HMS Collingwood

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jbryce1437
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HMS Collingwood

Unread post by jbryce1437 »

HMS Collingwood is a Royal Navy shore base and is located at Fareham, Hampshire. It was commissioned in January 1940 as a training base where "Hostilities Only" ratings, enlisted for war service, were given basic training. After the war, it became the Electrical training school in 1946 and officers and ratings undertook their electrical training there.
Until the mid 1960's, HMS Collingwood boasted the biggest parade ground of any establishment in Europe. After that time, approximately half was used to build new accommodation blocks.
After a Defence Training Review in 2002, the Maritime Warfare School was formed at HMS Dryad and this was transferred to HMS Collingwood in 2007.
HMS Collingwood is the Royal Navy's largest training establishment and is the headquarters of the Maritime Warfare School and Surface Stream which also has units in Excellent, Longmoor, Temeraire, Horsea Island and Raleigh, delivering training in Warfare, Weapon Engineering, Diving, Physical Training, Chemical Biological Radiation Nuclear and Damage Control, Sea Survival, Seamanship and Military skills.

Divisions at HMS Collingwood on Armistice Day 1958:
collingwood divisions 1958 armistice day.jpg
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HMS Raleigh 1963 , HMS Collingwood 1963 & 67 , HMS Ark Royal 1964-7, HMS Undaunted 1968-71, HMS Victory (Fleet Maintenance Group) 1971-72, HMS Exmouth 1972-74
JEM, EM, OEM, LOEM, POOEL
Then 28 years in the Fire Brigade
Retired since 2002
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jbryce1437
Posts: 1879
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2018 7:28 pm
Location: Roker, Sunderland

Re: HMS Collingwood

Unread post by jbryce1437 »

I was drafted to HMS Collingwood twice during my career in the Royal Navy. The first time was for Part 2 training after passing out from HMS Raleigh in the autumn of 1963. My first Division was Faraday Division and we lived in wooden huts at the south east corner of the parade ground. At that time the parade ground was the largest in Europe and I did several circuits of it as punishment, sometimes with a .303 rifle above my head.
Duties there included working in the Dining Hall, washing plates and cups - fortunately in a large dish washing machine. Another duty was Internal Security Patrol, where you were required to sleep, fully dressed with boots and gaiters on and with your wooden axe handle and tin helmet at your bedside. We did security patrols of the "Out of Bounds" areas, such as "The White City", checking doors and windows of all buildings. With some sensitive equipment being housed in some of the buildings, security was tight. I can recall that on one of my duties I was locked inside a building which housed newly developed radar equipment, and was let out again next morning. The building had metal bars over all of the windows and doors and it crossed my mind what would happen if a fire broke out while I was locked in and I formed the opinion that I was expendable ;)
After a short time, I moved to Lodge Division and we had our own little NAAFI canteen, complete with pinball table. We soon found that if you placed a couple of NAAFI ashrays under the front legs of the pinball machine that it clocked up credits and you could play on it for hours.

Preparation for rounds in Lodge Division
jem2 bryce john reay hms collingwood 1963.jpg


The leading hand of our small mess, of around a dozen people, was LEM Terry Harwood. Terry lived not far from me in the North East and he was on his killicks course. Our paths crossed again later, the first after I was drafted to HMS Ark Royal in February 1964 and Terry was also drafted to her when he finished his killicks course. The next time that I "bumped" into him was after I had left the navy and I was serving with the Fire Brigade in Sunderland. I was on loan with the turntable ladder to a different station to the one I was posted to and was having lunch on the top floor. We received a call to a fire and I ran over to the firemans pole and slid down two floors to the appliance room. As I stepped off the mat at the bottom I got tangled with someone standing there. It was Terry Harwood and he had come to the station to fix the floor scrubbing machine. Fortunately, the call wasn't for my appliance, so I had a chance to talk to him about old times.
After serving on the Ark 1964-67 and passing my exams for killick, I was drafted back to Collingwood in the summer of 1967. Before the course commenced, the whole class was commandeered, along with others from other Portsmouth shore bases, to act as Street Lining Party for the state visit of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. We practiced lining the main drive and across the parade ground, in preparation to lining the streets of London beside the Tate Art Gallery. As it turned out, I ended up sitting in the back of a covered lorry, just off Albert Embankment, with piles of raincoats, which would have to be dished out if it started to rain. It never did, so I ended up doing all of the training for nothing.
I was still an able rate, and Under Age for the tot, when I started the course, but I qualified for a tot near the end and I was promoted to killick shortly afterwards. At the end of my killicks course I spent six weeks training as an Electrical Officers Writer and did three weeks of Admin training at Collingwood and three weeks in Semaphore Tower, in Portsmouth Dockyard where a Chief Petty Officer Writer taught us to touch-type.
I finished my killicks course with Mechanicians marks of 70%, but I would have had to sign on to undertake the two year course, even though I still had around 7 years before my engagement expired and could have fitted it in comfortably.

Killicks course in Armada Block
oem1-bryce-collingwood-killicks-course-a.jpg
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HMS Raleigh 1963 , HMS Collingwood 1963 & 67 , HMS Ark Royal 1964-7, HMS Undaunted 1968-71, HMS Victory (Fleet Maintenance Group) 1971-72, HMS Exmouth 1972-74
JEM, EM, OEM, LOEM, POOEL
Then 28 years in the Fire Brigade
Retired since 2002
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Pelican
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Re: HMS Collingwood

Unread post by Pelican »

HMS COLLINGWOOD REMEMBERS EIGHTY YEARS OF SERVICE
15 January 2020
Former commanding officers joined serving personnel in Fareham as HMS Collingwood kicked off its 80th birthday year.

What started out as a temporary wartime base has become a mainstay of the modern Royal Navy and a key employer in south-east Hampshire.

The first trainees passed through the gates of Collingwood – then on the southern outskirts of Fareham – on January 10 1940 (one day after HMS Raleigh in Torpoint), established to meet the demands placed on the Navy by World War 2 – then just four months old.

One thousand new sailors passed through the gates every week, initially for wireless/telegraphy training and later in the war for instruction in radar.

Wartime conditions were rudimentary: barrack blocks were built to accommodate 10,000 sailors for up to ten weeks at a time.

Because the base was built on marshland it was susceptible to flooding, the blocks were mounted on plinths, the heating rarely worked in the wooden barracks (each built for just £600), and on day one there was just a single secretary and solitary typewriter in the entire establishment.

Collingwood was established as a ‘hostilities only’ base – due to be dismantled once peace returned. But at the end of World War 2 the Admiralty decided the base had an important role to play in training sailors for the nascent Cold War.

The establishment was extensively rebuilt in the 1970s and 1980s – especially the hub of the training and administration area – so few of the original 475 buildings on the site still remain.

But the church is one of them – and the obvious setting for a service of thanksgiving for all those who have served at Collingwood and died in the line of duty either on the base (it was bombed during the war including one raid which claimed the lives of 31 ratings) or on the front line.

Continues with photos at - https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-l ... GkjKwFzixY
HMS Pelican 1938 - 1958 GGCV L86 U86 F86 What I Have I Hold ~ A wonderful bird is the Pelican its beak can hold more than its belly can.
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