There are milestone moments in the life of... well, anything!  A child walking for the first time, a car reaching 100,000 miles, a baseball player getting his first hit in the majors, one's first rubber duck, one's second rubber duck, one's third rubber duck... you get the idea.  I can't help but feel that with this, the 30th "Mystery Ship" entry, The Pond has reached some sort of milestone in and of itself.  But enough of this woolgathering!  Here, for your enjoyment, is the Mystery Ship:

As always, no image searches or googlereversi or anything like that.  It's supposed to be difficult, y'see.  However, I am of the opinion that the prize is worth the candle: one free post on any topic you care to name (no pr0n, religion or politics, please)!  One guess per person.  Post no bills.  Burma Shave.

As always, FDM and CTX are unable to play for 24 hours or my say-so, whichever comes first.  Everybody else, have at it!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 08:21 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 171 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Pushing the limits of my knowledge way off the end of the diving board:  HMS Activity.  The only UK escort carrier I can think of.

Posted by: Ben at September 16, 2014 10:47 PM (DRaH+)

2 Steven, forgive me, but if I wanted hints given out, I'd be doing it myself.

Posted by: Wonderduck at September 17, 2014 12:48 PM (BCjxQ)

3 Sorry.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 17, 2014 01:22 PM (+rSRq)

4 I'm usually pretty good at aircraft recognition, but I can't make out the planes on deck.  Steven, could you share why they believe the vessel is British, without giving out more ship hints?

Posted by: Siergen at September 17, 2014 05:21 PM (r3+4f)

5
I think  that this is actually a subchaser rigged up as a decoy escort carrier. ISTR reading that they came up with this after Okinawa in anticipation of Operation Downfall with the idea that as long as they weren't too close to other ships (which would give away their scale) they'd draw kamikazes away from the actual escort carriers.  If the vessel was lost it would have a crew of a bit more than a dozen as opposed to 900+ for an actual CVE. Sadly, I have no idea what the name (or more properly the hull number as it was an SC) of this prototype was.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at September 17, 2014 05:39 PM (DnAJl)

6 Siergen, I didn't say anything like that. Anyway, I've already been spanked once in this thread, so I'm not going to say anything else.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 17, 2014 07:25 PM (+rSRq)

7 I'm going to give it to Brickmuppet.

Posted by: Wonderduck at September 17, 2014 07:27 PM (BCjxQ)

8 D'oh!  Sorry Steven - I read Wonderduck's message about "hints" and mentally-linked you to the previous post.  I guess I need new glasses after all...

Posted by: Siergen at September 18, 2014 04:34 PM (r3+4f)

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