History HubΒ permalink
Friday Quiz
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.Β
Posted by Katy R (U14748743) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Good morning,
Hope this post finds you all well.
Today's kick off question: can you name three ways in which the British tried to destroy incoming V1 flying bombs during WW2? -
Message 2
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Fighter planes tried to tilt them off course, ack-ack batteries tried to shoot them down, and the third method was using barrage balloons.
That's my guess, anyway. -
Message 3
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Yes, Churchill moved anti-aircraft batteries to the coast in an effort to concentrate fire on the incoming rockets. Perhaps the most successful method of reducing the V-1 & V-2 threat was to use double agents to send messages back to Germany saying the rockets were falling short or overshooting their targets. This led to adjustments which resulted in the missiles falling in open countryside rather than on heavily-populated cities. However as this involved targetting rather than destruction it doesn't quite fit the question.
Another method was the destruction of the missile site at Peenemunde by aerial bombing. The Germans resorted to firing from mobile sites - usually the back of a lorry - in occupied Holland during the winter of 1944-5 in a bid to disable the Allied port of Antwerp. -
Message 4
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Friday, 9th September 2011
The Gloster- Whittle Meteors of 616 Sqn RAF accounted for 14 V1s shot down (rather than tilted off course - an expedient adopted because the optimum range for shooting down a doodlebug was marginal in terms of the survival of the attacking fighter) by the end of the war.
Guess who had been doing some research on this subject recently?
IIRC the AA batteries assigned to this task had the first call on graze and proximity fuses during this phase of the war precisely to counter this threat. -
Message 5
Posted by Katy R (U14748743) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Glad I've had some responses !
the other thing I was going to venture was that they were shot down by Hurricanes.
This image might also be of interest if you haven't seen it already...
The background has been blurred out by censors.
They've got a V1 and a V2 in the Imperial War Museum in London. The V2 is unbelievable - looks like a modern day missile.
That’s all from me, hope you have a good weekend
Katy
-
Message 6
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Who became an outlaw and then a sherrif, and might at first sound like an assassin?
Sorry it's so easy! -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Allan D
I had to re-read your post when you referred to Peenemunde.. You had of course widened from Katy'y question which was about V1's. which could only "Channel Hop".. The V2 -of Von Braun and others- was the forerunner of the ICBM
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by Silver Jenny (U12795676) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Robin the Hood?.
-
Message 9
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Friday, 9th September 2011
No, Jenny, later than that.
-
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
Silverjenny
That may be the expected answer.. But is RH historical?
I ruled out my old outlaw who became a Lord Mayor of London- John Wilkes
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Friday, 9th September 2011
You're right, though, Cass! Interesting man, he certainly had an eventful life. Over to you.......
-
Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
raundsgirl
So he was a sherriff on the way up.. I once set a quiz question based upon the joke book of the Second Viscount Palmerston for which the answer was JH..
It was something of whom did Charles Townshend say on being told that he was going to be outlawed by the government that it was just as well because so far he had out-lawed them all... All those Wilkes and Liberty commotions.
OK. Another one based on the same source:
Which Prime Minister used to discuss with his manservant how the debate had gone in the premises where the MP's servants spent the day usually debating the same issues as their masters: and one day, when he asked his man how the debate had gone, was told that it had gone quite well, and that they probably would have won had the Scottish MP's had servants.?
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 9th September 2011
No stabs..
It is probably just because the MB seems to have gone dead...But I think it is implicit in the question that
a. These were early days of House of Commons power and parliamentary government
b. This was a PM who was no snob and got on pretty well with all sorts
c. The Scots were pretty new in town.. and from a still poor Calvinist country
Cass -
Message 14
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Allan D
I had to re-read your post when you referred to Peenemunde.. You had of course widened from Katy'y question which was about V1's. which could only "Channel Hop".. The V2 -of Von Braun and others- was the forerunner of the ICBM
°δ²Ή²υ²υΜύ You're right, Cass, apologies for not reading the question carefully. The V-1 was indeed a "flying bomb", as its popular name implied which simply fell to ground when it ran out of fuel - the sound of its noisy engine giving out followed by silence allowing a few vital seconds for those underneath to search for cover.
The V-2 on the other hand was the first guided missile - I think my targetting remarks referred to V-2s not V-1s as well - giving no sign of its approach and based initially at Peenemunde on the German North Sea Coast. I think I was recalling the 1960s film "Operation Crossbow" in which Churchill entrusted the task of ending the V-2 menace to his son-in-law, Duncan Sandys.
Katy was right about Hurricanes which would not only attempt to shoot the V-1s down but tip them to one side with their wing tips thus disturbing their gyroscopically-controlled navigation system causing them to fall to ground. -
Message 15
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Is the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole?
-
Message 16
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
I'm sure the fat old squire of Norfolk is the correct answer. Please can we have another question - let's get things *going* again. -
Message 17
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
I was going to suggest Pitt the Elder, the "Great Commoner" (although he later took a title) but Walpole sounds more likely.
At the risk of being accused of pushing my oar in, how about this:
Which PM described where as "a place where murder is the only amusement"? -
Message 18
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Vizzer and all
Apologies.. I have been out for the day.. Yes. Walpole was the answer.. I think that there was another one about Walpole enjoying the conversation at a baker's where people used to gather and talk.
Someone commented that Walpole probably went to the commons for his bread and to his baker's for his politics..
An early use, methinks, of the use of "bread" in the sense of making a living.
Thanks for getting on without me....
Cass -
Message 19
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Do you want to set the next question then, Cass, as noone appears to be interested in mine? (The answer is rather ironic given the PM's title and place of birth).
-
Message 20
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
I first thought that yours was a trick question Allan and that it was a prime minister of a foreign state referring to England but now I'm not so sure.
Was it Wellington referring to Ireland?
(Bit of a cliched guess I know.) -
Message 21
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Allan
No.. My wife wants to hi-jack the computer.. and I will not be able to check responses..
But another quip.. Someone was being posted to a governorship in the American Colonies and a friend recommended that he take a good clean shirt. "If I had a good clean shirt I would not be going to the colonies."
Cass -
Message 22
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Was it Wellington referring to Ireland?Β
No, but you're on the right lines (as Wellington had been born in Dublin). Another of the home nations receiving scant respect from one of its (erstwhile) native sons. -
Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Ramsay Macdonald and Scotland- his motherland having no fatherland
Cass -
Message 24
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Right country, wrong PM. Despite his humble origins he was quite proud of his homeland and I think even murder had gone out of fashion by his day.
-
Message 25
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
A titled PM who was at school with Byron (albeit briefly) as well as another PM..
-
Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Titled PM's with place connotations in their names..
Lord Liverpool too old surely to have been at school with L.B...
Lord Grey was surely a Geordie
Lord Melbourne.?.
Lord Pamerston was so English though the family took the title Pamerston from their estates in Ireland. ..
The Gladstone's were Scottish but I believe W.E. was English born as well as raised and may only have become Lord Kelvin after his stints as PM- though on reflection perhaps his last recall?
Cass -
Message 27
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Missing out the obvious one whose title links him to the country (although not the city) of his birth.
Lord Palmerston (whom I had forgotten was also at the same hilltop school as the answer, and unlike Byron and the other PM was almost an exact contemporary, being 9 months younger) had his country home at Broadlands in Hampshire, later owned by Lord Mountbatten where H.M.The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh (who isn't Scottish either) spent their honeymoon. He represented Tiverton in Devon as an M.P. (he was one of the unrepresentative Irish Peers so spent the whole of his political career in the Commons).
Mr G was born in Liverpool, the offspring of wealthy sugar importers. Grey came from Durham not Newcastle. -
Message 28
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
The Earl of Aberdeen?
-
Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Allan D
Apologies to Durhamites-- for some of us from down south all the NE is Geordieland .. A bit like all Brits being "Anglais" for the French
Yes. Broadlands features strongly in Brian Connell's "Portrait of a Whig Peer: Compiled from the Papers of the Second Viscount Palmerston" from which I took my quips... Yes "Harry" went to Harrow.. and then to a "crammer" in Edinburgh- run by Mr Stewart if I remember correctly.
As for Lord Aberdeen ....................
Cass -
Message 30
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Indeed, written as a 20yo in 1804 on coming back from an extensive tour of the Near East George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen (he had succeeded to the title on the death of his grandfather three years earlier whilst still a schoolnboy at Harrow) described Edinburgh, the city of his birth, as "of all places the most horrible" as well as going on to describe Scotland generally (although this was still less than 60 years after the Jacobite Uprising) thus:
"What a country, where murder is the only amusement."
I suppose it would be the equivalent of a modern-day tourist arriving back from some semi-tropical clime to a rain-sodden windswept Heathrow. although Aberdeen had been away for over a year which would have made the contrast even more marked! Nowadays, though, I think we might apply Aberdeen's description of murder as the only amusement to the Near East, whence he had come, rather than Scotland!
Like Anthony Eden, Aberdeen's failed premiership (in which he was succeeded by his Harrow classmate, Palmerston) overshadowed what had been hitherto a highly successful ministerial career, most notably as Foreign Secretary under Sir Robert Peel (his Harrow junior by 4 years along with Lord Byron).
Your go, Cass, if you can squeeze one in before the shutters fall. -
Message 31
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 10th September 2011
Allan D
I think Vizzer got their first.. Over to you Vizzer
Cass -
Message 32
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Sunday, 11th September 2011
Yes, sorry I overlooked your post, Viz. Unlike me, you not only concur with Polonius that brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes but put it into practice too. The stage is yours.
-
Message 33
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 11th September 2011
To wit - I'll try not to be so brief here and note that Byron wrote of his cousin Aberdeen:
'Let Aberdeen and Elgin still pursue
The Shade of fame through regions of virtu;
Waste useless thousands on their Phidean freaks;
Misshapen monuments and maim'd antiques;
And make their grant saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art'
Lord Byron was thus one of the first of a long line of Britons championing the cause of the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens. A noble cause which remains unrealised to this day.
As for the Friday Quiz - then maybe it should be put to bed for another week unless someone else would like to pose a question.
About this Board
The History message boards are now closed. They remain visible as a matter of record but the opportunity to add new comments or open new threads is no longer available. Thank you all for your valued contributions over many years.
or Β to take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
The message board is closed for posting.
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ iD
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ navigation
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ links
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Β© 2014 The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.