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I remember a few years back a documentry about the Ohio a U.S. tanker ship that came over and the crew were replaced by a British crew, it was about getting neat av-gasl down to the Med to in order to fuel the Spitfires so they in turn could ensure our flow of crude oil, anyway Churchill claimed that this was the turning point of the war and this is a first hand account of what happened

I had a lecturer at college many years ago who reckoned he was aboard one of the navy ships who went alongside the Ohio. He said there was a hole in her you could have driven a double decker bus through. Brave men the lot of them.

Goodness me, that was a rivetting - and terrifying - read.

Thank you very much.

I seem to remember in the documentry one of the surviving crew of the Ohio saying that by the time they had reached Malta you could just lean over the side of the ship and put your arm in the water where she had sank so low, had this one ship not made it WW2 may have had a different ending.

Churchill said at one point "this may not be the beginning of the end but it is quite possibly the end of the beginning", so he saw what had happened that day as the turning point, like we were well on our way and making real progress. I'm not sure what he was refering to when he said it.

There were several "WWIIs". On the Eastern Front, it might have been Stalingrad or Kursk. In the west, probably El Alamein. In the Pacific, the Battle of Midway. Bit of a false concept really.

Stalingrad, after this the Germans lost their bottle, they couldn't believe they could actually be defeated.

There was a film on TV a few weeks ago that I watched called The Malta Story.

Made in 1953 it was about the battering Malta took during WW2. The island was constantly bombed, and was short of food, and essential supplies like gas for the planes (and planes themselves it must be said).

Not a very good film I must say, and some of the special effects were laughable (model planes with string showing, supposed to be German bombers, and the sound effect of real planes).

This film covered the convoy trying to get to Malta and how the Germans bombed the ships on the way.

I am sure some of the film included genuine news footage of the time (there was lots of "old" news footage intercut with the modern film and some of the joins were terrible).

Malta was very strategic of course, just below Italy, and just above North Africa where Rommel was fighting it out with Monty.

I seem to recall in the documentry that one of the German dive bombers that was shot down actually crashed onto the deck of one of the ships it could have been the Ohio, and you saw archive footage of it with the pilot still in the cockpit, dead of course.

I saw this at home doing my nails and your spot on- crap film,terrific story....I think we were very lucky to have had churchill then............ x