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United States/Stamps : Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

 

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PDougherty999
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11 Feb 2012
12:05:56pm
Having just completed filling in my 2011 pages, I figured I’d share my thoughts on last year. I know some of you don’t like the new stuff that comes out, but I’m a fan as for me, it is an inexpensive way to add to the collection and my kids seem to like seeing the new stuff as it comes out as well. Also, my views are a little skewed towards the things my kids liked as well. So here goes…

Here are a couple of my favorites as it was very hard to pick just one or one set…

Mercury Project and MESSENGER Mission (Scott #4527-28) were cool looking space type stamps.

Owney the Postal Dog (Scott #4527) was a fun look back at an interesting aspect of postal history.

U.S. Merchant Marine (Scott # 4548-51) was a neat update from Scott # 939 from 1946.

Pixar Films: Send a Hello (Scott #4553-57) is of course a big favorite of my kids, having seen every Pixar movie ever made. And from what I see, they will be doing a second set of these in 2012.

My top choice though would have to be…

The Civil War (Fort Sumter, First Bull Run) (Scott #4522-23), more particularly, the full sheet of stamps with all of that historical data on it. I think that this series is a really nice update to a series that the post office did back in 1961-1965 with Scott #’s 1178-82.

And now, on to my least favorite…

Hanukkah (Scott #4583) was rather colorful, but over all, just seemed plain and didn’t convey the Hanukkah spirit to me.

And lastly, I’d like to present my pet peeve stamp from 2011…

Wedding Cake (64c) (Scott #4521) was a re-issue of Scott # 4398 in n2009. They released a new 44c Wedding series stamp in 2011, so I wonder why they didn’t just design a new one for this denomination as well. And then to “take the cake” (pun intended), they just re-re-released it yet again in a 65c denomination for 2012. Come on post office, be a little more creative there.

And I’d like to give an honorable mention Pet Peeve as well…

Go Green (Scott #4524a-p) was a nice idea that could have been executed much better. Now I have talked about how I buy a lot of my new stuff right from USPS.com. Well, anytime you do buy, the stuff is shipped in nice little packaging to keep the stamps safe. All fine and dandy, except when you are shipping a stamp or stamps that are trying to convey a green message. Yes, everything about the packaging and the stamps were recyclable, HOWEVER, there was way to much recyclable material. From the cardboard to keep the packaging stiff, to the plastic wrapping that just gets thrown away. And if you look at the full set of stamps, they could have probably had less selvage around the panes to conserve on paper.

Anyway, there you have it. I would like to hear what others thought about the 2011 stamps as well.

---Pat
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michael78651
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11 Feb 2012
01:24:19pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

I have about the same opinion as you. I would add the EID stamp as unattractive. The design has been reused too much.

Owney, was my favorite stamp, since Owney was involved with both of my hobbies: stamps and model railroading.

The best issue would be the Civil War sheet. We need to remember our past, no matter how horrible some of it may have been. That way we can cherish what we have today more because of the sacrifice made by others.

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cdj1122
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..

14 Feb 2012
08:17:33pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

The four Merchant Marine stamps. Image Not Found

I like the Merchant Marine set especially the one with the WW II Liberty ship, (Lower left corner) for several reasons not the least of which is that in the late 1960s I made two or three trips to Viet Nam and Korea on two different WW II Victory ships which were quite similar. Plus we have a refurbished one, the SS American Victory in Tamps moored near the Florida Aquarium and I am a volunteer Docent aboard her.

During WW II the Maritime Administration built 2,700 + Liberty ships and 574 Victory ships as well as several hundred C-3s and C-4s, both slightly larger in tonnage and size.
I sailed on several of those types also. Image Not Found

Far too often the men of the US Merchant Marine are even more forgotten than the US Coast Guard.(Motto: "Semper Forgottus")
Most Americans do not realise that during WW II the casualty rate per hundred among Merchant Marine seamen was higher than even the US Marine Corps and in all recent wars these vital supply vessels are crewed by volunteers, who by law cannot shoot back.

It was only in the mid-1990s that the US Congress conferred "Veteran" status on the WW II seamen which has allowed the few who are still alive some of the benefits all other veterans get as a matter of right.

Beside the acknowledgement the four well executed stamps provided the view of that fat gray target steaming across what I envision as a dangerous hostile ocean at eight or nine knots, wind blowing and smoke trailing astern does capture some of the essense of the sea and its everlasting attraction, that makes men, and now women, leave the safety of home and challenge the elements again and again. At the lower left edge of the stampthereis a escort vessel which I, and several of my Coastie buddies think looks like one of the 327' Coast Guard anti-submarine patrol vessels that accompanied convoys across the North Atlantic during WW II and adds an extra detail to the scene for me.

The 1991 Liberty ship stamp. Image Not Found

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lpayette
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14 Feb 2012
08:32:03pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

I like the Merchant Marine Stamps.
My father worked on oil tankers and Whalers before WW2, When the war started he was automatically in the Royal Norwgian Navy and shipped to Enland and then Ice breakers in the North Atlantic.
Notably the Fridjof Nansen til it sank and then various Norwegian Naval ships til the end of the war.As he spent over 5 years in the North Atlantic and the North Sea he had enough of it and took a job building them instead after the war.

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PDougherty999
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15 Feb 2012
08:15:45am
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

Hey Charlie,
Thank you for that post! It was very enlightening and for me, gave even more meaning to the set of stamps.
---Pat

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michael78651
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15 Feb 2012
08:49:57am
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

As a kid, I used to see the mothballed fleet of Liberty ships in Haverstraw Bay on the Hudson River across from Peekskill, NY. Then, the ships were sold to Spain and they weren't there anymore.

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Bobstamp
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15 Feb 2012
05:29:30pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

My VANPEX 2010 exhibit was about the Battle of the Atlantic. It included this sheet about Liberty ships:

Image Not Found

Charlie, you mention that "in all recent wars" merchant seamen haven't been allowed to shoot back. If they were, perhaps the piracy in off the Horn of Africa, as well as in other waters, wouldn't be the problem it is. I understand that the Liberty ships were armed with defensive weapons operated by navy gunners. I assume that that policy ended with the end of the Second World War.

Bob

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PDougherty999
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15 Feb 2012
09:36:13pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

Thank Bob as well. wow, this is starting to get real informative.

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cdj1122
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..

16 Feb 2012
11:50:33am
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

" ... I understand that the Liberty ships were armed with defensive weapons operated by navy gunners. I assume that that policy ended with the end of the Second World War. ..."
Both Liberty Ships and Victory Ships (C-2s) as well as the C-3s and C-4 were armed with defensive weapons that, because the civilian crew were legally prohibited from carrying or using arms, were manned by "Armed Guard" crews that were to a large extent Naval Reservists.
The Liberty had a 4" combination anti-aircraft / anti submarine gun aft, and the Victorys a 5" hydraulicly controlled gun aft. Both carried a 3' AA gun forward on the bow and about eight 20mm drum fed AA guns spaced about the deck house. Some had slightly different configurations. The Armed Guard crews lived aft in a separate deck house. Usually there were about 25 or so in the Armed Guard crew. A junior officer, one or two gunner's mates, a signalman, and the rest usually seamen.
Food was prepared by the civilian crew in the ship's galley in the main deckhouse and carried aft to a small pantry where it could be kept warm and served as men rotated watches. The officer and gunner's mate had a small compartment there also and of course there was a multiple facility head and shower as well.
Now while the civilian crew was not supposed to fire the weapons, there came times when they did despite the legality question. In fact, one very interesting story tells of Engine Cadet Edwin O'Hara who after being injured below decks made his way aft through the shaft alley and up the escape ladder arriving on the aft deck near the 4" gun.
O'Hara was a cadet at the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY and like all cadets spent a year assigned to various Merchant Marine ships even during the wars. O'Hara was on the SS Stephan Hopkins in September 1942 when his ship came across two German vessels, the Tanenfels, a disguised surface raider, and the Steir, a supply ship sailing off the coast of South America. The Hopkins was quickly disabled by gunfire from the Tannenfelsand the Armed Guard gun crew members aft were killed or injured. The ship was being abandonned as it was sinking.

Image Not Found

However, O'Hara saw that there were several rounds in the ready box near the 4" gun so he loaded the gun and waited for the Tannenfels to drift into range as it slowly circled its prey. He fired several rounds and the Tannenfels was damaged to the point of sinking. Edwin O'Hara then made it to the lifeboat but died from injuries before the surviving crew could make it to safety.
O'Hara and several crew members were later awarded medals for their bravery. During WW II almost 150 Kings Point cadets lost their lives in combat situations.

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DRYER
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The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.

16 Feb 2012
01:57:22pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

As a history buff, I thank you for the factual information, Charlie; and you, too, Bob.

For the Allies, there was never a more appropriately-named instrument of war than the "Liberty" ship. As a child, I used to listen with rapt attention to stories of the seas from a paternal uncle who was a merchant mariner before and during the Second World War. His vessel (Liberty? Possibly.) was sunk on the Murmansk Run and he was one of the few survivors. He died an alcoholic's death in the early 1950's and from my recollections of his maritime experiences (sailors had many nicknames for the suicidal Murmansk Run, including "death row") it was regrettable but understandable.

Postage stamps are like keys in that they open so many of memory's doors. Thank you both for the photographs.

John Derry

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cdj1122
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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..

17 Feb 2012
03:42:10pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

One of the several novels that I treasured "H.M.S. Ulysses" was printed in the mid-1950s and while a work of fiction, told in graphic detail the travails of a British "Dido Class" cruiser that escorted a convoy of merchant vessels on the Murmansk Run carrying war supplies around Norway and Finland to the northern part of the Soviet Union during WW II. The vessels had to deal with air attacks, the submarine menace and attacks by surface warships of the Kriegsmarine all made more complicated by the ever present Arctic weather and North Atlantic storms that often built up so much ice on the upper decks and rigging that the warship, already top heavy with added weaponry, was threatened with capsizing in the sub-zero sea. I think that almost all of the forty or so merchant ships in the convoy sinks from one hazard or another, as well as the escorting cruiser itself.
One of the hazards that these sailors faced was that once they escaped into lifeboats or jumped into the sea they had to be left behind as it was suicide for the other vessels to stop to effect a rescue and exposed to those temperature conditions life ended within a few minutes.
I bet the paperback edition is still available in used bookstores and reading it will frighten any wannabe sailors out of their overstuffed armchairs. If I remember correctly the story is based on the author's own experiences on a similar, less mythical ship.

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".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "
Bobstamp
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17 Feb 2012
07:04:29pm
re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

I read H.M.S. ULYSSES several years ago, and agree that it's a book you can't put down. From the other side, the German side, The Boat is an unforgettable account of war aboard a U-boat, and the film of the same name does honour to the book. The author, Lothar-Günther Buchheim, was a German propagandist who went on several U-boat sorties, but the book, written after the war, has nothing to with propaganda but with the reality of the tedium and terror of "undersea" warfare. Below is a sheet about Buchheim and The Boat from my Battle of Atlantic exhibit.

Image Not Found

On interesting thing I learned in researching my exhibit was that U-boats are not, technically, submarines. They are surface craft which can submerge if necessary to escape rough weather and, especially, anti-submarine vessels and aircraft. Most U-boat attacks took place on the surface, something the British were unaware of when they went to the trouble of developing ASDIC, the precursor of SONAR. ASDIC was designed to search for submerged U-boats, which meant that surfaced U-boats often carried out their attacks before they were even detected. If the British had been paying attention, they could have read about future U-boat tactics long before the war, in German books that were actually sold in British bookstores.

One of the best sources of out-of-print books, especially in these days of diminishing numbers of used book stores, is the Advanced Book Exchange, or ABE.com. If you can't find a book you're looking for on the ABE web site, which is is a clearing house for used-book sellers, it probably doesn't exist. The only downside, not that it matters for a book that you really, really want, is that shipping can be much more costly than the book itself.

Bob

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Author/Postings
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PDougherty999

11 Feb 2012
12:05:56pm

Having just completed filling in my 2011 pages, I figured I’d share my thoughts on last year. I know some of you don’t like the new stuff that comes out, but I’m a fan as for me, it is an inexpensive way to add to the collection and my kids seem to like seeing the new stuff as it comes out as well. Also, my views are a little skewed towards the things my kids liked as well. So here goes…

Here are a couple of my favorites as it was very hard to pick just one or one set…

Mercury Project and MESSENGER Mission (Scott #4527-28) were cool looking space type stamps.

Owney the Postal Dog (Scott #4527) was a fun look back at an interesting aspect of postal history.

U.S. Merchant Marine (Scott # 4548-51) was a neat update from Scott # 939 from 1946.

Pixar Films: Send a Hello (Scott #4553-57) is of course a big favorite of my kids, having seen every Pixar movie ever made. And from what I see, they will be doing a second set of these in 2012.

My top choice though would have to be…

The Civil War (Fort Sumter, First Bull Run) (Scott #4522-23), more particularly, the full sheet of stamps with all of that historical data on it. I think that this series is a really nice update to a series that the post office did back in 1961-1965 with Scott #’s 1178-82.

And now, on to my least favorite…

Hanukkah (Scott #4583) was rather colorful, but over all, just seemed plain and didn’t convey the Hanukkah spirit to me.

And lastly, I’d like to present my pet peeve stamp from 2011…

Wedding Cake (64c) (Scott #4521) was a re-issue of Scott # 4398 in n2009. They released a new 44c Wedding series stamp in 2011, so I wonder why they didn’t just design a new one for this denomination as well. And then to “take the cake” (pun intended), they just re-re-released it yet again in a 65c denomination for 2012. Come on post office, be a little more creative there.

And I’d like to give an honorable mention Pet Peeve as well…

Go Green (Scott #4524a-p) was a nice idea that could have been executed much better. Now I have talked about how I buy a lot of my new stuff right from USPS.com. Well, anytime you do buy, the stuff is shipped in nice little packaging to keep the stamps safe. All fine and dandy, except when you are shipping a stamp or stamps that are trying to convey a green message. Yes, everything about the packaging and the stamps were recyclable, HOWEVER, there was way to much recyclable material. From the cardboard to keep the packaging stiff, to the plastic wrapping that just gets thrown away. And if you look at the full set of stamps, they could have probably had less selvage around the panes to conserve on paper.

Anyway, there you have it. I would like to hear what others thought about the 2011 stamps as well.

---Pat

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michael78651

11 Feb 2012
01:24:19pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

I have about the same opinion as you. I would add the EID stamp as unattractive. The design has been reused too much.

Owney, was my favorite stamp, since Owney was involved with both of my hobbies: stamps and model railroading.

The best issue would be the Civil War sheet. We need to remember our past, no matter how horrible some of it may have been. That way we can cherish what we have today more because of the sacrifice made by others.

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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
14 Feb 2012
08:17:33pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

The four Merchant Marine stamps. Image Not Found

I like the Merchant Marine set especially the one with the WW II Liberty ship, (Lower left corner) for several reasons not the least of which is that in the late 1960s I made two or three trips to Viet Nam and Korea on two different WW II Victory ships which were quite similar. Plus we have a refurbished one, the SS American Victory in Tamps moored near the Florida Aquarium and I am a volunteer Docent aboard her.

During WW II the Maritime Administration built 2,700 + Liberty ships and 574 Victory ships as well as several hundred C-3s and C-4s, both slightly larger in tonnage and size.
I sailed on several of those types also. Image Not Found

Far too often the men of the US Merchant Marine are even more forgotten than the US Coast Guard.(Motto: "Semper Forgottus")
Most Americans do not realise that during WW II the casualty rate per hundred among Merchant Marine seamen was higher than even the US Marine Corps and in all recent wars these vital supply vessels are crewed by volunteers, who by law cannot shoot back.

It was only in the mid-1990s that the US Congress conferred "Veteran" status on the WW II seamen which has allowed the few who are still alive some of the benefits all other veterans get as a matter of right.

Beside the acknowledgement the four well executed stamps provided the view of that fat gray target steaming across what I envision as a dangerous hostile ocean at eight or nine knots, wind blowing and smoke trailing astern does capture some of the essense of the sea and its everlasting attraction, that makes men, and now women, leave the safety of home and challenge the elements again and again. At the lower left edge of the stampthereis a escort vessel which I, and several of my Coastie buddies think looks like one of the 327' Coast Guard anti-submarine patrol vessels that accompanied convoys across the North Atlantic during WW II and adds an extra detail to the scene for me.

The 1991 Liberty ship stamp. Image Not Found

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lpayette

14 Feb 2012
08:32:03pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

I like the Merchant Marine Stamps.
My father worked on oil tankers and Whalers before WW2, When the war started he was automatically in the Royal Norwgian Navy and shipped to Enland and then Ice breakers in the North Atlantic.
Notably the Fridjof Nansen til it sank and then various Norwegian Naval ships til the end of the war.As he spent over 5 years in the North Atlantic and the North Sea he had enough of it and took a job building them instead after the war.

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PDougherty999

15 Feb 2012
08:15:45am

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

Hey Charlie,
Thank you for that post! It was very enlightening and for me, gave even more meaning to the set of stamps.
---Pat

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michael78651

15 Feb 2012
08:49:57am

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

As a kid, I used to see the mothballed fleet of Liberty ships in Haverstraw Bay on the Hudson River across from Peekskill, NY. Then, the ships were sold to Spain and they weren't there anymore.

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Bobstamp

15 Feb 2012
05:29:30pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

My VANPEX 2010 exhibit was about the Battle of the Atlantic. It included this sheet about Liberty ships:

Image Not Found

Charlie, you mention that "in all recent wars" merchant seamen haven't been allowed to shoot back. If they were, perhaps the piracy in off the Horn of Africa, as well as in other waters, wouldn't be the problem it is. I understand that the Liberty ships were armed with defensive weapons operated by navy gunners. I assume that that policy ended with the end of the Second World War.

Bob

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PDougherty999

15 Feb 2012
09:36:13pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

Thank Bob as well. wow, this is starting to get real informative.

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Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
16 Feb 2012
11:50:33am

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

" ... I understand that the Liberty ships were armed with defensive weapons operated by navy gunners. I assume that that policy ended with the end of the Second World War. ..."
Both Liberty Ships and Victory Ships (C-2s) as well as the C-3s and C-4 were armed with defensive weapons that, because the civilian crew were legally prohibited from carrying or using arms, were manned by "Armed Guard" crews that were to a large extent Naval Reservists.
The Liberty had a 4" combination anti-aircraft / anti submarine gun aft, and the Victorys a 5" hydraulicly controlled gun aft. Both carried a 3' AA gun forward on the bow and about eight 20mm drum fed AA guns spaced about the deck house. Some had slightly different configurations. The Armed Guard crews lived aft in a separate deck house. Usually there were about 25 or so in the Armed Guard crew. A junior officer, one or two gunner's mates, a signalman, and the rest usually seamen.
Food was prepared by the civilian crew in the ship's galley in the main deckhouse and carried aft to a small pantry where it could be kept warm and served as men rotated watches. The officer and gunner's mate had a small compartment there also and of course there was a multiple facility head and shower as well.
Now while the civilian crew was not supposed to fire the weapons, there came times when they did despite the legality question. In fact, one very interesting story tells of Engine Cadet Edwin O'Hara who after being injured below decks made his way aft through the shaft alley and up the escape ladder arriving on the aft deck near the 4" gun.
O'Hara was a cadet at the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY and like all cadets spent a year assigned to various Merchant Marine ships even during the wars. O'Hara was on the SS Stephan Hopkins in September 1942 when his ship came across two German vessels, the Tanenfels, a disguised surface raider, and the Steir, a supply ship sailing off the coast of South America. The Hopkins was quickly disabled by gunfire from the Tannenfelsand the Armed Guard gun crew members aft were killed or injured. The ship was being abandonned as it was sinking.

Image Not Found

However, O'Hara saw that there were several rounds in the ready box near the 4" gun so he loaded the gun and waited for the Tannenfels to drift into range as it slowly circled its prey. He fired several rounds and the Tannenfels was damaged to the point of sinking. Edwin O'Hara then made it to the lifeboat but died from injuries before the surviving crew could make it to safety.
O'Hara and several crew members were later awarded medals for their bravery. During WW II almost 150 Kings Point cadets lost their lives in combat situations.

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".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "

The past is a foreign country, they do things different there.
16 Feb 2012
01:57:22pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

As a history buff, I thank you for the factual information, Charlie; and you, too, Bob.

For the Allies, there was never a more appropriately-named instrument of war than the "Liberty" ship. As a child, I used to listen with rapt attention to stories of the seas from a paternal uncle who was a merchant mariner before and during the Second World War. His vessel (Liberty? Possibly.) was sunk on the Murmansk Run and he was one of the few survivors. He died an alcoholic's death in the early 1950's and from my recollections of his maritime experiences (sailors had many nicknames for the suicidal Murmansk Run, including "death row") it was regrettable but understandable.

Postage stamps are like keys in that they open so many of memory's doors. Thank you both for the photographs.

John Derry

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"Much happiness is overlooked because it doesn't cost anything. "

parklanemews@gmail.c ...

Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
17 Feb 2012
03:42:10pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

One of the several novels that I treasured "H.M.S. Ulysses" was printed in the mid-1950s and while a work of fiction, told in graphic detail the travails of a British "Dido Class" cruiser that escorted a convoy of merchant vessels on the Murmansk Run carrying war supplies around Norway and Finland to the northern part of the Soviet Union during WW II. The vessels had to deal with air attacks, the submarine menace and attacks by surface warships of the Kriegsmarine all made more complicated by the ever present Arctic weather and North Atlantic storms that often built up so much ice on the upper decks and rigging that the warship, already top heavy with added weaponry, was threatened with capsizing in the sub-zero sea. I think that almost all of the forty or so merchant ships in the convoy sinks from one hazard or another, as well as the escorting cruiser itself.
One of the hazards that these sailors faced was that once they escaped into lifeboats or jumped into the sea they had to be left behind as it was suicide for the other vessels to stop to effect a rescue and exposed to those temperature conditions life ended within a few minutes.
I bet the paperback edition is still available in used bookstores and reading it will frighten any wannabe sailors out of their overstuffed armchairs. If I remember correctly the story is based on the author's own experiences on a similar, less mythical ship.

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".... You may think you understood what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you think you heard is not what I thought I meant. .... "
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Bobstamp

17 Feb 2012
07:04:29pm

re: Favorite and Least Favorite Stamps of 2011

I read H.M.S. ULYSSES several years ago, and agree that it's a book you can't put down. From the other side, the German side, The Boat is an unforgettable account of war aboard a U-boat, and the film of the same name does honour to the book. The author, Lothar-Günther Buchheim, was a German propagandist who went on several U-boat sorties, but the book, written after the war, has nothing to with propaganda but with the reality of the tedium and terror of "undersea" warfare. Below is a sheet about Buchheim and The Boat from my Battle of Atlantic exhibit.

Image Not Found

On interesting thing I learned in researching my exhibit was that U-boats are not, technically, submarines. They are surface craft which can submerge if necessary to escape rough weather and, especially, anti-submarine vessels and aircraft. Most U-boat attacks took place on the surface, something the British were unaware of when they went to the trouble of developing ASDIC, the precursor of SONAR. ASDIC was designed to search for submerged U-boats, which meant that surfaced U-boats often carried out their attacks before they were even detected. If the British had been paying attention, they could have read about future U-boat tactics long before the war, in German books that were actually sold in British bookstores.

One of the best sources of out-of-print books, especially in these days of diminishing numbers of used book stores, is the Advanced Book Exchange, or ABE.com. If you can't find a book you're looking for on the ABE web site, which is is a clearing house for used-book sellers, it probably doesn't exist. The only downside, not that it matters for a book that you really, really want, is that shipping can be much more costly than the book itself.

Bob

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