The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

[Alberto Virtuani]

Dunmunro wrote: "

Alberto Virtuani wrote:
@all:
I have just received the material I have ordered to the Churchill Archive. A very expensive set of letters and files, covered by copyright.
However, in order to close this very unfair novel invented by Kennedy to discredit Tovey, I can post here their content that relates to:

Cag wrote: " From notes I made from Roskills book Churchill and the Admirals I think he states he had letters from Tovey regarding this 'regrettable aftermath' am I correct? Does it state his personal opinion of the merit of this memory or is there nothing except a statement that he received letters? "

Hi Mr.Cag, yes it does.

This is the content of a letter written by Roskill to Kennedy when he was reviewing his draft "Pursuit" and correcting the many errors in it, due to Kennedy poor naval knowledge and historian skill, mostly inspired by his agenda to magnify the DS protagonists:

Roskill to Kennedy on 1973: "About Paffard's memories referred to at page 8, I am sure he is only correct about the last years of Tovey's life. Between about 1952 and 1960 he often came to see me bringing letters and papers, and was enormously interested in my work, all of which he read in draft. It was only at the end of his life that he became what Paffard calls a 'hermit'. "

This will hopefully close the debate about Tovey's memories when referring to the Court Martial, a clear and evident fact, not an opinion, confirmed in writing by Roskill against the very unfair Kennedy insinuations, inspired by his "one-sided" view.


Bye, Alberto

Kennedy notes in Pursuit (p.284) Tovey's errors in memory during 1954 regarding D/F bearing errors and a signal from the Admiralty. We have documented proof, via letters from Tovey to Roskill in 1954, that Tovey's memory was failing in the early to mid 1950s."

Hi Duncan,
No. Unfortunately for you, in the same material (that I still need to study in depth), Roskill and Kennedy discuss also about this signal episode.....but I have no time to write everything here and no intention to infringe the copyright, as the discussion is very long (and quite boring).
What comes out from the material in my hands is that "Pursuit" is a very well written fantasy novel with a happy ending, but from an historical point of view it is just .... bullshit.... (as we already understood from the passive acceptance of 6:13 as PoW retreat time ..... , from the very shameful accusations to Holland for the failure to explicitly order to a Rear Admiral to fight.... and from the alleged Holland decision to fight the entire battle with only the fore turrets bearing.. ..... from the attacks to Pound .......and now from the very unfair (and coward) insinuation of Tovey "dementia"...... )

Roskill is clearly stating here that, based on his serious historian judgement and his personal knowledge of Adm.Tovey, Tovey was perfectly reliable (of course this does not exclude minor errors and confusions regarding the famous signal) regarding the Court Martial episode.


However, I was sure that even this clear statement would have been denied by the ones that don't want to accept the reality..... .


Bye, Alberto

[Cag]

Hi All

Thanks Alberto funnily enough I hope I'll be seeing the Roskill papers early next week if available so with luck I'll be able to actually see the Tovey letters if they are not closed until 2058?

I'll take notes and give what info I can within copyright limits too. I know the Churchill Archive is quite strict on that and I'm no expert on copyright law.

Best wishes
Cag.

[wadinga]

Hello Alberto,

Bravissimo!

Real documentary evidence from the Roskill/Kennedy letters instead of hurling insults and constant repetition of unproved assertions cooked up to shore up the Conspiracy Story. Please continue in this enlightened vein.

Roskill is clearly stating here that, based on his serious historian judgement and his personal knowledge of Adm.Tovey, Tovey was perfectly reliable

Roskill just says Tovey was only a hermit towards the end of his life. This quote says nothing about his veracity. He might have been dancing on tables at a shindig every night and living it up in high society as Mr Personality , but that says nothing about how good his memory was.

We are not discussing Tovey's preferences for human interaction throughout the post-war years, but whether he recalled things accurately, and the quote you provide says nothing about this. It would be perfectly possible for Tovey to misremember the timings of significant events even in 1954, and to magnify a minor "off the record" comment by Pound into a serious and malicious proposal to court martial officers who had done an excellent job in trying circumstances. That subsequent historians have unquestioningly reproduced this slur against the Admiralty and HM Govt without any further research is most depressing.

The diagnosis of "dementia" is something you and Antonio have invented as a manufactured over-reaction. Transparent Tactics. All Tovey has been accused of is misremembering and embellishing things as he became more bitter over time when he considered his treatment during the war years and his run-ins with Pound and Churchill.

Antonio you are absolutely right

About one little thing......................

I have indeed been getting my footnotes muddled. 101 is when Leach's self proclaimed biographer (Wills) swallows the whole CMDS story without questioning it or even apparently doing as much research on it (205/10) as I have.

I have never suggested Kennedy got the CMDS story first and always highlighted Roskill's role in passing this uncorroborated material to Kennedy. Kennedy published this questionable story first and loaded it with caveats as to its truthfulness. I believe Roskill did this to get this decidedly questionable material into the open, with Kennedy "carrying the can" if it all went wrong. That there was a conversation between them on reading the drafts indicates Roskill was getting cold feet, especially when journalist Kennedy sought verification from Pafford about Tovey's factual reliability, something Roskill had apparently never done.

Antonio, in the scans you have provided from Churchill and the Admirals, Roskill cites Kennedy for the CMDS story, not the letters he has himself possessed for twenty years. Why? Because his reputation would be on the line for not verifying this appalling accusation, if he had put his name to it. He has unloaded the responsibility onto Kennedy. That he intimates there is discussion between WSC, Alexander and Pound in 205/10 on the subject, when there is none I have found, is doubly misleading. As I recently reminded you, there are only casual memos between underlings, spread over time, with no urgency whatsoever, and finally snuffed out by Churchill who has spent cordial time with Leach during the time PoW acted as his personal transport.

Returning to Alberto's opinions on small stone Ludovic Kennedy's abilities as a historian:

"Pursuit" is a very well written fantasy novel with a happy ending, but from an historical point of view it is just .... bullshit....

Kennedy was the son of an heroic naval officer, was himself an officer who served in Tartar during the final stages of Bismarck's destruction, and interviewed no less than 42 involved persons and witnesses during the exhaustive research for his book. (Notably not including Tovey). He wrote an accessible, popular history of the Bismarck Chase, supported and encouraged by Roskill. He used his instincts as a very successful career journalist, and a successful writer, and was honoured for this work in later life, and IMHO your ill-considered denigration of his excellent work is of no interest at all, despite your undoubted intimate familiarity with fantasy and bullshit.

Sir Ludovic Kennedy's many lifetime accomplishments are catalogued in his Wikipedia entry. He was involved in several cases righting legal injustice.

Cag, Good luck in the Cambridge archives.

All the best

wadinga

[Alberto Virtuani]

Wadinga wrote: "whether he recalled things accurately, and the quote you provide says nothing about this."

Hi Sean,
are you jocking, aren't you ?
For your convenience the text again (and I have much more than this now..... )

Roskill to Kennedy: "About Paffard's memories referred to at page 8, I am sure he is only correct about the last years of Tovey's life. Between about 1952 and 1960 he often came to see me bringing letters and papers, and was enormously interested in my work, all of which he read in draft. It was only at the end of his life that he became what Paffard calls a 'hermit'"

Roskill is writing to Kennnedy who provided him his draft "Pursuit" book asking to review before publication. Kennedy used Paffard (secretary to Tovey) to insinuate that the Court Martial story was an exaggeration from Tovey, as you are trying to do now..... , even after the overwhelming evidence of the contrary, as Roskill is commenting this Paffard's reference in Kennedy draft and insisting that Tovey was interested in his work and not scatterbrained......

I'm afraid for you, the story of Tovey memory (this poor old sailor whose memory was failing) is over, FOREVER.



Regarding my very tough comments on Kennedy book, I recognize his father as a (true) hero. The son, it is another story. He was a very good novelist and his book is well written and enjoyable.

As an historian, the work of Sir Ludovic has a value close to zero as already demonstrated by all the serious errors I have already listed (6:13 PoW retreat time, unawareness of W-W, disgusting accusations against Holland (dead in 1941), resentment towards Pound(dead in 1943)) and that he repeated in 1973 either for historical incompetence or intentionally, to make it a "propaganda" book: you can choose which one is true. Now we have found out that he was misusing Tovey secretary impressions to denigrate the CM story and Tovey (dead in 1971)..... I would not like to add more.

Regarding his naval knowledge, when you will have all the papers I have now in my hands, you will verify that almost literally he was unable to distinguish between port and starboard. Please for the time being believe me . Roskill had to correct some trivial errors from him that are leaving any sailor (even a very poor one like me) quite ashamed. I just wonder which was his duty aboard Tartar during his service with the Navy because, from Roskill papers, it looks like he is not aware of some elementary navigational elements.


Bye, Alberto

[Antonio Bonomi]

Hello everybody,

@ Wadinga,

I am sorry for you, because just like always in the recent past since I have started the thread of the Articles of War, ... discussing about this " Denmark Strait Saga ", ... you are going to find yourself on the loosing side of the discussion.

You congratuleted Alberto for the real documentary evidence from the Roskill/Kennedy letters.

Bravo Sean !

Those letters are demonstrating with no doubts all I have told you above and just the opposite of what you invented following your personal creative fantasy and Kennedy UNFAIR footnote about Adm Tovey reliability simply DEMOLISHED by Roskill on a private letter to Kennedy.

More, they are demostrating also what Alberto just started describing you here above, ... about the difference betweeen an Historian of the very high naval competence level like Stephen Roskill was, ... and a very low competence person like Sir Ludovic Kennedy was while writing Pursuit.

I anticipated you all this, but you wanted to follow your " intuition " on alone, ... failing miserably, ... as usual.

Anyone with a minimum level of competence about naval warfare history should now be able to realize what has been written by whom and why, ... where the real competence and knowledge was, ... and were an unbelievable incompetence and fantasy creativity was too.

Having Churchill and the Admirals by Roskill and Pursuit by Kennedy it was very easy to do the comparison on the footnote's and realize where the truth was. You failed the exercise.

Just try to realize now where you are going to find yourself now with your Kennedy fantasy footnote blind support.

Obviously an absolute naval incompetent journalist was never going to know those naval things better of a naval historian of the level of Stephen Roskill that spoke and knew those Officers much better than Sir Kennedy.

Incompetence and unfairness, ... and a side taken position just inventing things doing it, ... that is what you blindly followed thru Kennedy, ...

Now at least try to recover your position about all this " regrettable aftermath " ... with a minimum of dignity.

Bye Antonio

[dunmunro]

[
all the serious errors I have already listed (6:13 PoW retreat time,

On the one hand you want Tovey to be a paragon of truth, whose statements have the authority of a prophet delivering epistles from heaven, but on the other hand you ceaselessly brand him an outright liar and scoundrel for his written statements, such as above. This is what makes both of you so frustrating to deal with - you want to use every source when it is convenient and then don't bat an eye when calling that same source a liar.

This is what Kennedy wrote:

In fairness to Pound, it should be said that in later life Tovey’s
memory let him down, and he was apt to exaggerate. The
occasion of his having forgotten that he had asked the Admiralty
not to send their own interpretation of D/F bearings has already
been related in note 2 of Chapter 7 (pp. 149 to 174). Again in
1954 he was under the impression he had received the signal
about the King George V being towed home before Ark R0yal’s last
attack and decided that ‘if Ark Royal failed to damage the Bzkmarck
. . . to disobey the signal and turn back while we still had
enough oil to get back to an English port’. In another letter in
the same year he imagined that the signal had ordered him to
continue the chase ‘up to the shores of France’. (Tovey to
Roskill, ll Nov. 1954, and 20 Nov. 1954.) I

It is clear that letters from Tovey to Roskill revealed Tovey's memory lapses in 1954.

[Alberto Virtuani]

Dunmunro wrote: "It is clear that letters from Tovey to Roskill revealed Tovey's memory lapses in 1954."

Hi Duncan,
I already told you, you are wrong, not having all the papers.
In the material I' now studying, Roskill and Kennedy discussed at length over the signal (as well as did Tovey with Roskill, I have now the extracts of the related letters) and both of them are of a very different opinion than you. In any case an error regarding the time of receipt of a message CANNOT be used to say that Tovey was loosing his memory. To sum up their discussion, Kennedy was initially convinced that Tovey received 2 messages (one on 26 and the other on 27, as I can now see in the papers of Kennedy regarding the open points in his draft book) but Roskill told him that this was not probable and that he could not find them and concluded (correctly IMO) that regarding this mistery of the towing signal:

"....I doubt if this point can be firmily resolved" (Roskill to Kennedy, 1972)

Of course, having an agenda to discredit the Court Martial story, Kennedy ignored Roskill "cautionary warning" (in this case as well as in the Paffard's story) and published what you showed above, showing he was not a great historian.


There is absolutely NOTHING that can support Tovey loss of memory except a possible error in the Time of Receipt of the towing message, while Roskill is clearly saying that Tovey was VERY RELIABLE in the first years after his retirement, visiting him until 1960 and discussing with him his work, and confirming the CM story in a very lucid way (more to be posted regarding this aspect from the material !)

Your deny "at any cost" must be over now, if you don't want to look ridiculous.


Bye, Alberto

[Antonio Bonomi]

Hello everybody,

@ Dunmunro,

please do not try to sell on the other side what belongs to you, "blind closed mind deniers" of a very clear and evident fact.

Here in there are persons hunting and wanting to know the truth about this shameful and now completely, fully and well demonstrated " Denmark Strait Saga "and another group of persons that want to hide and deny all sort of evidence no matter what until the point to intentionally avoid to share books, statements and notes, ... even reference to available documents into the archives, ... or, when the evidence is irrefutable, even try to convince everybody that those Officers were unreliable while disclosing the facts, ... poor old sailors or even suffering for early dementia and failure of memory.

This is what you are doing since years, trying to avoid to have to admit what you cannot try to refute in any other way.

It is enough to read the various post's on this forum since this " Denmark Strait Saga " discussion started with the thread on " The Articles of War " to realize the line of defence of you " deniers at any cost ", ... becoming progressively more evident and even ridicolous, ... with some real example of high level gentleman trying to stop me at any cost even with personal offense or threat of any sort.

Adm Tovey was absolutely reliable during his years of talking with Stephen Roskill, and found himslef on a very difficult situation several times on his life with Pound and Churchill. He did many things, like reacting defending his Officers from a Court Martial attempt, and even intentionally modified Official reports to take them out of troubles forever, enabling and requesting the rewarding for them too, ... and any of us now can evaluate his actions the way one likes too.

This is a duty of an historian, just to preserve and list the events and the facts in the proper way with supporting evidence, ... just like Stephen Roskill did, ... and not to invent things to direct the reader toward a preconceived historically incorrect way to read the events like Kennedy did on Pursuit, ... even trying to declare somebody unreliable in order to try to modify the reality toward his version of the facts and in is favour.

This is what you " intentional deniers at any cost " are keep on trying to do just following Kennedy style of doing.

But it is an usefull effort on your side and now that this story is over and everything is clearly under our eyes, in written form and confirmed by the Royal Navy Official Historian for World War 2, namely Stephen Roskill, I am curious to see what are you going to invent about it/him now, trying to refute also this recently surfaced fact.

Referencing above, ... somebody recently wrote to me that I was going to risk my personal reputation as history researcher and writer following this path demostrating this " Denmark Strait Saga " shameful series of events.

Now that all is defined and it is clear who was right and who was wrong, ... and who has lost his reputation, ... I will enjoy the additional details finding ...

Bye Antonio

[Cag]

Hi All

I will be visiting the Churchill Archive on Monday, thanks to a nice chat with a very helpful lady. I will be seeing what Roskill papers are available and have a reference for the Bismarck operation file.

I will take notes and within the confines of the copyright infringement laws will let you know firstly if they are accessible and/or what they say.

Best wishes
Cag.

[Herr Nilsson]

Hello everybody,

sorry, I attached 2 times the same note, here the correct one.

I addition I have read with a lot of interest this footnote by Stephen Roskill on page 130 :

Roskill_page130_footnote.png

Finally a direct official admission of the " cleaning process " applied to the official records, ... as Roskill refers to it as " wedding the official records " ...

I do not thik we need to add anything anymore, ... all is more than clear enough now.

Bye Antonio

I‘m wondering what this footnote has to do with our topic?

[Antonio Bonomi]

Hello everybody,

@ Herr Nillson,

try by reading it on this way, first the clear statement by Stephen Roskill :

Roskill_page_313_note_38.jpg (39.05 KiB) Viewed 522 times

... and after a warning Stephen Roskill himself is providing to everybody managing those Archives in the future.

Roskill_page130_footnote.png (94.2 KiB) Viewed 522 times

... are you able to find the potential correlation now ?

Lucky us and the posterity, in this case Stephen Roskill put it in clear statements and notes what he knew, had realized and had the possibility to verify personally already.

Bye Antonio

[Cag]

Hi All,

Hi Antonio, I'm afraid you may have misunderstood that?

I have for a great number of years been trying to understand the camouflage paints and schemes used by the RN during WW2. There are a scant number of files remaining and none of the actual scheme design sheets used by those that actually designed the schemes.

During my years of research I've been told many times files were burnt or destroyed in 'weeding' episodes with no thought of saving documents for posterity.

This is a term that denotes not a specific or pre determined choosing of files or malicious intent but a generic destruction of old or unused documents without regard to their importance.

Believe me I'd like to have a long chat with the man who threw the camo schemes of PoW QE Renown etc away!

Best wishes
Cag.

[Antonio Bonomi]

Helo everybody,

@ CAG,

I can agree with you about the vaste majority of the cases.
It does not take much to realize that in some cases it could have been done on purpose too.

In this case it is NOT important why it happened, ... if it happened, ... etc etc ...
What is important is that in case we do not find the material Stephen Roskill is referring to, we know one possible reason of the missing documents.

More important is that Stephen Roskill found them years ago, he read that correspondence, realized they were about this Court martial attempt and where among Pound, Alexander and Sir Wnston Churchill, which is a clear evidence that they all knew everything about it.

This closes any debate and confirms at the highest Official possible level what occurred about the Court Martial attempt of Adm Pound thru Adm Tovey that defeated it the way we all know now.

Thanking Stephen Roskill book statements and notes, we know the truth.

Bye Antonio

[Cag]

Hi All,

Hi Antonio I'm afraid that does not make much sense. This is about a letter in which there is criticisms not connected with the DS battle is it not? Anything else regarding the destruction of other documents is again pure supposition.

If we have the documents already available e.g. Adm 205 etc even the Roskill papers then we have the documents we need?

I am no expert but I have come across the weeding process. I'm afraid with this you may be showing that there are not only deniers on one side?

Best wishes
Cag.

[Antonio Bonomi]

Hello everybody,

@ CAG,

it is does not make much sense for you, it does it for me.

I am glad you realize and recognize the existance of a " deniers " group here in ...

Regarding me, I think that what I have provided here in in terms of quality and quantity of material in order to show and share the truth of what happened on this battle, ... both sides ... and with no side taken, ... speaks for itself.

Anyway, I am glad that finally this Court Martial attempt that started the so called " Denmark Strait Saga " is now over and closed.

I started from the bottom to reach the top now, ... it could and should have been much easier to go on the other way around if only I had known Stephen Roskill and his book content some years ago.

Bye Antonio