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thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt
2021 Posts
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11/02/2006
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SIX GENERATIONS. I WAS THE FIFTH ,& THE OLDEST MAN TO JOIN THE NAVY SINCE WW2. I ENTERED THE RN. ON MARCH 13th 1972 JUST UNDER THE AGE LIMIT OF 32. BASIC TRAINING WAS AT HMS RALEIGH (TORPOINT) AND I WAS MADE CLASS LEADER IN THE FIRST WEEK. 22 MEN FROM ALL OVER THE UK MADE UP COLLINGWOOD CLASS 11, JOHN GREENBANK FROM EARBY WAS IN MY CLASS. WE ALL WORKED HARD AND WON THE "CAKE"FOR THE BEST TURNOUT EACH OF THE SIX WEEKS WE WERE THERE. I WAS AWARDED THE CAPTAINS PRIZE FOR THE HIGHEST OVERALL MARKS AND AT "PASSING OUT" PARADE, I WAS PRESENTED WITH MY GOLD INSIGNIA BY PRINCESS ANNE. PART TWO OF TRAINING TOOK PLACE AT HMS SULTAN(GOSPORT) THE NAVY MARINE ENGINEERING SCHOOL. JOHN GREENBANK PROVED HIMSELF TO BE A GOOD ATHLETE AND MY LADS TOOK THE LIONS SHARE OF FIRSTS ON SPORTS DAY. AT THE END OF PART TWO TRAINING THREE OF US STAYED AT SULTAN TO DO THE SSMEM COURSE HAVING GAINED THE MARKS REQUIRED FOR ACCELERATED ADVANCEMENT, THE OTHERS WERE DRAFTED TO SHIPS. A FURTHER TWO MONTHS WERE SPENT ON TRAINING AND I THEN JOINED HMS GRENVILLE(FRIGATE) FOR SEA TRAINING. THUS IT BEGAN. MORE TO FOLLOW.
thomo
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moh
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Posted - 22/02/2007 : 20:23
So am I to take it Western Isles was a shore base? Sounds a bit harsh
Say only a little but say it well  |
davidA
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Posted - 22/02/2007 : 20:24
Yes, here is a story about what happened on my last (best) draft Frank. I was on 'HMS Fawn' (a survey ship with a NATO crew) surveying in the west indies. I was a stoker PO keeping a watch down the engine room (no boilers on that ship) There were about four or five senior rates, nine or ten junior rates, and about five officers (total)
I used to go ashore and drink with the Doctor, who was British (very smooth) and a two and a half ringer. The Ausi Skipper was a total animal and was always pi**** out of his mind.
He went ashore one day in Trinidad (when we were doing a short refit) and was picked up by the police and thrown in jail.
When myself and the Doc returned to the ship after a run ashore the Doc was notified and asked to pick up and bail out the skipper from jail.
We were both totally shattered but went out to the police station to pick him up.
The Doc and the Skipper never got on very well together and when the skipper started hurling abuse (at the police station) he refused to sign papers to take him back to the ship. He told him that he was going to take command of the ship and leave him in the jail, to be sent home later.
We had about four or five more days in refit and we let him sweat it out before we picked him up (only a few hours before we were due to sail)
We had draught beer in the senior rates mess and duty free spirits in the wardroom. The voyage was a total hoot and was a super last draft... They offered me the Mech's course if I would sign on for another seven but I refused and went elsewhere LOL.
Edited by - davidA on 22 February 2007 20:27:46
Edited by - davidA on 22 February 2007 20:31:24
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frankwilk
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Posted - 23/02/2007 : 08:55
Hi David.
I bet the draught beer was either Watney's Red Barrell, or Double Diamond. Canned lager in the 60s used to be Tennants with either " Ann going to work " or "Ann on the Beach" etc on the side of the can. MOH I am waiting again for the postman.
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
moh
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Posted - 23/02/2007 : 11:31
You will need a bank loan at this rate - I bet ONS are rubbing their hands together
Say only a little but say it well |
davidA
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Posted - 23/02/2007 : 15:28
You are right Frank. Yes, the beer was Watney's Red Barrell.
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thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt
2021 Posts
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Posted - 23/02/2007 : 18:45
Could have been Watneys Ships Ale, specialy brewed for the mob and roughly equivalent to three pints of anything else, In Bremerhaven, the local Bergermiester came on board and set up a large barrel of rum under the fwd 6" turret, apparently all British sailors who visit that port are entitled to a "Good gulp of true rum" we also got a bottle to take home. Absolute aviation spirit! and not for the undeveloped pallete of the amateur. Keep the blue lamp swinging lads. you are doing well. Regards to you all. Thomo. RN Retd but not regretted.
thomo |
frankwilk
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Posted - 23/02/2007 : 19:10
Jesus Thomo, 6" shells
None of the Gunners would have been able to lift them when I was in the mob in the 60s !!!!!!
You can come round for 1/2 a tot any day.
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt
2021 Posts
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Posted - 24/02/2007 : 12:49
Yes Frank, serious "Whoosh bang oo nasty". They came in the form of a two part item, Projectile and Propelant, the latter being a cordite filled brass cartridge about four feet in length, after a "shoot" some of the spent cases would find their way into the machine shop for conversion to ashtrays etc. The gun itself was a twin mounting and had been reduced in combined firing rate from sixty rounds per minute to forty. The amunition was ex WW2 and was just a bit dodgy. A round every three seconds requires that the breech is already opening as the projectile exits the barrel and the next one is already in place. On a shoot off Cape Wrath a shell failed to exit the barrel, the breech opened and the hot gasses having nowhere else to go went down into the plenum space which is linked to the magazine. The on duty Mech reacted very swiftly and hit the magazine flood button, "Fire,Fire,Fire. Fire in the fwd magazine" As a member of the DC party I had to get from 3M2 mess along the Burma Way up fwd, not easy when everybody else is trying to get as far aft as possible. The magazine was completely flooded and my parties job was to get it pumped out. So suitably devoid of metal objects and having been warned that wet charges are very unstable, down we went, following the falling water level and removing pockets of ogin that remained with a rubber suction nozzle. On completion of this task we made our way out at which point ME Richardson (Irish) commented "Its just like bloody plasticine" and on turning found that he had poked his finger into the open end of a charge, fortunately the air only turned blue and not white and hot. If you positioned yourself carefully during a shoot you could follow the path of a shell and during such in the Indian Ocean a few of us were doing just that. More dodgy ammo, out of twenty rounds, six exploded prematurely, the last of these ended the shoot when it went off just over the side removing all that wasnt bolted down and some things that were from the focsl. No, life was never dull in the mob.
thomo |
thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt
2021 Posts
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Posted - 24/02/2007 : 13:34
Still on the subject of things that go bang, Off Florida in the 70s we were exercising with the second best navy who in their generosity had provided a patched up WW2 cruiser as a target for a shoot. Their imput into this shoot came in the shape of the USS Newport News which like us mounted 6" guns and was I believe the trial ship for male/female sailor cohabitation which like their efforts to sink the target or at least bend it a bit was a useless exercise. It was their target so they got the first bang at it and we were to go second in line with Devonshire third. All off watch were up there rubbernecking, "Guns will shortly open fire" followed by the audible clang of the firing gongs, at this point all eyes were on the target which very swiftly and without any fuss disappeared beneath the waves, folloed by great gusts of laughter and the Immortal words, "Thats how its done Yanks, frighten the buggers to death". At the aforementioned shoot in the Indian Ocean, the ship inline ahead of us was an ex WW2 British Destroyer, then in the hands of the Pakistani Navy. This ship had the old open turret gun arangement and it was amazing to watch the guns being fed and fired by hand. Later in the dockyard at Karachi the scene resembled a WW2 ship museum all ex RN. Hunt Class, Trbals,V&Ws and their pride and joy, the flagship, the Badur, ex HMS Ajax of river Plate fame. Also with us at this time were units of the Imperial Iranian Navy and during our time in port I became friends with a Chief ME. He came on board one afternoon in a very upset state. The Mad Ayatolla had taken over Iran, this meant that the crews of these three ships could not go home and that they would probably never see their families again. Men started to disappear having been payed off in cash and by the end of the week there were not enough left to crew on ship let alone three. Our friendly Chief came on board with a hatfull of cash and took us ashore for a night out from which recovery was lengthy indeed. But I still have a cap tally from the Badur.
thomo |
davidA
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Posted - 24/02/2007 : 18:22
Good story thomo. Who's next for a sea story?
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frankwilk
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Posted - 24/02/2007 : 22:48
Once upon a time.
I will write the rest later
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
frankwilk
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Posted - 09/03/2007 : 22:41
Still thinking on what to write, but not crossed the bar yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Frank Wilkinson Once Navy Always Navy |
thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt
2021 Posts
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Posted - 10/03/2007 : 09:37
You take your time Shipmate. One thing that Sailors in general and Stokers in particular have in common is the ability to tell it as it was whilst being able to lift even the darker events. I recall how often when home on leave and in my local when asked where I had been, just how easy it was to create space when describing runs ashore in exotic locations.
thomo |
handlamp
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Posted - 20/03/2007 : 15:37
MY NAVY SERVICE
I reported to HMS Royal Arthur at Skegness (Butlins Holiday Camp) about 4/00pm on 2nd December 1943 having travelled by the unusual route of LMS to Lincoln. As a result of an aptitude test it was decided that my immediate future in the `Andrew' would be as a Supply Assistant, but first I would have to undergo six weeks `square bashing'.
Apart from being confirmed by the Bishop of Grimsby at Lumley Road Church, my stay at Skegness was not very memorable. I can recall a lifebelt familiarisation exercise which involved umping into a large tank full of water wearing that piece of necessary equipment. However, no attempt was made to teach us to swim which would seem to have been appropriate. After we had been on the base a few days there was a strong rumour that a hut adjoining the beach had been emptied of inmates overnight. This was allegedly due to those hapless ratings having been seized by a landing party of Germans and whisked away on a U boat waiting off shore. On reflection it does seem a bit far fetched to believe that such an assignment could (a) ever be undertaken and (b) be successful. Nevertheless, I heard the same tale just over a year later in Trincomallee from a lad who boasted to have been in the adjoining hut.
At the end of the training we were given a long weekend leave and transferred to various establishments throughout the country for further training appropriate to the branch of the service to which we had been allocated. In my case this was HMS President V which was located at Highgate School where I reported as a Supply Probationer on 11th February 1944.
We were billeted at private houses in the Highgate area on a sort of bed, breakfast and evening meal basis. This was my first introduction to the bombing which, at that time, was largely of the incendiary nature. Our landlady's family had decided that air raids could most advantageously be endured by going to, or remaining in bed, rather than spending long hours in damp and cold shelters. This seemed an excellent idea which we adopted with alacrity, although our resolve did waver occasionally when Jerry did not play the game and dropped a few high explosives rather too near for comfort. Frequently our slumbers were abruptly interrupted by the pom-pom anti aircraft guns which were brought out and operated from the railway at the rear of our dwelling but at least we were warm and did usually get a few hours sleep each night. A few nights were spent fire watching at the school but the nearest I came to any action was extinquishing a smouldering incendiary which had landed in the yard.
Evenings out in the City were marked by us observing the populace claiming their night's sleeping quarters on the platforms of the tube stations as we went out, and seeing most of them bedded down on our return.
Having the advantage of free or privilege rail travel I was able to get home for a few weekends which allowed me to be there from around midnight Saturday (sometimes after a smart walk from Colne) until 6/50pm Sunday. Most of the main line services were packed tight, nearly all service personel snatching a few hours with their near and dear ones, and one was lucky indeed to get a seat with the chance of a few hours sleep on the overnight journeys. Some even acquired the habit of snoozing in the corridors.
At the end of our training an examination result of 81% overall qualified me for leading hand as from 2nd September 1944. Our training was completed at the end of April and, after a week's leave I reported to HMS Drake (the Barracks at Devonport) on 14th April 1944 as a full blown Supply Assistant rating (Jack Dusty in naval parlance).
I barely had time to sling my hammock before i found myself boarding a train at Plymouth enroute for Greenock to join HMS Khedive. On arriving on the dock I found that my ship had sailed and i was required to chase her to Belfast. I was directed to a Salvation Army Hostel in Glasgow for a bed and breakfast - my first experience of the most valuable service which that organisation afforded to service personel stranded in various towns and cities throughout the UK. After travelling all day via the Stranraer-Larne ferry, I had to have another `bobs' worth in the arms of the Salvation Army in Belfast, eventually tracking down the Khedive when she returned to anchor off Bangor later in the day.
To be continued.
Edited by - handlamp on 20 March 2007 15:43:38
Ted |
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart
36804 Posts
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Posted - 20/03/2007 : 17:52
Nowt to do with the navy but I love the gunnery stories. I remember my old sergeant telling me that you could see a 17pdr round if you stood in line with the barrel and I didn't believe it because they were such high velocity. However, I later found he was right, it just looked like a small upright black line because the trajectory was so flat. As for the yanks and guns.... Here's a bit from me memoir..... Shortly afterwards we had some real war games, we went to Putlos on the Danish coast for a really good shoot! Before this took place we went right through the guns and inspected everything. I should explain that we kept the same guns all the time except when we went to Sennerlager. I was still on the same 17pdr. I had first started on in Colchester, its barrel number was 20327. When we tested the air pressures in the Buffer Recuperating System we found that they were all down a bit. This wasn’t a problem as we topped them up on a regular basis to 600 psi from bottles of compressed air charged to about 3000 psi which we kept in the stores. It became a problem when we went to draw a full bottle and found we hadn’t got one. The central depot had borrowed ours and never replaced them. There was no time to get replacements by the usual channels so Rich and I were sent off in a 15cwt Bedford truck into the back streets of Berlin where we found a small factory which could charge the bottles for us. Actually they could only get up to about 2,500 psi but Rich said this was enough. We gave them the bottles and retired to a bar where we drank coffee, ate bockwurst and smoked until a lad came across and told us they were ready. Problem solved and a nice morning out.
We loaded the guns and all our tackle on to a train and set off for the coast. It wasn’t a large party as we were simply going to fire the guns, there was only Anti Tank Platoon and our officer who was Lieutenant Oulton. Major Cross turned up later to watch us firing but I think he did that because he enjoyed the guns as much as we did. I doubt if he would have admitted it but I suspect he had a soft spot for anti tank. Putlos lies on the Baltic coast about 30 miles east of Kiel. The ranges faced out to sea so any stray rounds went flying off into the Baltic. This was a necessary precaution with 17Pdrs because, being solid shot, they could ricochet for miles. They had a tracer in the back of the round and you could watch them skipping off the ocean until they were lost to sight. The local town was Oldenburg and we had some free time there to seek out the bars and other sinks of iniquity.
We had a whale of a time, everyone got a chance to lay the gun and fire at the derelict tanks down on the ranges. First, we had to zero the sights and we did this optically using cross wires on the muzzle and then check fired at a large square canvas target marked out in squares. There was one laugh that day. We had zeroed and check fired and were watching the other guns go through the same process. Late in the day the last gun ran out of APCBC ammunition (Armour Piercing, Capped, Ballistic Capped) but we had a few rounds of HE available for practice. Lt. Oulton decided it would be all right to use these for target practice as the fuse wouldn’t act until the round had passed through the canvas. They fired and I don’t know how far the round went beyond the target but it wasn’t far enough! There was a hell of an explosion, a cloud of smoke and when it cleared the target was nowhere to be seen. They decided to use the rest of the HE on some targets about 600 yards away on the dunes just to check whether they had got the sights lined up OK. I think it was Chris Byrne’s crew. He gave the order to fire two rounds at a white rock and it was only when they hit it with the first round that the gun layer reported that it had been a sheep! That did it, we packed up for the day.
In case any one is reckoning up the cost of all this profligate use of ammo, you have to remember that what we were firing was ex-WWII ammunition. There was plenty about and the guns were going to be obsolete soon anyway so we fired as much as we wanted. Ted told us a story about this. After the war, the government was desperate for protein to feed the country. Some agronomist came up with the idea that seeing as how peanuts were one of the richest protein foods available, it would be a good idea to grow them in Africa. They called it the Groundnut Scheme. There was a shortage of agricultural tractors but we had plenty of spare tanks left over from the war so it was decided to disarm these and send them out to use as tractors to cultivate the land for the peanuts. They must have been running behind schedule because a lot of the tanks were sent out with their armament intact. The rumour was that Colonel Nasser was buying these tanks and shipping them to Egypt and the reason for this was that he had realised that all the ammunition he would ever need for them was stored in dumps in the Western Desert, part of the aftermath of the campaign against Rommel.
Ted told us that we sent men out into the desert to find these dumps and blow them up. There were two main problems, one was finding the dumps, the desert sand was always shifting and most of them were covered up, the other was getting the ammunition to explode when you found it. Fixed ammunition, that is rounds where the projectile is part of the cartridge as opposed to separate projectiles and propellant charges, is so safe that it was no good simply placing a demolition charge in the centre of a pile of ammunition boxes, all that it did was explode one or two and scatter the others. The trick was to find a pile of ‘flimsies’ which were thin steel square containers of petrol. You piled these with the ammunition and ignited the lot with a small charge, the resulting fire brewed the Ammo up and eventually it would all go off together. I asked Ted how he knew about this and he went all shy on me. The Cheshires had been out in Egypt in 52/53 and I have an idea that Ted was one of the men who had made clandestine trips into the desert. I don’t think that Nasser would have been very pleased so the whole thing would be kept quiet. I have no evidence of this, just my assessment of Ted and his story but I don’t think I am a million miles from the truth.
Having sorted the sights out we settled down to some serious firing and gun drill. Looking back, it’s a wonder we didn’t all go deaf. When a 17 fires there is a terrific crack and concussion, we had no ear protection and used to go back at night half deaf and with a ringing noise in our ears. I don’t think any one ever thought about this at the time. I never heard it mentioned. Various people turned up to watch us at work, Major Cross came up from Gatow and one group of interested observers was a group of Americans who were firing on the same range as us. They had guns which were very similar to the German 88 but far more complicated. They doubled as anti-aircraft guns and had director and range-finding equipment in a van which travelled with the gun. We watched them firing and weren’t very impressed, they seemed slow and not all that accurate despite having full instrumentation.
There must have been some discussion in the Officer’s Mess about this because on the last day, Major Cross announced that we had been challenged to a shoot by the Americans. The rules were very simple, the winner would be the crew that got the most hits on a tank at 1000 yards in a minute. He picked my gun because I still had Mick Burgess as gunlayer and he was recognised as the best we had. We thought this was a great idea and did a bit of extra practise that evening. I asked Ted how much ready use we should have with the gun and he said 25 rounds. I thought he was a bit over the top with this estimate of our speed but on the day he was right. I think we fired 18 rounds in the minute and Mick only missed with one, the first. The Yanks only hit the target three times and I think they fired nine rounds. Simplicity paid off, we loaded and fired like a machine gun, when the gun recoiled it automatically ejected the spent case and when you rammed the next one up the spout it tripped the breech which was a sliding block and closed automatically. All Mick had to do was check his aim and pull the firing lever every time he heard the word ‘ready’. I asked Mick afterwards whether we could have done any more and he reckoned we could have fired the whole 25 but he was pacing himself and making absolutely certain he was on target before firing.
Major Cross was extremely pleased, I don’t know how much he had bet on the outcome but we had free beer that night. The Yanks had a go at firing our gun and we blew off a couple of rounds with theirs. We had no doubt which gun we preferred and on the quiet I think the Yanks had the same opinion.
Stanley Challenger Graham
Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk |
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MY FAMILY AT SEA
