D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Alec Penstone

Alec Penstone, Age 99, Royal Navy

Interviewed 3 June 2023

A technician specialising in detecting submarines, Alec Penstone was on board the escort aircraft carrier HMS Campania on D-Day as it played a vital role in protecting the troops landing on the beaches.

He had been on the Arctic convoys to Russia before his crew was diverted.

He said: "I was on the middle watch. 4am to 8am and when I looked through the embarkation space I could see we were anchored and all I could see were a mass of ships and houses and trees.

"I thought ‘What?’ No-one told us what was happening those days. And then one of the bunting tossers came down and said ‘I have seen The Needles, we are off the Isle of Wight’ and that’s the only time I knew. And the whole sea was covered with ships.

"As night fell on 5 June everything happened. I was on an escort ship, a converted merchant ship. We had Swordfish and Wildcats (aircraft) on board and overnight all our planes had been painted with white stripes to show they were friendly planes. 

"And then in the early hours of 6 June all hell broke loose. I was 27 feet down beneath the waterline and the only communication I had with the bridge was a telephone.

"And we heard then that it was an invasion and we were going over to Normandy. 

"We were the cover force protecting the invading craft from the U-Boats. We were kept quite busy. We were Action Stations for nearly 40 hours. Without us there would have been a massacre. We weren’t the only ships doing it.

"Everyone was doing their bit as well. One did get through from the North Atlantic and managed to torpedo one of the ships with all the troops on but that was the far side."

Mr Penstone’s ship was also an escort while cables were being laid across the English Channel.

Two oil pipelines, one from Dungeness in Kent and one from the Isle of Wight, supplied the advancing Armies in France in the weeks after the invasion.

This was Operation Pluto (Pipeline Under The Ocean.)

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