Veterans return as HMS Belfast marks 80th anniversary

STORIES and rare documents revealing life serving aboard HMS Belfast are being shared to mark the 80th anniversary of the warship’s launch.

John Harrison, the oldest surviving Second World War veteran of HMS Belfast, has described the dangers of serving at sea, facing German magnetic mines and treacherous Arctic conditions.

And the first “certificate for wounds and hurts” issued on the warship has been revealed by the Imperial War Museums (IWM) , which owns and runs the vessel as a museum moored near Tower Bridge on the Thames in London.

The document, which records the “accidental traumatic amputation” of Boy John Campbell’s “first two phalanges” – finger bones – while carrying out a gun-drill on the ship’s

4in guns, is dated August 18, 1939, the same month the ship was commissioned into the Royal Navy.

The insights are being shared ahead of the 80th anniversary weekend on March 17-18, when visitors have a chance to meet surviving veterans from HMS Belfast, explore the ship and take part in free nautical-themed activities.

HMS Belfast was on the verge of being scrapped in 1971, but the Belfast Trust stepped in to save it, docking it in London and opening it to the public. It was taken over by the IWM in 1978.

Mr Harrison, 104, who served as an ordinance artificer, described the dangerous conditions in the Arctic, including narrowly avoiding being swept overboard.

“I came to these big waves coming over, and I dashed to my [gun] turret, grabbed the turret door,” he said. “Another one came over, my legs went up with the water, and my hand was actually frozen on to the turret handle, otherwise I’d have gone over the side with it.”

„ British children liberated from Japanese internment camps in Shanghai, China, were entertained on ship in October 1945.

„ Crowds watch as HMS Belfast slides down the slipway at its launch on March 17, 1938.

„ HMS Belfast sails under Tower Bridge to take up its permanent mooring in London.