C. E. T. Warren

Lieutenant Jim Warren was invested as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1945. He died in Kent on 24 May 1988, aged 76.

Their fourth and final book 'The Broken Column' published in 1966 which recounted the extraordinary exploits of a British submariner who joined and led an Italian partisan group.

'Will Not We Fear' published in 1961 was their third publication which told the story of HMS Seal, the only British submarine to surrender in World War Two during 1940.

Their second book, 'The Admiralty Regrets' published in 1958, concerned the tragic sinking of HMS Thetis, off Holyhead during sea trials in June 1939 with the loss of ninety-nine lives. They received no assistance from the Admiralty as the authors were largely critical of the pathetic rescue efforts.

The 1955 British war film Above Us the Waves, starring John Mills, John Gregson and Donald Sinden, was based on Jim Warren's 1953 book of the same name.

Warren and Jimmy Benson set about writing the history of the Flotilla and produced 'Above Us The Waves', published in 1953 and still in print to this day, having sold over a million copies. In 1958 a film was produced starring many of the leading British actors.

In 1946 he was posted to Kiel to review the German Underwater School on the island of Sylte where the German vessel Walter Holzapfel was taken over to be converted at HMS Deepwater, the Royal Navy diving ship. He carried out various salvage jobs and further training of the deep sea divers.

He was duly promoted Lieutenant and compulsorily de mobbed in December 1946. On receipt of his first quarterly pension he saw that he had been transferred from The Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve to the Royal Navy, objective achieved!

He was appointed Trials Officer with the Admiralty Experimental Diving Unit (AEDU) and sent to the shore based HMS Vernon at Brixham in Devon, together with Aileen, where the vast majority of training involved port clearances in preparation for the invasion of Europe. In the 1945 New Years Honours List he was awarded the M.B.E. (3 July 1945)

During Spring and Summer of 1944, some of the charioteers transferred to other branches of the Service, others continued training and working up, sharing Bonaventure (a merchant ship converted for use as a submarine depot vessel) on Loch Striven and HHZ ( Loch Cairnbawn) with the X- craft crews (Midget Submarines).

On 16 April 1943, a party was selected to proceed to Malta to be accommodated on Manoel Island and the machines were delivered for practice runs in Ghain-Tuffihea Bay.

Italy surrendered in September 1943 and operations from Malta came to an end. Warren had now completed his twelve-year term and was signalled to return home to the UK whereupon he was informed that Admiral Sir Max Horton had kept his promise and he was to attend HMS King Alfred in Hove, the shore establishment for training officers from The RNVR (Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve). After a three-month course, Warren was commissioned as a Temporary Acting Sub Lieutenant, being the only ex Stoker to pass through as an Executive Branch Officer. After completion of the course, he attended the Royal Naval College at Greenwich before operational posting.

In 1943, Warren carried out the beach surveys of Sicily before the Allied landings and, in 1944, he was finally commissioned as a Sub-Lieutenant, but was seriously injured when he lost control of a chariot and sank to a depth of 100 feet. In 1946 he was commissioned as a Lieutenant and retired from the Royal Navy.

Rover was eventually patched up and Warren sailed with her, again on the surface, to Singapore where she was refitted although she never took any active part in the remainder of the war. Warren was permitted leave after two and a half years of war, he sailed home on a Dutch liner and that same evening met up with his long time girlfriend Aileen Ivey, at her father's house, 'Windrush' in Bickley. It was 7 March and they were both feeling impatient so the next day they obtained a licence and arranged the wedding for 12 March 1942 at St George's Hanover Square. The following afternoon he went home to Bedford and informed his parents, arranging for his youngest brother Michael, to be best man. The wedding was photographed and featured in the Evening Standard.

In October, Warren was signalled to report to Admiral Cunningham C in C on HMS Warspite and as it was assumed that he was still on Special Service, he was invited to volunteer as one of three Naval Liaisons to 50th Middle East Commando based at Heraklion, raiding islands in the Dodecanese. He duly joined No. 50 Commando in November 1941.

'Operation Abstention' was the name given to the invasion of the tiny Greek island of Kastelorizo, the most easterly island of the Dodecanese group being close to the mainland of Turkey. In late February 1941 it was occupied by a small detachment of Italian soldiers. Admiral Cunningham's plan was to capture the island and use it as a base to counter Italian naval and air activities in the region, the latter in particular had been disturbing Allied shipping between Greece and Egypt.

Returning once more to Crete in March 1941, Warren was holed up in Suda Bay, having been left to find his own way home and in danger of becoming stranded by the German invasion in May of that year.  He had settled in a very old school house on a promontory overlooking the bay from the west landward side, with a borrowed uniform a pig and a donkey. However, when HMS York was hit and damaged by an Italian explosive motor boat, he noticed his old submarine HMS Rover entering Suda Bay to give her power. In doing so Rover was hit by the Luftwaffe's bombing of the stricken York and badly affected so that she could neither use her engines or motors.

Warren then became a member of the naval liaison staff attached to No. 50 Commando based at Heraklion on Crete, raiding enemy outposts in the Dodecanese. During the evacuation of Greece, in 1941, he was Chief Stoker aboard the damaged HMS Rover as she was towed by the destroyer HMS Griffin to Alexandria. In 1942, he volunteered for the Special Submarine Flotilla, later known as the 12th Submarine Flotilla, which used two-man human torpedoes, chariots and midget submarines, to attack enemy targets, including the German battleship Tirpitz.

In his report to The Admiralty of 22 November 1940, Admiral Cunningham states the following:

After a spell training Royal Fleet reserves on Oswald and Osiris in 1939 he joined Lieutenant Commander Sladen on Oswald, patrolling the North Sea and Malta.

At the onset of war in 1939 Warren was serving with Oswald and still undertaking patrols from Aberdeen to Malta and whilst in Malta in 1940, bored and in search of action, Warren volunteered for 'A Hazardous Operation' which entailed masquerading as a Merchant Service Fireman and Trimmer, complete with false passport, civilian clothes and a beard.

It was a happy period, the Otus crew was the best with which he had served, they visited the Chinese ports of Shanghai, Chefoo, Tsingtao and the R.N. Summer base at Wei Hai Wei. He represented both The Colony and R.N. Rugby teams, playing against touring sides from New Zealand and Japan. In June 1937 he volunteered to join HMS Oswald on its three-month voyage home. A period of Foreign Service leave was taken before being placed on standby for HMS Undine, the first of the 'U' Class submarines at Barrow in Furness.

He joined the submarine HMS Rover in 1934 for her refit in Devonport and in March 1935 embarked on her for the China station via Gibraltar and Malta, where they picked up two more 'R' Class boats, HMS Regent and HMS Regulus and sailed on via Suez, Aden and Colombo where he spent four days with a tea planter cousin. In June via Penang and Singapore he arrived Hong Kong. In 1935 whilst on board HMS Otus at Shangai, he survived a serious engine explosion, eventually leaving Otus after eighteen months with promotion to Leading Stoker.

In 1932 he returned to Chatham and participated in the Higher Education Test, deemed essential for promotion. He re-joined HMS Repulse in the Spring and volunteered for target towing on St Cyrus, later joining HMS Renown as 'writer' to the Squadron Engineer, a Captain who proposed him for early advancement and sent him back again to Chatham after the Spring 1934 cruise.

On 22 June 1931 he joined the Royal Navy as an Able Seaman Stoker, becoming the first ex public schoolboy to enlist as a Stoker and a determination to work his way towards a commission.

Lieutenant Charles Esme Thornton Warren MBE (1912–1988) was a British Royal Navy submariner of World War II. One of the first Allied "human torpedo charioteers", practising methods of clandestine attack on enemy harbours and ships, he was later a bestselling author.

Born at The Den, Rose Walk in Purley on 11 January 1912 to wealthy middle-class parents and the eldest of seven siblings, 'Jim' Warren was educated at Wykeham House School, Worthing and Bedford School (1926-1929). On leaving he spent a year with the New Zealand Shipping Company.

Born in Croydon on 11 January 1912, "Jim" Warren was educated at Bedford School. In 1931 he became the first ex-public schoolboy to join the Royal Navy as an ordinary stoker. He hoped to achieve a commission through the Selborne-Fisher scheme. He achieved extremely high marks in both the theoretical and practical examinations, but the engineer commander at the Leading Stokers School in Chatham Dockyard refused to grant him a commission. Instead he was offered a free choice of whichever ship he wanted and chose submarines. Between 1934 and 1936 he served aboard HMS Rover on the China Station, and then aboard HMS Otus and HMS Osiris. He served during the Second World War and, in 1940, he took part in an operation intended to block the Danube at the Iron Gates, on the border between Serbia and Romania, to prevent German access to oil from the Ploiești oil fields. The plan was discovered and aborted.