OF ALL the valiant attempts to sink the German battleship Tirpitz none perhaps catches the imagination like the Royal Navy’s midget submarine attack on her in September 1943. From her lair at Kaa Fjord inside the Arctic Circle, Tirpitz had become the bane of the Arctic convoys carrying vital supplies to Russia. “While that damn ship is still afloat she will be a constant menace to all our shipping,” Churchill constantly urged the naval and air staffs. “We must destroy her or seriously damage her.”

Of the brilliantly conceived and resolutely executed operation that resoundingly achieved the second objective, putting the most powerful warship in North Atlantic waters out of action for several months, Richard Kendall was, as diver of the submarine X6, an important component. His task — which no one in X6’s crew envied him — was to exit the craft via the claustrophic wet-and-dry chamber, and cut through the antisubmarine nets that protected the battleship.

In the event, the chance passage of a German supply trawler through a “gate” in the nets, and a brilliantly seized opportunity to follow it by X6’s commander, Lieutenant Donald Cameron, obviated this necessity, and the midget submarine went in to lay her charges underneath Tirpitz as planned. , Kendall was awarded the DSO for his part in the operation, which included releasing one of the two lethal charges under the battleship. Cameron won the VC, as did the CO of the only other X-craft to penetrate the nets, Lieutenant Godfrey Place, of X7.

Richard Haddon Kendall was born in London in 1923. He was educated at Epsom College, which he left at 16 to work in the City. But war was approaching, and as soon as he was old enough he joined the RNVR as a rating. In June 1942 he went to sea on convoy duty in the destroyer Puckeridge. He was then sent to the officer training establishment, King Alfred in Portsmouth, passing out in December 1942.

In January 1943 he volunteered for the submarine service at HMS Dolphin at Gosport and trained as a diver. His first experience was with chariots, two-man human torpedoes of the type with which the Italians had penetrated Alexandria harbour and seriously damaged the battleships Queen Elizabeth and Valiant in December 1941.

The growing need to remove the threat of Tirpitz from the naval equation in the North led to the evolution of the midget submarine, the X-craft. While remaining essentially small this had to be robust enough to be able to undertake a passage of several hundred miles to and from her target deep in a fjord. It was to carry two charges, each weighing two tons.

Volunteers for “special and hazardous duty” were now sought, and Kendall was among those who stepped forward. Training went ahead in a somewhat piratical atmosphere in the waters around the Isle of Bute, with many formal constraints relaxed. At the same time the discipline that alone could ensure survival had to become instinctive as a larger crew than that for which the X-craft had been designed manoeuvred round each other in a cramped space, operating equipment much of which was unproven and given to sudden failure.

Six X-craft, X5 to X10, were to be used in the attack on Tirpitz. Manned by passage crews, they were to be towed by six submarines to a point on the edge of a minefield off the Norwegian coast, where the attack crews would come aboard for the final approach.

Finally, on September 11, 1943, training was at an end, and six parent submarines with their charges in tow left Loch Cairnbawn bound for Norway. Disaster soon struck. In the small hours of September 15 the tow between Seanymph and X8 parted, an event neither realised until they had lost sight of each other. Then X9 shed her tow to Syrtis, and plunged to the bottom taking her passage crew with her. Seanymph subsequently found X8 by doubling back, but the X-craft started flooding and it was decided to shed charges. She was subsequently scuttled and her crew taken on board the submarine.

On September 20 the four remaining craft took on their attack crews, slipped their tows and made their way gingerly through the protecting minefield. Of these X10 was subsequently compelled by mechanical defects to return to her parent submarine. X5 was later accounted for by Tirpitz’s 4-inch guns and sank with all hands in a deep part of the fjord.

Only X6 and X7 succeeded in getting inside the last layer of protective nets. Spotted by a zealous petty officer in Tirpitz, X6 came under fire from small arms — she had got too close for Tirpitz’s heavier armament to bear.

Now began a race between her and a resourceful German officer, Lieutenant Leine, who launched the ship’s motor boat armed with grenades and a grappling hook, determined to prevent whatever was intended. The boat was nearing X6’s position as Cameron ordered: “Release side charges” and Kendall and Chief Engine Room Artificer Goddard each released two tons of amatol on to the seabed under Tirpitz. There they joined two charges already deposited by X7.

Cameron and his crew now surfaced, opened the seacocks and climbed out of their craft with their hands up. Leine, anxious to secure not only the crew but the midget sub as well, had lines attached to her until he realised that she had been scuttled and was going to take his launch down with her. While Leine ordered the lines to be cut, the British stepped aboard his launch with great coolness. “We didn’t even get our feet wet,” said Kendall later.

Panic now reigned aboard Tirpitz as her CO, Captain Meyer, unsure of the nature of the threat, formed one plan after another. X7, attempting to escape after releasing her charges, added to the confusion by inadvertently surfacing nearby. Meyer thought there might be any number of midget submarines in the fjord, waiting for Tirpitz to come out of her net protection and torpedo her. He therefore contented himself with moving his ship to one side using his anchor cables.

This operation was still under way when at 8.12am the charges exploded, three forward and, a few seconds later, one aft. Kendall, who had stayed on the quarterdeck while his captain was taken below for questioning recorded: “My knees buckled as the explosion hurled the ship out of the water. Steam gushed from broken pipes. Oil flowed from the shattered hull and covered the waters of the fjord. Machinegunners imagined they saw submarines everywhere, and their fire mingled with the din of hand arms. All around was confusion . . . I suddenly felt tired to death, yet with a wonderful feeling of relief.”

Though the X-craft men were disappointed that they had not sunk Tirpitz, the damage was severe. Her 15-inch “C” turret, which weighed 2,000 tons, had been lifted off its mounting. Radio, radar, rangefinding and fire-control equipment were all out of action. None of her propeller shafts could be turned, and the port rudder was hopelessly buckled.

The other British survivors of the attack (only two, Place and his 2 i/c got out of X7 as she sank) spent the rest of the war in captivity, much of it near Bremen. During this time they heard of the award of their decorations. Tirpitz was to receive her quietus — after air attacks on her by the Fleet Air Arm and RAF — in November 1944, when she was sunk by Lancaster bombers of 617 (“Dambusters”) and 9 squadrons in Tromsø Fjord.

After being repatriated in May 1945, Kendall went to the Far East to help to bring home PoWs of the Japanese conflict, via Canada. He remained for several years in the RNVR, attaining the rank of lieutenant-commander.

In 1949 he took a degree in forestry at Aberdeen University and for the next eight years worked with the Forestry Commission. Then, in 1957, feeling that promotion would be slow in England he emigrated to Canada with his wife and children. There he worked with the British Columbia Forest Service and with the Federal Forest Service in Ottawa, before, in 1960, joining the MacKenzie Forest Service in North West Territories, where he met his second wife, Maureen, whom he married in 1961.

His last appointment was as superintendant of the Prince Edward Island National Park. In retirement at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, he continued to take an interest in conservation and forestry affairs and went on volunteer aid missions abroad for the Canadian Executive Service Organisation, to Costa Rica and Ecuador.

He is survived by his wife, by their two sons, and by a son and daughter of his first marriage, which was dissolved.

Richard Kendall, DSO, wartime Royal Navy diver and forester, was born on March 2, 1923. He died on December 18, 2005, aged 82.