Ships
- HMS Whelp Captain from 28 February 1944
George Anthony Francis Norfolk was born on 4 April 1907 and spent his adult life in the Royal Navy. He became an acting sub-lieutenant on 1 September 1927, a sub-lieutenant on 1 March 1928, and a lieutenant on 1 August 1929. A lieutenant-commander's rank followed on 1 August 1937.
He was promoted commander on 31 December 1939, at the end of the first months of the war, and was mentioned in despatches on 1 January 1940. That autumn he held a brief command of the minelayer Agamemnon, from 5 November to 21 November 1940. He remained a commander through the rest of the war.
On 28 February 1944 he took command of the new W-class destroyer Whelp. Hawthorn Leslie had built her at Hebburn on the Tyne. She had been laid down on 1 May 1942, launched on 3 June 1943, and came into service in the spring of 1944 for the 27th Destroyer Flotilla. While the ship worked up, Lieutenant Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later Duke of Edinburgh, served as Norfolk's first lieutenant.
The early months were spent with the Home Fleet. Off Scapa Flow in May 1944, Whelp drilled at anti-submarine work and gunnery and stood by larger ships during exercises. In mid-June she went north to Spitsbergen on a run that resupplied the small Allied garrison there. On 2 August the flotilla sailed for the East. Whelp reached Trincomalee in Ceylon on 12 September and joined the Eastern Fleet that autumn.
From then until the Japanese surrender, Norfolk's destroyer screened the fleet's aircraft carriers. She covered air strikes on Japanese-held targets in the Nicobar Islands and the Dutch East Indies, and later, with the British Pacific Fleet, strikes against Formosa and the approaches to Okinawa. Her work was the escort screen: keeping station on the carriers and guarding the force at sea.
Whelp lay in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945 for the formal Japanese surrender. She then served from Hong Kong with the 27th Destroyer Flotilla and took part in bringing Allied prisoners home from Japanese camps. The ship was paid off in January 1946. Norfolk's command continued into the early part of that year.
He was promoted captain on 31 December 1947. On 23 May 1952 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He became a rear-admiral on 7 January 1957, was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 January 1959, and retired on 21 August 1959.