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Son of Albert and Elsie Laura Smith; husband of Patricia Ruth Smith, of Chippenham, Wiltshire.

HMS Fidelity

Built as French Le Rhin for Compagnie de Navigation Paquet, Marseilles.
In June 1940 taken over by Britain, converted to the special service vessel (SSV) HMS Fidelity (D 57) and commissioned on 24 Sep, 1940. The ship was armed with four 4in guns and four torpedo tubes and equipped with two seaplanes, a motor torpedo boat (MTB), HF/DF and torpedo nets.

At 21.38 hours on 29 Dec, 1942, U-225 (Leimkühler) missed the HMS Fidelity (D 57), which was straggling from convoy ONS-154 station #54. U-615 (Kapitzky) missed the same ship with five torpedoes between 22.00 and 23.00 hours on the same day.
At 16.38 hours on 30 December, the vessel was finally hit by two torpedoes from U-435 and sank immediately. The landing crafts HMS LCV-752 and HMS LCV-754 on board were lost with the ship.

The HMS Fidelity (D 57) had a crew of 284 men and transported 51 Royal Marines for Indochina. The day before, she picked up 44 survivors from the Empire Shackleton, which had been sunk the day before by U-225 (Leimkühler), U-123 (Schroeter) and U-435.

The MTB with eight men floated free from the fast sinking ship and were picked up by the HMCS Woodstock (K 238). They were the only survivors apart from two men that had been picked up by the HMCS St Laurent (H 83) after a seaplane of the vessel crashed on take off.

U-Boat net http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/2560.html