Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An exceptional Second War ‘Utterly Fearless’ Submariner’s D.S.M. and Second Award Bar group of nine awarded to Petty Officer S. Hawkey, Royal Navy, for outstanding courage, coolness and devotion to duty in H.M. Submarine Porpoise, making vital ‘Magic Carpet’ runs to Malta, and striking the Japanese in H.M. Submarine Tally-Ho.

As a Control Room Telephone Operator and Quarter Gunner ‘Excellent in all Respects’, Hawkey endured repeated close calls, such as ‘One of the Heaviest Depth-Charge Attacks Ever Made on a British Submarine’ (the Fore Hatch was Blown Open and water flooded in), close inshore work with Force 136 operatives, and ramming by an enemy warship

Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R., with Second Award Bar (JX. 127066 S. Hawkey, A.B., R.N.); Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1936-1939 (JX. 127066 S. Hawkey, A.B., R.N.); 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star, 1 clasp, France and Germany; Africa Star, 1 clasp, North Africa 1942-43; Burma Star, 1 clasp, Pacific; Italy Star; War Medal 1939-45; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., G.VI.R., 1st issue (JX. 127066 S. Hawkey, A.B., R.N., H.M.S. Tally-Ho) mounted as worn, generally good very fine (9) £4,000-£5,000

Sotheby’s, May 1989; Dix Noonan Webb, July 2015.

Only 147 Second Award Bars were awarded to the Distinguished Service Medal during the Second World War.

D.S.M. London Gazette 29 December 1942:
‘For distinguished services in successful patrols in H.M. submarines.’

D.S.M. Second Award Bar London Gazette 20 February 1945:
‘For outstanding courage, skill and undaunted devotion to duty in successful patrols in H.M. submarine Tally Ho.’

The original recommendation states: ‘For coolness and courage in the face of the enemy. Leading Seaman Hawkey is the 4-inch gun trainer in H.M.S. Tally Ho. He is utterly fearless, his coolness in action has had a valuable steadying effect upon the younger members of the gun’s crew, and his skill has contributed to the destruction by gunfire of an enemy warship and fourteen other vessels.’

Stanley ‘Stan’ Hawkey, the son of a farmer, was born in St. Columb, Cornwall on 24 February 1911. After working as a farm labourer, at age 15 he entered the Royal Navy at Devonport as a Boy 2nd Class in May 1926. After three years of boy service in Training Ships and Battleships, during which he was tattooed on both arms, Hawkey engaged for Twelve Years on his 18th birthday in 1929.

Joining the Submarine Service, despite Tragic Disasters that killed his close Comrades
Hawkey advanced from Ordinary to Able Seaman in June 1930. From then onwards his story is closely linked with that of another ‘newly made’ Able Seaman, A.B. Leslie Bennington, who was two years younger. Bennington went on to rise rapidly through the ranks and was commissioned, eventually becoming one of the few wartime Captains who had begun his naval career on the lower deck. Bennington held seven levels of rank between 1931 and 1945 - remarkably, Hawkey served alongside him for part of each upward step. Hawkey greatly admired Bennington and the two men always got on well together.

By his 20th birthday, Hawkey decided to apply for transfer to the submarine branch but had a long wait for a vacancy to occur. In January 1932 H.M.S. M2, the world’s first submersible aircraft carrier, sank while attempting to launch her seaplane. Sixty men died; Hawkey personally knew six of them (they had transferred months ahead of him). He spent three years in the Mediterranean in the mid-1930s, serving as quartermaster in the destroyer Beagle, where he qualified for his first medal, the Naval General Service with bar ‘Palestine’ (Bennington was also aboard Beagle during this commission.). In May 1938 Hawkey was at last offered the chance to serve in submarines.

Due to heavy losses in submarine crews due to accidents, the nerve-wracking Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus (DSEA) test was obligatory. Each would-be submariner put on a primitive oxygen rebreathing apparatus and was locked inside a simulated submarine escape hatch (which could only accommodate one person at a time) at the bottom of a giant water tower. The occupant had to wait until the chamber was completely full of water before opening the outer door, exiting, closing the hatch behind him (so that the chamber could be pumped out and made ready for the next man to climb inside) and swimming to the surface of the water tower, without showing any signs of panic. Hawkey passed his DSEA test with flying colours.

Part of his training was two months service in a drifter. Bennington (by now a Lieutenant) was his Divisional Officer. Bennington’s assessment of A.B. Hawkey in August 1938 was ‘An excellent man, cheerful and willing. During a salvage operation in bad weather, he displayed great courage… Power of command excellent for an Able Seaman.’ Hawkey qualified as a member of the deck gun crew in H.M. Submarine Starfish. Many of his shipmates were subsequently drafted to the brand-new submarine Thetis, which was to undergo pre-commissioning trials in Liverpool bay.

On 18 January 1939 Hawkey was transferred to the large minelaying submarine Porpoise, which could carry 50 mines, together with six tubes (with two 21-inch torpedoes apiece) and a four-inch gun. Hawkey had also been earmarked for transfer to Thetis, and in April 1939 Porpoise’s Captain received official notification of this. However, the Captain refused to release his recently arrived crewman.

On 1 June Thetis sank with 56 men aboard after the outer and inner doors of one of her torpedo tubes were both opened by mistake. After 17 hours of work, the crew had pumped out enough water to raise her stern to the vertical, protruding upright out of the sea and bringing her DSEA escape hatch within 20 feet of the surface. Rescue ships arrived and signalled their presence. Four crew members (three naval personnel and a civilian aboard for the trials) in turn successfully used the escape chamber and were picked up.

During the fifth escape attempt the occupant of the DSEA chamber opened its outer door before the chamber had completely flooded. The higher external pressure caused an in-rush of sea water, trapping and drowning him. Because the outer hatch remained partially open, the chamber became inoperative; no one else could escape. The surviving crewmen still trapped inside the hull slowly suffocated. Hawkey stated “I knew every one of these good men and the majority of them sailed with me in the S/M Starfish and without a sudden change around in the drafting arrangements I should have certainly met my fate with them.”

Porpoise Carrier Service: ‘A first-class seaman and an excellent character’
In July 1939 Porpoise loaded live mines and sailed for Malta, to await the outbreak of war with Italy and orders to mine the entrance of the Italian battlefleet’s anchorage at Leghorn. By October that had not happened, so the submarines in the Mediterranean were ordered back to home waters. Hawkey married in November 1939 and settled permanently in Liverpool.

High-intensity war operations got underway in March 1940, when Porpoise joined 4th Submarine Flotilla at Rosyth to conduct hazardous patrols and mine-laying operations off Norway. In November 1940 she began escorting convoys across the Atlantic (and was the first submarine to protect convoys from German surface raiders). In August 1941 Porpoise completed a refit and began patrols in the Bay of Biscay, laying mines off St Nazaire and Bordeaux.

From October 1941 she was operational in the Mediterranean, based in Alexandria, and became the first submarine to carry supplies to the closely besieged and heavily bombed island of Malta. Surface resupply convoys were incurring heavy losses, of both merchant ships and their naval escorts. The three surviving British 'P' Class boats were tasked with executing Operation Magic Carpet to Malta, carrying 160 tons each run, made up of aviation fuel, ammunition, essential food supplies and mail, taking five days to reach Malta from Alexandria.

Porpoise showed the way, and her contribution (nine runs, almost 1,500 tons of supplies) was the greatest of all those boats which participated in the Magic Carpet Service. She soon flew her own special flag bearing the initials P.C.S., which stood for ‘Porpoise Carrier Service’. Six torpedoes and a few rounds of deck gun ammunition were carried on each trip. On the outward journey orders stated that these munitions could only be used to attack enemy capital ships, but once the precious cargo had been off-loaded in Malta the journey back to Egypt was made under the standard war patrol rules of engagement. Lieutenant Bennington took command of ‘Porpoise Carrier Service’ in April 1942.

Hawkey’s main operational duties were to serve as Control Room Telephone Operator (a critical role, relaying information to Bennington and passing his orders through the boat), Gun Trainer (during gun actions on the surface), and unofficial historian/secretary (while sitting at his telephone switchboard, he recorded accurate and precise details of actions and enemy attacks, to assist Bennington when writing his Patrol Reports).

In mid-August 1942 Porpoise endured four days of relentless enemy assault, described by the Admiralty as ‘one of the heaviest depth-charge attacks ever made on a British submarine’. The depth-charging began after Bennington torpedoed the Italian merchantman Lerici. Her escort of two destroyers and two torpedo boats delivered a protracted 60 depth-charge attack. Afterwards Bennington was directed to attack another convoy, and surfaced during the night of 18/19 August 1942, making full speed to intercept it. He was asleep on the bridge when the Watch Officer hit the dive klaxon and reported sighting an enemy destroyer dead ahead, intent on ramming.

Bennington recalled: ‘Suddenly a yell and the wail of the diving hooter jumped me awake. I joined the rush below... We were diving as fast as we could. But in a big submarine it takes time to get under. And it seems an awful long time when you know an enemy destroyer is racing up with a flock of depth charges ready to let go. Sustaining a depth charge attack is... very unpleasant, because there is nothing you can do about it except duck and take whatever comes, hoping that most of the stuff will explode above, where it has least effect, and none under, where you take the full explosive force. The destroyer passed overhead and dropped a depth-charge which exploded very close to the submarine. The gauges registered only 80 feet when there was a crash which nearly shook our teeth out. It was followed by two more huge bangs.’

A mug of tea that had been placed on the Control Room floor rose two feet and smashed in mid-air. The fore hatch, which was secured from inside the boat to allow it to be opened by the crew if the vessel was sinking, had its clips blown open and became unseated. Sea water flooded in, damaging the sub’s electric batteries. Some cells cracked, leaking electrolyte and choking fumes. The fore-end crew fought to reseat the hatch and clip it closed, but it nearly caused Porpoise to sink.

Bennington continued: ‘The poor old Porpoise lurched and bucketed. The main depth gauges winked and I saw their needles swing back to zero. Both had packed up and now we couldn’t tell what our depth was. Porpoise was badly shaken, some lights were extinguished and large quantities of corking were dislodged from the deck head, and shortly afterwards fumes and smoke were observed coming from No. 1 Section of the Main Battery. No. 1 Battery was isolated to prevent the spreading of fumes through the submarine. After the first depth-charge attack the destroyer continued in a northerly direction for about three minutes. She then turned back for another run. She passed astern and dropped four depth-charges which were unpleasantly close and damaged No. 2 and No. 3 Sections of the Battery.

Reports began to come in via the telephone operator [Hawkey]. The motor room said the port motor was dead…the worst news was that Numbers One and Two main batteries were smouldering and smoking. We needed no report on Number Three. From the Control Room we could see it gassing. [I ordered] ‘Shut off Battery Compartments.’ I had the fuses of One and Three Batteries dropped, putting them out of action, and reducing the gassing. The submarine was now dependent on a single damaged battery for all propulsion, lights and steering. It was 5.40 am. Upstairs, the destroyer had swung back, and she came. Crump! Crump! Crump!

Then we got news from the telephone operator [Hawkey], who began to relay the interesting things the hydrophone operator was telling him. “Enemy in contact, Sir. In firm contact. Attacking, attacking, attacking. Passing over. Passing over, Sir.” Whump! Whump! Whump! “Enemy going away, Sir. Enemy turning, decreasing speed, Sir, enemy turning. Transmitting. Enemy in contact. In firm contact, Sir. Attacking, attacking, attacking. Passing over, Sir. Passing over.” Whump! Whumph! CRRRRUMP-crash! So it went on for two hours. The enemy made a total of twelve attack runs but depth-charges were only dropped during the best runs. Altered course to 210 degrees. The enemy was not able to make contact as easily as before but when she did the attacks were as carefully conducted as before... Altogether the enemy dropped 27 depth-charges. All were very close.’

When Porpoise surfaced after sixteen hours, the entire crew was lethargic, breathless and vomiting from the fumes. The batteries were too leaky to allow the boat to submerge. The boat was in a dangerous area that the Navy called ‘bomb alley’. Bennington signalled for assistance and his crippled submarine was escorted back to Egypt by two destroyers and fighter air cover.

Hawkey participated in several fine gun actions, the first on 23 November 1942, when Porpoise encountered an armed supply vessel flying the Italian naval ensign. She was loaded with benzine. The fifth round struck her amidships, she ceased fire and abandoned ship. Porpoise approached to rescue the crew from their lifeboat, and Hawkey was on hand to assist them to climb onto the hull casing. After two had been pulled on board, a lookout reported a hostile aircraft and Porpoise immediately dived.

Hawkey never missed a single day of war-time patrol due to illness. Consistent with his cool courage during the ferocious depth-charging on 19 August 1942, his assessment at the end of 1942 read, “A first class seaman, and an excellent character. Is the acknowledged ‘father’ of the messdeck over which he has a very good influence. Always a hard and reliable worker. Very loyal, and in all ways an extremely pleasant fellow.” He was recommended for an award to mark the end of Porpoise’s tour in the Mediterranean. She returned to England on Christmas Day 1942. Soon Hawkey received his Third Good Conduct Badge.

Hawkey’s D.S.M. was bestowed at a Buckingham Palace investiture held on 16 March 1943, in the presence of his wife Doris. Afterwards, outside the Palace gates, Doris presented Stan with her own award, and was ‘caught in the act’ by a Press agency photographer. Two months later their picture appeared on the cover of a monthly Services magazine. Both Hawkeys were unaware of this ‘great honour’ until Stan came across it over a year later when glancing through old magazines in the lounge of the Globe Hotel in Columbo. He was offended by the advertisement under the photograph, which read: ‘Bovril makes duty a pleasure’, suspecting it was intentionally satirical.

Tally-Ho: ‘Utterly Fearless. This Petty Officer has been consistently good in every way’
Bennington was posted away from Porpoise to be the first commander of H.M. Submarine Tally-Ho, a newly-built ‘T-class’ patrol boat. The submarine branch allowed men to ‘follow’ a popular officer into his latest ship. Hawkey did so on 18 February 1943, together with about half of Porpoise’s crew. After completing her acceptance and diving trials, Tally-Ho was worked up via a series of war patrols off Norway, Gibraltar and the South of France. The Admiralty intended that Tally-Ho would join the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean, with the mission of cutting all Japanese maritime supply lines to Burma. The Eastern Fleet submarines were based in Ceylon. Tally-Ho arrived in September 1943, and was usually tasked to blockade the Malacca Straits, between eastern Sumatra and the west coast of Malaya. The Straits were a thousand miles away from Ceylon, and a skipper had to constantly bear in mind the long haul to get back home if his boat sustained damage from enemy ships/aircraft or from simple mechanical failure.

As well as being a ‘choke point’ for enemy shipping and thus a consistently target-rich environment, the great attraction of the Straits for Bennington was the strategic port of Singapore at their southern end, whilst at the north end was a combined Japanese and German submarine base on Penang Island. This facility was manned by both German and Japanese naval personnel and included a purpose-built factory to produce rations for German U-boat crews, such as tinned bread, meat, vegetables and fruit. After the war, enemy personnel claimed that they had been operating anti-submarine air patrols along the Straits.

The Malacca Straits were a shallow and particularly demanding billet, because they were not reliably charted. Accurate charts are based on frequent surveys to locate shifting sandbanks. Commanders and navigators were constantly perturbed by depths which failed to correspond with those shown on their charts. Tally-Ho’s crew had to endure appalling conditions due to the heat and humidity, especially when the boat was submerged. There was no air conditioning and all the deck hatches were kept shut. Her electric motors generated heat when running, which circulated through the boat until conditions become almost intolerable. The crewmen were nearly naked, wearing just a sarong or towel wrapped round their waists, as the sweat ran in streams down their bodies. Typical temperatures were over 100 degrees, while in the motor-rooms it was often 120 degrees.

Bennington was very flexible about roles and responsibilities on Tally-Ho, seeking out the best men for critical jobs, rather than adhering rigidly to ‘standard duties’. For example, anyone who was reliable could carry out look-out duty on the bridge, even the Chief ERA. Hawkey remained a quarter gunner, where he played a decisive part in many surface gun actions, but his 1943 annual assessment shows that Bennington trusted him to act as bridge lookout and to operate the hydroplanes, a key role (especially in shallow water) requiring both skill and strength as the forward hydroplanes regulated the boat’s depth. He was assessed as “An excellent seaman, and a valuable S/M rating of long experience. Very good influence, plenty of initiative, energy and intelligence… Power of Command for an A.B. is Very Good. Recommended for Leading Seaman and should make a very fine one.” Hawkey was duly given the step-up on 27 November 1943.

During Tally-Ho’s first patrol in the Straits, on 8 November 1943, she was depth-charged off Penang – Bennington reported ‘first pattern rather close and damaged depth gauge.’ On 11 December 1943 and again in January 1944 she performed ‘special missions’, dropping off or picking up Force 136 teams in shallow in-shore waters, when the surfaced boat was highly vulnerable; every one of its defensive weapons were fully manned.

On 11 January 1944 Bennington sank the most spectacular target of his career, the Japanese cruiser Kuma, north-west of Penang. This was the first time that a Japanese cruiser had been sunk by the British in the Indian Ocean. Tally-Ho was counter-attacked by an enemy destroyer. Depth-charges caused extensive damage to one side of the boat, and the crew thought they would never reach their home port. By skilful and careful manoeuvring, the submarine was coaxed on to her undamaged side and brought home to Ceylon.

On 24 February 1944 Tally-Ho had a hair-raising encounter on the surface with a Japanese torpedo boat. Bennington turned away from her attempt to ram, but could not avoid the enemy ship completely. It passed along most of Tally-Ho’s port side from the gun tower to behind the Oerlikon mounting on the rear of the conning tower, shearing off the portside fore plane and slicing open Tally-Ho’s port ballast tanks ‘like crackling on pork’.

Tally-Ho limped back to Ceylon, where she had a long stay in drydock for repairs. During this time, Hawkey was awarded his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal by Admiral Somerville, Commander-in-Chief Eastern Fleet, at a parade at Colombo in March 1944.

Despite many dangers and difficulties, Tally-Ho progressively cleared enemy vessels out of the Malacca Straits. In the 12 months from November 1943 (when the Japanese High Command were still confidently expecting to invade India), she sank by torpedoes, mine-laying and gun actions a greater tonnage of enemy ships than that sank by all other British submarines operating in the Straits. In autumn 1944, the enemy closed its sea route to supply Burma. Bennington distinguished himself further by sinking a German U-boat, and changed his tactics to emphasise gun actions on the surface. On 6 October 1944 Hawkey and his fellow gunners fought an epic and successful gun duel with a Japanese auxiliary submarine chaser, but Tally-Ho’s gunnery officer was mortally wounded by the enemy’s return fire.

On 23 November 1944 Tally-Ho completed her twelfth wartime patrol and departed for Britain, arriving back in Portsmouth on 19 January 1945. During the voyage, Hawkey was promoted to Acting Petty Officer and duly became Second Coxswain. “An excellent Leading Seaman in all respects. Has a thorough knowledge and firm power of command. Wishes to pass for P.O. and is highly recommended. I hope I’m fortunate enough to get him as my 2nd Coxswain in the future!”

Together with other ex-Porpoises and Tally-Hos, Hawkey was assigned to HMS Elfin, the submarine base at Blyth, Northumberland. He saw further operational service in the North Sea and in the lead-up to the liberation of Norway, thus qualifying for the ‘France & Germany’ clasp. It appears that he helped take over U-170 and became Chief Coxswain of its prize crew (he wrote U-190 in his scrapbook, but this is impossible and must be an error in a single digit as U-190 surrendered in Canada, while U-170 was based in Horten, Norway, and then sailed to Loch Ryan in Scotland).

Hawkey received the Bar to his D.S.M. at a Buckingham Palace investiture on 20 July 1945. Sixteen of Tally-Ho’s officers and crew were decorated at the same event, probably a record for one ship. Bennington assembled them for the ceremony with the words “Right! Come on, you buggers.” This provoked a high-ranking army officer present to exclaim, “I say, you can’t talk to your men like that.”

Hawkey’s final posting was Chief Coxswain in the surrendered U-1233, a Type IXC/40 based in Loch Ryan, Galloway, for evaluations and trials conducted off Northern Ireland. It was a large, extended-range boat, equipped for minelaying and sustained operations far from its home base. Hawkey was released from the Navy as a Petty Officer in December 1945, just before his 34th birthday. “This Petty Officer has been consistently good in every way.”

Hawkey subsequently served in the Royal Fleet Reserve 1947-52, while employed by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board as a seaman. He died in Liverpool in 1970, aged 59.


Sold with a copy of Hawkey’s extensive wartime scrapbook, which he complied in a German U-boat Logbook taken from the surrendered U-190, comprising newspaper reports, service record, photographs and much else (the original is held by the R.N. Submarine Museum); and a research file, including extensive war patrol reports written by Captain Bennington.