Bystander

Wow, strange to think about the ship standing on its nose! Cool link.

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?

Yes your right.

The shape is designed so it will do the most damage below the waterline.

:coffee:

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.

Clive, I have always had a fascination with these ships bow design, and have never really understood why the backwards sloping shape would have been an advantage.

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.

About the Greif.

Weren't the engines prone to overheating even resulting in explosions?

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?

Pegasus is poppet valve, Hercules is sleeve valve. There is a superb sectioned Hercules in the Wellington Museum at Moreton-In-Marsh run by Gerry Tyack, an ex WW2 groundcrew from RAF M in M. Well worth a visit if in the area and if you speak to him nicely he will show you the complete tail section of a Wellington in his back garden. I can also recommend a tea shop just round the corner in the High Street!

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?

Napier made some great engines. How about their Sabre: 24-cylinder, H layout, sleeve-valve, 36-litre, 3,500 HP

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.

I reckon we should go in feet first and start with the MkV - Male for preference if the Mk V was still split between Male & Female variants.

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.

You are right. There is nothing really that technically advanced in WW1 tank construction. It is all just big and very heavy. They were built over 90 years ago (in many instances by firms that also made traction engines) so a lot of the complicated problems that you have with new MV's today just wont exist. Firms build replica boilers for traction engines and steam loco's, so the technology for that cant be too far removed from tank construction. Anyway, the Germans built that replica A7V tank in the 1980's, so it has already been done. Admittedly that cost many £Millions, but then again so did Peppercorn.

 

Tim (too)

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.

I like the Mark A Whippet! see it blasting past the other tanks in this clip!!

(Bear with it for a couple of minutes till you get to the old footage)

 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e8CVm9iQGuE

 

 

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...

I believe that the MKII Spit is classed as still being in RAF service and available for combal duty. There was a simulation done about 25 years ago as to which would win in a dogfight between a Phantom and a Spitfire. It was decided that the Spit probably would if it got in the first volley as it was more manouverable as a Phantom on full power would need three counties to turn and come back. Heat seeking missiles ain't so smart picking up a Merlin exhaust!

 

Phil.

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.

As for 'Military Equipment', would a harbour count? How long have Portsmouth etc been used by the Royal Navy?

 

Steve

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

I think you are right Bystander the WWI versions were probably called something else not Warflats but they did have a long service life. Is there one in preservation I wonder? I keep intending to buy a kit (or kits) of the WW2 Warflats for my WD based model railway. At £16 a kit there won't be that many! To see them in action see the video 'Tanks by Train'

Phil.

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.

I served my apprenticeship at Shildon Railway Works and left in 1970 - there were plenty of Warflat coming in for repair at that time and after.

About mid-1980's the MOD had a new tank unloading facility at a Redmire sidings (Wensleydale). Uncertain about this but they could possibly have run them on their tracks from this sidings across some quarry property to get onto the ranges @ Bellerby Moor and then onto Catterick Garrison.

No great interest at the time but ISTR that they were using some new rail vehicles built at Shildon for these movements but the original Warflat could still have been in operation then.

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.

My Hippo was built in March 1944 and sold from WD railway wagons had a long service life. Some warflats built in 1917 were still in use in the early 1970's and fitted with improved brakes.

Phil.

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.

The last time i was at Saumer i gave the (very) young soldier who couldn`t understand English (i don`t speak French) 10 Francs and i climbed in/out, all over the vehicles i wanted to

 

Ashley

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.

I think it might be a ship....

http://www.hms-victory.com

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?

I think that is one half of the old kingsway tram tunnel,thats in Holborn.You can see the closed entrance from holborn itself.the other end,is what now is the kingsway underpass from waterloo bridge.

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!

This locomotive is decribed as:

 

'Hudson/Hudswell Class G 600mm gauge 0-6-0 well tank, works number 1216 of 1916, War Office No 107 having a spot of bother, derailed crossing the Albert-Fricourt road in September 1916 on the first steam worked 60cm line of the Somme Offensive.'

 

Hudson, of course, are the famous British light railway equipment manufacturers, equivalent to the French Decauville company. They made everything for light railways except steam locomotives which, from 1911 to 1929, they subcontracted from Hudswell Clarke of Leeds.

 

I didn't actually know all that (well, except the loco being built by Hudswells). I have just found a very good book on my shelf about the narrow gauge locomotives of Hudswell Clarke!

 

Steve

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?

Great idea. Perhaps maybe a sub forum. But where else would get the opportunity to post great pictures like this:

 

 

Tim (too)

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

I saw the dismembered Duxford Baldwin whilst under protracted repair at Leiston, Suffolk - sad really......

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.