The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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500748 Jack Mitchell Royal Navy HMS Manchester from:Gravesend, Kent, England. Jack Mitchell served on HMS Manchester and was on board when they took part in Operation Pedestal, the largest convoy of the war, bringing vital support to Malta, which was facing the possibility of surrender to Italy. The convoy included 13 large merchant ships, five aircraft carriers, two battleships, eight cruisers, 36 destroyers and nine submarines. Only two of these vessels actually reached Malta. In an interview in 2005 Jack said: "Before the convoy left, Churchill sent a signal to the officer commanding to say that, should just one merchant ship arrive in Malta and all the others sunk, it would still be deemed a success. Malta would have had to surrender if no-one had got through." The Manchester was torpedoed in the convoy on the 13th of 1942. Jack Mitchell and the rest of the crew abandoned ship and the vessel was scuttled. Jack and his crewmates were taken prisoner by the Vichy French and spent four months at the infamous Langout POW camp in Algeria. Conditions were vicious. A book was written about the camp and it said "Let us never forget the extreme privations suffered by the crew of the HMS Manchester and others in Langout." After Jack was freed from the camp following the North Africa landings, he returned to sea on aircraft carriers. Add to this record.  Related Content: HMS Manchester Laghouat Prisoner of War Camp Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.