Great Central Railway [ June 2016 ] - Modelling/5

D-Day Diorama - 'Flower' class corvette.

 

Workhorse of the Battle of the Atlantic. Based on a Smith's Dock [ Middlesborough ] design for a southern ocean whale catcher. A nice irony here - instead of harpooning Moby Dick and his brothers, they depth-charged Das Boot and his brothers.

 

The plans was picked up by a grateful Admiralty as something [ approx 1000 tons ] that could be built by smaller yards, but which had endurance, if not speed. Flat out K80 could manage 16 knots, but a surfaced U-Boat running on diesels could manage 17 knots...

 

War winning invention - just ahead of the mast is the 'lantern' that houses the type 271 centrimetric radar. Following the ground-breaking work by Randall and Boot at Birmingham University begun in 1939 and leading to the development of the cavity magnetron, an operational set was first installed on HMS Orchis [ K76 ] as early as March 1941. The U-Boat was not a true submarine, but a submersible, doing immense damage operating on the surface under cover of darkness. However with 10cm wavelength radar a surfaced U-Boat could be detected at 5000 yards, and even a periscope could be picked out at 1300 yards. The balance of advantage began to tilt towards the escorts.

 

Little known fact - when ' The Cruel Sea ' was filmed in 1952 the Admiralty had disposed of all their 'Flower' class corvettes. Fortunately the film's technical advisor knew that HMS Coreopsis - previously on loan to the Greek Navy as 'Kriezis' - was docked at Malta en route back to the UK and the breaker's yard [ - ! ] Hence for the purposes of the film she was re-numbered K49 and re-named ' Compass Rose '

 

K80 - HMS Bluebell - would have been on duty on D-Day as part of the anti-submarine screen. Bluebell did not survive the war. She was torpedoed off Murmansk in February 1945. Hit in the stern, her depth charges exploded, and she sank in 30 seconds with the loss of 85 out of her crew of 86.

Done