Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine Second War Coastal Forces D.S.M. group of six awarded to Leading Seaman J. J. Phillips, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, who was decorated for his deeds as a Coxswain in a brilliant night action in the Channel in March 1943, when M.G.B. 333 accounted for a brace of E-boats, one of them by ramming at high speed: such was the calibre of the bravery displayed that night that five members of 333’s crew were decorated and three more mentioned in despatches

Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (DX.1349 J. Phillips. L.Sea.), impressed naming; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Defence and War Medals; Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve L.S. & G.C., G.VI.R., 1st issue (1349 J. J. Phillips, A.B. R.N.V.R.) extremely fine (6) £1800-2200

D.S.M. London Gazette 1 June 1943: ‘For skill and gallantry in action with enemy light forces.’

A brief account of the action for which Phillips was decorated appears in Dog Boats at War by Leonard C. Reynolds, O.B.E., D.S.C.:

‘On 28-29 March 1943, it was one of the customary defensive patrols that brought the opportunity for confrontation with the E-boats against which, night after night, the boats lay in wait ready to repel their attacks. Lt. D. G. Bradford. R.N.R., was leading the unit in his own 333, with 321 (Lt. P. L. Stobo, R.N.V.R.) in company. While lying ‘cut’ (i.e. stopped with engines not running to enable a listening watch for E-boat engines), he suddenly heard them, started up, intercepted their course and having sighted them, tracked a line of five moving slowly. Why so slow, he could not fathom. He was able to approach very close, pour a broadside into the last in line, and then take on the next ahead. Stobo in 321 had gone after the others, so Bradford decided to ram, and sheared off the last twenty feet of her hull, which broke away. He circled back and could find little trace of either E-boat, so chased off to find the first three. When he found them stopped in a group, he opened fire and they were away at full speed. A group of prisoners of war later admitted that their E-boat, S. 29, had been scuttled after action damage from British M.G.Bs’.

Phillips’ C.O. that night, Lieutenant D. G. “Don” Bradford, R.N.R., would later command the 31st and 55th M.T.B. Flotillas, and ended the War as one of the most decorated officers in Light Coastal Forces, having won the D.S.O., three D.S.Cs and a brace of “mentions”. A colourful character by any standards, his pre-war career included service as ‘an Adjutant in the Bolivian Army during the Gran Chaco War and as an Ensign in a cavalry regiment of the International Brigade in Spain, and in both he had been wounded’. Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that Phillips would recall that his skipper had ‘a revolver stuck in his belt’ on the night of 28-29 March 1943, and that ‘around the bridge lay Mills bombs and cutlasses’. As Peter Scott would put it in his Battle of the Narrow Seas, ‘fighting was in his blood’.

Joseph John Phillips, who joined the R.N.V.R. in Bristol in 1935, commenced his wartime career with an appointment in the cruiser H.M.S. Diomede, then employed on northern patrols. In early 1941, however, he volunteered for Light Coastal Forces, and joined M.L. 451 that March, in which motor launch he served for 12 months, operating out of Immingham, Lincolnshire, on air sea rescue patrols. Then in July 1942, he joined M.G.B. 333 as her coxswain, the commencement of an eventful operational commission under “Don” Bradford, but one that came to a halt when he was “busted” down to Able Seaman for being found drunk at sea - but not before winning his D.S.M. for the above related action off Smith’s Knoll. Phillips subsequently joined M.T.B. 702 at the end of 1943, as a Gunner on one of her 6-pounders, but had reclaimed his Coxswain’s post in the same boat by the War’s end. He received his L.S. & G.C. Medal in 1945 and was demobbed in October of the same year.

Sold with a photograph of Phillips and his two brothers, and a hand-written résumé of his career.