Lt-Cdr Jack Smart RIP

Kyt · May 21, 2008

Lt-Cdr Jack Smart - Telegraph

Lieutenant-Commander Jack Smart, who has died aged 91, took part in two of the most daring midget submarine operations of the Second World War.

After minesweeper service in the eastern Mediterranean when war broke out, he joined HMS Varbel, the midget submarine training depot in Scotland in 1943, and was given command of X-8 for Operation Source, the attack on German ships hiding in the Norwegian fjords. Six X-craft were towed underwater across the Norwegian Sea, where X-8's target was the German cruiser Lützow. However, at 0400 on September 15, the craft took a sudden deep dive, and the towline to the parent boat Seanymph broke.

Smart blew the main ballast tanks to force the craft to the surface, but on doing so found no sign of Seanymph. Deciding to continue at a maximum speed of three knots on course for Altenfjord, he hoped to be rescued but, if not, was determined to carry out his attack on his own.

Twelve hours later Smart chanced on the submarine Stubborn, towing X-7, and continued in company with them until dark. Next morning the sea was empty. But Lieutenant J Oakley, commanding Seanymph, continued his search and in the afternoon he spotted X-8, and took it in tow. Smart had been on his own for 37 weary hours and was transferred exhausted to the parent submarine.

Subsequently when X-8 developed leaks in its high-pressure air system and was unable to dive, its explosive charges were jettisoned, but the resulting detonation so damaged the craft that it had to be scuttled.

Smart was appointed MBE for his efforts while Lieutenant Godfrey Place (X-7) Lieutenant Donald Cameron (X-6) were each awarded the VC for their successful attacks on the battleship Tirpitz.

In July 1945 Smart was commanding the improved XE-1 in the Far East. The Americans at first refused to let the X-craft take part in operations, likening them to suicide-bombers or Japanese kamikaze pilots.

But they proved so successful in cutting underwater telephone cables between Singapore and Tokyo that they were eventually allowed to mount Operation Struggle, the attack on two Japanese cruisers in the Johore Strait. Smart, in XE-1, and Lieutenant Ian Fraser, in XE-3, were towed to within 40 miles of Singapore, where they entered mined waters to avoid Japanese hydrophone posts.

Smart's target was the heavy cruiser Myoko. Creeping up the strait and through an anti-submarine net while avoiding enemy patrols took some 16 hours, and Smart lost the time he needed to reach his target.

Switching to the heavy cruiser Takao, which was aground on the falling tide, he dropped his two high-explosive charges close alongside and withdrew seawards. Fraser and his diver, Leading Seaman James Magennis, who had laid XE-3's charges under Takao, were awarded the VC for destroying their target; Smart received the DSO and was made an officer of the US Legion of Merit.

John Elliott Smart was born in Northumberland on March 1 1916. He joined the RNVR in 1938, and after retiring in 1954 became a stockbroker with Pemberton Securities, a Vancouver firm. He became a director and an outstanding expert in bond trading before transferring to the firm's Victoria office in the 1980s.

A large, quiet and unfailingly courteous man, Smart was known to his Canadian friends as "the English gentleman." He was shy in mixed company and reticent about his wartime exploits.

When he took early retirement in his late fifties, he devoted his time to golf, and while his second wife was away for years pursuing her career in alternative medicine in the United States, he lived a bachelor life. His interest in books led to him organising a monthly luncheon for writers at the Sticky Wicket, a pub in Victoria; he also liked to lunch at naval officers' mess when in Vancouver.

Jack Smart is survived by a son of each of his two marriages.
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Antipodean Andy · Jun 1, 2008

Brave man indeed. RIP.

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Lt-Cdr Jack Smart RIP

Kyt Άρης

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