Lt-Cdr Sammy Mearns RIP

Kyt · Jun 14, 2009

Lt-Cdr Sammy Mearns - Telegraph

Lieutenant-Commander Sammy Mearns, who has died aged 88, was a busy and aggressive pilot in the last 18 months of the Second World War, but later became a Fleet Air Arm legend for pinching a three-ton statue of the Greek goddess Persephone.

At the conclusion of a bibulous dinner in the mid-1950s he and his men of 809 naval air squadron, flying Sea Venom jets at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset, removed the sculpture from an antique dealer's garden. They placed her on a trailer, where she immediately fell over breaking an arm, and – shepherded from a distance by the police who had been summoned on receiving reports of a commotion – installed her outside the squadron office with a new name, Venomena.

Realising the error of his ways next morning, Mearns bought the dealer's silence by agreeing to pay the asking price of £150, and a collection was started though, as the senior officer, he made the largest contribution. His commanding officer, however, was unimpressed and expelled the goddess to a local transport café. But later Mearns returned to present her formally to the station; and the antique dealer became an honorary member of the mess.

When in 2003 the wardroom decided to sell her off, Persephone attracted the eye of a London auctioneer, who recognised her as the work of the 19th-century sculptor, John Warrington Wood, and a piece which had been lost for 50 years. He reckoned that she was worth £50,000 in good condition.

But having being left standing outside for so long, Venomena made only £12,000 at auction. The proceeds went to St Bartholomew's, the Fleet Air Arm church near Yeovilton.

Stephen Andrews Mearns was born on March 24 1921, and brought up by female relations before going to Stonyhurst. Known as "Sammy" on account of his initials, he volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm as a naval airman, second class, at HMS St Vincent in 1939, but was prevented by illness and frequent curriculum changes from completing his training until Christmas Eve 1943.

He first joined the mixed 835 naval air squadron in the escort carrier Nairana with the task, as a Sea Hurricane pilot, of driving off long-range bombers, while the Swordfish men maintained anti-submarine patrols to keep U-boats submerged. Shortly after dawn on May 26 1944 the New Zealand Sub-Lieutenant Al Burgham shot down a four-engined Junkers 290 west of the Bay of Biscay. Later in the day Mearns and Sub-Lieutenant Frank Wallis surprised two more Ju290s. Wallis made a snap attack on one before it disappeared on fire into cloud, while Mearns made a textbook attack on the other, strafing until it glided out of control into the sea.

Since the plane attacked by Wallis also seemed to have crashed, 835 squadron subsequently took pride in having destroyed 10 per cent of the enemy's 30 Ju290s.

Shortly afterwards the squadron was re-equipped with the American-built Grumman Wildcat, and Burgham, Mearns and Wallis were mentioned in despatches for their courage and skill.

Mearns recalled that in 21 convoys no merchantmen were lost apart from the American Liberty ship Henry Bacon which, in appalling weather, straggled behind convoy RA64 in February 1945 before being torpedoed. He was so incensed by the account of 835 squadron in EE "Barry" Barringer's Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea that he dictated his own, frank memoir for the Imperial War Museum.

After accompanying the three last Allied convoys to Russia in 1945, when his squadron shot down several more Germans, Mearns was awarded the DSC for his gallantry, skill and devotion to duty.

During the Korean War he was senior pilot of 827 strike squadron in the carrier Triumph, flying 30 operational sorties while spotting for British cruisers and covering the amphibious assault on Inchon. Despite the excitement, however, he recalled it as a period of complete frustration, in which he flew the obsolete Fairey Firefly I under a command structure that lacked aggressive spirit.

From 1951 to 1952 Mearns took part, as senior pilot of 703 squadron, in the first trials of the British-invented steam catapult. He was only the second pilot to test the machinery successfully, and demonstrated it to the US Navy on board the carrier Perseus in Philadelphia.

Although he enjoyed commanding 809 squadron on the carrier Ark Royal, Mearns found the rest of his career an anticlimax. He was trials officer in a converted sloop, Fleetwood, engaged in experiments for the Admiralty Radar Establishment. During the Suez crisis in 1956 he was a staff officer on the joint fire support committee and then was involved in planning the day and night training of front-line fighter squadrons.

While he enjoyed a remarkably accident-free record in the Second World War, he made four belly landings in Sea Venoms, including one on a grass strip in the New Forest after losing engine power and hydraulics at 30,000ft over Southampton. "Landing on the grass seemed to go on for ages," he recalled, "but the aircraft only suffered the usual abrasions."

All told, Mearns logged 371 deck landings and 2,173 flying hours. Although he was a born leader, forceful and ever cheerful, his outspokenness prevented him from rising higher in the Navy.

On leaving he joined the sales force of Allen and Hanburys, a division of Glaxo, based in Hong Kong, and then found marketing hovercraft more to his taste. But when the company, Hovermarine, closed, Mearns became a property developer.

In 1970 he sold his Queen Anne house near Romsey, Hampshire, and moved to Ireland, where he ran a self-catering holiday business and started a project to renovate a Victorian coastguard station at Courtmacsherry, West Cork. As coxswain of the village's RNLI lifeboat crew he took part in the 22-hour rescue of Casse Tete, a competitor in the disastrous Fastnet race of 1979. At the Boat Show the following year he received the Golden Anchor on behalf of all 16 lifeboats involved in the rescue operation.

In later years he restored Moose, an old Looe lugger, for which he chose the trees to provide the masts, and triumphantly sailed her from Cork to Brest for a classic boat rally in 1992.

Sammy Mearns, who died on May 3, married, in 1945, Shirley Beor. After they divorced in 1953 he married, in 1955, Anne Newman who survives him with their two daughters and a son and daughter of the first marriage.
Click to expand...

Antipodean Andy · Jun 14, 2009

A very interesting career. Very interested to read of his convoy protection service. RIP.

Venomena. Love it.

Log in or Sign up

Lt-Cdr Sammy Mearns RIP

Kyt Άρης

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Lt-Cdr Sammy Mearns RIP

Thread Tools

Kyt Άρης

Antipodean Andy New Member

Share This Page

Useful Searches