1. All
the casualty numbers used by Gordon
Smith were supplied by Don Kindell
(below), which "should include all later
died of wounds. I would pull up the
vessel by name, delete prior non-related
casualties and count the numbers from
there including the later deaths. One
discrepancy I encountered in compilation
was aliases where I would find the alias
and the real name both listed."
2. Don
Kindell, who has worked closely with the
Naval Historical Branch (MOD (Navy)),
the Commonwealth War Graves Commission,
David Brown of the NHB and other naval
historians and authors over the last 30
years or so - "The casualty lists are a
collation of Admiralty Officer and
Rating Death Ledgers, Fleet Air Arm crew
Death Ledgers, the Admiralty releases of
casualties in loss of ships, the
Admiralty Miscellaneous Lists which
covered the non sinking and smaller ship
casualties, and other lists taken from
Reports of Proceedings and other
official sources. My original interest
was to find the casualties in the
Norwegian campaign in damaged ships and
Fleet Air Arm operations. This branched
out over a period of almost ten years to
include casualties from World War I to
the present."
3. Lt Cdr
Geoff Mason RN (Rtd), whose researches
over the last few decades include over
1,000 detailed ship histories, quotes
total casualties i.e. men killed, lost
or missing presumed killed, from two
sources. In most cases they were taken
from "Warship Losses in World War 2" by
David Brown, late of the Naval
Historical Branch, published by Arms and
Armour Press in 1990. Alternatively from
the casualty lists published by the
"Times" newspaper in the period when the
ship was lost.
Where
there are differences, hopefully the
above notes will help to guide
researchers.
