Bystander

Yes I thought that it was pretty amazing - I cannot recall another example of a vessel sticking in the seabed like a tombstone. Does anybody else know differently?

I think that I am correct in saying that other than a few submarine rammings (e.g. by HMS Dreadnaught) where the shape of the bow was pretty immaterial really. The only example of a ram bow ‘doing its job’ in the RN was the famous ‘own goal’ sinking of HMS Victoria by HMS Camperdown. If one follows this link: (http://www.divernet.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?id=2273&sc=1023&ac=d&an=2273:Victoria's+Secret...) one can see that ram bows had a secondary effect after sinking! Of course the ram function become more stylised over time and ended up as little more than a bulbous bow on dreadnaughts.

I believe that you will find that the ram bow was designed to sink ships by ramming, which was given an exaggerated importance in the seond half of the Nineteenth Century following the events of the Battle of Lissa.

Absolutely - if one looks at a DB610 it looks all wrong - the bottom pair of cylinder banks are too close together IMHO (The DB610 was a pair of DB605 inverted V12 engines nailed together). As you say they were notorious for catching fire, with disasterous consequences for the integrity of the wing. Allegedly this originated out of the traditional Heinkel obsession with reducing drag, resulting in both the configuration and tight-fitting engine cowlings. Who can guess where the photo was taken?

Sorry a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! Particularly when coupled to a dodgy memory. Used to ogle the sectioned examples in the old Birmingham Science Museum in my lunchtimes - have never visited the new Powerhouse(?), are theystill there?

Absolutely what a massive solid chunk of precision engineerd components, with all of that complex sleeve valve drive train. Another contender has to the Bristol Pegasus. All of the Roy Fedden designed sleeve valve Bristol Radials are things of beauty. One needs to look at a sectioned example to see the superb machining of the cooling fins and the Swiss watch like construction. P&Ws are so crude by comparison.

Gets my vote too, given that the only operable one is in a very frail state I understand, I cannot think of anything else that is remotely more important and is within the scope of amateur skills. The earlier tanks, without a differential, are far too difficult too drive - I understand that the MkIV 'Excellent' at Bovington is also theoretically a runner, but it takes too many people to drive it and that the risk of inflicting catastrophic damage to it by poorly co-ordinated brakesmanship is too great to use it. Perhaps someone better informed could say more? Besides which the Male MkV is the archetypical WWI tank in my humble view. Still think that repatriation of the British exhibits at the APG should also be an objective though.

Agreed, although having spent some time poking around inside and outside the MkIV in Bovington, there are quite a lot of forgings involved, even the track construction is quite a lot more complicated than one first might think from a cursory examination. Then of course there is the (probable) construction of the engine from scratch. But yes I agree the enginering is fundamentally advanced blacksmithing and is achievable. As long as the work is carried out in house I don't think that one is anywhere near talking about a cost in the millions. If one procured in everything commercially and paid a commercial firm to assemble and manage it then I agree one would end up at A7V replica cost levels.

Of course one could always try to repatriate the APG Whippet (and MkIV) - a disgrace to "preservation", which would need so much work to stabalise them after the damage caused by sitting outside rusting away for so many years, that restoration as a runner must be a possibility. After all a lot of other nations have got thier tanks back from Aberdeen - notably the French WW1 tanks, and of course the Czechs got a tank back only about a month ago. But to go back to the original question, it is funny that the recreation of WW1 tanks should be mentioned. The thought had occurred to me as well that recreating a usable MkV might be a good idea. Out of curiousity I had a good a good look at the open MkIV in Bovington to see what it would involve. As someone who worked in railway preservation for 17 years, it certainly looks well do-able to me, although as one always finds, when one looks at what is involved in detail there is more to it than one first expects. It is certainly much less involved than recreating even a small steam loco from scratch...

There is a story in Price's Spitfire at War about combat tests that were carried out between an EE Lightning and Mk XIX Spit in 1963, in preparation for possibly fighting with the Indonesians, who had Mustangs. As you suggest dog fighting was found to be very dangerous for the Lightning, since the speed differential was so great that slowing down for a decent shot made it vulnerable. The answer found was to attack from underneath and behind in a climb, which made the Lightning almost invulnerable and gave it a chance of getting both a lock with infra red missiles and a good gun shot. If it missed it just went into a vertical climb that the Spit couldn't possibly follow, before zooming back for another go.

Thaks Steve the oldest building or structure still in military use is an interesting question. My vote would go to Carlisle Castle.

Thanks Phil, there was certainly a Rectank at Beverly, a quick search of the web has found spome photos of it: http://gallery6801.fotopic.net/c1278041.html, where is it now I wonder. As well as the Warflats there were also the Warwells of course, which I believe also dated from WW2. Thanks very interesting, I believe that there are Warflats (and Warwells) in depot service, certainly I saw several during the trip to Bicester that I mentioned.

Good point - I thought that the WW1s ones were Rectanks and the WW2 ones were Warflats (c1942 design?), but I may be wrong... Certainly there are still some WW2 Warflats around. Is the ex-LSWR Dining Car of c1907-12 still at Bicester? I had a tour round the military railway there about six years ago in it, one of the saloons still had a few original features. I think that there is/was another at Marchwood. Having thought about it I think that the answer might be the famous wind direction indicator in the Admiralty Boardroom, which one presumes is still useful to their Lordships in ascertaining the direction that the wind is blowing in the vicinty of Whitehall.

Reminds me of the first time that I went to Bovington as a lad in 1967, when I can recall being able to climb inside at least a couple of the tanks and climb around all over others - I particularly remember staging to get one onto the deck of the King Tiger and trying to peer through the vision blocks. Mind you though, in these days of mass tourism, it is probably a very good thing for vehicle preservation that it is now verbotten. I don't think that Bovington is poor value, considering the quality of the exhibits and the work that is going on there. Particulaly as one can go back as many times as one likes in a year once one has purchased a ticket - I went three times this year on mine and I even took my three year old daughter in for free the last time - she loved it.

If we are talking about military equipment in a non-ceromonial role, what about the Bofors? Although no longer used in the RN I believe that the RFA still uses it.

Agreed, although there is very, very little of the vessel that dates back to either 1765 or Trafalgar, from memory: most of the keel, the lower part of the sternpost, a few of the raking timbers in the stern structure and most of the lower gundeck. There might be a few older items of naval ordinance around. In the case of the army the ceremonial WW1 field artillery? For the RAF the BBMF?

No that is a separate and much shallower tunnel. Photos of the tram tunnel can be found at: http://www.abandonedstations.org.uk/Kingsway_tram_tunnel.html, which as you can see is basically cut and cover construction. If you look at the photographs of the tunnels that are for sale these have been bored using a shield. The interesting thing was that they were built to a larger diameter than the standard tubes to permit them them to be used post-war for an RER type system using full-size main line trains. The four lengths of tunnel built were aligned so that they could be subsequently extended and joined up. Unfortunately the economic realities of post-war Britain prevented anything coming of the scheme. There was a brief 'now it can be told' piece about them in a immediately post war edition of The Railway Magazine, but I have just briefly looked at my 1946 volume and cannot find the reference - I will dig further.

Just found this by mistake http://www.calequipment.com/detailpages/eclcm8.html (I was looking for secondhand container cranes), probably small enough to bring here as deck cargo!

Thanks for the information Steve - was thinking that it looked rather like "Douglas" on the Talyllyn, which of course is another WW1 survivor, albeit ex-RAF. Was WW1 WD loco building subcontracted by Hudsons to anyone else other than Hudswell Clarke I wonder?

Nice picture! Is it a product of Andrew Barclay & Sons?

Presumably this is the same one that is now with the WHR(P), which will now steam again, going someway to compensating for the cutting up of the abandoned WD 590 by the MoS in Dinas shed in 1941-2. If we are thinking about all military locomotive survivors the thought occurs that the German Feldbahn locomotives should be mentioned, of which there are a few survivors. Then of course there is this: http://www.wdlr.org.uk/WDLR/appeva.htm In finding this I Found this list of presevered WDLR equipment, which also lists surviving wagons: http://www.wdlr.org.uk/WDLR/preserveduk.htm

Have now done a little research on WW1 WD engines, further ones to add are: a 1' 11 1/2" gauge WDLR Simplex at Leeds Industrial museum (WD 10756); a further Simplex at the Ulster Transport Museum (WD 246) standard gauge Barclay 0-4-0ST "Lord Fisher" on the East Somerset Railway http://www.eastsomersetrailway.com/stock.php?num=1398; standard gauge 0-6-0ST Peckett "Westminster on the Northampton & Lamport Railway http://www.nlr.org.uk/stock/swestmin.htm; standard gauge Hawthown Leslie 0-4-0ST "Invincible" on the Isle of Wight Steam Railway see http://www.iwsteamrailway.co.uk/ and follow the links. Better stop before this becomes a trainspotter's website!

Of course there are the Ffestiniog examples as well. In the case of Simplexes the first loco exer to run on the preserved Ffestiniog in 1954 was one, albeit something of a bitza: http://www.frheritage.org.uk/wiki/The_Simplex. In the case of steam locos there is their ex-WDLR 1916 built Alco, although as with much of their rolling stock it has been cut about a bit: http://www.frheritage.org.uk/wiki/Mountaineer_II. Another rather cut about WW1 survivor on the FR is the petrol powered Baldwin: http://www.frheritage.org.uk/wiki/Moelwyn There is another Simplex at Amberley: http://home.fastnet.co.uk/gerrycork/amberleyrail/our-locos.htm. Another Baldwin 4-6-0T is on the Wesh Highland Railway (Portmadog): http://www2.whr.co.uk/s/stock/794. There may be others, but this is what comes to mind. There are also a handful of preserved standard gauge locomotives that were borrowed by the WD during WW1 - the P Class twins 27 and 323 and the Adams Radial Tank on the Bluebell Railway come immediately to mind.