Talk:HMS Dasher (D37)

Comments

Is the Firth of Clyde counted as part of the Irish Sea? I very much doubt it. If not, the category should be changed to shipwreck in the Firth of Clyde. Douglasnicol 21:00, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Displacement appears incorrect...sister class ships (and article on Avenger class escort carriers) show displacement of 15,200 tons.

The Times: "Cemetery dig clues to ‘cover-up’ of wartime carrier loss"

• It has been a campaign lasting almost 70 years, with many setbacks, but now at last, relatives of the seamen who died in one of the worst British naval disasters of the Second World War believe that they can discover where the bodies of their loved ones are buried. Lawyers acting for North Ayrshire Council have finally agreed to legal moves that will allow the excavation of a patch of ground at Ardrossan cemetery, a decision that, campaigners believe, will solve a painful mystery. The decision by the council’s legal department will allow archaeologists to peel away the top soil from an area where it is thought that the bodies of more than 60 sailors were dumped in a pit — which is unmarked — apparently because the Royal Navy was desperate to keep the true story of their deaths a secret. The loss of 379 of the 555 crew is still the second-worst naval disaster in home waters. It is surpassed in scale only by the loss of the 833 men in the sinking of HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow in 1939. Thirteen of the bodies brought ashore were buried with military honours at Ardrossan cemetery and another seven were buried at Greenock. However, dozens more, washed up along the Ayrshire coast, were apparently taken away by the Navy and never seen again. Campaigners believe that up to 60 people were dumped in an unmarked grave at Ardrossan cemetery as the Navy did its best to keep the extent of the disaster secret. Even wartime papers relating to HMS Dasher were kept from them, retained by the UK Government, which reclassified them for a further 75 years when they became due for release in 2008. The campaigners secured an important breakthrough last Friday when North Ayrshire Council agreed to co-operate with plans to excavate an area in the cemetery where the bodies are believed to lie.

Hamish Macdonell, The Times Scotland, October 24 2011
--Mais oui! (talk) 04:29, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Bridge

It says in the text that the bridge is on the starboard side, but to me the photo appears to show the ship steaming towards the camera with the bridge on the port side. It could just be the the original photo was printed from the negative the wrong way around. Can anyone confirm this? --Derek Andrews (talk) 10:25, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Whilst I cannot confirm details about the original photo, you are definitely correct about the image being back to front. That shot IS taken "bow on" as you can clearly see the two anchors either side of the stem and bow waves either side of the ship. Not to mention that all RN Aircraft Carriers had and still have their Island on the Stbd side. Robodick (talk) 20:56, 6 December 2012 (UTC) Greg.

Yup. The image is clearly reversed. Dasher's RN sister ships HMS Avenger (D14) and HMS Biter (D97) had the island on the starboard side, as does USS Charger (CVE-30) which served with the US Navy. I think it would be legitimate for now to at least note the discrepancy in the image caption, so I'll do this. 81.154.7.26 (talk) 17:09, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Does it make more sense to create a reversed copy of the image and use that instead? Lovingboth (talk) 10:05, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Class

The memorial plaques at Ardrossan and Brodick refer to the Archer class, not Avenger class; comment? Nedrutland (talk) 09:15, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell it appears that the mistake was by the council as there is no Archer class in operation during WW2, my guess is that they didn't know the class name (which isn't surprising given that there was no official comment on the sinking for 70 and the war time cover up) but did know it was an American built escort carrier, the first of these to be given to the Royal Navy was HMS Archer which was a Long Island class but if the council thought that these were of the same class and used Royal Navy naming conventions to get the class name of Archer — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.41.118.227 (talk) 23:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)