{"id":88868,"date":"2024-08-07T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T05:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=88868"},"modified":"2024-08-06T08:05:06","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T12:05:06","slug":"qotd-the-crew-of-hms-sheffield-in-the-falklands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/08\/07\/qotd-the-crew-of-hms-sheffield-in-the-falklands\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The crew of <em>HMS Sheffield<\/em> in the Falklands"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>But it&#8217;s 40 years since the Falklands. And from that we get <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Timbrom2\/status\/1786905127225270629\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>May 4th 1982: As <strong>HMS Sheffield<\/strong> is abandoned and the fire spreads towards the Sea Dart ammunition. The remaining crew gather on the foredeck singing &#8220;Always look on the bright side of life&#8221;.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now I have heard that story and I&#8217;ve always thought it were more than a little bit mythmaking. And yet, and yet. Someone I know (our fathers knew each other, he took a sister out a few times, we worked together for 6 months later on) was actually there. Running the flight control stuff from the next ship over:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Singing led by the FC that we had loaned to them. One of our Sea Kings closed on the fo&#8217;c&#8217;sle to pick up wounded and saw them all swaying from side to side with their arms outstretched. I learned why when he got back.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ll take that as being something that really happened then. Not for publication, not something published for home consumption, but something that actually happened. Young men, on a burning ship, not knowing whether they&#8217;d be lifted off before the fire got to the missiles and the kaboom of their little bits all over the South Atlantic. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re a weird, weird culture here in Britain. We will, and do, take the piss out of absolutely anything, including our own impending death.<\/p>\n<p>Now, whether that&#8217;s quite what the economists mean by institutions that aid in economic development is another thing but it is indeed one of those institutions of that British culture.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also wholly glorious but then I&#8217;m a Brit so I would say that, wouldn&#8217;t I?<\/p>\n<p>Tim Worstall, <a href=\"https:\/\/timworstall.substack.com\/p\/the-british-are-a-very-very-weird\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The British Are A Very, Very, Weird People&#8221;, <em>It&#8217;s all obvious or trivial except &#8230;<\/em><\/a>, 2024-05-06.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But it&#8217;s 40 years since the Falklands. And from that we get this: May 4th 1982: As HMS Sheffield is abandoned and the fire spreads towards the Sea Dart ammunition. The remaining crew gather on the foredeck singing &#8220;Always look on the bright side of life&#8221;. Now I have heard that story and I&#8217;ve always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,5,41],"tags":[52,493,1453,200,30],"class_list":["post-88868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-military","category-quotations","tag-absurd","tag-falklandislands","tag-montypython","tag-music","tag-navy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-n7m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88868"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90907,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88868\/revisions\/90907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}