Category: Gallery

Here’s a collection of images of the secondary guns of HMS Rodney. I was fortunate in picking up a second album of HMS Rodney with photographs taken with the spring cruise of 1935 and the fleet review of 1936. I added the approximate years and mixed the photographs below a bit. The second album had normal postcard-sized images and isn’t of the same quality of the first album but still very much worthwhile to show.

I just missed out a third album that would have complemented a nice series of HMS Rodney refuelling a destroyer at sea, but it had many duplicate shots and had to let it go.

1937

1937

1935-1936. A gunnery target with HMS Hood in the background.

1935-1936

1935-1936

1935-1936

1937

1937

1936. Night exercise off Invergordon. Image appeared in the Times, 3rd of October 1936.

This one is actually HMS Nelson, 1939

This last image isn’t particularly good, but does show quite well how large this 4.7″ gun actually is.

Admiral Backhouse and guests, blocking the view to a 4.7″ gun.

This series of images was one of the more rewarding of date and place. The second image shows the building at right showing the Norwegian flag, but I could only be sure after I identified the building itself; this is the Dronningen restaurant in Oslo. I even found one shot of HMS Rodney in the Norwegian archives here taken on the 21st of June 1937 (Ballantynes books puts Rodney in Olso in July but the ship logs state the 21st to the 30th of June 1937). There is a small fair in the background, the Vi Kan Utstillingen, at left matching the location with the restaurant perfectly. Now, if this is a visit to Norway, than the third image shows King Haakon VII walking the deck with Admiral Backhouse, with Maud van Saksen-Coburg en Gotha between them in the sixth image. King Haakon VII has the same rank on his sleeves as the Admiral as he is an admiral in the Royal Navy, but usually wears the ranks of Admiral for the Royal Norwegian Navy (Link)

HMS Rodney showing her dress flags; the Olso city hall (rådhus) under construction is visible in the background. Note that the ship’s badge as visible on the tampions is also fitted to the rangefinder covers of A & B turrets; Nelson also had her badge in the same position.

This image shows Admiral Backhouse (presumably) on the bow of the Norwegian Royal barge Stjernen I.

This is the first post of a series of HMS Rodney from an album I picked up on Ebay a while ago. The album had no text anywhere and only a few images had text on the back. Using Ballantyne’ s Rodney book and simply searching for images of the buildings in the background lead to the city of Algiers that Rodney visited from January 29th to February 6th 1937.

This image was also found in this newspaper confirming the location and date.

Another image of the crew touching up the paintwork was found here