Memories of first Royal Navy ship sunk by a guided missile

Martin Longhurst contacted me about his late father Herbert who served in the sloop HMS Egret, said to be the first ship sunk by a guided missile, and this was in 1943.

During an anti U-boat mission, Operation Percussion, in the Bay of Biscay in August, Egret fell victim to a Henschel 293 glider bomb launched from a Dornier 217.

The weapon was a 500kg bomb fitted with wings with a range of seven miles and was radio-controlled by an operator in the aircraft. There was a small rocket motor of 12-second duration.

HMS Egret capsized and only 35 officers and ratings were rescued by the Canadian HMCS Athabaskan. Herbert was not among them.

A total of 194 members of the ship’s company went down with her plus four RAF technicians hoping to determine the radio frequency operating the missile. Three days earlier a similar missile had damaged the sloop HMS Bideford.

Martin says: ‘Being only six months old at this time, I of course wasn't aware of this. I was seven before my mum told me that my dad had died in the war and even then she had, like all wartime widows, only limited information because of early post-war security.

‘It wasn't until many years later when I myself was at sea, serving in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary deep sea tug Reward, that I contacted the RN records museum and was sent scanned records of the battle log and more importantly the longitude and latitude to pinpoint where my dad and his shipmates rest. This is about 30 miles west of Vigo, Spain, very near the main shipping routes for vessels sailing