Here is the first memoir I found
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/38/a2143838.shtmland here is an excerpt copyright of BBC -WW2 people's war.
"rejoined my ship early in October to find her tranmogrified. Painted completely in wartime grey with a necklace of degaussing cables round the hull, the Boffins very quick response to magnetic mines. Also she had been armed!
A 4” BL naval gun and a 12 pounder anti-aircraft gun had been fitted on the poop. On the bridge were two 1917 Lewis machine guns and on the foredeck, a weird contraption called a Holman Projector. This was designed to throw old-fashioned Mills bombs at attacking aircraft. I was a short tube attached to the ship’s steam line. With the bombs we had empty cocoa tins. The drill was to remove the pin from a bomb, carefully place it in a cocoa tin, drop it down the tube and open the steam cock. The idea was that this would shoot it up in the air, air pressure would remove the tin, the lever would fly open, explode the bomb and frighten the Luftwaffe. The only time we used it, the bomb came out of the tube with a spout of rusty water and fell on deck. A quick-thinking seaman threw it over the side before it went off. We all had an intensive course in the drill for these weapons at the local RNVR depot and when we sailed, included in the crew was a party of Naval ratings who formed the nucleus of the gun crews. Even though we were not a severe threat to the enemy, just having the whole crew going to action stations with heaps to do and being able to make a satisfactory noise had a good effect on the morale of the Merchant Navy crews of the time. Much better than just waiting to be shot at."
Here is the link to another memoir
http://www.naval-history.net/WW2Memoir-RussianConvoyCoxswain03.htmand here is an excerpt courtesy of naval-history.net
"We were to find out that this was all that it was fit for. Its crew was supposed to put down this pipe an ordinary hand grenade which nestled in a tin; the lever from the grenade came through a slot in the metal container and was held down by a pin in the safe position on the outside of the container. The drill was that when the crew were going to fire this 'thing', first they had to make quite certain that there was enough steam pressure on the gauge to project the grenade out of the pipe. They then took the pin out of the grenade, dropped the grenade still in its container down the spout of the pipe, banging their foot down on a pedal at the base of the pipe, and at the same time aiming the 'gun' at the target. If the target was a plane, the grenade was supposed to go off in the vicinity of the plane after parting company with the container as it left the mouth of the pipe. In theory I suppose that this was quite a legitimate description of its action if the steam pressure applied to the projector was correct; if it wasn't, the grenade and its container had a nasty habit of just managing to climb out of the end of the pipe, and dropping onto the deck where they separated, rolling about until they either exploded where they were, and fragmented amongst those of the crew who were panicking to throw them over the side, or in the sea out of harm's way if the crew had been successful in doing what they had set out to do.
Most ships' crews found as time passed by that the best use for the Holman Projector was for throwing potatoes or empty cans at their 'chummy ships' as they passed by them in a channel. To be used for the job for which it was really intended was thought to be more dangerous to those actually firing it than to the aircraft supposed to be at the receiving end. Eventually, I believe, these Holmans were taken off most if not all ships."
Enjoy your reading
Clive
