BRATT Victor Edwin

Additional information on the memorial: Royal Navy. Killed in action 12 February 1944. Age 38.

Appears on the Royal Navy casualties list for Worcestershire.

The birth of Victor Edwin Bratt is registered in the September Quarter 1905 under the Bromsgrove Registration District.

Stoker V. Bratt of 59 King George Close, Bromsgrove appears on a list of men from the Bromsgrove District killed in the 1939 – 1945 war, provided by the Reverend C.W. Banner, “Tuffley”, 19 Stourbridge Road, Bromsgrove, dated 29th June 1950.

HMS Lanka was a shore based naval establishment located on the outskirts of Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).  On 6th February 1944 Victor Bratt was a passenger on the SS Khedive Ismail which left the African port of Kilindini bound for Burma as part of the convoy KR 8.  On board the ship were 1,511 personnel from the Army, Royal Navy and Merchant Navy including a number of females and nursing staff.  On Saturday 12th February 1944, the convoy was in the Indian Ocean South-West off the Maldives when the Japanese submarine I-27 launched two torpedoes, successfully hitting the SS Khedive Ismail in the engine room.  It took 2 minutes from the impact of the torpedoes for the ship to sink resulting in the loss of 1,297 people, 27 of them women.  Just 208 men and 6 women survived the attack.  The submarine was depth charged through some of the survivors by the destroyers Paladin and Petard and was eventually forced to the surface where it was destroyed and sent to join the SS Khedive Ismail at the bottom of the ocean.

Sources for SS Khedive Ismail information:
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Ships/SSKhediveIsmail.html

A page dedicated to Stoker 1st Class Victor Bratt, including photographs, can be found via the following link:  http://www.roll-of-honour.org.uk/b/html/bratt-victor-edwin.htm

Victor Bratt has no known grave, the photograph available shows his name on Chatham Naval Memorial.