1940 Sinking of the Polish Destroyer 'Grom'

May 20, 1940. British Movietone News. On 30 August 1939, the Polish destroyers Burza, Błyskawica and Grom were ordered to head for Great Britain, from where they were to operate as convoy escorts. On 1 September 1939, the Polish destroyers met the British destroyers Wanderer and Wallace. The British ships led the Polish flotilla to Leith, and in the night the Polish destroyers came to Rosyth. However, no convoys were ever organized to help Poland during the Polish Defensive War and the Polish ships were used in support of allied maritime operations.During her operations during the Norwegian Campaign Grom was ranked by the German soldiers as probably the most hated of all the allied ships deployed to the area. This hatred was founded by the fact that the Grom took an intense interest in all hostile movements on shore and was reputed to spend hours lurking the coast in order to kill even a single German. On 4 May 1940, Grom carried out what turned out to be the last of her many Naval Gunfire Support missions in the Narvik area in the Rombaken fjord. Her loaded midship torpedo launcher was struck by a bomb from a German plane and the torpedo exploded, causing the hull to break into two parts and the ship to sink almost immediately with a loss of life of 59 sailors.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Polish
• Destroyer
• Grom
• Narvik
• Norway
• Norwegian
• Campaign
• 1940

[Gordonalways1]

the sound about deafened me, holy shit!

[skoblinI]

Unfortunately, I don't always have control over the original volume, lol

[olivenstein]

"Poland

First to Fight!"

[SuperYogSothoth]

@sjokolade777

hahahahaha

[HeiligesReich2]

Noch ist Polen nicht verloren

[sjokolade777]

Well if NAZIS had taken GB, you would not be the slaves now of the jewish-islamic subversion!14!88!

[Gordonalways1]

lol its okay!

[ToonandBBfan]

I think it was a bit of both mate - LOL

Mind you, I bet the Germans must have shit themselves when they heard the blast of her 15 inch guns echoing up the fjord!!!!!!!!!!

[jmaccyd]

yes, does look like an old R class battleship - I stand corrected! Can never make my mind up if it was pure bravery or insanity to sail the Warspite up those fjords though.

[ToonandBBfan]

Warspite was involved at Narvik as you say but the battleship in this video is definitely not a Queen Elizabeth class.

Its an old "Revenge" class and I believe that HMS Resolution was involved in the Norway campaign at some point.

Cheers

[jmaccyd]

Amazing. Anyone moans about Polish workers in the UK I will post them this video. Could be HMS Warspite in the video, I believe she was involved at Narvik, the navy boys sailed her up the fjord!