Bleedin' Hitler ...at it again ........

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

How many have you had Specs ?       Bank's  or have you been down to Ma Pardoe's  ?

Ohhhhh......   :shakehead

Close but no cigar..

Bathams tis a good tipple after a hard days graft.

http://www.bathams.co.uk/

:Salute     Guinness

 

[steptoe]

Ohhhhh......   :shakehead

Close but no cigar..

Bathams tis a good tipple after a hard days graft.

http://www.bathams.co.uk/

:Salute     Guinness

Mr Rutter agrees

 

[phil d]

Ha !  My Dad was on mine layers & mine sweepers during the war .  I remember him telling me about de-gausing the ship .   I think what happens is  , because of the earth's magnetic fields  ships became like giant magnets and he told of them forming a long line to lower a cable down the side ....perhaps with AC current flowing or positive DC  , I'm not sure TBH ,  then draw the cable up again .   

         A magnetised ship would attract a mine to it . 

And theres me Dad  with Ausie friend .

View attachment 8057

I,ve actually got a book about bomb disposal in the second world war and it's very interesting, the Degaussing you are on about involved wrapping a cable around the ship like a wide belt, this prevented the magnetic mines from being attracted to it. There were several types of mine, Magnetic, known as "influence mines" Acoustic, and general mines, the general mine just hung about waiting for someone to bump into it, the magnetic went off when a large chunk of metal came close (ship) and the acoustic, went off when it sensed certain sounds, which had to be rhythmic, like an engine of a ship.

There were plenty of these things washed up at Shoebury ness on the south coast, the problem was that defusing them involved a hammer, and if you hit it like tap, tap, tap, it would trigger, so you went tap tappity tap then taptap tap, you hit it in a way that was not rhythmic.

The same fuse was put in bombs too, interestingly a German director of a company called Ruhlmetal, (later became Siemens) visited an armaments show using half a ticket stuck in his top pocket, Germany was banned from developing weapons at the time under a treaty, he also visited Ford factory in the USA, and developed the production lines in Germany along the same lines as Ford did. This was just before the outbreak of WW2 and while in America he looked at electronics, with a view to buying capacitors to use in fuses, but he found the German ones were better than the American ones.

All the bombs had different names, depending upon size, and believe it or not the British government hadn't thought about UXB,s in the beginning of the war, they were split between the forces, anything in the Sea was the Admiralty's problem, anything landing on an airbase was the RAF's problem and anything else went to the Army. There was even talk of making the Home Guard responsible for UXB's!

Eventually it was handed to the Royal Engineers, and although they don't get a lot of credit, quite a large amount of the work was done by Conchy's, For those who don't know let me explain what a Conchy was.

During the war there were a fairly large group of people who for various reasons believed it wrong to take a life, any life, these were known as conscientious objectors, they refused to carry a weapon or kill, initially there were not conscripted but later on they were and a lot were put into medical battalions. Eventually there were too many and they began to join bomb disposal units, there was a reasoning among them that while they strongly objected to killing, they believed that defusing bombs was actually saving lives, so in a sense they were doing what they believed in. These people became known as Conchy's and were often accused of being cowards, believe me they weren't, there's not many who'd volunteer to go down a hole with a bomb that you didn't know when it was going to blow.

When dealing with a bomb on land the first think was to find a "funk hole" , this was somewhere, not too close to the bomb that you'd get hurt if it went off, but not too far that you couldn't run to it quickly if the ****** started ticking, the walk from the "funk hole" to the bomb was known as "the longest walk" it still is today, although now it's the distance to the nearest safe area.

Well I've probably bored you enough for now so I'll leave it at that. Phil. 

 

[Tony S]

Thanks for that Tony ....  now you mention it I think I heard of them being wooden hulls.

 

[Evans Electric]

Good post Phil .   

I sometimes think that everyone should be a "Conchy"   .  When the politicians , Kings , Tsars & Kaisers order the working classes to come and fight their wars , they'll tell 'em to funk off  and fight it yourselves.  

 

[rapparee]

Talking of conscientious objector, did anyone watch hacksaw ridge yet. 

It's very good.