Groups and Single Decorations for Gallantry
The final moments of the Hermes, photographed by a Japanese pilot
The London Gazette of 10 November 1942 carried the announcement of Mentions in Despatches (Posthumous) ‘for great bravery when H.M.S. Hermes was sunk by Japanese aircraft’ to Captain Onslow and Able Seaman George Page.
In August 1982, forty years after the loss of Hermes, a team of divers, guided by local fishermen and assisted by the gunboat Balawatha of the Sri Lankan Navy, located and positively identified the wreck of the carrier. The Admiralty chart current at the time showed the ship to be resting about nine miles offshore in some 60 fathoms of water, just on the edge of the continental shelf of the east coast of Sri Lanka. As a result of the dive the correct position was found to be 4.24 miles from the coastline and about 5 miles away from the charted position at a depth to the sea bottom of 180 feet (30 fathoms). The ship rolled over on to her port side as she sank and the wreck is now lying upturned with the flight deck almost horizontal, the slightly higher side being held up by the remains of the starboard side superstructure.
Richard Francis John Onslow was born on 29 March 1896, at Woolston, Hampshire, the eldest son of the Rev. M. R. S. Onslow, M.A., Royal Navy chaplain and his wife Fanny Harriet Onslow (née Graham). He joined the navy’s training establishment on 15 January 1909, a couple of months before his thirteenth birthday, first at the Royal Naval College at Osborne and afterwards at Dartmouth.
On 15 September 1913 he was appointed midshipman and posted to the brand new battle cruiser H.M.S. Queen Mary within two weeks of her being commissioned. The Queen Mary was attached to the 1st Battle Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral David Beatty; in June 1914 the squadron paid a visit to Russia. Promoted to acting sub lieutenant on 15 September 1915, Onslow next saw service in the destroyer Zulu attached to the Dover Patrol for the first two years of the First World War until a mine removed her stern in October 1916.
A posting to the submarine depot ship H.M.S. Thames, based at Sheerness, for ‘special service’ in April 1916 was followed by his next step to sub lieutenant on 15 May and four months later he was appointed to command Coastal Motor Boat (CMB) No 12. He was promoted acting lieutenant on 15 September 1917, and lieutenant two months later and continued in command of coastal motor boats until the end of the war, receiving generally excellent reports on his ability and potential from his superior officers.
A Court of Enquiry in April 1918 into an accident involving CMB 31B in the River Thames that resulted in the death by drowning of two men concluded that blame was attributable to Lieutenant Onslow in that ‘he did not get a clear understanding with C.O. as to who was in command of the CMB and in that he cornered at so high a rate of speed in narrow waters, where traffic was to be expected.’ He was cautioned to be more careful in future. This setback did not, however, stand in the way of his being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for services in CMBs with the Auxiliary Patrol at Dover.
On 28 January 1919, he was posted to H.M.S. Theseus, at that time the depot ship for the Caspian and Black Sea, for command of CMBs. In November 1918 the anti-Bolshevik authorities in Azerbaijan made it known that they would welcome the return of British forces which had been withdrawn two months earlier and the Royal Navy’s Caspian Naval Force under Commodore Norris returned to Baku to assist and train local forces in support of the White Russians and to deter the Bolsheviks from moving south down the Caspian. In March 1919 the Centro-Caspian Flotilla, nominally under the White Russian commander-in-chief, was forcibly disbanded and its gunboats immobilised and disarmed when it was found to be in contact with the Bolsheviks.
Some of the armed merchant ships were incorporated into the Royal Navy flotilla which continued to grow until the middle of the year when it peaked at 47 RN officers and more than 1,000 ratings. It had 12 CMBs, brought by rail for use in the shallow water of the north Caspian. The flotilla did a lot of patrolling and carried out some successful attacks on Bolshevik naval forces in May. After the Paris Peace Conference responsibility for the area was transferred to the White Russians, the flotilla’s ships were handed over in stages and, on 2 September 1919, the Royal Navy’s Caspian flotilla ceased to exist. Lieutenant Onslow’s service record is annotated ‘sent home’ in September 1919 from H.M.S. Caesar, which the previous month had become the depot ship in the Black Sea for British naval forces operating against the Bolsheviks. The Russians awarded him the Order of St Stanislaus 3rd Class with Swords, which, according to his service record, he was granted permission to accept and wear, while the card index at TNA notes that he was granted unofficial permission, that the award was for the Mediterranean and its disposal was on 13 July 1920.
On 16 February 1920, he was posted to H.M.S. President ‘for service with Commodore Norris outside [the] Admiralty’ as a member of the Anglo-Persian Naval Mission. His service record notes that in July he was lent by the Naval Mission to Teheran to the General Officer Commanding, Mesopotamia for service on river patrol boats and on 21 September that G.H.Q. Baghdad no longer required his services. He returned to England in the P&O Line’s S.S. Naldera, arriving at Tilbury on 20 November 1920. This secondment earned him the Naval General Service Medal 1909-62 with the scarce clasp ‘IRAQ 1919-1920’ – there were, according to the medal roll only 129 awards, of which nine were to officers, for service on river craft operating within Iraq between 17 July and 17 September 1920. It is interesting to note that had Lieutenant Onslow stayed with the Naval Mission under Commodore D. T. Norris, C.B., C.M.G., the purpose of which was to consolidate the British position in Persia by helping with the development of the Persian navy and mercantile marine on the Caspian Sea, he would instead have earned the very rare clasp ‘N. W. PERSIA 1920’ of which only four were awarded. The qualification dates for that clasp were 10 August to 31 December 1920, though the mission appears to have been withdrawn in early December.
After his return from Baghdad he was posted to the navy’s gas school at H.M.S. Excellent for two years and then from 2 January 1923 until 3 January 1925 he was in the battleship Resolution. There then followed a two-year appointment to Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth during which he was promoted lieutenant commander on 15 November 1925. Onslow’s next ship was H.M.S. Hood of the Atlantic Fleet and in which he stayed for 30 months until he was posted to the light cruiser Colombo on the America and West Indies Station until January 1930.
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