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Commander Edward Young DSO, DSC*, RNV (S) R Signed Naval Art






Commander Edward Young DSO, DSC*, RNV (S) R

Edward Young was born in 1913 and, after leaving Highgate School, joined The Bodley Head as an office boy. Edward Young worked for Penguin for the Reprint Society in 1939. As a keen yachtsman and maritime student in civilian life, he qualified for direct entry into the RNVR as a sub-lieutenant at the outbreak of war and, having volunteered for submarines, went on his first patrol in the ancient submarine H28 in October 1940. Serving next in the brand new Umpire in July 1941, he was below in the wardroom when she was accidentally rammed and sunk, while on the surface at night, by a trawler which was escorting a convoy. Rapid flooding caused Umpire to hit the bottom at 80 feet, Young and three others making an extemporised escape without breathing apparatus using the top and bottom hatches of the conning tower trunk as an air lock. The CO and 14 men were saved, but 22 were drowned in this disaster. As torpedo officer of the Sealion, Young operated from Murmansk for a few months until appointed second-in-command of the newly built Saracen, commanded by the distinguished Lieutenant Michael Lumby. This submarine was at sea, working up the skills of an inexperienced crew in the North Atlantic off the Faeroes when a U-boat was sighted making her way to the Atlantic. A snap attack sank her and the one survivor was made prisoner. Young was awarded a mention in dispatches. Saracen was subsequently ordered to the beleaguered island fortress of Malta to join the 10th Submarine Flotilla - the famous Fighting Tenth - whose base was under constant air attack from enemy aircraft flying from nearby Sicily. Young's efficiency and coolness were rewarded by the DSC when Saracen sank the Italian submarine Granito off Sicily in November 1942. In January 1943 he was selected for the COs qualifying course - known as the perisher probably from its original title, the Periscope School, coupled with its strict attitude to standards - which he passed successfully. He cut his teeth commanding the P555 - an ex-American submarine, used mainly for training anti-submarine forces. Then, in June 1943, he was appointed to command the new submarine Storm then building at Cammell Laird's at Birkenhead. The celebrated Admiral Sir Max Horton, C-in-C Western Approaches, came down to see him off to his first patrol. Storm's first patrol north of the Arctic Circle was uneventful. By January 1944 the Allies had established a strategic mastery of the Mediterranean and the operational focus shifted to the war against Japan. Storm, with others and her depot ship, moved to Ceylon and started operations in the narrow Malacca Strait. Sighting a Japanese submarine on his first patrol, Young was disappointed to be unable to close sufficiently to attack. Thereafter his luck - and skill - improved and he was awarded a Bar to his DSC for the results of four war patrols with the Far Eastern Fleet. In April he sank a minesweeper and subsequently several other vessels in support of the overall campaign to deny the Japanese any use of the sea for military purposes. A particularly hair-raising cloak-and-dagger action involved the landing of an agent by rubber boat on Pulau Weh island on the northwest tip of Sumatra. When the submarine approached to recover the agent four days later, the prearranged Morse code signal by light, although correct, was late and was being transmitted from the wrong place. Young and the Special Forces major in charge of the shore aspect of the operation noted a smell of treachery in the air. But the major and a leading seaman detailed off to assist him bravely paddled inshore and shouted in the darkness to the agent whose replies suggested that he was under some duress. By now highly suspicious, they abandoned all thoughts of trying to retrieve the agent and paddled frantically back to the submarine. By now the whole shore had come alive with flashes and detonations as four machineguns and a four-inch emplacement gun opened fire on Storm, which replied with a couple of rounds from her own gun for good measure. Miraculously neither the major, the seaman nor Storm's gun crew were hit in the fusillade of machinegun rounds which were ricocheting off the water and the submarine's conning tower - mercifully the emplacement gun had not yet found the range. After a tense interval, both men were hauled back aboard the submarine and Young was able to withdraw with only one man wounded, giving the order to dive, as four-inch shells from the gun onshore screamed overhead. In July, while on a roving commission to look for trouble in the islands of the Mergui Archipelago off the coast of Burma, Storm entered Port Owen on the surface in a rainstorm and sank two patrol vessels, various coasters and a small merchant ship by gunfire. But by September 1944 British submarines were beginning to run out of suitable targets and a move was negotiated further east into the American area of operations where the much larger and better equipped US submarines had been hugely successful. Nevertheless, the Americans were genuinely grateful for the help from the smaller British submarines in shallow water. Storm, based at Fremantle, Western Australia, carried out two further successful war patrols, sinking numerous schooners running the nickel-ore trade and making a devastating attack on a convoy in the Mergui Archipelago, firing 150 rounds of ammunition until her gun jammed with the heat. Young was awarded the DSO for these patrols, the last of which racked up a record distance run, for Storm, of 7,151 miles. By early in the new year it was time to go home, and on April 8, 1945, Storm reached Portsmouth after ten-week voyage, via Sumatra, Ceylon, Aden, Port Said and Gibraltar. Since leaving the Cammell Laird yard 18 months before, she had sailed 71,000 miles and spent the equivalent of 60 days and nights under water. She was destined for passage to America for a refit, but Young, promoted to acting commander, was posted to a staff appointment. He was released from naval service in November 1945. After the war he returned to publishing and worked for the Reprint Society and Pan Books. He then joined the new firm of Rupert Hart-Davis as director of production. It was this firm that in 1952 published One of Our Submarines, which was written at the instigation of Admiral Sir George Creasy, who had commanded the submarine branch of the Royal Navy from September 1944 to October 1946. Commander Edward Young, DSO, DSC and Bar, died on January 28, 2003, aged 89.



Awarded the Distinguished Service OrderAwarded the Distinguished Service CrossAwarded a Bar to the Distinguished Service Cross
Distinguished
Service Order
Distinguished
Service Cross
Bar to the
Distinguished
Service Cross

Commander Edward Young DSO, DSC*, RNV (S) R - Signed Naval Art
Naval Crew Signatures

Secret Operation by Robert Taylor.

Secret Operation by Robert Taylor.
One edition.
The edition features 4 additional signature(s).
£75.00



Text for the above items :

Secret Operation by Robert Taylor.

Submariners are a special breed of sailor. Their environment, operating deep beneath the surface of the waves, is both unnatural and dangerous, and demands men of cool courage and exceptional quality. Prowling the depths like a mammoth shark, sometimes hunted, submarine crews live and fight, and sometimes die together, alone in the remote expanses of the worlds great oceans. Regardless of national flag under which they sail, this small elite Silent Service is both feared and admired by all who sail the seas. Plying their deadly trade in World War Two, the German U-boats posed such threat to the vital Atlantic convoys; Winston Churchill feared the submarine threat more than anything Hitler had at his disposal. Hunting in wolf packs, roaming the shipping lanes far beyond the reach of protective aircraft, they decimated the Allied merchant vessels during the Battle of the Atlantic. Manned entirely by volunteers, British and American submarines saw action in every maritime theatre during the great conflict of 1939 - 1945, the crews fighting their solitary, stealthy, secret war with courage and nerves of steel. This print captures the menacing beauty of a submarine on the surface: S-Class type HMS Sceptre slips her moorings in Scapa Flow, Scotland, and glides quietly into the North Sea to begin another top secret underwater operation. On the conning tower the skipper takes a final look across the water to the distant highlands while the crew savour the fresh salt air knowing soon they will submerge into their eerie, silent, artificial world, beneath the waves.

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