-H.M.S. Hood Crew Information-
H.M.S. Crew List

It is estimated that as many as 18,000 men served aboard the 'Mighty Hood' during the operational portion of her 21 year career. Unfortunately, there is no surviving official single listing of ALL men who served in her. Here you will find our attempt at creating such a listing. We are using the few, fragmentary crew lists known to exist, Navy Lists, various official reports, public records, and most importantly of all, inputs from the families of former crew.

Colin Percival Harding

Colin Harding was born in 1921. The family home was in a cottage, in the corner of Sarisbury Green that is now the community centre. At the age of 5, Colin moved to Duncan Road and a home he would live in for the next 87 years. It was close to Swanwick railway station, where, as a child, Colin witnessed the death of a brother, crushed by a shunting train.

In 1938, in response to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's assessment that there would be 'Peace in our time', Colin joined the Royal Navy!

Early in World War II, Colin was serving in HMS Hood. He was drafted ashore for a gunnery course, and so missed the sinking of the ship.

His war took him to other places, including Crete, which he left, in an open boat with a number of other men, off the south of the island as the Germans were parachuting into the north. The boat was spotted by an Italian submarine, which tried to ram them. The officers left and swam to the submarine to allow the rest to escape. Colin piloted the boat across the Mediterranean to Egypt and, for this, was mentioned in dispatches and received an oak leaf endorsement to his medal to show for it.

He then became a frogman attached to the Royal Marine Commandos. He specialised in demolitions, and helped destroy Normandy beach defences immediately before D Day, and so helped pave the way for the invasion. Later, he participated in the Allied advance through Holland.

'Demobbed' after the war, Colin found employment as a conductor with The Southdown Motor Bus Company. On one occasion, when his driver was late, he tried to help by driving the bus to the route start point. Forgetting that the brakes needed to be 'pumped' to be effective, he crashed the bus and demolished a post office! Later, he went to work at the Swanwick & District Basket Factory. It made punnets for strawberries, and was near his home in Duncan Road. It was there that he met his future wife, and they married on 2nd August 1952.

Colin passed away on 7th July 2013.