1937 Onwards

Hello Brian, Thanks for a very interesting description of life as we lived and loved it in the post-war years...No, am not from Pompey am even senior to you by some four years, but dance-hall names like Ted Heath and Cleo Lane mean a lot to me too if for me although geo-wise closer to Smoke and dance-hall fréquentations were more towards Hammersmith Palais...and ah the Lyceum, in the Strand and Café de Paris by Leicester Square.....Dog-fights too like you I watched on my way to school one horrible lunchtime in 1940 when so many attacks over Surrey and Vickers-Armstrong inWeybridge where the Brooklands (can’t say « old » race-track still existed because the very last race Meeting had been held less than one month before 3rd September 1939!) they had been overwhelmed and unable to sound the air-raid warnings...can you beat that! I had often wondered how it was I had been just sauntering off back to school when all of a sudden I beheld a crescendo of fighter plane noise immediately overhead and over Vickers of course, and it was only two or three years ago when browsing through one history of the RAF (into which Service I went for my NS in ´51) that I learned of that fact that that day there were so many Nazi attacks the authorities had been unable to sound the sirens in time...
Likewise Brian, what prompted me really on reading through your souvenirs to ask you, you being there in Pompey at the time AND your Father being a Shipwright too (and he might well have talked about it) is how did Nelson’s flagship The Victory come through all the blitz unscathed, for rather like Brooklands Motor Racecourse familiar to all those German and Italian pre-war motor racing aces and now Nazi fighter and bomber pilots these historic sites must have been like brilliant beacon landmarks and in the case of Brooklands the course had to be broken up, covered up and camouflaged because Vickers and Hawkers too were building Wellington bombers and Hurricane fighters on the very same area and this was known too because Brooklands was known to also for its flying school, airfield and even Vickers manufacturing a/c company as well. Well, sure, landmarks were inevitable and they can’t all be disguised being too big and obvious, eg Hampton Court and the Tower of London, even the River Thames itself! But those they might and could hide they certainly would try, and so to the great Flagship of Horatio...Could you tell me how they did prevent it from being a target and destroyed forever ? I would imagine that its survival must have been many a talking-point, and they had far too much to do than to wheel it away somewhere into the country, it not being so relatively easy as hiding paintings and other works of art in museums. And it was made of wood too!
Cheers!

I have only just seen your interesting article. From what I understand for the target not many bombs done much damage to the Dockyard although they still dredge them up now out of the harbour. On e ig Parachute bomb nearly did , but the parachute got caught on a hook on a crane and was lowered to the ground. As for the Victory our only Battleship of today as my father a Shipwright worked on it several times not much of the original timber is still there,