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Gallery: HMS Rodney, Anti-Aircraft guns

August 19, 2017 / efoeth

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.

Gallery: HMS Rodney visits Oslo

March 18, 2017 / efoeth

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.

Gallery: HMS Rodney visits Algiers

March 11, 2017 / efoeth

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

Gallery: Euryalus

December 6, 2016 / efoeth

My next build will be HMS Prince of Wales in her disruptive camouflage scheme. For a while I was planning to build her alongside the Dido-class cruiser HMS Euryalus; they were part of the same group for a while and share a wide range of equipment, among others boats and launches, pompoms, and 5.25″ turrets, and, HMS Euryalus had an equally interesting disruptive camouflage scheme similar to HMS Prince of Wales’. I briefly collected images images of Dido’s and of HMS Euryalus, Cleopatra and Charybdis sharing the early-war camouflage pattern. This camouflage pattern is particular interest as fate would have it, from the roughly 15 images I found all images of Euryalus and Cleopatra are from the starboard side and all images of Charybdis are from the port side. I have been searching deliberately for images of the battle of the Sirte as I expected that would give the best chance of a shot of HMS Cleopatra during the battle; one image I first found in Haynes’ book is a dud as it is reversed, but eventual I found one. The pattern was completed and shown below, doodled into a drawing by Alan Raven, with some liberties taken here and there. A nice aerial show allowed for the deck pattern. As with HMS Prince of Wales, the colours used remain a point of discussion but at the moment(!) I’d guess MS1/B5/MS3/MS4/MS4a.

I needed an excuse to get both ships in the same frame, either exchanging mail or fuel, so I collected images on those subject as well, but meanwhile dropped the idea of building HMS Euryalus altogether and will am now planning to pair HMS Prince of Wales with USS McDougal, an exchange that at least actually happened. Pictures of Dido’s aren’t really scarce with many of them showing a cruiser entering or exiting the harbor of Valletta, Malta. I found one album of HMS Euryalus which was kinda nice, but not really. Some pictures you no doubt have seen earlier; I added a few other decent random shots of ships in her class.