Obituary: Lewis King

* Lewis King, World War II hero. Died aged 91.

New Zealander Lewis King played a heroic role in saving his destroyer after it was hit by German shells while defending an Arctic convoy in the Barents Sea, north of Norway, in World War II.

King, then first lieutenant in HMS Onslow, leader of the 17th Flotilla, needed all his skills to fight the fires that raged in the forepart of the ship after the German heavy cruiser Hipper landed three 8-inch shells on the destroyer on the morning of December 31, 1942.

Forty men were killed or wounded, the forward guns knocked out, the bridge wrecked and the engine room holed.

Fires broke out and at one stage virtually the whole of the front section of the destroyer was blazing.

Captain Robert St Vincent Sherbrooke, commander of Onslow, wrote later that though King had been first lieutenant in the ship for only a month, the destroyer's safe arrival in port was "testimony to his sound judgment and untiring efforts".

King led fire parties attacking the flames and after four hours had the fires out and a collision mat over the hole in the ship's side.

He earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his exploits that day.

Convoy JW51B should have been cut to pieces in a pincer by the Hipper and the pocket-battleship Lutzow but the German teamwork was weak.

Both big German ships ended up on one side of the convoy where they were eventually frightened off by the arrival of British cruisers which damaged the Hipper and sank a destroyer.

The Royal Navy lost one destroyer and a minesweeper but all the merchantmen reached port safely.

The action - it became known as the Battle of the Barents Sea - and lack of German success enraged Hitler and led to the resignation of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder and his replacement by Karl Doenitz.

Born in Glasgow in 1914, Lewis King was 17, an office boy in a Wellington advertising firm, when he joined the naval volunteer reserve in 1931.

He left the destroyer after the engagement in the Barents Sea, did a 10-month course and then joined HMNZS Achilles as gunnery officer in December 1943.

He remained with the cruiser until the end of the war, and was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander.

After the war, he returned to advertising. He was a partner first in Wellington's Carlton Carruthers, Du Chateau and King, then in 1959 formed McKay King. He retired in the mid 1970s.

King is survived by two daughters and one son. His wife and another son, writer and historian Michael, pre-deceased him.

- NZPA