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Sub Lieutenant (A) Robert Howard CARDWELL RNVR
830 Naval Air Squadron Fleet Air Arm Date of birth: 3rd June 1918 Date of death: 23rd December 1941 Killed in action aged 23 Commemorated on the Lee-on-Solent Memorial Bay 2 Panel 6
Robert Howard Cardwell was born on the 3rd of June 1918 the son of Howard Elliott Cardwell, a schoolmaster of Capetown, and Agnes Maitland (nee Kelly) Cardwell of “Clovelly”, Albion Hill, Exmouth in Devon. He was educated at Lancing College where he won an Exhibition and was in Seconds House from September 1931 to July 1937. He was a Sergeant in the Officer Training Corps achieving Certificate A in 1934 and was a member of the Fives Team in 1936. He gained his School Certificate in 1933 and Higher Certificate in 1935. He was appointed as a House Captain in 1935. He went on to Hertford College Oxford in 1938. Robert Cardwell joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and trained as an Observer in the Fleet Air Arm. He was commissioned as a Sub Lieutenant (A) on the 10th of February 1941 and was posted to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal in July 1941. His was one of six Swordfish crews who were posted to Malta to reinforce 830 Naval Air Squadron which had been stationed there since the 30th of June 1940. They took off from HMS Ark Royal at midnight on the 24th of July and, after four and half hours in the air they landed at dawn at the airbase of Hal Far, shortly after an enemy air raid had finished. On the 10th of August 1941 he took off with his pilot, Sub Lieutenant Thorpe and two other aircraft, for an attack on a 13,000 ton enemy ship which was anchored at Syracuse. Flares were dropped and the three aircraft approached the target from the landward side. Despite intensive anti aircraft fire the first two aircraft attacked with torpedoes from a height of sixty feet but with no visible result. Thorpe and Caldwell, approaching from the south and released their torpedo at a range of five hundred yards at a height of only thirty five feet. They struck the target just to the rear of its funnel and there was an enormous explosion which caused the vessel to sink by the stern. During their attack Thorpe's aircraft was hit repeatedly by anti aircraft fire and the crew considered themselves very lucky to have survived. On the night of the 29th/30th of September 1941 three Wellington Mk VIII bombers arrived in Malta under the command of Flight Lieutenant Anthony Spooner. They had been specially adapted and fitted with ASV radar and were to work in co-operation with 830 Squadron, whose Swordfish were fitted with receivers for night reconnaissance operations. On the 23rd of December 1941 Robert Cardwell joined the crew of Wellington Mk VIII Z8703 DF-? from the Special Duties Flight of 221 Squadron as a Royal Navy observer for a night patrol to locate an Italian destoyer which was thought to be leaving Palermo at dusk, bound for Tripoli. They took off from RAF Luqa at 5.55pm for the mission and made a radio call at 8.28pm, when they were off the coast near Marsala in Sicily, but did not report whether they had seen any enemy ships. The aircraft was not heard from again and its fate, and that of its crew, is unknown. The crew was:- Sergeant Graham Humphreys Hunt Warrant Officer Alfred John Gulliver Sergeant Douglas Mason Kingston Sergeant William Dennis Reason (Pilot) Sub Lieutenant (A) Robert Howard Cardwell RNVR Flight Sergeant Leslie John Woolley (Rear Gunner) Sergeant Arnold John Reid His father, Private 22330 Howard Elliott Cardwell 1st Regiment South African Infantry, died on active service on the 3rd of May 1919.

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