Invisible Submarine!
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- Medium: Video
- Owner: Veterans Affairs Canada
- Duration: 1:30
- Copyright / Permission to Reproduce
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Details
Invisible Submarine!
Mr. Jobin explains how a submarine can become invisible to radar.
Guy Jobin
Mr. Jobin’s father was a chemist for a mill in Chandler, in the Gaspé. During the Depression, his father left to go work in Masson, in the Outaouais Region, and the family joined him 18 months later. They settled in Buckingham and when war was declared young Guy Jobin, a lover of ships, wanted to enlist in the Navy. He did his basic training in Québec and then went to Halifax to learn to fire guns before being sent to British Columbia. His group of Canadians left on the British aircraft carrier HMS Nabob. The ship went down the Pacific coast, crossed the Panama Canal and stopped in Virginia before arriving in England, at Liverpool. There they found the remains of a city damaged by 9 days German bombings. The Nabob was active in the British Isles throughout the war. During a mission to Scapa Flow in northern Scotland, the boat was hit by a torpedo. Upon his return to Canada, Mr. Jobin was hospitalized for awhile.
Transcription
Invisible Submarine!
We had guys on board that spotted U-boats, y’know, and at the time it was rudimentary; it was called pings. There were some pretty big things that happened. Once I was in their room, a big room, and they saw ping, ping, ping . . . on the screens. Today, it’s specialized and it’s nothing like that; they knew there was something around. And if it the submarine didn’t start its engines, well, you didn’t see any pings. That’s how we got ourselves hit. You knew they were there but you didn’t know where. The Germans knew it; they didn’t start their engines. They’d go here one day, there another. They came up, launched a torpedo, went back down. The submarine that torpedoed us, the three-five-four, the airplanes got it four months later in Iceland somewhere. It had come up and had to . . . apparently it had to come up, it was there awhile . . . and the airplanes got it. And what they did with it, if you want to see it, the English navy recovered it – it must not’ve been deep – and put it on display in England with their holes in it, and the whipping they gave it; they put it on a pedestal in a city. I’d like to go there but I don’t have any money. Just go see it . . . That’s the one that torpedoed us. He probably torpedoed others, too.
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