On the back of being disabled by our dog I sent some photos of the work done on the Commonwealth Plots in irvinestown to Les and maureen Ingram , Maureen's father was Sgt Guy Wilkinson who was died when his Sunderland crashed on Mount Brandon in August 43 - he is buried in Irvinestown. Les who is a brillant man - a really decent sort with huge life exp[ereince and a sense of humour ro match sent me this experience of his which I will share with you - it could only happen here and thesuccess rate has to be admired , two shots , two hits sunk a postman and dented a car ferry. From Les. "Hope your leg is OK now and that the mutts hot blood has cooled down somewhat. Bet her ears are still burning though. Many thanks for the pictures and for keeping us up to date with the cleanup in the churchyard. Many thanks also for putting the cross on Guy's grave. Torpedo story I promised you is this. When I ran the engineering at the Underwater diving and trials in Fort William I was asked to ready one of our tugs to accomodate a team of experts from the Marconi Underwater warfare team who were then in the early stages of developing the Tigerfish Torpedo's. We went out on the trial down Loch Linnhe and had a trial launch of one of the guided torpedo's that worked perfectly in an open stretch of water. That was OK but the torpedo had'nt been tested on a vessel of any kind so it was decided to make a simulated attack on the Corran Car Ferry. Here I must explain that the torpedo's had no explosives in the head but were filled with concrete to the same weight as if they were armed. Still a concrete warhead would have gone through the thin skin of the car ferry with no problem. We were about a mile from the Ferry when they launched the Torpedo ( with a limited amount of propellant in case of problems ). Next thing there was a large wake heading for the Ferry with the Torpedo at first reacting to the guidance being given to it by the Marconi crew. The torpedo's own automatic guidance system was being overidden by a Marconi operator for safety when something went wrong and its own system kicked in. No way would it respond to the manual overide when we heard a loud humming coming from the Guidance system monitoring the weapon as it located the Ferry and its brain decided to attack it automatically. Talk about a flap with Marconi experts running about the tug like headless chickens, panic was not the word to describe the scene. One idiot even said to me "DO SOMETHING" and did'nt take it in the spirit it was meant when I said would it help if I wrote a letter of apology on their behalf to the Argyll-shire Council. Luckily the weapon started running out of propellant and had slowed down considerably but it still bumped into the side of the Ferry leaving a small dent in its skin. It bobbed up after hitting the ferry and we recovered it so that the experts could strip it down to see what had gone wrong. Meanwhile the engineer on the Ferry was a good mate of mine from my Merchant Navy days who I had sailed all around the world with over many years. He was also my best man when Maureen and I got married. Peter as he was called felt a loud bang as the torpedo hit the ferries side and it gave him such a shock that he dropped his cup of tea. Going on deck he looked over the side to see what they had hit (as he thought) and saw the torpedo's head bobbing up and down and also our tug about a mile away. He put two and two together and we confirmed the accident by VHF call to the ferry. Because Loch Linnhe is quite a busy seaway we were denied permission to conduct further tests there and told that any further tests could only be carried out in certain locations where there was no danger to any ships or ferries. The powers that be decided that the ideal location would be the Sound of Raasay north of us here on the West Coast. From the mainland the village of Raasay can only be reached by a thin strip of a single road atop a man made causeway that runs for three miles. The road runs about ten feet above the highest tides and is set on a short stretch of sand and shingle that slopes up from the sea on each side to the road itself. We put out some large steel mooring buoys to act as targets and commenced the trials again. Things went well for a while but again we had problems with the guidance systems not always locating the targets so modifications were made by the experts. It was at this stage that the postman comes into the picture. He had the job of cycling to Raasay along the causeway to deliver the village mail. He was doing this when we launched a modified torpedo at one of the buoys. It went off course on its automatic run so one of the Marconi experts swiched it over to manual control. Nothing happened and the torpedo shot straight towards the sloping beach without stopping. The postman was the only person on three miles of road and received a massive shock when the torpedo shot up the sloping beach, over the road, and hit the front wheel of his bike knocking him off and scattering his mail all over the place. What a shock he got and had to take time off work for some time to recover I believe. Headlines in the daily papers the next day read " POSTMAN TORPEDOED BY BRITISH VESSEL IN THE SOUND OF RAASAY GOVERNMENT TO HOLD ENQUIRY " Further problems were caused because the torpedo carried on to the other side of the causeway and was bobbing about in the open sea. We were on the other side of the land spit and instead of being able to just sail for a mile or two to recover it (remember this was the latest top secret British torpedo and had to be recovered at all costs) we had to sail twelve miles, round the sound of Raasay and sail twelve miles on the other side to recover it. What a panic because the tide had taken it away from the shoreland and out into the open. sea. Took us fourteen hours and several changes of underwear before we recovered it." Fact can sometimes be stranger than fiction, loved it.
James, What a great story of the two incidents. I bet that they did not see the funny side of it at the time! It reminded me of the Carey Grant film, where the pink coloured submarine sank a Japanese lorry on the beach road! Regards Tom
The same one I was thinking off Tom " Sank a truck". I did chuckle quite a bit when I got this from Les - Les is an Ex Merchant seaman an engineer who spent 23 years at sea - a really great bloke, much respect for the man and his son Steve who is at this moment in the Gulf of Mexico.
Adam, Thanks for remembereing Operation Petticoat, just couldn't remember the name, grey cells rusty and all that! Regards Tom
James, Surely that has to go into the Guinness book of records. The only bicycle ever to be torpedoed! Regards Tom
Imagine the confusion that would have been caused if we had of been able to destroy the entire German postal service. A sub comes back to base with approprate number of postman painted on conning tower. And we still won the war, good luck or what. Priceless.
