Sometimes bravery can be like unbelievable...imagine flying through this?

So here's the story I read. It is about this pilot who managed to successfully torpedo the most ferociously defended target and got a VC. 

His citation read

Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell, 22 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.In recognition of most conspicuous bravery. This officer was the pilot of a Beaufort aircraft of Coastal Command which was detailed to attack an enemy battle cruiser in Brest Harbour at first light on the morning of 6th April 1941. The aircraft did not return but it is known that a torpedo attack was carried out with the utmost daring. The battle cruiser was secured alongside the wall on the north shore of the harbour, protected by a stone mole bending around it from the west. On rising ground behind the ship stood protective batteries of guns. Other batteries were clustered thickly round the two arms of land which encircle the outer harbour. In this outer harbour near the mole were moored three heavily armed anti-aircraft ships, guarding the battle cruiser. Even if an aircraft succeeded in penetrating these formidable defences, it would be almost impossible, after delivering a low-level attack, to avoid crashing into the rising ground beyond.This was well known to Flying Officer Campbell who, despising the heavy odds, went cheerfully and resolutely to the task. He ran the gauntlet of the defences. Coming in at almost sea level, he passed the anti-aircraft ships at less than mast-height in the very mouths of their guns and skimming over the mole launched a torpedo at point-blank range.The battle cruiser was severely damaged below the water-line and was obliged to return to the dock whence she had come only the day before. By pressing home his attack at close quarters in the face of withering fire on a course fraught with extreme peril, Flying Officer Campbell displayed valour of the highest order.- See more at: http://ww2today.com/6th-april-1941-kenneth-campbell-attacks-the-gneisenau?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorldWarIIToday+%28World+War+II+Today*+%29#sthash.rNyGiDWr.dpuf

But this photograph blew my mind

This is a vertical photograph of the flak over this area few nights before. These are tracers. And you know that only one in say 10 bullets is a tracer. So the actual amount of lead and exploding shells is actually 10 times of this photograph. And you have to fly through this insane multiple curtains of death, whilst your bombardier is begging you to fly steady and straight because his norton bombsights cannot handle movements. 

I dont think I can even comprehend the levels of bravery involved. And then we have bloody students demanding safe spaces. The mind boggles. 

How The Royal Navy's X-Class Midget Subs Helped Make D-Day Possible

It takes a special kind of courage to drive one of these little boats kids. I've seen the x24. It's a tiny machine. Submarines are tiny anyway. Some of the more recent subs like the typhoon class of ussr or the American boomer subs or our trident class ones are fairly big but the ones of world war 2 time were truly diabolical. Tiny. Cramped. Wet from condensation. With the full knowledge that if they hit a problem, and believe you me, they hit giant amounts of problems, they cannot be rescued. The submarine bells and other rescue gear were invented long time afterwards. 

So consider an even worse situation with respect to a submarine. A tiny one. With very little amenities. Days on end. Rolling and pitching. But indomitable courage kids. That's the heritage you inherit from you being a citizen of the United Kingdom. There's a reason why the world war 2 brought out so many great attributes of what it means to be British. That doesn't mean you become a rabid nationalist but history tells you and helps you become what you are. 

Have a nice trip to Nottingham son. Send me your final cv and cover letter today so that I can review it quickly. And yes. Apply to as many banks as you can. No harm in that. Do you want me to arrange for a test interview with one of my graduate interviewers? But make sure you apply to all your top 10 banks by this weekend. Don't lose time son. Every day you delay, somebody else has applied and taken a place reducing the number of places for you. Remember what I said about luck. Lucky people jump at more opportunities than others. :) 

Diya, I've done the parent pay payment for you. I loved your two class photographs. You look totally squishilious. And I also loved you were called dodo because of your interest in history and weird facts. It's brilliant. People remember that kind of interesting personalities. :) I'll show you the Oxford photo of you with the dodo this weekend ok? 

Love

Baba

How The Royal Navy's X-Class Midget Subs Helped Make D-Day Possible
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/how-the-royal-navys-x-class-midget-subs-helped-make-d-d-1709530716
(via Instapaper)

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HMS Erebus

HMS ‘Erebus’ Passing Through the Chain of Bergs,1842 by Richard Brydges Beechey || Oil on canvas, 78.8 x 111.76 cm || Collection: National Maritime Museum

I have talked about this episode separately when I went to see the exhibition in the British Museum (haven't blogged the photos yet…) but when I saw this painting, it was truly earth shattering.

Here’s the story of HMS Erebus. What an extraordinary story of exploration and discovery and and the truly tragic end of the brave ship and its men.

Salutations.

The story of a ship

Some amazing photographs of the Arizona, one of the famous battleships of WW2. Here are some of the ones which I liked, but you can go to the link and see much more…

under construction 1913

FDR visiting the ship

Launched

Commissioned

After modernisation in 1931, see the towers..

after the Pearl Harbour attack.

what was left after the cleanup of the wreck

and how it looks now.

Book review The Spanish Armada

I have to admit kids that I didn't know the details of this episode. Of course I knew the basics, Philip of Spain wanted to attack England and Elizabeth with Drake managed to fight him off. Big seminal moment in British history. Take that, you poxy papists.
But managed to go deeper this time on this book. It's a bit of an old book so I'm sure there will be more recent research based books which provide more information via library and newly discovered archives and books. But this 55 year old book was good enough to talk to me about the leaders. The ships. The cannons and culverins. The food and water - or rather the lack of it. On both sides.
Two lessons I took away. First is that I'm still very convinced that logistics are the crucial part of any strategy. England at times had only 1 day worth of food and water in their ships. They were fighting while hungry. They couldn't fight many times because they didn't have any ammunition. Round shot and powder was terribly in short supply.
Second, it's about luck. And luck comes to the brave and people who jump at more opportunities than the next one.
Curiously the actual number of ships destroyed in actual battle were minuscule. Most ships were lost to the storms and when they had accidents while getting lost. Huge number of sailors died due to disease and sickness rather than battle. Hardly any damage was actually done to the ships.
It's curious. One of the greatest triumphs of England and the reason for that was luck and that the Spaniards were badly led. Truly history is written by the victors.
Love
Baba

 

The Writer Who Built the World’s First Engine-Powered Submarine

What a man. Quixotic yes but there's a man with a vision. Truly before his time son. Somebody who can achieve much! He failed to operationalise his submarine but he is remembered for being unreasonable and not taking no for an answer. And then he was a writer fighting for what he believed in. 

And a wonderful happy birthday to you son. You're 18 now. A man in all senses. My prayers are with you for you to have a happy life son. 

Love

Baba

The Writer Who Built the World’s First Engine-Powered Submarine
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Writer-Who-Built-the-Worlds-First-Engine-Powered-Submarine--224148171.html

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Narcis Monturiol loved the ocean’s corals so much, that he built a machine so he could better enjoy them

• By Rob Dunn
• Smithsonian.com, September 18, 2013, Subscribe

A man cannot one day just decide to build a submarine, much less the first poweredsubmarine, much less if that man is a writer. Yet that is just what Narcis Monturiol did.

As a young firebrand of the mid-19th century, Monturiol flirted with inflammatory subjects including feminism and Communism, placing him under the watchful eye of an oppressive regime. When he fled to Cadaqués, an isolated town on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, he found a peaceful fishing village where he could expand on his ideas of a Utopian world. It turned out that Cadaqués would also be the inspiration for his biggest idea.

Search for the USS Thresher

A fascinating account of the search for a sunken submarine son. Put yourself in the seat of the commander of the operation. So many difficult decisions to take. 

April 10, 1963: Search for the USS Thresher | Naval History Blog
http://www.navalhistory.org/2013/04/10/april-10-50th-anniversary-of-the-loss-of-the-uss-thresher

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This article was published in the May 1964 issue of Proceedings as “Searching for the Thresher” by Frank A. Andrews, Captain, U.S. Navy.

The Thresher search was very much an ad hoc operation. On 10 April 1963, the day of theThresher‘s loss, there was no real search organization, no search technique, nor specific operating procedures for locating an object lying on the ocean bottom at 8,400 feet. In the first frantic hours after the Thresher‘s loss, a full scale search effort consisting of 13 ships was laid on with the aim of scouring the ocean for possible life or floating signs from the Thresher. Within 20 search hours, all hope for survivors had passed, and the entire Thresher project began to change character from that of a standard Navy search and rescue opera­tion to that of an oceanographic expedition. This special expedition soon consisted of three ad hoc elements, which, as later events were to show, combined in a most successful and harmonious manner in support of searching out the Thresher‘s hull.

Frigate in the water

Peeked out of the window at the office and I could see a dinky little frigate at the docks. So I took a picture and facebooked as a joke that its sent over from the Government to kick the bankers, no more simple police for us lot then.

Then hared down to look at it closer. It seems to be an Aussie frigate called as HMAS Sydney. It did look a bit battered if you ask me. Here are some details from the local rag.

 

THE Aussies don’t go anywhere without their barbie. That goes for the Royal Australian Navy as well. The frigate HMAS Sydney arrived in the Thames for a goodwill Commonwealth visit to London equipped with its state-of-the-art air defence, anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, surveillance and reconnaissance.
The 4,000-tonne frigate which has been deployed to the Middle East four times and seen action in both Gulf wars, had torpedos, missiles and two Seahawk helicopters on board. But she was also armed to the teeth with barbecue steak and sausages when it moored Canary Wharf. The crew didn’t waste time making themselves at home and throwing a few snags on the barbie and for a cocktail party serving up kangaroo skewers.
The crew were keen to enjoy a few days in London’s East End, while moored in the shadow of the O2 at West India Dock, before weighing anchor yesterday and setting sail for Labrador and Newfoundland on the next leg of their northern hemisphere tour—with their state-of-the art barbie equipment.

That name sounded vaguely familiar to me and I was staring at the damn ship racking my brains as to why on earth would I find it strangely unsettling? When I got back to the office, googled a bit and then it struck me. Here’s the strange story of the ship with the same name. The sheer amazing line of events, eh? Go figure.

Armed forces 'get free education'

Now this is an excellent step, and kudo's to the government who have thought this up. I quote:

Service personnel are to be given university education free of charge after they end their duty with the armed forces, it has been reported. According to the News of the World, personnel who complete six years service in the Army, Royal Navy or RAF will qualify for the scheme. The government will pay tuition fees to study for GCSEs, A-levels, university degrees or other qualifications.

I wrote about the GI Bill here.

Technorati Tags: Education,Armed Forces,United Kingdom

A good landing is a landing you walk away from

Woweeee.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Pirates caught by commandos

This is the only way to deal with pirates. Pirates are beyond the pale. This is why whenever they were caught, they were summarily executed or punished. They do not work on the basis of normal behaviour. Whether we are talking about Julius Caesar or the North African Barbary States, they only stop once they have been thumped hard.

Similarly, these Somalian pirates need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and armed might. This is a very good step, I just wish the other navies take a step and do the same. Way to go, Sarko.

Technorati Tags: Piracy,France,Somalia,Indian Ocean

Aircraft Carrier in the Sea of Japan

A most amazing video of an aircraft carrier in the Sea of Japan. Can you imagine parking a 60 million dollar plane out in the weather like that? But there you go, the power of the sea versus power of the ship

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

India's communist party protests about the International naval war games are being held in the wrong place

The Indian communist parties are going to protest against the international naval war games to be held in the Bay of Bengal. But the communists are great at doing these kinds of demonstrations and they are right now planning to do a walk about the Indian countryside to protest against these war games. I seriously think they should go to the place where the war games are actually happening and protest there.

But the main purpose of these wargames is to make sure that navies of various regions work together. Ships are massively complex animals and it is further complicated when you have a group of ships working together, and it becomes a furiously complicated beast when you have navies of different countries working together.

So here is a four dimensional theater (air, surface, underwater and land), in a shallow sea (navies hate shallow seas, it causes bad echo's, sand banks, confusion, etc.), full of moving bottoms (the bottom of the Bay of Bengal, Malacca Straits and other South East Asian areas is very geographically mobile - remember the tsunami?), and more importantly, because of the HUGE distances involved, require all navies to pull together when faced with terrorist and pirate threats.

Oh! yes, there is a huge amount of piracy going on in the world, and the epicentre's of this piracy business is off the east African coast and in the Iindonesian Iislands/Malacca Straits. So this is a great step as we do need an international maritime flotilla and group to stop the rampant piracy in the Indian Ocean region. See here, here, here and here.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

India's communist party to protest naval war games

Sun Sep 2, 4:58 AM ET

India's communist party, embroiled in a row with the government over a US nuclear deal, has announced plans to protest next week's naval exercises with the United States and Asian nations.

Twenty five warships from Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and the United States will take part in the exercises over five days starting on Tuesday in the Bay of Bengal.

Two US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers will be among ships involved.

"These exercises are seen as a major step towards India joining a strategic security cooperation between India and the United States, Australia and Japan," the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said in a statement Saturday.

"There will be countrywide protests from September 4 to 8 against these exercises."

India's ruling Congress party receives crucial support from left allies but the relationship has been shaky in past weeks, with the communists protesting a recently concluded civilian nuclear agreement with the United States.

Protesters will march along the east coast to the port of Visakhapatnam, headquarters of India's eastern naval command, for a rally next Saturday.

The exercises will be held between Visakhapatnam and India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, a chain of more than 500 islands over 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the mainland.

The communists, who oppose strategic ties with Washington, say the nuclear deal threatens India's sovereignty, notably the continued development of its nuclear weapons programme.