At 06.25 hours on the 20th of September 1942, U-435 fired one torpedo at the convoy QP-14 west of Bear Island and observed a hit on a freighter after 46 seconds. After two torpedo's were fired at 06.26 and 06.29 hours, two detonations were heard after 4 minutes 10 seconds and 4 minutes 30 seconds. A torpedo fired at 06.28 hours missed because it was a surface runner. At 06.31 hours, the U-Boat fired one more torpedo at a destroyer and observed the ship sinking after being hit 1 minute 25 seconds later. The hit destroyer was the fleet minesweeper HMS Leda and it sank southwest of Spitsbergen.
HMS Leda was a Halcyon Class Minesweeper ordered from HM Dockyard , Devonport on the 1st of July 1936. The ship was laid down on the 16th of November 1936 and was launched on the 8th of June 1937.
The build was completed and the ship was commissioned on the 19th of May 1938.
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On this very same day my father, David Gale was born, This record of his Navy career will be a more thorough account than the original document that I produced shortly after he passed away in 2012.
The original document was rushed so that a copy of it could be placed with him when we laid him to rest. I now have the time to really dig into his day to day activities and hopefully uncover some interesting stories.
My father never really spoke of his time in the Royal Navy, and it was only after he passed and we found his old documents and Navy record that I began to understand his journey in the Navy.
He was a strong, disciplined man, and it is now clear that his time in the Navy was the making of the man he became.
