The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

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dunmunro
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by dunmunro »

Antonio Bonomi wrote: Thu Aug 09, 2018 8:18 pm

I wrote radio messages and official bearings from the strategical plot, ... not the 1941 report, ... because Capt Ellis was a liar and he lied intentionally on 1941, ... and only partially declared the truth on his autobiography, ... at least recovering some of his dignity.
You refuse to address that fact that Ellis's statement in his memoirs don't support your thesis or your contention that Suffolk was at ~18K yds from Bismarck at ~0542.

You accuse Ellis of lying while at the very same time doing that yourself by intentionally misrepresenting what Ellis actually stated in his memoirs.
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

I do not have any thesis about Capt Ellis, ... I know he lied on 1941 intentionally, ... as it is self evident by his autobiography.

The Suffolk position in relation to the enemy, ... the Prinz Eugen track we have, ... is an easy exercise anybody can do ( assuming he is able to ) by just going on the proper thread and follow his track, with course and speed from 04:47 until 06:20.

We do not need his report or his autobiography, .... the radio messages and Suffolk strategical plot bearings are more than enough and will reveal once again that simply .... he lied on 1941, ... and he lied intentionally of course.

It is not difficult to be realized, ... just do it and open your eyes to the truth, ... instead on keep on writing useless statements on this thread.

Bye Antonio
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by HMSVF »

Afternoon all.

I was reading John Winton's excellent "Carrier Glorious" this afternoon when I came across this very interest reply from AV Alexander (First Lord of The Admiralty).

He was replied that "courts martial" were not always held.The loss of the Glorious had been investigated by a Board of Inquiry "but there was no advantage to be gained by holding a court martial in addition".

Now, allowing for the fact that HMS Glorious is probably one of the biggest cover ups (IMHO) the RN ever conducted (why else slap a 100 years rule on the BoI) AV Alexander states that a BoI did not mean automatic court martial proceedings. In regards to Tovey and his memoirs where he states that he had no intention of putting Wake Walker or each through a B o I wouldn't he be aware that whilst a BoI is the precursor to any court martial, it does not guarantee court martial proceedings (taking the above AV Alexander House of Commons reply into account - since he was 1st Sea Lord you would hope he would know his apples!)

He also went onto say that in regards to court martial "all the evidence is in public and that in the present circumstances I am not prepared to publish it."

Now this was in regards to HMS Glorious - a big, well known disaster, where the Admiralty sidelined and interrogated the survivors. In the Bismarcks case if we are following the idea of a cover up there would be many officers and sailors who would be brought for interrogation.

So if the supposed court martial was a real threat it wouldn't just have been Wake Walker or Leach who would be up against the Admiralty wall it would have been their staff as well. If the threat of B o I was that real then Wake Walker and Leach and Tovey and their staff + lower ranking witness's would have been aware. That is an awful lot of people to keep quiet and keep quiet for the rest of their natural lives. The fact that Alexander states in the House of Commons that a Board of Inquiry does not guarantee a court martial is an interesting statement when we have been told that a B o I means automatic court martial.



So I still think what happened is this...

i) Churchill has one of his volcanic losses of temper (before he knows any information.

ii) He tells his 1SL that he wants blood.

iii) Pound "sits on it" whilst the information comes in.

iv) Churchill realises that he has been a complete plonker and says "leave it" to save face and not pee off an already annoyed RN (Think North and Somerville)

v) Tovey through the "whisper mill" gets to here that Churchill has been Churchill again.

vi) When he speaks to Pound he gets the first blow in by saying "lets get one thing straight - I'm not B o I (ing) WW or Leach. Pound says don't worry about it - its sorted.

Vii) Churchill being Churchill decides to carry on as if nothing has happened in regards to being an idiot in regards to his initial responses about the Denmark strait battle. Hence using HMS POW,with Leach to sign the Atlantic Charter,

viii) 20 years later Tovey embelished or plain forgets that he said that he wouldn't have a B o I for WW and Leach (the precursor to a CM according to AV Alexander but not a guaranteed precursor) and goes straight for the CM story. This would explain why not one single Admiralty paper, cabinet document or Imperial staff document states anything about a court martial and why Tovey is the one main source. As an aside, if Pounds papers were that "hot" why were they destroyed and not slapped under the 100 year rule as per other cover ups. Why did subsequent 1SL not give any hints of juicy tit bits they discovered on reading the documentation? And given the circumstances of HMS Glorious incident, which are murkier than the sea off Blackpool, why do the records in regard to this event survive, under the 100 year rule (which makes the events post HMS Hoods sinking pale into insignificance) and yet not a single conclusive ,unambiguous, not open to interpretation piece of documentation has been produced or even suggested to exist in a restricted file?



If this wasn't the case there would be a paper trail 20 miles long and more witness's than a Premier league football fixture. Where are they? Even if you take Pounds correspondence into account there would be others. All we have is Tovey as a source and a source that dates many years after the event and the gentleman's service.
Last edited by HMSVF on Sat Aug 11, 2018 4:39 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by pgollin »

.

Why are people using the wrong (out of date) 1913 edition of The King's Regulations ?

Just for the education of A & A (who sadly seem to need a lot). The way the British legal system works is that Bills are laid before (and hopefully approved by) Parliament, this is the "Naval Disciplinary Act". Within such an Act is the power for Ministers to promulgate "Regulations" - these contain the detail (as I said before, one is the "ten commandments", the others are the legal rules).

And, as was said above Boards of Inquiry are definitely NOT a part of a Courts Martial.

.
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by HMSVF »

Here is the Hansard link to that HoC with AV Alexander...

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... ts-martial


(which sort of ties in to what PGollin has said above)
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by wadinga »

Hello HMSVF and P Gollin,

To answer Phil's question: because the 1913 version is published online and easily accessible. If you have found a later one please nominate.

Article 703 says a Court (Board) of Inquiry merely allows "a senior officer to reach a correct conclusion about any matter on which he requires to be thoroughly informed,"

going on to say "OR upon which they may be a question whether it should form the subject of a Court Martial."

So a Court(Board) of Enquiry is not a disciplinary matter as I pointed out above, merely an information gathering exercise.


To HMSVF: Well done in finding the A V Alexander HMS Glorious reference. In fact the matter of whether a Court Martial was required every time a ship was lost was discussed in the House of Lords in 1915 when certain parts of the NDA were being changed. Someone went back through the previous century to show that it was not a requirement. Further, this was pointed out:
It will be remembered that with the exception of the case of the "Oceanic" there have, in fact, been no Courts-Martial in respect of the losses of ships. I am not making and do not intend to make any complaint of that. I think that every one in the country is prepared to support the Admiralty to the utmost, and I can assure the noble Lord that I speak to-night in no spirit of criticism.
Even the idea that a Court Martial was a prosecution of named officers was challenged. Although unlike a Court of Inquiry, it has legal powers to inflict punishment, there is no automatic assumption of guilt as opposed to ill-fortune in the convening of a Court Martial.

A couple of sentences from this 1915 debate, are most illuminating in the matter of personal courage and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice. This debate on this website has been couched in terms of comic-book heroic cliches or the ancient "Articles or Warre" in which officers far back in history, living in a different society, had complete disregard for the lives of their crews and were expected by the authorities to expend them with no consideration as to whether results might justify casualties. The same men they might have flogged to death for minor infringement. In 1941 attitudes were different even if a few archaic phrases remained in the revised NDS. A WWII fighter pilot like Sgt Ray Holmes who, after expending his ammunition, deliberately crashed his Hurricane into a Dornier, was bravely risking his own life. But his life only, not hundreds. This is what was said in that 1915 debate:
Another reason that I have seen alleged seems to me also a most inconclusive one. I have seen it said that the apprehension of a Court-Martial would lead officers to "play for safety" and not take risks when in the interests of the Service they ought to take them. I believe that to be a profound misconception. Let us take the case of an officer who is hesitating whether he shall take a risk or not. What is it that makes him hesitate to take it? Not because he is thinking of a Court-Martial when he comes home, but because he is thinking of the precious lives on board his ship, of the value of the ship itself, of the injury to the defences of the Empire if that ship should be lost. Those are the things, if anything, that would make him think twice, and not the fear of being tried by Court-Martial.
This is pointing out that the legal practice of a Court Martial follows the presumption of innocence and therefore should allow an officer to justify his actions. This is a protection against any unfair disciplinary actions which the Board of Admiralty or its officers might undertake at its discretion. Admiral North wanted a Court Martial so the reasons for his dismissal might be examined, but was denied one. As has been pointed out many times if there was even a grain of real suspicion about Wake-Walker or Leach they would have been quietly re-assigned with no need for publicity.

HMSVF you are absolutely correct that the last thing Churchill would have actually wanted was a Court Martial, since its legal status meant keeping things under wraps would be impossible, as it proved eventually in Troubridge's case. The evidence got out and showed his exoneration was warranted, his orders were imprecise, his chance of success minimal and Battenberg's determination to scapegoat him unreasonable. Within months Battenberg was forced to retire (for being German) and Churchill followed (Gallipoli), but Troubridge served on with distinction in Serbia.

HMSVF be aware that A V Alexander was only First Lord of the Admiralty, not First Sea Lord- that was Dudley Pound. He was a Labour (Socialist) politician brought into a Government of national unity replacing WSC when he moved on to PM of that government. As I pointed out in another thread, AVA was not even security cleared to see the contents of the Operations Intelligence Centre at the Admiralty. In the same job before him, Winston interfered with operations over Pound's head, appointed his old WW I cronies like Roger Keyes into positions where they caused mayhem, and generally made a lovable, inspiring, maddening, nuisance of himself. Pound didn't let Alexander go that far, but he couldn't stop PM Winston sticking his nose in and causing trouble, as is clear in this case.


All the best

wadinga
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
Wadinga wrote to his bully supporter": "If you have found a later one please nominate."
:lol: :lol: :lol: "pgollin" who gives a whatsoever value to this discussion ? This would be new ! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Luckily, we need neither this poorly educated person help nor the last King's Regs in force in 1941, because the Naval Discipline Act from 1866 (http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1866.htm) contains the relevant "Articles of War" (unaltered until 1941) applicable as charges at a Court Martial for the two timid officers we are speaking about: the articles about the "misconduct in the presence of the enemy", that were never treated in the King's Regs.


Wadinga wrote: "So a Court(Board) of Enquiry is not a disciplinary matter as I pointed out above, merely an information gathering exercise.
"
...and, in case the "exercise" ascertains a dereliction of duty, it is the antechamber of the Court Martial....

Kings_Regs_703.jpg
Kings_Regs_703.jpg (20.43 KiB) Viewed 1155 times



Bye, Alberto
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

"There's always a danger running in the enemy at close range" (Adm.W.F.Wake-Walker)
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by wadinga »

Hello Alberto,

I asked P Gollin if he could supply King's Regs in force for 1941.

You say:
contains the relevant "Articles of War" (unaltered until 1941) applicable as charges at a Court Martial
You may well be right, but you have presented no actual evidence to support your assertion, whereas now, like Antonio you quote the King's Regs for the procedure for both Court Martial and Court of Inquiry.

...and, in case the "exercise" ascertains a dereliction of duty, it is the antechamber of the Court Martial....
Equally if it doesn't, it isn't. :D As I showed, the Articles below 703 point out that none of the recorded proceedings of such a Court of Enquiry can be used in a subsequent Court Martial, and all evidence re-acquired under the terms laid out for a Court Martial, ie due legal process, in the relevant part of the King's Regs. So not so much an antechamber, more a completely different building.

As I pointed out, using the same wording the use of "or" in the 703 article shows the exercise to have two entirely different purposes only one of which has anything to do with Court Martials. The Board of Inquiry into Hood's destruction was clearly of the former, information gathering. To determine the cause of her destruction. If it had found evidence that large numbers of cordite charges had been left unsafely stacked around on the upper deck and Chief Gunnery Officer Moultrie had survived the sinking, it might well have led to his Court Martial.



At the time of Pound's letter on the 28th, only the barest scraps of information existed on the details of Leach's and Wake-Walker's actions. Only the very depressed, highly stressed and verbally intemperate PM would have turned his original childish emotional outburst on hearing the bad news into something to bother the First Sea Lord with, as Colville relates, through into the following day. It should be remembered that this was happening on the Sunday 25th May, the very same day Pound and Phillips were sending contradictory information and instructions to Tovey and Dalrymple-Hamilton, whilst also supervising the unravelling disaster in Crete. (If Twitter had existed in 1941 we would have the actual wording of verbally intemperate outbursts just like those of Donald J Trump today)


As for identifying "bullies" around here, Alberto review your and Antonio's posts before applying such classification to others. You have deliberately driven away valuable posters supplying useful information, like Cag and Alan Raven with insults and disparaging comments. It may merely be your drive to be "winners" in an argument, it might be you have identified sources of inconvenient information and decided to tactically "take them out" before their evidence undermines further your flimsy assertions.

All the best

wadinga
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by pgollin »

.

Yes, I have a 2 volume set of The King's Regulations in force at the time in my possession (although one needs to check with AFO's and CAFO's to see which were modified between the official publication and the date of the D.S. action).

I am NOT going to reveal either the date, or relevent paragraph numbers as A & A need to find them for themselves if they have any credibility. (And this matches their idiocy over their "silver bullet".)

Their complete misunderstanding of how the Admiralty actually worked is part of the problem with their thesis/fantasy.

As I have noted before, no external assessor, or competent editor is ever going to accept their work as they have so little understanding how things really worked;

- No idea on how the Admiralty worked,

- No idea on the interface of the Board with Churchill,

- No idea on the nuances of the English language,

- No idea on the practicalities of accuracies of bearings in WW2, nor the accuracy of plotted tracks

- No idea of the way the Admiralty proceeded regarding after action investigations and their choices regarding Boards of Inquiry

And, finally, their deliberate cherry-picking and partial quoting shows a basic dishonesty in their presentation of their case.

.
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by Antonio Bonomi »

Hello everybody,

Someone should tell the most idiot member of this forum that we know and realized quite well how everything worked.

At first they wanted a board of inquiry for the 2 coward
s, and after they gave them a medal.

This is what they did.

Bye Antonio
In order to honor a soldier, we have to tell the truth about what happened over there. The whole, hard, cold truth. And until we do that, we dishonor her and every soldier who died, who gave their life for their country. ( Courage Under Fire )
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by wadinga »

Hello Antonio,

Hello Antonio,

If you were First Sea Lord and you imagined you had two cowards running immensely important vessels/operations, why would you leave them in place or promote them?

Because you never imagined it was true in the first place, because you were merely mollifying a silly old politician who had imagined it, but you knew would regret it soon enough. Which he did.


All the best

wadinga
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Alberto Virtuani
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by Alberto Virtuani »

Hello everybody,
Wadinga wrote: "you have presented no actual evidence to support your assertion"
I did SEVERAL TIMES but Mr.Wadinga does not accept them (as well as all the other evidences presented here regarding the poor story of the DS battle from British side... :lol: ).

The NDA, 1866 (http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA1866.htm) contains the "Articles of War" in force in 1941, because no change to NDA was impacting Part I in the meantime (http://www.pdavis.nl/NDA.htm).

An additional demonstration is simple and it was provided by Mr.Wadinga himself, when posting the charges at the CM against Troubridge: exactly the wording of article 3.

The King's Regs are very interesting and detailed indeed and I will continue posting from them (just to scorn some petulant hooligans infesting this forum), but they are totally IRRELEVANT for the potential charges against Leach and Wake-Walker, because they DO NOT CONTAIN the articles regarding the "misconduct in the presence of the enemy", just because they are "details" and NOT "substance" regarding discipline.


Bye, Alberto
"It takes three years to build a ship; it takes three centuries to build a tradition" (Adm.A.B.Cunningham)

"There's always a danger running in the enemy at close range" (Adm.W.F.Wake-Walker)
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wadinga
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by wadinga »

Hello Alberto,

You just saying the unmodified 1866 version of the NDA article 3 was in place in 1941 does not make it so. You have presented no evidence, even though several examples of changes unnoticed by pdavis have been supplied to you.

My Troubridge evidence referred to 1915, how exactly does that affect what was happening in 1941?

As we have established whereas in the case of loss of a vessel one can go straight to Court Martial under King's Regs, this is most unusual in the case of
"misconduct in the presence of the enemy" where such a circumstance would first have to be established by a Court of Enquiry. It is clearly remiss of Tovey to have forgotten this procedure, but then memories can be confused when 15 or 20 years have passed by. This is probably why he completely forgot that is what Pound apparently asked for in his letter of the 28th, and which he addressed and refused in his own hand, and not a Court Martial because CMDS is a myth.

As you will be aware there was required to be a Board of Inquiry into Troubridge's decisions before it went to Court Martial. Tovey's suggestion that things would go straight to Court Martial is yet another demonstration of how pretty much everything he told Roskill was wrong. Wrong about ROOF. Wrong about bearings. Wrong about CMDS.


Of course you could throw some additional light on things if you showed the "Silver Bullet"- or maybe it's not as significant as you once pretended. A bit like Tovey telling McMullen the same fanciful story he told Roskill ie not significant at all.


All the best

wadinga
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by pgollin »

.

I am SURE I have posted this before, but I will post it again.

There is something in "The Articles of War" about punishment for unnatural acts/buggery/homosexuality - this was carried over, in detail, into the King's Regulations.

HOWEVER, around the time of the invasion of France there was a CAFO to ignore the wording of the King's regulations and basically told commanding officers to lay off discipling or comming down too hard on gay sailors as the Admiralty had noted the need for mass conscription and realised that they had to live with what they got. This meant that unless some act was so blatant or well known around the ship punishment was to be light and forgotten.

As soon as the war was over one of the first Cafos issued was to reinstate full imposition of the King's Regulations.

However, according to "The Articles of War" A & A would have us think that this was impossible.

.
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Re: The Court Martial for the Denmark Strait

Post by wadinga »

Hello P Gollin,

I do not propose to dive into the anatomical elements of the NDA modification by regulations, especially regarding the buggery element of "Rum, Buggery and the Lash. :o


However here is parliamentary discussion from 1909 confirming disregard for an article of the NDA and its superceding by the relevant Admiralty Order.

www.godfreydykes.info/NAVAL%20DISCIPLINE%20BILL.htm
This Bill seeks, by means of a Schedule, to make a very large number of amendments in the Naval Discipline Act, and when we reach it, I hope the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill will be able to give us full and detailed information regarding them.
and
With regard to what is called flogging in the Navy, namely, the corporal punishment inflicted under Sections 52 (4) of the Naval Discipline Act, that has been entirely suspended by Admiralty Order since 1881, and no man has since that date been subject to the punishment. The hon. Gentleman has some anxiety lest by a stroke of the pen the old system may be re-enacted. I do not think he need have any anxiety on that point. There is not the slightest prospect of it so far as I know.
Mr. KEATING
Then why not put it in the Bill.
Dr. MACNAMARA
That is exactly the point to which I am coming. That would mean such a very considerable change in the whole scope of the Bill, and objections might be taken to it in certain quarters, with the result that at this late period of a very long Session, we might endanger this reform upon which we have set our hearts. If we were revising the Naval Discipline Act my hon. Friend would be able to raise the point.
This confirms P Gollin's point that the NDA could be modified by schedules which required parliamentary debate and approval, which could be slow and cumbersome, or merely by changing the Admiralty Orders in the King's Regs.

There is no evidence all that stuff about a "flying enemy" was not superceded by King's Regs and Admiralty Orders long before 1941, but sometime after 1915.


So Alberto:

"You just saying the unmodified 1866 version of the NDA article 3 was in place in 1941 does not make it so. You have presented no evidence, even though several examples of changes unnoticed by pdavis have been supplied to you."

All the best

wadinga
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