James Holland
speaker
22,555 appearances
49 recordings
7 series
first heard May 2025
last heard yesterday
James Holland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 46 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 10.
Appearances
Cargo was cork, and as the Thurzo went down it erupted to the surface everywhere.
Fortunately, the men were rescued from the floating corpse.
The corvette that picked William up, HMS Marigold, was sunk by an Italian torpedo six months later.
The crew she rescued.
Uh lift her.
This is where the two stories connect.
In November 1942, William joined SS Fox as second officer, ferrying war supplies along the Algerian coast as part of Operation Torch.
Ammunition encased aviation petrol in containers called Flimsies.
William noted, By goodness, they were flimsy.
They would only just stand up to their own weight more or less.
At the same time, Stan's logbook has him flying daily patrols with forty three squadron over the same stretch of coastline, including repeated entries of patrol bougie.
The forty three squadron operational records confirm fuel shortages at the Ford Airstrips during exactly this period.
William was delivering the fuel stand squadron, couldn't fly without.
At Bougi, a city in northern Algeria, the fox-loaded cased petrol that had already been transferred once from a bigger ship, degraded, leaking, soaking the hold with one hundred octane fumes.
William noticed a ventilation fan arcing in the DMS accommodation and mentioned it.
Nothing was done.
Towards the evening there was a crunch and the petrol went up.
It went up aft first.
Blew up the DMS gunner's legs.
He ran through his burning cabin, face on fire, reached the gangway and found the radio operator hanging upside down from the ladder frozen with terror, coattails brushing the key refusing to let go.
Showing 781–800 of 22,555 · page 40 of 1128
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