During WWII, the sailors of the British merchant navy played a vital role keeping the UK fed and armed. They carried essential supplies across the treacherous Atlantic - and many paid with their lives. What's less well known is that many of those sailors were Chinese - volunteers who came to Britain to help the war effort. Joe Phillip's father was one of those seamen, and after the war he returned to Liverpool to rejoin his wife and children. But shortly after returning home, he disappeared without a trace.

The mystery of what happened to him, and hundreds of other Chinese sailors who also vanished, is only now being solved - thanks to newly released Government papers. In this exclusive History Hit investigation we tell the story of those brave men and the families they left behind, and reveal the shocking truth hidden in those files.