That changed the world

James Joseph Magennis VC (1919-1986)

"Knowing it was my job, I went out and did it."

Belfast-born sailor who won the Victoria Cross serving as Leading Seaman on the midget submarine XE3 in Operation Struggle, a daring attack on the Japanese 10,000-ton heavy cruiser Takao in the Johore Straits, off Singapore Dockyard in July 1945, just before the end of WW2.

In murky dangerous waters he squeezed through the jammed hatch. Reattached his breathing apparatus. And scraped razor-sharp barnacles off Takao's hull and attached 6 mines. With cut hands and leaking breathing apparatus he dives again to release an explosives carrier freeing the sub to escape out to open sea.

“I have never met a braver man." Ian Fraser VC