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Robert Franks
Robert Franks
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Robert Franks (far left) just before D-Day
Robert Franks (far left) just before D-Day
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Robert Franks - HMS Gipsy
Robert Franks - HMS Gipsy
Capt Robert Franks OBE, DSC, DSO - Dartmouth WWII Heroes
There can be few men to have featured so strikingly in many of the Second World War’s most iconic and bloody episodes as Capt Robert Franks.
His distinguished service was riddled with moments in which he showed calm and nerve under huge odds and under great pressure.
Born in 1912, Robert Franks joined the Navy at the age of 13 when he arrived in Dartmouth to train at the Britannia Royal Naval College. After passing out of BRNC, he joined HMS Shropshire under training as a Midshipman on the Far East Station.
Robert spent the next few years training on various vessels, seemingly enjoying himself immensely.
In 1937 he joined the HMS Gipsy, a new destroyer as 1st Lieutenant. In 1939, under the command of Captain Nigel Crossley Gipsy was stationed in Harwich to patrol the North Sea after war had been declared. On November 23, a German plane was spotted, dropping things attached to parachutes into the harbour at Harwich. No one thought to follow up this information with a search. That evening Gipsy followed another Naval ship, HMS Griffin, out of harbour. The Gipsy was unlucky enough to strike the magnetic mine which the German plane had dropped, breaching her hull, killing 32 men on board. Robert was on the bridge with his Captain when the mine struck, and they were both thrown in the air. Capt Crossley fell onto his head, and died from his injuries, Robert fell onto his backside and escaped unhurt. He held onto his nerve despite the shock and fear he must have felt and took charge and organised the rescue of the remaining crew. For his efforts he was awarded an OBE “For outstanding initiative and resource on the occasion of the loss of his ship.”
After this, he became engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Jane Tozer. Jane was the daughter of his godfather: a colleague of Robert’s Lloyd’s Underwriter father. They were married in February 1940.
He next became the commanding officer on HMS Scimitar, a destroyer he had previously served on. He was the youngest man in command of a destroyer in the Navy at the time at the tender age of 28.
He was involved in the movement of the British Expeditionary Force to France, and then the much more urgent operation to rescue troops at Dunkirk – the ‘Miracle’ of the little ships as it has become known. Scimitar was tasked, as all boats involved in the evacuation were, to bring back as many troops as possible.
In his memoirs, Robert says he felt the ship was ‘quite full’ when 70 servicemen had clambered aboard at Calais. He was then given ‘guidance’ in clear naval language that more would be coming on. The boat sailed with more than 500 men on board. He said the weight of the men made the ship quite unstable.
Robert returned twice more. By the end of the evacuation, 2,716 men clambered, tired and frightened onto his ship for the journey home. He said the scenes at the beachhead were, in typical naval understatement, ‘rather unbelievable’. He was ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for his efforts.
On its way to its next engagement, Scimitar stopped in at Dartmouth. As it was moored at Sandquay, a dogfight between a Fleet Air Arm Fighter and a Heinkel plane was seen above the town. The German plane shot down the allied craft, which was seen to crash-land in the sea outside the harbour. Word reached Robert who instantly took the ship on a rescue mission. By the time it reached the harbour mouth, the ship was travelling at 20 knots and tore through the submarine nets placed there to stop a crafty invasion by a U-Boat! The mission was a success - the pilot was recovered alive – and Capt Robert Franks passed into Dartmouth folklore.
But there was to be no rest for Robert – he was next off to Londonderry where the Scimitar would become part of the fleet that protected the North Atlantic convoys as they were harried by U-Boats. ‘The Battle of the Atlantic’ as it became known was one of the pivotal fights of the war – with supplies to Britain from America being vital to our chances of standing against the Germans.
One night in June 1941 a U-Boat sunk a ship in Robert’s convoy with the loss of all hands, but revealed itself in doing so – the Scimitar crew sent down 14 depth charges and sank it.
A command on a larger vessel fell through after this, and he was, instead, sent to Burma on another incredible mission: he was to take 20 sailors and use gun boats to harass and hopefully destroy Japanese placements along the Mayu River. Sleeping, hidden, by day and raiding by night, Robert led his sailors on a very successful mission. So successful, in fact, he was told to come home.
The Navy didn’t want the boats back, and the sailors were commanded to scuttle them and come back to Allied-held North India through the jungle, over the mountains in enemy-occupied Burma. More than this, the guns they had been using were considered vital, so Robert had to find 18 mules to carry them as they walked through the hot, humid and mosquito filled jungle. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for “courage, leadership and resource in operations against the enemy”.
However, he contracted blood poisoning in this jungle trek and nearly died. This illness meant he had, again, missed out on a promotion to a full command.
On D-Day he was appointed Staff Operations Officer on board HMS Largs that oversaw operations at Sword Beach. He served so well he was again ‘Mentioned in Despatches.’
After this he was attached to the Canadian Army as Naval Liaison Officer and navigated their amphibious assaults up the Scheldt estuary against spirited German opposition - for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
After the war he was stationed in many places, including Malta and even helped defend the new nation of Kuwait against Iraq in 1961, in one of his last actions in the Navy.
After his naval career had come to an end. Robert moved to Dartmouth, where he had built a home in 1956, at the suggestion of his sons. He managed to create an ideal second career taking command of newly constructed warships on sea-trials. He became a stalwart of the Dartmouth community: he was a town councillor, one of the instigators of Dartmouth in Bloom, was Commodore of the Yacht club and was an ever-present force at Regatta for many years, starting the highly successful Regatta tennis tournament.
He passed away in 2008 at the grand old age of 95.
First published December 2013 By The Dart