Royal Navy Veteran, 90th Birthday, help needed please!

Hi, I wonder if anyone could possibly help me please. My Father In Law will be 90 years old on May 9th this year. As a surprise I'm putting together a "This Is Your Life" book for him.
During WW2 he enlisted with the Royal Navy in 1940, doing his basic training at Devonport, he thinks it was HMS Raleigh, would that be right? We have gathered some random memories and I'm trying to put them together to make some sense. One ship he remembers was HMS Palmeras or Polmeras, I can't find any reference to this ship and wondered if anyone on here could point me in the right direction please. He also remembers being on board an LST (Landing Ships Tanks?) being involved in the D Day landings, and something about taking Winston Churchill's car to France? At one point his ship was torpedoed, the men were all put up in lodgings in Liverpool whilest waiting for the ship to be repaired, that's where he met his future wife.
We are fascinated to know what he would have done on a day to day basis, he can remember going to Russia, and the USA, but obviously at nearly 90 it's all a bit muddled, although he's as bright as a button and lives life to the full! Should he have been given a copy of his service record at the end of the war? All he got was a reference for his next job. Is there any way of finding these?
Many thanks for your help.

 

Hi Marion,

As your FIL is still with us he can apply for his records from the Royal Navy himself:

Ministry of Defence | Freedom of Information | How to make an official request under FOI | Requests for Access to Personal Data Held by the Ministry of Defence

The RN will not provide them to anybody save him. I know it would spoil the surprise you have planned but if you get the forms in the link above and have him sign them (you can fill out most of them yourself) and send them to the RN with a letter explaining why this is being done, they will action his request promptly.

Once you have those records (ask for photocopies of originals) we can help decipher the wheres and whens.

From what you've written here alone he had an exciting time and I would suspect that he was on the convoys to Murmansk and Arkangelsk:

http://ww2total.com/WW2/History/Battles/Arctic-convoys/Convoy-PQ-17.htm

And he would have indeed done his training at HMS Raleigh which opened in January of 1940:

http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/operati.../training-establishments/hms-raleigh/history/

I cannot find any reference to any ship called the HMS Palmeras or any variation thereof.

 

Many thanks for your advise, I will send off for the records and tell him that I need them for my family history research! I really appreciate the links too, it's odd that no record of this ship can be found, he's sure of the name, and has a very good memory, especially the far distant past! Once I have the records I will ask for more assistance if that's OK?
Again, thank you for your time.