Johnny Payne
‘Human minesweeper’ who made Allied wartime ports safe
ABLE SEAMAN JOHNNY PAYNE, who has died aged 98, was the last known survivor of the “P” Parties, or “human minesweepers”, a secret navy formed during the Second Word War.
Called up into the Navy when he was 18, Payne heard that volunteers for special duties were needed. He found that he was to become a demolitions diver: only men who were unmarried were accepted.
After training in London docks which had suffered under the Blitz, Payne was issued with a khaki uniform, a rifle and five rounds of ammunition, and sent to the Admiralty. There, an officer showed pictures of docks still in enemy hands, defended by barbed-wire entanglements and various mines. Payne recalled: “When he asked, ‘Does anyone want to back out?’ nobody did, which, I think, he was quite pleased with.” The diving kit consisted of a rubberised canvas suit and a mask with limited visibility.
Though Payne did not know it at the time, the Germans had sabotaged the ports of north-west Europe and these urgently had to be opened up so that the advancing Allied armies could be resupplied by sea.
Several P Parties were formed, each with about 12 divers and their dressers, drivers, maintainers, a sick-bay attendant and a cook. Payne joined “P1” (later formally renamed Naval Party 1571), and the first harbour he helped to clear was Cherbourg.
The men dived several times a day and worked round the clock in thick mud; the days ran into weeks, and at one point the only rations P1 received were American cigarettes – “which were pretty bad, but good for bartering”.
Payne helped to clear debris, booby traps and unexploded bombs before moving to Rouen – “though you could hardly tell it was a dock as it was blown to pieces so badly”.
Some of the damage was due to Allied bombing. As the British and Canadian armies advanced, P1 cleared the ports of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Some were reached only hours after the retreating Germans, and P1 also took prisoners of war.
At Antwerp, in the winter of 1944-45, in the freezing water “rockets and shells were still coming over at times every three minutes … The Germans were doing a
lot of shelling, but the Americans held them back.”
Eventually, five P Parties were formed, comprising about 100 British, Commonwealth and Dutch divers. Remarkably, there were few casualties and they became one of the most highly decorated units of the war, accumulating some 70 awards, including a George Cross, seven George Medals, two OBES and numerous BEMS and Mentions in Despatches. Payne was awarded the BEM for his valuable service in connection with mine clearance and disposal just before the close of the war and in the months that followed.
John Edwin Payne was born in Oxford on March 16 1925, but brought up at Lancing, West Sussex, where he received little schooling except in the Church Lads’ Brigade, and by the time he was 15 he was a newspaper delivery boy and a messenger in the Auxiliary Fire Service.
After VE-DAY, Payne volunteered to join a P Party about to deploy to the Far East, but the war ended when the atomic bombs were dropped. He was offered the chance to stay on but “was too damn tired”, and left in 1946, recalling: “There were no real options to dive outside, even though I thought I might like to dive again. I enjoyed my diving, although I had a lot of responsibility. It was a great time and great lads, and thinking back I miss them dearly.”
He returned to Lancing, and after a brief spell on the railways became a postman. For many years he was also a Sea Cadet instructor at TS Vanguard in Worthing, promoted to lieutenant.
Johnny Payne married, in 1949, Jean Williams. They divorced in the 1950s, and in 1972 he married Julia “Jill” Lee, who survives him with a daughter from his first marriage and two stepsons.
Johnny Payne, born March 16 1925, died April 16 2023