14 NAVY NEWS, JULY 2010


Show line-ups confirmed


THE line-up for the RN’s premier public event of the year – Portsmouth Navy Days – is now pretty much confirmed with less than a month to go. Britain’s two newest warships HMS Daring and Dauntless (£1bn apiece...) are likely to be the biggest draws... ... but the Type 45 destroyers


aren’t the largest vessel at the Friday July 30-Sunday August 1 event: RFA Argus, the aviation training and casualty receiving ship is the most imposing attendee.


Crash test dummy run at Sultan


WHAT do you do with an unwanted Sea King? Well the team at HMS Sultan have


the answer: you use it as the backdrop for a casualty exercise. With a helicopter turned over on


its side, emergency parties at the Gosport establishment were expected to deal with the ensuing fire, extricate casualties and provide on-the-spot medical aid. The exercise was aimed at preparing medical staff currently serving at Sultan prepare for an impending tour of duty in Helmand on Operation Herrick 14.


Also on display are frigates Richmond and Westminster, mine hunter HMS Cattistock, fishery protection ship HMS Tyne, and the smallest vessel in the RN inventory, survey launch Gleaner. The French are sending their


fishery ship/patrol vessel FS Cormoran.


Attractions in the sky include the RN Historic Flight, the Lynx display team the Black Cats from RNAS Yeovilton, the Royal Artillery’s parachute display team the Black Knights, while a coastguard helicopter and a lifeboat will stage a rescue demonstration. Tickets are priced £17.50/£14.50 per day for adults/concessions in advance (£19.50/£16 on the gate), or £50 for a family ticket (£55 on the gate). They’re available from www.navydaysuk.co.uk or 023 9283 9766. n If you don’t catch the Black Cats over Portsmouth Harbour, you can see them at Culdrose Air Day on Wednesday July 28. They’ll be joined in Cornish skies by a SAR and ‘Bagger’ Sea Kings from Culdrose, the RN Historic Flight, a Dutch F16, the Royal Jordanian Falcons display team, nine replica aircraft from the Great War Display Team, plus vintage Spitfires, Seafires, and Skyraiders and Wasps. Gates open at 9am, flying


begins at 1.30pm and the day ends at 6pm.


Tickets are £10/£5 for adults/ children in advance (£15/£5 on the gate) from ticketzone.co.uk or 08444 99 99 55.


Strike up the bands


THERE’S a day of top quality military music in Portsmouth this month – and it’s all free. Nine Royal Navy Volunteer Bands will compete at their annual festival on Saturday July 3.


Bandsmen and women – all connected with the RN but not full-time professional musicians – from nine establishments will perform indoors and outdoors from 8.40am.


The festival begins in Guildhall Square where the nine bands – representing Portsmouth, Heron, Neptune, Seahawk, Sultan, Collingwood, Devonport, Northwood and BRNC – will be judged on their marching diplays. In the afternoon,


performances shift inside the Guildhall where each band will stage a 15-minute concert programme.


In between the bands’ performances, the RN Pipers’ Society will be providing the entertainment.


The festival ends a little after 5pm with prizegiving. Although the event is free, tickets are required to watch the afternoon session; they are available now from the Guildhall box office.


The medics were tested dealing with


burns victims, breaks and fractures and one flier with severe chest wounds (although all made miraculous recoveries once the exercise was done and the fake blood was washed off). “The exercise gave me the


opportunity to put my skills to the test,” said MA O’Grady. “It was a good start to preparations


for my forthcoming Afghanistan deployment.” Also involved was a class of trainee


air engineering officers, giving them an insight into something they’ll probably face at least once during their careers with the Fleet Air Arm. Picture: LA(Phot) Darby Allen, HMS Sultan


Viking warriors honoured


ROYAL Marines inspect a new memorial to their comrades killed in action in Vikings in Afghanistan. The monument – a Platt Mount from


a Viking armoured vehicle – used to be found at the Viking vehicle park on the edge of Camp Bastion, and was passed daily as the Royals headed out on patrol. Four members of the Armoured


Support Group RM – Mnes Dale Gostick and Jason Mackie, Cpl Rob Deering, L/Cpl Rob Richards – and one member of Armoured Support Company (Army), Tpr Robert Pearson were killed on operations in Afghanistan during 2008 and 2009.


Matthew Tomlinson MC – had the idea of bringing the memorial back to the UK.


Group Sergeant Major – now WO1


Here it was refurbished and mounted on rocks, also from Bastion, and dedicated at the ASG’s base of RNAS Yeovilton with air station commander Brig Mark Noble and 3 Commando Brigade CO Brig Ed Davis in attendance, plus friends and family of the men honoured. “Memorials matter, they are a link to the past to recognise the selfless bravery and dedication of our servicemen and women, they have relevance here and now as we come to terms with who we have lost and provide a beacon of hope and aspiration for the future,” said Brig Davis.


Children learn about Royal Oak tragedy


A NEW generation of youngsters will learn of the sacrifices their forebears made as one of the worst disasters in Royal Navy history becomes part of the school curriculum. In 1939 the sinking of the battleship HMS Royal Oak in the supposedly safe haven of Scapa Flow shocked the Senior Service – and nation – to the core and brought the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, to tears.


Of the 833 men lost when the battleship sank, 120 of them were aged under 18. In the wake of the tragedy, the rules were changed; no boy would serve on the front line without his parents’ approval or special permission.


An information pack has been produced for teachers, including an 11-minute video, by Learning and Teaching Scotland, the educational arm of the Scottish Government.


It is the fate of those 120 boys, and the persistent efforts of a relative of one of the Royal Oak’s victims, which has prompted the tragedy’s inclusion in the Scottish schools’ curriculum.


it’s of huge personal interest,” said David Turner, who has talked extensively about the Royal Oak tragedy and been involved with two documentaries. The tragedy also prompted him to write a book, Last Dawn, which has become a bestseller, and is being translated into Gaelic, Welsh and German. Mr Turner has lived in the shadow of the battleship’s loss since he was nine; his uncle Cdr Ralph Lennox Woodrow-Clark, a high-flyer tipped for the highest echelons of the Senior Service, was among the victims. Aside from that personal connection, it’s the fate of the battleship’s boy sailors


“The Royal Oak is not only a tragedy, but


And now they will, thanks to the learning pack. “It’s taken a lot of hard work and letters to education chiefs, but it’s been my burning ambition to get it into the curriculum,” said Mr Turner. You can view the teaching resources used by schools in Scotland at www. ltscotland.org.uk/scotlandsculture/ royaloaksinking/index.asp and also download an 11-minute documentary.


which has always shocked the author. “Wherever I’ve talked about the Royal Oak, I’ve been approached by children or students,” Mr Turner said. “They asked: why don’t we learn about this in our schools? “It’s the horrendous loss of life of boy sailors which schools can relate to. “It is important that we never forget the sacrifices made by that generation. Children also need to know what happened to people of their age.”


Waterbus to help museum


A WATERBUS service has been introduced to Portsmouth Harbour to link naval attractions on both sides of the water. Running throughout the summer, the new link coincides with the revamp and relaunch of the naval firepower museum Explosion at Priddy’s Hard in Gosport.


The museum charts not just


the weaponry which helped the RN become the pre-eminent naval force between the 18th and 20th Centuries, but also the people who toiled to produce those weapons. At the peak of production during WW2, some 2,500 women worked at Priddy’s Hard.


Since opening nine years


ago, Explosion has been dogged by financial problems and has struggled to attract visitors. The museum was intended to be the centrepiece of a development which would see shops, bars and restaurants, plus homes built around the historic site.


Key to its success would be good links with other harbour attractions, chiefly by waterbus. Houses were built at Priddy’s


Hard, but not the amenities and the long-mooted waterbus service was never introduced. Under the threat of closure, the site was taken over by the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard last autumn with the promise of revamping Explosion – and hopefully reversing its fortunes. Displays in some of Explosion’s dozen or so galleries have been overhauled and updated over the winter, the museum logo (above) has changed, and the website (www.explosion.org.uk) has been completely redesigned. The last act of the refurbishment was to dredge a channel at Priddy’s Hard and install a pontoon for the waterbus; it links Explosion with the RN Submarine Museum in Gosport, the historic dockyard and the Gunwharf Quays shopping/leisure complex. Full details on times and prices


Picture: LA(Phot) Abbie Gadd, RNAS Yeovilton


at www.portsmouth-boat-trips. co.uk n Visitors to the Royal Navy Submarine Museum can see the world’s first submersible – and we’re not talking Holland I. The ‘Drebbel’ is a working scale replica of a 17th Century ‘submarine’ built by Dutch inventor Cornelius van Drebbel (he also invented the chimney, the microscope, a thermostat for an oven and a scarlet dye). Built in the 1620s, the original


was tested extensively in the Thames. It was powered by 12 rowers whose oars stuck out through flexible leather seals. They breathed through snorkel tubes at depths down to about 15ft and could remain submerged for several hours. The replica was built for a BBC documentary Building the Impossible back in 2002 using the tools of the day. It was successfuly tested on


a lake at Eton Dorney near Windsor and rowed underwater for ten minutes.


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