Hero of the Month - November 2024
Published in Britain at War - November 2024
Lieutenant Commander Dennis Arthur Copperwheat GC
Dennis Copperwheat was decorated for bravery on Malta at a time when the besieged island was suffering incredible hardship during World War Two. He risked his life to save islanders and his comrades and was duly rewarded with the George Cross, Britain and the Commonwealth’s most prestigious award for bravery not in the presence of the enemy.
Dennis Arthur Copperwheat was born in Raunds, Northamptonshire, on May 23 1914. He was the elder son of Arthur Copperwheat and his wife, Agnes (née Haxley). His father had worked in the shoe industry, which was centred on Northampton. After winning a scholarship to Kimbolton School in Cambridgeshire, he joined the Royal Navy in the rank of Boy Sailor in 1929. He then served in HMS Ganges, HMS Vernon and the torpedo and mining school at Portsmouth, Hampshire, all shore-based establishments.
Copperwheat got married in August 1935 to Olive Cowley, the wedding taking place at St Mary’s Church, Rushden, Northamptonshire. The couple went on to have a daughter.
In April 1939, Copperwheat, was promoted to Acting Gunner and, from July 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, he served in HMS Hero, an H-class destroyer built for the Royal Navy in the 1930s. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-9, the ship enforced the arms blockade imposed by Britain and France on both warring sides as part of the Mediterranean Fleet.
In October 1939, shortly after the outbreak of war, Copperwheat was commissioned as a Lieutenant, still serving in Hero. During the first few months of the war, Hero searched for German ships that had been attacking Allied merchant ships in the Atlantic Ocean. The destroyer also took part in the Second Battle of Narvik during the Norwegian Campaign of April–June 1940.
In 1941, Copperwheat began training as a torpedo and explosives specialist and, in June of that year, he started serving in HMS Penelope. The ship had run aground the previous year and been badly damaged but she underwent repairs and was back operating in the Iceland/Norway areas before heading to Malta in October 1941.
Over a period of several months, Malta became the most bombed location on earth. This was because the island was seen as a vitally important strategic location by both sides in the war. Malta’s battle for survival had, in fact, begun on June 10 1940 when Italy joined the war.
In his book Faith, Hope and Malta GC, Tony Spooner writes, “Until 10 June 1940, nestling quietly in the Mediterranean, had had a quiet and not unpleasant war. It was only on that day that the Italian Dictator, Benito Mussolini, brought his country into the war on the side of her so far victorious German ally and so began Malta’s travail from the new Axis forces. The fall of Paris just four days later, followed by the total French collapse by the 17th, further added to Malta’s plight.”
The situation worsened and, by late March 1942, the Allied leaders realised that the besieged island of Malta was in desperate need of resupplying. On March 20 1942, one naval auxiliary and three merchantmen (supply ships) sailed from Alexandria unaware that the Germans had just decided to launch an immediate and all-out air attack on Malta from Sicily and Sardinia. The four ships were given substantial protection from four cruisers and 16 destroyers, while a flotilla leader also sailed from Malta to join them.
When the four ships got to within 20 miles of Malta, one of the merchantmen, Clan Campbell, was sunk by German bombers. The naval supply ship, Breconshire, edged to within eight miles of the island before she too was hit and disabled, before being beached and destroyed by German bombers. Only a small part of her valuable cargo of oil was saved.
A large part of the Maltese population lined the battlements of Valetta harbour to cheer in the two surviving merchantmen, Pampas and Talabot. However, when only a quarter of their food and ammunition had been unloaded, both ships were hit in yet another German bombing raid. One of the ships – the one loaded with most ammunition – was only 40 yards offshore when she burst into flames. Everyone present knew that if she was not scuttled quickly, the ship would explode, at the same time badly damaging Grand Harbour, which provided Malta’s lifeline to the outside world.
Lieutenant Copperwheat, who was on board Penelope in the area, was sent with a party to sink the ship. As Copperwheat approached the inferno on March 22, he would have been in no doubt that his task was fraught with danger. As well as the fierce blaze on board, ammunition had started to explode all around the ship. On arriving at the scene, Copperwheat quickly assessed the situation. Because of the fires on board, it was impossible to place scuttling charges in the holds. Instead, they had to be slung over the side of the ship. Furthermore, the electric cables for firing the charges were only just able to reach the ship from the shore.
When everything was in place, Copperwheat sent the rest of his party to shelter away from Talabot while he remained at the scene to detonate the charge. When the explosion occurred, he was lifted off his feet. However, a crisis had been averted, the harbour had not been damaged and many lives had been saved.
His GC was announced on November 17 1942 when the citation ended: “But for his brave action the ship must have blown up, and grave damage would have been done to the harbour. Moreover, much of the ammunition was saved and some very heavy bombs, part of the cargo, were soon afterwards dropped in Italy.”
Shortly after receiving his gallantry award, Copperwheat told the BBC: “While we were working, there was terrific heat and ammunition was exploding all over the place, but everything was ready in a very short time. When we started off for the jetty, we found that our electric cable was too short, so we had to junction a piece more on. Having finally got ashore, I looked around for a sheltered place from which to fire the charge and escape the blast. The cable was rather short but it just reached the corner of the building. Having sent the men to shelter, I touched the ends of the leads on to the battery but nothing happened. I got from under my shelter and checked up and found that I was not holding the end of the ‘earth” connection. So pleased was I to find this that I touched the correct leads on the battery without getting back in the shelter. However, I got there quickly enough because the force of the explosion threw me in it!”
The Penelope was badly damaged, being holed forward and aft, by Axis bombing in Grand Harbour, just four days after her rescue work involving Copperwheat. While undergoing repair work in the dry dock, the ship was hit several more times and so she was unofficially christened “HMS Pepperpot” because she had so many holes. After undergoing extensive repairs, she became seaworthy again but the ship was torpedoed and sunk after leaving Naples, Italy, for Anzio on February 18 1944: 417 of the crew, including the captain, went down with the ship, with only 206 survivors.
In April 1942, while the island was still under siege, Malta became the first recipient of the GC that was awarded collectively, rather than to an individual. Uniquely, the GC was not announced in The London Gazette.
Instead, the award was a personal gesture of King George VI, and not a decision of the British government or the military. The award was announced by Buckingham Palace with the publication of a citation written in the King’s hand in the form of a letter sent the Governor, General Sir William Dobbie. It stated: “To honour her brave people I award the George Cross to the Island Fortress of Malta to bear witness to a heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history.”
Copperwheat received his GC from George VI at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on November 24 1942, only a week after his decoration had been announced in The London Gazette. He was one of three men to receive the award for their bravery in relation to the siege of Malta.
By the time of Copperwheat’s investiture, the situation on Malta was much improved. Operation Pedestal had been launched in August 1942, withs some 50 ships attempting to bring supplies to the island. Eventually, more than 500 Allied sailors and airmen were killed and only five of the fourteen merchant ships reached Grand Harbour but it was enough to relieve the island’s immediate suffering. By the end of the year, the siege of Malta was over, having lasted for nearly two and a half years.
After the war, Copperwheat remained in the Royal Navy. He survived a second scare while serving as a torpedo officer in the carrier HMS Indomitable. A fuel leak on the vessel caused a sudden explosion that blew Copperwheat off his feet but he was not seriously injured.
From August 1953, he worked at the Underwater Weapon Material Department at the Admiralty, London. He retired in 1957 in the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Copperwheat then embarked on a civilian career, working first for a firm of London insurance brokers and later as a specialist on the treatment of timber. In fact, he became an expert in understanding the harm that the deathwatch beetle does to timber. This is because the female hatches her eggs in the timber and, when the larvae hatch, they burrow into the timber and later gnaw their way out. Copperwheat was one of a specialist team that sought to eradicate the deathwatch beetle from Canterbury Cathedral, Kent.
Just like his post-military career, Copperwheat’s personal life was not entirely conventional. After divorcing his first wife, Olive, he remarried and had two further children with his second wife, Dorothy Croft, whom he married in 1967. However, in December 1976, Copperwheat remarried his first wife, Olive, this time at Kettering Register Office in Northamptonshire. After her death just three years later, Copperwheat married for the fourth time, on this occasion to Joan Holmes at Weekley Parish Church, Kettering, in December 1984.
Copperwheat died on September 8 1992 at Weekley, near Kettering, aged 78, and he is buried at St Mary’s the Virgin Church in the village. His name is on an honours’ board at Kimbolton School, where he had been a pupil. The whereabouts of his GC medal group is unclear.