Re-watched Sink the Bismarck! (1960) again and I'm not sure if I like it as much as I used to.

[Darius43]

2 minutes ago, MarkC said:

Years ago - I must watch it again

Deckhand : Nice drop o' gun, this.

Deckhand : Alright to look at. But guns are like women. You can't tell till you're in action, an' then it's too late.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[Metr0Land]

6 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

And also the admiral in charge of the battle cruiser squadron, Admiral Beatty, was a complete idiot and wanted the flash protection removed on the battle cruisers so they could have a slightly greater rate of fire.

 

so it shouldn’t be surprising that the older battle cruisers started to explode.

 

Note that Beatty was one of the worst RN admirals ever.

 

I agree, but IIRC the Admiralty was obsessed with rate of fire, not just Beatty?

[geoffers]

My late father served on HMS Bermuda, a Colony Class cruiser and a slightly smaller version of the Southampton Class, of which HMS Edinburgh and HMS Belfast were a larger development. He did at least one Arctic convoy before entering the Pacific theatre on Bermuda. Reading the Cruel Sea gave me a much better insight of his reluctance to talk about his war service. Two of his sailor uncles died in WW1, one on HMS Bulwark which blew up whilst loading ammunition at Sheerness in November 1914, and another at Jutland in 1916 aboard the destroyer HMS Ardent which was blown out of the sea by a German battlecruiser. It was their memory which prompted him to join the Navy in 1943 as a 17 year old. By mentioning it here it, at least, extends all their memories.

[The Johnster]

My father, a Merchant Navy Officer during and after the war until 1956 when he took up a position as a Cardiff Pilot, was on a convoy that was within earshot of the final battle of the Bismark escapade; in fact, some of the escorts were summoned away to join in the action, leaving the convoy unprotected.  He always assumed, possibly correctly, that the reason they were not attacked was that the stalking U boat had also been summoned to the battle, the reason that many of the Bismark survivors were abandoned to their fate as the British ships dispersed under the very real threat.

 

I enjoyed the film when I was younger as well, despite father pointing out inaccuracies and that Lutyens was never a Nazi.  Few of the surface fleet officers were, and by no means all of the U-boat men.  Dad had been in Montevideo shortly after the Graf Spee had scuttled (there were officers and seamen interred in the city that he encountered in bars and cafes, and he bought a pair of Zeiss spotting binoculars that had been liberated from the German ship by one of her officers, with a brass stamp 'SMS Graf Spee' on it, would like to know what happened to this!), and knew well that Kapitan Langsdorff was no Nazi.  One of my school chums' dad had been taken aboard her from one of the merchant ships she sank, and told me that their treatment aboard the ship from Langsdorff and his crew was exemplary, even extending to an xmas party thrown for them.  They had a bad time on the refuelling tanker, the Altmark, later sunk by Cossack, as this was very much a Nazi ship.  His internment in Germany was no barrel of laughs either, but they weren't ill-treated and always fed well, leading to them giving the guards food for their starving familiers towards the end!

 

'Cruel Sea' portrays the grimness better to my view, the grinding destruction of men's souls. the erosion of their base morality as the war stretched out, and the all pervading constant fear.  I remember men, friends of father's, from my childhood, that reminded me of Jack Hawkins in this film.  Father claimed to have only been scared once during the way, starting on 3rd September 1939 and finishing on VJ day.  But, for me, 'Das Boot' stands head and shoulders above all of them, even 'All Quiet On The Western Front', which I read as a book from school lending library.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, Metr0Land said:

Admiralty was obsessed with rate of fire

The Trafalgar mythos. It might well have been true of British gunnery in the Napoleonic wars but was no substitute for accuracy by the 20th century.

[chris p bacon]

21 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Langsdorff and his crew was exemplary, even extending to an xmas party thrown for them.  They had a bad time on the refuelling tanker, the Altmark, later sunk by Cossack

 

I've posted this before on here with pictures so won't go into too much detail, but Father was captured By Scharnhorst when in the mid Atlantic and transferred the next day to Altmark. He wouldn't say much about his time until shortly before he died, but did say the crew and captain of Scharnhorst treated them well but Altmark were absolute b'stards.

His time as a captive was not a happy one as he started off in a French concentration camp (yes the Vichy had them but was conveniently airbrushed from history afterwards).  It did get better when karl Donitz did a camp inspction and was not impressed with the French, the following day they were put on cattle trucks and sent to Northern Germany to build their own camp.  Dad had visited Germany in about 1935/6 and had a German pen friend from school so could speak some German, he was elected by his Captain to speak to Donitz and ask for more food. Donitz replied that 'everyone wanted more food' to which dad replied "you look better fed than us".

He was about 12 stone when captured and after 7 months in France was down to just over 7.  When repatriated he was back to about 9 stone.

 

He was part of a convoy but said the escort turned back when they were just 120 miles out from the Scottish coast leaving the convoy to scatter, they had 4,500 miles at 6-8 knots.

[Bon Accord]

Regarding the Bismarck episode, I remember a Geordie fireman by the name of Bill Linskey mentioned it during his wartime reminisces.

He was in SS Newbury at the time of the Bismarck action; Newbury was a nondescript, slow, coal burning tramp recently fitted with a single Bofors gun aft - her only defensive weapon.

One day in 1941 the Master (retired RN) called all the crew together on deck and said "I have been informed that the German battleship Bismarck is in this vicinity. If we sight it, we shall engage it. I expect you to do your duty as British seamen".

The mostly South Shields crew were unsurprisingly less than impressed to say the least by this speech and the donkeyman - an aged Scotsman who'd been sunk twice himself in the previous war - couldn't hear what was going on and asked Bill to repeat what the Master had said. On doing so, his reaction was to shout at the Master concerned in front of the rest of the crew "you stupid old ******, you'll get us all killed. We're ****** civilians".

The Donkeyman concerned was subsequently logged and fined for his remark.

A month or so later Bill and the Donkeyman got into bother during a run ashore in the Caribbean and went AWOL for a few days enjoying wine, women and song. On the ship's return to the UK they were both arrested and spent a few weeks in a converted Borstal, which he described as being akin to a holiday camp compared to being at sea at the time. They both therefore missed Newbury's next voyage.

On his release and whilst awaiting another ship he discovered Newbury had been sunk with her entire crew of 45 only a couple of weeks previous. The aforementioned Master was one of those lost.

Bill wasn't so lucky next time out as his next ship (SS Ashby) was sunk in the Atlantic with the loss of a quarter of the crew. He survived after spending a week in a lifeboat and then joined SS Empire Beaumont. She then went on to the Murmansk run on convoy PQ18 and was sunk on that voyage by air attack in the Arctic Circle. Again he survived this sinking, however about 2/3 of the crew did not.

Firemen in coal burners were often hard cases due to the backbreaking work and awful working conditions and Bill was true to type. Even before the war he was constantly getting into bother through drink, however his wartime experiences put him on a downward spiral as he was haunted by what he had seen.

After the war Bill joined Alcoholics Anonymous and becoming one of it's stalwarts in this country and was the first UK member to notch up 50 years sober.

He passed away about 15 years ago, a few years after committing his wartime memories to print, of which I am fortunate to possess a copy.

Just another ordinary man - a civilian - forced into an extraordinary and vicious situation.

 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

On 27/01/2022 at 19:23, OnTheBranchline said:

I recently re-watched this movie which I loved when I was younger but since now that I am older I'm becoming more torn on it.

...

It's worth a watch either way, not sure if other people felt the same.

It has been many years since I watched it. I know I saw it more than once with my dad who sailed, postwar, with the RAN. He would point out details to me.

 

One that stuck was the British gunnery officers use of "shoot", to avoid shouting "fire" aboard ship - which is of course the most terrifying word at sea.

 

The back-to-back scenes of British officers saying "shoot" and German officers "fire" with the same cuts of a gun firing felt tedious to me, even in my young impressionable form. They would be tedious still. I doubt I would ever want to watch it again, other than for nostalgic reasons.

[Ozexpatriate]

On 27/01/2022 at 22:51, Phil Bullock said:

Churchill said it was the u-boats that terrified him and the Battle of the Atlantic ... was probably the longest running battle of the war in which the role of the Merchant Marine was unheralded for too long. Brave men all. 

11 hours ago, MarkC said:

To me, the unsung heroes were the officers & crews of the Merchant Navy. At least the RN could fight back...

8 hours ago, Simon Lee said:

Indeed, the MN is still often overlooked, when there are programmes or articles about either of the two world wars. As an island nation we ignore the Merchant Navy at our peril.

 

W. S. Churchill (Their Finest Hour, 1949)

Quote

The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.

 

I concur that without the Merchant Navy (and all who served to help protect them from both sides of the pond) there would be no victory in Europe - at least along the lines we remember. In high school we did a unit on the second world war and were expected to write an essay about a battle. Most students chose subjects like El Alamein, Stalingrad or D-Day. I chose the Battle of the Atlantic.

 

The Merchant Navy were the unsung heroes of the war. Most online links point to the US Merchant Marine (which, at 1 in 26 over both wars, suffered higher casualty rates than any US service) but the British Merchant Navy had a 27% fatality rate.

Quote

27 percent of merchant seamen died through enemy action

 The overall service casualty rate was about 12.5%.

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

Few remember the extent to which the USN participated (quietly) well before the beginning of 1942 including in the hunt for the Bismarck. Some might find this USN page interesting.

Quote

American policy began to shift away from neutrality. On 27 June 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a national emergency and began American efforts to control shipping in the western hemisphere. In August, as part of informal staff talks between American and British officers, the U.S. sent military officers to observe Commonwealth operating procedures. As part of this process, and to familiarize the British with American-built seaplanes (London had ordered 200 such aircraft), U.S. Navy officers soon began flights in Coastal Command Catalina patrol aircraft. ...

 

A British Catalina aircraft of No. 209 Squadron, piloted by US Navy observer Ensign Leonard B. Smith, USNR (US Naval Reserve), spotted Bismarck at a range of about eight miles. While Ensign Smith flew the aircraft and evaded accurate German antiaircraft fire, his British copilot radioed a report of the enemy warship's location. ...

 

Later that day, naval observer Lieutenant James E. Johnson in a British Catalina from No. 240 Squadron, relieved Smith's plane and maintained contact with the German battleship until Sheffield took up a shadowing position.

Perhaps these details are also in the movie. I don't remember.

EDIT:
I have a vague memory of my dad talking about it, so perhaps it was.

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[mow]

40 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Few remember the extent to which the USN participated (quietly) well before the beginning of 1942 including in the hunt for the Bismarck. Some might find this USN page interesting.

Perhaps these details are also in the movie. I don't remember.

 

Given that the USA was still a non belligerent until Dec 7th 1941, it might come as surprise to read that HMS Illustrious was under repair at Norfolk Navy Yard from May 12th 1941. HMS Rodney was carrying material for repairs in Boston, when she was rerouted to hunt Bismarck. 

Edited January 29, 2022 by mow

[SouthernBlue80s]

3 hours ago, The Johnster said:

My father, a Merchant Navy Officer during and after the war until 1956 when he took up a position as a Cardiff Pilot, was on a convoy that was within earshot of the final battle of the Bismark escapade; in fact, some of the escorts were summoned away to join in the action, leaving the convoy unprotected.  He always assumed, possibly correctly, that the reason they were not attacked was that the stalking U boat had also been summoned to the battle, the reason that many of the Bismark survivors were abandoned to their fate as the British ships dispersed under the very real threat.

 

I enjoyed the film when I was younger as well, despite father pointing out inaccuracies and that Lutyens was never a Nazi.  Few of the surface fleet officers were, and by no means all of the U-boat men.  Dad had been in Montevideo shortly after the Graf Spee had scuttled (there were officers and seamen interred in the city that he encountered in bars and cafes, and he bought a pair of Zeiss spotting binoculars that had been liberated from the German ship by one of her officers, with a brass stamp 'SMS Graf Spee' on it, would like to know what happened to this!), and knew well that Kapitan Langsdorff was no Nazi.  One of my school chums' dad had been taken aboard her from one of the merchant ships she sank, and told me that their treatment aboard the ship from Langsdorff and his crew was exemplary, even extending to an xmas party thrown for them.  They had a bad time on the refuelling tanker, the Altmark, later sunk by Cossack, as this was very much a Nazi ship.  His internment in Germany was no barrel of laughs either, but they weren't ill-treated and always fed well, leading to them giving the guards food for their starving familiers towards the end!

 

'Cruel Sea' portrays the grimness better to my view, the grinding destruction of men's souls. the erosion of their base morality as the war stretched out, and the all pervading constant fear.  I remember men, friends of father's, from my childhood, that reminded me of Jack Hawkins in this film.  Father claimed to have only been scared once during the way, starting on 3rd September 1939 and finishing on VJ day.  But, for me, 'Das Boot' stands head and shoulders above all of them, even 'All Quiet On The Western Front', which I read as a book from school lending library.

 

I think this post deserves more likes. My grandfather and others in my family served In the Royal Navy, before he died he gave me Lothar Buchheim's book of u boat photographs ....on which Das Boot  was based upon.

 

The base morality, as you so eloquently put it, can be eroded pretty quickly. I speak from personal experience. And understandably but woringly many people today can not conceive of how easily the mind can be brutalised.

 

I agree Das Boot was a ground breaking film.

Edited January 29, 2022 by SouthernBlue80s

[brianusa]

On Netflix last night was The Edge of War.  Interesting time but missed the point to some extent.  Most should know the sequence of events leading up to Chamberlains letter waving!

    Brian

[The Johnster]

Prior to America's joining the war when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, a shock the American psyche that is difficult for us to visualise or imagine and probably the biggest influence on their foreign policy to this day, there were broadly two attitudes in that country regarding the war.  One was understandable isolisationism; they felt they were better off out of it, happy to have the Atlantic separating them from it, and many of them, or at least their parents or grandparents, had migrated to the New World specifically to escape the bondage of European attitudes, alliances, emnities, and prejudices (admittedly only to recreate them in the ghettoes of the American cities in gang warfare, but we'll gloss over that for now).  OTOH there was a body of opinion that held that the Fascist powers of Europe were every bit as 'unamerican' in their basic principles as the Russian communists, and were to be opposed to the greatest extent possible. 

 

There was also a distinct section of American society that was fairly virulently anti-British; we did not behave well during the War of Independence (ok, neither did they) and the hatred never fully died out, and of course revolution against the British is at the very core of American political and military culture.  Aligned with these people were many of Irish descent; our mishandling of the Great Famine and the atrocities of the Black and Tans fresh in their memories; they and their descendents were still funding the Provisional IRA in my lifetime!  We didn't make a lot of friends during the 18th and 19th centuries, and some of it came back to bite us in the 20th...

 

So, in 1940 and most of 41, there was on the one hand a willingness from the US government to assist the British as much as they could within the bounds of neutrality, with the likes of lease-lend (a very good business deal for the Americans) and the repair of Illustrious by the US navy at Norfolk VA, again for which the British paid, and on the other the inexplicable appointment of Admiral Ernest King, USN, to the defence of the Eastern Seaboard during the closing days of 1941 and during 1942; Doenitz would have been more effective.

 

That, of course, has no bearing on the Bismark saga, but King was a disaster to the extent that he looked as if he was on Doenitz's payroll (not suggesting that he was).  He was, however and indisputably a) anti-British in his beliefs and attitudes, and b) opposed to the convoy system as he felt it presented larger and more vulnerable targets to the U-boats.  The result was that, while transatlantic convoys were reasonably well protected by escorts with electronic detection equipment, long range bombers, and of course Bletchley Park by 1942, the American merchant shipping, particularly oil tankers, sailing independently and unprotected up the Eastern Seaboard from the oil ports of the Gulf of Mexico to the convoy assembly ports of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were sitting ducks, conveniently illuminated and silhouetted for the U-boat periscopes by the brilliantly lit shorelines they were sailing along; King refused to authorise blackouts along the Eastern Seaboard because he felt it would undermine civilian morale and spread panic.  His attitude to the effect on civilian morale of watching blazing tankers a few miles offshore sometimes close enough to hear the screams, and collecting the charred bodies of American civilian seamen off the beaches in the morning is not recorded.  It was carnage; King was one of Hitler's best allies in the Battle of the Atlantic!  The U-boat captains called it the 'happy time'.

 

If the contribution of the British Merchant Navy to the ultimate outcome of the war is overlooked, and it indubitably is, the disaster on the Eastern Seaboard, a massive setback to the Allied cause, is almost ignored.  The Americans are understandably not proud of it, and as the casualties were mostly US merchant seamen we are not as interested as we should be in their shamefully unneccessary sacrifice. 

 

Just thought I'd mention it, nobody else ever seems to...

[Hroth]

My grandfather was a Merchant Navy 3rd engineer in Chinese waters during WW1 so escaped the terrors of the Atlantic during that conflict. He was equally lucky when he signed off the SS Vestris to come home and take up a post as a Liverpool tram engineer before she sank.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Vestris

 

On topic, I've always preferred the naval war films, especially those made nearest to the conflict as the further away in time, the more influenced by anachronistic attitudes they become, a parable for our times rather than a reflection of theirs.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

... when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, a shock the American psyche that is difficult for us to visualise or imagine and probably the biggest influence on their foreign policy to this day,

I disagree. Pearl Harbor was politically "useful" for FDR and Churchill almost equally. FDR knew war was inevitable and had been moving in that direction since the Japanese invasion of China. US possessions in the Philippines were particularly threatened. He needed a politically acceptable reason.

 

The fact that the Pacific Fleet was moved to Pearl Harbor from San Diego in April of 1940 should suggest anticipation of the inevitability of conflict with the Empire of Japan.

 

Allied victory had an enormous impact on post-war US foreign policy, not Pearl Harbor.

 

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

there were broadly two attitudes in that country regarding the war.  One was understandable isolisationism; they felt they were better off out of it, happy to have the Atlantic separating them from it ...

A political majority wanted the return to the Monroe Doctrine after Wilson's intervention in the Great War and the failed League of Nations. Others knew that this policy was neither going to succeed nor be in the best interests of the US.

 

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

OTOH there was a body of opinion that held that the Fascist powers of Europe were every bit as 'unamerican' in their basic principles as the Russian communists, and were to be opposed to the greatest extent possible.

Not unlike the UK, in the 1930s there were plenty of influential supporters for the Fascists in the US; Charles Lindberg and Henry Ford are good examples, both decorated by the regime in Germany. There were also large communities of the descendants of German and Italian immigrants, which reinforced adherence to the Monroe Doctrine.

 

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

There was also a distinct section of American society that was fairly virulently anti-British; ... Aligned with these people were many of Irish descent; 

You make a lot of sweeping generalizations here. It's not all 'wrong' but it feels very overstated. Except where they built enclaves in large northeastern cities, the Irish immigrants to the US were despised (like most immigrants) during the 19th century by the "WASP" establishment. They did not have political influence at a national level in the 1930s.

 

The US had many contingency war plans in the 1930s, one of which was "War Plan Red" focused on the British Empire.

 

All this of course is entirely  relative to "Sink the Bismarck".

 

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Ozexpatriate
Off topic

[BR60103]

A little controversy in Ontario that bears on some posts above.

 

The town of Ajax has its streets named after crewmen on HMS Ajax.

One, though, is named Langsdorff. The naming is being used to attack a politician.

 

He honoured a Nazi. How can Andrea Horwath think he’s a great NDP candidate? | The Star

(Sorry, I can't get links to post. Newspaper Toronto Star, Jan 29)

 

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, brianusa said:

On Netflix last night was The Edge of War.  Interesting time but missed the point to some extent. 

I haven't seen it but did see one of the actors on television doing promotional television appearances. It is intentionally provocative regarding the conventional narrative.

Their thesis is that "appeasement" in the Munich Agreement in 1938 was necessary to allow British preparations for war.

 

I found this article to be thoughtful. It makes a couple of interesting observations:

Quote

Indeed, in his enthusiasm for the Spitfire and Hurricane, Chamberlain showed more insight than Churchill, who, as a Tory backbencher, felt that the RAF should be concentrating production on two-seater fighters with rearward-firing turrets. In 1938 Churchill explained: “The urgency for action arises from the fact that the Germans must know we have banked on the forward-shooting, plunging Spitfire, whose attack must most likely resolve itself into a pursuit which, if not instantly effective, exposes the pursuer to destruction.”

 

Exactly such a plane was being made, though not in the quantities that Churchill wanted. It was called the Boulton-Paul Defiant and proved a disaster in the war, offering little more than target practice for the Luftwaffe.

Quote

Contradicting his reputation for parsimony, Chamberlain poured money into a succession of 13 RAF expansion programmes, while, as prime minister, he approved the construction of a series of aircraft factories, most notably the world’s largest plant at Castle Bromwich in Birmingham, which was meant to produce 1,000 Spitfires by June 1940. By 1939, rearmament was swallowing 21.4 per cent of Britain’s gross national product, a figure that reached 51.7 per cent by 1940. When Chamberlain finally declared war in September 1939, Britain’s aircraft output had overtaken that of Germany’s.

Quote

In autumn 1938 Fighter Command had just 25 squadrons, mostly made up of obsolete biplanes. By the eve of the Battle of Britain, there were 58, most of them Spitfires and Hurricanes. Denis Webb, a manager at the Supermarine company that built the Spitfire, wrote, “Chamberlain’s despised scrap of paper gave us a good return”.

As my previous post, this is  from "Sink the Bismarck".

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Ozexpatriate

[The Johnster]

10 hours ago, BR60103 said:

A little controversy in Ontario that bears on some posts above.

 

The town of Ajax has its streets named after crewmen on HMS Ajax.

One, though, is named Langsdorff. The naming is being used to attack a politician.

 

He honoured a Nazi. How can Andrea Horwath think he’s a great NDP candidate? | The Star

(Sorry, I can't get links to post. Newspaper Toronto Star, Jan 29)

 

Bit of a history lesson needed to clarify things in Ajax, Ont., I think.  Langsdorff was most certainly not a Nazi, and his actions in Montevideo show this most clearly.  He ordered Graf Spee scuttled by a skeleton crew flying the battle flag of the German Imperial Navy, not the Kreigsmarin, showing very publicly where his personal sympathies lay and doing considerable propaganda harm to the Nazi cause.  His suicide in a Montevideo hotel room echoed the fate of his ship; his career was of course over and one doubts that his prospects would have been viable had he returned to Germany.  it is important not to label Germans fighting honourably for their country as Nazis unless they clearly were.  One can serve a dishonourable nation with personal honour, and I contend that Langsdorff did exactly this, and so did Lutyens to bring us back on topic!  The film portrayal of Lutyens in 'Sink the Bismark' was well off.

 

Father arrived on a merchant ship a few days later while the wreckage was still smouldering as they passed it, glad that a major threat to his ship had been removed.  He took a 127 Brownie of it which I remember seeing.

[Phil Bullock]

As did Rommel and Canares …. Both of whom paid the ultimate price at the hands of the regime,

[JeremyC]

On 29/01/2022 at 11:14, MarkC said:

To me, the unsung heroes were the officers & crews of the Merchant Navy. At least the RN could fight back...

Agree totally!

My maternal grandfather was an engineer in the Merchant Navy and went through both wars safely. His brother who was also an engineer was killed when his ship the 'SS Cairndhu' was torpedoed and sunk. His name is listed on the Tower Hill Memorial in London which commemorates the men and women of the Merchant and Fishing Fleets who died in both World Wars and have no known grave.

My nearest experience of wars was twice being on tankers sent into the Persion Gulf while it was a war zone. At the time there had been attacks on tankers in the region, but fortunately nothing happened to us. I still have some photos of one of the ships with large union flags painted on the main deck to identify our nationality.

Edited January 30, 2022 by JeremyC

[62613]

21 minutes ago, JeremyC said:

Agree totally!

My maternal grandfather was an engineer in the Merchant Navy and went through both wars safely. His brother who was also an engineer was killed when his ship the 'SS Cairndhu' was torpedoed and sunk. His name is listed on the Tower Hill Memorial in London which commemorates the men and women of the Merchant and Fishing Fleets who died in both World Wars and have no known grave.

My nearest experience of wars was twice being on tankers sent into the Persion Gulf while it was a war zone. At the time there had been attacks on tankers in the region, but fortunately nothing happened to us. I still have some photos of the ship with large union flags painted on the main deck to identify our nationality.

You were lucky. I know of at least two ships of my former company that were hit.

[SouthernBlue80s]

2 hours ago, Phil Bullock said:

As did Rommel and Canares …. Both of whom paid the ultimate price at the hands of the regime,

 

To expand...

 

Canares certainly. Rommel I am less sure about, as he was a body guard to Hitler ealier in his career. Certainly by 1944, like many German oficers, he was disillusioned. Incidently my wife works today with a certain Frau Rommel.

 

Also I have found that many people wether they were clergy, officers and so on, who one would consider to be NAZIs in the 30s often dropped their support in the 40s. Cardinal Galen of Munster being a good example. Allegiances changed.

Edited January 30, 2022 by SouthernBlue80s

[geoffers]

For those who are interested in ships here is a photograph of HMS Bermuda, C52, in Sydney Harbour in 1945 or 46,  The photo is in a ruinous state, sadly, as after my mother died in 1986 I suspect my father destroyed, or tried too, much of his past life. The photos he had of Nagasaki post-bomb, and which I remember seeing as a boy, were not found when my sister and I went through his possessions after he died in 1992 - not that I am sure I would want to see them again. In 1961 not long before decommissioning HMS Bermuda was moored at Portland Naval Base and was open to visitors on the Open Day. Needless to say my mother and I were dragged all over the ship to the consternation of the OOW who finally caught up with us.

 

 

[geoffers]

Incidentally Dad transited home in 1946 or 47 on HMS Belfast for demobbing. He had been encoraged to sign up properly (as he was Hostilities Only) but demob fever was raging, a decision he regretted. In the 60s he became a Deputy Sector Warden in the Civil Defence Corps before it was disbanded and in the 70s and early 80s served in the Royal Auxiliary Navy Service (RNXS)  and sailed in HMS Portesham, a Ham Class Minesweeper based at Poole. So the sense of service in him, did not die out. Did it carry on in me? Well I never joined the services but did work as a meteorologist and forecaster with the RAF and Army. Not that you wished to know that .