British Med Fleet Gibraltar 1938

[33LIMA 972]

As it was in a Stringbag, maybe it means Wet, Slow and Draughty?

[Flyby PC 23]

Aha!

 

Another device is known as the Camera Obscura, and it

is used in conjunction with aircraft. It consists of a wide-

angle lens fitted into the roof of a small hut or tent, giving

a clear view of the sky overhead. A picture of the expanse

of sky is reflected on a piece of paper pinned to a table

immediately below the opening of the lens. In this way

one can look down at the paper and see the sky as clearly

as if one were lying on one's back in a pleasant meadow

on a sunny afternoon. The pupil bomb-aimer is sent up

in an aeroplane fitted with a device which flashes a light

as the bomb lever is pulled. As the 'plane speeds overhead

a man in the hut under the lens plots its course with a

pencil on the paper and when the light flashes in the

aeroplane he marks the spot and calculates the margin

of error, if any.

 

 

 

 

[33LIMA 972]

Wow! That's an impressive piece of detective work! Primitive but effective; things have come on a way since then but that's progress.

 

Reminds me of an early indoor firing range - 'theatre' range or somthing, thy called it - which projected a view of the countryside with pop-up targets, via a reel-to-reel movie projector on a big screen which comprised two paper screens on rollers, like giant, rectangular white conveyor belts, one right behind the other, one running left to right and the other running top to bottom. When you fired (SLRs, firing .22 rounds with the H&K conversion kit) the sound stopped the rollers instantly, and a light shone from behind the screens then showed thru as a little prick of light, indicating where you where you had hit, since the two moving screens stopped with the 'entry' and 'exit' holes lined up, facing you. A real Heath Robinson piece of kit. Wind the clock forward about 20 years and we had the Firearms Training Simulator which used a modern video projector with actors playing out the senario, firing electronic replica pistols and getting critiqued on where every round went and whether it was within the 'RoE'. Ah, progress!

[carrick58 23]

Wonderful Pic. Its little things ( Like This) that make this Forum Special.

[Bullethead 12]

Is there a short cut to identify the cruiser types or just a good eye and experience?

 

Some of both. I make naval wargames for a living so am rather familiar with pretty much all major ships from about 1860-1945, plus I have a huge referrence library. But the Brits made essentially 3 main types of cruisers (plus the easily recognizable Didos). First they made a bunch of big, high-sided, things with 3 skinny funnels. Then they made several batches of much smaller ones with 2 widely spaced, thick funnels (or sometimes 1 fat funnel). Finaly, they made a zillion large, 2-funneled cruisers with a huge, blocky bridge. You have some of each family here. So the 1st trick is to separate them into their families, then go through and try to identify specific classes within those famnilies based on the minor detail differences between them.

 

The ones with 3 skinny funnels are "Counties" because all of them were named after counties. They were 13 of these divided into 3 classes. The 1st and 3rd were practically identical except for the position of the cranes while the 2nd had a taller bridge structure.

 

The small ones were the Leanders, Apollos/Perths, and Arethusas. The former had 1 fat funnel while the other 2 classes were practically identical in outline except the 2nd had 2 turrets aft and the 3rd was slightly shorter and only had 1.

 

The big, blocky ones were in 5 classes, which varied mostly in some having vertical and some raked funnels, although the Edinburghs were bigger, had funnels further aft, and their aft turrets higher. They're rather hard to tell apart in a photo like this but, this being 1938, not many had yet been built.

 

Malaya is wrong, the Malaya inside the harbour is confirmed, but whatever ship it is looks Queen Elizabeth Class. Renown was refitting I understand. So that leaves the two QE Class battleships as either HMS Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, Barham, and Agincourt. I can probably confirm Barham is one of them, because she appears later in my Dads logbook so she was in the Med near the time, so the other has to be Elizabeth, Valiant or Agincourt.

 

I hadn't noticed you'd already spotted Malaya behind Warspite. My bad. So, with Queen Elizabeth herself and Valiant both in dockyard hands, only 1 of the BBs in the anchorage can be a QE. If she is, then she'd have to be Barham. But they both look the same so are of the same class. That means they have to be Revenges.

 

Strange. I usually don't make such an error. I can only offer excessive booze as an excuse. But on closer examination, it's clear. The funnel's too close to the bridge and they're too short in the quarterdeck to be QEs. What was I thinking?

[Flyby PC 23]

It's maybe my error BH, on a previous version of the picture I had Malaya marked down as Barham. If I hadn't seen the Jim Higginson picture from Hood, she still would have been too.

 

Your correct about the identifications. When I started looking at the picture every ship could have been 'anything'. The more you look the more you see, and you can split them up into types and 'quarter' the search.

 

I've also learned this is a combined fleet exercise too, not just the Mediterranean Fleet, but elements of the Home Fleet are there too. The Home Fleet ships are the darker coloured grey.

 

I've also circulated the picture itself to a few sources, including the Fleet Air Arm Museum and Hood Association, so I'm hoping to get more information. Since most of the heavies are named, or narrowed down to one or two possibles, the next bit will be trying to identify the small destroyers. Without reading their numbers, I reckon the only way to find out who's who is from people who were there at the time. I'd really like to see a close up of the 'fishing fleet' of small destroyers packed into the right hand side. You can count 20+ keels, but identifing them is impossible without a better picture.

 

The only disappointment is minor, and that is my dad wasn't in his Swordfish when he took the picture. In the beginning, we didn't even know where the picture was taken, so it was an obvious presumption it was taken from an aircraft, and we never had occassion to give the matter another thought. Even when we confirmed it was Gibraltar, the penny never dropped that there was a great big rock you could stand on to take pictures. It's so obvious now. It's also dented my hopes a little, because there could be any number of similar panoramic shots of the fleet hidden away in various old picture collections. That's not a bad thng really, because there are compensations too. It was believed my Dad had taken the picture, but it always niggled me that he'd never written anything down about it in his logbook. How could you fly over the whole combined fleet and never write it down? I never dared question that version of events, but to myself, it cast a doubt that my father actually did take the picture. Now I know it isn't in his logbook because he wasn't flying at the time, I'm now certain my father did indeed take the picture exactly as I was told he did.

 

He did take some pics from his aircraft, - this is Hal Far airbase on Malta. Can you spot the main reason to believe this was taken from an aircraft? No prizes.

Edited October 26, 2011 by Flyby PC

[Bullethead 12]

I've also learned this is a combined fleet exercise too, not just the Mediterranean Fleet, but elements of the Home Fleet are there too. The Home Fleet ships are the darker coloured grey.

 

That would explain the presences of 3x Revenges. See, by that point in time, those ships weren't frontline units anymore, due to being too slow. That's why only a few of them were updated early on in the 1920s and none of them were rebuilt along the lines of the [i[QE[/i]s. They were still in service, however, because in those days surface commerce raiders were still a real threat and slow battleships as convoy escorts could stop any raider smaller than Bismarck, which hadn't yet been built. Thus, the Revenges were scattered about at strategic locations instead of operating as a battle squadron. This is a big reason why I was predisposed to think those distant BBs were QEs. Sometimes it's bad to know a lot about ships

 

He did take some pics from his aircraft, - this is Hal Far airbase on Malta. Can you spot the main reason to believe this was taken from an aircraft? No prizes.

 

Well, maybe you can answer a question for me.... A friend of mine just built a very nice model of a Swordfish. It has a couple of big, black, knobby things mounted on 1 upper edge of the observer's cockpit, but there are mounts for them on both sides, so obviously they could be moved across the plane. In the kit, they just had part numbers and instructions to paint them black. Neither of us know what they were.

 

My guess is they were compasses with sights for determining the bearing to some distant object or ship. They look rather like that. Do you know if that's what they were? Thanks.

[Flyby PC 23]

I think I know what you mean, but don't know the answer. I know what they're not, they're not gun mounts, nor lifting points, nor fixing brackets to hold the wings when swept back.

 

My guess is some kind of bracket to hold a cover over the rear two positions if the aircraft was flying solo. I might also have said a rear canopy, but I've never seen one.

 

These the bits you mean?

 

 

The other possibility I considered was perhaps a rack of bombs a la world war one, but I really doubt that. A cover is my best bet. You'd need to bolt it securely for flight, and do it externally, but it does look very crude if that is the purpose.

 

Incidentally, the nickname Stringbag doesn't come from the struts and rigging. The Swordfish could actually carry all sorts of 'stuff' in her cockpit. The 'stringbag' nickname was literally meant that you could fit anything you wanted inside and carry it from A to B, and as such were often sent on delivery errands.

Edited October 28, 2011 by Flyby PC

[Flyby PC 23]

Or wait a minute.... What are these? I know it's a model, but I don't know what the black things mounted on the far side are.

[Bullethead 12]

Or wait a minute.... What are these? I know it's a model, but I don't know what the black things mounted on the far side are.

 

Yup, those are the very things. And they have identical mounts on both sides of the plane, so the observers apparently could swap sides with them as needed. Thus, I think they were some tool of the observers and probably had something to do with observation.

 

They look an awful lot like compasses with sights on them, such as mounted on the bridges of ships. With such devices, there's a mirror under the sight that shows the slice of the compass dial along the line of the sight. Thus, you aim the sight at some distant object of interest then glance down at the mirror to read the bearing to the object.

 

A naval aircraft would definitely have a use for such a thing when out scouting for the fleet. Knowing its own position, it could then report the position of enemy ships by bearing and estimated range from its oown position.

 

But that's just my best guess. I don't know for sure.

[Flyby PC 23]

Wow! First feedback from someone at the Hood Association and he's only flagged up the stern of a second carrier - HMS Furious. Don't know how many times I've looked but never saw that!

 

I've asked about those mounts BH, and hope to hear something soon.

[Flyby PC 23]

We've just found out even more about this picture.

 

If you look at this picture of the float Swordfish being lifted into the sea, look behind and you see the Rock of Gibraltar in the backgound, some railway carriages, and the crane obviously. But put 2 and 2 together, and you can place that picture in this part of the Fleet picture. And then, when you look a little more closely at the Fleet picture, you see these six funny shaped objects. These are 6 Swordfish float planes with their wings folded back. These are the aircraft my Dad would have flown in while he was in Gibraltar.

[Bullethead 12]

I've identified a few more things...

 

The 2 accomodation hulks tied to the jetty are the sloop Cormorant and the corvette Rapid. Both were composite-hulled ships, meaning they had iron keel and frames but wood planking. Long before this pic was taken, they'd been gutted, roofed, and turned into floating barracks. Cormorant was launched in 1877, hulked in 1889, renamed Rooke in 1946, and not disposed of until 1949. Rapid launched in 1883, hulked in 1906, and remained at Gib until 1948.

 

Also, there are some important buildings ashore. To the left is The Convent, home of the governor, although the building dates to the 1531 and was originally a Franciscan covent. More in the middle is The Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the Anglican main church in the outpost, built 1825-1832. The fortificiations along the waterfront are Brit-built from the 1770s, just in time for the Great Seige. I suppose the visible bastions all have names, as was traditional back then, but I haven't yet found a reference for that.

[Flyby PC 23]

Thanks BH. Those accommodation hulks remind me of the frigate, HMS Unicorn in Dundee. She's a 19th Century warship which is now used for functions.

 

Many years ago, there was a party on the Unicorn. Me and my mates were a bit early and it was a bit quiet, so we left the party to head into town for a few more drinks. When we returned later on, the party was heaving, and it had got so busy there were bouncers on the door only letting people on as people came off. We couldn't get in. Thing is, one of my mates who'd already been inside had left his jacket on board, and now couldn't get in to get it. Being a little the worse for drink, he decides to knock on the window to ask someone inside to bring out his coat. It was a private function, so we knew lots of people on board. Thing is, Unicorn is a ship, in a harbour, with an 8 - 10 feet gap between ship and dry land which is filled with a little bit of the North Sea. In his defence, it was dark, but as my mate walked forward to tap on the window, just like the roadrunner cartoons he walked into space and plonked himself in the drink. I remember his hand being raised to tap on the window - all the way down until he hit the water. We all lined the quayside, til up he came gurgling "I'm up, Im up I'm alright", as he started to swim. We noticed some steps further along and told him to swim in that direction, and I jumped down on some platform to help him out the water. We'd been very lucky I know, but we fished him out without any problem. However, as we climbed back up the stairs two of my other mates were in a pitched battle with the bouncers, who'd apparently called my mate an 'arse' for jumping in the harbour. So next we had to calm that down, but then heard the sirens of the cops coming so we all just legged it. We'd just reached the harbour gates when three cop cars arrived, and I swear it's true, they stopped beside my mate who'd been in the water, and asked him if he'd seen 'some nutter' jumping in the harbour. My mate, still dripping, raised his dripping arm to point and said "yes officer, he went that way!" and off shot these three police cars to look for him as we all disappeared into the night. We hadn't actually done anything wrong, (apart from a little boxing with the bouncers but even that was self defence), but we reckoned explaining ourselves in Bell Street nick just wasn't the ideal way to end the evening. So like the responsible citizens we were, we all did the decent thing and ran away as fast as our drunk little carcasses would let us. Funny? Well you had to be there perhaps, but yes. It was *!%*!! hilarious.

[Flyby PC 23]

How neat to bring things back to WW1 aviation relevance.

 

That second carrier we've found, HMS Furious? She was the carrier which launched the two flights of Sopwith Camels which bombed the Zeppelin base at Tondern in July 1918, - the first ship borne strike force in naval aviation history.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tondern_raid

[Bullethead 12]

We'd just reached the harbour gates when three cop cars arrived, and I swear it's true, they stopped beside my mate who'd been in the water, and asked him if he'd seen 'some nutter' jumping in the harbour. My mate, still dripping, raised his dripping arm to point and said "yes officer, he went that way!" and off shot these three police cars to look for him as we all disappeared into the night.

 

 

I though the States had a monopoly on stupid cops

 

How neat to bring things back to WW1 aviation relevance.

 

That second carrier we've found, HMS Furious? She was the carrier which launched the two flights of Sopwith Camels which bombed the Zeppelin base at Tondern in July 1918, - the first ship borne strike force in naval aviation history.

 

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Tondern_raid

 

Well, arguably the Japanese did it first, all they way back in 1914 at the Seige of Tsingtao. But those were seaplanes hoisted out instead of flying off a deck.

[Flyby PC 23]

Those mountings? Courtesy of the CO, Royal Navy Historic Flight, Yeovilton, (who fly historic Swordfish):-

The mountings you are interested in would have been used for all manner of things! During operational service they would have held a further compass or searchlight (even signal light) to allow the Telegraphist Air Gunner (TAG) to search the ocean.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Fascinating discussion, gents!

 

Amazing some of the feats the Swordfish were responsible for in the early part of the war: Taranto, Bismarck...

[Bullethead 12]

The mountings you are interested in would have been used for all manner of things! During operational service they would have held a further compass or searchlight (even signal light) to allow the Telegraphist Air Gunner (TAG) to search the ocean.

 

Well, that makes sense. Did you ask them what the knobby black things on the model were? Not searchlights, surely ;).

 

 

Amazing some of the feats the Swordfish were responsible for in the early part of the war: Taranto, Bismarck...

 

The old Stringbag did an awful lot of damage throughout the war. It put paid to many U-boats out in the Atlantic and scads of ships in the Med. Most of the latter was done at night, too, due to the local air opposition. But they managed to stick radar in the plane somehow, so it could find ships in the dark. It wasn't until fairly late in the war that the the US Avenger and Fairey Baracuda started appearing in numbers for the FAA.

[33LIMA 972]

Methinks those black fittings look like smaller versions of the small, pedestal-mounted rotating sights you see being used on the bridges of WW2 RN warships, to take a bearing and maybe a range on a surface target. There are probably some clips on youtube from 'In Which We Serve', Hunt the Bismarck', 'Battle of the River Plate' and 'The Cruel Sea' which show these in use.

[Flyby PC 23]

My Dad's logbook also has numerous entries marked as HF for anti aircraft artillery, the HF I'm sure standing for Height Finding. You can work out what that means the same as I can, but I'm not sure if that also used some piece of ranging equipment or aid to work out geometry.

 

A ranging compass or Azimuth detector perhaps. Here is a picture of a compass for navigating by the stars.

 

Had a hunt for more pictures, and this is interesting with regards anti aircraft artillery equipment.

 

http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/88mm-antiaircraft-gun/german-artillery-fire-control-equipment.html

 

Speaking of the Battle of the River Plate, it's on TV again later today. I shall consider it vital homework to watch it again, then update my list of spares for a Swordfish cockpit.

[Wombat 1]

My Dad's logbook also has numerous entries marked as HF for anti aircraft artillery, the HF I'm sure standing for Height Finding. You can work out what that means the same as I can, but I'm not sure if that also used some piece of ranging equipment or aid to work out geometry.

 

A ranging compass or Azimuth detector perhaps. Here is a picture of a compass for navigating by the stars.

 

Had a hunt for more pictures, and this is interesting with regards anti aircraft artillery equipment.

 

http://www.lonesentr...-equipment.html

 

Speaking of the Battle of the River Plate, it's on TV again later today. I shall consider it vital homework to watch it again, then update my list of spares for a Swordfish cockpit.

 

I have one of these compasses in a plastic (bakelite?) box. I have no idea where it came from originally; it was given to me by my father-in-law many years ago. I have often wondered how exactly it would have been used, given that there are levelling feet and bubble glasses which I can't imagine being very useful except on dry land.