The Life and Death of HMS Manchester

[greendragon]

Having read a lot even in those old times when buying a book of interest from abroad was sort of painful organisational effort (as well as pain to the pocket) I have left Pedestal Operation on a margin. Looked like everything was clear and well known.
The scuttling of HMS Manchester was sort of little red bulb blinking in my mind for tens of years just to know what really happened that the ship was lost.
I bought The Watery Grave in Amazon in a Scotich "cunny" way when price went down significantly .
Before had checked who is the author: Mr Richard Osborne - Ok, ; and the most important factor how the bibliography looks : absolutely impressive.
So it is - i.e. almost all the part related to the court martial consists of minutes of the trial, original evidences of the crew members including of course the CO.
Author, has avoied too much comments of his own though some points were brought to surface.
Appendixes include original reports of construction damage, effect of explosion, the Pedestal lesson learned and many more.
I strongly recommend the book for everyone who would like to get a much better knowledge about how people react under a permanent pressure inflicted by enemy and to know why the CO has never been given any command of HM ships.
Couple of small thigs struck me:
- the ship CO saved his ship without any problems which had been torpedoed a year before and suffered almost identical damages;
- the "black gang" of the cruiser didn't want to abandon the ship because they were finishing the job of making the ship ready to go and had to be forced to quit;
- the sad part of the CO's report is when he was scuttling his ship he observed two crippled merchants - "one of them a tanker" stubbornly heading East;
- and last but not least a note put in the Amazon opinion signed as "I am the Navy officer" who stated that the CO made the right decision of scuttling the ship. I am sure all those who rest in their watery graves trying before to save their ships fro sinking (i.e HMSs Edinburgh, Achates, Somali -to mention just couple of so many of them) have turned seeing this !!!

Have good reading,

GD

[greendragon]

I have found an interesting annex to the subject.
As I have mentioned I have read hundreds of memories of HM naval personnel as collected in the brightest idea ever of collecting them under BBC Peoples War project.
One of them was - actually in thee parts - very big and detailed description of how it was with the cruiser as seen by a 6in gunner .
Because power was cut the gunners were inside their turret , knowing nothing, in total darkness, ship listing, engines stopped - pretty horrible situation.
A seaman, runner was sent to get some orders for the gunners, he was not back quick making tension even more stronger.
Finally he returned with the order to abandon their duties and also being prepared to abandon the ship - which was soon executed.
The matelot memories are really interesting and would no doubt provide a good view on the atmosphere (he was not impressed) on the ship.
He was really brave man , after the ordeal on the cruiser he volunteered to be crew member of one of the HM X-midget subs and saw some action on them.

gd