Originally Posted by
Chugalug2
Your V bomber example is inappropriate. Your Captain knew that order could come, and if he wasn't going to obey it the answer wasn't to disobey it but to offer to resign instead.
I beg to differ. It was not the V-force; it was a single crew; it was near the end of the cold war.
PN, I'm not suggesting that Pound's order would not be easily countermanded. Almost certainly if it had been the order would have been executed making it very difficult to reform the convoy and escorts.
A fait accompli rather than an implicit endorsement.
The point I am making is that someone should have tipped off Pound's superiors that he was ignoring the advice of others and in doing so needlessly leaving PQ17 exposed to the very real menace of the U boats and the Luftwaffe.
[I]
his successful campaign against German U-boat activity and the winning of the Battle of the Atlantic
He was a hero.
What I do know is that as many as possible that had been overridden that day should have alerted someone higher up the CoC.
There were only two higher than Pound.
One was Churchill and the other was the great one, Politics and Propaganda.
As you know, Stalin and King were very displeased and the civilian morale was still fragile and to punish a hero would not have helped.
I do not share the characterisation of the UK Officer Corps then by you and racedo as by accident of birth. The wartime realities meant that ability not birth counted for more. Pound was FSL because of his record and proven ability not because of his birth, but he was human and subject to its frailty.
Piffle. That might have been true of the lower ranks in the Army but the RN was resolute in dividing RN from RNR from RNVR.
Pound joined the RN as a midshipman in 1891 Born the son of Alfred John Pound (an Eton-educated[1] barrister) and Elizabeth Pickman Pound (née Rogers) (an American from Boston),[2] Pound was descended from Dudley Leavitt Pickman,[3] an early Salem, Massachusetts merchant, on his mother's side.[4][5] He was educated at Fonthill School in East Grinstead, Sussex.[6]
No way was he not of the 19th Century officer class.
The same was true of
Tovey was born on 7 March 1885 at Borley Hill, Rochester, Kent, the youngest child (of eleven) of Lt Col Hamilton Tovey, RE, and Maria Elizabeth Goodhue.[2] He was educated at Durnford School, Langton Matravers
2SL was a cadet in 1899.