Forums

Posted: 29-07-2013 20:47 Post subject:

It probably is; A flying friend once told me there were only two amphibs in this country, and one was a Catalina.

They are delightful, practical planes, like the Dakotas, Im surprised more haven't survived.

Posted: 29-07-2013 22:55 Post subject:

A dramatic WWII story:

USS Indianapolis sinking: 'You could see sharks circling'
By Alex Last, BBC World Service

When USS Indianapolis was hit by Japanese torpedoes in the final weeks of WWII, hundreds of crewmen jumped into the water to escape the burning ship. Surrounded by sharks, they waited for a response to their SOS. But no one had been sent to look for them.

In late July 1945, USS Indianapolis had been on a special secret mission, delivering parts of the first atomic bomb to the Pacific Island of Tinian where American B-29 bombers were based. Its job done, the warship, with 1,197 men on board, was sailing west towards Leyte in the Philippines when it was attacked.

The first torpedo struck, without warning, just after midnight on 30 July 1945. A 19-year-old seaman, Loel Dean Cox, was on duty on the bridge. Now 87, he recalls the moment when the torpedo hit.
"Whoom. Up in the air I went. There was water, debris, fire, everything just coming up and we were 81ft (25m) from the water line. It was a tremendous explosion. Then, about the time I got to my knees, another one hit. Whoom."

The second torpedo fired from the Japanese submarine almost tore the ship in half. As fires raged below, the huge ship began listing onto its side. The order came to abandon ship. As it rolled, LD, as Cox is known to his friends, clambered to the top side and tried to jump into the water. He hit the hull and bounced into the ocean.

"I turned and looked back. The ship was headed straight down. You could see the men jumping from the stern, and you could see the four propellers still turning.
"Twelve minutes. Can you imagine a ship 610ft long, that's two football fields in length, sinking in 12 minutes? It just rolled over and went under."

The Indianapolis did not have sonar to detect submarines. The captain, Charles McVay, had asked for an escort, but his request was turned down. The US Navy also failed to pass on information that Japanese submarines were still active in the area. The Indianapolis was all alone in the Pacific Ocean when it sank.

"I never saw a life raft. I finally heard some moans and groans and yelling and swam over and got with a group of 30 men and that's where I stayed," says Cox.
"We figured that if we could just hold out for a couple of days they'd pick us up."

But no one was coming to the rescue. Although the Indianapolis had sent several SOS signals before it sank, somehow the messages were not taken seriously by the navy. Nor was much notice taken when the ship failed to arrive on time.
About 900 men, survivors of the initial torpedo attack, were left drifting in groups in the expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

And beneath the waves, another danger was lurking. Drawn by the carnage of the sinking, hundreds of sharks from miles around headed towards the survivors.
"We were sunk at midnight, I saw one the first morning after daylight. They were big. Some of them I swear were 15ft long," remembers Cox.
"They were continually there, mostly feeding off the dead bodies. Thank goodness, there were lots of dead people floating in the area."

But soon they came for the living, too.
"We were losing three or four each night and day," says Cox. "You were constantly in fear because you'd see 'em all the time. Every few minutes you'd see their fins - a dozen to two dozen fins in the water.
"They would come up and bump you. I was bumped a few times - you never know when they are going to attack you."

Some of the men would pound the water, kick and yell when the sharks attacked. Most decided that sticking together in a group was their best defence. But with each attack, the clouds of blood in the water, the screaming, the splashing, more sharks would come.

"In that clear water you could see the sharks circling. Then every now and then, like lightning, one would come straight up and take a sailor and take him straight down. One came up and took the sailor next to me. It was just somebody screaming, yelling or getting bit."

The sharks, though, were not the main killer. Under the scorching sun, day after day, without any food or water for days, men were dying from exposure or dehydration. Their lifejackets waterlogged, many became exhausted and drowned.

"You could barely keep your face out of the water. The life preserver had blisters on my shoulders, blisters on top of blisters. It was so hot we would pray for dark, and when it got dark we would pray for daylight, because it would get so cold, our teeth would chatter."

Struggling to stay alive, desperate for fresh water, terrorised by sharks, some survivors started to become delirious. Many started to hallucinate, imagining secret islands just over the horizon, or that they were in contact with friendly submarines coming to the rescue. Cox recalls a sailor believing that the Indianapolis had not sunk, but was floating within reach just beneath the surface.
"The drinking water was kept on the second deck of our ship," he explains. "A buddy of mine was hallucinating and he decided he would go down to the second deck to get a drink of water. All of a sudden his life-preserver is floating, but he's not there. And then he comes up saying how good and cool that water was, and we should get us a drink."

He was drinking saltwater, of course. He died shortly afterwards. And as each day and each night passed, more men died.

Then, by chance, on the fourth day, a navy plane flying overhead spotted some men in the water. By then, there were fewer than 10 in Cox's group.
Initially they thought they'd been missed by the planes flying over. Then, just before sunset, a large seaplane suddenly appeared, changed direction and flew over the group.

"The guy in the hatch of the plane stood there waving at us. Now that was when the tears came and your hair stood up and you knew you were saved, you knew you were found, at least. That was the happiest time of my life."

Navy ships raced to the site and began looking for the groups of sailors dotted around the ocean. All the while, Cox simply waited, scared, in a state of shock, drifting in and out of consciousness.

"It got dark and a strong big light from heaven, out of a cloud, came down, and I thought it was angels coming. But it was the rescue ship shining its spotlight up into the sky to give all the sailors hope, and let them know that someone was looking for 'em.
"Sometime during the night, I remember strong arms were pulling me up into a little bitty boat. Just knowing I was saved was the best feeling you can have."

Of a crew of almost 1,200, just 317 sailors survived.
Looking for a scapegoat, the US Navy placed responsibility for the disaster on Captain McVay, who was among the few who managed to survive. For years he received hate mail, and in 1968 he took his own life. Sad

The surviving crew, including Cox, campaigned for decades to have their captain exonerated - which he was, more than 50 years after the sinking.

Cox spent weeks in hospital after the rescue. His hair, fingernails and toenails came off. He was, he says, "pickled" by the sun and saltwater. He still has scars.
"I dream every night. It may not be in the water, but... I am frantically trying to find my buddies. That's part of the legacy. I have anxiety everyday, especially at night, but I'm living with it, sleeping with it, and getting by."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23455951

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b037gnxp/Witness_The_Sinking_of_the_USS_Indianapolis/

Posted: 29-07-2013 23:17 Post subject:

The sinking of the USS Indianapolis is not Forgotten History if you've ever seen "Jaws"

Posted: 29-07-2013 23:25 Post subject:

Posted: 01-08-2013 22:20 Post subject:

Vasili Arkhipov, the Man who saved the World

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

First off this guy was involved in a near-meltdown on his submarine the K-19, an incident which was made into the film K-19 The Widowmaker ; he was played by Liam Neeson.

But that's not the incident where he saved the world; during the Cuban Missile Crisis he refused to let his submarine retaliate when they were depth-charged (apparently unintentionally).

Posted: 02-08-2013 09:10 Post subject:

Never mind the Czech gold the Nazis stole...
The Bank for International Settlements [BIS] actually financed Hitler’s war machine
By Adam Lebor
8:21PM BST 31 Jul 2013

The documents reveal a shocking story: just six months before Britain went to war with Nazi Germany, the Bank of England willingly handed over £5.6 million worth of gold to Hitler – and it belonged to another country.

The official history of the bank, written in 1950 but posted online for the first time on Tuesday, reveals how we betrayed Czechoslovakia – not just with the infamous Munich agreement of September 1938, which allowed the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland, but also in London, where Montagu Norman, the eccentric but ruthless governor of the Bank of England agreed to surrender gold owned by the National Bank of Czechoslovakia.

The Czechoslovak gold was held in London in a sub-account in the name of the Bank for International Settlements, the Basel-based bank for central banks. When the Nazis marched into Prague in March 1939 they immediately sent armed soldiers to the offices of the National Bank. The Czech directors were ordered, on pain of death, to send two transfer requests.

The first instructed the BIS to transfer 23.1 metric tons of gold from the Czechoslovak BIS account, held at the Bank of England, to the Reichsbank BIS account, also held at Threadneedle Street.

The second order instructed the Bank of England to transfer almost 27 metric tons of gold held in the National Bank of Czechoslovakia’s own name to the BIS’s gold account at the Bank of England.

To outsiders, the distinction between the accounts seems obscure. Yet it proved crucial – and allowed Norman to ensure that the first order was carried out. The Czechoslovak bank officials believed that as the orders had obviously been carried out under duress neither would be allowed to go through. But they had not reckoned on the bureaucrats running the BIS and the determination of Montagu Norman to see that procedures were followed, even as his country prepared for war with Nazi Germany.

His decision caused uproar, both in the press and in Parliament. George Strauss, a Labour MP, spoke for many when he thundered in Parliament: “The Bank for International Settlements is the bank which sanctions the most notorious outrage of this generation – the rape of Czechoslovakia.” Winston Churchill demanded to know how the government could ask its citizens to enlist in the military when it was “so butter-fingered that £6 million worth of gold can be transferred to the Nazi government”.

It was a good question. Thanks to Norman and the BIS, Nazi Germany had just looted 23.1 tons of gold without a shot being fired. The second transfer order, for the gold held in the National Bank of Czechoslovakia’s own name, did not go through. Sir John Simon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had instructed banks to block all Czechoslovak assets.

The documents released by the Bank of England are revealing, both for what they show and what they omit. They are a window into a world of fearful deference to authority, the primacy of procedure over morality, a world where, for the bankers, the most important thing is to keep the channels of international finance open, no matter what the human cost. A world, in other words, not entirely different to today. Sad

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/bank-of-england/10213988/Never-mind-the-Czech-gold-the-Nazis-stole....html

Posted: 04-08-2013 09:05 Post subject: St Piran's Oratory, Perranporth

This topic has only been mentioned once on this board, back in 2001!

Posted: 04-08-2013 12:35 Post subject:

Hurrah!

I have been in Cornwall this summer; studying Celtic Christianity!

(And later am off to Durham to see the Lindisfarne Gospels Exhibition...)

Posted: 04-08-2013 19:30 Post subject:

Posted: 04-08-2013 20:32 Post subject:

Cornwall or The Book?

Posted: 04-08-2013 23:01 Post subject:

Posted: 15-08-2013 13:48 Post subject:

Posted: 16-08-2013 16:35 Post subject:

Must confess that I've never heard this story before, but I'd like to bet that Rynner has!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/10236118/Kenneth-Dancy.html

Posted: 16-08-2013 17:12 Post subject:

Posted: 17-08-2013 03:36 Post subject:

Sorry about that....didn't look at the Lone Coastguard thread. I had been listening to a Radio 4 piece about the death of Mr Dancy which sparked my interest enough to have a look on Wikipedia about it.