"Firing into the Brown" #7 - Books, LCT's and sundry stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update...

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I have been to...  "Landing Craft Tank LCT 7074"

Been meaning to share these pictures for ages as I found the subject fascinating..  last summer I took a ride down to Southsea on my new then e-bike ('Gertude', by the way..  don't ask..) as part of a circumnavigation of Portsea island - done for no other reason than it was a lovely warm day, with little breeze (so no sailing) and I had a new electric bike to ride..

Outside the D-Day museum (which I must revisit soon as I haven't been inside in ages) they now have a new installation - the last every surviving Landing Craft (Tank) in the UK, and according to the information I've read the last surviving LCT that was actually present on the beaches on D-Day.

She was saved from a life on the bottom of Birkenhead docks, where it had sunk following an interim life as a club house and then a nightclub (!), and restored/returned to it's war time appearance with a National Lottery grant - and it is huge... 

On D-Day this would have carried 10 tanks, the display has a couple of the Museums exhibits in it (a Churchill and a Sherman), it's a Mark 3 version, one of about 250 built..  She had a crew of 12, maximum speed of 9 knots provided by twin 460HP engines (fairly unusually she had petrol rather than diesel engines), about a 190 feet long..

The vessel was built in just three months by Hawthorn Leslie on Tyneside, at a cost of about £28,000, the equivalent of just over a million pounds today.

The "17" is to indicate that she was part of the 17th LCT flotilla, and given that she was only launched on April 4th, she had just two short months to prepare for D-Day (in fact, less than that, as she had engine problems after launch). Evidently this preparation was successful though, as on the day, commanded by Sub Lt John Baggott RNVR (picture following), a trainee solicitor in Swindon in "real" life, she landed 9 of her 10 Sherman's (another source says she had 1 Cromwell tank, 2 Sherman tanks and 7 Stuart - but confirms 9 of them were landed) on Gold Beach in support of the British and Canadian landings.. as ever, it is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things that leaves you gob smacked..

Sub-Lieutenant John Baggott RNVR, who commanded LCT 7074.
© National Museum of the Royal Navy

Then check the following (picture courtesy and copyright  the IWM) which is fascinating..  first..  look at the hole in side of the LCT next to them ... two, the Germans on 7074 don't seem to be too bothered about having been captured.. and three, on the back of the LCT with the hole you can just see written "looters will be shot", clearly the crew of that LCT were very proprietorial..  😁

LCT7074 7th June 1944 on Gold Beach with enemy prisoners for return to the UK. © IWM

"While I breathe, I hope" - inscription on the bridge..

After D Day she continued in her role of delivering men and tanks to Normandy, and over the following months made 32 landings in all.

To get an idea of the size of it - this might help with scale...

 

 

More here (3 and 4 in particular, are very interesting): 

1. https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/713/lct-7074
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMLCT_7074
3. https://www.combinedops.com/WW2_LANDING_CRAFT_LCT_7074_RESTORATION.htm
4. https://blog.twmuseums.org.uk/lct-7074-hebburns-remarkable-d-day-survivor/
5. https://museumcrush.org/worlds-last-d-day-landing-craft-tank-to-be-restored-and-displayed-in-southsea/
   

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Just finished this one which was very good ..

David Gilman is probably better known as the author of the 100 Years War series of books featuring the archer turned knight Sir Thomas Blackstone, and very good they are as well - now to my knowledge that author hasn't completed that series but clearly fancied a change as a couple of books ago he started this series, set in modern times, and featuring the ex French Foreign Legionnaire, Raglan..

Raglan served a long and eventful career in the Legion in their special ops regiment, where he cultivated a number of very useful friends and contacts, one of whom, in this book has disappears in mysterious circumstances leaving only a message that if he does so, Raglan is to be contacted..

Raglan follows the clues, meets a number of people who do and don't help him, kills a fair number of them (😀), hunts and is hunted, but in the end tracks down his man (or rather woman) and Armageddon then ensues in the middle of a jungle..

I have never read any Jack Reacher books, but am enjoying the Amazon Prime series, and I can't help thinking Raglan and Reacher would enjoy each others company - wouldn't want to be in the pub with them at the same time though!

If you like special ops, Frederick Forsyth level weaponry and procedural detail, and a very easy reading thriller style, this is the one for you..  I do, so it's recommended...  9/10.

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Elsewhere, re-basing has started..

These (following) are classed as already "good to go", being based to the standard size/look that I will do the rest with..

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"Laters", as the young people are want to say...