Ships
- HMS Grenville Captain from 28 January 1944
Harold Pitcairn Henderson was born on 3 April 1901 and was commissioned into the Royal Navy as an acting sub-lieutenant on 15 September 1920. He became a sub-lieutenant in May 1921, a lieutenant in May 1923, and a lieutenant-commander in May 1931. Promotion to commander followed on 31 December 1936. In the first half of the Second World War he was mentioned in despatches twice, on 16 August 1940 and on 11 June 1942.
His first wartime sea command was the sloop Black Swan, which he joined as a commander on 25 October 1940. On 1 November she struck a mine in the Firth of Forth, was docked at Rosyth, and went to Dundee for repairs that lasted into the following spring. Henderson left her before the end of 1940. On 23 December he took command of the destroyer Venomous. Six days later she too was mined, in Liverpool Bay, and after repair he kept her on Atlantic convoy work, including Gibraltar routes and Halifax convoys, until 3 July 1941. He moved the next day to the destroyer Boadicea and stayed in her until February 1942. On 15 March 1942 he became commanding officer of the destroyer Harvester. While still in that ship he was promoted captain on 30 June 1942, and he left her on 9 August.
From 8 October 1942 until November 1943 Henderson commanded the destroyer depot ship Philoctetes at Freetown in Sierra Leone, the assembly port for the South Atlantic convoys. He returned to a fleet destroyer on 16 November 1943 as captain of Jervis. Off Anzio on 23 January 1944, in the air attack that sank the destroyer Janus, Jervis was hit by a German glider bomb. The ship had no casualties. She made Naples under her own power, accompanied by the tug Weasel and escorted by Grenville.
On 28 January 1944 Henderson assumed command of HMS Grenville, the U-class flotilla leader. Through February and March she worked in the central Mediterranean and the Adriatic after the Anzio landings. In April she went north for the invasion of Normandy. In May she joined Bombarding Force K of Force G, with the cruisers Orion, Ajax, Argonaut and Emerald and destroyers of her own flotilla, and practised bombardment in the North-Western Approaches. Grenville sailed from the Clyde on 3 June. On 6 June 1944 she gave gunfire support to the troops landing on Gold Beach, then stayed in the Eastern Task Force area for further bombardment and for patrols against surface craft and submarines off the beachhead. She remained in the English Channel with the flotilla after the assault phase ended.
In August 1944 Grenville was nominated for the Pacific. A refit followed. In October she sailed for the Mediterranean, and on 10 November she bombarded Civitanova and Pedaso on the Italian Adriatic coast before going on to Ceylon. She joined the British Pacific Fleet on its formation on 22 November 1944. In January 1945 she was in the screen of Task Force 63 for Operation Lentil, the carrier strike on the oil refineries at Pangkalan Brandan in Sumatra, and later that month for Meridian I and Meridian II against the refineries at Pladjoe and Soengei Gerong, north of Palembang. After Sydney, Manus and Ulithi she screened the fleet off the Sakishima Islands in support of the Okinawa landings, covered the April strikes on Formosa, and in May stood by the battleships during the approach to bombard Miyako, which was broken off when the carriers came under heavy air attack. Henderson remained in command until June 1945, while Grenville was at Sydney.
He resumed command of Grenville on 27 August 1945 and kept her until the middle of 1946. On 11 June 1946 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Henderson retired on 7 July 1951. In the New Year honours of 1955 he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.