A great uncle of mine was one of the submariners who piloted one of the midget subs that blew up the German warship Tirpitz in Norway using limpet mines.
A book was written about it – Above Us The Waves – in which he appeared as ‘Geordie Worthy’. But he very much was a Sunderland (Hendon) boy not from Newcastle. It’s just wasn’t a big deal then, I guess, and way before ‘Mackem’ became popular.
It was later made into a hit film, starring Sir John Mills. But sadly poor old ‘Geordie’ wasn’t featured in it.