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Lieutenant Commander Anthony Roger Townend BATLEY RN
HMS Hood Royal Navy Date of birth: 29th March 1901 Date of death: 24th May 1941 Killed in action aged 40 Commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial Panel 60 Column 2
Anthony Roger Townend Batley was born at Kingston Hill in Surrey on the 29th of March 1901 the son of Sidney Townend Batley, an engineer, and Margaret (nee Dale) Batley of Whitkirk, Leeds in Yorkshire. He was christened at St Luke's Church. Kingston on the 4th of May 1901. He was educated at Lancing College where he was in Sandersons House from September 1915 to April 1919. On leaving school he went to work at the engineering manufacturers, Messrs. Greenwood and Batley Ltd of the Albion Works at Armley Road in Leeds. He was commissioned as a probationary Sub Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on the 6th of November 1928, was promoted to Lieutenant on the 6th of November 1931 and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander on the 6th of November 1939. He joined HMS Hood at 10.15am on the 26th of March 1941. At 1am on the 22nd of May 1941 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. They were heading 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 of May the force was 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. At 7.39pm they changed course and increased their speed to intercept the enemy ship. 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 HMS Hood opened fire on Prinz Eugen at a range of 25,000 yards. HMS Prince of Wales fired her 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