Ten Little Furies

DESCRIPTION: "Ten little Furies, landing on so fine. One hit the round-down, Ting! Bang! Nine." And so on through many different reasons for losses, until we're left with "One little Fury, being flown by Number one, Sugar in his petrol tanks, Good idea son!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1969 (Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy)
KEYWORDS: technology navy death humorous derivative
FOUND IN: Britain(England)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy, pp. 108-109, "Ten Little Furies" (1 text, tune referenced)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Ten Little Injuns" (tune)
cf. "Ten Little Pilot Boys" (tune, idea)
NOTES [303 words]: Tawney-GreyFunnelLines-RoyalNavy lists the tune of this as "Ten Little Nigger Boys," which I believe is the item we've indexed as "Ten Little Injuns."
This sounds like a World War II song, but in the form printed by Tawney, it can't be. Both the plane involved (the "Fury") and the ship where Tawney supposedly found it (the Theseus) argue against it.
There was, according to Wikipedia, a pre-war biplane fighter called the "Fury," but it had been phased out of combat roles by the start of World War II (although I gather from Wikipedia that a few were still used for training during the war).
But this can't be the plane involved, because the song mentions a "Bofors," which is a famous 40 mm anti-aircraft gun -- but it wasn't in use by the British before World War II. Similarly, the song mentions an armored flight deck, and no pre-war British carrier had an armored deck. So the pre-war Fury is out. It's possible that the word is actually "Fairey," the maker of many British naval planes, including the famous Swordfish torpedo plane and the Fulmar fighter, but we have no evidence for that. There was a post-war plane called the "Sea Fury," so that is likely what is meant here,
Tawney said this was a version from the Theseus, although the song itself does not offer a ship name. I checked three different sources and could find no Royal Navy ship named Theseus during World War II. Certainly there was no carrier of that name! But, according to Wikipedia, the carrier HMS Theseus was commissioned shortly after the war, and served primarily in a training role until the Korean War. She was broken up in 1952. Given that the Bofors went obsolete well before 1962, Tawney's version is likely from the late 1940s.
I wonder, though, if there wasn't a World War II version featuring some other plane. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: Tawn080

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