I have a picture of Mikey with the Hood walking out of the water. You can see the fish hanging just below the shafts. What a hoot.
By the way Marty, I was the captain of that fast moving German and I do recall mumbling while going up the hill something about my depth perception. I heard that the next year someone went back to the pond during a dry spell and found all these red fuzzy things. Turned out they were BB's on the bottom of what used to be the pond. You said it best, "Ah memories!!!"
OK Marty. So there may have been two such speed-bumps in the otherwise charmed life of my old Hood. Thank you for reminding me of them both. Haha. If my long-term memory serves me well, (but not as well as yours appears to be serving you). Haha (again). The battle were the Hood ran aground was the last battle on Saturday. She had been performing pretty well all day, but we picked up a couple more boats, and for some reason, my reverse was intermittent. So, as battle started, the old Hood, and Joe's Monarch (California class), went after each other. The Monarch was rammed twice (no damage) when I couldn't get my revese to engage, when we approached head-on. So On the third pass I turned the other way, and got into a corner that I couldn't turn out of. I tried, but eventually got hung up on a partially sunken tree branch, that caused the Hood to roll to one side, which left the cannons on one side shooting down into the water only a few inches from the boat, and the cannons on the other side shooting up into the trees. So I called 5 minutes (out-of-control). Joe brought the Monarch up alongside and started emptying his cannons into her. I mentioned to him that the Hood was not the only enemy ship on the water for him to shoot at. He in return mentioned that I could declare Hood sunk. But I couldn't bring myself to doing that, and Joe was able to unload all of his ammo into the old Hood, and she was able to take it without sinking. Which was something of a moral victory for me. But the Hood set a record for the most damage taken in combat, which now needed to be patched. That's my story. And I'm stickin to it. Mikey
That was pretty good memory work! I was buzy with Carl at the time and only got to see some of the action so I will accept your story as written. I had gotten stuck on a lily pad in the "slot" and Carl took out two panels of the Warspite's side but I did survive my 5 minutes (that time).
