Name
Hugh Robert Faulkner
Conflict
Second World War
Date of Death / Age
15/06/1942
19
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Ordinary Seaman
P/JX 296535
Royal Navy
H.M.S. Airedale
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
PORTSMOUTH NAVAL MEMORIAL
Panel 65, Column 3.
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
NA
UK & Other Memorials
Hitchin Town Memorial, Hitchin Roll of Honour 1939 – 1945 (Book) St Mary’s Church, Hitchin
Biography
He had been born in Redruth in Cornwall on the 10th July 1923 and later lived at Eastbourne and was evacuated to Hitchin at the outbreak of war with Eastbourne Grammar School. He joined the Hitchin Sea Cadets and was a drum major. On leaving school he worked for the Herts Rubber Company.
He joined the Royal Navy in September 1941 as a ‘Y’ Reservist (the youngest age group) and his Service Number was P/JX296535. He joined H.M.S. ‘Airedale’ which was an escort destroyer of 904 tons built in 1940. It was a unit in an eastern convoy codenamed ‘Vigorous’ from Alexandria to Malta under Rear Admiral P.J. Vian in mid-June 1942. The convoy was sighted by enemy aircraft when some days out and intensive and persistent attacks developed from E-Boats, U-Boats and bombers supported by heavy units from the Italian Navy. On the 15th June 1942 the ‘Airedale’ was abandoned following air attacks and was sunk by guns and torpedoes from H.M.S. ‘Aldenham’ and H.M.S. ‘Hurworth’. One officer and 43 ratings lost their lives. The convoy sent a few ships to Tobruk but was finally compelled to return to Alexandria.
He has no known grave, but the sea and is remembered on the Portsmouth Memorial to the Missing.
His home was at 29, Periwinkle Lane, Hitchin where he lived with his mother, brother and two sisters. He had said to his mother "If I get killed in action that's the way I want to die".
Additional Information
CWGC records him as 16 years old.
Acknowledgments
David C Baines – ‘Hitchin’s Century of Sacrifice’, Paul Johnson - local historian, ‘Dictionary of Disasters at Sea’ by C. Hocking, Herts Pictorial dated 30th June 1942
