The Record
Royal Navy G-class destroyer, screening the British fleet moving north to intercept the German invasion of Norway. Ran into the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in heavy weather on the morning of 8 April 1940; outgunned by a factor of ten. Her commanding officer, Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Roope, laid smoke, closed, and rammed the Hipper amidships before his ship was destroyed by gunfire. 109 dead, 31 survived. Roope received a posthumous Victoria Cross, the recommendation written by the German captain he had rammed.
The Vessel
HMS Glowworm (H92) was a G-class destroyer of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the John Thornycroft yard at Woolston, Hampshire, on 22 January 1936. She was 98 metres long, 1,370 tons standard displacement, armed with four 4.7-inch guns in single mountings and ten 21-inch torpedo tubes in two pentad (five-tube) mountings. Her designed speed was 35.5 knots on twin Parsons turbines.
The G-class was one of the Royal Navy's most numerous interwar destroyer classes: nine ships commissioned between 1935 and 1936, with revised anti-aircraft armament and improved damage-control arrangements compared to the preceding F-class. Glowworm and her sisters served through the 1930s on Mediterranean and Home Fleet assignments, operating principally in the screening of larger fleet units.
Her commanding officer from September 1939 was Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Broadmead Roope RN, 34 years old, a career destroyer officer who had served in the Mediterranean Fleet through 1938. Roope was a large-framed man known in the Royal Navy as "Rammer" from an incident during his 1936 command of HMS Garland, when he had accidentally rammed a friendly ship during fleet exercises. His crew called him "Rammer" with affection; the name would prove apt.
The Voyage
In early April 1940 Glowworm was part of the Home Fleet force covering the mining of the Norwegian coastal waters (Operation Wilfred), a British operation intended to deny the Germans the use of the sheltered Leads for iron-ore shipment from Narvik. The British force comprised HMS Renown (battlecruiser), HMS Berwick (heavy cruiser), and ten destroyers including Glowworm.
On the night of 7-8 April 1940 the fleet was dispersed across the Norwegian Sea in heavy weather, force 9 westerly gales producing 8-metre seas. Glowworm had become separated from the main fleet at approximately 04:00 on 8 April 1940 while searching for a man who had been washed overboard. She was proceeding independently on a course toward the main fleet's position when, at 07:50 on 8 April 1940, her lookout sighted two unknown ships on the northern horizon.
The two unknown ships were the German destroyers Hans Lüdemann and Bernd von Arnim, part of the German invasion force destined for Narvik and Trondheim. Roope closed to investigate and identify. At 08:10 on 8 April 1940 the German destroyers opened fire. Glowworm responded with her forward 4.7-inch guns and her starboard torpedo tubes. The two destroyers exchanged approximately 15 minutes of gunfire in the heavy seas before a third ship appeared on the horizon behind them.
The third ship was the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, 14,000 tons, armed with eight 8-inch guns in four twin turrets, and commanded by Kapitän zur See Hellmuth Heye. Admiral Hipper had been dispatched with the destroyer force to screen the Trondheim invasion force.
The Disaster
The appearance of Admiral Hipper transformed Glowworm's tactical situation. Against two German destroyers of roughly comparable capability she had been fighting a reasonable engagement; against an 8-inch-gunned heavy cruiser she had no gun that could range her attacker's armour and no prospect of victory. The conventional Royal Navy response would have been to withdraw under smoke and report the enemy's position.
Roope chose a different course. He ordered Glowworm to close the range at full speed, laying smoke to conceal his intentions, and fired his remaining starboard torpedoes at Admiral Hipper from approximately 2,000 metres. All five torpedoes missed. Admiral Hipper's 8-inch guns had, by this time, already scored multiple hits on Glowworm: her bridge was destroyed, her forward 4.7-inch mounting was wrecked, her hull was pierced multiple times below the waterline.
At approximately 09:00 on 8 April 1940, with Glowworm listing heavily to port and her speed reduced to perhaps 8 knots, Roope ordered the helm hard a-starboard and turned his ship directly into Admiral Hipper's course. Glowworm rammed Admiral Hipper on her starboard bow at a closing speed of approximately 15 knots.
The ram produced a 40-metre gash in Admiral Hipper's starboard side, flooding two of her watertight compartments and taking out of action her starboard forward torpedo tubes. Glowworm's bow was crushed. She withdrew from the collision still under power, still firing her remaining after 4.7-inch guns, but was obviously mortally damaged. Admiral Hipper's 8-inch guns fired at Glowworm at point-blank range; she was hit repeatedly through her remaining ten minutes afloat.
HMS Glowworm capsized and sank at 09:24 on 8 April 1940 at approximately 64°27′N 6°45′E. 109 of her 149 crew died. 40 survivors, including Lieutenant-Commander Roope, were pulled from the water by Admiral Hipper's boats. Roope himself, the last man out of the water, slipped from the ladder and was lost as Admiral Hipper's crew tried to haul him aboard. He drowned within sight of the German rescue party.
The Legacy
Kapitän Heye of Admiral Hipper, impressed by Roope's conduct, wrote personally to the British Admiralty through the International Red Cross in September 1940 recommending Roope for a British decoration. Heye's letter was one of only two examples in the entire Second World War of a German naval officer recommending a British decoration for an opposing officer; the other was Kapitän Rolf Ruge's recommendation for Commander Fogarty Fegen of HMS Jervis Bay in November 1940. The Admiralty accepted Heye's recommendation and posthumously awarded Roope the Victoria Cross on 10 July 1945 as one of only two VCs ever awarded on the nomination of an enemy officer.
The citation, published in the London Gazette on 10 July 1945, described Glowworm's engagement with Admiral Hipper in detail and credited Roope with "undaunted resolution in the face of overwhelming odds, and outstanding ability in the handling of his ship". The VC was presented to Roope's widow by King George VI at Buckingham Palace on 13 March 1946.
The operational consequences of Glowworm's ram were also significant. Admiral Hipper's damage from the ramming required her to return to Wilhelmshaven for emergency repairs, removing her from the Norwegian campaign for the critical weeks of April-May 1940. Her absence from the Norwegian operations has been credited by some historians with contributing to the Royal Navy's tactical success at the First Battle of Narvik on 10 April 1940, two days after Roope's engagement.
The wreck of HMS Glowworm has not been located. Her position is known approximately from the 1940 German engagement reports; she lies at approximately 64°27′N 6°45′E in approximately 2,700 metres of water in the Norwegian Sea. The site is a protected war grave under the UK Protection of Military Remains Act 1986.
The 109 dead are commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial. The name HMS Glowworm is carried in the Royal Navy's line honours as one of the ships whose battle honours are to be recalled perpetually; the name has been held in reserve for a future Royal Navy vessel and has not been reassigned to any ship since 1940.