Ronald Healiss wrote a detailed and very readable account of his experiences in the Royal Marines serving on the aircraft carrier Glorious. The climax of the story is his account of the sinking of the carrier off Norway in 1940 by the German ships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and his gallant survival until rescued by a Norwegian trawler. If you have an interest in WW2 history, as lived by the men below decks at war, you should read Arctic Rescue.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
Putting our best book forward
Each Great on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Get the free Kindle app: 
Enjoy a great reading experience when you borrow the Kindle edition of this book with your Kindle Unlimited membership.
Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.
Shop this series
See full series- Kindle Price:$20.95By placing your order, you're purchasing a license to the content and you agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use.
Shop this series
There are 7 books in this series.
Kindle Price:
$20.95
By placing your order, you're purchasing a license to the content and you agree to the Kindle Store Terms of Use.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Page 1 of 1 Start over
- Bamboo Doctor: Saving Lives on the Railway of Death in World War Two (Memoirs from World War Two)Stanley S. PavillardKindle Edition
About the author
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2023
- Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2020
A remarkable, unique survival story from a survivor of the sinking of the HMS Glorious in the Arctic
- Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2021
Top reviews from other countries
- MusicFanReviewed in Canada on February 2, 2022
A must-have on the experience of navy crewmen, and the perils of war.
- Brendan the FrustratedReviewed in Australia on April 24, 2024
Historically Important Memoir
- C. NationReviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2021
My father's younger brother, the uncle I never knew ...
The loss of HMS Glorious looms large and personal in my life. My grandfather lost two brothers in WW1 and one son of three in WW2. He almost lost my father's younger brother, who survived the sinking and evaded capture by the Japanese after HMS Prince of Wales was sunk off Malaya.C. NationMy father's younger brother, the uncle I never knew ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2021
Thomas Alan Hansen Nation, known as Alan, was one of the hundreds lost when Glorious was sunk. I was shocked to read this account by Healiss. Any one of the men who died in front of him, tho' not known to him personally, might have been my uncle. The two dead men still clutching the line around the Carliis float when he made it from the motor boat - was one my uncle?
I was contacted by the nephew of the commander of the Glorious, D'Oyle Hughes, back in the 1980's. He was in the process of compiling a book which, it would be logical to surmise, was to be an exoneration of his uncle's decisions to take Glorious to sea with the escort of only two destroyers, to have no aircraft out on 50 mile patrol round the carrier, nobody manning the lookouts up the masts, in fact to leave Norway early instead of in company woth the rest of the evacuation fleet.... Not surprisingly I never heard from him again and this book, a fatuous excercise, was never published.
It is generally accepted now that he was fixated in returning to Scapa to initiate the Court Martial of his erstwhile First Office, who was detained on a charge there. The 'authorities' will never accept this.
There is a book, 'Carrier Glorious' by Jon Winton ex-RN and a 2 hr Channel 4 documentary based on that book, which superbly describes the life and death of Glorious. Those who have criticised Healiss' book for being too personal have completely missed the point.
This book is the account of a survivor, in his own words. A description of his life as a member of the crew, on duty and off. It is indeed written in the vernacular, almost comic book style, but that was the background from which he came. He knew only one way to express himself, the slang of the RN, the repartee of the pub and the street.
This is a very valuble document. I have trawled through the files on the sinking of Glorious at The National Archive and never found anything like this. There are letters and written testimony by survivors at inquiries carried out subequent to the sinking and for many years after the war but there is nothng I have read that describes the survival of a member of the crew. This is it.
Images in this review
- Ricardo Ferreira do AmaralReviewed in Brazil on January 18, 2021
Very well writen !
