942 Acting Sub Lieutenant Arnold was the navigator of Motor Launch 446, under command of Lieutenant Dick Falconar (sic) RNVR:  the 112 ft long, 65-ton, wooden-hulled motor launch normally carried a crew of sixteen and was used for escort or anti-submarine duties and was unsuited to the role of assault ship, but this night ML 446 was one of sixteen each carrying a squad of commandos into the German held port of St Nazaire and flying, as a ruse de guerre, a German ensign.

They were part of Operation Chariot, and their mission was to escort the ex-American destroyer, Campbeltown, which had been converted to look like a German warship and filled with explosives, to demolish the strategically important drydock known as the ‘Normandie Dock’ and prevent it being used by German battleships.     Arnold’s ML 446 was as the tail-end of the column, her mission to take off Camplbeltown’s crew while the commandos secured an embarkation point on the mole [quay] for other commandos who were busy demolishing pumps and port facilities. 

The cross-Channel passage into the Bay of Biscay and approach from westward was uneventful, but as they were discovered entering the harbour they hoisted the White Ensign and [in the words of the official despatch] “We were suddenly fired on heavily … in the full fury of the attack that was let loose on both sides, the air became one mass of red and green tracer travelling in all direction.”

ML 446 was hit, killing some of the crew and many of the commandos and jamming the bridge machine guns, and only the Oerlikon, which was manned by Ordinary Seaman Albert Tew who despite serious wounds continued to man his gun with extreme courage, continued to fire.  

Nevertheless ML 446 attempted to gain the mole, but was driven off by fierce fire and joined the other battered but surviving MLs in the northern part of the harbour.   As they manoeuvred through the hail of fire she attempted to make a smokescreen which, only seemed attract further enemy fire and Arnold was wounded. 

Undaunted Arnold continued to navigate ML 446 through the maelstrom of fire and the burning wrecks of other MLs while fighting continued ashore.   Nine MLs survived this first phase of fighting, but in the next hour three more were sunk:  however, Campbeltown had been successfully driven into the gates of Normandie Dock.  

The raid was regarded as totally successful, despite heavy losses in both men and ships.  Of an initial force of  611 soldiers and sailors, 169 died and many more were wounded or taken prisoner, and of the eighteen small craft only one MGB, one MTB and three MLs returned.    Three MLs including Arnold’s ML 446, were destroyed on the return passage when they were considered too slow to enable the accompanying destroyers to make better speed away from the threat of enemy air attack.  

Five VCs were won that day, Tew was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, and Arnold was awarded the DSC for his great gallantry, daring and skill. 

At noon on 28 March Campbeltown, who was loaded with a hidden cargo of explosives which the Germans had not found, blew up, taking with her over a hundred German investigators, sightseers and souvenir-hunters, destroying the gates of the dock and rendering it unusable for the rest of the war.

Hugh Wilson Arnold was born in Dublin where his grandfather was a Presbyterian minister and his father a barrister, and he was educated at Colet Court, Barnes and at St Paul’s.  He volunteered for the Navy as soon as he could and was commissioned in the RNVR.

His first boat was MTB 71 which was at Ramsgate on February 12 1942 when news arrived in the late morning that a force of German ships was making its infamous ‘Channel Dash’ to return from France to the Baltic.   MTB 271 was one of a flotilla of three boats which were ‘scrambled’ from Ramsgate:  one boat hit an underwater obstruction and was put out of action and the other two were damaged in the deteriorating weather and none were able to reach the faster, fleeing Germans.   (MTB 271 can now be seen at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford.)  Soon afterwards Arnold was appointed to ML 446. 

After Arnold had recovered from his injuries at St Nazaire, he was appointed first lieutenant of the MTB 621 which in July 1944 in the Channel was involved in an intense sixteen nights of gruelling action to prevent German fast patrol boats based at le Havre from interfering with the landings in Normandy, until in, MTB 621 was very badly damaged and Arnold was wounded and invalided from active service.   His captain, Lieutenant John Whitby RNVR wrote to Arnold’s parents, “He was very popular with the crew and they had a great admiration for him as a fighter. He was always at his best in action, and his fine courage and coolness were a great help to me personally on many occasions. Incidentally I heard him still exhorting the gunners onto greater efforts sometime after he himself had been hit”.

Postwar Arnold read English at Pembroke College, Oxford before he was recruited into MI5 and served in Aden, Cyprus, Singapore.

Arnold was a keen and talented sportsman. He was captain of cricket at St Paul’s in 1939 and in 1946 won his Oxford University Authentics (sic) cap. He also played rugby fly-half for the Old Paulines and Surrey.

Arnold was president of the St Nazaire Society and for many years he laid the wreath on behalf of the society at the Coastal Forces annual Remembrance Service at their memorial at the Hornet Services Sailing Centre, Gosport.  In 2005 the French made him a member of the legion d’honneur for his wartime bravery at St Nazaire.

He married Pamela Foa (sic) in 1958 who survives him with their son Robert and daughter, Alice who is former BBC announcer and newsreader and a Daily Telegraph columnist.

Hugh Wilson Arnold, born January 15, 1921, died December 17, 2013