Description
D.S.M. London Gazette 24 March 1942: ‘For skill and enterprise in action against enemy submarines while serving in H.M. Ships Exmoor, Blankney, Stanley, Mallo and Marigold.’
Thomas Farrell was serving in H.M.S. Mallow at the time of being recommended for his D.S.M. While engaged on an A./S. sweep off Cape Spartel on 19 October 1941, in company with the Corvettes H.M.S. Rochester and H.M.S. Carnation, Mallow picked an asdic contact at 500 yards range. Manoeuvring into an attack position, she dropped seven depth charges set to 150 and 300 feet, but on the point of delivering a second attack ‘an area of oil approximately 200 yards long and 50 yards broad was seen extending across the wind’. Mallow was now joined by the Carnation, and later still the Rochester, both of whom carried out further attacks on what appeared to be a stationary target. Further evidence of a probable ‘kill’ turned up 24 hours later, when the air vessel and fuel and water bottles of a German torpedo were recovered in a position about eight miles eastward of the original attack, and in their subsequent deliberations the U-Boat Assessment Committee concluded Mallow’s favour with a ‘Known sunk’. Her victim was probably the U-204. Farrell received his D.S.M. at an Investiture on 27 October 1942.
