Jack has often told stories about being assigned to the British Navy. Me refers to the ship as the HMS BEC 1. I think it is the HMS Kilbirnie BEC1. It was made by the Pullman Standard Car Company in Chicago.n 1943. But Jack would have been 22, not 19 as stated in the note. Here's some information: "Pullman Standard Car Manufacturing Company established a shipbuilding division and dived into wartime small ship design and construction. The yard was on Lake Calumet, on the north side of 130th Street, at the most southerly point of the lake: you can see where it must have been but there is no sign of a shipyard there now. Pullman built the boats in 40-ton blocks, just as we do today, the blocks being assembled in a fab shop on 111th Street and moved to the yard on gondola cars. In two years, they built 34 PCEs, which were 180 feet long and weighed 640 tons, and 44 LSMs, which were 203 feet long and weighed 520 tons."Shipbuildinghistory.com I also found that it was "temporarily assigned the hull number BEC 1 in expectation of transfer to Britain" Tiornu
Dad has told a sad WWII story about one or more pilots who were lost during a severe storm on the Lake while in training.
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