Sunday - 70 years in The Royal Navy Forum

RSS
Email

0 Points

<< Previous Topic Next Topic >>

Sunday - 70 years

Author	Comment
HMS Troutbridge	Sunday - 70 years	Lead	[-]
Posts: 1396 (10-Feb-2012 15:06:40) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Remove this ad This Sunday will be 70 years since 825 Squadron made a heroic but hopeless attack during the Channel Dash, where all 6 Swordfish were shot down and 13 of the 18 men killed. Lt Cmd Esmonde was posthumously awarded the VC and all 5 survivors decorated. The Twins escaped unscathed, but later struck mines.
HMS Pinafore	For want of a...	#1	[-]
Posts: 2117 (10-Feb-2012 15:42:59) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	...working vacuum tube! If the tube had not blown on the outbound flight the RAF Coastal Command aircraft would not have had to turn round and head home. Instead it would have picked up all the KM warships the moment they cleared Brest. This would have given the British roughly 10 hours extra warning - enough time to have got all the pieces into place to make the 'Channel Dash' a bit more interesting. Its frightening that something like this can essentially boil down to whether a device not akin to a lightbulb works or not.
HMDL1963	The greatest generation	#2	[-]
Posts: 256 (10-Feb-2012 20:00:17) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Bravo 825 Squadron. Think of the sheer guts it takes to fly something as slow and virtually defenceless as a Stringbag into that inferno of Flak & FW190's that was Operation Cerberus - and in broad daylight too. It's amazing that any of them survived. But the Fleet Air Arm held no monopoly on courage - RAF crews unfortunate enough to find themselves assigned to a Blenheim anti-shipping squadron in home waters, or from Malta, must have faced broadly similar odds. I'm in awe of them. For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

<< Previous Topic Next Topic >>