Edward Thompson: Wartime C.M.E. Discussion

I think the Crab's were very highly regarded in their day, and certainly more versatile than the K1's - no-one would be happy to see a K1 on the front of their express, yet the Crab's did very well on express duties in Scotland prior to the advent of the Stanier types. The Stanier Crabs were pretty good as well.

I tend to think of the K1 as an improved J39, and very good at the things a J39 was good at, while cheaper to maintain. If that was the intent of the design then the comparison with the Crabs is no criticism, and also one does have to make allowance for the different conditions between the building of the Crabs and the building of the K1's.

The K1's are much better looking

 

Oh God.

sometimes I regret all the things I've read, it makes reading other things very stressful...

what actually happened here was that Goering was asked by Brown (his name was Eric 'Winkle' Brown, not Eric Winkle) about the Battle of Britain. Goering, quoting the statistics of the final week of the battle (which IIRC was the only week in all the months where German losses were lower than British) said it was a draw. He was being very disingenuous, given that overall the Germans lost more men, more aircraft, and didn't destroy the RAF, invade Britain, or force Britain out of the war. He was basically (the interview was undertaken while awaiting trial at Nuremberg) the equivalent of Monty Python's Black Knight - no arms, no legs, threatening to bite people's legs off and 'we'll call it a draw.'

To your question 'is this the official view today?' the answer would be no, just as it wasn't the official view then. And, just so we're clear, at no point did Winkle Brown accept that the British lost more planes in the Battle of Britain. Because they didn't, by about 200 or so. In the last week, yes.

 

Ah, but he WAS quoting statistics and very selectively at that.

 

I prefer my crabs steamed in ginger sauce.

 

Takes all sorts

The Crab's certainly do have a 'presence'. And their L&YR heritage is pretty plain to see despite the silly tender.

 

I don't think Tom was being serious...

Noel

 

What about Jutland?

In terms of ships sunk, clearly a victory to The High Seas Fleet.

But it never came out again in strength and The Grand Fleet remained 'In Being' until the end of WW1

 

But Goering was surely analogous to the LNER Board in that his opinion was based on facts and figures provided by his pilots (train crews) and air marshalls (area managers) hence the need for those statistics in providing only part of the picture to be supported by other data sources.

 

I was reading about his oppinions of latest german aircraft and somehow got guided to his own , as I thought , describtion of the interview with Goering.
This describtion did not clarify that it was true for last week only.
It just proves,if that is nessecary ,that one shall not trust statistics manipulated by others or presumed memoirs written by third persons.
Sorry to have made unnessecary noise.

 

i tend to read rather than contribute to this thread as Im no engineer, but as we have moved on to the BoB,:

you could have asked my father what it was like to be at Biggin Hill in the summer of 1940 (unfortunately he is no longer with us so there would be little point now) and he might have told you, although like many service men he was often relucant to talk about it. He could have told you the feelings he experienced at the time and possibly his views on the possible outcome of the battle and the war. However, I'm not sure his views on the latter would count for much against the statistics.

whats this got to do with Thompson, well as I've stated before, at this distance Id rather rely on stats than recollections.

 

I think it also shows how entrenched and enduring myths become. ie Britain in peril and Thompson as hating Gresley.

Something to check out is when narratives start to emerge. The amplification of myths normally takes a few years to develop before it becomes a hegemonic narrative. (There has been quite a bit about the development of the War Cult in the USSR and Putin-era Russia - less so about the UK because WW2 is more of a foundational myth (before anyone starts clutching their pearls - all collectivities have myths that provide a rationale for actions taken - ie exceptionalism, victimhood, pre-destination, myth of return, heroic valour, etc etc). Myths are not about a historical truth (in as this exists at all), but about perception and it is less about the content as the function of that content. Myth is why some propositions are seen as normal and natural and others as perverse and alien. 'We do this because we are exceptional, this happens to us because we are always victims/we are doing this because we are always victims and we are standing up against etc etc.

So a case in point - most heritage railways (as an example of a collectivity) have their myths normally heroic valour, sometimes victimhood (but for BR, the council, we would have...), some combine them so on the WSR they combine exceptionalism, victimhood and glory (we do things differently down here, but for x,y,z, we are a premier league line). It is why on say one line getting a Pacer might barely raise an eyebrow and on another be seen as an affront to the purity of the railway. 'We'll have no diesels here, this is a steam railway' - the point is the myth orders the world and makes the idea of a Pacer on line X seem perverse and alien but normal on line Y where there is no myth of a 'pure' steam railway.

You might say 'yeah but where does Thompson hating Gresley fit into this' but it is more about the myth of the 'Golden Age' (check how often that is used to describe the interwar period) - so hence there needs to be an explanation as to why the Golden Age ended - easy to frame it as betrayed by the jealous successor who threw out all those wonderful designs. It used to be that nationalisation was also blamed but that myth has eroded.

Thank you. Once again context is everything. This is especially true when it comes to personal testimonies. There needs to be a context to when the statement is given and whether it should be taken at face value. The stats need context ie quoting a single week's figures provides a snapshot and if it is an outlier. As you show, Goering uses partial statistics to buttress his personal testimony, and by quoting the full figures, we can see that the Goering's evidence was partial and that his personal testimony is therefore unreliable in terms of an overall assessment of the Battle of Britain, but what it does tell us a lot about where Goering was when he was being held a prisoner (the Black Knight analogy is very apt) - ie self-exculpatory.

 

Exactly that. Hence my earlier comment …

… was only partly in jest. There is a tendency on this thread to set personal reminiscences as having higher value than statistics. But as the Göring example shows, an individual may have all sorts of reasons why their testimony is unreliable. It might be self-serving; it might depend on unreliable numbers; it might be made in ignorance of important information known elsewhere but not to the person making the comment; it might simply be impressionistic; it might be made years later when memory starts to dim. Most people can see that Göring was not a reliable judge of the outcome of the Battle of Britain (though presumably did at least provide some valuable insight into the high command mindset of the time); but what is true of Göring has also to at least be a consideration of the Neasden shed master complaining about clanky L1s.

Tom

 

agree, although what I particularly like is that it would be Neasden, for so long the butt of jokes in Private Eye any time they want somewhere representative of dull and dreary yet here, why, it's the very crucible of reputations, the furnace in which the best are tempered and the flawed perish.

 

Just remember that whatever Sid and Doris Bonkers might say, Neasden FC’s results don’t lie …

Tom

 

What will ashen faced Ron Knee have to say about this?

 

I apologize for going off topic, but were there any diesel locomotives allocated to Top Shed when Flying Scotsman was withdrawn in early 1963? @S.A.C. Martin

 

'Colemanballs' books have a table of the most featured compiled by 'The Neasden Institute of Statistics'.

Now about the personal testimony of the Black Shirted Sid Himmler