Fellow Contributors,
Bill Jurens has commented:
I wonder about the 'Guns are OK' commentary. Does it refer to the gunnery system as a whole, i.e. to the guns and the ammunition handling train, etc., or might it merely refer to the fact that the guns themselves -- less of course previously anticipated failures -- were undamaged
There is an unwarranted assumption that McMullen sending a boy with a message to the bridge was
as a reaction to PoW commencing a turn which was disrupting his gunnery and about which he was "furious". One might consider how long it took this messenger to get from where ever he was, after receiving the order from McMullen, to the Compass platform. That is too late to affect circumstances, since the turn is already underway and it would take some while to countermand. A far more likely motive is simply that McMullen's communications with the Captain were broken, due to virtually everybody on the Compass Platform being dead or wounded and the voice pipes and open line telephones smashed.
This obsession with the turn being the motive for sending the "unusual" message ignores the fact that as Brooke notes, the gunnery team was warned the ship would be making a major turn to port as the closing course of 280T was unnecessary once decisive range was reached. Only when the turn exceeded the bearing at which the DCT could track the target was it inconvenient enough for McMullen to get at all "furious".
The Gunnery Officer's responsibility
in action was not monitor the minutiae of loading and firing of his guns, about which he could know nothing in the DCT, but in addition to personally supervising his spotting and rate crew, liaising
continuously with the Captain about targets and manoeuvres. Losing contact with the Compass platform was a serious matter and his patently incorrect and imprecise "the guns are OK" was a mere assurance to the Captain that despite losing communications the Gunnery system was still operating.
Only the gun layer, ie the man with the trigger, at his telescope had the gun ready lights to tell him when sufficient guns to constitute a worthwhile salvo were ready, and he would fire when his sights were on.
I am quite happy to have the above described as a fabrication/assumption although only after people have read The Pocket Gunnery Book available on the web.
This however is pure interpretation:
implicitly asking him what the hell he was doing with that hard turn under smoke.
I suspect the failure in B turret happened around salvo 11, when the shell ring was empty and had to be reloaded from the shell rooms
This observation/assumption/suspicion directly contradicts Barben who we are told was actually in B turret and reported:.
This means that B turret missed three salvoes, although ready to carry on, with shell in the guns when the action finished
Is it seriously proposed that it should read "This means that B turret missed three salvoes,
but then fired some more, although ready to carry on, with shell in the guns when the action finished"
The qualifier "although" clearly means that despite the failure, this was overcome and the guns were loaded and ready to take part again by the end, not that they had managed to fire some guns before the end of the action. If they had fired again it would be superfluous to add "although ready to carry on, with shell in the guns when the action finished".
The estimate/assumption/suspicion of salvo 11 is typical of how apparently "logical" assumptions made may mislead. It is presumably estimated/assumed/suspicioned because the proposer has done some sums. Why allow the shell ring to become completely depleted when with gaps between double salvoes approaching a minute mean that while shells and cartridges are being hoisted and rammed, the shell ring is clear to rotate and be topped-up? A failure of logic rescued only by being described as a suspicion instead of being asserted.
Speaking of assertions of the timing of the Compass Platform hit:
Leach's narrative:
And at 0602 compass platform was hit and majority of personnel killed. Navigating Officer was wounded; Commanding Officer unhurt.
This directly contradicts the assertions made by Mr Virtuani,
Therefore the hit in compass platform happened around 06:00:50,
he should not cite it in his support and should as a courtesy admit this.
BTW Unhurt compares with "blown to fragments or severed femoral artery or splinter through face or blinded or permanently deafened etc.
All the best
wadinga
