Originally Posted by vometia
somewhere in between converting the mesh to Collada format and then slurping it into Blender (v2.75) the UV is going missing


The default Collada importer in v2.77 displays UVs just fine for me.

Originally Posted by vometia
Granny Viewer can't read the newly created GR2, though that's probably because I'm using a really ancient version that appears to be dated 2008


Not even the v2.8.49.0 (the version D:OS 2 uses) Granny Viewer can open them. It appears that the D:OS EE and D:OS 2 GR2 files use a different header signature that the Viewer doesn't recognize.
A workaround is to save them in the (old) D:OS format.