ARmy Rumour SErvice

**seaweed** · 09-06-2011, 19:36

The offshore surveying certainly complemented the inshore COPP work. The LCs used were I think specially fitted for the surveying, running taut wire measuring gear etc. Submarines, Midget submarines (X-craft, for which the associated COPPists had to qualify as X-Craft crew as there was no room for extra hands), MLs, MGBs and Landing Craft were all used at various times (depending on risk of detection, minefields, state of defence ashore, process of recovery etc etc) for launching COPPists either as swimmers or in canoes developed from the pre-war civilian Folbot. This all interacts with the fact that we were landing all sorts of other people on other sorts of sneaky expedition. It's an immensely complicated web once one starts to get into it.

The RN Submarine Museum at Gosport provides a visit to HMS Alliance which includes an explanation of how canoes were got up on deck and floated off from full size submarines, and a walk through a sectioned X-craft.

Thanks for the map, Jim, that's ace.

**seaweed** · 21-07-2011, 08:44

Honours for submariners who led secret D-Day invasion | Mail Online

The beacon had to be established to the East of a reef that lies just off Sword Beach so that Landing Craft could pass safely if they left Jim to starboard. He came on stage in the Hayling Island theatre 15th & 16th and took questions - bright as a button and had been racing his son in law on the hotel exercise bikes. Why the Admiralty thought someone of 6' 4" was just the chap to spend days cooped up in an X-craft is another matter! If they were running out of oxygen they could not surface in daylight as that would have given everything away. So they KNEW that if that happened, they would just have to stay on the bottom and die. But Jim doesn't mention that.

There is an X-craft on show at the RN Submarine Museum in Gosport.

**seaweed** · 27-07-2011, 11:32

Word is that the filming of Jim Booth by Meridian TV MAY be on the 1800 local news slot on ITV in the South on Thursday 28th.

**seaweed** · 23-08-2011, 14:12

Meridian Regional News | Merdian Tonight - ITV Local

Jim Booth who operated a beacon for landing craft on D-Day is interviewed and there is other material relating to X-Craft and the D-Day landings.

**Poppy** · 23-08-2011, 19:44

I'd never heard of COPPS until this evening when I received the Combined Services Museum Maldon Newsletter - they have some COPPS artefacts along with SOE ones and SAS Iranian Embassy Siege stuff. Sorry it's Adobe so I can't copy link but this is their website MSM Magazines Ltd

**ordinaryforces** · 23-08-2011, 20:49

I was his driver in NI 1970/1971 and whilst arriving in b/kinlar one evening we stopped and asked a soldier* for directions to a building, the soldier stood with one hand in pocket and used the word boss....big fucking mistake, I never seen such a high ranking officer alight from a car as quick,..such a bolliking I have seen before or since ,I swear if he had a pistol on him he would have shot him on the spot, I was just a cpl dvr what could I do? I just sat there shitting myself on behalf of the squaddie.
the Gen must be pushing 90 now surprised to hear he is still alive.

* I don't think that being speshul cut to much ice with the old boy?

**baboon6** · 24-08-2011, 15:19

[QUOTE=ordinaryforces;3916337
the Gen must be pushing 90 now surprised to hear he is still alive.

* I don't think that being speshul cut to much ice with the old boy?[/QUOTE]

91 in fact!

Logan Scott-Bowden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**seaweed** · 27-09-2012, 16:39

The COPP memorail on the front at Hayling Island was dedicated this a.m.

This is the memorial - it awaits grassing, which must be seeded, turfing is not allowed.

The crowd who turned up to watch was estimated at c.400 or so:

The dedication was led by Countess Mountbatten:

and CDS:

COPPist Jim Booth, 92, SKIPPED up to the podium and spun a dit:

Wreaths:

and finally this is an example of the sort of truck that wa sused for ferrying from HI Sailing Club to the railway etc - there were two called Tweedledum and Tweedledee, with Wren drivers: