Has anyone on this Forum come across 'Landale' before and could tell me a little about it? The context is this. I am looking at the naval record of a RNVR officer in WWII. He has just finished his training at HMS King Alfred at Hove and, prior to training on a LCT before going on for further specific training in Combined Ops in Scotland in early 1944, he was 'lent Landale' for a period of 4 days and then 2 days. I can find no vessel of this name and wondered if it was a code name for a secret Landing Craft organisation in the Yorkshire Dales. I have several books on the RNVR and Landing Craft -- but they yielded nothing. TIA Rattler
Thank you for your response Richelieu which I appreciate. I too thought it might have referred to HMS Landrail which was the name of the Naval Air Station at Machrihanish. Now Campbeltown airport, it had an incredibly long main runway which served well as a RAF airbase in later years. It was not too far from HMS Dinosaur the Combined Ops training base at Troon for where the young Midshipman whose record I have was destined two and a half weeks later. At the time he left HMS King Alfred there would likely have been many of his graduating class of 88 Temporary Midshipmen & Temp. Act sub Lts destined for Combined Ops which at this period of the war was taking 40-50% of fresh RNVR officers coming out of King Alfred. Thus I could envisage a group of them being transported by, say an RAF Dakota, to an airbase near Troon, rather than have about 40 Combined Ops recruits making a likely 2-3 day rail journey from Hove to HMS Dinosaur at Troon. I searched for a merchant transport called 'Landale' in case it was a Passage ship -- but to no avail. However there were two nearer airbases -- being the airfields at Dundonald and RAF Prestwick, so why, I wondered, take him/them to Machrihanish ..... unless some LCT training was carried out in Campbeltown port. The other thing that mitigates against Landrail is that' Lent 'Landale' is stated 3 times over this 18-day period. It is on a P & V Ledger record and I wonder if the naval clerk of 1944 entering the base on the record would have really misspelt it 3 times. It could of course be an error typed up recently at the Navy Command Archive that supplied the P & V transcription. I couldn't find a senior Army or RM officer called Landale - who might have run a Combined Ops training course. Unfamiliar and unexplained terms are a feature of WWII Naval records (which of course were not compiled for the benefit of postwar research) so I will best assume it does refer to Landrail ... but who knows --- the explanation might again come up on this website in the future. Cheers Rattler
