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Paymaster Lieutenant (S) Thomas Gordon Putt LUXMOORE RN
HMS Hood Royal Navy Date of birth: 13th May 1912 Date of death: 24th May 1941 Killed in action aged 29 Commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial Panel 45 Column 3
Thomas Gordon Putt Luxmoore was born on the 13th of May 1912 the only son of Captain Henry Luxmoore RN and Grace Eileen (nee Maddox) Luxmoore of Plantation Cottage, Bearstead near Maidstone in Kent. He was educated at the King’s School Rochester and at Lancing College where he was in Sandersons House from May 1926 to July 1929. He was a member of the Officer Training Corps where he achieved Certificate A in 1928 and gained his School Certificate in the same year. Immediately on leaving school he joined the Navy as a Paymaster Cadet entering HMS “Erbus” for training in September 1929 and was appointed as Paymaster Midshipman on the 1st of September 1930, following which he served on HMS “York", HMS “Repulse”, HMS “Renown” and HMS "Dauntless” in home waters, in the West Indies and in the Mediterranean He was promoted to Paymaster Sub Lieutenant on the 1st of November 1932 and to Paymaster Lieutenant on the 1st of December 1934. From April 1935 until October 1936 he served on the depot ship at Rosyth following which he was appointed to HMS “Queen Elizabeth” for service on the staff of Sir Dudley Pound, Commander in Chief Mediterranean, where he served until 1939. On the 1st of June of that year he joined HMS “Hood” as secretary to the Chief Staff Officer, Battle Cruiser Squadron. On the 22nd of May 1941 at 1am the battleship HMS “Hood” set sail from Scapa Flow in company with the newly built battleship HMS “Prince of Wales. They were escorted by the destroyers HMS ”Achates”, HMS “Antelope”, HMS “Anthony”, HMS “Echo”, HMS “Electra and HMS “Icarus” for Hvals Fjord in Iceland following reports that the German battleship “Bismarck” and the cruiser “Prinz Eugen” had left Bergen in search of merchant shipping targets. By the evening of the 23rd they were to the south of Iceland when they received a report from the destroyer HMS “Suffolk” that they had sighted “Bismarck” in the Straits of Denmark and at 7.39pm they changed course to intercept and increased their speed. Due to the pounding seas and the high speed of the two larger ships, the escorting destroyers were struggling to keep up and were given permission to drop back at 4am on the 14th as the two capital ships continued the hunt on their own. The enemy ships were sighted and at 5.52am “Hood” opened fire on “Prinz Eugen” at a range of 25,000 yards. “Prince of Wales” fired its first salvo one minute later. “Hood” received five salvos in reply from the two enemy ships, the second and third of which bracketed the ship causing a fire to break out on the port side. At 6am she was hit by the fifth salvo in the aft magazine, blew up, and sank in three to four minutes with the loss of 1,415 of her crew of 1,418.

Sandersons House