The Night Mail

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[rockershovel]

4 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

That was Nelsons favoured tactic. Given the length of time it took for ships to approach one another the first shots were really the only ones where sailors had time to ensure that everything was at its best. You also have to factor in that the British looked to beat there enemy into submission by weight of shell power, relying on the drills that they had practiced to produce a high rate of firing.

All of the above, really

 

- the "rolling broadside" issue isn't wrong, it's a related issue

 

- Napoleonic-era Men-o'-War fired a limited number of rounds before becoming over-heated and liable to premature detonation. Same for field artillery

 

- Nelson would seek to "cross the T" and intersect the opposing fleet, firing "raking" broadsides along the length of the enemy fleet while minimising their own exposure. This means only firing when the guns actually have a target.

 

- field artillery didn't seek to fire by broadside but for practical reasons would fire by volley, more or less.

 

- Men-o'-War would seek to fire consistently "on the rise" or "on the fall" because otherwise the ranges achieved varied greatly. Obviously the closer they were, the less this mattered. 

 

- ballistics wasn't an exact science then, but much time was spent chipping the rust from iron shot, smoothing the profiles and generally "improving" loads to increase consistency. Master Gunners would have detailed records of the performance of different calibre guns vs range and would conduct testing of individual batches of powder. It was well known that "the glass" (air pressure, as recorded by a barometer), wind and humidity/rainfall affected performance; Wellington's and Napoleon's gunners both achieved high consistency at Waterloo under poor weather conditions and naval gunners operated on wind-powered vessels. 

 

- the "rolling barrage" was a feature of rifled artillery using factory-made, jacketed shot with cordite or ammonal type propellants in quantities, and over ranges unimaginable to black-powder gunners of an earlier era. They operated by line-of-sight on very short ranges - Union artillery of the American Civil War period operated muzzle loading howitzers to fire indirectly over long ranges but this was restricted to fixed installations such as marine defence forts and siege works such as Vicksburg 

Edited March 4 by rockershovel

[TheQ]

9 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The 8th Army had fought continuously all the way across N Africa then back, and then forward again.  Then to Scicily and all the way up the spine of Italy. Yet they were referred to D Day dodgers which was a bloody insult as they had been in continuous action since September 1941.

Many men of the 8th army had been fighting long before that.

Granddads regiment of the time ,  The 4th Royal Tank Regiment, he fought with them in Europe before Dunkirk, then in north eastern Africa kicking the Italians out of Ethiopia, before returning to North Africa and fighting before the 8th army was created for the desert gallop..

[SteveyDee68]

12 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

I did wonder when Stukas were mentioned if this incident happened in 1940.

 

Jamie 

Got to say it’s been a school day (lots of things I’ve learnt from the responses) but I literally simply retold the story as retold by my dad - he recalled being told the tanks were bombed but didn’t say by what - I added the question “Stukas?” as those are the only German planes I know of that might do that! (I am not a war historian in any shape or form)

 

My understanding is that John only told the story on one occasion - he literally never spoke about the war, even on Remembrance Sunday. He was a smallish, quiet man who always smelt of cigarettes although I can’t recall ever seeing him smoke!

 

Steve S

[Winslow Boy]

44 minutes ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Got to say it’s been a school day (lots of things I’ve learnt from the responses) but I literally simply retold the story as retold by my dad - he recalled being told the tanks were bombed but didn’t say by what - I added the question “Stukas?” as those are the only German planes I know of that might do that! (I am not a war historian in any shape or form)

 

My understanding is that John only told the story on one occasion - he literally never spoke about the war, even on Remembrance Sunday. He was a smallish, quiet man who always smelt of cigarettes although I can’t recall ever seeing him smoke!

 

Steve S

I had a relative who had fought in the war in tanks. Unfortunately I never met him as he died soon after i was born. He spent some time receiving psychiatric care due to what he had seen. He would often wake up screaming after having awful nightmares.

Edited March 4 by Winslow Boy

[Happy Hippo]

15 minutes ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Got to say it’s been a school day (lots of things I’ve learnt from the responses) but I literally simply retold the story as retold by my dad - he recalled being told the tanks were bombed but didn’t say by what - I added the question “Stukas?” as those are the only German planes I know of that might do that! (I am not a war historian in any shape or form)

 

My understanding is that John only told the story on one occasion - he literally never spoke about the war, even on Remembrance Sunday. He was a smallish, quiet man who always smelt of cigarettes although I can’t recall ever seeing him smoke!

 

Steve S

We are often not helped by slang terminology  which is different between arms and services. ie Paras 'Tab', Royal Marines 'Yomp'.  It's the same thing, a long walk over distance, but sounds totally different to the outsider.  We used to use the term 'bombing up' when we were loading the vehicle with ammunition.  Another would be 'Scheme' which was any form of training exercise. Others used 'Exercise' or 'FTX'.  A lot of this could even just be down to regional variations.

 

Thirty years after WWII we used to refer to the Centurion hulks at Warcop ranges as 'bombed out', even though they were the recepients of anti tank fire, so I can see a possible connection that would cause confusion and lead to the wrong assumption about what happened.

 

As with The Q's point about the Eighth Army, my late father in law, was in exactly the same situation: BEF/Dunkirk/Middle East/N Africa/Scicily/Italy/Germany.

 

 

[bbishop]

There is a "rolling" factor in providing troops for WW2.  The BEF was formed from the regular army.  The territorials were called up in 1939, trained and were available for the African campaigns.  This included my father, captured at Knightsbridge, which meant he was pre-8th Army so never got that campaign medal.  Oh and probably the Singapore debacle.

 

The Dunkirk survivors were meanwhile training up conscripts for the 1st Army and Normandy campaigns.  The problem then for the British Army that the country had basically run out of suitable men by the end of 1944.

 

My father was in the Honorable Artillery Company (not as a "gentleman" member) - the 11th went to Egypt, the 12th were in 1st Army, the 13th (and 86th AA) went to Normandy.

[bbishop]

Thinking about yesterday's post, it is of course the wrong time of year to be painting trees.  I either take a sketch book up to the National Gallery and sketch The Hay Wain or wait until summer and go (say) to Petts Woods.  I'm in no hurry, the layout isn't going out until the autumn.

[SM42]

I'm painting door frames and skirting this morning.

 

It'll be the poshest airing cupboard in town

 

Andy

[Happy Hippo]

8 minutes ago, SM42 said:

I'm painting door frames and skirting this morning.

 

It'll be the poshest airing cupboard in town

 

Andy

I assume we are talking about painting inside the airing cupboard?

 

I do hope that any door panelling is picked out in a similar fashion to a railway coach, fresh out of the carriage works.

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

It'll be the poshest airing cupboard in town

Ours has been re-plumbed and has had network cables routed through it but I am sure it has never been painted since the house was built in 1990. 
Tony

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

I do hope that any door panelling is picked out in a similar fashion to a railway coach, fresh out of the carriage works.

 

With brass commode handles?

 

[jamie92208]

20 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

With brass commode handles?

 

How do you know he uses a commode, pray tell. 

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

13 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

How do you know he uses a commode, pray tell. 

 

Obvious - more commodious. 

 

7 hours ago, rockershovel said:

volley

 

That was the word that was eluding me yesterday.

[Oldddudders]

Eluding a volley sounds eminently sensible. 

[SM42]

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I assume we are talking about painting inside the airing cupboard?

 

I do hope that any door panelling is picked out in a similar fashion to a railway coach, fresh out of the carriage works.

 

Yes. 

 

Doesn't take long. Not much to paint and uses up part tins, which makes more room at SM42 Towers and soothes my inner Scrooge

 

The doors are in the LNER panelling stylee so no need to paint, just varnish. 

 

Andy 

 

Edited March 4 by SM42

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

Eluding a volley sounds eminently sensible. 

But not if you are playing tennis. 

[TheQ]

28 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

But not if you are playing tennis. 

A direct hit off a volley is pretty painful...

 

[SM42]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

A direct hit off a volley is pretty painful...

 

 

Especially on a squash court. 

 

Andy

[iL Dottore]

6 hours ago, bbishop said:

The Dunkirk survivors were meanwhile training up conscripts for the 1st Army and Normandy campaigns.  The problem then for the British Army that the country had basically run out of suitable men by the end of 1944.

 

Which is why the cross-party working group (I forget the formal title) in WWII came up with the plan for what became the NHS. They were appalled at how few were fit enough for either essential war work or military service. And in 1944 this was of critical concern as no one knew how long the conflict would last - notwithstanding the Axis powers being "on the ropes". I read somewhere that some in the government were forecasting the conflict lasting into 1946, if not 1947.

 

But then came Operation Bagration, The "Battle of The Bulge", Iwo Jima and the eventual nuclear bombing of Japan (although some claim that it wasn't the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that caused the Japanese to surrender, but rather the declaration of war by the Soviet Union and the Soviets invading Manchuria). The Axis powers basically disintegrated*

 

We must be thankful that both the Nazi regime and the Japanese Military regime interfered politically with their military. Had, for example, Hitler allowed strategic retreats and switched aircraft production away from bombers to fighters, he would have still lost the war, but at a far, far higher cost than that that was eventually paid.

 

* an interesting aside, with Germany, Japan and Italy basically being "bombed flat" they had to rebuild everything from scratch: infrastructure, industry political and (to a lesser degree) social systems, leading them to far outstrip the former Allied powers (in many areas) in the latter part of the last century. And looking at the parlous state of the UK at present, it isn't hard to conclude that the Axis powers "lost the war and won the peace". Which, I guess, is kinda of easy to do when you rebuild everything (e.g. Germany) and don't have to "mend and make do" because you - basically - have bankrupted the country winning the war (the UK).

 

Edited March 4 by iL Dottore
Hit the post button to early

[Hroth]

27 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

Especially on a squash court. 

 

Andy

 

There are worse things that can come out of Squash Courts...

 

[SM42]

24 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

There are worse things that can come out of Squash Courts...

 

 

Me after the game for instance. 

 

I sort of flow out, as in like a river, rather than walk.  

 

But I've given up that sort of malarkey nowadays. 

 

Andy

[Happy Hippo]

Back home after the weekend sortie back to S Wales.

 

Our Granddaughter has given us both colds.

 

As a result, the logistics drop to br2975 was, as he put in an RAF style 'touch and go' rather than a more leisurely chat and tour of the latest developments at Aberflyarff(TV).

 

By way of consolation, we stopped for lunch in the garden centre cafe at Aberllynfi.  For those who are not afficionados of the Welsh and Midland Railway scene, it is just to the east of the site of the old Three Cocks Junction station where the Central Wales Railway from Builth Wells (and other places further north) met with the Midland line from Hereford.

 

In later years, both lines were frequently populated by Ivatt's Class 2 Moguls, as the ex GWR 22xx 0-6-0 which should have replaced the Dean Goods in use on the CWR, was too heavy for the lightly loaded route.

 

Then:

 

 

Perhaps Jamie and I could build something similar in the other half of his barn...

 

Three coach trains!  what's not to like?

 

Edited March 4 by Happy Hippo

[Hroth]

26 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

Three coach trains!  what's not to like?

 

Its not a trainset, its prototypical!

 

Though a "bit" further south, I've seen photographic evidence of a Bulleid Air Smoothed Pacific with a single coach train...

 

Edited March 4 by Hroth

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

We must be thankful that both the Nazi regime and the Japanese Military regime interfered politically with their military. Had, for example, Hitler allowed strategic retreats and switched aircraft production away from bombers to fighters, he would have still lost the war, but at a far, far higher cost than that that was eventually paid.

Also so many resources was expended on the 'Final solution', the Holocaust that it reduced the effectiveness of the German military.