WWII Stuff

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Re: WWII Stuff

Postby John » Thu Nov 30, 2006 9:25 pm

My Kitten wrote:For outwith Glasgow discussions!


Did you know that the word "outwith" is rarely used outwith Scotland?
'It's a sad day for capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park'
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WWII guide for Americans

Postby scallopboy » Thu Nov 30, 2006 9:28 pm

That's the 41-45 war for Americans, the 39-45 for us in UKland.
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Postby Dugald » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:30 pm

Escotregen, this is a reponse to your very interesting post about the 'Repulse' and 'P. of W.' on the "Bombs over Glasgow" site.

"The commander of the Prince of Wales was credited with suberb seamanship".

If my memory serves me on this, I think it was a fellow by the name of Phillips who tried to save the P.of W. by 'Throwing it around like a destroyer'. Anyway, there were 17 torpedoes fired and only five found their mark along with a bomb or two, so superb seamanship was indeed involved. (One questions the wisdom though, of this very capable seaman, depriving Britain, by his own means, of a captain capable of such superb seamanship!).

Escotregen, your poser about the " Fairey Swordfish aircraft and the high-tech Japanese torpedo aircraft?", is a bit beyond me, unless it was as Alycidon suggests, that they both had the same design of torpedo release equipment. I could tell the difference in appearance between a Fairey Swordfish and a Gladiator, but not much beyond that.

Cheers, Dugald.
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Postby Peekay » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:37 pm

Image

The wreck is in a sport divable depth so the RN removed this in 2002 before someone stole it. She sits in 60-70 mtrs and the Repulse is about 40

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Postby Dugald » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:43 pm

Great picture Peekay!

How would you like to have that bell standing at your front door?

Cheers, Dugald.
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Postby Peekay » Thu Nov 30, 2006 10:51 pm

Dugald wrote:Great picture Peekay!

How would you like to have that bell standing at your front door?

Cheers, Dugald.


You're lucky to find anything remotely brass on wrecks now. I've only ever seen a few Portholes on the one wreck. A wargrave called the "Verona" in the Moray Firth. Apart from that absolutley hee-haw. Attitudes are slowly changing but sadly it's too little, too late. Still, at least the "right" thing was done with this bell. There's so many garages, some of them I know, sitting with interesting/important artifacts like this gathering dust in them.

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Re: WWII Stuff

Postby ozneil » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:56 am

walbass wrote:
My Kitten wrote:For outwith Glasgow discussions!


Did you know that the word "outwith" is rarely used outwith Scotland?


We use outwith here & outback too
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Stealing from a POW camp in Govan.

Postby Dugald » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:40 am

Stealing from a German POW camp in Govan.

During the war when I was a young schoolboy, I was crazy about war souvenirs and would have walked the proverbial mile over broken glass to get any. One day in the summer of '43, I heard that a troopship had docked in Govan and thousands of Rommel's Afrika Korps soldiers, direct from North Africa, had been taken to a transit camp at the White City race track on Helen St. in Govan, and to the Bellahouston Park, where they were re-equipped with POW uniforms. These camps were not far from where I lived.

Later in the evening, about 8pm, myself and seven other pals went to the White City. No POW's were to be seen, indeed no one was to be seen. But behind the barbed wire immense mountains of discarded military uniforms and equipment were to be seen. We all stood there, drooling at the thought of all these long-dreamed of military items just over the fence, drooling just as an art thief might fantasize over breaking into the Louvre.

There were no guards in sight so we waited until it was dark then we all crawled through the coils of barbed wire. Soon I was deep in the middle of this mountain of treasures stuffing every pocket I had, then into a rucksack and jamming loads up my jersey. I was completely oblivious to my surroundings and had just started to gather as much as I could carry in my arms when I heard wild and frantic screams. When I looked up it was just in time to see a horde of battle-hardened Cameronians descending on us at great speed. I managed to get as far as crawling into one of the coils of wire, but after getting caught on barbs because of having too much stuff up my jersey, I felt a big strong hand lock itself onto my ankle and I knew I too, had been "captured".

Four of us got caught and the other four stood outside the wire taunting us. We laughed back at them thinking it was a great lark as we, each of us between two big tough-looking Cameronians, were taken to the guardhouse. The soldiers, in their broad Scotch accents, assured us that we were for the "high Jump" (never ever did find out what this "high jump" was!).

We were still laughing and shouting back at our pals when we entered the guardhouse where we were met by an officer, and he wasn't laughing. He had us lined up and started to question us, somewhat forcefully, one at a time, with all the Cameronians standing around watching. All went well for the first three of us and then it was Rab's turn to be questioned. After the usual questions about address , school, etc., it got to, "Where does your father work?".

"My father is dead" said Rab (died from wounds in Great War in fact). "Where then does your mother live", continued the stern-faced officer. "My mother is dead too." replied Rab.

The officer didn't believe Rab and started to shout at him. This went on for a while then Rab started to cry, but the officer didn't let up. Rab was a neighbour of mine and I knew he was was telling the truth, his brother was away in the navy and he lived with his sister. I started to cry too and screamed at the officer to leave him alone. The officer said we would be held here till the civilian police arrived.

By this time the soldiers weren't laughing either. In fact the one who was holding me whispered that he hadn't expected this to happen and thought we'd just have been given a "kick on the arse" and sent home. The Cameronians were in fact now on our side...not that it made any difference. We were kept a long time under intense guard until two detectives from the Govan Division arrived, and after taking all the facts and telling us to report to Govan Police station after school next day, they allowed us to go. I got home at 1 am, an unheard of time in my household in these days, and there was hell to play! Anyway , despite having found the latter part of the experience rather frightening, I had survived.

I, and all of us, had been genuinely frightened by what went on in the guardhouse. Yet despite this, at lunchtime next day, I, alone, jumped on a car and went up to the Bellahousten Park. This was my territory, I knew it well. I stood at the railings at the top of Jura Street and cased the area thoroughly. There were still mountains of equipment here, and not a guard in sight. I had a clear view that all was clear, and I knew that I could out-run any hob-nail-booted Cameronian guard if it came to that. I hopped the railing (no barbed wire here) ran to a heap of equipment and uniforms, filled a rucksack with all it could take, ran like a train back to the fence and was over it and on a car back to school in no time flat. At four o'clock I reported to the Police station on Orkney St. and had my name entered in the "Doomsday" book, as the big hielen sergeant called it. I promised him never to break into a POW camp again ...and I didn't.

My fanaticism regarding souvenirs is clearly evident by the fact that despite having been terrified the previous night, I went back and did the same thing within a matter of 11 hours!

What about this creep of an officer? Why such a big deal over four schoolboys looking for souvenirs?

German military equipment was one type of souvenir, but it was not very long before I had a host of other souvenirs which I had not, very foolishly, considered. In those days all young teenagers wore short trousers. I was sitting in my class one day examining my bare leg, vaguely aware of the teacher mumbling away in the distant background, when I noticed a wee crab-like beastie. It was white, perhaps oh, 1/10 inch in diameter, with legs jutting out on each side. The thing about this beastie was that it wasn't ON my skin, it was UNDER my skin! I tore at the skin in a mad panic and removed it with great haste and much blood. But alas, the removal was much too late...by the middle of the summer the Afrika Korps beasties were all over my legs...and other places on which the sun didn't shine.

It took me some time to realize that I really had a problem, and eventually I couldn't hide it from my parents any more. I was hauled off to the doctor and finished up at the Glasgow University Dept of Dermatology. They couldn't figure out what it was either... I hadn't told anyone about my White City caper and there was no little black swastikas on the shells of these wee beasties. I got rid of the major problem only after a few months of rigorous painting, but I had another problem too, more baffling apparently. I had developed deep-rooted blisters between all my fingers...it took more than three years to get rid of this lot! According to the doctor at Glasgow University, I had two different skin diseases!

It's not surprising that I suffered from such skin ailments as I did a lot of camping that summer using a Wehrmacht rucksack, cape, hats, shirts, and even a water bottle..all from Rommel's escapades in the desert wastes of Libya.

Now to this "creep of an officer". He really did give us a hard time and was not at all happy about the civvy police letting us go...he wanted to keep us at the White City! I have wondered ever since if his reason was that we had a need to be fumigated. The German prisoners had no doubt been fumigated ...but certainly AFTER they had disposed of all that precious equipment that we had so hungrily collected.
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Postby Dexter St. Clair » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:59 am

Excellent story.
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Postby Peekay » Thu Dec 07, 2006 3:06 am

That sounds great fun (up to the part about the beasties anyway!)

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Postby ozneil » Thu Dec 07, 2006 3:19 am

Wreck of Japanese Midget Sub like this just found 4Km off Sydney coast about 2 weeks ago. I t was the third one found of the 3 that attacked Sydney Harbour in 1942. The other two were sunk in harbour.

Image

This is pic of one being raised in Harbour.
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Govan POW camp.

Postby Dugald » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:31 pm

Thank you very much Dexter. Glad you liked it. Cheers, Dugald.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was great fun PK. I recall having, among a lot of other things, three Afrika Korps hats and a Luftwaffe tunic; oh yes, and the Luftwaffe tunic still had all the cloth regalia on it. They'd be worth a bundle if I still had them, but alas...
Cheers, dugald.
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Japanese Sub.

Postby Dugald » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:34 pm

A very interesting photograph Ozneil. I don't recall hearing anything about this in the media. I sure would have liked to be a part of the investigation team opening its conning tower. Did they find anything of great interest?

It's interesting too, that you chose Dec 7th to post the photograph of the Japanese submarine. This date is, as I'm sure you're aware, the 65th anniversary of the day which gave Roosevelt all the justification he needed to stick the label, "Day of Infamy", on the Japanese. Was your choice of this date a coincidence or was it by intent? You know, I haven't read or heard anything at all regarding this anniversary ...strange, maybe even something more than that!

Cheers, dugald.
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Postby ozneil » Fri Dec 08, 2006 4:34 am

It is an old pic I posted taken in 1942. The sub (M24), which was found last month hasnt been opened, was found in 70m of water by a team of amateur dives who saw an anomaly on their fish finder & decided to investigate.

Image
pic from "Manly Daily"

They did the right thing & informed the Navy after diving on it. RAN divers confimed it was M24 complete with cannon shell holes. The Japanese government has been informed. The site has been declared a "War Grave" as hatch is closed & therfore the 2 crew are still aboard so no attempt will be made to raise it until they make up their minds

Divers say its impossible to enter it with scuba gear on, besides which there are demolition charges on board which may or may not be "live" so raising it is really only option.

The date of post was a pure coincidence
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Postby Roxburgh » Mon Dec 11, 2006 3:56 pm

That was a great story .. thanks.

My mother has a box full of WW2 insignia. Most of them are American - from various boyfriends and admirers. She also has Russian army officer's cap badge. A red star with the hammer & sickle emblazoned on it.

As the story goes, she had a boyfriend who was a French aristocrat and in the SAS. When the time came for him to go on a mission, the MPs would pick him up and he would disappear for a number of weeks. One time he disappeared and returned home with the Russian cap badge.

She also has the trainee flying officer hat of one of her schoolfriends (boyfriend?). Unfortunately, he ended up being killed over Germany.
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