Past meets future as WW2 veteran visits Royal Navy's new HMS Glasgow
The past has met the future as Second World War veteran Archie Hazledine shared his wartime experiences on board HMS Glasgow with the crew of the modern Royal Navy warship of the same name.
The 98-year-old former Royal Marines gunner from Oxford was treated to a VIP tour of the BAE Systems yard in Scotstoun, where the ninth ship named after Scotland's great industrial city is being fitted out.
The HMS Glasgow that Mr Hazledine served on board was the seventh Royal Navy vessel to bear the name. She was a Town-class cruiser and a sister ship of HMS Belfast, which is now a museum ship on the River Thames.
He specialised as an ack-ack (anti-aircraft) gunner, a role he had performed defending airfields during D-Day.
HMS Glasgow took part in the Normandy operation, but Mr Hazledine was only assigned to her after the landings when she was refitted to prepare her for the war in the Far East to bolster defences against Japanese kamikaze suicide attacks.
The revamped cruiser was sent via Gibraltar, Malta and the Suez Canal to the Far East to take part in the planned final invasion of the Japanese home islands.
But before HMS Glasgow arrived in Singapore, Japan formally surrendered in response to the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The ship was then redeployed to the Indian Ocean, but damaged her rudder in Ceylon [now Sri Lanka] and had to go to Simonstown for dry dock repairs.
Mr Hazledine said he spent a very enjoyable few months in South Africa, where he fondly remembers the absence of rationing, before being demobbed and sent home on a troopship.
After the war, the veteran returned to his native Oxford and became a teacher.
Logistics specialist Chief Petty Officer James Oakley and Petty Officer Kieran 'Woody' Woodward, Glasgow's chief boatswain's mate, hosted Mr Hazledine throughout the tour of the BAE yard and ran through the wide range of capabilities the new class of frigate will offer the Royal Navy when it enters service.
The Second World War HMS Glasgow relied on men like Mr Hazledine to defend the vessel with its 20mm Oerlikon cannon, which could pump out up to 300 rounds a minute.
The modern HMS Glasgow, a Type 26 frigate, will use her Sea Ceptor anti-aircraft missiles and 30mm automatic guns to deal with any aerial threat.
PO Woodward said: "It was an absolute pleasure hosting an old HMS Glasgow shipmate.
"Archie was really interested in the flight deck - much larger than a typical frigate's - and he was fascinated to learn that it is capable of landing the RAF's heavy-lift Chinook helicopter.
"He also showed a keen interest in the mission bay and asked lots of really good questions about how it will be used and the flexibility that it brings."
Before he was called up, Mr Hazledine was an air raid warden in Oxford, and he recalled the night of the Coventry Blitz - 14 November 1940.
That night he was on fire watch on the Oxford Castle mound, hearing the German bombers fly over and watching the glow of fires on the horizon.
CPO Oakley said: "It was fantastic hearing about Archie's experiences during the war.
"It was a pity that the visit had to end actually - we would have been very happy to exchange stories with him all day."
The new HMS Glasgow is the first of eight Type 26 anti-submarine frigates being built by BAE Systems for the Royal Navy, replacing the existing Duke-class ships from later this decade into the mid-2030s.
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