SS Kalev Arctic Convoys & Normandy Campaign

[Graham Shaw]

Dennis,I presume you have checked Convoy Web?

ss KALEV (Estonian ,1,867 grt ,built 1917)
was in none of those 3 convoys,which were:-
JW 55A dep. Loch Ewe 12/12/43 arr.Archangel 22/12/43
JW 55B dep. Loch Ewe 20/12/43 arr.Archangel 30/12/43
JW 56A dep.Loch Ewe 12/1/44 arr.Kala Inlet 28/1/44

In the Ship Movements section of the Arnold Hague Ports Database :-

There are no disclosed/ recorded movements for KALEV between :-
WN 169 dep.Oban 17/8/41 arr.Methil 21/8/41 and :-
EBC 5 dep.Barry 8/6/44 and Seine Bay arr.11/6./44

[j.sabourn]

#40 As regards your Estonians refusing to go to Russia during the war years Dennis I can confirm the same situation existed long after the war in 1953 for instance both Estonians and Latvians I sailed with were no where to be seen on deck when a Russian ship was in port , they always kept a low profile. 11 years later as mate on a ship trading with Murmansk any Poles Latvians Estonians on the vessel we used to go through the fiords rather than round the North Cape and drop them off in Norway and picking them up again when clear of Russia. If their reasons were true or not we had no reason for complaint as that North Cape in wintertime was not too nice a place at times . Cheers JS ..

[Dennis Billaney]

Dennis,I presume you have checked Convoy Web?

Dear Graham, YEs, I have checked Convoy Web and have been going back checking for updates for the past 10-15yrs. I'm well aware that there's no entries there, or on any other database I was able to find so far.

Anyway, as I wrote (quote) "I now believe they (SS KALEV) were scheduled to join convoy..."

The fact is/are, there are no entries to be found so far, at the same time, he mentioned, spoke and wrote about it (convoy to Murmansk), and finally, he received the Russian issued medal dedicated to allied veterans who participated in those runs.

Thanks anyway for your feedback!

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#40 As regards your Estonians refusing to go to Russia during the war years Dennis I can confirm the same situation existed long after the war in 1953 for instance both Estonians and Latvians I sailed with were no where to be seen on deck when a Russian ship was in port , they always kept a low profile. 11 years later as mate on a ship trading with Murmansk any Poles Latvians Estonians on the vessel we used to go through the fiords rather than round the North Cape and drop them off in Norway and picking them up again when clear of Russia. If their reasons were true or not we had no reason for complaint as that North Cape in wintertime was not too nice a place at times . Cheers JS ..

JS, thanks for sharing, I often wonder what happened to the Estonian crew members of the SS Kalev after the war. Perhaps you have some stories about those mates who sailed with you, not assuming they were SS Kalev crew, but perhaps they shared a similar fate/history? (just curious)

Cheers

[j.sabourn]

#43 whether it was the Iron Curtain or the Bamboo Curtain it was the usual practice to be approached by the MOD for one should I say keep their eyes open for certain info. they supposedly needed. This was before satellites and the spies in the sky syndrome everyone was keen to write about , you may or may not remember think it was Grenville Jones a business man who was picked up for spying in one of Russia’s satellite countries and was displayed all over the media at the time. He was no more a spy than I am , but must have thought he was doing his civic and moral duties , pie in the sky it was practiced on both sides and probably still is , I always said no , and meant it when approached . I knew of a master and mate on a ship going into Shanghai who were caught with sketches of various objects they received a number of years in a Chinese jail. Your country in most cases will deny your existence when caught . It’s alright for spy novels and someone’s vivid imagination but in real life should be kept well clear of.
I would imagine every country after WW11 had people lists of people they wanted to interview for different reasons one of the biggest was Israel who had a big bone to pick with Germany , Russia probably had similar bones to pick with various others also , although they were probably more severe in their immediate punishments without due trial. One old second mate told me of a time before the war in Europe he was in one of the Baltic ports and lost his watch. He reported it to the Russian guards , work was stopped and all the stevedores were searched , his watch was found and returned , the miscreant was marched to the end of the jetty and shot in the head , game set and match as easy as that, his body was dumped off the quayside . Makes one wonder what today the followers of the clean seas acts would say to that one. Think they would keep their mouths shut. The. Same. Second mate must be a long time dead by now but he. Told me he could of had the watch , he must of had a bad conscience for the rest of his life. Cheers JS

[Dennis Billaney]

Besides my latest post regarding the Arctic Convoys, I just wanted to share another tiny bit of grandads war diaries I had recently found, this was Normandy.
I will try to scan the whole doc and related notes and post them here, but here’s just a short part which reminded me of his typical humorous way of talking about the war.

May 1944 …
Quote: all voyage descriptions were normally written as FGN, foreign, that now changed to SPECIAL OPERATIONS…

This took place off Omaha beach on around D-Day +2 or so. He had mentioned the mix of cargo they were carrying and described the scenery he saw while waiting to unload:

Quote: we waited all day and could hear the explosions and terrific barrage of our warship guns. The ships were at times attacked by German fighters, machine gunning the lines of ships, but RAF soon took care of them most of the time.

We were hit a few times but nothing serious.

The strange and maybe funniest thing was when we heard a fighter coming and machine gunning us, we would all fall to the deck and shelter behind petrol cans that we were carrying as deck cargo.

[j.sabourn]

Dennis notice in your introduction you live in Vietnam . We also have where I live in WA an ex think it must be an ex RAAF member from the Vietnam War who also lives there permanently. He told me he comes home to Oz every year for a couple of months , but is having trouble at the moment in getting his visa to get back home to Vietnam as should have received a couple of weeks ago . Nothing going on is there with the I’mmigration , he lives outside Saigon in the country. Cheers JS

[Dennis Billaney]

#43 whether it was the Iron Curtain or the Bamboo Curtain it was the usual practice to be approached by the MOD for one should I say keep their eyes open for certain info. they supposedly needed. This was before satellites and the spies in the sky syndrome everyone was keen to write about , you may or may not remember think it was Grenville Jones a business man who was picked up for spying in one of Russia’s satellite countries and was displayed all over the media at the time. He was no more a spy than I am , but must have thought he was doing his civic and moral duties , pie in the sky it was practiced on both sides and probably still is , I always said no , and meant it when approached . I knew of a master and mate on a ship going into Shanghai who were caught with sketches of various objects they received a number of years in a Chinese jail. Your country in most cases will deny your existence when caught . It’s alright for spy novels and someone’s vivid imagination but in real life should be kept well clear of.
I would imagine every country after WW11 had people lists of people they wanted to interview for different reasons one of the biggest was Israel who had a big bone to pick with Germany , Russia probably had similar bones to pick with various others also , although they were probably more severe in their immediate punishments without due trial. One old second mate told me of a time before the war in Europe he was in one of the Baltic ports and lost his watch. He reported it to the Russian guards , work was stopped and all the stevedores were searched , his watch was found and returned , the miscreant was marched to the end of the jetty and shot in the head , game set and match as easy as that, his body was dumped off the quayside . Makes one wonder what today the followers of the clean seas acts would say to that one. Think they would keep their mouths shut. The. Same. Second mate must be a long time dead by now but he. Told me he could of had the watch , he must of had a bad conscience for the rest of his life. Cheers JS

Espionage & Secret Reconnaissance at Sea during the Cold War

Your post reminded me of another 3 page handwritten document I found among Grandads stuff. From what he wrote, I understand that from 1959 to 1963, while working as a mate and later as skipper for a company which I decided not to disclose its name, not the name of the 2 vessels he was on when this took place, he obviously participated in gathering specific intelligence about Russian Navy vessels and activities, as asked to do so by a Royal Navy Officer.

He wrote, a Naval Officer approached him and asked if he had any experience of the Norwegian northern coast and Russian coast, which he did and he told the Royal Navy Officer that he spent his entire life fishing in those waters and knew all the Fjords in and out.
This officer wanted to know if he had ever seen Russian naval vessels, which he also did and in fact was quite a common thing.
He was then asked if he would help gather information such as noting locations, directions, speed, type of vessel and cargo, and those sorts of details. He was told that it would be classified as secret and he was to never mention or talk about this to anyone.
My grandad agreed and was equipped with mini film and photo camera, special high quality binoculars and before each trip this officer would catch up with him and provide specific details of what kind of intel they were mainly looking to get, besides anything else he could gather if they came across Russian vessels. Each time they got back from a trip, the officer would meet up to de-brief him, collect all the info which grandad had gathered and resupply him with film and other sorts of material.

There was one specific mission he wrote about, where he was asked to keep a look out for a kind of vessel which might be used to lift extremely heavy material from the ocean bed, or which might have already lifted such material. He was told that an American Air Force plane was shot down and the Russians were searching for it, likely trying to recover it in order to study the equipment it was carrying. He wrote that they never came across anything related to this “spy plane”, but he went on explaining how in the later years they were instructed to make covert radio reports whenever they did manage to successfully find something of interest. In the early days or when I began this sort of work, as he wrote, they were instructed to keep total radio silence and not even talk about anything with anyone on the vessel, nobody was allowed to know about his secret activities. That somehow changed when the radio operator on his vessel separately got recruited and they then acted as a 2 man covert team, kept secret from the rest of the crew.

Grandad wrote, one particular instance was when the officer called him at home and ordered him down to the docks for an urgent meeting. The navy knew about grandads upcoming trip and assumed that they would be encountering the Russian fleet along the way, which was believed to have received some new kind of vessels or which had new equipment on them. He was ordered to take as many pictures, film and notes if they would encounter any Russian vessel and furthermore, to make immediate report by sending telegram messages in code, which they were trained ahead of the trip.
Upon any such contact with Russian fleet or vessels, they were to send as follows:
Quote:
Congratulations on Mary’s engagement on the 23rd (date 15-25 to indicate speed), and best wishes to all her lads on “western” or “eastern” avenue, and to all those up in Northhull, have a toast with a glass of Southern Comfort (to indicate the direction). He added that he could not recall the exact wording for each coding, but that it was something like that.

I’ll also get this one scanned and post it here once I get a chance.

Cheers

[j.sabourn]

What you say is nothing unusual and most British ships were approached as such as have said . It is all water under the bridge today as was the past. Usually the Official Secrets Acts If signed should be enough to keep silent , however they usually had a life span of 30 years and I can’t remember signing them , how ever I never made a practice of accepting cameras and binoculars but they were offered, is all over 30 years ago . I still believe in keeping clear of such games which had the chance of turning nasty. This may all seem weird to a shore person , but strange things happen at sea. JS
As to coded messages non government but in shipowners private made up one to inform the master of a crew change on arrival Japan from a Chinese to an Indian crew beforehand and the radio officer being Chinese and in the dark about it , if the crew change was to be made , the message would be , your life rafts will be replaced in Japan , and if crew change was not going to happen , was your life rafts will not be be changed. We all live in a sneaky world without it being made worse by politicians sticking their oar in . Cheers JS

[Dennis Billaney]

Dennis notice in your introduction you live in Vietnam . We also have where I live in WA an ex think it must be an ex RAAF member from the Vietnam War who also lives there permanently. He told me he comes home to Oz every year for a couple of months , but is having trouble at the moment in getting his visa to get back home to Vietnam as should have received a couple of weeks ago . Nothing going on is there with the I’mmigration , he lives outside Saigon in the country. Cheers JS

JS,

Correct, I live in Saigon and what you wrote about this friend of yours, it is indeed something I hear quite frequently, regarding visa issues, which due to COVID-19 was at one point halted altogether and has just started to slowly get revived, yet far from how it used to be. Even for me with a valid work permit and residence card, plus married to a VNese, until early this year (2022), if I had left between June 2021, I would not easily have been allowed to return/enter VN, and anyone with something like a tourist visa would not have been able at all to enter from/after April 2000 until just a few month ago.

There's quite a decent number of Aussie and other Vietnam War vets who tend to reside in or around Saigon, but they mostly stay on what used to be called a multi entry 3 or 6 month visa, which could be extended 2-3 times, therefore allowing to stay up to more than an year. They all ran into trouble when the country went into lock down and all travel to VN was banned, except for "special cases such as essential or diplomatic people and specialists".

Anyway, he should be able to get back now, perhaps not on a 6month multi entry visa, but from what I hear, currently guys like him apply for a 1 month tourist visa and once they're here, they can sort it out via "agents" and under the table oily money...

However, feel free to share my contact details with him, if there's anything I could do to help, I'd be happy to do so, or perhaps just to catch up and enjoy a few cold beers. Maybe I even know him or we might have bumped into each other. Lot's of those blokes hang out in Vung Tau which is 100km from Saigon down at the sea. I go there often and there's not many places where most of those chaps hang out, small community!

Cheers

[j.sabourn]

If he’s still here next Wednesday at the Bingo will mention to him. Thanks. Although should imagine he has lived in Vietnam for the past 40 odd years or so . Cheers JS