Catalogue description Admiral Sir Robert Burnett GBE KCB DSO

Partial records of his naval career, 1903-46, including an ms. memoir (28 pp) covering his life up to August 1914 with especial reference to his early naval training and his specialisation as a physical training officer, private letters from fellow officers 1924-47, appreciations of him and various papers relating to his commands of the Home Fleet destroyer flotillas and then the 10th Cruiser Squadron in defence of convoys to North Russia from September 1942 to December 1943. The collection includes several documents concerning his action against a superior German force off the North Cape on 31 December 1942 and the sinking of the battlecruiser Scharnhorst on 26 December 1943, and there are also useful first-hand accounts by the chaplain of the battleship King George V of the sinking of the Bismarck in the Atlantic in May 1941 and by a retired naval officer of his service as a staff officer at Northwood during a NATO naval exercise in 1955 as well as an interesting lecture by Burnett on the role of chaplains in the three services.

Burnett, Sir, Robert Lindsay, 1887-1959, knight, Admiral

Unrestricted

• Russia
• Naval personnel
• Second World War, 1939-1945