Picture of the day
- Thread starter jwhc
- Start date
Dark Alley Dan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Darkest Edmonton
'You lot smell awful. Grab your towels and shaving kit and let's go to the beach.
Bring your weapons too, because Army..."
fat tony
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
I lived onboard the Bonnie for a week as we loaded her up for her last operational cruise. She had just undergone a refit and if she was in "fighting condition", someone had a pretty own standard of what that entails. The sailors referred to her as a floating garbage scow.
Her aircraft had long been shore based at HMCS Shearwater (Trackers, Banshees, and the beautiful Hawker Seafury's), the launch system dismantled, there were lights that didn't work, etc., and I will never forget the 'head' in the bow of the ship with the anchor chains running through it! Perched over a trough with running water and the cold wind coming in off Dartmouth harbour through those huge holes made the trip memorable.
She was a floating anachronism, a relic of WWII and post WWII marine technology. I only survived her frozen decks thanks to "Spirits Up" on the quarter deck. It broke the chill, but gave me a lifelong distaste for Pusser rum.
Her aircraft had long been shore based at HMCS Shearwater (Trackers, Banshees, and the beautiful Hawker Seafury's), the launch system dismantled, there were lights that didn't work, etc., and I will never forget the 'head' in the bow of the ship with the anchor chains running through it! Perched over a trough with running water and the cold wind coming in off Dartmouth harbour through those huge holes made the trip memorable.
She was a floating anachronism, a relic of WWII and post WWII marine technology. I only survived her frozen decks thanks to "Spirits Up" on the quarter deck. It broke the chill, but gave me a lifelong distaste for Pusser rum.
I was just going by an article I read around the time she was sold off. The Brazilians did use her for several years before breaking her up. I don't know if she was a training ship or what. Brazil used the types of aircraft she was built for up into the 80s. Whatever, she did a lot of work in her useful life span.
I think perhaps you are confusing the Bonaventure with the Colossus class carrier Vengeance, which went to Brazil and renamed Minas Gerais. The latter carrier would have already been in operation with the Brazilian Navy at the time. Bonaventure was scrapped in Taiwan only a year after being decommissioned.
Thanks for that. I never got into it in depth.
They were constrained at Jutland by limited elevation and an APC shell that had a deficient bursting charge and less than ideal ballistic shape. Once improvements were made, the 15 inch guns really came into their own.
The rumour about the Bonaventure involved her being swapped mid-ocean for a sister ship that had been passed on to the Indian Navy by the RN and was, so the story went, in much worse condition. I believe she was scrapped in Japan - HMCS Ontario was.
Next stop - Hanoi! "... downtown ...."
Bomb-laden VA-34"Blue Blasters" A-6E Intruder over USS John F Kennedy, ca.1980-81.
I think more like Panama!!
Not if you've seen the movie or read the book - "Flight of the Intruder". That's the image the pic generates for me.
