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Sinking of a sub, "maybe"

Heroes Remember

Sinking of a sub, "maybe"

Transcript
The old Sackville, she's tied up down at the museum, there. She was a corvette and I, we were with her the night she sunk the sub. And that was quite a get together. There was a huge fleet of submarines. I guess they call, I forget what they call them now. Some kind of a pack, wolf-pack. They attacked the submarine, or they attacked the merchant ships and the... I don't know how, but she sunk one, anyway. It was sinking the ships that was on it's way back. We went over mid-ocean to, to meet the convoy, and we got a... It was [inaudible] run by the British, the Witch. Between the Witch and the Hamilton, they got a navy. We could see the sub on the surface, way behind the convoy and we went after it and got contact with the radio, the ASDICs. And we all dropped charges on it and got oil up. They'll say, shoot things out through the torpedo tubes, so it's to think you sunk them, oil and old bits of clothing and stuff like that. And that you think you'd sunk them, so we only got a "maybe".
Description

Submarines could be a hard target to confirm sinking. They could try to trick the navy into thinking it had sunk it by releasing debris and oil from its torpedo tubes. Mr Carroll describes a night that the ship he was on with the HMCS Sackville, a corvette, were credited with a "maybe" in the sinking of an enemy sub.

Francis Carroll

Mr. Carroll was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1916. He was one of 12 children, six girls and five boys. In 1927 he moved to Rockingham. Mr. Carroll's father was a bookkeeper in Halifax. For a few years during the depression of the 1930s Mr. Carroll served in the CNS, Canadian National Steamship service. He spent two to four years aboard CNS Boat Two, the Prince Henry, before joining the Navy in 1939. Mr. Carroll served aboard the HMCS Acadia, a ship that is now docked in Halifax harbour and serves as part of a naval museum. Mr. Carroll's services took him on the Triangle run, a route that included Boston to Halifax to Newfoundland. In 1941 Mr. Carroll married and had two children. After the war he worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs at Camp Hill Hospital in the re-establishing of credit to Veterans. In 1950-51 he managed to get a job at the dock yards in Halifax as a timekeeper where he worked for 29½ years before retiring.

Meta Data
Medium:
Video
Owner:
Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:
01:59
Person Interviewed:
Francis Carroll
War, Conflict or Mission:
Second World War
Location/Theatre:
Canada
Battle/Campaign:
Battle of the Atlantic
Branch:
Navy
Units/Ship:
Acadia
Occupation:
Steward

Copyright / Permission to Reproduce

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