Page 117 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

did the majority. But, it should also be noted, the Navy never knew what could
happen; in the 1870s to 1918 period there emerged from an obscure and poor
family living in Ceylon Britain’s second most famous Admiral (after Nelson), the
short, ugly and obstreperous Jackie Fisher, who from all the wrong beginnings
created the Navy of the First World War, whose ascendancy was never seriously
challenged by Germany’s High Seas Fleet.

The training on the first day comprised being out on the rifle shooting range
with .303’s at 200 and 500 yards. This was hardly very testing, as we were shooting
with only slightly more modern rifles than those with which I had shot at school.
By itself this was a bit of a surprise, because at school the Belgian-designed FN
had begun to be used by the Army, and we had been given a few of these rifles to
fire two years before this exercise, a gun at once better but more complex than the
antique Lee-Enfields which we were now given. We thought that this was because
rifle-shooting is hardly at the top of the Navy’s agenda, whereas it was all that the
Army was about.

Following this pleasant morning we were given instruction on loading anti-
aircraft guns, principally the Bofors. Again, we thought this somewhat strange
as the Oerlikon had seemingly overtaken that weapon for naval defence, but it
didn’t much matter to us; we had no expectation that this expertise would be
called upon in the nuclear age. (Little did we appreciate how things would work
out – the next time that such knowledge was needed was in the Falklands, when
such weapons were a principal form of armament.)

But next day was heavier going. We were to begin with a practical exercise
in firing big guns. We soon found out how such an unlikely exercise was to
be carried out within Portsmouth Harbor, when we were ushered into a large
and smelly warehouse, wherein was a platform mounted on gimbals, and
upon which resided a full Bofors gun, evidently with ammunition and all the
appurtenances of war. This we were apparently going to fire (thankfully with
blanks) in a simulation of an aerial attack upon a destroyer. We were shown
how to manipulate this devilish thing, and then a crew of four of us was placed
upon the platform, again being shown how to operate it. We were told that a
simulated search-lighted aircraft was to pass ‘overhead’ and the all we had to do
was ‘load’, then shoot it down. The lights were turned way down, and the platform
began to roll in a most nauseating manner (that was why the simulation was
a destroyer, a battleship obviously being a far more stable platform!), almost
immediately after which a tiny little aircraft appeared on the ceiling. Hitting it
proved quite impossible, so difficult was the wheeled mechanism for rotating
the gun and aiming the gun, and so tiny the target. Then it got worse – suddenly
we were doused with sheets of water, again to simulate what it would be like
as a gunner on a real ship (at once, we knew why we had been issued with
oilskins, one of man’s least comfortable outfits). Despite firing off hundreds of

116