Word: convoys
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...German plane, obviously crippled and unable to climb, fluttered past a British destroyer, one of the ship's smaller guns picked off the raider. Instantly a message flashed from the convoy's British commander: "Thought it not done to shoot a sitting bird." Back flashed a reply from the gunner: "Yes, but I wasn't going to have it perching on my deck...
Last week the commander, Rear Admiral Edye Kington Boddam-Whetham (pronounced boddom-wettem), proudly told the story himself in Moscow. Weathered, towering (6-ft.-3) Admiral Boddam-Whetham had good reason for proud chuckles: he had just brought safely into Russia's Arctic ports the biggest convoy in history. A large part of it had come all the way from the Hudson River...
...size and importance of the convoy could be judged from the fact that 75 British warships of various sizes (among them at least one aircraft carrier*) had escorted the merchantmen laden with planes, guns, tanks and ammunition. Much of the convoy was shot to pieces in a six-day running battle north of Norway, but much more of it stayed afloat...
...where, in baggy tweeds, basket on arm, he did his own marketing. Behind him were almost 40 years in the navy as commander of various destroyers and of the battleship Queen Elizabeth. Five weeks after retirement he was back in uniform, assigned chiefly to duty on the perilous Arctic convoy route, where his sailor's fear of fog and ice found ample justification...
Before seeing the feature you'll have to sit through something called "Atlantic Convoy." Filmed in a bathtub containing model boats no self-respecting man would give to his kid brother, this film never even flickers...