THE FIRST VICTORIA CROSS AWARDED FOR HEROISM IN WW2 #ww2 #shorts #history #heroic
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THE FIRST VICTORIA CROSS AWARDED FOR HEROISM IN WW2 #ww2 #shorts #history #heroic

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Here is a David versus Goliath story from the early stages of WW2: In 1940, a small destroyer, HMS Glowworm, took on the more powerful German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in a Norwegian fiord.
On the morning of April 8, Glowworm encountered two German destroyers who were part of a German naval detachment led by Hipper. Glowworm opened fire, and the German destroyers attempted to disengage, signalling for help. Hipper spotted Glowworm at 9.50 am. Hipper's salvo hit Glowworm, and she started making smoke. She turned into her smoke to break visual contact with Hipper. Still, the cruiser's radar-directed guns were not affected by the smoke. When the destroyer emerged from her smoke, Hipper took out the cruiser's 10.5-centimetre (4.1 in) guns, the radio room, bridge, and forward 4.7-inch gun with additional hits in the engine room, the captain's day cabin, and finally, the mast.
At 10:10am, Lieutenant Commander Gerard Broadmead Roope fired five torpedoes from one mounting at a range of 800 metres (870 yd). Still, all missed because Captain Hellmuth Heye had kept Hipper's bow pointed at Glowworm to minimize risk from torpedoes. The destroyer fell back through her smokescreen to buy time to get her second torpedo mount working, but Heye followed Glowworm through the smoke to finish her off before she could fire the rest of her torpedoes. The two ships were very close when Hipper emerged from the smoke, and Roope ordered a hard turn to starboard to ram the cruiser. Hipper was slow to answer her helm, and Glowworm struck the cruiser just above the anchor. The collision broke off Glowworm's bow, and the rest of the ship scraped along Hipper's side, gouging open several holes in the hull and destroying her forward starboard torpedo mounting, but it was not seriously damaged. Glowworm was on fire when she drifted clear, and her boilers exploded at 10:24, taking 109 of her crew with her. Captain Hellmuth Heye was so impressed with the heroism of Roope and his crew that he wrote a recommendation for a Victoria Cross to be awarded to Roope posthumously - the first V.C. awarded in WW2.
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