almost mystical feeling , as if I had been there myself and was reliving the experience, years later. STEPHEN H. BUSCH Norwalk, Connecticut
From Over the Hungaria Restaurant The article "Building the Normandy Beachhead," by James E. Vaile (Sea History 69), inspired me to bring to your attention a small but dedicated group of men who, under Commander Charles Frederick Goodeve, were respon sible for designing and developing a number of the vital elements that helped put fighting men ashore under fire on D-Day. The Department of Miscellaneous Weapon Development (DMWD), sometimes called the Wheezers and Dodgers, never seems to get any credit for the amazing projects they worked on. Long before D-Day, they got the detail s of the Swiss Oerlikon 20mm cannon and made it available to the Allies. The USN made great use of thi s gun , sometimes fitting as many as 100 to a ship. They designed and developed the Hedgehog anti-submarine weapon which helped turn the tide against the U-boats. They worked on all manner of rocket weapons, flame throwers, anti-a ircraft weapons and even developed the degaussing technique that saved hundreds of ships from magnetic mines. From their offices in rooms over the old Hungaria restaurant in Lower Regent Street in London, these scientists, engineers and inventors traveled all over, testing and modifying their infernal machines. Cdr. Goodeve discovered an amazing inventor living in a bomb-damaged wing of the Grosvenor Hotel in London. This man , Ronald Hamilton, had improvised a 200-foot-long testing tank along a coITidor of the hotel, made from lino floor covering. On its waters Hamilton had developed rolling dynamic buoyancy. This invention became the "Swiss Ro ll " floating wood and canvas roadway which got laden vehicles ashore in Normandy until the girder bridge floating road was installed about D-Day + 12. TheBombardon wave suppression floating breakwaters which cut wave heights by 90% came from DMWD, as did the Rocket Landing Craft that swamped beaches with explosives and the spec ial di ving suits used by Royal Navy frogmen when searching by hand the 20 million square feet of Cherbourg harbor. Thousands of men owed their Ii ves to the cladding of Plastic Protective Plating, SEA HISTORY 7 1, AUTUMN 1994
fitted round the bridges of their ships, protecting crews from splinters and cannon fire. Dozens more inventions could be mentioned. The most detailed hi story of the weapons , tri als and the human efforts involved, can be fo und in Gerald Pawle 's The Secret War. JOH N BATCHELOR Dorset, England
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The Cape Horn Road Thank you so very much for your "Cape Horn Road " in Sea History 70. A wonderful account and a great read setting forth so many aspects of that part of the world . Like you, I couldn ' t cross the bar for the last time without passing South of the Horn. Having never made it during my many years at sea with the Merchant Marine and the US Navy, I finally cruised past on the deck of MN Royal Viking Sun. Although I must report a west to east passage with moderate wind and sea, I still experienced, as you so well put it, a sense "of the ships and their people who had gone before ... of what they achieved there, against such odds." I found it to be a very moving experience. CAPT. GLEN R. CHEEK, USN (RET) Merritt Island, Florida
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Errata
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The caption for the photograph of Wa vertree on page 11 of SH 70, implies that it was taken in 1970. It wasn ' t. The ship arrived in South Street in 1970, but the photograph was taken in 1993. In Sea History 70, the photograph of trainees furlin g a sail aloft (p. 21) was taken on the mainyard of the frigate Rose, not the main topsail yard, and the caption for the Buttersworth painting of the clipper Eagle (p. 24) incorrectly says she is under lower topsail s; actually, it ' s double-reefed topsails. These enors, plus the mi sspelling of the Chincha Islands (p. 21) were caught by us too late to correct. Andrew J. Nesdall, of Waban, Massachusetts, spotted them and suggested we should have a nitpicker on staff-to which wecanonlysay"Amen. " Three further egregious errors spotted by readers: The US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point is in Nassau County, not Queens as we had it (in the errata section! ); New Brunswick's seaport city is Saint John , not St. Johns (p. 33); and the nautical mile is of course 6080 feet, not 6020 as we had it in "The Cape Horn Road ."
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