Ian Hogg (Royal Navy Officer) - World War II Service

World War II Service

Ian Hogg was awarded the first of his two DSCs for his efficiency and coolness as a navigator under the trying circumstances of the evacuation of Crete in May and June 1941. The Germans had intended to take Crete with combined airborne and seaborne attacks. Although the Royal Navy was able virtually to annihilate the seaborne component, which carried much equipment in local caïques, the German paratroops — though at great loss to themselves — forced the under-equipped British forces, many of whom were still in shock after being driven out of Greece, into another evacuation.

Air attacks by an almost unopposed and expert Fliegerkorps VIII around Crete cost the British three cruisers and six destroyers sunk, with an aircraft carrier, two battleships, five cruisers and seven destroyers badly damaged, bringing the Mediterranean Fleet almost to breaking point. The Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, was adamant that while ships were replaceable, the reputation of the Royal Navy was not, and that the evacuation of soldiers should continue to the limit. In the event 18,000 troops were rescued.

As the flotilla operations and navigating officer to Captain Stephen Arliss in the Royal Australian Navy destroyer Napier, Hogg was responsible on 28–29 May for organising hazardous feats of navigation on an unlit and badly charted coast near Sfakia in southwest Crete for his ship and the destroyers HMS Nizam, HMS Kelvin and HMS Kandahar. Only two motorboats and four unpowered whalers were available to embark 700 men and, at the same time, land 15,000 badly needed rations for those troops still fighting onshore.

The need to make best use of available darkness required the anchorage for this operation to be perilously close inshore. On 30 May, reduced to only two ships through damage and defects but using abandoned landing craft to supplement these, Napier and Nizam saved more than 1,400 troops. Hogg received praise for his cool, calm and cheerful demeanour and his very good advice when the force came under intensive air attack on 31 May, during which Napier was damaged in the engine room by a near miss.

Hogg stayed with the Napier as the senior staff officer to Captain Arliss, who became the commodore in command of Admiral Somerville’s Eastern Fleet destroyers, based in Ceylon, until early 1944.

As the navigating and signals officer of the cruiser HMS Mauritius in August 1944, Hogg was awarded a second DSC for his outstanding zeal during prolonged and violent night actions against escorted enemy convoys close inshore near La Rochelle and the Ile d'Yeu. His captain remarked that Hogg was “cool, calm and collected and afforded advice that enabled us to take risks which with a less resolute and skilful officer would not have been justified”.

Hogg was known as a very good-looking man. It is recorded that during the war when Mauritius was refitting in Liverpool and a drink was difficult to come by, his companions would always “put Ian into bat first with the barmaid” — with invariably satisfactory results. In 1945 he married Mary Marsden within three months of having met her in Liverpool on a Monday and becoming engaged on the Saturday.