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Hms Opossum Association HMS OPOSSUM ASSOCIATION SPRING NEWSLETTER 2017 1945-1958 Welcome to our Spring Newsletter, 2017. The dispatch of this will be a little earlier this year, because I’m off again on another ‘foreign’ down to the Falkland Islands then island hopping back up the Atlantic, with lots of lumpy sea-time in between! Well sCoHmAeIoRnMe AhNas’S t oR EdoP OitR!!T!! In the absence of any incoming Newsletter material, this edition is mostly my effort to keep our “Opossum’ band together and hope that it provides some interest to the membership. th nd With winter days behind us Spring is here. One thing on our minds is the HMS Opossum reunion at the Royal Beach Hotel, Southsea. 19 - 22 May 2017. Please make every effort to be there. In February the Aldershot four enjoyed a five day break at Warner’s Warren Hotel, Hayling Island, where the sun shone as it will do when we all meet up again in May – excited at the prospect. Very Sincerely Yours Aye Lewis Trinder Legion de Honneur Chairman Chairman Lewis Trinder 107 North Lane, Aldershot, Hampshire GU12 4QT 01252- 323861 [email protected] Secretary/Editor Eddie Summerfold 28 Greymont Road, Limefield, Bury Lancs. BL9 6PN 0161-764-8778 [email protected] Treasurer Sam Edgar 21 He1ath Lawns, Farnham, Hants PO15 5QB 01329-235732 [email protected] Website www hmsopossum.org.uk TREASURER’S REPORT Brought Forward £1,818.96 Income 20.00 [Tony Blacker] Balance ROLL OF HON£ O1U,8R38.96 Ronald Bradley John Eardly Wilmot John Cartwright J W Powell Albert Corless Harry Barlow David Jarvis Bob Gray Les Wood George Scott John Williams Ken Harris Pat Norman Reg Parker Harry Roach Ivan C Haskell George Fletcher Fred Thompson George H Richards Fred[Mick]Bodel Fred King Grorge Curry Sid Pemberton John Davison Cliff Harthill George Brown Steven Hart Stewart A Porter Arthur Pope Jack Marshall Les Dimmock John Bray Joe Gornall Doug Banks Dick[Ginger]Bird Jackie Scholes Harry Woolhams Cornelious Canon Jim Tribe Doug Goulding John Fraser Pete Maddox Bill Bolton Cyril Mason John Hardman Ken Phillips Mike Swayne Harry Catterson Ron Hare Bill Bovey Jack Richards William Wilder George[Jan]Lobb Bill Price Martin George Ken Slater Mike Cole Edward[Ted]Longstaff Jim Payne Peter Lockwood Roy Cope Ron Blundy Bert Rimmer John Blair John W C Clark Ken Carson Charles Parker Tony Harris Willy Mitchell Brian Healey Alister Hunter Blair Alan Percival Stan Oldfield John Jones Roy Wood John Mackenzie Tom Tolson Ian Janes John Owen Ken Hodgkin 2 LIFE ON A MINESWEEPER by Eddie Summerfold HMS Yarnton It’s the late summer of 1959 and I’m on a lone draft from Devonport up to South Queensferry in Scotland. None too pleased that I am to join a minesweeper with no fire control system that I’d spent the last eight months of intensive training learning about to be drafted to a frigate, destroyer of some bigger ship that would have been more acceptable to a newly qualified Second class Fire Control Armourer! Still an A/B [passed for Killick] I am the relief of a Leading hand and soon realized I’ve much learning to do about minesweeping and all the subject entails. Mine warfare had progressed considerably during the Second World War and in 1947 the R.N. Construction Dept. had been tasked with producing designs for a new class of minesweeper that would incorporate all the latest advances. This was to be the Ton Class, named after British towns and villages ending in ‘Ton.” In a ten year period 119 were built. They were designed to be as anti-magnetic as possible, having a hull of double layer mahogany planking and deck houses of aluminum, a shallow 8ft. draft, a displacement of 440 tons, a length of 152 ft. long and a beam of 28ft. Powered by either Mirlees or Napier Deltic diesel engines with a top speed of 15knots. Armament of a single 40mm Bofor on the foc’s’le and a twin 20mm Oerlikon behind the funnel. And having the onboard facilities to tackle conventional moored, magnetic or acoustic mines. There were five boats in the Hundredth Mine Countermeasures3 squadron Coniston [with a four ring Captain in squadron command] Wolverton, Appleton, Upton and Yarnton. The complement was around 30 and each had a bunk bed. With only one trained cook the menu was the same for all onboard, when he was off duty and a seaman or stoker took over - meals were at best simplistic. With a shallow draft and a high free board most seas were lumpy and pot mess was the staple diet. Sweeping exercises took place on a regular basis often in the Forth estuary but the ship did venture to the Portsmouth area and on one occasion as far as Malta. Few foreign visits came the way of Yarnton, Kiel is remembered so too was Gothenberg. In between the squadron did frequent sweeping exercises with our NATO partners. From the whole 16 months spent on the ship one incident stands out. While exercising with the French Navy, Yarnton received an urgent signal to retrieve sweeps and head at once for Plymouth. Here in a hurry we embarked survey ratings and equipment and headed around Lands End into a rough Irish Sea our destination Greenock for fuel and on to the Kyle of Lochalsh. The Royal Navy’s atomic submarines were coming on stream and there was an urgent requirement for them to be tested in deep water yet close to land in case of problems. Charts around the Inner Hebrides being ideal but were the depths accurate since last surveyed many years before? This was Yarnton’s task to find out. For three weeks the ship was based at Kyle of Lochalsh, securing to the end of the pier each evening after another boring day steaming back and forth between the island of Raasay and the mainland taking soundings recording the figures on the charts. We soon discovered the railway station bar was conveniently only twenty paces from the ship. This together with becoming involved with the local community when young and not so young gathered for their Gaelic ceilidh dance evenings proved very popular with the men of Yarnton. The conclusion of the surveying work came like this. Taken from the 1985 Guinness Book of Records [page 89] “The deepest point in the territorial waters of the United Kingdom is an area 6 cables [3,609ft] off the island of Raasay in the Highland Inner Sound at Lat. 51 degrees 30 minutes North – Long. 5 degrees 57 minutes West. A depth of 1,038ft. 173 fathoms,[ 316 metre’s] was found in December 1959 by HMS Yarnton [Lt. Cdr. A.C.F David RNst .” HMS Dreadnought [S101] was Britain’s first nuclear submarine built at Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness and launched on Trafalgar Day [21 October 1960] Why the big rush in December 1959 for the Yarnton to do the survey? 4 CONVOYs As Britain’s survival depended on supplies from overseas, right from the start of the Second World War the Admiralty instituted the convoy system, in it’s war with Nazi Germany - to give protection to merchant ships that would bring foodstuffs to feed the British people, ship raw materials and fuel from around the world. The biggest threat was U-boats, but mines and bomber aircraft would add to the woe of merchant seamen and their naval escorts. Sailing in close company was not popular with the merchantmen, nor was the necessary time taken to attend convoy conference’s or the days to muster a collection of ships before they sent off for their destination. Slowly convoy organization built-up it was to be a vast enterprise to receive ships in specific home ports and oil terminals, carry out ship repairs, if necessary, and send ships out to sea again for further cargoes. This round the clock activity required speed and efficiency at all times, often interrupted by enemy bombing, this enterprise went on month after month throughout the whole six years of the war. Ships were required to carry cargoes for which they were not built, over seas they were never meant to sail – they travelled from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Glasgow or Liverpool, coming to the U.K. from the long haul around the Cape of Good Hope, from Rangoon or Singapore and those through the Suez canal and the Mediterranean - later deliveries of war supplies would go via Reykjavik to Murmansk. While each and every convoy was important, perhaps the most important were the Atlantic convoys bringing from Canada and the USA war materials, food and fuel – then returning in ballast for more of the sam5 e. Convoys would spread out into five, six or seven columns each ship a thousand feet apart, each towing a fog buoy that the ship behind would keep their eye on by day and by night and to avoid collision. Convoys would cover many miles of sea. In charge would be the Commodore, usually a long retired Royal Naval Captain, maybe in his fifties, sixties or even seventies, always in the lead ship of the centre column. Under his command would instructions be given to alter onto a prearranged zig-zag course as an anti-U-boat prevention. Around the convoy’s outer flanks would be the naval escort, a destroyer perhaps, certainly some sloops like “Opossum” and a bevy of corvettes or armed trawlers. There would be fast convoys up to 14 knots and slower ones down to 6 knots or less.
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