Projectile batteries’ log

One person who missed the ceremonies of the 70th anniversary of the award of the George Cross was my friend Jim Rose, a very active committee member of the Royal Naval Association Branch of Norwich. He was looking forward to yet another visit to Malta where he had served his national service in HMS Narvik and HMS Kenya in the early 1950s.

When I first met Jim several years ago we were talking about the war years and I mentioned that as a boy I had seen projectile bombs suspended from parachute fired against low-flying German aircraft over Grand Harbour but some writers had disclaimed these were used over Malta. To my surprise he said he had proof of this – he had the very detailed log-book of the operations of the batteries manned by navy personnel on Corradino Heights. He gave me a copy of over 100 foolscap-size pages giving the minutest details of every single day operation following the first in February 1942.

It was with great sense of loss that I learnt a few days before Jim was to come out here that he had died suddenly. Tributes were paid to him in Norwich at his funeral, including by Bob Knights, a former chairman of the Norwich Branch, who came out to Mata as he had previously planned to do with Jim.

The Rose family is being asked to present the log-book of the projectile batteries to the National War Memorial Association in memory of him.