Orders, Decorations and Medals

A rare ‘Stringbag’ pilot’s D.S.C. and Polar Medal group of six awarded to Lieutenant W. H. Thomson, Fleet Air Arm, and pilot to the Falkland Island Dependencies Survey Team
Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., the reverse officially dated ‘1944’; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Defence and War Medals, these four all privately named (Sub-Lieutenant, D.S.C., R.N.V.R.); Polar Medal, E.II.R., silver, 1 clasp, Antarctic 1947 (William H. Thomson) together with various photographs and correspondence including original Admiralty notification of the D.S.C., and a typed Midwinters Day 1947 Dinner Menu, signed by the Survey Team members, good very fine (6)

D.S.C. London Gazette 20 June 1944. ‘For skill and determination in attacks on U-Boats while operating from H.M. Ships Fencer and Vindex’. The Admiralty notification states: ‘for courage, skill and determination shown as pilot of a Swordfish aircraft which operated from H.M.S. Fencer in an attack on a German submarine on 10th February, 1944, which resulted in the probable destruction of the enemy’.

The following extract is taken from Thomson’s patrol report of the action (ADM. 199/466), ‘I had been scrambled...to attack a U.Boat which had surfaced...I saw dead ahead of me about half a mile away a swirl being formed...the swirl gradually increased until the first part of the conning-tower of a U.Boat appeared...I dived fairly low to about 20 feet and dropped my depth charges across a point just ahead of the conning-tower, about two feet of which was now showing...The depth charges went off straddling the target although for some reason the middle depth charge went off about three seconds later than the other two, apparently exploding almost on the target...The observer and air gunner saw the bows of the U.Boat lift out of the water with the first two depth charge explosions...When the water subsided no part of the U.Boat was visible but oil came to the surface and gradually spread out...’

Polar Medal London Gazette 17 July 1953. Pilot, Marguerite Bay, 1947, Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey. One of six ‘Antarctic 1947’ clasps issued.

Lieutenant William Harvie Thomson is shown as Sub Lieutenant (Air), 1944 and as a Lieutenant the following year. He served in the Aircraft Carrier H.M.S. Fencer during the RA59 Convoy from the Kola Inlet, 28 April to 6 May 1944, and took part in the subsequent sorties against U.Boats. He was appointed pilot to the Survey Team of the Falkland Islands Dependencies in 1947, and from the base at Marguerite Bay in north eastern Antarctica, flew the light aircraft Ice Cold Katy during the laying of sledge ration depots. On the return flight from the Cape Keeler depot, 150 miles to the east, Thomson crash landed in adverse conditions. The transmitter was broken and Thomson with his two companions were seventy miles from base. The following extract is taken from Two Years in the Antarctic by Kevin Walton:

‘The actual story of the seventy-mile tramp back to base can never be completely told. Their assets were only the clothes they stood up in, a small tent, two sleeping bags, an ice axe, an alpine rope, petrol primus, seven pounds of pemmican, and some odd sweets. There were also two cine-cameras, not their own, my Leica, a wireless receiver, and a tank full of petrol. Ice conditions were the same as they had been on the previous week - a thin breakable crust covering two feet of watery slush. They had no ski or snow-shoes and couldn’t walk without breaking through. Every step was a flounder and a struggle. They rationed themselves to three ounces of pemmican a day and struggled on, with high winds, driving snow, and very low temperatures. On the 23rd a seal popped up and they killed it with an ice axe, and then as they ate it the aircraft spotted them and they were safe.’

‘That the three fliers were safe was most surely a miracle, and though the rescue was carried out on a calm day, in perfect flying conditions, tribute must be paid to the skill and courage of the American pilots, Lassiter and Adams, who were prepared to fly and search in conditions that would have grounded any normal pilot. That Tommy, Reg, and Bernard themselves had the pertinacity to go on in spite of all, is in keeping with the great tradition of endurance in polar travel.’