Temporary Lieutenant Joseph Gaunt RNVR/RNZNVR

Joseph Gaunt was born on 20 March 1920 in Bradford Yorkshire and grew up in New Zealand were in 1939 he volunteered for the RNZAF. Gaunt entered the RNZAF as some of the first “hostilities only” aircrew on 3 October 1939.[i]

He was sent to England and was assigned to the armoury at RAF Feltwell, home to the 75^th Squadron flying Wellington Bombers. Many New Zealanders were in this Squadron as aircrew. While there he served as an armourer. There were a couple of very close shaves with exploding bombs that destroyed five Wellington bombers and a runaway machinegun in a turret that nearly shot him.[ii] Sadly, he became ill and was invalided out of the RAF as unfit for military service.[iii]

Upon his recovery, he transferred to the Royal Navy joining as an ordinary seaman on 29 January 1941[iv] and completed his initial training at HMS Collingwood.  He was posted to the destroyer HMS Arrow in April 1941 for sea training and was then posted to the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Southdown for active service from August 1941.[v]  Ten months after joining the RN he was promoted to the rate of Able Seaman and continued to serve on Southdown until April 1942. During this time his ship was assigned to hunt the German battleship Scharnhorst when she broke out of Brest into the North Sea.[vi] He said of this time:

‘When I think back to the casual way I was in action firing at E-Boats & aircraft…when I didn’t have a gunnery rating & had no formal gunnery training in the Navy. I never told my buffer or any of my officers that I had been in the Airforce and had a “superior” classification as an air gunner. Most of my time on destroyers I was on the bridge as a lookout. We did half hour spells on the binoculars so our eyes didn’t get too tired, and in between times manned the antiaircraft guns on the flag deck…Most of the CW candidates as we were called were put on bridge lookout duties, but we were never given any instruction or advice or even talked to by the officers, and none of the crew or our messmates knew we were CW candidates until we were replaced by new crew members and drafted to KA [HMS King Alfred] for officer training.’[vii]

He returned ashore in April 1942 and was sent to HMS King Alfred for officer training. In July 1942, having successfully passed the course, he was commissioned as a Temporary Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.[viii]

After the commission, Joseph Gaunt like many other newly commissioned officers was assigned to the fleet that would carry out Operation OVERLORD, the invasion of Europe. LCT HQ at Troon Ayrshire issued a Naval Watchkeeping Certificate on 24/2/1943 to Gaunt noting that he was competent to take charge of a Watch as sea as a lieutenant and to perform efficiently the duties of that rank. It noted that ’his certificate is granted for Landing Craft, Tank, and similar craft only’.[ix] At a shore base in Warsash, Hampshire he was given command of LCI(S) 517 or Infantry Landing Craft (Small).  This was one of thirty-six craft designed and built to carry infantry and land them on the beaches of Normandy. These craft had a crew of sixteen and could carry up to 85 fully equipped infantrymen. They were assigned to a base in the Hamble River.  Training was conducted for the D-Day landings by beaching their LCI(S) on the gravel beaches near Portsmouth.

On the 6 June 1944 LCI(S) 517 was carrying 63 men from E Troop, 45 Royal Marine Commando, and 20 men from the Medium Machinegun Section.[x] Their designated landing space was the very left flank of Sword Beach next to the mouth of the Orne River for 0730hrs. Because the tide was coming in faster than was expected, to avoid the men getting swamped as they stepped off the ramp, Gaunt took the craft further in so that the men had dry feet.[xi] It appears as if the craft hit an obstruction when first landing on the beach, causing flooding that caused the boat to sink in the afternoon around 1630. Until then, he was able to make a number of trips between the troopships at anchor and the beachhead carrying reinforcements for the initial landing.[xii] He and his crew were rescued by LCI(S) 519 and taken to a troopship and then returned to England. Upon his return to England, the first thing he was asked for were the two revolvers he had been issued prior to D-Day by the base gunnery officer! [xiii]

On 21 July 1944 Gaunt was appointed to command LCT 7015 from 1 August 1944.[xiv] This was a Tank Landing Craft. In July 1945, He was given command of a half-flotilla of LCTs and was to take them to Japan for the proposed invasion in November 1945. Sailing from Boston in England, he and the flotilla had reached Kabret in Egypt when the war ended. The LCT was taken into dry-dock for a clean and paint but that was the end of Joseph Gaunt’s war career.  In January 1946 he returned to New Zealand and served a limited time in the RNZN until March 1947. Also in 1947 the RNZN detached Gaunt to supervise the construction and display of the Mulberry Harbour model in Christchurch. At this time he was a Temporary Lieutenant RNZNVR.

In December 1978, he rescued some RNZN sailors whose dingy capsized. Those rescued were impressed at his boat handling.