THE VICTORIA CROSS AWARDED TO LIEUTENANT COMMANDER EUGENE ESMONDE, 825 SQUADRON, FLEET AIR ARM, HAS BEEN LOANED TO THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
1 November 2007


( select to enlarge )
Medal entitlement of Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde
Royal Navy ( 825 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm )

  • Victoria Cross
  • Distinguished Service Order ( DSO )
  • 1939-45 Star
  • Atlantic Star
  • War Medal ( 1939-45 ) + MiD Oakleaf


The Victoria Cross awarded to Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde, 825 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, a Second World War award, has been loaned to the Imperial War Museum in London.


For the award of the Victoria Cross.

[ London Gazette, 3 March 1942 ], Straits of Dover, English Channel, 12 February 1942, Lieutenant Commander Eugene Kingsmill Esmonde, Royal Navy ( 825 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm ).

On the morning of Thursday, 12th February, 1942, Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde, in command of a Squadron of the Fleet Air Arm, was told that the German Battle-Cruisers 'Scharnhorst' and 'Gneisenau' and the Cruiser 'Prinz Eugen', strongly escorted by some thirty surface craft, were entering the Straits of Dover, and that his Squadron must attack before they reached the sand-banks North East of Calais. Lieutenant-Commander Esmonde knew well that his enterprise was desperate.

Soon after noon he and his squadron of six Swordfish set course for the Enemy, and after ten minutes flight were attacked by a strong force of Enemy fighters. Touch was lost with his fighter escort and in the action which followed all his aircraft were damaged. He flew on, cool and resolute, serenely challenging hopeless odds, to encounter the deadly fire of the Battle-Cruisers and their Escort, which shattered the port wing of his aircraft.

Undismayed, he led his Squadron on, straight through this inferno of fire, in steady flight towards their target. Almost at once he was shot down: but his Squadron went on to launch a gallant attack, in which at least one torpedo is believed to have struck the German Battle-Cruisers, and from which not one of the six aircraft returned.

His high courage and splendid resolution will live in the traditions of the Royal Navy, and remain for many generations a fine and stirring memory.


All six Fairey Swordfish aircraft were shot down. Five survivors were fished out of the Channel waters and only one of these men was unwounded. Four of them were awarded the DSO, the other the CGM. About seven weeks later Eugene Esmonde's body, still in his lifejacket, was washed ashore in the Thames Estuary near the River Medway. Esmonde was buried at Woodlands Cemetery, Gillingham, Kent, on the 30th April 1942.


[ London Gazette, 12 September 1941 ], To be a Companion to the Distinguished Service Order ( DSO ), Lieutenant Commander Eugene Kingsmill Esmonde, Royal Navy, ( HMS 'Victorious' )

Awards to Officers and Men of HM Aircraft-Carriers and Naval Air Stations for gallantry, daring and skill in operations in which the German Battleship Bismark was destroyed.

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Iain Stewart, 1 November 2007