The Bentley Blog

Another question I have been asked a few times is why Rosyth?  So here is the answer…..

In my dim and distant past, in my youth, I was an Army Cadet.  Enjoyed most of it.  Was the only cadet in the school to achieve an Army instructors certificate in signals (hauled up in front of the whole school on that one!) and was also classified as a marksman in both small bore and full bore rifle shooting. Spent time away from home on all sorts of escapades (as well as being arrested by the Military Police for drinking Coke in a local pub - someone had reported us for drinking beer!).  

Then an opportunity arose… would you like to join the Royal Navy on one of their warfare exercises for a week.  Why not!  I was the only Army Cadet amongst a whole ship full of sailors…. That was fun in itself as you can imagine.  I joined one of the Royal Navy’s Leander Class anti-submarine frigates at Rosyth in Scotland.  So there you have it.

We went all round the British Isles and eventually docked in Devon.  We stopped at the Isle of Skye for some fun too.  For example, a yacht race where a navy cadet I had befriended and I beat the navy teams.  One memorable day was during some of the war games.  Apart from firing Bofors guns at a target towed by one of the other frigates (I missed! But then so did most others), we were “attacked” by a couple of Phantom jet fighters (I think they were FG.1s from the Naval Air Squadron).  The most amazing thing was you never heard them coming.  The sound was many seconds behind them buzzing the ship.  And it was visceral!  You felt it as much as hearing it!  We saw them coming the second time around…  approaching in complete silence until several seconds after they flew by. 

So that is it.  This has all stuck in my memory for years.  I guess if I was going to pick a location it was going to be the Rosyth Royal Naval Dockyard.