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1940 10 20 HMS Hotspur rams submarine Lafole - Chris French

18:30hrs, 20th October 1940. Royal Navy H-Class destroyer HMS Hotspur rams the Italian submarine Lafolè in the western Mediterranean. RN ships had been engaged in seven hours of cat-and-mouse with the submarine, depth charges having damaged electric motors and pumps on Lafolè, bending the propeller shafts and causing flooding. Ultimately, the submarine could not sustain a dive and surfaced repeatedly, the final time being directly in front of HMS Hotspur. The destroyer going full speed rammed the submarine in the area of the conning tower and it sank soon after. 9 survivors were picked up. Hotspur underwent temporary repairs to her bow at Gibraltar with permanent repairs made later at Malta, completed by February 1941.

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1942 Narvik class destroyer - Roy Cross

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1942 IJN Minelayer Okinoshima - box art Fujimi

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1942 Soviet gliding torpedo boat type G-5

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1942 10 12 Battle of Cape Esperance, Cruiser Helena CL-50

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1942 06 04 Midway IJN Aircraft Carrier Akagi vs B-26 Marauder - Randall Wilson

Having taken off prior to the Japanese attack, American bombers based on Midway made several attacks on the Japanese carrier force. These included (…) four USAAF B-26s of the 18th Reconnaissance and 69th Bomb Squadrons armed with torpedoes.

One B-26, piloted by Lieutenant James Muri, after dropping his torpedo and searching for an escape route, flew directly down the length of Akagi while being fired upon by fighters and anti-aircraft fire, which had to hold their fire to avoid hitting their own flagship; the B-26 strafed Akagi, killing two men. Another B-26, piloted by Lieutenant Herbert Mayes, did not pull out of its run after being seriously damaged by anti-aircraft fire, and instead flew directly at Akagi's bridge. Either attempting a suicide ramming or out of control, the plane narrowly missed striking the bridge, which could have killed Nagumo and his staff, crashing into the ocean. This experience may well have contributed to Nagumo's determination to launch another attack on Midway in direct violation of Yamamoto's order to keep the reserve strike force armed for anti-ship operations.

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1942 06 04 Midway, USS Yorktown CV-5 - box art Academy

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1942 Aircraft Carrier Akagi - box art Hasegawa

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1941 05 24 Hood vs Bismarck - Ivan Berryman

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1941 01 Malta HMS Beryl - Ivan Berryman

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1941 05 King George V sinks Bismarck - Arkadiusz Wrobel

repost corrected color

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1940 King George - Danijel Frka - box art Revell

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1941 HMS Thorn - John Cooper

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1941 05 Prinz Eugen - Roy Cross

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1939 ORP Orzel - Andrzej Deredos - box art Mirage Hobby

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1940 HMS Illustrious

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1939 11 24 First defusing of a magnetic mine - Wilf Hardy

In November 1939 Britain faced the prospect of capitulation to Nazi Germany. Huge numbers of ships bringing essential supplies like food and fuel were being sunk and nobody had a clue what weaponry was sinking them.

The lifeline to the British troops still fighting in France, before the evacuation of Dunkirk, was being cut off.

Winston Churchill who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time faced his first major crisis of what became known as the "phoney war".

Churchill described how the events could have been the "compass of our ruin".

On the 21st November HMS Belfast was rocked by a huge explosion. The back of the ship was broken and the damage put her out of action for three years.

The Germans stepped up the programme of deploying their "secret weapon" which was in fact a magnetic mine. As ships passed over the mine, the steel hull triggered a magnetic field exploding the mine.

In the middle of the night the following day a German sea-plane flew low over the Thames Estuary just offshore from Shoeburyness, Essex.

Military spotters reported what looked like a sailor's kit-bag being dropped into the sea. The Admiralty was immediately informed.

Part of the elite naval bomb disposal unit he was immediately driven from Whitehall to Shoeburyness. Commander Ouvry arrived at 3.30 in the morning.

With a small team of men Ouvry stood ankle deep in the mud and water over the following twelve hours trying to work out how to disable the torpedo shaped object.

It was unknown to them and as fellow bomb disposal officer, Lt Noel Cashford observes, "he didn't have a clue what he was dealing with, he was taking a risk, a huge risk".

It was a risk that he was instructed to take "at all costs" so high were the stakes. It was agreed between Ouvry's team that whilst he attempted to disable the mine, with Chief Petty Officer Charles Baldwin to assist, the remainder of the team would observe from a distance.

In his report of the incident, which has only recently come to light, Ouvry wrote; "we fixed on a definite sequence of events, which he (his fellow bomb disposal officer, Lt Cmdr Lewis) could clearly observe from the distance, in case of a mistake upon my part".

Of course the mistake would have blown Ouvry and Baldwin to smithereens and reflects the temperament of the men needed to do such dangerous work.

In the event of failure, his colleague could at least then attempt to disable a second mine they had discovered further along the same beach.

It was of course critical they discovered if this was the secret weapon and how it worked so counter-measures could be devised.

After 12 painstaking hours Ouvry described the feeling of being "on top of the world" as he successfully disarmed the mine. The mine was taken away for analysis and within a week countermeasures were introduced to protect shipping from that particular danger. Britain survived to fight on.