By the casualty list, I would say it is a ship that went down, although a Rear Admiral being killed is very unusual. The nearest RN warship loss by date is 30th May, RN submarine Untamed sinking during training exercise in the North Sea. There was a lot of Naval action taking place around Pantelleria at this time, and several Atlantic convoys. Often it would take a while for ship losses to be announced, as sometimes nothing was heard from the ship, although in this case, there seem to have been wounded too.