HMT Queen Mary the Grey Ghost

[citroenzxdriver]

Evening all,here's a photo of my HMT Queen Mary, 2 years on and off in the building, finally finishing in time for the Blackpool model show last month, its built from a Revel 1:570 kit, first painted as the liner then repained into her war paint with subtle weathering and a mean seascape.

[lmcq11]

Very nice model ! Grey ghost indeed.

Your post made me curious about what the Queen Mary did during the war. It seems it had great success as a troop carrier, running non stop service between continents throughout the war and after.

One incident is worth mentioning. On October 1942, the Queen Mary and HMS Curacoa were on a collision course off Ireland. Both ship expected the other to give way. The Queen Mary, transporting 15,000 men of the 29th infantry division, was under order to zigzag and stop for nothing. Queen Mary cut the Curacoa in half, 337 men went down, while Queen Mary suffered only bow damage and could not even stop to pick up the survivors.

QM

Its surprising the allies put so many men on one ship at the same time. It would only have taken a couple of torpedoes from a U-boat to destroy a whole division.

[Sub]

Hi.
Very nice model indeed.
Imcq11...just for info the Queen was considered too fast to be torpedoed.
Went on her in Long Beach California and you can go on the ghost tour deep in the bottom of the ship and they re enact the collision with sound effects and actors etc....rather disturbing.
Sub.

[jarndice]

Very nice model ! Grey ghost indeed.

Your post made me curious about what the Queen Mary did during the war. It seems it had great success as a troop carrier, running non stop service between continents throughout the war and after.

One incident is worth mentioning. On October 1942, the Queen Mary and HMS Curacoa were on a collision course off Ireland. Both ship expected the other to give way. The Queen Mary, transporting 15,000 men of the 29th infantry division, was under order to zigzag and stop for nothing. Queen Mary cut the Curacoa in half, 337 men went down, while Queen Mary suffered only bow damage and could not even stop to pick up the survivors.

Capture22.JPG

Its surprising the allies put so many men on one ship at the same time. It would only have taken a couple of torpedoes from a U-boat to destroy a whole division.

Quite simply the Queen Mary was far too fast for a U boat to accurately target,
And that is why she never ran in a convoy.

[43rdRecceReg]

Amazing how interesting facts just bubble to the surface here on RCTW Lovely model, by the way!

With an incident such as this, these days- we would never hear the end of it, given the prevailing 'victim culture'. However, It's just a sad fact that folk become inured to death in wartime. I often think of the hand of a dead soldier in the wall of a trench, that soldiers arriving would shake (including Robert Graves, who mentions it in 'Goodbye to all that')- for good luck. He had been somebody's son; now just reduced to a grim novelty.
Only three men survived the loss of HMS Hood (1,415 died)- a beautiful ship, but with a 'glass chin'. Almost 2,000 were lost when Bismarck went down. The worst ever loss (and yes, a whole division of troops would have been hard to overlook ), was the Wilhelm Gustloff, torpedoed in the Baltic by a soviet sub, with what is claimed to be the loss of over 9,000 passengers (mostly civilians).

[jarndice]

HMS Hood was a compromise in that she was a battlecruiser contrary to the popular belief which Included many sailors of the time that she was a battleship,
The difference between the two being for a battlecruiser to have the speed of a cruiser and the firepower of a battleship something had to go,
In the case of HMS Hood it was the deck armour which where it was over the magazine was not thick enough,
The second salvo from Bismark struck the foredeck in front of the bridge penetrating the lighter armoured deck plating over the main magazine

[Tiger6]

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[971wright]

Hi My Dad was on the Queen Mary when he was sent to Egypt, over 10,000 on board, sailed all the way down the Atlantic then up the Indian ocean and Red sea, long way round but no chance of being bombed, if it had tried to cross the Mediterranean sea it would have been sunk.

regards pete

[jarndice]

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A great summary BUT every scenario is forwarded by a could be or perhaps BUT the documentary evidence clearly shows the second salvo from Bismarck striking the deck in front of the bridge of HMS Hood closely followed by an enormous explosion and the ship sinking,

[Tiger6]

I've never seen anyone suggest that the forward magazine was hit in addition to the rear - do you have a source for that?

[citroenzxdriver]

Thank you all for your kind comments, my model depicts the Queen Mary travelling from New York to Gourock Scotland on a night in Devember 1942 with over 16000 troops & crew on board. On this night she was hit by a rouge wave that was over 95 feet tall. This wave broke windows on the bridge and caused other minor damage and also caused her to roll, by some accounts over 50 degrees! Fortunatety she righted herself and continued on her way. This is my take on that night. Working out the size of a scale 95 foot wave just looked too big to be believable, not wanting to suffer the wrath of the rivet counters I scaled back the size of the wave.

[43rdRecceReg]

All the most recent evidence, including that gathered by a ROV (at a depth in excess of 9,000 ft ), shows that the explosion that split the Hood in half, occurred in the aft part of the ship. A contemporary sketch by the Captain of the Prince of Wales, Capt. Leach, also indicated an explosion in the aft magazine. Such a shame.

[Tiger6]

Working out the size of a scale 95 foot wave just looked too big to be believable, not wanting to suffer the wrath of the rivet counters I scaled back the size of the wave.

It doesn't take much imagination for the viewer to imagine the ship being at the point of diving under, and the wave breaking up and over the bow. It certainly brings to mind footage of fleet aircraft carriers bobbing up and down like bath tub toys on the arctic convoy runs

Also worth bearing in mind that what the crew percieved to be a 90+ foot wave is in reality only half that height above the mean level, they are just looking up at it from the bottom of the proceeding 45 foot trough