The word compendium has several definitions one of which is a box which contains many games, like Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, Chess, Draughts, Dominoes etc.  Another is a space saver, like putting several small items on one page of my web site instead of using several pages.  Hence, using the 'several things' bit, I can get away with both these definitions.

Here are just a couple of loose items for which I have no dedicated home.

Q.

USS Phoenix, the Japanese and the British. What have they got in common?

A.

Q.	Who is this person?   Did you say or think of Prince Philip? .....I bet!	A.
Q.	What rank is this gentleman?	A.
This is him again   and this time he is a

Now you know the answer to NAVAL OFFICER 2, why don't you read my LEADING ARTICLE which can be found in NAVY THING MAJOR FEATURE ARTICLES ?

Now for some ANAGRAMS. A little while ago a pal of mine emailed me a list of anagrams and they are so clever, that I want to share them with you. I have added a few of my own, but by and large, I claim no credit for this section of the COMPENDIUM apart from the page design of course!

Here we go then.  Don't forget to use your browser BACK button after each answer. What is the ANAGRAM of:-

You do know that you are not allowed to tell porky pies, or 'engineer' a situation which is false - you do know that?  .......next time they change computer keyboards, and I am sure that they will, they ought to put a dwell-a-pause key so that the audience out there know that there is a break to allow readers to gather their thoughts!

On Saturday 2nd July, I visited IFOS in Portsmouth Dockyard. It was my second day there and by mid afternoon I was rather tired - the Dockyard is a big place you know. Very close to what we used to called Fountains Lake Jetty [or thereabouts] I spied a large tent [or a small marquee] with chairs in it, so I went to sit down. Obviously I passed the sign on the door and knew that the owners of this stretch of canvas where the R.N. Presentation Team. 'Action' music was playing and very soon the show started when a male commander and a female lieutenant started their chalk and talk, or more accurately their talk and video screen. The commander had told the audience that this was the third run that day, but as yet, not one person in the audience had asked a question, so would we please pay attention and formulate our question as the show rolled out. Excellent do, as usual, and some embarrassment held for these professionals trying to put over to a less than enthusiastic audience, the need for and the role of our navy. The commander summed up the main points and then asked for any questions. Nothing! No enthusiasm; zilch; stony silence so I put my hand up. I told them I was ex career navy, that I was a submariner starting in the 1950's.  I suggested that submarines of my time were horrid things, but that those of today are underwater hotels [not literally but by comparison] moving towards the question of why women can't serve in boats. I wasn't even interested in my own question never mind their answer, but I felt duty bound to stimulate the audience if that were possible. The commander said that women do not serve in boats for metabolic [female that is] reasons, and when I returned to my home, not knowing whether this was correct or not, I checked his answer on the RN website.  Sure enough he was bang on for this is what they say

Question: Why are women not permitted to serve on submarines? More questions
	Answer: Service in submarines is closed to women because of medical concerns for the safety of the foetus and hence its mother. This restriction is purely medical and does not relate to combat effectiveness. The potential risks to the foetus do not arise from hazardous radiation, but from contaminants in the submarine's atmosphere. The Institute of Naval Medicine (INM) reviewed the exclusion in 1999, as did subsequently both the Defence Scientific Advisory Council and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Their outcomes supported the conclusions of the INM report, that the exclusion was justified.

so well done the commander. The female lieutenant then amplified her boss's answer. She said that today's nuclear submariners [SSK or Bomber] still hot-bunked, and described to the audience what that meant. That was another reason why women can't serve in boats she said. With hot-bunking must come hard lying money - one of the reasons for having it - and I find all that too much to believe.  Submariners of today have a mess in which they socialise and a separate bunk space in which they sleep and another separate space in which they dine, and yet another in which they can keep clean. We didn't, keep clean that is, not enough water, and in my day, all of that was one space, and on 'S', 'T', 'A' and even 'P' boats that was bloody small. Whilst I can believe the medical experts and their evidence ably stated by the commander, I find it disturbing that half of the Presentation Team is saying things which are not true on a daily basis.  By that I mean that hot-bunking may have occurred for some specific reason, but surely, it cannot be the norm in submarines in 2005. If there are submariners reading this page, please tell me whether the lieutenant was wrong or am I misunderstanding modern submarines. I belong to the Gosport Submariners Association so I will ask at our next meeting. If you don't hear further from me, she was wrong, but if she was right, then I will leave this text extant, and write an add-on as an apology.

I read an article yesterday [7th July 2005] about a North Yorkshire policeman who had been drafted to Edinburgh, Scotland to assist with controlling the louts trying to wreck the G8 conference at Gleneagles. Apart from describing his job, he also said that the big Scottish capital city was awesome [he felt lost], let alone facing the scum on the streets. I got to thinking about what a city policeman might think about patrolling the wilds of some national park [Yorkshire's for example] trying to round up pro or anti hunt wreckers. I came up with this anagram.

COSMOPOLITAN LONDONER [assume my policeman was either a City or a MET copper]=

DID YOU KNOW THAT? [End WW2 to 1950]

1. At the end of WW2, submarines were employed full time in our dockyards using their diesel engines and their electrical generating plant to produce electrical power for use by the dockyard and sometimes, civilian use.  The very opposite of the norm, which is shore supply on arrival in harbour from sea duty.
2. In 1946, though why I knoweth not, nor was it apparent that it was ever taken seriously, the title of Fleet Air Arm was changed to Naval Aviation. I don't remember that name being used by the commentator at Earls Court during field gun runs!
3. In 1946, the Supply and Secretarial School at Highgate in London, was moved north to Yorkshire, when HMS CERES was commissioned at Wetherby with, for the first time, a Pusser Captain as the Commanding Officer.
4. Also in that year HMS THUNDERER was commissioned as the RNEC [Royal Naval Engineering College] Manadon in Devonport.
5. 513 British minesweepers [of which three were lost] helped to sweep 20,000 German mines in 1946, and Operation DEADLIGHT was completed which saw the last of the captured U-Boats that were not required by the RN/USN, destroyed.
6. After a year of peace in 1946, two British warships were mined in the Mediterranean in Corfu Channel. One, the Saumarez had to be scrapped. The other, Volage was repaired.
7. After Britain regained Hong Kong from the Japanese at the end of WW2, the RN centre of operations was run from HMS AIRE, a frigate, berthed alongside the wall in Hong Kong harbour. When HMS Tamar was commissioned as the Shore HQ, HMS Aire sailed for home. She ran aground and was lost, never making it back home to dear old Blighty.
8. In 1947, plastic coating mothballing was introduce to preserve ships in long reserve.
9. SEASLUG, the weapon on the back of Guided Missile Destroyers [GMD's or DLG's] which at least looked impressive, was making slow development progress in 1947.
10. In 1947 there was a Royal Review in the Clyde, the Vanguard was enroute to South Africa with the Royal Family, 'Alongside RAS' trials began using RFA Bulawayo [an ex German tanker], the first Snorkel trials were conducted using HM S/M Alliance, there were over 180,000 in Naval Aviation [the former Fleet Air Arm] - see 2 above, 246 WW2 mines were swept, Royal Arthur was moved to Corsham Wiltshire for PO leadership training and New Entry HO training [which had been conducted throughout the war in HMS Ganges], and HMS Sea Eagle was commissioned in Londonderry Northern Ireland.
11. Finally in 1947, two foreign stations disappeared from drafties list, one good and one not so good! The naval port facilities at Alexandria in Egypt [used as much, and often more than Gibraltar and Malta especially in WW2] was handed back to that country, and the naval facility in Sydney NSW was transferred to Singapore.   
12. In 1948 duty free tobacco certification was introduced and the Electrical Branch formed. The navy was a very unhappy place to be, with complaints raised about everything and often given to journalist which appeared in the newspapers. Fleets had to be reduced in size and commitment because of manning problems with HO's leaving [and had left] in their thousands, and career men [officers and ratings], queuing up to leave. Boy ratings were now allowed in frigates in compliment billets instead of able rates. 333 RN warships had been sold to Commonwealth navies or foreign countries since 1945. HMS Wildfire was the RP's training school at Sheerness Kent. HMS Virago carried out the first trials on the new inflatable liferafts, while National Service was reduced to the 2000 mark. The Clearance Divers Branch was formed. Almost as a rehearsal for 1982, protests were exchanged between HMS Minerva and HMS Snipe and the Argentine units in the Antarctic.
13. 1949 National Servicemen were forced to serve in the RNVR after their two years service. HMS Phoenix was opened at Stamshaw in Portsmouth and a liberty boat sank in Weymouth harbour leading to the George Medal being awarded to a boy seaman for a rescue attempt. HMS Amethyst was trapped in the Yangtse River China but then broke out successfully. Many events taking place in Far East [mainly China] which involved ships of the Royal Navy. The Korean War was starting to escalate.

Other 'fillers' of interest are, and will be, added to other parts of the site.

Everybody knows about the build up of allied forces in the UK after Pearl Harbour and the entrance into WW2 by the Americans.  From 1942 onwards, the Yanks poured into our tiny country although of course not all stayed here - the US Army used the UK as a spring-board to Europe, the US Navy relatively little and the US Air Force as a launch-pad for their famous daylight bombing missions over Germany.  However, did you also know that Pearl Harbour caused another mass involvement of US troops on the other side of the world? In the book, 'The Liners' A Voyage of Discovery {ISBN 0752210580} by Rob McAuley, a Boxtree Channel Four Book which accompanied the television series of the same name, he tells the story about the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth the largest liners in the world. From the earliest days of the war they had been secretly routed, zig zagging and at high speed from Scotland, across to the States then out to the Far East, to Singapore and then to Australia. There they moved the cream of Australian men, as fighting soldiers, from Sydney to the Suez time and again.  There was no war in the Far East so the ships were safe and the men were needed where the war was raging. In December 1941 everything changed. Australia was now vulnerable to Japanese attack/invasion and the Queens' were needed in the North Atlantic again to ferry across hundreds of thousands of US troops to the UK.  The Australian troops, now battle-hardened could not be returned home, so the last job the Queens' did before coming back to the States/UK run, was to ferry 20,000 US Troops to Australia to help protect it against the Japanese. Apart from some Australian territory way north of Australia proper in Port Morseby Papua New Guinea, Australia itself was not attacked or invaded. At least we in Britain looked after our own internal security without having to rely on the Yanks.  However, all stop {!} for I have found a further article of relevance. In researching the death of HMS Dorsetshire [of Bismarck fame] on the 5th April 1942 [more about that later in another story [page]] I picked-up on her being in company with HMS Cornwall who was also sunk [great loss of lives with only 1120 survivors from both cruisers] who had been earmarked for Trincomalee on the 8th April, to join military convoy SU4 for passage to Australia after the ANZAC troops were withdrawn from Middle East Operations because of the Japanese threat to Australia.  That must have been some blessing because the ANZAC boys were taken away from a real war to rightly go back home to defend their own country by themselves, but since they were not attacked, there must have been some kind of an anti climax for them.