In July 1945, Leading Seaman James Joseph Magennis and three other frogmen, on a covert mission in a midget submarine, weaved their way through miles of minefields to reach the 10,000 tonne Japanese cruiser, Takao, which was guarding the entrance to Singapore Harbour.
As the British naval team steadied directly below the ship it was the 25-year-old west Belfast man, Magennis, who fitted on his frog suit and slipped out the hatch into the murky water to begin his task.
Despite a leak in his breathing apparatus, he succeed in scraping inches of barnacles from the hull of the cruiser and attaching six mines before struggling back into the submarine 45 minutes later.
He had already made naval history as the first person to exit a submarine in a diving suit, perform a military operation and return to the same submarine.
But the mine-carrying mechanism wouldn't disengage, so the crew could not make their escape. Magennis refused to let his commanding officer, Lieut Ian Fraser, a less experienced diver, venture out to carry out the task. He said later: "Knowing it was my job, I went out and did it." Seven minutes later he collapsed back in the capsule barely conscious but with the mission complete. The crew sped for open water past Japanese battleships in the strait. Six hours later the Takao exploded and allied forces for miles around saw the glow.
Magennis and Fraser were awarded the Victoria Cross by King George at Buckingham Palace at the end of the war. He returned to Belfast a hero having received the highest military honour for gallantry. It was thought by many that he should receive the freedom of Belfast, as he was the only person from the North to win the VC during the second World War, but this never materialised.
Belfast artist George Fleming researched Magennis's life for his book Magennis VC. He tells a sad tale of a chequered career in the British navy followed by a civilian life of relative hardship and poverty. He says the city council rejected the boy from the Falls Road for the simple reason that he was a Catholic: "The unionist-dominated city council would have seen him as an embarrassment because he didn't fit the mould of the disloyal Catholic. To cover up their refusal to give him the freedom [of the city] they had to do something so they launched a shilling fund, hoping that he'd get a couple of hundred pounds and it would satisfy him. But the people didn't care what religion he was and he got over £3,000, which was an awful lot of money."
Magennis returned briefly to the British navy but left in 1949, a period of detention "in the rattle" marring his final weeks of service. He returned to Belfast but times had changed, the South had pulled out of the Commonwealth and declared a Republic. The attitude to partition had hardened with the introduction of the principle of consent by the British government. The post-war euphoria was very much over and the heroism shown by Magennis was cast aside.
"Unless you understand the working-class element of Protestant Belfast . . . everything is based on military romanticism, from the Boyne through the Williamite wars to the Somme. That is one of the cliches of Ulster Protestantism - "We are the heroes, we are the best and we won." Having a Catholic hero didn't fit that, so in the Protestant areas, James Magennis was a vote loser and he wasn't wanted, says Fleming.
The nationalist community also spurned Magennis for his service in the British armed forces. He had been brave but for the British armed forces and not Ireland, which made him a traitor. On a visit to his old school, St Finian's on the Falls Road, none of the school children rose from their seats when he entered the room, as was customary.
By 1952 times were hard for Magennis. His eldest son David was killed by a trolley bus on the Cregagh Road in east Belfast, where he lived with wife Edna. He was laid off from his job at the Royal Navy air station at Sydenham and had spent the £3,000 raised for him by the people of Belfast. He was forced to sell his Victoria Cross to a pawn shop for £75 and it made headline news in Belfast for all the wrong reasons.
"There was a terrible bad-mouth campaign launched by the powers that be when he sold his VC. They used it to portray `There, that's what a Catholic does with his medal of honour; he doesn't care'. People ask me what did he do with the money. He divided it out among his large working-class family; he was a generous sort of soul. But undoubtedly many a drink bill was paid by him; he was young," adds Fleming.
Magennis received hundreds of letters castigating him for selling his medal. The pawn shop agreed to give it back to him but only if a journalist and a photographer were present. It was the ultimate embarrassment for the mild-mannered seaman.
He realised he was not welcome in Protestant unionist east Belfast or in Catholic nationalist west Belfast. "As attitudes hardened in Northern Ireland he was the little guy in the middle caught in a strange religious and political trap. The only thing was to go to England."
In 1955 he moved to Doncaster where he worked as an electrician down a mine and then on to Bradford where he worked and lived for 30 years. An electrician by trade, he lived in a council house in the town and on his death in July 1986, Bradford claimed him as its own war hero, erecting a plaque in his honour in the local Anglican cathedral.
"Whereas most VC winners went on to become admirals, Magennis died in relative poverty and obscurity without ever being granted any official recognition in his native city of Belfast - until now," says Fleming.
A campaign by George Fleming to have Magennis honoured by Belfast resulted yesterday in the unveiling of a memorial in the grounds of the City Hall by the Ulster Unionist mayor of Belfast, Cllr Robert Stoker. It is the first to be erected by the council to a Catholic from a working-class back ground.
Lieut Fraser VC, now almost 80 years old, attended the unveiling of the six-foot bronze and portland stone plinth, which is shaped like a ship's capstan. Also present were members of Magennis's family and Mr William Gould VC, the only other surviving Royal Navy Victoria Cross winner from the second World War.
The Victoria Cross awarded to James Magennis is no longer in the family's possession. On their father's death his three surviving sons sold the medal because they could not afford to insure it.
The anonymous buyer is rumoured to be a Canadian millionaire with over 100 Victoria Crosses in his collection. The first Royal Navy Victoria Cross to be sold at public auction fetched £31,900 but this didn't surprise the auctioneer at Sotheby's, who said "estimates are always difficult in a case of something so unique and with such a story".
Magennis VC by George Fleming is published by History Ireland 1998.