TNA / MT 40 36 Pt 2

TNA MT 40 36 Pt 2

Collection details

TNA MT 40 36 Pt 2

A second digitised section of MT 40/36: Ministry of Transport papers on the Dynamo small-craft pool, special-service planning and claims procedure.

Holding archive: TNA
Collection reference: MT 40 36 Pt 2

View the archive catalogue entry ↗

Source: The National Archives, Kew, MT 40/36 Pt 2. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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List page 1 of 1 Showing document pages 187–187 of this collection

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Page	Image	OCR text	OCR tags
187	Log in to enlarge	-4- 176 omber that had been particularly offensive, itself came under the notice of one of our fighters and suddenly plunged vertically into the sea just about 50 yards astern of us. It was the only time any man ever raised his voice above a conversational tone, but as that big black bomber hit the water they raised an echoing cheer. My youngest son Pilot Officer H.B. Lightoller (lost at the outbreak of war in the first raid on Wilhelmshaven) flew a Blenheim and had at different times given me a whole lot of useful information about attack, defence and evasive tatics (at which he was apparently particularly good) and I attribute, in a great measure, our success in getting across without a single casualty to his unwitting help. On one occasion an enemy machine came up astern at about 100 ft with the obvious intention of raking our decks. He was coming down in a gliding dive and I knew that he must elevate some 10 to 15 degrees before his guns would bear. Telling my son "Stand by" I waited till as near as I could judge, he was just on the point of pulling up and then "Hard-a-port". (She turns exastly 180 degrees in exactly her own length). This threw his aim completely off. He banked and tried àgain. Then "Hard-a-starboard", with the same result. After a third attempt he gave it up in disgust. Had I had a machine gun of any sort, he was a sitter - in fact there were at least theee that I am confident we could have accounted for during the trip. Not least of our difficulties was contending with the wash of fast craft, such as destroyers and transposts. In every instance I had to stop completely, take the way off the ship and La Kanna which is about nine Owing to the engines failing we had to leave with only a few tr WE and proceeded back to Dunkirk W here we took five more loads of the shore which we were now able to do owing to the rising tide Whilst these operations were being carried out we were being	Success Black Few Lightoller

Raw OCR

Unformatted machine-generated OCR for document page 187.

-4-
176
omber that had been particularly offensive, itself came under
the notice of one of our fighters and suddenly plunged vertically
into the sea just about 50 yards astern of us. It was the only
time any man ever raised his voice above a conversational tone,
but as that big black bomber hit the water they raised an echoing
cheer.
My youngest son Pilot Officer H.B. Lightoller (lost at
the outbreak of war in the first raid on Wilhelmshaven) flew a
Blenheim and had at different times given me a whole lot of useful
information about attack, defence and evasive tatics (at which he
was apparently particularly good) and I attribute, in a great
measure, our success in getting across without a single casualty
to his unwitting help.
On one occasion an enemy machine came up astern at
about 100 ft with the obvious intention of raking our decks. He
was coming down in a gliding dive and I knew that he must elevate
some 10 to 15 degrees before his guns would bear. Telling my son
"Stand by" I waited till as near as I could judge, he was just on
the point of pulling up and then "Hard-a-port". (She turns exastly
180 degrees in exactly her own length). This threw his aim
completely off. He banked and tried àgain. Then "Hard-a-starboard",
with the same result. After a third attempt he gave it up in disgust.
Had I had a machine gun of any sort, he was a sitter - in fact
there were at least theee that I am confident we could have
accounted for during the trip.
Not least of our difficulties was contending with the
wash of fast craft, such as destroyers and transposts. In every
instance I had to stop completely, take the way off the ship and
La Kanna which is about nine
Owing to the engines failing we had to leave with only a few tr
WE and proceeded back to Dunkirk W here we took five more loads of
the shore which we were now able to do owing to the rising tide
Whilst these operations were being carried out we were being