大象传媒

Explore the 大象传媒
This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving.

15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

大象传媒 Homepage
大象传媒 History
WW2 People's War Homepage Archive List Timeline About This Site

Contact Us

Fortunes of War

by musormb

You are browsing in:

Archive List > Royal Navy

Contributed by听
musormb
People in story:听
Musician Jerry Judge and Musnician John Adams RM BABND
Location of story:听
Portsmouth Harbour
Background to story:听
Royal Navy
Article ID:听
A6575484
Contributed on:听
31 October 2005

It was August 1938 and I Jerry Judge was standing on the upper deck of HMS Royal Oak looking across te harbour at HMS Hood.
We had just returned to Portsmouth after conveying the coffin of her majesty the Queen Maud of Norway accopanied by King Haakon VII and members of the royal family to Oslo.
The Hood was due to proceedon on a commission to the Mediterraenean and we were a bit envious of them, especially with war being fairly emminent with Gerany. However this situation was due for a ghange as my Lords of the Admiralty had, in their wisdom ,decided that it would be far better to transfer our greatest battle cruiser, the Hood, to the hooe fleet to counter the great German battleship Bismark and for us to take her place in the Med.
This was great for the cello player on the Hood for he had been in touch with me to change ships with him as he wished to get married and now it would all be off.
Fate plays ironic tricks in our lives for in the susequent turn of events I survived the sinking of the ROYAL OAK in capa Flow ans he went down on the Hood the question remains in my mind if we had changed would the circumstances been the same would John Adams of survived the war and would I have been one of its casualties and did he manage to get married.
I wonder if you might assit in finding the answar to the latter question please
Again it was ironic that we were in Scapa at that particular time as if the exchangge of crews had not taken place we would prabably been gharged with operational duties with the Home Fleet as we were a fully trained ships company but as it was we had to go to Scapa for a working up period then as fate decreed whilst we were still invovlved in this operation, when war was declared, and when in October the fleet
proceeeded to sea to pursue the German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnorst we were to patrol a likely escape route between the Sheland and Faroe Islands

Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.

Forum Archive

This forum is now closed

These messages were added to this story by site members between June 2003 and January 2006. It is no longer possible to leave messages here. Find out more about the site contributors.

Message 1 - fortunes of war

Posted on: 01 November 2005 by brian walker

Re Musician John Adams and loss of
the Hood.If you log on to the HMS HOOD
web page and look under crew list
memorial you will find an Adams,Musician,RM.If you then note the
details and go to the Commonwealth
War Graves Web site you can find out
a little more about him.I hope it
answers your need to know.
Brian Walker,
Adelaide,
South Australia.

Archive List

This story has been placed in the following categories.

Royal Navy Category
icon for Story with photoStory with photo

Most of the content on this site is created by our users, who are members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not those of the 大象传媒. The 大象传媒 is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced. In the event that you consider anything on this page to be in breach of the site's House Rules, please click here. For any other comments, please Contact Us.



About the 大象传媒 | Help | Terms of Use | Privacy & Cookies Policy