OBITUARY : Commander Jim Suthers

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
27/03/2007

OBITUARY : Commander Jim Suthers
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Commander Jim Suthers, who has died aged 88, sank an Italian destroyer and 
helped to capture important Enigma codes in the Second World War; later he 
pioneered the use of helicopters in the British armed forces..../snip/

....On June 6 1941, in an operation prompted by the decoding of Enigma 
signals, one of Suthers's squadron sank the German U-boat supply ship, 
Elbe, in the South Atlantic. Nine days later Suthers intercepted the 
supply ship Lothringen which had been bombed.

For four hours he circled the enemy, machine-gunning any Germans who 
appeared on deck to try to prevent it being scuttled, while the cruiser 
Dunedin raced to the scene. His aircrew eased the monotony by improvising 
bombs from tins into which they had relieved themselves, and, as Suthers 
flew over Lothringen's bridge firing his single fixed gun, they dropped 
their "bombs". But as Dunedin's boarding party climbed aboard Lothringen, 
the aircrew saw the Germans emerge to throw confidential books into the 
sea, but could do nothing for fear of firing on their own men.

Important Enigma material was found behind a cabinet in the wireless room, 
and Lothringen was taken into British service as fleet oiler Empire 
Salvage and later took part in several Mediterranean convoy battles.

Suthers was also involved in some of these battles, but his flight was 
ashore at Gibraltar when Eagle was sunk..../snip/

...Jim Suthers, who died on February 22, married, in 1948, Pat Heath, 
his former WRNS driver. She died in 2003, and he is survived by a son 
and three daughters.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml
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