大象传媒

With the Eastern Fleet in HMS Renown, 1944
Transcribed from a video recording
From there on it gets more exciting, or more interesting, because it鈥檚 in the Tropics now. Straight down the Suez Canal, and it鈥檚 the only place in the world where you can see the curvature of the earth. As you look down the canal it appears to curve. It doesn鈥檛 actually, it鈥檚 a mirage, but we used to fool the young lads 鈥� 鈥渏ust have a look at this鈥� 鈥� 鈥淥h yes, isn鈥檛 that funny?!鈥� Anyway, down the Canal, and we finish up in Sri Lanka, well it鈥檚 Ceylon then, I remember it as Ceylon, and the main anchorage, beautiful anchorage, called Trincomalee, so we鈥檙e base in Trincomalee with the Eastern Fleet. This is tropical, sun every day, our men, swimming, nearest beach, but all the time the numbers of ships are accumulating, the Americans joined us, in a huge aircraft carrier the Saratoga, the French joined us in the battleship Richelieu, and the fleet is getting together for an attack against the Japs, and we did one bombardment of the Anderman islands 鈥� now they鈥檝e been mentioned recently, because they were affected by the Tsunami thing, so was Ceylon 鈥� they were Japanese occupied.
So we bombarded the Anderman Islands, and the Nicobar islnds, almost in the same group, and we also did a bombardment of an oil installation and Japanese airfield in Surabaya in Java, and when I say we bombarded it, we never saw the land, because we had 15鈥� guns on Renown, that鈥檚 not 15鈥� long,, its 15鈥� diameter, the shells weighed three quarters of a ton for a start, so we were bombarding from about twelve miles, we had spotter planes from the carrier Illustrious, we had several carriers with us, Illustrious was one of them, and when the photographs were taken, it was just like a zip fastener, bombarded right down the runways. The Japanese didn鈥檛 like it, but we were happy with that, and that was two of our main actions. Ceylon was a beautiful place, and I鈥檓 devastated with the news, because the area that I knew, in the South of the island, was wiped out by the Tsunami thing, Beautiful place. So that鈥檚 that part of it.

Gordon Richmond

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