Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Second War anti-U-Boat operations D.S.M. group of five awarded to Able Seaman T. Farrell, Royal Navy, for the sinking of U-204 by H.M.S. Mallow in October 1941

Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (JX.199905 T. Farrell. A.B.) impressed naming; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; War Medal 1939-45, mounted court-style, very fine and better

Spink, December 1997.

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, Mallow 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 in 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.