The Night Mail

[J. S. Bach]

8 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 ...snip... I evinced more interest in the engine room and spent as much time as I could talking to the Chief Engineer and his team .

Dave

Sounds like me when I visited the U. S. S. Texas museum battleship and memorial. After doing the regular walkabout tour, I asked to see the engine room; they dredged up someone to show me and we both spent a quite a bit of time down there. It was fascinating.

[Dave Hunt]

The Guys on Oberon pulled a great stunt when they were tied up at HMS Terror in Singapore. They threw a cocktail psrty and invited about four bus loads of guests and when everyone had arrived and were standing on the quayside they invited the, by now bemused. attendees below. It was fairly obvious to everyone that the number of guests couldn't possibly fit into an O Class boat but somehow the line was slowly disappearing down the forward hatch. What no-one had noticed was the line ascending out of the rear hatch behind a canvas screen and making its way to the large building where the party was actually taking place. My Squadron sent them a thank you card with a picture of a bulging sardine tin labelled 'Oberon'. 

 

RN 1, Other Services 0 

[pH]

18 minutes ago, polybear said:

Bear wonders which of the three services (Army, Navy, RAF) gave the best chance of surviving WW2?  Given the choice I'd guess the RAF - assuming you weren't aircrew, of course.

One of my uncles was regular RAF before WW2 and served as aircrew till 1946 - Bomber Command, then Transport Command. A lot of good luck seemed to be involved. Having survived that, he was one of the most unflappable people I knew.

 

And his pilot from his first wartime tour survived too, and they met again through the Canadian Legion decades later.

[jamie92208]

I have report a good afternoon was had watching trains, made even better qs Andy's wife had supplied flapjack and LDC. The latter had obviously to be eaten quickly as we didn't want the douarniers to have to try to quarantine bears and hippos at the border.

 

Jamie

[PhilJ W]

The chances of survival depended not so much on which service you were in as much as where you were. One of my managers when I worked for the council was a Royal Marine serving on HMS Prince-of-Wales. When they arrived in Singapore the Marines contingents of both P-o-W and Repulse were put ashore to reinforce the garrison. As you are probably all aware that both ships were sunk a couple of days later. He wasn't so lucky as he was taken by the Japanese when Singapore fell and he spent the next three to four years working on the death railway.

[jamie92208]

One naval party spent the war in huts on the upturned hull of a WW1 German battleship SMS Thuringen. This had been refloated in Scapa in 1938 but due to the Munich crisis the dry dock at Rosyth wasn't available. It was kept afloat with compressed air in Scapa throughout the war and a crew was on board, living in huts built on the flat bottom.  It was eventually scrapped at Faslane in 1947, still upside down.  It thus achieved  the unique distinction of having spent longer floating upside down than the right way up. Not the most comfortable place to be stationed but a lot less risky than many.

 

Jamie

[Florence Locomotive Works]

1 hour ago, J. S. Bach said:

Sounds like me when I visited the U. S. S. Texas museum battleship and memorial. After doing the regular walkabout tour, I asked to see the engine room; they dredged up someone to show me and we both spent a quite a bit of time down there. It was fascinating.

Ah, the sad case of the Texas.

 

These days, the parts of the hull in the engine room is so thin you can drop a 6 inch Crescent wrench right through it, so I’ve heard. Personally I can’t see how they are going to salvage it, as the cost of a dry dock for any ship never mind a superdreadnought would be immense. I suppose they might be able to use underwater welding to sure up parts the hull, but that doesn’t seem like a good long term solution. 
 

Apologues all for the ramble. 

[simontaylor484]

23 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

One naval party spent the war in huts on the upturned hull of a WW1 German battleship SMS Thuringen. This had been refloated in Scapa in 1938 but due to the Munich crisis the dry dock at Rosyth wasn't available. It was kept afloat with compressed air in Scapa throughout the war and a crew was on board, living in huts built on the flat bottom.  It was eventually scrapped at Faslane in 1947, still upside down.  It thus achieved  the unique distinction of having spent longer floating upside down than the right way up. Not the most comfortable place to be stationed but a lot less risky than many.

 

Jamie

My Grandad spent some time at Scapa Floe he said it was even worse than Archangel and Murmansk

[Florence Locomotive Works]

My family doesn’t have much service history. On my dads side, (the Liverpool side) my great grandfather joined the Royal Artillery in early 1940. Eventually he went though his training, and got onto the ship to France. The story goes he walked five feet off the gangway in Dunkirk and was met by an officer telling him to get back on.
 

He was a senior turbine engineer at Clarence Dock Power station in Liverpool, which provides power for the docks and parts of the city, so was considered to valuable, probably saving his and my lives. His son my grandfather was born just before the war in 1939, went to sea with Brocklebank line in the late 50s. He to was a one of the lower engineers, but from memory I think he did wear white overalls. 
 

On the Louisiana side, it is thought that some uncles very far back went to D-Day, but it’s never talked about. WW1 has never been mentioned on any side. 
 

Douglas

Edited April 24, 2021 by Florence Locomotive Works

[PhilJ W]

22 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Ah, the sad case of the Texas.

 

These days, the parts of the hull in the engine room is so thin you can drop a 6 inch Crescent wrench right through it, so I’ve heard. Personally I can’t see how they are going to salvage it, as the cost of a dry dock for any ship never mind a superdreadnought would be immense. I suppose they might be able to use underwater welding to sure up parts the hull, but that doesn’t seem like a good long term solution. 
 

Apologues all for the ramble. 

Wasn't there some mention of reinforcing it with concrete.

[Florence Locomotive Works]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Wasn't there some mention of reinforcing it with concrete.

I can't say I've heard any, but that's what the Japanese did with IJN Mikasa. Its also the last remaining British built battleship.

[Dave Hunt]

3 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

He was a senior turbine engineer at Clarence Dock Power station in Liverpool, which provides power for the docks and parts of the city, so was considered to valuable, probably saving his and my lives. 

 

Even that wasn't the safest place to be as the area was pasted by the Luftwaffe during the Liverpool blitz. It wasn't reported very much at the time as the government didn't want the Germans to know just how much damage they were doing to the Country's main supply line.

 

Dave

[J. S. Bach]

46 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

I can't say I've heard any, but that's what the Japanese did with IJN Mikasa. Its also the last remaining British built battleship.

Looking at photos of the IJN Mikasa, she reminds me of the USS Olympia in Philadelphia as they are of a similar vintage. I have visited the Olympia and the USS Becuna (SS-319) and would love to visit the Mikasa, but that will never happen..

[jamie92208]

4 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Even that wasn't the safest place to be as the area was pasted by the Luftwaffe during the Liverpool blitz. It wasn't reported very much at the time as the government didn't want the Germans to know just how much damage they were doing to the Country's main supply line.

 

Dave

That's exactly why Cairnryan and Faslane were built as military ports in case of damage to Liverpool and the south Wales ports.

 

Jamie

Edited April 24, 2021 by jamie92208

[Dave Hunt]

Liverpool handled 90% of the war materiel entering Britain as well as the headquarters for operations during the battle of the Atlantic being there and as a result was the most heavily bombed city outside London. The raids that took place in April 1941 were described by the Luftwaffe as the heaviest ever carried out against Britain. The empty shell of St. Luke's church that was destroyed by incendiary bombs is still standing as a reminder of those days and is a well-known landmark to Liverpudlians. When I was a kid it seemed that almost every street had a bomb site, which, of course, were playgrounds for us.

 

Dave

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

The empty shell of St. Luke's church that was destroyed by incendiary bombs is still standing as a reminder of those days and is a well-known landmark to Liverpudlians.

 

I can well remember visiting the baroque and rococo churches of Munich, with their polished marble pilasters and white-painted plaster wedding-cake vaults. Just inside the entrance there would invariably be a large framed photo "Interior of the church in 1945" - showing a large heap of rubble. 

Edited April 24, 2021 by Compound2632
One l in pilaster.

[Dave Hunt]

When I was first posted to Germany in 1970 there was still a lot of damage apparent in Monchengladbach, two large car parks being simply levelled bomb sites. Flying at low level in Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium etc. there are a lot of bomb craters that can still be seen and even the WW1 trench systems in Belgium and France are visible.

 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

Part of a headline from this morning's Daily Express:

 

London shooting: Gunman opens fire in cake shop

 

 

I can assure readers that PB and I were not involved.

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Part of a headline from this morning's Daily Express:

 

London shooting: Gunman opens fire in cake shop

 

 

I can assure readers that PB and I were not involved.

I should hope not HH. An operative of your size and stature- no pun intended, shouldn't have to resort to such criminality..

 

It was probably one of iL Dottorie minions attempting to gain favour with his boss by adding to his already vast cake depository. The poor chap will be quickly dispatched for getting caught I suspect. So if anybody receives a call from a contractor with a German accent offering to relay their patio for free I would be very suspicious.

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

When I was first posted to Germany in 1970 there was still a lot of damage apparent in Monchengladbach, two large car parks being simply levelled bomb sites. Flying at low level in Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium etc. there are a lot of bomb craters that can still be seen and even the WW1 trench systems in Belgium and France are visible.

 

Dave

There is also the enormous craters from the massive mines exploded under the WW1 trench systems.

https://lochnagarcrater.org/visit/

[Happy Hippo]

Considering the large numbers of Germans that were blown up when the mine was detonated, I find it rather sad that there appears to be no mention of them in any of the memorials that dot the site.

[PhilJ W]

6 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Considering the large numbers of Germans that were blown up when the mine was detonated, I find it rather sad that there appears to be no mention of them in any of the memorials that dot the site.

That is the prerogative of the German equivalent of the War Graves Commission. There are memorials to the German missing in places such as Langemark

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langemark_German_war_cemetery

However after the Great War the Germans were forbidden to build any memorial higher than two metres. Also their practice was to place their dead in a pit instead of individual graves with a black granite slab bearing the names of those interred beneath. These pits also usually contained bits of bodies recovered from the battlefield.

Edited April 24, 2021 by PhilJ W

[simontaylor484]

I think all schoolchildren should be taken to a military cemetery. I have visited some in US ones in East Anglia and Commonwealth ones at Osterbeek. Although they are a sad place obviously with the death they represent the way they are laid out is simply stunning the way the graves line up on various axis. I also visited a German cemetery in Holland that was laid out in a similar way but with black headstones granite if i recall but it was when i was 16

[Compound2632]

11 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

I think all schoolchildren should be taken to a military cemetery. 

 

It is (or perhaps one should say, was) the standard GCSE History trip. Apart from the impact of Covid, I suspect that Brexit will have made organising such trips more complicated and expensive - no EHIC - and of course not all pupils elect to do history.

[Florence Locomotive Works]

A bit of steam up was had this morning.

 

All in all, the results were good, as the engine able slightly over crawl along, however the boiler bushing was still leaking. So today I tended to thoroughly cleaning the area and resolder the bushing. My previous job with this was just using the original solder without any flux, looking back not the best idea. One of the exhaust pipes is also leaking, but this doesn’t matter as it’s the exhaust and the engine rarely goes into reverse. However, after the regulator faces were lapped in December it’s not longer leaking.
 

As we had some niceish weather today, the steam up was outside.

 

 

 

 

Douglas

Edited April 24, 2021 by Florence Locomotive Works