Oral History Gallery

Conditions 4 - Taken from feeding to fighting 1960s

Name: William Alexander

Service: 1952 - 1991

Rank: Captain

Branch: Weapons Engineering

William Alexander served in the Royal Navy from 1952-1991, specialising as a Weapons Engineer Officer. His career spanned a time when there were significant developments in naval weapons. He saw the mechanical and labour-intensive gunnery procedures give way to new computerised technology.

From the 1960s he became involved with the development and trials of various guided missile systems such as Sea Dart and its 909 radar, and later the Seawolf system.

Here Bill describes how shells were moved to the gun turretts on HMS Lion in the 1960s, and whos job this was.

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Extract Text (Duration0.29)

So down in the magazine you traditionally used people like cooks and stewards who would be taken from feeding to fighting, and sent down to the bowls of the ship. And their job down there was just to move the cartridge cases from their racks and on to the, in Lion's case, the automatic machinery that was sending these shells up through five decks into the turret.