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Channel Dash Swordfish hero’s medals to go under the hammer

Lt Cdr Eugene Esmonde VC and colleagues in front of a Swordfish - Picture Fleet Air Arm Museum
19 December 2024
Expected to be snapped up for as much as £100,000 when auctioned next month are the medals of one of just five naval aviators to survive the Channel Dash.

Chief Petty Officer ‘Don’ Bunce earned the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal – one of six decorations he received for his WW2 service as a telegraphist/air gunner going under the hammer at London auction house Noonans Mayfair next month.

Bunce was one of three crew members of Swordfish ‘L’ from 825 Naval Air Squadron, one of six torpedo bombers scrambled on the afternoon of February 12 1942 to intercept the core of Hitler’s surface fleet attempting to make a break through the Dover Strait and reaching Germany.

The ships – battle-cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen – had been stuck in Brest in occupied France following raiding sorties in the Atlantic (the cruiser had accompanied the Bismarck on its ill-fated maiden voyage in May 1941).

Rather than leave the ships in Brest at the mercy of frequent RAF raids, Hitler ordered them brought back to Germany where, in theory, they would be safer.

The resulting breakout – Operation Cerberus to the Germans, Operation Fuller to Brits, though better known simply as the Channel Dash – took place in foul weather (snow/sleet flurries) with heavy air cover provided to the German warships.

Half a dozen Swordfish bombers, operating from RAF Manston in Kent, were sent to stop the breakout. 

Leading the attack was Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde, already decorated for attacking the Bismarck the previous spring – a mission on which Don Bunce also flew.

Within ten minutes of taking off, the lumbering torpedo bombers were pounced upon by faster, more agile Messerschmitt 109 and Focke-Wulf 190 fighters.

The German admiral leading the breakout, Otto Ciliax, contemptuously dismissed the British attack, remarking: “Now the English are throwing their mothball navy at us.” 

Nevertheless, Bunce’s pilot Pat Kingsmill succeeded in manoeuvring his Swordfish to launch a torpedo against the Prinz Eugen (it missed) while Bunce himself is credited with downing at least one German aircraft before the bomber crashed into the Channel. 

Rescued, Don Bunce – just 20 years old – recovered and spent the rest of the war as an instructor, until he was demobbed as a chief petty officer in 1946.

Christopher Mellor-Hill of Noonans said Don Bunce was a modest man, much in demand in later life to recount his deeds and attend reunions and commemorative events marking both the Channel Dash and Bismarck chase.

He was also persuaded by historians at the Imperial War Museum to record his wartime experiences – the cassettes form part of the archive being auctioned, alongside log books, papers and correspondence with fellow Channel Dash survivors and documents relating to 25th and 50th anniversary commemorations as well as the Bismarck action.

Mr Bunce died in 2008 aged 87 with his naval medals and documents bought by a private collector…whose collection is now being broken up. They are valued at between £80k and £100k by Noonans, by far the highest expected price of the 600 lots going under the hammer on January 15.

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