Stripey and Blondie

DESCRIPTION: "Now come here and I'll tell you a story It's all about Malta you know." Stripey is dating Blondie and an "OD winger." Blondie catches Stripey with his other man, and arranges for a 15" gun of the Warspite to blow up Stripey, the OD winger, and the bar
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1987 (Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy)
KEYWORDS: navy courting homosexuality betrayal technology derivative
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, pp. 66-67, "Stripey and Blondie" (1 text, tune referenced)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Frankie and Albert" [Laws I3] (tune of the "Frankie and Johnny" versions)
NOTES [178 words]: The reference to the Warspite as the ship in this song is interesting. The Warspite, a member of the Queen Elizabeth class, had eight 15" guns (the size mentioned in the song). These are not the largest guns used in the Royal Navy; the Nelson and Rodney carried 16" guns, and the battlecruiser Furious briefly carried two 18" guns before they were found to cause so much blast that they damaged the ship; they had to be removed and the Furious converted to an aircraft carrier.
But Nelson, Rodney, and Furious were not ships that served in the Mediterranean, at least for any length of time during World War II (and the Furious had lost her big guns anyway). The Warspite spent much of the war there. What's more, she was famous for a battle there in which she scored the longest-range hit ever recorded by a naval gun. So although Blondie could theoretically have found a bigger gun, the song correctly describes her as using the biggest artillery available from Malta, and even picking the ship most likely to score an accurate hit with it. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.1
File: Tawn049

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