Nick

Lets see if you Navy Buffs have any idea on this beauty !!

Photo taken recently so is still about

I may have got my facts wrong as I am relating something from quite a few years back. When I was a teenager I spent several years with the Sea Cadet Corps. Our training establishment which was sponsered by the Royal Navy was named after HMS Acorn. I have always wondered when she was last commisioned and I am sure there was a painting and a story relating to HMS Acorns role with HMS Hood. However I may be well off the mark.

Yes a very strange looking vehicle !

I think that the Royal Artillery wear a white lanyard for cowardice to remind them of a battle where the guns were abandoned. Is this true ?

Does anyone know what role HMS Acorn played in the fight against Bismark?

Thanks

Oh there is no stopping you

Yes the remains of Prinz Albrecht Strasse 8, Berlin. HQ of the Gestapo, now a memorial to the victims of the nazi's.

A bit harder this one not much left to see !!

Also out of interest here is another famous part of this story. This is Heydrich's actual car, which is the Army Museum in Prague (a really amazing museum !!!).

Operation Anthrapod was the real operation name. Here is another shot as you have got it.

The longest serving British Police Officer was Supt Richard Jervis Lancashire Constabulary he served 57 years in the police from 1850 to 1907. He joined at 18 and retired at 75 years of age !

He wrote a book called Chronicles of a Victorian Detective (reprinted a few years ago). He was also awarded the KPM two years after he retired, but he was ill so he did not receive it until 1911 and he died the day he got the medal.

This is his medal:

Not enough room to swing a cat

animal

Yes. Sadly the days that the Royal Navy ruled the waves are long gone. It seems that WW2 was the swan song for the RN dominance. The falklands showed how stretched we were back in the eighties. Now the fleet is almost non existant.

But go to San Diego or Richmond USA and there you will see what a fleet is, and that the ones not at sea !!

Very close.

Lets say part of a church.

Well I m not so sure the 2SU, used in a ground defence role with X4 30mm cannon would probably make a small dent in the armour of a T55

Sorry its the jacket.

I thought it was a 100mm rifled gun that fired AT-10s ?

Any ideas on this location ?

Not the bottom.

Anyone know what museum houses the only surviving Napoleonic Rifle Officers Dolman ? I would like to get some photo's of it for a project.

But I am not sure if it is in the National Army Museum or elsewhere.

Is it true then that if senior NCO's volunteered for the Forlorn Hope, acquitted themselves well and survived, they could have been possibly awarded a commission ?

I find this hard to believe as being a matter of course although undoubtedly it may have happened on the very rare occasion.

Yes it is the Luitpold Arena N?rnberg. The rally ground was heavily bombed at th eend of the war and the arena was turned into a park with the War memorial remaining. Here is the photo of the WW1 & WW2 veterans memorial on the other side. I love the style of the eagle.

Probably not.

However the Iron Cross did come long before the nazi's and the German Army still use the stylized Iron Cross shape today.

It was instituted on 12th Jan 1945 but it is believed only awarded on paper. Due to the late stages of the war the badge is highly unlikely to have been ever made. You do see repro's about that give an idea of what it would have looked like. It looks like the tank destruction badge but instead of a panzer has a small fixed wing aircraft in the center. It was awarded along the lines of the tank destruction badge i.e. to shoot down the aircraft single handed but not as part of a flak battery etc.

Then 1935

The Iron Cross was last awarded in WW2. It is only instituted in wartime when the actual security of Germany is threatened. Hence there are the 1813, 1870 1914 & 1939 versions of the Iron Cross. There is also the 1957 version which replaced the 1939 Iron Cross so that WW2 veterans could wear their awards without breaking the German Law and showing the swastika. These crosses were only replacements to those that were awarded the WW2 Iron Cross series.

If there was ever another situation in which Germany was directly threatened by invasion, technically the Iron Cross could be reinstituted, but it cannot be awarded in peacetime. As to whether future German Governments would ever do that even in time of war, is debateable, due to the demilitarisation of German society since WW2.

It was awarded for service "at home". So I think you are partly right in what you say, but it could only be awarded in wartime not peacetime and could be awarded to military personel as well as civilians. In the Franco Prussian war of 1870 several British Officers (Surgeons who were attached to German Units) were awarded the Iron Cross (mainly of the non combatant variety) for services to the wounded. In WW2 this non combatant award was replaced by the War Merit Cross.