Posted on 10/06/2008 6:10:48 AM PDT by Vanders9
The last remaining survivor of the sinking of WWII battle cruiser HMS Hood in May 1941 has died at the age of 85, his naval association has said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
He certainly used up all of his luck on that particular day.
RIP.
In May of 1941 the war had just begun
The Germans had the biggest ship that had the biggest guns
The Bismarck was the fastest ship that ever sailed the sea
On her decks were guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees
Out of the cold and foggy night came the British ship the Hood
And every British seaman he knew and understood
They had to sink the Bismarck the terror of the sea
Stop those guns as big as steers and those shells as big as trees
We’ll find the German battleship that’s makin’ such a fuss
We gotta sink the Bismarck cause the world depends on us
Yeah hit the decks a runnin’ boys and spin those guns around
When we find the Bismarck we gotta cut her down
The Hood found the Bismarck and on that fatal day
The Bismarck started firing fifteen miles away
We gotta sink the Bismarck was the battle sound
But when the smoke had cleared away the mighty Hood went down
God Bless You, sir.
RIP, shipmate.
Especially notable as he was the last of only (Three!) survivors of the crew of 1,418.
Unfortunately, HMS Hood was a bastardized camel-designed-by-committe that was riddled with conceptual flaws and outdated ideas and glaring vulnerabilities. There was a serious move in the Admiralty to scrap her even before she was completed.
I was going to post that lyric (sung by Johnny Horton), but you beat me to it.
So here’s the parody of the song, that came out a few years later, and was actually recorded (I remember hearing it on the radio, but don’t know who sang it, and haven’t heard it since my childhood).
Way back in nineteen-forty-two or maybe forty-three,
I sailed with Captain Tuna, the chicken of the sea.
We didn’t sink the Bismarck , no matter what they say,
For when we seen the German ships, we sailed the other way.
We seen torpedos comin’ and we saw a periscope.
We were full of fightin’ spirit and our souls were full o’ hope.
The captain yelled, “Now hear this!” He really flipped his lid.
We haven’t yet begun to fight. What’s more, we never did.
Oh, we didn’t sink the Bismarck and we didn’t fight at all.
We spend our time in Norfolk and we really had a ball,
Chasin’ after women while our ship was overhauled,
A-livin’ it up on grapefruit juice and sickbay alcohol.
Then they made me a frogman on the demolition team.
I sunk a battleship, a cruiser, and a submarine.
I blew up ammunition dumps. I did my best to please.
I did it all before the Navy sent me overseas.
Tony, our Italian cook, was a-settin’ on the deck,
And we were a-peelin’ ‘taters. We must ‘a’ peeled a peck.
The captain yelled, “Hey, Tony! Is that a U-boat I see?”
Tony says, “It’s not-a my boat; it’s-a no belong to me.”
Oh, we didn’t sink the Bismarck and we didn’t fight at all.
We spend our time in Norfolk and we really had a ball,
Chasin’ after women while our ship was overhauled,
A-livin’ it up on grapefruit juice and sickbay alcohol.
And now the war is over and our story can be told
About our captain’s fightin’ and the young ones and the old.
We stayed in San Francisco , away from the battle scenes.
We spent our time on Treasure Island a-fightin’ the Marines.
Oh, we didn’t sink the Bismarck and we didn’t fight at all.
We spend our time in Norfolk and we really had a ball,
Chasin’ after women while our ship was overhauled,
A-livin’ it up on grapefruit juice and sickbay alcohol.
She was a very “wet” ship forward, but I don’t think that was as a result of a refit, more of a change in design half way through build.
All warships are compromises on design to some extent. The problem for poor old Hood was that the concepts and ideas behind her construction were perfectly valid in 1918 and even right into the thirties, but were totally invalidated by the introduction of fire control and ranging radars, fast battleships, and of course air power. It takes a long time to design, build and commission warships, especially large warships, and technology advances are so rapid that they are all obsolescent.
The curious thing about the Hood is that I dont think anyone is exactly sure why she sank. The classic explanation is that she took a magazine hit, but the problem is none of the survivors or the witnesses remember an explosion.
The crew are together again, at last.
What I take from this is everybody dies, whether you’re in your twenties or your eighties. Either way, it’s brief and you don’t know when time is up.
True enough, but its still sad when it happens.
Briggs is remarkable because after the sinking, he remained in the Royal Navy and served for several more decades.
During the Thirties many WW1-built Battleships had complete turret re-designs to increase the elevation of their main guns. Instead of receiving hits on your heavy armor belt from a (relatively) flat-firing WW1 naval rifle, now you are taking hits directly on your deck from a relatively high-angle. Dive-bombing aircraft present a comparable threat.
|
|
|||
Gods |
I think there were just two survivors when the Hood was sunk by the Bismarck. Image/video search link: |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Briggs, Dundas and Tilburn were the only survivors from a crew that totaled fourteen hundred eighteen.
To those that looked at the sketch. In the Imperial Navy
one cable is 620 ft. So the sketch was made from a view of about 1/2 mile. Must have rocked the other ship pretty good.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
