Royal Signals Museum - Postal Covers - Visual Signalling

Royal Signals Afloat - Visual signalling

For many years detachments of army signallers have been employed on board HM ships for communications in amphibious warfare, and logistics supply vessels. Their use began before the second world war but the formation of Combined Operations HQ under Lord Louis Mountbatten, himself a former naval signals officer, in 1942 led to the rapid expansion of the service. In 1942/43 four HQ Ship Signal Sections, as they were termed, were formed to join HMS BULOLO, LARGS, HILARY and LOTHIAN, vessels converted for combined operations and known as LSH(L). The Royal Signals sections worked alongside the Naval communications ratings controlling the radio nets between HQ staffs and the troops ashore. The first three named took part in Operation NEPTUNE, on the Eastern Task Force for the Normandy landings in June 1944, as HQ ships each controlled a division. HMS LOTHIAN with No. 4 Ship Signal Section was deployed to the Pacific where it remained in support of Australian and US forces until the Japanese surrender.

Earlier in the first months of the Italian campaign No.2 Ship Signal Section in HMS LARGS had taken part in the operation at Pantelleria and Sicily and at Salerno when they were aboard USS BISCAYNE, an American sea-plane tender. After many adventures elements of No.4 Section transferred to PERSIMMON in the Pacific, and witnessed the surrender of the Japanese commander of Sumatra on board their ship. HMS LARGS sailed for the far east in 1944 and took part with PERSIMMON in the operations to reoccupy Malaya and Rangoon.

At the end of the war a nucleus of Ship Signal Sections remained and No.601 Signal Troop(formerly 1 Ship Signal Section Malta) joined HMS MEON, then part of the Amphibious Warfare Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet. HMS MEON was a converted frigate, built in 1943. She was manned by Canadians during the war, taking part in the D-Day landings. In 1956 she took part in the SUEZ operations a HQ ship. In August 1960 MEON was officially affiliated with the Royal Corps of Signals, flying the Corps flag at her masthead on the 40th anniversary of the Corps.

The envelope date-stamp design is based on the ships badge of HMS MEON, and the envelope commemorates the anniversary of operation VANTAGE on 1 July 1961 at Kuwait in which MEON was HQ ship. This operation forestalled an earlier threat to Kuwait's borders from Iraq, pre-dating the reign of Saddam Hussain. HMS MEON was de-commissioned in 1965 and 601 Troop disbanded the following year. The ships bell now hangs in the Royal Signals Museum in Blandford.

MEON was replaced by HMS FEARLESS and INTREPID, both purpose built assault ships with all the facilities needed to provide a dock landing platform and the communications to control an assault force. Two new Signal Troops were formed: No.621(FEARLESS)and 626(INTREPID). HMS FEARLESS took part in the Rhodesia talks of October 1968 at Gibraltar, providing a conference centre and communications for Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the Rhodesian Premier Ian Smith. In 1967 she took part in the operation to withdraw British troops from Aden, handing over in the final days to her sister ship INTREPID.