December RIP

Sincere sympathies for your loss...Awful.

 

Without disrespecting g the thread.. 'along with hundreds of other no names'!!!

 

The Stranglers' drummer Jet Black dies aged 84

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ands-hits-Peaches-No-Heroes-dies-aged-84.html

 

Bloody hell first Dave now Jet. When you where a young kid watching them at Brid Spa you where inspired by the energy. RIP Jet don’t forget your sticks.

 

Best band ive seen live by far rip jet

 

RIP Jet Black.

The Stranglers at their finest.

 

Fantastic band,saw them many times from 1977-Recently and they were up there with the best.They were musically one of the tightest,most talented outfits to come out of the punk rock movement and the drum and bass(the engine room)were a massive part of the 'buzz' they gave off.

I was first and foremost a big Clash fan but the Stranglers,Pistols,Buzzcocks,Siouxsie etc gave people of our era a purpose in life and sadly they are now starting to leave us.

RIP Jet Black,another punk rock warlord has left the building...

 

Think we had a choice of music at the time that blew my socks off.

 

RIP


Johnny’ Johnson obituary
Last of the Dambusters who served as a Lancaster bomb-aimer during the RAF’s most audacious raid of the second world war
Nigel Fountain

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Over the moonlit Sorpe dam in Germanythe Lancaster bomber known as T-Tommy made nine aborted runs. Three dams, the Möhne and Sorpe in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Eder in Hesse, were under attack from allied planes on the night of 16-17 May 1943.

Nine Royal Air Force Lancaster bombers were detailed to attack the Möhne and the Eder, five were held in reserve. Five of the nine were targeted on the Sorpe, but just one got through. T-Tommy was piloted by the sole American of 617 Squadron, Flt Lt Joe McCarthy. His bomb-aimer, Sgt George “Johnny” Johnson, who has died aged 101, was the last survivor of the raid. McCarthy was the only officer among the seven-strong crew.


“On the tenth run in,” wrote Johnson “both Joe and I were satisfied we were right on track. I pushed the button and called ‘bomb gone’. And from the rear turret was heard, ‘thank Christ for that’.”

The Dambusters’ bouncing bomb technique, invented by the engineer Barnes Wallis, could not be used on the Sorpe. It had to be dropped by T-Tommy halfway along the length of the dam. In The Last British Dambuster (2014), Johnson wrote that he was convinced he heard Wallis say: “It would take six bombs to crack the Sorpe.”

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‘Johnny’ Johnson in 1962. Photograph: SWNS
The dam was hit above the waterline, but not seriously so. However, flying back, at near-ground altitude, Johnson could see that the Möhne, like the Eder, had been severely breached. Just before 3.30am T-Tommy’s crew were back on the ground at RAF Scampton, Lincolnshire.

Some 133 fliers took part in the raid; 53 of them never returned, and three became prisoners of war. Around 1,300 people died in the resulting floods, the majority of them slave labourers from the Soviet Union. The Nazi minister of armaments, Albert Speer, observed later that to make the Möhne-Katastrophe truly successful the RAF should have conducted further raids.

Born in the Lincolnshire village of Hameringham, George was the fifth son and last child of Charles Johnson, a farm worker, and Mary Ellen (nee Henfrey), who died just before George’s third birthday.

He remembered a brutal early childhood, thanks to his father. He was raised by his sister, Lena – his salvation, he wrote later. By 1926 all his brothers had left home and, soon after a move to Langford in Nottinghamshire, Lena went into service, and Johnson Sr married a “vicious and hellish woman”, as Johnson Jr recalled her, who left in summer 1928. George was initially educated at a primary school in nearby Winthorpe, and with the full-time return of his sister, life began to improve.

At the age of 11 he won a boarding place to Lord Wandsworth college in Long Sutton, Hampshire. In December 1939 he left it with his school certificate. Having volunteered for the RAF in 1940, by early 1941 he was in Torquay, Devon, and met his wife-to-be, Gwyneth Morgan. She and her family were to be a great influence on his life.

The RAF supplied his “Johnny” nickname. Having failed a pilot’s course in Florida, once back in Britain Johnson moved to air gunnery, and in July 1942 was posted to 97 Squadron in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire. There he stayed until spring 1943, initially as a “spare gunner”. During those months, raids took him across Germany and down into Italy.

It was in 1942 that planners separated the roles of navigator and bomb-aimer, for the RAF’s three new four-engined bombers, the Stirling, the Halifax and the Lancaster. The normal crew of a Lancaster was seven: pilot, flight engineer, navigator, wireless operator, mid-upper gunner (missing on 617’s Lancasters), “tail-end charlie” gunner, and, from that year, bomb aimer-cum-front turret gunner. “The difference in pay was from 7 shillings and 6 pence to 12 shillings and 6 pence,” Johnson wrote. “I thought I would have a go.” He took the bomb–aimer’s course. Then he was back on 97 Squadron, “this time as a spare bomb-aimer”.

Soon after, McCarthy, then a pilot officer, was looking for a new bomb-aimer. An initial suspicion from Johnson, wary of his experiences with Americans, gave way to respect. He would come to believe that the Long Islander was the best pilot in 617 Squadron.

Meanwhile he joined his 97 Squadron crew, and on the night of 22-23 December 1942 flew on his first sortie, to Nuremberg. Nineteen raids followed, mostly to Germany, but also taking in Turin, Italy, and the Nazi U-boat pens of Saint-Nazaire, western France.

Then, in mid-March 1943, Wg Cmdr Guy Gibson, commander of 106 Squadron, and known to many of his 106 crews as the “Arch Bastard”, was called to the HQ of 5 Group, in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

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‘Johnny’ Johnson at his home in Torquay, Devon, in 2008. Photograph: Barry Gomer
There Gibson was asked, according to his own account in Enemy Coast Ahead (1946), by the 5 Group commander, Ralph Cochrane, how he would “like the idea of doing one more trip”? Gibson got the job of heading “Squadron X”, based at Scampton, just north of Lincoln. The squadron would spend two months practising flying Lancasters at very low levels, down to 100ft, and then 60ft.

Among the pilots selected by Gibson was McCarthy. The American asked his crew whether they wished to join X. And that is how Johnson, the Lincolnshire lad, joined what became the most famous squadron in the RAF. For Johnson the next problem was his wedding, scheduled for 3 May 1943, but all leave had been cancelled. McCarthy appealed to Gibson, and Johnson got his wedding.

After the dams raid he was commissioned as an officer and awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. With McCarthy he took part in a further 19 raids, before becoming an instructor. After the war, as a navigator, he remained in the RAF, flying Lincoln bombers and Shackleton naval patrol planes.

Sqn Ldr Johnson quit the RAF in 1962. He then became a teacher, first of primary children, then in adult education, working with people with mental health problems.

In retirement he lived in Torquay, and then Bristol. He was active in local Conservative politics, and in 2017 was appointed MBE. That year too he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lincoln, and the following year had a train named after him.

Gwyneth died in 2005. Johnson is survived by three children, eight grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.

George Leonard “Johnny” Johnson, airman, born 25 November 1921; died 7 December 2022

 

I said no ore than anyone I can think of

 

Hi-de-Hi! actress Ruth Madoc has died aged 79, her agent has confirmed in a statement.

Phil Belfield of talent agency Belfield & Ward Ltd, described Ruth Madoc as "one of a kind and a unique talent loved by many".


He said: "It is with much sadness that we have to announce the death of our dear and much loved client Ruth Madoc.

"Ruth passed away on the afternoon of Friday 9 December while in hospital following surgery for a fall she had earlier in the week, which had led her to have to withdraw from panto in Torquay.

 

A man extremely critical of the World Cup being awarded to Qatar. Will be interesting to see how this one develops.

 

ruth madoc, 79. hi-de-hi actress.

 

Although articles always stress that Ruth Madoc was brought up in Wales I did work with a woman who said she had spent some time in Anlaby (lived in Lowfield Road I think). Apparently she did attend a local dance class and was a star pupil.

 

Jim Stewart (92) - co-founder (with his sister) of Stax Records.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jim-stewart-dead-obit-1234641886/

 

Back in the 1960s about three quarters of my favourite songs were on Stax and Volt. And still are, really.