I’ve found the pages you’re looking for, but there are 12, in all; if you’d like to send me a PM, with an E-mail address, I’ll send them on. I had to photograph a TV screen, so the quality isn’t the best, but it should be readable.
Edgar

Secret U-boat base in the Irish Republic? An interesting first-hand account…..but surely she is mistaken.

I think that the dirty great “U” painted on the conning towers would have given her a clue, and, if she’d been mistaken, I suspect that she’d have been told to look again, getting it right, this time, not given a heavy hint to turn a Nelsonian blind eye.
Edgar

I’m just (loosely) quoting from that super-historian, James Holland.
Edgar

Land-based fighters were green & brown, at first, later green and grey, on top surfaces, with greenish-blue (1940) or light grey underneath. Bombers remained green/brown, usually with black underneath. The “Temperate Sea Scheme” was Extra Dark Sea Grey and Slate Grey (a greenish grey) on top; the lower white colour was extended to cover the whole of the lower fuselage so as to make the boats more difficult to see against a cloudy background during a low-level attack.
By necessity, that’s a very simplistic response; the WWII camouflage systems were many, and varied.
Edgar

During a visit to Binbrook, our guide told us that the overwing tanks were the reason for the arrestor hook on the F.6, since, if the parachute failed, the brakes were likely to burn out before the aircraft came to a stop.
Edgar

Ah stumbled across LF.IX the other day, going to sound like a total loon but what does the L stand for?

According to the V manual it was low altitude.
Edgar

6A is a (very early) RAF stores reference number, which includes aircraft instruments. The P8 was used in many aircraft, and your example is very early, since the rotatable bezel only has two crosswires; later versions had two more wires, at right angles, but only half-painted, so as to form a “T.” This was because the original arrangement could easily lead to the pilot flying on a reciprocal course. The compass was normally filled with industrial alcohol (which is poisonous,) plus a percentage of water (later went to 100% alcohol.) Inside the bowl is a metal “spider,” with 8 arms, 3 of which have tubes of white powder mounted on them. Please do not remove the bezel, or try to disassemble the compass, in any way. If it has not received a post-war modification, to make it react to fluorescent lighting, the tubes, and some of the writing on the bezel, under the glass, will be radium powder, or paint. While the radiation, in itself, is not lethal, by any means, the paint, as it ages, turns powdery, and can easily be breathed in, with severe consequences to your lungs. First, take it into a darkened room, and, if it glows, it has the radium paint; if it doesn’t glow, illuminate it with a fluorescent lamp, when much of it should glow, and it’ll be safer to handle.
The name could mean that it was tied in, somehow, with an Essex-based company, Kelvin & Hughes, who certainly made many “P” compasses during, and post, war.
There should be a curved lever, which, when turned to the right, locks the rotating bezel in place. The idea was that you set your desired course against the small white tube on the opposite side of the “AFT” engraving, locked the bezel, and turned the aircraft until the tubes were centred between the pair of wires; the locking lever was to stop the bezel rotating during flight, due to vibration. The compass was normally accurate to +/_ 1 degree, and could be used anywhere in the world.
The hand-held compass is what was known as an “Observer’s Compass,” and could be used for taking star sights from the observer’s cupola in, for example, a Lancaster. The observer would sight on the star, through the “V” sight, then light the card, from the bulb shining through a ground-glass screen beneath, so he could read off the heading. It had an accuracy of about +/- 2 degrees; it, too was filled with alcohol.
Unproven, I know, but it’s my belief that the yellow circles, on the pilot’s head armour, were to signify that it was magnetic, and that the compass should not be used anywhere near it.
Edgar

Dear Poms

You have missed the point
Civilians on the other hand, trundle off to work each day and those same pressures don’t apply, there is the fair and reasonable expectation that each day you would return home safely.

With the drones in Pakistan, the CIA drivers are waging war (guiding the drones, killing people, destroying things) , but without the risks of being a warrior,they are killing people (civilians mainly – non-combatants, children) but without any personal risk to themselves.

That expectation is similar to the civilians who worked in the mutions factories in WW2, they aided and abetted the destruction and killings but took a far lower personal risk.

As for the industrial action, that is the point – they were fighting for freedom and that is a basic part of being free.

I hope you are able to pick up on the thread of my thoughts now.

I think that I have understood completely; from the safety of several thousand miles, and 70 years, you feel qualified to comment on war conditions, here in the 1940s, and appear to be making a cynical anti-war (and anti-American?) statement, at the same time.
So munitions workers had a fair and reasonable assumption that they’d remain safe, did they? They might have spent the whole night, hiding in a damp, smoky, Anderson shelter, then emerged, knowing that, to the Nazis, everyone was a legitimate target. One woman, recently, related how she, and her 5-year-old schoolmates, ran into the playground, waving to an aircraft, not realising it was German; the pilot waved back, then turned back and machine-gunned them. The factory workers “aided and abetted” the armed forces, who were trying to stop the advance of one of the most evil regimes this world has ever known.
As for the “right to be free” baloney, with regard to industrial action, workers sell their time, and skills, to bosses, with the expectation of a fair return. If it isn’t forthcoming, there’s the basis for unrest, and there’s always some political smart-alec ready to exploit it. The idea, that strikers are seeking “freedom,” is typical of today’s politic-speak middle classes, who have absolutely no idea of how the working classes think and feel.
Edgar (retired working class)