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Mike Chapman

@mikethechapman.bsky.social
233 followers 452 following 42 posts

Former barrister, now occasional law tutor. Devote my spare time to researching obscure aspects of naval and military history, which hopefully may one day see the light of day!

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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Very interesting. When I visited the SS Jeremiah O’Brien in San Francisco and the volunteers heard I was from London they were eager to point out that the Thames still has its own Liberty ship. Albeit not as seaworthy as their one!
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Peter Ricketts @lordrickettsp.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
On the night of 5/6 November 1942, a vast Allied convoy passed undetected through the Strait of Gibraltar, carrying the assault forces for the Torch landings in N Africa. It was a major feat of military planning, but its success hinged on the diplomatic skills of our man in Madrid. 1/7
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
The Patriot is a Vietnam War movie. A plucky group of farmers fight a brutal bunch of regular soldiers from a land far far away. Villages get burned. When you realise this it is indeed a great if much misunderstood film.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Financial Ombudsman Service currently scores 1.3 out of 5 on Trustpilot so unfortunately not a great back up for the disgraceful behaviour of insurance companies
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Peter Ricketts @lordrickettsp.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Two weeks to publication of Peace Makers geni.us/PeaceMakers. This🧵is on the major achievement of the Foreign Office in finding the bandwidth in the middle of WWII to think strategically to shape the future peace. Credit to the Permanent Under Secretary Sir Alec Cadogan 1/6
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
I seem to remember he describes the British position on Spion Kop as a false summit. It wasn’t. They were on the top of the hill but unfortunately when morning arrived there were other higher hills nearby occupied by the Boer artillery.
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Peter Ricketts @lordrickettsp.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Three weeks to publication of geni.us/PeaceMakers. This week’s🧵is on the women of the Foreign Office in WWII. They were barred from joining the ‘administrative grade’: the senior staff/policymakers. Many hundreds joined the FO in support functions like typing. BUT 1/6
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Dr Emma Salisbury @salisbot.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
If you're wondering how the blockade is landing, this has been making its way around the naval nerds today
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Joshi Herrmann @joshih.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
I have three court hearings to attend in three months. Two subjects of our reporting are suing us. Journalism is threatened by abusive legal threats aimed at silencing reporting. The Government needs to #StopSLAPPs. Please share and write to your MP. manchestermill.co.uk/three-courts...
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Alan Owlport 🦉 🎃 @alanallport.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Russell Crowe’s Göring in Netflix’s #Nuremberg is genuinely impressive: vain, intelligent, manipulative, unrepentant. And the film gets the courtroom dynamic right: Jackson fumbling the cross-examination before Maxwell Fyfe stepped in to rescue the prosecution. So far, so good. 🧵
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
“Like being savaged by a dead sheep.”
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
The alt text is spot on
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
A great general indeed, but definitely not living!
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Same. He has a good claim to be our greatest living general, but he’s always seemed modest about his role in the Falklands campaign
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Barry Foster was nailing Wingate right about the time Rossiter was in Reggie Perrin
Barry Foster as Orde Wingate in a still from the 1976 TV series
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Whenever people wax lyrical about the early Blair years I think of Stephen Byers.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
A joy of buying second hand books is finding an old bookmark. My quick research suggests Dazzle was staged in 1955 and as Retrospect was published in 1952 I can’t help wondering if the first owner gave up at p94? Layers of biblio-archaeology!
A photo of a bright yellow and red handout for the show Dazzle, resting on a copy of a hardback book Retrospect by Viscount SimonA copy of a bright red and yellow handout for the show Dazzle, resting on an open page 94 of the book Retrospect by Viscount Simon. The text of the page concerns great events leading to the Armageddon of 1914.
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Ben Phillips @benphillips76.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Plans to invade Greenland have just been cancelled after this
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Always exciting to find an SIS CX report out in the wild, especially when (a) I wasn’t looking for it and (b) for once we know that it’s flat out incorrect. (Unsurprisingly the source supports the false Japanese justification for the Mukden Incident).
An SIS CX report dated 19.9.1931 on the subject of the Sino-Japanese Collision at Mukden, reporting from “a reliable Japanese source”
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Dan Snow @thehistoryguy.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Still the greatest list ever complied.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
An Ungentlemanly Act is an outstanding war film, definitely worthy of a WMT episode. The fighting scenes are well done, it’s tense, and Bob Peck is the sort of officer I’d throw myself onto a grenade for. (The DJ is played by Mike Grady, possibly better to known to some of us from Citizen Smith!)
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 31/01/2026
Finished this last night. An outstanding read. Fascinating, stimulating but never imho controversialist. And the final page - I wasn’t expecting that. What a way to finish a Second World War book.
Front cover of the book Advance Britannia by Alan Allport. The cover depicts British soldiers wading ashore.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
It must be the day after Pill-Box-ing Day! (Also a year and a day after the one above. Last year was South Devon, this year North Cornwall. Not quite the West Country equivalent of the Atlantic Wall)
A photograph of a fortification over a beach at Bude, Cornwall, sitting above some interesting rock formations with farmland and the sky behind.
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Rhodri Marsden @rhodri.biz · 24/12/2025
Just bumping the link for donations, if you can spare any moolah #DuvetKnowItsChristmas www.gofundme.com/f/duvet-know...
gofundme.com
Donate to Duvet Know It's Christmas, 2025, organized by Rhodri Marsden
Unbelievably, it's the 15th year of this thing. What is it? Improbably, the nig… Rhodri Marsden needs your support for Duvet Know It's Christmas, 2025
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
Bernard Fergusson’s The Watery Maze was the “semi-official” history of Combined Ops so he had access to both official papers and veterans. A lively read too. The Green Beret by Hilary St George Sanders is a great early (1949) take on the Commandos.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
As well as Pegasus Bridge I’d recommend the Merville Battery museum nearby. They have a D-Day veteran C-47 which you can go inside. The story of the attack on the battery is pretty epic too.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
She would definitely have @georgemonbiot.bsky.social on side if she did
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
They look very similar to me
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
But according to one pilot it was “very manoeuvrable. Very quick immediate aileron control.” He was talking about evading an Fw190 at low level! (Thomas Murray from his IWM oral history).
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Fascinating. Having spent some time looking at both the Shropshire Yeomanry and QOOH during this period I imagine this was quite a shift, what with the TF not being intended for overseas duties. (Unfortunately I have no suggestions for where your piece might go, sorry!)
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Well I’m intrigued. Who were the part-time soldiers? I’d have thought Territorials and Yeomanry were still in Britain. Was it local expats?
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The Mary Rose Museum @maryrosemuseum.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
On the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, we thought we'd answer a question that's often asked, "If they raised the Mary Rose, why not raise the Titanic?" Allow our scaled diagram to explain...
A light blue diagram depicting the sea, with the water's surface at the top, and just below it is an outline of the Mary Rose, with the depth (12m, 40ft or 6.7 fathoms). There is a line showing the seabed, which takes a rapid dive into the vertical...
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
I recently watched all 3 Dunkirk films - Dunkirk (2017), Dunkirk (John Mills in 1958) and Atonement - and unfortunately I think Nolan’s is the worst of the lot (though a decent watch tbf)
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Cotton and the Electra feature in Keith Jeffery’s authorised history of SIS (MI6)
APPROACHING WAR
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SIS played an important part in the development of clandestine air photography. Towards the end of 1938 Winterbotham’s Section II set up an Air Photographic Unit. This was an Anglo-French joint SIS-Deuxième Bureau venture with business cover as the Aeronautical Research and Sales Corporation. An American Lockheed plane was purchased by the French, and SIS engaged an Australian pilot, Sidney Cotton. Cotton and his team developed cutting-edge photographic techniques for air reconnaissance which provided better results than ever before. By the end of 1938 clandestine photographs were being taken of Italian bases and air-fields. The Air Ministry paid for a second Lockheed and assistance was given by the RAF Experimental Establishment at Farnborough. Cotton proceeded round Europe, flying at very high altitudes over Germany and Italy, photographing large numbers of airfields and other military intelligence targets. Indeed, so successful was he that by mid-1939 there was a bottleneck in the production of this material through a shortage of trained photographic interpreters. Shortly after the outbreak of war Cotton's organisation was taken over by the Air Ministry, but SIS could claim with some justification to have been the initiator of modern high-altitude, high-speed photo-reconnaissance.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
youtu.be/0artAOAZA8A?... She was raised in 1950 and towed to Trieste but eventually scrapped
youtu.be
Salvaging Of HMS Breconshire (1950)
YouTube video by British Pathé
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
She was one of the 4 fast Glen ships converted for Catherine, Churchill’s planned 1940 Baltic op. Her sisters Glenearn, Glengyle and Glenroy became the original LSI(L)s, survived the war and eventually returned to merchant service. Glenearn class some of the finest British merchant ships ever, imho!
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
I use a busy road blighted by roadworks. When TMCs put in traffic lights they are poorly timed (equal preference for quiet side roads) & don’t reflect traffic flows (busier in different directions at different times). On occasions they’ve been replaced by humans, who can and do respond in real time.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Here’s the window as preserved at the NMM
A photograph of the stained glass window formerly at the Baltic Exchange in London. It shows figures standing in porticoes.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Yes. All part of the IRA’s attempt to somehow damage the City as a financial district, which seemed as bizarre then as it does now. I was lucky enough to go into the Baltic Exchange in the 80s, a lovely building. Was so pleased to see they’d saved the window at least.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Ah thank you, my memory playing tricks again!
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Also destroyed the Baltic Exchange, where the Gherkin is now. Happily they recovered the stained glass window which you can see in the National Maritime Museum.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Non Player Character. In a video game it's a character controlled by the game (rather than a human player) and therefore of lesser and subsidiary importance
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Seconded for the HGM Plus there are several awesome flak towers
Photo of an old car in a museum. Old photographs behind it, showing that it was the car Franz Ferdinand was in when he was shot in 1914
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
I really enjoy your posts, thank you for sharing. I may not "like" every one but they're always interesting!
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
It must be Pill-Box-ing Day!
A stone pillbox above a beach in Devon, England, with a cliff behind it
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Smaller and slower too, so the fast Glens definitely had the advantage. Never heard about the Roselli loss, what an awful loss
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Ah, interesting. Very similar appearance, I guess fast cargo ships had a certain look.
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
HMS Breconshire?
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 25/09/2024
Something about Belgian machine guns I think 🤔
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Mike Chapman @mikethechapman.bsky.social · 15/09/2024
Pretty much any parent who lives in a grammar school area knows how massively it skews not just secondary education outcomes but also things like house prices. Given logically most kids won't get in it's not surprising their parents view grammars as a bad thing
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