Fnurban #42 Defending England : from Radar masts to Martello Towers

Amid the continuing heatwave, last week we had a day and a bit enjoying the sea breezes on the Suffolk coast.  Normally we might well have headed for Dunwich,  but the huge wildfire burning there made us think again, and we went for the Bawdsey/Felixstowe area. It's a nice stretch of coast and a bit less busy than places  like Aldeburgh and Southwold further North,  and it has the bonus of some military history,  too!    

Firstly,  there is the Bawdsey Radar Museum :  commemorating the fact that on  24th September 1937, RAF Bawdsey became the first fully operational Radar station in the world.  The previous year, the inventor of radar Robert Watson-Watt and his research team had taken over nearby  Bawdsey Manor estate as their base, and built the first set of transmitting and receiving masts there - the former being no less than 360 feet high! The station was the first of the 'Chain Home' installations built around the British coastline, which played such a vital role in the defence of the UK in the 1939-45 war, most  famously in the Battle of Britain in 1940. 

At Bawdsey, the 'transmitter block' building remains and has been made into a small museum - we had visited before, but since 2018 it has been completely refurbished and updated, to tell the story of the invention of radar, how it works, and the history of the Bawdsey site, which continued to be part of the air defence system until the 1990s,  and still has a radio mast belonging to HM Coastguard - albeit a mere 100 feet tall.  We paid a visit to the museum, which was interesting if not large - worth an hour or so of your time, I'd say, if you're in the area. I took a few (not brilliant, sorry!) pictures: 

  Here  is the transmitter block - heavily protected by sloping earthworks/concrete, the entrance passageway is between the earthworks and the building and feels a bit like walking along a WW1 trench, and the steel  main doors were apparently gas-proof.  The HM coastguard radio mast is only 1/3 of the height of the original radar masts, but gives you an idea - the 1937 masts were pretty much in the same place, with the transmitter block housing generators to power the radar transmitters.

 

Not a very good (sorry!) picture of the main display room; it did do a good job of telling the story of Radar and the history of the site, and there was inevitably an 'interactive' feature which allowed you to test your potential as a 1940s radar operator,  turning dials to work out the range and bearing of a 'blip' on a screen (essentially an oscilloscope trace )  - it turns out that most operators were women, as they were more proficient.   

You may already know that Watson-Watt was originally asked to look into the possibility of 'death ray' weapons to actually shoot down enemy aircraft, but suggested that it would be more practical to use radio transmissions to detect targets by bouncing the waves off them.  What I learned was that he and his colleagues actually went as far as to calculate the energy that a 'death ray' would require, and concluded that this would be greater than the total electrical energy that could be generated in the whole of Britain at the time! 

 Rather a prescient quote from H,G. Wells as far back as 1902 featured in the displays - along with the inevitable 'The Bomber Will Always Get Through' of Italian General Giulio Douhet. 

And one most historic  piece of 'kit' - this is a Cavity Magnetron,  the device which allowed radar sets to shrink from filling a room to being able to be carried on ships and aircraft. It's been described as 'the most important invention to come out of the second world war' and was important enough to be offered to the US by Britain in the Tizard Mission in 1940.  

 

We also spent some time at neighbouring Felixstowe (see below)  which gave us a distant view of Bawdsey Hall, where Watson-Watt had set up his research facility.

 Finally a picture from the museum guide booklet : a postwar view of the radar station, with the transmitter masts in a line at the back, and receiving masts nearer.  

 As it says in the caption, multiple aerial cables were strung between the transmitter towers, and engineers had to swing out between them (at 300 feet!)  to do maintenance - it must have been terrifying! 

After an immersion in the defence of Britain from Hitler in 1940,  we took a walk along the coast path from Bawdsey to nearby Shingle Street,  which featured an important feature of the defence of Britain from Napoleon in 1805.  Within a stretch of a couple of miles, we passed a total of four Martello Towers.   I'm sure readers of this blog will know the story of these - inspired by a Genoese fortificd tower on Corsica, the Torra di Mortella  which put up a stout defence against British attack in 1794, a chain of 103 of them was built between Aldeburgh, Suffolk and Seaford, Sussex between 1804 and 1812, when Britain was threatened with a French invasion.  Wikipedia says that  of the 103 built, 

Fifteen towers were demolished to enable the re-use of their masonry. The sea washed thirty away and the military destroyed four in experiments to test the effectiveness of the new rifled artillery. During the Second World War, some Martello towers returned to military service as observation platforms and firing platforms for anti-aircraft artillery. 

They were given code numbers ( on the south coast ) and letters (on the east coast), and a list of them is available on-line, so we could identify the towers we saw.   Hence I can tell you that these were as follows: 

(above and below)  Tower 'W' at East Lane, Bawdsey - handy for a free car park by the sea wall from which we started walking. 

 then a few hundred yards North,  we have Tower 'Y'  ( it seems there was yet another one, 'X', in between but long-demolished )  which turns out to be rather special : 

 

This one has been extensively refurbished as a luxury home:  It underwent transformation by architect Stuart Piercy of Piercy & Company in collaboration with Duncan Jackson of Billings Jackson Design in 2010 into a three-bedroom home, winning the RIBA Award that year in the process.  And it has recently been  sold  ( advertised on The Modern House, naturally ), with the asking price listed at £1.25m,   Here's a  picture of the interior  'borrowed'  from the estate agent's pages: 

 I was fascinated by that brick column and vaulting, and it turns out that this is original and is of course there to support  the roof, which needed to bear the weight of artillery pieces installed on top. Given that  the walls are about 3m thick too, you can see what a feat of engineering these things were.  I wonder if the new owner is 'in to' military history? 

Moving right along, again only a few hundred yards to the North we have  Tower 'Z' which may be my favourite,  I'm calling it the Smiley Martello 🙂 

 Not sure if this is occupied, though there is a modern exterior staircase for access. The structure on top looked like a 1940s pill box, so I am assuming this one was one of those re-purposed during WW2.  

 We ended our walk at Shingle Street, a small village with a polyglot collection of homes ( I suspect mostly holiday/second homes) built right on the shingle, a very pleasant place lacking only a pub or teashop!  And here we found  Tower 'AA' ,  which is another conversion to residential use, albeit probably not quite as recent or as snazzy as Tower Y.  I suspect that what with the thick (and curved)  walls and the massive interior brick column, any rooms inside the brick structure are quite small (and hard to furnish!), which means that the roof area provides the main living area, with a sun terrace and  wonderful views, of course. 

 

So within about 40 minutes walk we had ticked four towers - sadly I forgot to take a photo (which would have been easily done) showing all four in a line along the coast.  Still, a pleasant seaside walk (we sat on the beach for a few minutes near Shingle Street, and a saw a seal swim by) , with a nice bit of military history included.

That however is not quite the end of the story - we also dropped in at Felixstowe, where there are two more Martello towers..  Here is Tower  U ,  at Felixstowe Ferry :

and here is Tower T,  guarding Felixstowe's golf course

 

Phew!  Now assuming there are about 50 surviving Martello towers,  the Bawdsey/Felixstowe area is richly endowed with them, having six within a handful of miles (actually seven, there's another one we missed!).  It's interesting that at the time they were built, Felixstowe itself was still quite a small settlement, not the important port that it has since become. But as Wikipedia says,   The Felixstowe area as a whole provided a linchpin in England's defence, as proved in 1667 when Dutch soldiers landed near the Fludyers area and tried (unsuccessfully) in the Battle of Landguard Fort to capture Landguard Fort due to its strategic location.
Which reminds me that a visit to Landguard Fort should be on the list.. 

 I should add that there was a link between the Radar and the Martello Towers - my partner's father was an electrical engineer who worked on  naval radio and radar during the war and continued servicing radar on ships for the rest of his career. The naval/maritime  connection probably means he wasn't at Bawdsey, since that was an RAF establishment, but it was nice to learn a bit about radar, which became his career (sadly like so many of the wartime generation, he never talked about his experiences, so we know very little).  And  the Martellos? Well, we have a picture of him, probably taken in the late 1940s or early 1950s, in front of - you guessed it, a Martello tower.    

 

I do like this picture - everyone has some of these, don't they, with family members dressed rather formally while 'relaxing' at the seaside!  The past is a foreign country, indeed - or maybe it was just  a chilly Spring or Autumn day?    He did quite a lot of work at Felixstowe later, as it was a big port, and we did rather hope it might be one of the Felixstowe towers -  but from what we saw none of them matched the photo. So, we have only forty-odd more Martello towers to go and see, in our quest to work out where this picture was taken!   It's a very long shot, but does anyone reading this have a suggestion as to where it might be?   Note the line of beach huts and the groynes on the beach - it must be at a seaside resort rather than a piece of 'unspoiled' coastline.   Any suggestions welcome! 

In other hobby news, I've been plugging away at re-basing vintage Minifigs 25mm 7YW figures.Currently working on Russians, and eventually I should have six units of infantry (Line, Grenadiers and Pandours), and four cavalry (Hussars and Cossack lancers). I am hoping there are some guns and gunners lurking in the box of artillery from this collection, which might complete a nice 'pocket army', inspired by Norm Smith's examples on his Battlefields and Warriors blog. 

 

 

 

If all goes well, for my next post I'll be able to show the whole Russian force and its constituent units. I'd better get cracking with the PVA glue, MDF bases, green paint and making some flags! With another heatwave coming, I will probably be mostly indoors, so no excuses..  Until then , keep well everyone. 

Fnurban #41: General Knowledge

Among the worryingly large backlog of unread volumes on my bookshelves (worrying because one starts to compare the probable time required to read them all, to average life expectancy), there is a small but distinct category - that of biographies of  prominent British army commanders. This is a direct result of my reading John Keegan's  1991  Churchill's Generals a couple of years ago.  Keegan acted as editor for a collection of 17 biographical essays  by various authors, covering no less than 20 British generals from the Second World War. 

 I'll freely admit that I really knew very little about any of the subjects, so this book was a very nice introduction to the subject - and of course it left me wanting to know more about quite a few of them! In second-hand bookshops and charity shops I tend to find myself looking at the history/military sections of the bookshelves, and guess what?  Yes, you got it, I have been picking up biographies  and memoirs of some of these commanders. Here is the harvest so far: 

I found Alex , Nigel Nicholson's authorised biography of Field Marshal Alexander, in the excellent  Harris and Harris Books at Clare - and actually managed to read it! Well worth it, and very relevant given my interest in the 'D-Day Dodgers' Italian Campaign 1943-45, in which Alexander was allied C-in-C, and highly successful in commanding truly multinational forces. 

Viscount William Slim's Defeat Into Victory (an abridged, but still substantial tome)  came from Cuirassier Books, I think at the Re:Play show at the Royal Engineers Museum a couple of years ago. I like the 'career arc' of Slim : certainly not the usual public school educated product of a family of soldiers,  he was the son of a Birmingham ironmonger, working as a junior clerk before 'joining up' in 1914.  Defeat Into Victory is his account of his command in the Burma campaign, and according to Duncan Anderson in Churchill's Generals,  reveals 'an ordinary man, one often assailed by self-doubt, who made mistakes.. and did not consider himself particularly brave'.  

A charity shop find next:  Horrocks: The General Who Led From the Front by Philip Warner (1984).  I'll let the cover blurb give a flavour.  'Sometimes described as 'Britain's answer to Rommel', Sir Brian Horrocks was not only a charismatic and courageous leader of men but one of the most successful commanders of the Second World War'. His career spanned  Ypres 1914 (and 4 years as a POW) , Russia 1919, Dunkirk 1940, North Africa 1942/43 and North-West Europe 1944-45 (despite being seriously wounded in 1943), with 'retirement' involving the post of Parliament's  Black Rod, journalism and even presenting military history on 1950s  TV!   

On a recent trip to the National Trust's property at Calke Abbey (well worth a visit!), another little find came up in their second-hand bookshop : John Connell's 1964  Wavell:Scholar and Soldier (to June 1941) .  Much more than a simple soldier, Archibald Wavell was 'also a man of scholarly interests and attainments;  a biographer; an outstanding administrator...; and a Viceroy of India'. He may be better known as compiler of a best-selling poetry anthology Other Men's Flowers than as a soldier.  His misfortune was to be unable to build a good relationship with Churchill, perhaps partly  due to his taciturnity - eventually Churchill relieved him of command in the Middle East, at which point this volume ends.    His Middle East command was much more than just the Western Desert, also covering East Africa, Iraq and Syria, Greece and Crete - a huge responsibility with action in all areas, much of which will probably be new to me.  

 

And finally, the joker in the pack, so to speak - Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart's Happy Odyssey (1950).  An addendum sticker inside the front cover records that 'in this book General Carton de Wiart makes no mention of the fact that he was awarded the Victoria Cross'.  I think this may give an idea of the character of the man. In contrast to Wavell, he clearly had a very good relationship with Churchill, who has provided a foreword, and also appointed de Wiart  as his personal representative to Chiang Kai-Shek,  'to which he was not entirely suited' , as professor Gary Sheffield puts it in Churchill's Generals.  Multiply wounded (note the eye-patch) and famously courageous in 1914-18, in WW2 he led a British  military observers mission to Poland in 1939,  had an independent command in Norway 1940, and was captured by the Italians after a 'plane crash en route to Yugoslavia in 1941,  subsequently (aged 63) escaping from a POW camp via a tunnel and evading capture, in the company of fellow General O'Connor,  for several weeks. I think this is going to be a roller-coaster ride.. I had never heard of this gentleman until I read Churchill's Generals, and I was pleasantly surprised when a copy if this book turned up in Sudbury RSPCA shop a few weeks ago - snapped up for £5.  Amazingly, last week I was browsing  in our local Oxfam, and found another copy  - but they want considerably more money!        

Now it's very easy to buy books, especially if kidding yourself you are 'rescuing' them from charity shops, but the proof is in the reading, and I have all too many unread books. But I have a good feeling about these, and I think I will start with what looks to be the most straightforward and positive story, that of Horrocks. This is also a rather long-term project, and I won't be trying to get through them all in quick succession, more likely pick up one every so often, in between other reads.  Let's see how it goes.. 

The recent heatwave has driven away any thoughts of hobby painting, or hobby anything much! (in Suffolk we managed to have the record-breaking highest June temperature)  Now we seem to be cooling down a bit, today I managed a tiny amount of painting - here 'on the bottletops' we have four Garrison command figures for my French 7YW infantry unit Volontaires Étrangers de la Marine.   

 They've had a coat of grey primer, and their uniform base colour of white - it's a start. at least. There's some 'real life' stuff coming up this week which means I might not get them finished  until the weekend, but I should get some of the basic details done. There are also various 6mm units for Risorgimento 1859 wanting finishing, and.. and.. and... just like the books, the painting backlog never ends!

I hope everyone reading this  in the UK has got through the hot spell without too much discomfort - I think we all need some decent sleep! Hopefully we can all get back to our hobby now, and I can report a little more progress next  time. Until then keep well, everyone.  

Fnurban #39: Black Friday and the Middle Aisle

 Apparently it's 'Black Friday' today, some sort of made-up festival of what exactly?  So I won't bore you with lists of special deals ( that turn out to be not so special ),  but I did happen to be in a branch of the Aldi supermarket chain  today, and saw these in the famous 'middle aisle':    

Yes folks, a selection of 1/72 scale Airfix kits, selling at £6.99 each.  You can see some of them in my hasty 'phone picture,  but the full list appeared to be as follows: 

    Supermarine Spitfire Mk 1a

    Messerschmidt Bf 109E 

    Mitsubishi A6M 'Zero' 

    North American P51 Mustang

    DUKW 

That last one seems a little random, but there we are - I guess it's a job lot of whatever Airfix had a surplus of. If you are in the UK and a keen modeller of WW2 aircraft (and/or DUKWs ) in 1/72 scale, get down to your local Aldi 'while stocks last'.. 

I admit I didn't make a purchase, but it's nice to see them there, maybe a new generation of kids will experience the joy of sticking their fingers together with poly cement, or a few old geezers will re-live their childhood..  Actually I may go back for a DUKW - useful for river crossings by my 'D-Day Dodgers' British and Indians? 

One thing about them that made me smile was the presence of safety warnings etc printed on the boxes in several languages, one of which was of course German. So if you pick up the Spitfire kit, you see in very bold print the word  ACHTUNG... ( in the picture you can spot it on the topmost  'Zero' box ). Seems very appropriate, somehow. 

That's all for now, just a quick topical note. 'Real Life' and a bit of a mini-break has meant little or no hobby time this week apart from reading other folks' blogs - I hope to make some more progress next week, and report on it. Must start painting the figures I bought at Warfare the other week.  Until then, keep well everyone.        

UPDATE:  Reader, I succumbed...

 Jus the one, mind - maybe I should have got three, and hung them on the wall...

 

Still Alive - But Got Killed the Other Day

 Is 31st January too late to wish everyone a Happy New Year? I hope 2025 has started well for you all, anyway.  As may be obvious from my lack of updates, this month has been  a slightly  'Dry January' in hobby terms  ( and as a wise hobby friend said, don't try to write blog posts when you've got nothing to report ) -  but I am determined not to reach the end of a month with no updates whatsoever, especially in the run-up to what I believe may be called  the 'fiftth blogoversary' of this stream of inconsequential nonsense ( I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he did, either... ). And so, in the dying hours of this bleak midwinter month, a quick summary of recent hobby-related happenings, and a few thoughts and ideas for the future seem in order. 

I may not have run any actual games myself, but I have been lucky to have been involved in a few: many thanks to Jon Freitag, as ever, for inviting me to join in with two of his remote gaming extravaganzas. First up was his fourth iteration of the Italian Wars period battle of  Agnadello 1509; something of a nail-biting game in which Tony (MS Foy) and I as the Venetians came quite close to holding off  Mark (Jolly Broom Man) ,  Chris ( Nundanket ) and Dave ( LiverpoolDave )'s  French, partly by going against what seemed to have become the accepted wisdom of the previous three outings. A learning point from this - I think I had assumed we would lose, but if I had kept a closer eye on the scores we might have seen a chance to actually win!  Never assume.. Click on the link here for Jon's excellent report.    I did smile at Jon's writing at one point : By now, Alviano's attacks have run out of momentum - what in fact had happened was that my Heavy Cavalry  Men-At-Arms had pursued a badly-damaged French light horse unit, striking the routers from behind and rolling eleven dice against the French one - and then  I had rolled no hits with my eleven dice, and seen my brave knights slink away in disgrace! A moment to remember.  As you can see , the game was a really colourful affair, with some mighty struggles as the big pike blocks collided across the Venetians' defended ditch. 

                        

 

The second offering from Jon was earlier this week - a complete change of theme, The Gunfight at Adobe Wells Station ... yesirree, a rootin' tootin' Wild West Gunfight!   Tremendous fun was had as (by coincidence ) the former Venetians Tony and I became Pinkerton Agents, defending a stash of weapons against a gang of lairy-looking desperadoes who strongly resembled the French nobiltiy of 1509.  My character 'The Accountant' managed an initial coup by fatally drilling Chris's  'ZZ Hood' right between the eyes,  but then fell to a rain of bullets and clubbed pistols from Mark's  villainous 'Wild Bill' Briscoe.  Meanwhile Tony's  'Careful' McMinn had been anything but careful, and took a whole lotta lead from 'Daring Dave' McGinty, and the Pinkertons were unceremoniously rubbed out.  A great game, with Jon reviving his version of 'The Rules With No Name' and figures after 25 years disuse - you did a good job of remembering them, Jon!  I liked the simple card-driven activation which sometimes gave a player two or even three actions on their turn, hence allowing a deadly 'reload - aim - fire' sequence, and the use of a 'joker' card to end the turn randomly - which quite often saved characters who had got into a very tight spot, by denying their opponent the chance to finish them off! Alas, The Accountant ran out of luck in the end,  and his books are now closed.  I borrowed the following pic from Jon's blog - the moment my man went down, in a close-quarters rooftop fight..

                               

  

Chris aka 'Nundanket' has featured quite a lot in my hobby January - as well as the above we met in real life a couple of times. First was at the National Army Museum for one of their excellent Friday lunchtime talks, this time on the  Saratoga campaign of 1777.   Chris has posted a report of the talk here - note that if you can't make it in person to the talks, you can book in to watch them on-line, and well worth it they usually are.   Secondly, Chris and I were involved with  an evening of board wargaming in a London pub, playing my venerable (1983!)  Soldier King  game. Very much a 'learning the game' exercise for all concerned, but interesting, and we are arranging another try with the same group - in which we will hopefully move a bit quicker and get stuck in to some proper battles! Here is a picture (thanks again Chris!)  to give you an idea of the look of the thing 

 

So that's a summary of most of what I've been doing hobby-wise - you may have noticed that this does not ( shock, horror! ) include any painting.. Well, I have managed a few painting sessions on my 1859 Risorgimento  Piedmontese and Austrian 6mm armies, and they are 'getting there' but by no means complete, though I have been enjoying the process.  Here is a 'work in progress' sort of picture - Austrians mainly in white, Piedmontese in blue. I like the simple, semi-flat format of the Commission Figurines models, which are a mix of their Napoleonic and ACW ranges. 

on the workbench - just not often enough!

 

For the future, I have a couple of ideas  knocking around,  plus an invitation , as follows: 

D-Day Dodgers as a Mini-Campaign?

I was intrigued and inspired by a couple of posts from the always excellent Norm Smith on his Commanders website and/or  Battlefields and Warriors blog  ( and by the way, if you haven't already,  do yourself a favour and download his brilliant  2024 Christmas Newsletter ).  In these he highlighted a  piece in Matt OIrsik's 'Warning Order' free downloadable  wargaming magazine, issue no. 58, which in turn is inpsired by a very old series on 'One-Day-Campaigns' which appeared in early issues of Wargames Illustrated  back in 1987!  I remember those 1980s articles, too - quite inspiring. Norm is using the concept to set up a WW2 campaign for his 'Old School Tactical' boardgame collection, which you can read about on his site - he calls the campaign  Krosnogord 1944, and excellent it is too. I have been thinking that something similar might be a pretty good way to use my D-Day Dodgers  1943-45 Italian Campaign collection, having now painted a few units for Rapid Fire Reloaded, I need a framework for putting together game scenarios, and the 'linked maps/tables' format of the mini-campaigns suggested by Norm and Matt look like a pretty good idea. I am giving this some thought..I hope Matt won't mind too much if I show a screenshot of  part of his Warning Order article :

And of course, if you have not previously seen Warning Order, do have a look, it is an amazing piece of work and well worth supporting! 

Thirty Years War with Portable Pike and Shot ? 

I have got a bit tied up with painting figures for projects in the past few months, and it occurs I should change things up a bit and vary my routine by remembering the armies that are already painted, and could be used for actual games with very little effort.. in particular I've been thinking of my 15mm Thirty Years' War forces. I chanced upon some blog entries by Archduke Piccolo, who has tried re-fighting battles of the Thirty Years' War using Bob Cordery's  The Portable Pike and Shot Wargame - an example being his Portable White Mountain  from June 2024.  It made me think - I wonder if I could do that?  At around the same time, I noticed that Helion  have published a book about the battle of Fribourg 1644 :

 

Being a bit of a fan of Marshall Turenne ( slightly morbidly, I think I once saw the cannonball that killed him, in the Invalides museum  in Paris ), this could be a good one to try gaming, and my armies are supposed to be French and Imperialists ( OK, maybe it was Bavarians at Fribourg, but we'll overlook that! )  . The book will I assume have decent orders of battle, and they can hopefully be scaled down to the limited table and forces at my disposal - a sort of 'bathtub Fribourg', perhaps?  Actually I don't think the armies involved were all that large, at this late stage of the war, which may make it easier. So that's another book for for the wish-list - but it should be well-worth reading, Monsieur Thion being the expert on French armies of the period. 

A PBEM Seven Years War Campaign? 

Chris 'Nundanket' strikes again - he has kindly invited me to join a 'Play by Email' campaign he is planning, based on Frederick the Great's invasion of Bohemia in 1757. We talked about the idea when we met at the NAM (see above), and the discussion and some ideas batted around gave him the impetus to get started on it, I think. He has a bunch of willing generals lined up and an interesting co-operative/competitive format in mind, whereby we may be all playing Prussian commanders versus the umpire-driven or automated Austrians - it looks like it should be quite in interesting excercise. Thanks yet again, Chris, I look forward to it..  

What with getting the 1859 armies completed and hopefully a game on the table soon,  I think I have given myself plenty to be getting on with!  I've also rambled on quite long enough here, so I will call it a month and hope to come back with some actual progress in February ( which is tomorrow, of course- maybe not quite  that quickly, then!).  Meawhile I hope everyone out there is enjoying their hobby time, and until the next time keep well, everyone.   

Fnurban #36 : What's in a Name?

There's been something of a pause in hobby activities in the past few weeks - largely just due to 'daily life' happening, really  ( 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans..' as a working-class hero may, or may not, have said ).  A little progress on painting 6mm figures for the Risorgimento project, but nothing finished and alas, no gaming.  But there has been a little 'military history' interest, with a common thread, that being my family name. 

I think I was slightly aware that one of Wellington's staff in the Peninsular bore the name Barnes - I think I remembered him being mentioned at 'No.1, London', Apsley House, which is of course well worrh a visit if you are in central London. But recently, and  possibly after Jon Freitag's ACW Shiloh game that I took part in,  I happened to search on-line for 'General Barnes'. There was indeed an ACW character of that name, commander of the Union army's 1st Division, who disgraced himself at Gettysburg, I'm afraid. However,  I was more interested to see some details of the Napoleonic officer, Sir Edward Barnes (1776-1838).  His Wikipedia page makes a good introduction.  He seems to have had a distinguished military career, rising to be Wellington's  'fire-eating adjutant general'  in the Waterloo campaign, and was wounded in that battle. Subsquently he spent seven years as Governor of Ceylon, and was Commander-in-Chief in India in 1832-1833.   Here he is, in a portrait by William Salter 

Need I say there is emphatically no resemblance to me? ( except perhaps what is euphemistically called a  'high forehead' )  And no evidence of any family connection - my ancestors were all  lowly farm labourers in Norfolk at the time.  But I was struck by a couple of nice coincidences in his biography.  Firstly,  that he was briefly MP for Sudbury at the end of his life - Sudbury being my adopted home town. As an aside, he was first elected in a controversial by-election in 1834, which was covered by a young newspaper reporter named Charles Dickens, and probably inspired Dickens' fictional election at  'Eatanswill' in The Pickwick Papers.         

And secondly, General Barnes died at his home at Walthamstow in 1838, and is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's Church, Walthamstow. His gravesite is marked by a large monument, with an inscription giving details of his achievements in life.  It happens that before moving to Sudbury, I too lived at Walthamstow, for about 10 years ( I suspect his house was a bit grander than my Warner Estates maisonette ), and I must have walked past St. Mary's churchyard a good many times, all unknowing. It has occurred that I seem to be following my illustrious namesake around, and it might be fun to do a little research into his life and career. By way of a start, a few weeks ago I paid a visit to the church, and found the monument : 

 as you can see it's quite impressive, but alas the inscription is by no means easy to read

- but it's a start, at least. It might be nice to find out some more.  Perhaps my new friends at the National Army Museum ( well, I paid for a membership there, mainly to donate some money and to get a discount in the cafe when attending their talks! ) can help..

Another thread of research is a bit closer to home - I have done a bit of family history investigation  over the years, and have recently been passed copies of  the RAF service records of a relative (with whom I also share surname), who was a mid-upper gunner in Lancaster bombers in 1943 and 1944. I  have his service record document which records his joining up in 1942, and then the sequence of postings to various reserve, reception and training establishments, finally arriving at No. 57 squadron  at RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire in late 1942.  Scampton is famous as the base at which No. 617  'The Dambusters' squadron was formed in early 1943, and several crews joined no. 617 from no.57 squadron, so my relative may very well have been familiar with many  'Dambusters', though he remained with No.57.  He stayed with the squadron until July 1943, so I assume he completed a 'tour' of operations, and then transferred to various OTUs (Operational Training Units), perhaps as an instructor, before joining no.9 squadron ( the RAF's senior bomber unit ) in July 1944.  

All that information is interesting enough, but what is really fascinating to me, is a series of copies of  the squadron's Operation Records, for operations which my relative took part in. These give the date and target of the mission, the number of the squadron's aircraft involved,  and a summary of how the operation went - and then a separate section for each aircraft, giving details of crew members, time 'up' and 'down', whether they reached the target, time and altitude of bombing, whether results could be observed, and bomb load carried. 

As an example, here is the squadron's summary for the operation undertaken on the night of 3rd/4th March 1843 :

BOMBING OPERATION: TARGET - HAMBURG
Seven aircraft were detailed to attack HAMBURG. All took off, but one returned early with rear turret u/s and an oil leak in one engine. The other six aircraft reached the target area. Visibility was good and all saw the River Elbe and the dock system. The P.F.F. markers were clearly seen and bombed. All crews report a good concentration of bombs on the markers and report huge fires which could be seen over 100 miles away on the return journey. All returned to base except 'M' which was sent on to Wittering to land on the long runway there because of the inability to get the flaps down for landing. It landed safely there. Photographs taken on this raid show a large mass of fires with little ground detail. Those plotted (in all squadrons in Command ) show that the main concentration of bombing must have been on the little town of Wedel on the Elbe about 12 miles West of Hamburg. 

And for the aircraft in which my relative flew : 

Time up : 19:15, down 00:31. River Elbe identified and T.I. markers seen. Bombed concentration of markers at 21:35 hrs from 20,500ft. Bombing was concentrated around the markers. Bomb Load:  1 x 4,000lb H.C. + 96 x 30lb I.B. 

[  'P.F.F.' means Path Finder Force,  'T.I.' is Target Indicator, 'H.C.' I think means 'High Compression' (i.e High Explosive )  and 'I.B.' is Incendiary Bomb ]

I have Alfred Price's excellent introductory book Battle Over The Reich about the RAF and USAAF bombing campaigns over Germany, and he specifically discussed this raid - stating that the Pathfinder Force aircraft had problems with their new H2S centimetric radar sets, which were supposed to give an accurate picture of the features on the ground over which they were flying. The H2S operators were confused by low tides uncovering sandbanks which 'produced the appearance of  a river narrowing far downstram of Hamburg' . Also at Wedel 'Army engineers had dammed a small mill stream nearby to produce a large lake resembling in shape the Alster Lake in the centre of Hamburg... the majority of the raiders released their loads on the decoy, obliterating Wedel itself and several of the nearby villages' .  It seems from the squadron summary above that the failure of this mission was very soon known to Bomber Command.  No consolation to the unfortunate inhabitants of Wedel of course - and those of Hamburg had only a temporary reprieve before the horrors of the highly successful ( from the RAF point of view )  Operation Gomorrah in the following July.

I think the above gives a flavour of the information I am looking through - and perhaps the mixture of fascination and unease which they give.  I suspect that a big factor in our interest in military history ( or any history come to that ) is to consider 'what was it like to be there', and the sort of details available here help hugely in creating a picture in the mind of what the young men ( my subject being only about 20 at the time ) involved were going through,  and also, it must be said, of the destruction that they brought to the cities and people of Germany (look at the 'bomb load' details for just one aircraft,  multiply by several hundred aircraft  per operation, and think of the effect of them on the ground: huge fires which could be seen over 100 miles away ).  The amount of information available on-line on the RAF bombing campaign is impressive, including  from the  International Bomber Command Centre at Lincoln, which I now hope to visit. The records I am looking at give the ID number of every aircraft involved, and so far  a simple on-line search has easily turned up information on the fate of each one of them - suffice it to say that the operational life of a Lancaster bomber in 1943, even if not actually lost in action, was usually  measured in months.  Very sadly, the same goes for the crews, and the fascination of following my late relative's tour of duty is overshadowed by the knowledge that he 'failed to return' from a mission in July 1944, aged only 21. 

 

As an illustration of perhaps the 'small world' of Bomber Command and the amount of information available,  the above picture is from Wikipedia's page on 57 Squadron, and depicts  Flying Officer R.W. Stewart, a wireless operator on a Lancaster of No. 57 Squadron based at RAF Scampton speaking to the pilot from his position in front of the Marconi T1154/R1155 transmitter/receiver set :  it so happens that my relative flew on one mission in the same aircraft as F/O Stewart.  I am gradually reading through the records I have been given and transcribing extracts involving my late relative - it really is a very interesting, and sobering, exercise. When I was 20, living at a university and doing the final year of my degree seemed fairly stressful - I really didn't know I was born, did I? 

Aside from that, there has been a tiny bit of hobby activity, as I have made very small steps forward with painting my recently-acquired  Commission Figurines figures ( from their Napoleonic and ACW  ranges) for the 1859 Austrians vs. Piedmontese war in Italy, 

 

Here they are on the coffee-stirrer painting sticks ( always keep your coffee stirrers, I have a bundle of 'em ).  So far they've been primed, the infantry have been given their tunics/greatcoats and the cavalry horses have been painted. Still quite a long way to go, and xmas shopping, card-writing  and socialising has been getting in the way a bit, but  I will try to keep finding some time for them. 

I'm hoping to squeeze in one more post before Xmas, even if it's only a picture of a small Xmas tree - and maybe a little more painting progress. There is even a rumour of possible remote gaming.. we shall see.  Until then, keep well and enjoy the mince pies, everyone.

Fnurban #34 Duxford redux

There's been a period of quiet here, partly due to being away on holiday; to 'get back in the saddle'  I will take this opportunity to put up a picture-heavy post, and try not to be as verbose as I can sometimes be! 

Following my first visit to IWM Duxford in July,  I was able to return there in late August, and this time had a good look around the 'Land Warfare' display.  I managed to take a decent number of photos of the exhibits I was most interested in, so without further ado:

Valentine tank

6-Pounder A/T Gun

Lloyd Carrier

Very glad to see a Lloyd Carrier, I was not at all familiar with them. I like the tea-mug kept handy for 'brew-up' at any opportunity! 

 

wasn't this an Airfix kit? AEC 'Matador' and 5.5in Gun ?

the classic 'Quad' tractor and (behind) 25-pounder gun

Monty's desert command tank (the actual one, I believe?)

and the opposition: German 10.5cm howitzer

and ( I think ) 75mm abd 59mm PAK anti-tank guns

plus of course the dreaded '88'

'Hanomag' half-track (in fact a post-war Czech copy)

Jagdpanther tank destroyer

the Jadgpanther has had a section of the hull side cut away to show the interior, and we were kindly allowed a closer look at that: 

 

it was striking how the entire cabin is taken up by the gun!

Finally, some representatives of the Red Army: 

T-34/85 of course

and Joseph Stalin (mk II, I think?)

Following the WW2 vehicles, there was then a display of Cold War and later kit with some interesting stuff such as T-55, Centurion and Chieftan tanks, but I confess I did not photograph many of them, we had reached something of a surfeit of AFVs and lunch was calling!   Nevertheless this was a really interesting display with some highly relevant vehicles and weapons for me - I was particularly interested to see the Lloyd carrier, having acquired some models of it for my 'D-Day Dodgers' British forces. 

Sadly however, parts of the 'Land Warfare' area were closed, and the guides told us that this is because the whole thing is going to be closed. Not sure what will happen to the collection - there was some suggestion they might be dispersed around the other halls at Duxford, presumably to be displayed alongside appropriate aircraft, but I'm not sure really how that would work. Or would they be better moved to other IWM sites, given that Duxford is really about aircraft?  We shall see. 

 After lunch we had a good look around the main hall 'Air Space' display of British aircraft, which has a splendid collection, as you can see from just this photo : 

hmm... Lancaster, Sunderland, Vulcan, TSR2, 'and many, many more' - and there is a Concorde in the same hall!  

the English Electric Lightning is quite something..

..it's basically all about the engines!

Outside there was a lot of flying activity as usual, we were lucky to see the B-17 Flying Fortress taking off.   Also nice to see this C-47 'Dakota', no doubt coming to an Arnhem commemoration right now..

and finally we were able to get a fairly close look at the PBY Catalina being maintained on the tarmac, another favourite of mine. 

 

If you have £15,000 to spare, it seems you can become a 'shareholder' of this aircraft, though I'm not sure what privileges that gets you, apart from probably being asked for more money to look after it! Good for those who do, of course. 

All in all another excellent day at Duxford, highly recommended if you like this sort of thing! Having taken out an IWM membership, to get the full value we need to visit HMS Belfast and the Cabinet War Rooms, both in London, and those visits are indeed being planned, no doubt leading to more posts on this blog!   

One piece of actual ( albeit virtual/remote) wargming has been fitted in: this week I was lucky enough to be invited to join Jon Freitag's  re-creation of the opening phase of the Battle of Shiloh, 1862. 

I took the role of one of the Confederate commanders, and the picture shows the 'traffic jam' of our units as they crowded in to the attack!  Jon will doubtless put up a battle report soon, in the meantime his description in a recent blogpast of the game as featuring some surprise, jubilation, despair, and a lot of laughter  sums it up pretty well! Thanks Jon, and the other players, for a great game. 

That's all for now, next time perhaps some painting progress can be reported on, or a certain amount of military history interest gleaned from my recent holiday. Until then keep well, everyone.