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More like, look at me, everyone loves me. He even gave a load of shit to the ships company of a visiting Irish vessel at keil week a few years back on the grounds that "we lost a lot of good guys to your lot"
Guys a tit!
But, have we not been here before- remember Shatt al Arab.
The command of HMS Cornwall failed to foresee that it's boarding party might encounter trouble.
by William S. Lind
UPI Commentator
Washington (UPI) April 13, 2007
The row over maritime boundaries in the Shatt-al-Arab between Iran and Britain seems to be over, with the British sailors and marines released and returned home. I continue to suspect a deal was made regarding the five Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers held by the United States in Iraq. If they go home in a few weeks or months, it will be a quid pro quo, regardless of how much Washington and London deny it.
For Britain, and especially for the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, the incident ended in utter disgrace. The initial surrender of the British boarding party to what appears to have been a much larger Iranian force is the only defensible British action in the whole sorry business. Even in Horatio Hornblower's Royal Navy, a British frigate captain was not disgraced if he struck to a French or Spanish ship of the line. Force majeure remains a valid excuse.
But everything else that was said or done would have given Hornblower, the fictional creation of novelist C.S. Forester, or Jack Aubrey, the captain created by Patrick O'Brien, an apoplexy. The failure of HMS Cornwall to foresee such an event and be in a position to protect her people; the cowardice -- there is no other word for it -- of the boarding party, including two officers, once captured; their kissing the Iranian's backsides in return for their release; and perhaps most un-British, their selling their disgraceful stories to the British press for money on their return -- all this departs from Royal Navy traditions in ways that would have appalled the tars who fought at Trafalgar in 1805.
Yet that is not the worst of it. The worst of it is the reaction of the Navy's higher-ups. According to a story in the April 7 Washington Times, the Royal Navy's top commander, Admiral Jonathon Band, leapt to the boarding party's defense with virtually Jerry Springer-esque words:
"He told the British Broadcasting Corp. he believed the crew behaved with 'considerable dignity and a lot of courage' during their 13 days in Iranian captivity.
"He also said the so-called confessions made by some of them and their broadcast on Iranian state television appear to have been made under 'a certain amount of psychological pressure.'...
"'I would not agree at all that it was not our finest hour. I think our people have reacted extremely well in some very difficult circumstances,'" he said."
Had the captives been 10-year old girls from Miss Marples' Finishing School, Band's words might make some sense. But these were supposed to be fighting men from the Royal Navy and Royal Marines! Yes, I meant men. What Politically Correct imbecile detailed a woman to a boarding party?
To understand just how bad the whole business is, one must first know a bit about Hornblower's navy. In the latter half of the 18th century, the Royal Navy developed and institutionalized what we now call maneuver warfare or Third Generation war. By the Napoleonic Wars, it was all there -- the outward focus, where results counted for more than following orders or the Fighting Instructions; de-centralization -- Nelson was a master of mission-type orders -- prizing initiative above obedience; and dependence on self-discipline, at least at the level of ship commanders and admirals.
It is often personified as the Nelson Touch, but it typified a whole generation of officers, not just Nelson. In the 19th century, the Royal Navy lost it all and went rigid again, for reasons described in a wonderful book, Andrew Gordon's "The Rules of the Game." But Hornblower's and Aubrey's navy was as fast-acting, fluid and flexible at sea as was the Kaiserheer, the later Imperial German Army, on land.
I told Andrew Gordon that I would someday love to write the intellectual history of that first, maritime incarnation of maneuver warfare; he replied that the source material to do that may not exist, since Royal Navy officers of that time were not writing things down. He may be right, but I think one incident holds the key to much of it: the execution by firing squad, on his own poop deck, of Adm. John Byng.
In 1756, at the beginning of the Seven Year's War, the French took the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean from the British. Byng was sent out from London to relieve the island's garrison, then under siege. He arrived, fought a mismanaged battle with the attending French squadron, then retired to Gibraltar. Deprived of naval support, the garrison surrendered. Byng was court-martialed for his failure, found guilty, and shot.
The reason Byng's execution played a central role in the development of maneuver warfare in the Royal Navy is the main charge laid against him. The capital charge was "not doing his utmost" in the presence of the enemy. In other words, Byng was executed not for what he did, but for what he did not do.
Nothing could have done more to spur initiative in the navy. As Voltaire famously wrote, "Sometimes the British shoot an admiral to encourage the others." Encourage the others to take initiative and get the result the situation demands is exactly what it did. Without Byng, I doubt there would have been a Nelson.
Byng's execution points directly to what went wrong in the Royal Navy in the Shatt. It is not so much what people did as what they did not do. Neither the fleet commander nor the commander of HMS Cornwall prepared for such a situation. When it happened, Cornwall did not react. The captured sailors and Marines did not think about anything except their own skins. The Royal Navy, as represented by Band, decided to do nothing about its disgrace except pretend it did not happen.
The whole business represents Hornblower's and Aubrey's worst nightmare: the Brits have become the kind of force they defeated.
NO we haven't Tim - what the hell has a hovercraft crashing on a display in the Thames got to do with Iran?
stop stirring the sh|t for no reason.
RGJ,
Both incidents indicate poor training -and cockiness-and reflect badly on the Royal Marines.
I have a personal interest as some of my instructors were from the Royal Marines and the RN-this was on Lake Kariba and the Zambezi. That's all.
Tim, it is a tenuous connection and although reported by two members I am not giving any warnings or points.
"Fellow-soldiers of the Irish Republican Army, I have just received a communication from Commandant Pearse calling on us to surrender and you will agree with me that this is the hardest task we have been called upon to perform during this eventful week, but we came into this fight for Irish Independence in obedience to the commands of our higher officers and now in obedience to their wishes we must surrender. I know you would, like myself, prefer to be with our comrades who have already fallen in the fight - we, too, should rather die in this glorious struggle than submit to the enemy." Volunteer Captain Patrick Holahan to 58 of his men at North Brunswick Street, the last group of the Four Courts Garrison to surrender, Sunday 30 April 1916.
RGJ,
Both incidents indicate poor training -and cockiness-and reflect badly on the Royal Marines.
I have a personal interest as some of my instructors were from the Royal Marines and the RN-this was on Lake Kariba and the Zambezi. That's all.
oh fcuk off poor training Tim! it's a crash and a minor one at that.
floating at speed in a mini gunship along the surface of the water is not easy - try it sometime.
so i guess you are insinuating that your beloved Rhodesian Police were 'poorly trained' if your instructors are obviously 'poorly trained' is that what you are getting at?
is everyone who has a bump in their car poorly trained?
was Ayrton Senna poorly trained when he crashed his car?
Neighbour of mine here owns a hovercraft,(russian made) has told me they are not the easiest to drive, and you are completely at the mercy of wind and waves. He says it is a lot like driving an office chair. Just because you are pointed in the direction you want to go does not mean you will go there.
Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.
Neighbour of mine here owns a hovercraft,(russian made) has told me they are not the easiest to drive, and you are completely at the mercy of wind and waves. He says it is a lot like driving an office chair. Just because you are pointed in the direction you want to go does not mean you will go there.
don't be silly Goldie - Tim Horgan and Vickers know best - it surely comes down to 'poor training'
RGJ
...Once a Rifleman - Always a Rifleman...Celer et Audax
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