8x6 inch hand written letter written and signed by Admiral Michael Kyle Pope
In August 1940 he was third hand (after the captain and the first lieutenant) aboard HM submarine Oswald in the Mediterranean. The boat had been one of six operating from Malta when Italy entered the war on June 10 1940. Six weeks later, on patrol between Sicily and Sardinia, the vessel was rammed by an Italian destroyer. The steering was damaged and one of the two engines was immobilised, leaving her circling slowly on the surface.
In August 1940 he was third hand (after the captain and the first lieutenant) aboard HM submarine Oswald in the Mediterranean. The boat had been one of six operating from Malta when Italy entered the war on June 10 1940. Six weeks later, on patrol between Sicily and Sardinia, the vessel was rammed by an Italian destroyer. The steering was damaged and one of the two engines was immobilised, leaving her circling slowly on the surface.
The captain, Lieutenant Commander David Fraser, gave the order to abandon ship and to scuttle. Kyrle Pope was the only officer below deck and could see that the damage was not disastrous, while the boat's main gun and torpedoes were unaffected. He clearly thought Fraser's orders were premature and searched the Oswald to ensure that all the crew had escaped. He was unable to persuade one rating, who could not swim, to let go of a rail; he and three others were lost, but 52 men survived. Discipline broke down as they waited to be rescued by the enemy.
At the obligatory court of inquiry into the loss of the submarine after the war, and the subsequent court-martial of the captain and the first lieutenant, the former was severely reprimanded and the latter dismissed the service for "conduct unbecoming". Kyrle Pope, on the other hand, was highly praised for his conduct in saving many lives.
However, the scuttling was the end of his submarine service. He was first imprisoned on an island near Venice. His career as a would-be escaper began almost at once, when he and three colleagues hid for days under the eaves of the Italian officers' mess before emerging one night to steal a boat. But they were caught in the act and sent to another camp, far from the sea, at Sulmona in Abruzzi. Kyrle Pope now turned his hand to tunnelling, but was caught again. His next escape attempt took place in January 1941, when he and two airmen climbed over a fence. After five days, they were detected and put in solitary confinement for a month.
Back at Sulmona, the irrepressible Kyrle Pope tried digging another tunnel, only to be betrayed by a donkey which fell into it. Eventually, he was transferred to the medieval fortress of Gavi, described as the "Italian Colditz", a special camp for habitual escapers north of Genoa. He and a few South African miners tunnelled through the thick stone walls, only to be caught when they broke through.
Following the Italian surrender in 1943, Kyrle Pope was transferred to a camp for naval officers in north Germany. He was involved in an escape immortalised in the 1953 film Albert RN, where a dummy in naval uniform supported by two prisoners turned out on parade to cover for an escaper. In the chaos at the end of the war, he seized a German staff car and headed south-west. He managed to get to Ostend, and from there back to England. He was made an MBE, a rare award, as usually only successful escapers were decorated.
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