Steve's Random Musings on Wargaming and other stuff...: "Firing into the Brown" #12

Friday, March 25

"Firing into the Brown" #12 - Mulberry's, books and 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... bit of a quiet week this week due to other demands on time - sailing season approaching, and also Genesis at the O2 on Thursday which I am looking forward to immensely..

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Couple of book reviews to start off

Dick/Felix Francis (father/son) are my guilty secret - for some reason I do like their stories which almost always feature horse racing in one form or another but usually with some other main focus to provide the counter point to the story.. so in the past his books have featured horse racing along with among other things architecture, jewels, stock broking, portrait painting, and all sorts.. for this novel the hero of the story suffers from anxiety and mental issues - the story flips between past and present, and the (likeable) hero of the story eventually arrives at an understanding at his past, and why he has suffered the issues he has.. compassionate view of what it is like to suffer from an anxiety based mental issue, in a readable story, that also features the Cresta skeleton bob course.. brilliant.. 8/10

First read this I don't know how long ago, forty plus for sure, but among a handful of authors I keep returning to, Nevil Shute* is 100% a story teller - not all authors are, or have the skill, but basically he tells tales that suck you in.. in this particular case a very ordinary man is given a task that takes him far outside of his normal sphere of life and experience.. he is a guy who writes for a model engineering magazine, and is particularly skilled as an engineer, but lives an ordinary life until his sister and her husband are killed in a shipwreck on the other side of the world, and then has to come up with a plan as to how he can afford to support their daughter.. how he does that is a superb and uplifting read.. super recommended .. 9/10

*he's also a bit of a local hero, as he lived and worked in Portsmouth for some time - in fact one of the roads I use to get to work (Norway Road) is named after him..

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While doing the research on Operation "Starfish" in the last post, I also got distracted by the background to a huge concrete structure that has sat at the bottom of the (same) harbour for as long as I can remember..so thought I'd share..

Putting this in context of "Starfish" - looking north - Farlington Marshes is left in the distance - the white line is the dyke around it.. Fort Purbrook is up on top of the hill..

This structure was built sometime between 1943 and 1944, and was intended for use as part of the Mulberry Harbour off the Normandy beaches post D-Day. Most people are aware that Mulberry was the code name for the artificial harbours (there were two) intended to assist the allies with offloading supplies and reinforcements direct from the beaches, what is lightly less well known is that each stage/part of Mulberry was formed of multiple parts.. along with scuttled ships, these concrete caissons were intended to bolster, reinforce, and in some cases replace the ships as required and provide the outer breakwater..

The caissons were code named "Phoenix", the block ships were code named "Gooseberry", but there were also a number of other elements to the design (booms etc.) - the first reference link below is very good on the overall design.

My research would seem to indicate that the Phoenix in Langstone Harbour (I've put it's position - the circle - on the "Starfish" map just for context) is what would have been classed as a type C (the smallest)

There were four Phoenix type C's built on Haying, sometime between '43 and '44 as mentioned, and I originally suspected that they would have been built in that inlet just to the left of the "Holiday Village" label in the map, but the actual build location I've marked with a star - the tide flows fast through the harbour entrance, and the beach is quite steep but photographic evidence [clicky] would indicate this was the construction site location - it's handy for Sinah Common, which as we already know had an anti aircraft battery..

The following picture was taken at Stokes Bay, which is just along the coast, but gives an idea of what a Phoenix beach construction site must have looked like at the time, albeit they made the bigger one's, type B's, at this site..

Returning to the particular Phoenix that started off this whole (enjoyable) rabbit hole I dived down, well unfortunately it developed a fault after it was launched so was towed to it's current position and just left - over the years it has broken it's back in two places but gives a good view of the internal separation/walls.

Once the caissons were built the usual method of hiding them from enemy aircraft attention was to sink them until they were needed - the Hayling Phoenix's were sunk off Pagham until required (x marks the spot)..the caissons had a water inlet, centrally controlled, in the bottom of each segment - open them and they took about 20 or 30 minutes to sink.. to refloat them, close the inlet and then suck the water out with pumps..

Unfortunately, before the other three were used, another was found to be faulty so only two of the Hayling constructions were eventually towed to Normandy and used.

Local records show that some 500 workers to construct them were billeted at St Mary’s hospital (which, apropos of absolutely nothing, was the hospital I was born in! 😁), which is interesting as St Mary's Hospital is on Portsea Island so that would imply some kind of ferry service to take them to and from their work - I wonder if it used the same route as the ferry that still operates to this day, or whether it stopped further over, in Milton, at the Portsmouth end so as to be handier for the hospital site (which in turn prompts another idea for a military local history link!)