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Warship Wednesday 15 April 2026: The Fastest Yugo

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger.

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday 15 April 2026: The Fastest Yugo

Courtesy of Mr. C.W. Beilstein 1983. Naval History and Heritage Command Catalog #: NH 94341

Above we see the class-leading destroyer (razarac) Beograd of the Royal Navy of Yugoslavia (Kraljevska mornarica Jugoslavije, KMJ) shortly after she was completed at Nantes in 1939. Note her “B” hull identifier.

Lightning-fast at 39 knots during her trials, she was captured 85 years ago this week and went on to serve under two other flags until the final days of WWII.

The KMJ’s tin can needs

Emerging from the wreckage of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, mashed together with the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro by the Versailles Treaty in 1919, Yugoslavia needed a fleet.

The country inherited eight small 188-foot/250-ton torpedo boats, four Danube River monitors (the ex-Bosna, Enns, Körös, and Bodrog), four small TBs converted to minesweepers, and some scratch-and-dent auxiliaries from the Austrians. The largest ship collected from the smashed empire was the circa 1887 7,000-ton ironclad SMS Kronprinz Erzherzog Rudolf, which was condemned and sold for scrap within a couple of years.

In 1921, the budding polyglot country bought six surplus 500 ton German minelayers as tugs on the open market and armed them with new Skoda 3.5″/45s then followed that up in 1926 with the elderly German Gazelle-class light cruiser ex-SMS Niobe (2,370 tons) and added six new Skoda 3.4″/55s to that hulk, bringing her into service as the flagship Dalmacija.

Moving to purchase new construction, in 1927-31 the KMJ bought two small (236-foot/975-ton) 6-tubed Armstrong-built coastal submarines (Hrabri and Nebojsa), another two similarly small subs from France (Smeli and Osvetnik), the 250-foot/1,870-ton seaplane tender/minelayer Zmaj from Germany (capable of supporting 10 floatplanes, which the Yugos didn’t seem to have), and five 174-foot/130 ton Maclinska-class minelayers, the latter built by Yarrow’s Adriatic Yard in Kraljevica.

As part of the 1928 naval program, the KMJ moved to order from Yarrow, Scotstoun, what would be their most modern and well-armed surface combatant, the 2,800-ton destroyer leader Dubrovnik.

At 371 feet overall and powered by three oil-fired Yarrow boilers and dual sets of Parsons steaming and Curtis cruising turbines, she had 48,000shp on tap and was designed for 37 knot speeds (made 37.2 on trials).

Crtež razarača Dubrovnik, Yugo destroyer leader

Yarrow had built the experimental one-off destroyer HMS Ambuscade for the RN, delivered in 1927, and it could be argued that Dubrovnik was basically an enlarged take on that design.

Dubrovnik photographed by A.T. Kelly of Glasgow, while fitting out at the shipyard of Yarrow & Co., during the winter of 1931-1932. Courtesy of Mr. C.W. Beilstein. NH 94345

Same as above. NH 94344

Outfitted with four new 5.5″/56 Skoda single mounts— guns capable of firing 87.7-pound HE rounds at up to eight rounds per minute per tube out to 25,600 yards– Dubrovnik was one of the most heavily armed destroyers in the world at the time. In fact, her guns were the largest the KMJ ever had afloat, barring the trio of 12-inch Krupp M1888 L/35 guns on the old Erzherzog Rudolf, which were likely never put into service.

Škoda 140mm guns, Yugoslav destroyer Dubrovnik, May 1932, during a visit to the Netherlands, Den Helder, to install Hazemeyer fire control devices

Going past the 5.5″/56s, she had weight and space for an embarked seaplane, carried several 83mm M.1929 and 40mm/L67 Skoda AAA guns, and two triple 21-inch tubes for French-designed 1923DT torpedoes as well as depth charges and mines.

Dubrovnik was essentially a lead-in for the construction of a very similar new series of large (2,500-ton/377-foot) British destroyers authorized under the 1935 program, the well-liked Tribal class, which also had four gun mounts (for smaller 4.7″/45s), two funnels, and a three-boiler/two-turbine 44,000shp power plant for 36 knots.

The Yugoslavian fleet, circa 1937.

Yugoslav destroyer Dubrovnik in 1934

Delivered in May 1932, it was planned to build two sisters to Dubrovnik, and, since they were destroyer flotilla leaders, a whole class of modern tin cans for them to lead.

Which brings us to our subject of this week’s Warship Wednesday.

Meet Beograd

Named for the Yugoslav capital (Belgrade), the lead ship was ordered to a design from Ateliers et Chantiers after the fast French destroyer L`Adroit, which had entered service in 1929.

French destroyer torpilleur l’Adroit. The speedy French greyhound went 1,380 tons (standard) and ran 351 feet overall and, powered by three three-drum Temple boilers and two turbines for 31,000shp, could make turns for 33 knots.

French destroyer torpilleur l’Adroit. Armed with four 5.1″/40s and two triple torpedo tubes, she was a brawler, and the French would build 14 of her class.

Beograd would run a little shorter than L`Adroit (321 feet overall, 316 at the waterline with two funnels instead of three and less of a clipper bow) and hit the scales at 1,200 tons standard (1,655 full). Powered by three Yarrow boilers on two sets of Curtiss geared steam turbines, she had 44,000shp on tap and made just over 39 knots on trials versus a designed speed of 38.

Schemat niszczyciela Beograd

Armament would be four new model 4.7″/46 Skoda DPs, which could fire 52.9-pound HE shells at 10 rounds per minute to 18,000 yards. Secondary battery would be two twin 40mm Swedish Bofors with Dutch Hazemeyer fire control devices (one of the first mountings of such guns that would go on to become iconic), two 15mm Skoda heavy MGs, and two triple 21-inch torpedo tubes in addition to a stern depth charge rack. As many as 30 mines could be carried as well.

Laid down as Yard No. 585 at Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in Nantes in 1936, Beograd took to the water on 23 December 1937 and was completed in August 1939, just as Europe was marching to another world war.

Beograd photographed before World War II. Courtesy of Mr. C.W. Beilstein, 1983. NH 94342

Just 300 miles to the north of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia had just been swallowed up by Germany, Hungary (which occupied Carpathian Ruthenia), and Poland (which occupied and annexed the Zaolzie area), and things were getting tense between Russia, Poland, and Germany. Meanwhile, Italy invaded and swiftly annexed Albania to Yugoslavia’s south in April 1939, sending 22,000 troops across the Adriatic supported by two battleships, six cruisers, and two dozen escorts.

The first of at least two of Beograd’s planned sisters, Zagreb and Ljubljana, were ordered in 1936 from the new Ateliers et Chantiers-founded Jadranska Brodogradilista shipyard in Split, as Yard Nos. 22 and 23, respectively, and were likewise delivered in the summer of 1939.

Yugoslav Beograd-class destroyer Zagreb in the Bay of Kotor

Destroyer Zagreb, 1939

Jadranska brodogradilišta A.D shipyard in 1933, where Zagreb and Ljubljana were constructed between 1936 and 1939. The yard is still around, as Brodosplit, one of the largest Croatian shipyards.

War!

As noted by Dr. Milan Vego in his 1982 Warships International article on the KMJ, in 1940, the force counted 326 officers, 1,646 petty officers, and 1,870 seamen. At that time, just 64 former Great War era Austro-Hungarian officers (1 VADM, 27 CAPT, 27 Senior CDR, 5 CDR) were still on the rolls, while 336 officers were educated in the Yugoslav schools after 1918 (14 CDR, 110 LCDR, 27 ensigns).

The U.S. military attaché in Belgrade then observed that the “discipline and morale of navy personnel was very good. The men are content and like their life.” However, “higher commanders appear somewhat discouraged at the inferior position of the Yugoslav Navy due to totally inadequate appropriations.” In his view, “under such conditions the fleet units kept in service may be said to be in very good condition considering the small amount available for upkeep and training.”

Less than a month after commissioning, as Hitler marched into Poland, Beograd was sent to Britain with a large part of Yugoslavia’s gold reserves (7,344 ingots), which were deposited at the Bank of England for safekeeping.

Keeping their heads down in the event of a surprise attack from Italy, in which they had orders to make to sea to raid the Italian coast and shipping, Beograd and her sister ship Zagreb were deployed to the 1st Torpedo Division in the Bay of Kotor (Cattaro) with Dubrovnik. The third sister, Ljubljana, was undergoing repairs in the Tivat Arsenal after sinking in an accident on 24 January 1940.

It became clear that the Germans and Italians planned to move Yugoslavia into their orbit, especially after Mussolini invaded Greece in October 1940, using Albania as a springboard. When the 27/28 March 1941 coup in Belgrade changed the government’s polarization from semi-German to semi-Allied, the writing was on the wall. By 30 March, it became known that Germany and Italy had started evacuating their citizens living on the Yugoslav coast.

Mobilization orders were passed, and the KMJ’s warships were ordered to keep full bunkers, magazines, and stores, as well as charge the air valves in their torpedoes and depth charges. To keep from being picked off at pier side, they were ordered dispersed, and the crews of the ships camouflaged themselves along the coast; the destroyer Dubrovnik in the Bay of Kotor, the destroyers Beograd and Zagreb near Dobrota.

Royal Yugoslav Navy destroyer Zagreb heavily camouflaged with foliage on April 15, 1941

On the eve of the expected Axis (German, Italian, and Hungarian) invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Zagreb and Beograd, along with four 250-ton class torpedo boats and six MTBs, were sent to the port of Sibenik, about 50 miles south of Zadar– an Italian enclave on the Dalmatian coast which had been occupied since the Treaty of Rapallo in 1920– in preparation for an attack on the Italians, to be joined by a reinforced Yugo army division from landward.

While the assault on Zadar kicked off three days into the war on 9 April, it faltered, and Beograd suffered damage from Italian aircraft off Sibenik, which knocked out her starboard engine. Sailing back to the Bay of Kotor for repairs, Beograd and the rest of the Zadar assault flotilla set up a triangular kill box for attacking Italian aircraft, firing on successive waves over the next few days while the KMJ high command dithered over what to do.

Eventually, it was decided to try to evacuate the ships that could still fight to join the Allies in Greece and North Africa, and on the evening of 16 April, the submarine Nebojsa set out for Alexandria, followed the next day by the torpedo boats Kajmakcalan and Durmitor— without orders. Word was flashed to the KMJ that the surrender would begin at 0500 on the 17th.

With many of Zagreb’s crew heading ashore during the looming collapse, two of Zagreb’s lieutenants, Milan Spasić and Sergej Mašera, scuttled the destroyer, sacrificing their lives in the process on the afternoon of 17 April.

Spasic and Masera were posthumously decorated by exiled Yugoslav King Peter II with the Order of the Karađorđe Star with Swords in 1942, then awarded the Order of the People’s Hero by Tito in 1973. Zagreb never sailed again.

With Beograd hamstrung by her damaged engines, her crew disembarked in lifeboats and landed ashore at Kotor. She was captured there by rapidly advancing Italian forces just after Zagreb settled.

The destroyers Dubrovnik (left) and Beograd (right) photographed in the port of Kotor in 1941 after being captured by the Italian army. Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-185-0116-22A

Beograd in Bay of Kotor April 1941

Yugoslav Navy Beograd in Bay of Kotor, April 1941, Dubrovnik in the background

Beograd in Bay of Kotor April 1941 b

Dubrovnik in Bay of Kotor April 1941. Note the tall German Sd.Kfz. 231 armored car in the background.

Other vessels lost during the short war included the river monitor Drava, bombed and sunk by Luftwaffe aircraft off Cib with the loss of 54 of her 67 crew on 12 April, while her fellow monitors Morava, Vardar, and Sava were scuttled by their crews on the same day. The coasters Senj and Triglav were scuttled to prevent capture at the Island of Krk. Meanwhile, the cargo ships Karadjordje and Prestolonasledik Petar were sunk by Italian mines off Sibenik.

Germany’s Balkanfeldzug sideshow had only cost the Axis about 4,500 casualties to conquer Yugoslavia in less than a fortnight, but is generally believed to have forced the delay of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, by some five precious weeks, which could have made a huge difference in the outcome of the frozen Battle of Moscow that winter, which was a hard-won victory for the Red Army.

Under a different king

Much of the KMJ was put back into enemy service under either Italian or puppet (Croatian) flags over the next couple of years.

Dubrovnik served as the Italian destroyer Premuda from 1941 to 1943.

The destroyer Premuda (ex-Dubrovnik ) in the port of Patras on August 5, 1942.

Ljubljana, sidelined during the war in the shipyard, was completed by her new owner, renamed Lubiana (the Italian translation of her name), and sent to escort convoys to North Africa. She ran aground on 1 April 1943 near Tunisia and was destroyed the next day by an Allied air attack.

Italian destroyer Lubiana, formerly the Beograd-class Yugoslav destroyer Ljubljana, at Pola in January 1943

Destroyer Ljubljana under the Italian flag

Beograd, repaired and up-armed with several Breda Model 35 20mm L/65 AAA guns, was commissioned into the Regia Marina as Sebenico in August 1941.

Italian Navy destroyer Premuda, former Yugoslavian Navy Dubrovnik, crossing into Taranto circa 1942

Sebenico ex Royal Yugoslav Navy Beograd, weighing anchor, autumn 1942. Note her camo scheme and SB identifier. 

Beograd/Sebenico’s career in Italian service was much more active than under the KMJ ensign. She was immediately put to work as a convoy escort on routes between Italy and the Aegean Sea and North Africa, completing over 100 runs over a period of two years.

This brought her under the scopes of at least 12 British submarines– HMS Proteus, Safari, Taku,  Thunderbolt, Torbay, Turbulent, Ultimatum, Unbeaten, Unique, Upholder, Utmost, and Ursula— but managed to escape their wrath.

Yugoslav destroyer Dubrovnik (Premuda) and Beograd (Sebenico) listed incorrectly as the former Ljubljanka, USN ONI 202 Flashbook on Italy 1943

Under the Reichskriegsflagge

After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, several ex-Yugoslav and ex-Italian units were taken over by the Kriegsmarine and designated Torpedoboot Ausland (foreign torpedo-boat). These included TA32 (ex-Premuda, ex-Dubrovnik), TA43 (ex-Sebenico, ex-Beograd), and the TA48 (ex-Italian and Yugoslav T3, ex-Austrian 78 T), which were amalgamated into the hodge-podge 9. Torpedobootsflottille, tasked with escort and minelaying in the still Axis-held northern Adriatic.

In German service, TA43/Sebenico/Beograd landed her torpedo tubes and saw her armament augmented by seven 37mm flak guns in one twin and five single mounts, as well as two single 20mm guns.

Surviving air attacks and both Italian and Yugoslav partisans, TA43 was scuttled by her German crew in Trieste on 1 May 1945, just a week before VE-Day. She narrowly survived Dubrovnik, which had been lightly damaged by British destroyers in March 1945 during the Battle of the Ligurian Sea and was scuttled in Genoa on 25 April.

Varying accounts have Beograd raised and scrapped postwar, generally in the 1947-48 time frame, as Trieste was under UN mandate as a Free Territory before it was split between Italy and Yugoslavia.

Salvage of the destroyer TA32 (ex-Dubrovnik) in Genoa in 1950.

Epilogue

Little remains of our destroyer that I can locate.

As for the treasure that Beograd rushed to London for safekeeping, following the war, the Bank of England restituted 334,654.186 ounces of gold and coins to the National Bank of Yugoslavia between 1948 and 1958.

Models of Zagreb, who had the most heroic ending of her class, dot museums in Zagreb, Belgrade, and Kotor, her story and that of her two defiant lieutenants retold throughout the past 85 years.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday 8 April 2026: Front Runner

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger 

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday 8 April 2026: Front Runner

USN Photo 80-G-08937 via the National Archives.

Above we see the Cramp-built Balao (not Tench) class fleet boat USS Tusk (SS-426), some 80 years ago this week, in April 1946, just after she was commissioned. Note her late WWII style “gunboat” arrangement with two 5″/25s and two 40mm Bofors clustered around her fairwater.

Remember, National Submarine Day is on April 11th, and Tusk, which never fired a torpedo in anger (that we know of), nonetheless has one of the most epic careers in naval history

The Balao Class

A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. Unlike those of many navies of the day, U.S. subs were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home.

The Balao class was designed to dive deeper (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 ft.) due to the use of high-yield-strength steel in the pressure hull.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.

USS Roncador (Balao) class plans

USS Roncador (Balao) class plans

An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:

  • Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
  • Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
  • Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
  • Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
  • Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)

We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Greenfish, the UDT-10 carrying USS Burrfish, the rocket mail slinger USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, the cruiser bagging USS Charr, Spain’s “30-one-and-only,” and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories

Meet Tusk

Our subject is the only U.S. warship named for the cusk or tusk, a large edible saltwater fish related to the cod. The 14th and last submarine to be built by the Cramp Shipbuilding Company of Philadelphia, she was laid down as the future SS-426 on 23 August 1943, and launched into the Delaware River on 8 July 1945; sponsored by Mrs. Carolyn Park Mills, wife of RADM Earle Watkins Mills (USNA 1917) who was soon to take over the Maritime Commission from the retiring VADM Emory S. Land.

Mrs. Mills christens the future Tusk, 8 July 1945. Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center, George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection, SCRC 170

Launch of Tusk, 8 July 1945. The sign on her bow says she was paid for via War Bond Purchases made by the people of Philadelphia. There were eight war loan drives from 1942 to 1945. By the end of the war, 85 million Americans had purchased 185.7 billion dollars of bonds. Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center, George D. McDowell Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Collection, SCRC 170

With the end of the war, construction slowed, and Tusk was only commissioned on 11 April 1946.

Tusk had a late war “gunboat” style arraignment, including two 5″/25s and two Bofors guns, along with points for detachable 50 cals

Her first skipper was CDR Raymond A. Moore, USN, who seems to just be a placeholder as he was replaced within a fortnight by CDR Marshall Harlan Austin (USNA 1935), who had commanded the Gato-class fleet boat USS Redfin (SS-272) on her 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th War Patrols, sinking a Japanese destroyer and four merchantmen to earn a Navy Cross.

These images were taken the day before her commissioning:

(Cold) War!

Under Austin, Tusk completed her shakedown cruise in the South Atlantic, visiting ports in Brazil, Curacao, and Panama from June to July 1946. She returned to New London in August and the week before Thanksgiving 1946, President Harry S. Truman, ADM William D. Leahy, and Annapolis Commandant, VADM Aubrey W. Fitch, toured Tusk while she was tied up at the Naval Academy.

Photograph of President Truman and Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy inspecting the USS Tusk, a submarine, during the President’s visit to the U.S. Naval Academy. Note the well-turned-out MM1 watch stander’s dolphins and hash mark on the sleeves of his cracker jacks. National Archives Identifier: 198606

Photograph of President Truman aboard a submarine, the USS Tusk, during his visit to the U.S. Naval Academy: (left to right) the President; Vice Admiral Aubrey Fitch, Superintendent of the Naval Academy; Fleet Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief; and General Harry Vaughan, Military Aide to the President. NARA 198648

Truman waves from Tusk’s conning tower. NARA 198649

The next year saw Tusk participate in a series of exercises and a minor collision with the hospital ship USS Consolation (AH-15).

Repaired in Philadelphia, she then conducted oceanographic work along the Atlantic shelf with Columbia University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

She ended 1947 at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for a Greater Underwater Propulsion Power Program (GUPPY) II conversion, one of 24 Balao and Tench-class subs that received the SCB 47 rebuild.

During the subsequent seven months, Tusk underwent significant modifications to enhance her submerged performance. Four high-capacity 126-cell batteries replaced her original batteries, which had half as many cells, bedded into larger wells. The hull was streamlined by adding a rounded bow, recessing anchors, capstans, deck rail stanchions, and cleats; and eliminating propeller guards, improving hydrodynamic efficiency.

Topside, her deck guns were removed and sail enlarged and refined to accommodate three new masts (snorkel induction, snorkel exhaust and ESM), the snork enabling diesel-powered operation at periscope depth and battery recharging while submerged. The periscope and radar mast were enclosed. A BQR-2 sonar was fitted with hydrophones under the forefoot and its electronics housed in the forward torpedo room. Likewise, her Elliot Motor Co. high-speed drive electric motors with reduction gear were swapped out for low-speed direct drive motors of 2,500 hp per shaft, up from 1,370.

Her step-side Portsmouth Sail had a thinner top than those fitted to other GUPPYs by EB, with a curved trailing edge, square windows, and a sharper lower forward edge. They also had a fitting for the sub’s SV radar screen.

These upgrades transitioned Tusk from a submersible to an actual submarine and, while her surface speed was cut by about two knots, her submerged speed rose from 10 knots to about 15 knots.

After her G.II conversion in early 1948, she emerged looking very different from her original 1946 configuration, and, amid the Berlin Crisis, conducted a simulated war patrol to the Canal Zone in June and July as part of her post-modernization shakedown.

Her skipper during the cruise was CDR Guy F. Guggliotta, USN, another wartime sub driver who had commanded USS S-28 (SS 133), Halibut (SS 232) on her 10th War Patrol, and Raton (SS 270) on her 8th War Patrol, earning a pair of Silver Stars in the process.

Tusk, post GUPPY II conversion with her step side Portsmouth sail, seen off the New London Harbor Lighthouse.

Tusk seen between 1948 and 1962 post GUPPY II conversion with her step side Portsmouth sail, NH 67826

Cochino’s Last Dive

Attached to Submarine Development Group 2 out of Newport for the first six months of 1949, she sortied to the North Atlantic that July with SubRon 8 for a series of multinational NATO exercises that saw her visit Londonderry and Portsmouth in the British Isles.

At this point, Tusk was on her fourth skipper, WWII sub captain CDR Robert Kemble Rittenhouse Worthington, USN, who had earned a Navy Cross during Balao’s 8th, 9th, and 10th Patrols after sinking over a half-dozen small vessels, adding to a Silver Star he earned as a junior officer on four patrols aboard USS Silversides.

It was while still on these exercises that on 25 August, Tusk, operating alongside her sister USS Cochino (SS-345), which had been on a secret deployment above the Arctic Circle in the Barents Sea, encountered a severe gale off the coast of Norway that left Cochino in dire straits.

As noted of Cochino by DANFS, “huge waves slammed the submarines’ snorkel so violently, and jolted the boat so severely, that the pounding caused an electrical fire and battery explosion, followed by the release of deadly hydrogen [chlorine] gas,” forcing the stricken sub’s crew to evacuate the surfaced boat in terrible weather, and hunker down on her deck.

The last known photograph of USS Cochino (SS 345) was taken in July 1949. She now lies in deep water north of Norway near 71.35N. 23.35E, sunk stern first on 0146 on 26 August 1949 with no personnel aboard.

Receiving the underwater sonar signal from Cochino “Casualty surfacing,” Tusk worked over the next 14 hours on the rough seas to save first Cochino herself, then, after a second battery explosion made that impossible, to rescue Cochino’s 77 embarked souls via a prow rigged between the two boats on the open sea. Tragically, Tusk wound up trading 11 of her own crew and an embarked Philco techrep (Mr. Robert Wellington) to Poseidon in the deal, with only six later recovered from the sea alive.

A depiction of the USS Cochino battery fire that led to the sinking of the submarine in 1949, and cross-decking to Tusk, by Stanley Borack.

Greater detail from Tusk’s deck log:

Tusk, packed with nearly 150 personnel, many of them injured and suffering from exposure, she made for Hammerfest Harbor, Norway, and tied up at 0845 on the 26th to immediately receive a Norwegian medical team aboard.

Besides an officer (LCDR Richard M. Wright) sent to a Norwegian hospital in Tromso and four men flown home to Westover AFB for transfer to the Navy hospital at Chelsea, Massachusetts, the remaining 72 Cochino survivors crammed aboard Tusk once again two days later tor the return trip back across the Atlantic, arriving at New London on 9 September for a home town welcome.

Truly an epic sea story.

The 1950 Silent Service installment “The Last Dive” (Season 1, Episode 22) covered Cochino and Tusk’s final 14 hours together. A young Walter Matthau, DeForest Kelley, and Leslie Nielsen portrayed Cochino crewmembers, with LCDR Wright appearing at the end of the show, having completed 14 months of medical rehab.

Continued Cold War service

Tusk was assigned to the Submarine School at New London, then Submarine Development Group 2, interspersed with regular Atlantic Fleet exercises.

One of her declassified Dev Group tests now in the public archives is one for the Naval Research Laboratory in 1957, which involved the use of a light pulse transmitter to communicate with aircraft while submerged at depths of 90 feet.

In November 1949, during maneuvers 175nm off the Labrador coast in 40-foot seas, Tusk struck her periscope on the screw of a Navy supply ship USS Aldebaran (AF-10), picking up minor damage but suffering no casualties.

In late 1952, Tusk was assigned to SubRon 10 for a six-month Med cruise with the 6th Fleet, visiting Malta, Gibraltar, Cannes, Piraeus, Izmir, and French Oran.

USS Tusk (SS 426) post GUPPY II conversion 1 August 1952 USN 477116

Tusk would make four further European cruises over the next two decades. Notably, this would include a visit to Fiumicino during the 1960 Rome Olympics, calling in Portugal to mark the 500th anniversary of Prince Henry the Navigator, and a 1967 cruise where she would visit Bremerhaven, Aarhus, and Göteborg.

USS Tusk sailing into Malta on one of her Med deployments, pre 1965

Jane’s 1960 entry for the Tench class, with both the Cramp-built GUPPY’d Tusk and Trumpetfish listed incorrectly as members. At the time, the Navy was also operating at least 80 Balaos, including NRF ships and those in mothballs.

Tusk also pulled three shorter Operation Springboard readiness deployments to the Caribbean, a region of growing importance post-Castro. As you can imagine, annual Springboard exercises involved high-profile mock ASW, amphibious landings, and fleet maneuvers around Puerto Rico. It was a common gathering for GUPPYs in the 60s and 70s.

Balao-class Springboard GUPPYs with North Atlantic sails: USS Bang (SS-385) preparing to tie up alongside USS Chivo (SS-341) at San Juan Naval Station, Puerto Rico, during Operation Springboard. Of note, the lowest point on the keel to the IFF antenna atop the lowered snorkel was 49 feet 8.25 inches, while the height to the top of the whip antenna is 78 feet from the keel. You weren’t going to submerge one of these bad boys in 10 fathoms! Bang’s skipper, CDR R.J. Carlin, is giving orders from atop her sail. The bow of a Canadian Ojibwa (Oberon) class SSK is visible in the lower left, and a U.S. Coast Guard HU-16 Albatross amphibian is flying low in the center background. Photograph by PHC CJ Wiitala, USN, released 14 March 1968 by Tenth Naval District Public Affairs Office. NH 98697

Further, Tusk was involved in at least two extensive polar ice operations, including with USS Tench (SS-417) on ICEX ’60 and SUBICEX 1-62 with Skate (SS-578) and Entemador (SS-340).

USS Tusk, USS Entemedor, and USS Skate dusted with snow, 1962, during SUBICEX

Tusk on ICEX March 1960 with Tench

Entering Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in July 1965, Tusk was given a six-month major overhaul that including removing all her engines, motors, and generators for rebuild, receiving a new periscope with a built in electronic sextant for taking star shots while still submerged, and picking up the tall streamlined fiberglass/plastic clamshell “North Atlantic” style fairweather typically seen on most American GUPPYs after the mid-60s.

The new sail allowed extra room for the growing number of masts and aerials, a higher observation platform for lookouts, and a more habitable position for watch standers while on the surface. Tusk also received the new Prairie Masker bubbler system, increased air-conditioning capacity, additional storerooms, and additional fresh water tanks as part of the modifications.

Balao class GUPPY II sister USS Catfish post refit 1960s North Atlantic sail. Tusk had the same layout.

Balao class GUPPY II sister USS Catfish post refit 1960s North Atlantic sail. Tusk had the same layout.

Rejoining the fleet in January 1966, Tusk was transferred to SubRon 8.

Submarine Squadron Eight at New London, 1968, with a wild mix of eight Cold War fleet boat conversions. Left to right: USS Sea Robin (SS-407)(GUPPY IA with Portsmouth style step sail); Tusk (SS-426)(GUPPY II w North Atlantic sail); Sea Owl (SS-405)(Fleet Snorkel w EB style step sail and large Project Kayo BQR-4A horseshoe passive sonar array); Sablefish (SS-303)(Fleet Snorkel w North Atlantic sail); Halfbeak (SS-352)(GUPPY II w North Atlantic sail); Blenny (SS-324)(GUPPY IA w North Atlantic sail) and Becuna (SS-319)(GUPPY IA w Portsmouth step-sail). The eighth unidentified submarine on the left has PUFFS passive underwater fire control arrays for the BQG-4 system. NH 88415

Tusk (SS-426) at New London, Connecticut, June 1, 1968, as part of SubRon 8. USS Becuna (SS 319) is across the pier. Sailors on deck, civilians observe from the pier. Courtesy of D.M. McPherson, NH 86627

By 1969, Tusk had been transferred to SubRon 2 but was still based out of her traditional New London home. She was known as The Front Runner, so dubbed “due to its reputation for excellence and high-performance.”

This was supported by her being awarded the Fire Control “E” for several consecutive years and the Battle Efficiency “E” for fiscal year 1973.

Tusk underway in Hampton Roads, Virginia, 11 February 1970, as part of SubRon 2. NHHC K-81809

USS Tusk 1972 Provided by Tom Robinson QM2 (SS)

While on her fifth European deployment on 12 August 1972, while off the coast of Spain, the well-traveled Tusk made her 10,000th dive and surface, a benchmark few submarines have reached. Of note, Tusk’s Balao-class sister USS Spikefish (SS-404) had set the 10,000 record first in 1960 and earned the title of “The divingest Submarine in the World,” which was later claimed by another Balao, USS Piper (SS-409), who logged 13,724 before her decommissioning.

Speaking of decommissioning…

Under the Cog

In 1960, the ROC (Taiwan) Navy embarked on the Sea Shark Project, designed to create a submarine force.

This morphed into the Wuchang Project and, in October 1964, after months of wrangling, Capt Wang Xiling, the ROC naval attaché stationed in Rome, overcame diplomatic difficulties and ordered two 58-foot SX-404 class midget-submarines with a displacement of only 40 tons from the Italian commercial shipyard Cos.Mo.S. SpA, Livorno. Two CosMoS CE2F/X100 human torpedo chariot-style frogman SDVs were acquired as well.

ROCN 58-foot SX-404 class midget submarine Haijiao (Sea Dragon) (S-1) between 1968 and 1973

To avoid complications, the components were shipped from Europe to Tamsui and then assembled in Taiwan by CoS.MoS personnel. The two SX-404 boats were commissioned on 8 October 1969 as Haijiao (Sea Dragon) (S-1) and Hailong (Sea Dragon I) (S-2), and were immediately put to work as training vessels of the Wuchang Submarine Squadron for the nascent ROCN sub force. The CNO of the fleet, ADM Feng Qicong, personally handed out the country’s first dolphin badges that day to the program’s members.

By late 1970, and with two years of midget sub operations under the ROCN’s belt, Capt Wang Xiling, then moved to the embassy in Washington, persuaded the U.S. to sell two submarines to Taiwan as training vessels, citing the need to enhance the navy’s anti-submarine warfare capabilities. In other words, “tame mice” for the ROCN’s two dozen destroyers and frigates to play with.

On 21 April  1971, the U.S. confirmed the planned handover of two surplus GUPPY IIs, initially designated “Project Poseidon” by the Navy, and renamed “Project Mercury” in December. In March, 1972, the first batch of ROCN personnel receiving the Project Mercury submarines arrived at the U.S. Naval Submarine School in New London for training.

Tusk’s sister, USS Cutlass (SS 478), was transferred to the ROCN as ROCS Hai Shih (Sea Lion) (SS 91) on 12 April 1973, her hull number later changed to S-791

By May 1973, with Tusk just returned from a three-month Caribbean training cruise that saw her call at Guantanamo Bay, Ocho Rios, Port au Prince, and Montego Bay, she welcomed aboard 81 officers and men from the Republic of China to commence training for turnover.

In anticipation of the new (to them) vessels, Taiwan laid up its SX-404s and redesignated the Wuchang Submarine Squadron as the Republic of China Navy’s 256th Squadron (Submarine) in August 1973.

On 18 October 1973, Tusk was decommissioned at New London and was simultaneously transferred, by nominal sale, to the Taiwan Navy. Her name was struck from the Navy list on the same day.

She became ROCS Hai Pao (Seal) (SS 92) in the same ceremony, with LCDR David H. Boyd, USN, turning over the boat to CDR Cheng Kuo-Yu, ROCN. Kuo-Yu had served in the Wuchang Squadron since 1969 and had spent seven months in Sub School in New London before beginning training on Tusk/Hai Pao.

Jane’s 1975 entry on the Cutlass/Hai Shih and Tusk/Hai Pao. They have since changed their hull numbers to S-791 and S-792

Amazingly, both of Taiwan’s GUPPYs, for decades the last remaining Balaos in service, are still in operation with the 256th Squadron, training ROCN submariners for the current front-line subs, the Dutch Zwaardvis-class ROCS Hai Lung (Sea Dragon) and ROCS Hai Hu (Sea Tiger), which were delivered in 1988.

Nonetheless, they are still officially combat-ready and undergo regular dry docking, inspection, overhaul, and sea periods.

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 circa 2005

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 internals

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 Zuoying Naval Base Oct 2017 Tuo Chiang-class corvette

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 circa 2014

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 circa 2014

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 sail

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 circa 2014 Keelung

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 circa 2014 Keelung

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 circa 2014 Keelung

ex USS Tusk, now ROCS 海豹(seal), SS792 control room

ROC President Tsai Ing-wen attended the “2017 Naval Goodwill Flotilla Launch Ceremony and Submarine Indigenous Construction Design Initiation and Cooperation Memorandum Signing Ceremony,” emphasizing that submarine indigenous construction is the most challenging aspect of the national defense autonomy policy and a responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief to the nation. The ROC Navy’s Tusk/Hai Pao (SS-792) is moored to Tsai Ing-wen’s left fore-south.

When the first two domestically built Haikun (Seagull)-class SSKs arrive in service in 2026 and 2027 (?),  Cutlass/Hai Shih and Tusk/Hai Pao are expected to be retired with the 40-year-old Dutch boats rotating to fill the roles of the old GUPPYs.

The President of Taiwan presides over the naming and launching ceremony of the prototype submarine built domestically, the future ROCS Haikun (SS-711), on September 28, 2023.

Epilogue

Tusk’s logs and plans are in the National Archives.

There is at least one blog and one crewmember reunion group (who last met in 2017) to cherish Tusk’s memory and those who served on her.

Her U.S. service is remembered in Cold War classic maritime art.

“Cat and Mouse” by Wayne Scarpaci shows the GUPPY II USS Tusk (SS-426) with a Lockheed (P2V) Neptune flying overhead in ASW training.

Her skipper during the Cochino rescue, CDR Worthington (USNA ’38), had been on subs that earned a dozen battle stars and sunk 100,000 tons of shipping during WWII, earning him a Navy Cross, Silver Star, and three Bronze Stars. He didn’t need more medals. He retired from the fleet as a Captain on the staff of the Twelfth Naval District in San Diego in 1962, capping a very busy 24 years of active service. Worthington received an M.S. in Physics and Electronics from UCLA and worked for Lockheed Corporation on the design and construction of the pioneering submersible Deep Quest, which achieved a depth of 8,000 feet during a test dive. Leaving Lockheed in 1975, Worthington returned to the sea, sailing as master on several ocean vessels in Caribbean and Alaskan waters. He passed away in 1996, in San Diego, leaving a wife and two children behind. His papers are in the U.S. Naval War College Archives, of which he was an alumnus.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Nimitz making history on her way out

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The U.S. Embassy in Panama recognized the importance of the recent visit of the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) to Panama City on the country’s West (Pacific) coast as the supercarrier sails to her new homeport in Norfolk from Bremerton. She also hosted representatives from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador for flight ops in the process as part of the 4th Fleet’s Southern Seas 2026.

Panamanian distinguished visitors and U.S. Embassy Panama personnel pose for a photo during flight operations on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) in the Pacific Ocean, March 28, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jaron Wills)

Note, there are over 25,000 American citizens living in Panama, and something like 300,000 former Canal Zone expats and their descendants.

Armed Forces of El Salvadoran and civilian distinguished visitors observe flight operations on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) in the Pacific Ocean, March 27, 2026. Nimitz is deployed as part of Southern Seas 2026, which seeks to enhance capability, improve interoperability, and strengthen maritime partnerships with countries throughout the region through joint, multinational, and interagency exchanges and cooperation. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd

Mexican military and civilian distinguished visitors observe flight operations on the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) in the Pacific Ocean, March 23, 2026. Nimitz is deployed as part of Southern Seas 2026, which seeks to enhance capability, improve interoperability, and strengthen maritime partnerships with countries throughout the region through joint, multinational, and interagency exchanges and cooperation. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jaron W

An F/A-18E Super Hornet, attached to the “Kestrels” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 137, launches from the flight deck of Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) during flight operations in the Pacific Ocean, March 19, 2026. Nimitz is underway in the U.S. 3rd Fleet area of operations as part of a scheduled homeport shift to Norfolk, Virginia. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Meyer)

Nimitz is accompanied by her escort, USS Gridley (DDG-101).

Of course, Nimitz can’t pass through the Canal as she is both too tall (252 feet to the top of the mast) to sail under the Bridge of the Americas which has a 200 foot clearance at high tide, and is too wide (252-foot beam across deck) to fit into even the new 1,400-foot-long Neopanamax locks, opened in 2016, which are only 180 feet wide.

The Embassy said it was the first visit by a U.S. carrier to Panama in “over 50 years.”

The Canal, which opened in 1914, was first transited by an American carrier in January 1924, when USS Langley transitioned from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Langley in Gaillard Cut, Panama Canal, Nov 16, 1924 185-G-0947 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) photo. NARA Identifier: 100996474; Local Identifier: 185-G-947; Agency-Assigned Identifier: 80-C139; Container ID: Box 5, Volume 10. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/100996474

Throughout the rest of the 1920s and 30s, it was common to see Lexington and Saratoga pass through the Canal, swapping from Atlantic to Pacific war games and exercises.

Palm trees form a picturesque setting for USS Saratoga (CV 3) in Pedro Miquel Locks, Panama Canal, Canal Zone, 21 January 1935.

Then came Ranger, Yorktown, Enterprise, and the gang. Of note, Ranger made the passage at least four times in her career.

USS Ranger, in the Panama Canal, late 1930s.

Some 15 of the 24 completed Essex-class carriers were completed on the East Coast and, when rushed west to the Pacific, did so via the “Ditch” to save time and fuel, with many later making their way back through the Canal post VJ Day for mothballs or continued service.

USS Yorktown (CV-10) transiting the Panama Canal, bound for the Pacific combat zone, circa 11 July 1943. Note Grumman TBF-1 and Douglas SBD-5 aircraft on deck. SBDs carry markings of VB-4. Also note camouflage screens alongside the canal lock. Photographed by Lieutenant Charles Kerlee, USNR. 80-G-K-15334

While CVEs and CVLs were soon disposed of in all but auxiliary service and the new Midway class CVBs (and every American flattop class after) were too big to transit the man-made wonder, the Canal remained on the menu when redeploying the dwindling Essexes for Korea and Vietnam. Valley Forge did so at least five times, with the last being in 1962.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) transits Gatun Locks during her transit of the Panama Canal on 31 May 1950. Note crew on deck, and ship utility unit North American SNJ-type aircraft. 80-G-439853

USS Valley Forge (CVA-45) approaches the Pedro Miguel Lock while transiting the Panama Canal, circa 18 August 1953. Her deckload includes several TBM, F4U, and F2H aircraft and many automobiles. The photograph was released for publication on 16 September 1953. NH 96943

USS Valley Forge (CV-45/LPH-8) passing through the Panama Canal, north to south, en route to San Diego, CA., January 1962

However, it should be noted that some East Coast-based CV9s were sent to Vietnam via the Suez (such as Intrepid in 1967) to both boost American presence in the Med and Middle East, even briefly, and because it was a slightly shorter trip (10,350 from Norfolk to Singapore via Suez, versus 10,900 Norfolk to Singapore via Panama and Pearl). Another outlier, USS Shangri-La, made an epic circumnavigation the long way via Cape Town, going East and Cape Horn going West on her 1970-71 Vietnam deployment.

While I cannot pinpoint the final Canal transit by an American carrier, it can be a safe bet that Lexington, which operated from Pensacola, may have called at Panama sometime between the Cuban Missile Crisis and her decommissioning in 1991.

The “more than 50 years” quote would dial it back to circa 1976 and before. I just wish I could say which flattop that was…

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

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Some 80 years ago this week. Off Istanbul, Turkey, on 5 April 1946.

Here we see the famed Iowa-class fast battleship USS Missouri (BB 63) moored in the Bosporus. She had just brought home for burial the body of the late Turkish Ambassador to the U.S., Mehmet Munir Ertegun. This visit was also aimed at influencing Russian Middle East policy. The Gearing-class destroyer USS Power (DD-839) is at left.

Note that Missouri is wearing a more peacetime solid-blue hull (Measure 22) over her wartime Measure 32/22d camouflage, which she wore through the end of WWII, just seven months prior.  National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-702557

At right is the infamous Turkish Moltke-class battle cruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim (ex-SMS Goeben), some 36 years old at the time.

When Missouri, the light cruiser Providence (CL-82), and Power had entered the straits on 5 April, Missouri and Yavuz exchanged 19-gun salutes, two great bookends in battlewagon history.

A better look at Missouri on this cruise. Note the Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk floatplane on her catapult. Official caption: “Mediterranean Cruise 1946 of USS Missouri (BB 63). USS Missouri (BB 63) anchored in the harbor of Piraeus, Greece.” 80-GK-9343

Off Istanbul, Turkey, 5-9 April 1946. Missouri center. She had brought the body of the Late Turkish Ambassador to the United States, Mehmet Munir Ertegun, home for burial, on a mission that was also made to influence Soviet Middle East policy. USS Power (DD-839) is at left, and the Turkish Battlecruiser Yavuz (formerly the German Goeben) is at right. The Dolmabahce Mosque is in the foreground. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-366179

The camouflaged Yavuz (Turkish Battlecruiser, 1911, formerly the German Goeben). Off Istanbul, Turkey, in April 1946, during USS Missouri’s visit there. Photographed by Lieutenant Commander Dewey Wrigley. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-376888

Still somewhat capable of at least scratching the paint of a Soviet battleship or providing NGFS against land forces trying to close the strait, when Turkey joined NATO in 1952, Yavuz picked up a B-series hull number (B70) before she was decommissioned in 1954 after 42 years of service (40 of those to the Turks). Even while laid up, she continued to be used as a stationary headquarters for the Battle Fleet until 1960.

Offered as a museum ship to West Germany, and unable to preserve the historic 25,000-ton vessel themselves, Goeben/Yavuz was instead sold by the Turks for scrap to M.K.E. Seyman in 1971, although several relics were preserved.

Check out this great original color clip of the old girl in 1973 as she was preparing for tow to the breakers:

Warship Wednesday (on a Tuesday) 31 March 2026: Good Luck Sometimes Runs Thin

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday (on a Tuesday) 31 March 2026: Good Luck Sometimes Runs Thin

Admiralty photo by LT Sidney James Beadell, Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve (Sp), Imperial War Museum catalog A 1725

Above we see the twin 5.25″/50 QF Mark II DP gun turrets A, B, and Q forward of the very open bridge of the Royal Navy’s Dido-class light cruiser HMS Bonaventure (31), circa 1940. Note the compass platform and the canvas-covered rangefinder in the foreground.

Often credited with helping to spoil the attack of the much larger German super heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper on Convoy WS 5A– firing 438 rounds from the above three forward turrets in the space of only 24 minutes– Bonaventure gave her last full measure some 85 years ago today, just a short ten months after she was rushed into service.

The Didos

The Didos were very light cruisers indeed, designed in 1936 to weigh just 5,600 tons standard displacement, though this would later swell during wartime service to nearly 8,000 tons. Some 512 feet long, they were smaller than a modern destroyer, but, on a powerplant of four Admiralty 3-drum boilers and four Parsons steam turbines, each with its own dedicated shaft, they could break 32.5 knots on 62,000 shp.

They were intended to be armed with 10 5.25″/50 (13.4 cm) QF Mark II DP guns in five twin mounts, three forward and two over the stern, although most of the class failed to carry this layout.

Bow 5.25″/50 turrets on HMS Hermione as she enters Malta Harbor in September 1941. The muzzles of her third forward “Q” turret can just be seen above the crane at the upper left. She, along with Euryalus, Naiad, and Sirius, was the only Dido that completed with the full battery of five twin 5.25-inch mounts, largely due to a shortage of such guns. IWM A 5772.

The Dido class had provision for up to 360 rounds for “A”, “B” and “Q” turrets, 320 rounds for “X” turret and 300 rounds for “Y” turret and a properly trained crew could rattle them off at 7-8 shots per minute per gun out to a range of 23,400 yards or a ceiling of 46,500 feet when used in the AAA role. The fact that one of these cruisers could burp 70-80 shells within a 60-second mad minute gave them a lot of potential if used properly. However, this didn’t play out in reality, at least when it came to swatting incoming aircraft.

Gunnery booklet laying out the general plan of a Dido-class cruiser

As noted by Richard Worth in his Fleets of World War II, “Often referred to as AA cruisers, the 16 Dido-type ships shot down a total of 15 enemy planes. The entirety of British cruiser-dom accounted for only 97 planes, while enemy planes accounted for 11 British cruisers.”

Nonetheless, these vessels carried a decent (for the era) secondary AAA batteries as well.

Originally fitted with two quad .50-caliber Vickers guns, these were augmented with five single 20mm Oerlikons, whose numbers were further expanded until the ship carried over a dozen in twin mounts by the end of the war.

She was also equipped with a variety of quadruple 2 pdr 40mm MK VIII pom-pom guns on Mk.VII mountings.

WRNS visit Dido-class cruiser Euryalus of the Mediterranean Fleet, 3 May 1942, Alexandria. A Wren with her bearded Supply Petty Officer escort on the pom-pom platform. IWM A 8830 http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142750

Meet Bonaventure

Our subject is at least the 10th RN warship to carry the Latin term for “good fortune” since 1489, giving her nine battle honors carried forward (Lowestoft 1665, Four Days’ Battle 1666, Orfordness 1666, Solebay 1672, Schooneveldt 1673, Texel 1673, Beachy Head 1690, Barfleur 1693, and China 1900).

The immediately preceding ninth Bonaventure was an Astraea-class second-class cruiser commissioned in 1894 and used mostly as a submarine depot ship until broken up in 1920.

“HMS Bonaventure and submarines” circa 1911 by William Lionel Wyllie. RMG PW2083. Inscribed, as title, and signed by the artist, lower right. The ‘Bonaventure’ (1892) was a second-class protected cruiser converted to a submarine depot ship in 1907. This finished watercolor shows the ship in her 1911-14 condition. Both the ‘Bonaventure’ and the trawler tender on the left are flying large red flags, advising other vessels to keep clear of a submarine operating area. 

Ordered from Scotts of Greenock on 21 March 1937 under the 1937 Programme, our future Dido-class Bonaventure was laid down on 30 August the same year as Yard No. 575 and launched on 19 April 1939, officially having a peacetime hull.

Bonaventure shared the same armament fit as class leader Dido and sister Phoebe, with her four twin 5.25″/40s (as opposed to five mounts as seen on Naiad, Euryalus, Hermione, Sirius, Cleopatra, and Argonaut), a single 4″/45 QF Mk V starshell gun in the position of her “X” turret (only ever seen on these three cruisers and Charybdis due to a shortage in the supply of the new 5.25s), two quad Vickers 40/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII pom poms, two quad Vickers 50 cals (guns just seen on the first six Didos, replaced on the latter vessels by Oerlikons) and the univesal torpedo tube fit of two triple 21-inch tubes.

On 24 May 1940, amid the evacuation from Dunkirk, Bonaventure was commissioned for Contractor’s Trials and accepted on 19 June, just days before the Fall of France.

Her plankowner skipper was Henry Jack Egerton, a 48-year-old Mountfield-born Englishman listed in the peerage (grandson of 1st Earl Brassey) who started “taking the king’s shilling” as a Mid in 1909. Serving as a junior officer during the Great War, he shipped aboard the battleship HMS Agincourt, the cruiser Caledon, and the battlecruiser Repulse. Interwar, he passed out of the Senior Officers’ War Course at Greenwich and the Imperial Defence Course before moving into the captain’s cabin of the destroyer Bridgewater, his first command, in 1936. When WWII began, he was commanding officer of the Emerald-class light cruiser Enterprise with the 4th CS on Atlantic escort duties.

War photographer LT Sidney James Beadell, RNVR, captured a series of images of “Britain’s latest light cruiser” and her skipper and XO, CDR Edward Francis Disbrowe, RN.

IWM A 1733

IWM A 1732

IWM A 1739

IWM A 1731

Note her two H-aerial (separate transmitting and receiving antennas) 70kW Type 279 A-band radar atop her mainmast, good for a theoretical 60nm for high altitude targets and about 2-6nm for surface targets. IWM A 1730

Note her missing “turret. IWM A 1734

Left: Captain E J Egerton, RN, and (Right) Commander E F Disbrowe, RN. Disbrowe, 39, had joined up in 1919 and had previously commanded the Acacia-class sweeping sloop HMS Laburnum out of Singapore. IWM (A 1735)

War! (Already in progress)

After just a couple weeks of trials and exercises in the Clyde followed by a short yard period to address defects, Bonaventure sailed out on 5 July to escort the liners Monarch of Bermuda, Batory, and Sobieski for Halifax– all loaded with £25 million in gold from the Bank of England, sent abroad for safekeeping in Canada should Mr. Hitler cross the Channel as part of Operation Fish. The little convoy was joined at sea by the battleship HMS Revenge and three destroyers.

On her return from the Canada run, Bonaventure was assigned to the 15th Cruiser Squadron, Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, and she shipped out with HMS Naiad to patrol the Faeroes for German blockade runners in late August.

HMS Bonaventure as seen from the destroyer HMS Javelin, August 1940, in the Firth of Forth. Note her four-turret arrangement. Photo by Reginald George Guy Coote, IWM (A 443).

By 6 September, she was part of Operation DF, a carrier raid built around HMS Furious on German shipping in the occupied Trondheim area.

The next month saw Operations DN 2/DNU which aimed to bag a group of 20 German fishing vessels and a patrol ship that were reported off Egersund. Only the 300-ton weather ship WBS 5 (ex-Adolf Vinnen) was found and sunk north of Iceland, sent to the bottom by detached destroyers.

November saw Bonaventure scrabbled to join the unsuccessful hunt (alongside Hood and Repulse) for the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer after the latter attacked convoy HX 84, with our new cruiser sustaining weather damage to her foc’sle in the rough North Atlantic.

Nominated for duty in the Mediterranean Fleet with the rest of the 15th CS, Bonaventure put in for repair at Rosyth and was then assigned to escort the slow Middle East military Convoy WS (Winston Special) 5A, its 18 transports packed with 40,000 troops, from UK ports to the Suez. WS5A started leaving on 18/19 December and by Christmas Eve was some 700 miles West of Spain’s Cape Finisterre, where they stumbled across the bruising 18,000-ton German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper on her Operation Nordseetour raid.

Not what you want to see chasing you if you are a British light cruiser.

While the convoy had two carriers attached (Furious and Argus), they only had a bare handful of two Swordfish of 825 NAS and three Skuas of 801 NAS available for ASW duties; the rest of their hangars and decks were packed with aircraft being ferried to Takoradi in Ghana.

That left the primary line of defense against Hipper in the hands of the County-class heavy cruiser HMS Berwick, our Bonaventure, and the old 4,000-ton Danae-class light cruiser Dunedin. While Berwick carried eight 8″/50s and went some 13,000 tons, her armor was thin. Likewise, Dunedin carried slow 6″/45 Mk XIIs, which had been all but replaced in RN service.

Hipper had made contact with the convoy with her DeTe radar at some 23km out late on Christmas Eve. Closing to 6,600 meters unseen, she attempted an unsuccessful three-fish long-range night torpedo attack at 0153 on Christmas, then closed for a gun action at 0639 in a heavy gale with whitecaps. Over the next 36 minutes, Berwick and Bonaventure fought Hipper at long range, with Dunedin laying smoke and the convoy dispersed, the weather dropping visibility to less than a mile. The Brits used Hipper’s gun flashes as an aiming point, with the German boogeyman turning to retire.

Berwick got the worst of the encounter, hit by at least four of Hipper’s 8-inch AP shells (which, for the most part, passed right through the ship), knocking out her X turret, killing four of her crew, and sending her to the yard for seven months. Hipper also landed an 8-inch shell on the liner/transport Empire Trooper (ex-German Cap Norte, 13,994 GRT), having fired 174 shells in the encounter, and a 4.1-inch DP shell hit on the freighter Arabistan (5,874 GRT). Hipper made Brest on 27 December.

For Bonaventure’s part, she fired a “prodigious amount of 5.25in shell,” some 438 rounds, from her forward six guns in 24 minutes at Hipper, who came away with no damage. I mean, that is probably understandable for the low visibility and heavy seas of the encounter, and her performance was mirrored by sisters Cleopatra and Euryalus, who fired 868 and 421 5.25-inch shells at the Battle of Second Sirte in 1942 and hit as many Italian ships as Bonaventure did Germans on Christmas ’40.

Sent to look for the damaged Empire Trooper-– which she located– Bonaventure got something of a consolation prize by encountering the 8,300-ton German blockade runner Baden on Boxing Day, sending the HAPAG freighter to the bottom via torpedo– as the weather conditions did not allow boarding– about 325 nautical miles northeast of Ponta Delgada in the Azores. All 39 crew members were rescued and taken to Gibraltar, with their skipper, Capt. Max Schaefer, reporting on the three-day ride on the cruiser: “The accommodation on board was very primitive, but the food was plentiful and good.”

The HAPAG steamer Baden was sent to the bottom by Bonaventure while coming from Tenerife and bound for occupied France.

January 1941 saw Bonaventure outbound from Gibraltar and involved in the periphery of Operation Ration, the interdiction of a four-ship Vichy convoy off Oran. Then came convoy ops in the Med to Malta (Operations Excess and Operation MC 4) with our cruiser generally credited with shooting down at least one (and up to three) attacking Italian Savoia bombers on the 9th.

By February, she was operating from Suda Bay with other cruisers of CS15 and took part in Operation Abstention, the failed commando raid on the Italian island of Casteloriso (Castelelorizo).

Dido-class cruiser HMS Bonaventure steaming at high speed in the Med, early 1941

March saw her with Force C, supporting Convoy MW 6 to Malta, where she survived a near miss from a German bomber, just narrowly missing the Battle of Cape Matapan.

Returning to Alexandria, Bonaventure joined Force A at sea on the 29th to escort another convoy, GA 8, from Piraeus, Greece. The convoy heading from Greece to Alexandria with the transports HMS Breconshire and Cameronia, along with the destroyers HMAS Stuart, HMS Griffin, and HMS Hereward, was soon being bird-dogged by Italian submarines.

Bonaventure came away from a night attack mounted by the Italian Adua-class submarine Dagabur (TV Domenico Romano) at 2037 on 30 March, with both of the sub’s fired torpedoes missing at 3,000 meters.

Our cruiser was not as lucky, just six hours later, when the Italian Perla-class coastal submarine Ambra (TV Mario Arillo) came across her while about 100 nm south-south-east of Crete.

Via Uboat.net:

At 0237 hours, Ambra was proceeding on the surface when, from the bridge, S.T.V. Ignazio Spinale observed a shadow in the mist at a distance of 2,000 meters, followed by another at about 1,000 meters.

At 0244 hours, three torpedoes were fired from bow tubes at 4-second intervals. After a lapse of time, T.V. Arillo thought the torpedoes had missed. He was about to order the firing of more torpedoes when a double explosion was observed. He immediately gave orders to crash-dive. ASDIC pings (described as “Hastings” in the Italian report) were heard, and many depth charges followed, but the submarine escaped.

Bonaventure sank in six minutes, taking 139 souls with her, including her XO, CDR Disbrowe. Stuart and Hereward heaved to and picked up 310 survivors. She was the third of HM’s cruisers taken out of action in the last week of March in the region.

The cruiser is often billed as the largest warship sunk by Italian submarines in WWII.

She was in the first batch of a staggering 206 Allied vessels lost in the Eastern Med during the Greek/Crete campaign and its follow-on evacuation between 28 March and 1 June.

Bonaventure’s slayer: the 600-ton. 197-foot Italian Perla-class coastal submarine Ambra. She was knocked out of service by RAF Wellingtons in 1943 and sent to the bottom for good by USAAF B-17s the following year

Of Bonaventure’s sisters, Charybdis, Hermione, Spartan, and Naiad were all lost during the conflict. Classmate HMS Scylla was badly damaged by a mine in June 1944 and was never repaired.

Epilogue

Our ship and her lost men are remembered by The Wartime Memories Project in the UK and For Posterity’s Sake in Canada, as at least two of her final complement hailed from the RCN/RCNVR.

Bonaventure’s only skipper, Jack Egerton, survived his ship. He continued in the cruiser trade, going on to command the familiar Berwick from Admiral Hipper fame while escorting convoys to North Russia, was named an ADC to the King, and ended the war as Senior British Officer in Russia then later became Captain in Charge, Singapore/Malaya with a CB on his chest before moving to the Retired List in 1948, capping 39 years in uniform. VADM Henry Jack Egerton, C.B., RN, passed in Coxwold in 1972, aged 80, and is buried in St Helen and the Holy Cross Churchyard in North Yorkshire with his wife. His eldest son. LT Edward Gervase Egerton, RN, was killed in action at Dieppe in 1942, aged 22. His younger son, Col. Christopher Charles “Kit” Egerton, M.C., passed in 1970, a former commander of the 15th/19th Hussars.

Captain E J Egerton, RN, as seen aboard Bonaventure, May 1940. By Beadle, IWM (A 1737).

The final Bonaventure (F139), the command and depot ship for the newly formed X/XE-craft of the 14th Submarine Flotilla, entered service in 1943 and, by extension, went on to be the most decorated ship in the fleet, her submariners earning no less than 4 VCs, 3 CBEs, 11 DSOs, a OBE, 10 MBEs, 17 DSCs, 6 CGMs, 12 BSMs, 4 BEMs, and over 100 MiDs from her deck during WWII. She returned to commercial service in 1948 and was scrapped in 1963.

HMS Bonaventure, Xcraft mothership, IWM 30564

Somehow, the RN has not seen fit to recycle the name.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Bonefish, found

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Gato-class fleet boat USS Bonefish (SS-223) returning to the submarine base in Fremantle, Australia, at the end of her 4th war patrol on 30 May 1944

In company with her fellow fleet boats Tunny and Skate, USS Bonefish (SS-223), commanded by T/CDR Lawrence Lott “Larry” Edge (USNA ’35), departed Guam on 28 May 1945 to conduct her eighth war patrol. She is still on that patrol, and until last week her final resting place was known only to God, sunk by Japanese surface forces near Toyama Wan on or about 18 June.

(Photo: Chris Eger)

Last week, Tiburon Subsea CEO Tim Taylor and the Lost 52 Project announced that the wreck of Bonefish had been discovered during surveys in 2025.

Beyond Bonefish, Tiburon’s current expedition located the lost Sumner-class destroyers USS Drexler (DD-741) and William D Porter (DD-579), and the Japanese merchant ship Konzan Maru.

More here.

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 26 March 2026: Gallic Stepping Stone

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 26 March 2026: Gallic Stepping Stone

Above we see the one-of-a-kind Croiseur d’aviation (aviation cruiser) Commandant Teste between May 1938 and August 1940 with a fat Loire 130 flying boat above her, likely from Escadrille Embarquée de Surveillance HS1.

Our subject was authorized under the French 1926 Programme some 100 years ago this year, and she was a very curious ship with a notable history.

French carrier beginnings

Before the Great War, the 6,100-ton torpedo boat tender (croiseur porte-torpilleurs) Foudre had been converted for experiments with seaplanes of a half dozen different types, minting the French Navy’s first 13 seaplane pilots, moving up to having a 33-foot flying off platform installed in early 1914.

A Caudron seaplane, being craned on La Foudre in April 1914.

During the war, while Foudre was put to use as a submarine tender and aircraft transport, the French Navy converted at least four small merchant steamers to carry a couple of light deck guns and a few Nieuport IV and later FBA C-type seaplanes for patrol purposes. Two, Nord and Pas-de-Calais, were 1,541-ton paddle-wheelers. A third, the 1,656-ton turbine-powered Rouen, was more effective. The largest, the 3,319-ton Campinas, would remain in service until early 1920. The old Foudre, used as an aviation school ship immediately after the war, was decommissioned by December 1921.

Enter: Lieutenant de Vaisseau Paul Marcel Teste. 

Born in 1892, Teste graduated from the naval academy and shipped out on the cruisers Duguay-Trouin and Vauban before WWI. By 1916, as commander of the gunboat Dragon, he was accepted to flight school by the end of the year, and was an observer on FBA seaplanes of Escadrille B101 out of Dunkirk. When his section of four lightly armed FBAs came across seven formidable German Hansa-Brandenburg W.12s on 26 May 1917, he was plucked out of the water after the clash and imprisoned first in Zeebrugge, then at Oflag Kavalier-Scharhorst in Karlsruhe. The intrepid young officer managed to escape and make his way to the Dutch border in January 1918. He earned his pilot’s license (no. 568) and finished the war as an instructor at Saint-Raphaël.

Drawing from British aircraft trials on the early carriers HMS Argus and Furious, LdV Georges Guierre was tapped to attempt to fly a wheeled aircraft (a Hanriot HD2 stripped of its floats) from a 49-foot platform on the No. 2 turret of the Courbet-class battleship Paris in Toulon on 26 October 1918.

LdV Georges Guierre battleship Paris Oct 26 1918

After Guierre’s success at Toulon, Teste moved to repeat the effort from Paris while docked at Corfu two days before the Armistice. He wound up in the water.

Following those tests, a comical 65-foot platform, some 28 feet wide, was built over the bow of the 245-foot Arras-class aviso Bapaume in March 1920. Over the next four years, Teste and others flew a series of light aircraft (Hanriot HD 2, Nieuport 21/23, and Nieuport-Delage NiD.32) from this tiny deck.

French Lieutenant Commander Teste on the Bapaume with his Hanriot

French Lieutenant Commander Teste on the Bapaume with his Hanriot, circa 1920

Then came Teste’s biggest claim to fame, becoming the first aviator to land and take off from the unfinished aircraft carrier Bearn off Toulon on 20 October 1920 in a proof of concept.

On Bearn, an incomplete Normandie-class battleship launched in April 1920 and likely bound for the scrappers due to the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty, a 148-by-30-foot wooden platform with an improvised arresting gear system that was weighted down with sandbags.

Teste trapping on incomplete Bearn 20 October 1920

Teste’s take-offs and landings using the temporary wooden flight deck were made in a two-seat Sopwith 11⁄2 strutter. During the 1921 trials, the Sopwiths were replaced by the two-seat Hanriot HD.3.

The tests a success, Bearn was sent for full carrier conversion, including hangar and elevators. She was commissioned in May 1928. However, Capitaine de Fregate Teste would never see her in her final form. He was killed in a test flight in 1925, aged just 32.

Meet the Commandant Teste

Under the 1.4 billion franc 1926 Program (up from the 1925 Program’s 1.31 billion), a 10,000-ton Treaty Cruiser with eight 8″/50 Modele 1924 guns was authorized, becoming Colbert, the second ship of the Suffren class.

Colbert was joined in the same 1926 Program by three 2,000 ton Bourrasque class destroyers, four smaller 1,500-ton L’Adroit class destroyers, seven submarines– the experimental cruiser submarine Surcouf and the start of the 630-series (Argonaute, Orion, and Diane classes)– the 6,000-ton sub tender Jules Verne, two tankers, a school ship (the 70-foot Breton yawl Mutin, which is still in service), and our Commandant Teste, named after the lost aviation pioneer.

It was thought that the Commandant Teste would act as a sort of tender to the building Bearn, and as a floating reserve from which aircraft supplies and spare planes could be drawn by the fleet’s battleships and cruisers, who were increasingly given facilities for float planes. Alternatively, she could always serve on colonial patrol and put up a decent air wing for light strike purposes (although she could not recover them very rapidly).

Still, heady stuff and on the cutting edge of modernity.

This 1931 cover of La Science et la Vie celebrates the Commandant Teste,

At 10,000 tons standard (12,000 full), the Commandant Teste was 547 feet overall length and had a very wide 88-foot beam, a roughly 6:1 ratio. She had a deep draft, some 22 feet. Powered by four mixed-firing super-heated Yarrow-Loire boilers and two sets of Schneider-Zoelly geared steam turbines, she had 21,000shp (23,230 forced) to turn her twin screws, enough for a 20.5 knot sustained top speed. On her trials, she sustained 21.77 knots for three hours. Carrying 720 tons of coal and 290 tons of fuel oil, she had a range of 6,000nm at 10 knots using coal alone.

1929 Jane’s on the new Commandant Teste, which had just been launched.

She had a cavernous hangar deck (hangar et teugue) that stood three decks high and ran 262.5 feet long and 86 wide, bisected by a central bulkhead.

This allowed at least 10 large torpedo bombers (Loire 130 twin engine flying boats with a maximum take off weight of nearly 8,000 pounds) to be stored with their wings folded or 20 smaller aircraft (e.g. the later Gourdou-Leseurre GL-812 HY reconnaissance floatplane used by Escadrille 7S2, which had a 34 foot fuselage, a 54 foot wingspan and 5,000 pound take off weight). Another half-dozen aircraft could be stowed, knocked down in crates.

. Gourdou-Leseurre 812 of Ecadrille 7S2 is being hoisted aboard Commandant Teste, Arzew, Algeria, May 1937. The three-place GL-812 HY used a single 420hp Gnome, was good for 110kts, could range 300nm, and carry 330 pounds of bombs to augment a single forward-firing 7.7mm machine gun and two used by the rear seater.

The Levasseur PL14 and PL15 three-seat biplane torpedo bombers were seen on Teste from early in her career, flying with Escadrille 7B2 until November 1933 (PL14) and HB1 (PL15) until April 1939.

The short-lived (in service on Teste) CAMS 37 and CAMS 55 flying boats were only embarked on the ship with Escadrille 7B2 from November 1933 to July 1934.

The big Loire 130 flying boat, akin to the RN’s Supermarine Walrus, could hit 119 knots on a pair of Hispano-Suiza V12s and stay in the air an impressive seven hours. Besides its three-man crew (and four passengers in a pinch), it could carry a pair of machine guns and two 165-pound bombs. The French Navy bought 111 of these, and they served with HS1 aboard Teste.

The Loire 130 was also used on the Richelieu and Dunkerque class battleships, as well as the light cruisers of the La Galissonière and Duguay-Trouin classes, carrying as many as five of the flying boats and two catapults.

The good-idea-on-paper Loire 210 was a single-seat catapult-launched fighter seaplane that, powered by a 720hp Hispano-Suiza 9Vbs, could only make 162 knots. Armed with four wing-mounted 7.5mm machine guns, they were prone to structural failure of the wings. Just 21 were delivered, flying with Escadrille HC.1 and HC.2 for six months in 1939.

By late 1938, the new Latecoere 298B folding wing torpedo bomber floatplane was arriving in the French fleet, which purchased 177 of the type. Using the same Hispano-Suiza 12Y as the MS.406 fighter, it could make 156 knots, range 600nm, and carry a very respectable 1,600 pounds of ordnance, be it a torpedo or bombs. It had three light machine guns for self-defense (two forward, one rear). Teste would ship two squadrons of these, HB1 (formerly 7B2) and HB2. In September 1939, four land-based squadrons 298s were operational, including 1T on the Étang de Berre (a lagoon on the Mediterranean coast), 2T at Cherbourg, and 3T and 4T at Boulogne.

Aboard Teste, aircraft were shuttled around on an innovative Decauville rail system of wheeled trolleys running throughout the hangar to the quarterdeck at the rear of the ship. No deck tractors here.

When it came to launching and recovery, he had four large Penhoet compressed-air catapults amidship and five cranes– one for each cat and one over the stern to serve the aft hangar entrance.

Catapultage Gourdou-Leseurre GL-810 HY Commandant-Teste vers 1936 (musée de la Marine)

French seaplane tender Commandant Teste with Morane Saulnier MS-406s moving via rail in her hangars circa 1940 on a ferry run

She had no elevators, and instead simply used her catapult cranes to pluck aircraft from a 50×23-foot hatch, one per cat, which opened to the hangar deck below. She could reportedly launch four aircraft in seven minutes and, with recovery taking about 20 minutes per airframe, would require as long as seven hours to re-embark a full 20-aircraft wing.

After hangar doors and cranes on the French seaplane carrier Commandant Teste

The French also employed a towed beaching ramp to enable floatplane recovery while steaming.

A postcard with Teste showing one of her Loire 130s along with an Air France Breguet Br.530 flying boat, registered as F-AJOB, flying over water in the late 1930s. The 20-passenger, three-engine Br.530 was used by Air France on their Marseille-Ajaccio-Tunis route.

A tinted version of the same card.

Besides her aircraft, Commandant Teste carried a full dozen 100 mm/45 (3.9″) Modele 1927 guns, capable of firing 10 35-pound shells per minute to 16,000 yards, controlled by two directors with 10-foot optical rangefinders. This weapon was only carried by our subject, with the updated Modele 1932 variant later used on three classes of torpedo boats (Melpomène class, Chevreuil, and La Capricieuse). Her decent secondary armament (for the time), was geared toward AAA and amounted to eight 37mm/50 (1.46″) Modele 1925 high-angle guns, and six twin 13.2mm/76 (52 caliber) Hotchkiss Modele 1929 heavy machine guns.

Armor included a two-inch belt that protected most of her length from bridge to her stern hangar deck, a 1.5-inch armored deck over her machinery spaces, and just over three inches of shielding for the conning tower. During a later refit, her 3.9-inch guns received shields.

She is described interchangeably in texts as an aviation cruiser, which is probably the most correct term, or, more simply, a transport d’hydravions (seaplane transport), which is more Treaty-friendly and less likely to draw the ire of other signatories of the age.

Boats included a 32-foot and 36-foot Motor Service Boat (Canot de Service a Moteur), two 40-foot and one 30-foot fast launches (Vedette Rapides), a 36-foot lug-rigged sail chaloupe, two 10-foot punts, and two 16-foot rowboats.

Ordered in May 1927, she was laid down at the Forges et chantiers de la Gironde, in Bordeaux, on 6 September 1927 and was launched on 12 April 1929.

Our subject is the only warship to carry the name of the late naval aviator, and the largest seaplane carrier used by a European fleet.

She was a rival to the Regia Marina’s very proud 4,500-ton seaplane carrier, Giuseppe Miraglia, which entered service in November 1927 and could carry as many as 20 light aircraft. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the Royal Australian Navy in 1928 welcomed its new seaplane carrier, HMAS Albatross, which hit the scales at 7,000 tons and could carry nine aircraft.

Commandate Teste’s design was considered successful, and Chantiers shopped it to Portugal, albeit in a shortened concept.

Prewar service

Seaplane tender Commandant Teste during trials, July 1931

Seaplane tender Commandant Teste during trials, July 1931. Note that her guns are not installed. 

Commissioned to active service on 18 April 1932, Commandant Teste served with the French Mediterranean Squadron opposite the Italian Giuseppe Miraglia.

Over the next eight years, she had four squadrons associated with her Flottille F1H airwing:

Escadrille Embarquée de Surveillance HS-1/7S-2, which, as 7S-2, flew Gourdou-Leseurre 810/811s until October 1935, Gourdou-Leseurre 812/813 from April 1938, then, as HS-1, switched to Loire 130 flying boats from October 1938

Escadrille Embarquée de Bombardement 7B-2/HB-1 (“Walruses”), which, as 7B-2, flew Levasseur PL14s until November 1933, CAMS 37 and CAMS 55s until July 1934, from October 1938 to April 1939, then, as HB-1, flew Latecoere 298s from March 1939

Escadrille Embarquée de Bombardement HB-2, which also flew Latecoere 298s from September 1939.

Escadrille Embarquée de Chasse HC-1, which existed from July to November 1939 and flew the troublesome Loire 210 floatplane fighter.

In company with the submarine tender Jules-Verne, Commandant Teste took part in naval maneuvers off Quiberon in May 1934. The exercise aimed to intercept a naval force tasked with destroying a troop convoy from North Africa, with the cruisers Dugay-Trouin, Foch, Tourville, Dupleix, and Colbert.

She then took part in other fleet exercises in the Bay of Biscay and as far off as Dakar in West Africa.

French battleship Bretagne near Brest, 1935, with Commandant Teste, a trio of CAMS flying boats, and the cruiser Foch

French seaplane-tender Commandant Teste anchored off Saint Raphaël naval air base, August 5th 1936

Both Bearn and Commandant Teste were deployed during the Spanish Civil War. This led Teste to evacuate foreign nationals and civilians from Barcelona in August 1936.

After that, she was part of the international neutrality patrol there, protecting commercial shipping from “pirate submarines.”

“Latest volunteer in the undeclared Mediterranean War” by Daniel Fitzpatrick, lampooning the Italian pirate submarines in the Spanish Civil War. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri, 5 Sept 1937. Via The State Historical Society of Missouri https://cdm17228.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ec/id/11937

She was increasingly used to shuttle military aircraft from Europe to France’s overseas possessions.

Teste hauled 18 Dewoitine D.510s from GC II/1 and 5 Dewoitine D.510s to Sidi-Ahmed in Tunisia in November 1937, then repatriated 10 of the aforementioned aircraft back to France four months later.

She then brought 21 Morane-Saulnier MS.406 fighters from GC I/6 to Algeria in February 1939.

War!

Sadly, the French never seemed to take advantage of Commandant Teste in a combat capacity, just using her for patrol work for the first five months of the war.

Landing her Flottille F1H airwing in January 1940, her squadrons were reassigned to shore duty, with HS-1 flying from Oran and later Arzew, Algeria; HB-1 from Karouba, Tunisia, and HB-2 from Berre Lagoon outside of Marseille, where they flew surveillance missions until the Armistice.

Our subject, shorn of her air group, then clocked in as a transport, shuttling 26 MS.406s to Beirut in February 1940 for the I/7 fighter group based at Rayack.

With the French air force leaning into moving some muscle and training operations to North Africa, she then carried:

  • 6 Potez 63 recon/bombers and 1 Morane 406 to Port Said, Egypt in March.
  • 13 Potez 63s, 2 Loire 130s, and 11 vehicles to Beirut in April.
  • 38 Glenn Martin 167F (Maryland) light bombers of GB I/62 from Toulon to Algiers in early May.
  • 40 training aircraft (e.g. Dewoitine D.500/D.510s, Morane MS 225s, Breguet 14s) from Toulon to Algiers on May 22.
  • Another 40 training aircraft from Toulon to Algiers on 26 May.
  • And 40 more on 14 June.

French seaplane tender Commandant Teste, taking four squadrons of Morane Saulnier MS-406 fighters to North Africa, and Lebanon

French seaplane tender Commandant Teste, Beirut

French seaplane tender Commandant Teste, Beirut, with a Morane Saulnier MS-406 in the foreground.

Then came the Fall of France and the cessation of hostilities (at least with the Germans and Italians) on 25 June, ending the active six-week Battle of France and splitting the nation into an occupied north and a nominally free unoccupied France (the zone libre) in the Vichy-controlled south.

An uneasy Vichy “Peace.”

In the final days of France’s initial combat against the Axis in 1940, the French admiralty made definite moves to send their fleet outside of metropolitan France. While a few were interred in British ports (e.g., the old battleship Lorraine and four cruisers in Alexandria, the elderly battleships Paris and Courbet in Portsmouth), this saw numerous ships appear in French colonies in the Caribbean and Africa en masse.

The great naval anchorage of Mers-El-Kebir, Tunisia, by the end of June, was host to elements of ADM Marcel-Bruno Gensoul’s Force de Raid, which included the very modern 35,000-ton/29.5 knot fast battleships Dunkerque and Strasbourg, the older 26,000-ton Great War era battlewagons Provence and Bretagne, six destroyers, and our Commandant Teste.

French battleships Bretagne, Strasbourg, Provence, and Dunkerque at Mers-El-Kebir. This photo was taken from the Commandant Teste shortly before the British attack on 3 July 1940. One of her cranes can be seen in the foreground.

Then came ADM James Somerville’s Force H from Gibraltar in the Churchill-directed Operation Catapult. Backed by the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the battleships Valiant and Resolution, the Swordfish-carrying flattop Ark Royal (which dropped mines in the exit channel), and a force of cruisers and destroyers, Somerville issued an ultimatum to Gensoul: join him, sail to a British port, be interned in a neutral port, or scuttle their ships.

Long story short, Gensoul refused and, before French submarines and destroyers could arrive to reinforce him, Somerville bombarded the anchorage, leading to 1,297 French deaths. Most of these came from Bretagne, whose magazine exploded after at least four British 15-inch AP shells hit her. She rolled over and capsized with the loss of 36 officers, 151 petty officers, and 825 seamen.

Bretagne was seen sinking at Mers-El-Kébir from Commandant Teste. Note the range finder and Bachi cap.

Commandant Teste and her crew of nearly 700 men were, as noted by French naval texts, “miraculously spared” (miraculeusement épargnés) during the attack of 3 July 1940, only receiving a couple of shrapnel hits that caused minor damage and no casualties.

Bretagne sunk at Mers-El-Kébir, Commandant Teste seen with her boats in the water

The closest vessel to the lost Bretagne, Teste’s boats moved in swiftly to rescue as many survivors as could be found– 308 scarred men.

Ordered to Oran, accompanied by two destroyers, the next day with a cargo of burned and injured men, Teste was sighted by the P-class submarine HMS Proteus (N 29) that afternoon. However, before an attack could be started, the French ship altered course to the eastward and was soon lost out of sight by the British sub the French tender was able to drop off her human cargo.

Proteus sighted Commandant Teste again two days later, headed to Bizerte, on 6 July, but by then the Admiralty had ordered that no French ships should be attacked unless they attacked first, so the submarine let her be.

Once Commandant Teste returned to Toulon in metropolitan France, a deputation from her crew went to the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bonne Garde in La Seyne-sur-Mer to place a votive offering (ex-voto) to the Virgin Mary there for having protected the ship during the cauldron of Mers-El-Kebir, where British shells rained all around her.

By August 1940, with her air wing officially dissolved, Teste was swaying at Toulon, her crew reduced and her magazines and bunkers empty. She spent the next two years as a floating schoolhouse.

French seaplane tender Commandant Teste, battleship Provence, and the accommodation hulk Condorcet, Toulon, July 1941

When the Great Sabordage came on 27 November 1942 after the German operation to seize the fleet at Toulon, codenamed “Unternehmen Lila” kicked off, within minutes, 77 French vessels– including three battleships, seven cruisers, 15 destroyers, 13 torpedo boats, 6 avisos (sloops), 20 submarines, and our Commandant Teste– were aflame or settled to the harbor docks, their crews busy wrecking everything they could.

The French suffered about 40 casualties. The Germans, only one motorcycle rider was wounded.

seaplane carrier Commandant Teste, the battleship Courbet, and the old predreadnought battleship Condorcet Toulon

Refloated in 1943 by the Italians, who hoped to use her, she was sunk again at Toulon by Allied air strikes the next year. Raised and dewatered in June 1945, it was thought she could be refitted and returned to service, perhaps with her superstructure converted to a flight deck and turned into a proper aircraft carrier.

As noted in the 1945 Jane’s:

Kept around for another 18 years, growing mold and accumulating barnacles, she was only sold for scrap in 1963.

Epilogue

Sadly, the French fleet has not reused the name of the vessel, and few relics are to be found.

The most tangible reminders are her distinctive ‘Blue T’ ship’s badges worn by her crew, which circulate among collectors.

And in period postcards.

Of course, the country went on to reboot its carrier tradition immediately post-war, operating as many as four flattops in the 1950s, and today maintains the only CVN CATOBAR carrier not in U.S. service, so there is that.

Odds are, old Paul Teste would take solace in that fact.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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French going big with new 80,000 ton CATOBAR CVN

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As any navy expert will concede, having just a single aircraft carrier in your fleet is essentially having a carrier in name only, as the prospect of keeping it continuously ready to deploy is a farce. A carrier strike force “in-being.” An exercise in carrier theory. A headquarters float for a naval parade.

Sure, there have been many countries that tried the single-carrier concept during the Cold War —Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Thailand, the Netherlands —but they all decided that the money would be better spent on more escorts, submarines, and perhaps an LPH/LPD or two.

The juice just wasn’t worth the squeeze. At best, a sole carrier allowed them to go to sea for a few week-long workups one year and a short 4-6 month deployment the next, then have to go totally offline for most of a year every six or seven years for refit and refurbishment in a pretty big dry dock that they may not have. Then there is the problem of keeping a carrier air wing operational, sans carrier.

A few other navies briefly operated two (even conceptually three) carriers then downshifted to a single flattop due to budgetary reasons (Canada and Australia), but, as witnessed by the Royal Navy’s ups and downs when it comes to keeping two-three CV/CVLs since the 1970s (albeit with a zero carrier gap from 2014 to 2017), the Soviet’s four 40,000-ton Kiev class (Project 1143 Krechyet) Yak-38 carriers in the 1980s, Italy’s own two-top policy since 2009, and India’s decision to operate at least two since 2013, that figure is the bare minimum to ensure that, maybe, there would be one ready when needed.

France was an early adherent to this rule, having operated 2-4 carriers almost continuously from 1932 to 1997, 65 years (with a gap from November 1942 to April 45).

Pre-WWII, they had the 12,000-ton cruiser-armed seaplane carrier Commandant Teste (which could carry 26 aircraft and had four catapults) and the small (598-foot, 22,000 t) carrier Bearn, the latter of which was really just a Treaty-era use of an incomplete Normandie-class battleship hull. Two planned 35,000-ton Joffre-class carriers never made it off the drawing board before 1940.

French Aircraft Carrier Béarn, in exile in Martinique, Feb 1941, LIFE David E. Scherman

During WWII, the Free French picked up the U.S.-built escort carrier Dixmude (A609) (ex-HMS Biter, ex-Rio Parana) in April 1945, then soon added the 18,000-ton British Colossus-class carrier Arromanches (R95).

French Douglas SBD Dauntless au-dessus du porte-avions Arromanches.

The French carrier force grew to four with the loan of two 15,000-ton Independence-class light carriers in the early 1950s: Bois Belleau (R97) (ex-USS Belleau Wood) and La Fayette (R96) (ex-USS Langley), and would operate through 1960.

By 1961, the first of two 32,000-ton French-built Clemenceau-class CATOBAR carriers, Clemenceau (R98) and Foch (R99), entered service, while a larger 45,000-ton CV, Verdun, was only canceled later.

French carrier Arromanches in her 1960s Commando Carrier role. The ex-HMS Colossus (15), Arromanches served in the French fleet from 1946 to 1974, transitioning from fixed-wing fleet carrier off Indochina and Algeria, then in a commando LPH role, and finally as a training carrier (AVT)

From 1963, when Foch entered the fleet through 1974 when Arromanches was decommissioned and returned to the British, the French had two brand-new fleet carriers and a third legacy training/commando carrier on hand.

French aircraft carriers Foch (R99) and Clemenceau (R98) in 1977

It was only in October 1997 that the French reduced to a single carrier (something they hadn’t done since Commandant Teste joined Bearn back in 1932) when Clemenceau struck. The worn-out Foch herself was retired in November 2000, leaving France with zero carriers for six months until the 42,000-ton CVN Charles de Gaulle commissioned in May 2001.

Charles de Gaulle at Goa, December 2025

Since then, France has been the only country in history to run a CVN other than the U.S. (even the Chinese and Russians have only operated conventionally powered flattops), which is an accomplishment. She has had several gaps in her career, leaving France sans carrier aviation, including a 15-month refit in 2007-08 (just six years after entering service) and an 18-month midlife upgrade and refit in 2017-18.

Still, she has conducted at least 11 extensive overseas deployments to the Indian Ocean/Pacific, the latest being Clemenceau 25.

Curiously, Charles de Gaulle was at sea when the latest combat in the Middle East broke out earlier this month, off Sweden, and has now been redeployed to the extended region (Cyprus), even while both British flattops (which are much newer) are sidelined for months.

So, surprisingly, Paris is moving forward with a sort of super-Charles de Gaulle as a replacement for the now 25-year-old CVN, rather than two smaller ships (ala HMS Queen Elizabeth), which arguably would be more capable of providing continuous coverage.

At least the new French carrier will be a big one. A super carrier by any post-1945 definition.

At 78,000 tons with two K22 nuclear reactors, the planned France Libre (Free France), pennant R92, is set to replace CDG in 2038ish, with the first steel plate being cut in 2031. Like CDG and the Clemenceaus, she will be CATOBAR and will be able to carry a 70-80 aircraft CVW.

The sizzle reel from Nava Group:

Welcome back KGV!

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Some 80 years ago this month.

The class-leading fast battleship HMS King George V (41) returns to Portsmouth after the war on 6 March 1946, having steamed a total of 73,722 miles since sailing to join the British Pacific Fleet from Scapa on 28 October 1944, and having burned 61,077 tons of oil fuel in the process.

KGV had earned battle honors during the war for Atlantic (1941), Bismarck Action, Arctic (1942-43), Sicily (1943), Okinawa (1945), and Japan (1945), attending the surrender ceremonies in Tokyo Bay on VJ Day.

In the sinking of the Bismarck, she fired 339 main (14-inch) shells and 700+ secondary (5.25-inch) shells at the German leviathan, and in targeting Japanese industrial areas around Hitachi delivered another 2,000 14-inchers ashore.

Japanese Surrender, Tokyo Bay, USS Missouri, HMS Duke of York, HMS King George V, by Charles David Cobb via National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth

After her arrival back home, she became the flagship of the Home Fleet until 1950 (only missing Korea), when she was placed in Reserve, her class a fleet in being in the rare case they should ever have to fight the few remaining Soviet battleships or deliver NGFS during a large amphibious assault.

King George V class battleships listing, Jane’s 1946

Laid up in the Gareloch, she was never recommissioned and was placed on the Disposal List in 1957.

Sold to BISCO for demolition by Arnott Young, she was towed to Dalmuir on the Clyde to be de-equipped on 20th January 1958. Demolition was completed at Troon, where she arrived during May 1959.

Warship Wednesday 18 March 2026: A Lake by any Other Name

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday 18 March 2026:  A Lake by any Other Name

Via the New Zealand Navy Museum, Torpedo Bay, photo AAT 0005

Above we see the very Commonwealth-oriented Loch-class frigate HMNZS Tutira (F 571) with a bone in her teeth off Korea between August 1950 and April 1951.

Built in Tyneside, she served with a Canadian crew under a different name during WWII before shipping to her new home a world away with a Kiwi crew– and a much different war against a new enemy.

The Lochs

The 151 frigates of the River class, built in 29 yards across three continents between May 1941 and May 1946, were a baseline for anti-submarine escorts in the British Royal and Commonwealth nations. While built in five slightly different groups, the Rivers were all generally 1,500 tons light/2,000 tons full load displacement, 301 feet overall length, and with a 36-foot beam. Using twin reciprocating steam engines that could generate about 5,500 shp, they could make 20 knots and steam for 7,000 at an economical 12.

Manned by a ~100-man crew, they carried a couple of 4″/40s augmented by an AAA suite but were primarily outfitted as sub-busters with a Hedgehog projector, up to eight depth charge throwers, two depth charge rails, and allowance for as many as 150 “ash cans.”

River-class frigates fitting out at Vickers Canada, 1944

Where the Lochs were an incremental improvement over the Rivers was that they were gently larger (307 feet oal), were simplified in construction, used mercantile engineering machinery, and had an allowance for a single 4″/40 mount, then ditching the Hedgehog for a pair of triple-barreled Mark IV Squid ASW mortars. Each Squid could project three 440-pound depth bombs to 275 yards abeam.

The overall layout of the Loch class frigates. Note the single 4″/40 mount forward, followed by two Squids on the forecastle. Her quad 40mm Mark VII QF 2-pounder Pom Pom gun was aft, while two 40mm singles and as many as eight 20mm Oerlikons were arrayed abeam.

Installed on only some 70 RN and Commonwealth frigates and corvettes during the war, Squid’s first successful use was by the Loch-class frigate HMS Loch Killin on 31 July 1944, when she sank U-333.

HMCS Iroquois and Swansea at Halifax with two Squid ASW mortars shown forward. The system was credited with sinking 17 submarines in 50 attacks over the course of the war – a success ratio of 2.9 to 1. MIKAN SWN0284

Anti-Submarine Weapons: Anti-submarine Mortar Mark IV Squid launchers and loading apparatus on the forecastle of Loch class corvette, HMS Loch Fada, in Gladstone Dock, Liverpool. 27 October 1944 IWM (A 26153)

Royal Navy sailors loading a Squid anti-submarine mortar.

Battle class destroyer HMS Barrosa steams through the wake of her Squid anti-submarine mortar system, showing the usefulness of its triple-barreled format. IWM (A 33111)

The Loch design catered to small yards with limited infrastructure through the miracle of prefabricated modular construction techniques. No subassembly of the ship would be larger than 29 feet long, 8.5 feet wide, and 8.5 feet tall, with a maximum weight of 2.5 tons to allow for easy lift by even the most modest of crane and rail systems. As much as 80 percent of the ship could be prefabbed and then sent for assembly in the graving dock, with great effort meant to eliminate curves in favor of straight-line construction.

The late-war sensor fit was advanced compared to what RN escorts were working with just a few years earlier, with the Lochs carrying Type 277 radars (good for detecting high flying aircraft out to 40 miles and surface contacts at 20) and Type 144 ASDIC with Type 147B depth finding sonars.

Using a pair of  VT4cyl (18.5, 31 & 38.5, 38.5 x 30ins) engines and two Admiralty 3-drum boilers, they could gen up 5,500 hp and push it out on twin screws. With 724 tons of fuel oil carried, these ships were slightly slower than the 20-knot Rivers, typically hitting 19.5 knots on trials and 18 or so when dirty and fully loaded at 2,200 tons displacement, but had a higher cruising speed (15 knots vs 12) for a 7,000nm range.

Loch class frigate HMS Loch Insh, October 1944 IWM (FL 14742)

With class leader HMS Loch Achanalt (K424) ordered from Henry Robb Limited, Leith in July 1942, the first completed Lochs only started arriving in the fleet in early 1944.

While 110 hulls were planned and 82 ordered from at least 10 yards, peace intervened, and only 28 were completed, the rest being canceled or, in the case of 26, converted to Bay class AAA frigates for Pacific service with a much reduced depth charge capacity and no Squid mortars to allow room for a roughly doubled gun battery.

Meet Loch Morlich

Our subject is the only warship named for the peaceful 5,000-foot freshwater loch (Mhor Thalamic in Gaelic) in the Badenoch and Strathspey area of Highland, Scotland, near Aviemore. Ordered 13 February 1943 as Yard No. 1784 from the fine Tyneside firm of Swan Hunter, Wallsend, for construction at the Neptune Yard in Low Walker, the future HMCS Loch Morlich (K 517) was laid down five months later on 15 July 1943.

Loch Morlich was one of eight Loch class frigates ordered from Swan Hunter, with sister Loch Shin (K 421) ordered five months prior. Sister Loch Cree was instead completed by Swan as the South African Navy’s SAS Natal (K 10). Meanwhile, two other Swan-built sisters, the planned Loch Assynt and Loch Torridon, were instead completed post-war as the unarmed depot ships Derby Haven and Woodbridge Haven. Of the rest, Swan was told to cancel the planned Loch Griam, Loch Kirbister, and Loch Lyon as the war ended.

Morlich’s sister, HMSAS Natal (K 10), a South African Loch class frigate fitting out, 5 March 1945. One of three Lochs completed for the South African Navy, she would go on to sink the German submarine U-714 on 14 March, only four hours after having left Swan! IWM A 28216

Launched 25 January 1944, Loch Morlich was bound for Canadian service and fully Canadian manned with her first skipper, T/A/LCDR Leslie Lewendon Foxall, RCNVR, assuming command while she was fitting out on 6 March 1944. Foxall had commanded the smaller Flower-class corvette HMCS Chilliwack (K 131) for two years on Atlantic convoy runs, so he knew his trade.

War!

With WWII well into its sixth year, Loch Morlich broke out her colors on 17 July 1944 and was assigned to the 8th Canadian Escort Group. Two other Lochs likewise went to the Canadians, Loch Achanalt (to the 6th CEG) and Loch Alvie (9th CEG), in July and August, respectively.

Morlich’s workups in the Western Approaches were delayed due to accidents while training, but she eventually made ready and sailed with her first convoys, MKS 067G and SL 176MK, on 17-18 November.

Loch Morlich CTB016772

HMS Loch Morlic (K 517) secured to a buoy on the Tyne. IWM FL 6042

She would clock in on at least six other convoys over the next five months, most of them under the command of Lt. George Frederick Crosby, RCNVR, who took over from Foxall in December 1944.

The Lochs were on hand to corral the last of Donitz’s steel sharks at sea in May 1945.

Loch class frigate HMCS Loch Alvie (K 428), and a surrendered U-boat, May 1945. (Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4950920, color)

The class is credited with assisting in the sinking of at least 17 U-boats as vetted by post-war examination boards.

After VE-Day, it was decided that the three Canadian-manned Lochs should return to England to prep for possible Pacific service under RN control. Morlich returned to Sheerness, and her Canadian crew was released on 20 June 1945, apparently returning home with the ship’s HMCS-marked bell. Paid off, the frigate was reduced to Reserve status.

Her RN crew never came, preempted by VJ Day.

No Lochs were lost in combat.

Meet Tutira

While some had thought the post-WWII New Zealand Squadron should be built around one of the RN’s many surplus aircraft carriers–after all, Canada and Australia had gotten into the flattop game as well– and, indeed, the Colossus-class carrier HMS Glory had operated from New Zealand as part of J Force in 1946, taking RNZAF Squadron No. 14 to Japan for occupation duties, RADM George Walter Gillow Simpson CB, CBE, head of the New Zealand Navy Staff in the late 1940s, instead championed for a smaller, more anti-submarine, force.

A series of non-violent mutinies among the ships of the NZ fleet in April 1947 over poor living and working conditions, coupled with outrageously low pay, further emphasized the downshift from such lofty carrier goals, and J Force returned home from occupation duties by September 1948, its mission complete.

While over 10,000 men served in the RNZN and RNZNVR during WWII on 60 commissioned ships, by the late 1940s, the peacetime New Zealand fleet shrank to just 2,900 officers and men, enough to man two 5,900-ton light (5.25-inch gunned) Dido class cruisers (HMNZS Black Prince and Bellona, later Royalist), six surplus ASW frigates, four 1,000-ton Bathurst-class escort minesweepers, eight minesweeping trawlers (including the famous Kiwi and Tui), the disarmed River-class frigate Lachlan used as a survey ship, a dozen 72-foot MLs, as well as miscellaneous tenders and tugs.

The half-dozen above-mentioned “surplus ASW frigates” were laid up Lochs that were sold to NZ for the princely sum of £1,500,000 for the lot, weapons included, transferred between 13 September 1948 and 11 April 1949 after refits. Loch Morlich in particular went for £228,250.

Taking a page from their original loch names, in NZ service they earned names of lakes from their new home country, with Loch Eck becoming HMNZ Hawea, Loch Achray – Kaniere, Loch Achanalt – Pukaki, Loch Katrine – Rotoiti, Loch Shin – Taupo, and our Loch Morlich now HMNZS Tutira. They kept their old pennant numbers, just changing the K to an F, with Loch Morlich (K 517), for example, becoming Tutira (F 517) in New Zealand service.

HMNZS Pukaki (formerly Loch Achanalt) and two other Loch class frigates of the Royal New Zealand Navy

HMNZS Taupo, a Loch class frigate of the Royal New Zealand Navy, Auckland Anniversary Regatta, 29 January 1951

Loch-class frigate HMNZS Hawea (F422), formerly HMS Loch Eck (K422), photographed in 1955

HMNZS Tutira F 517

The NZ Lochs were soon frolicking in their home waters in exercises with the British East Indies Fleet and RAN.

15 March 1950. Ships of the Australian and New Zealand naval fleets are arriving at Auckland for combined naval exercises. HMNZS Tutira (left) and Pukaki (middle). Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1370-U045-08.

March 1950. HMNZS Pukaki (F424) and other frigates in Akaroa Harbour during combined naval exercises of the Royal New Zealand and Australian Navies. The exercises included the British submarine HMS Telemachus, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney, four New Zealand frigates-HMNZS Taupo, Rotoiti, Tutira, and Pukaki-the Australian frigate HMAS Murchison, the destroyers HMAS Bataan and Warramunga, and the cruisers HMNZS Bellona and HMAS Australia. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1370-313-15.

March 1950. The cruiser HMAS Australia (D84) in the foreground with other ships in Akaroa Harbour during combined naval exercises of the Royal New Zealand and Australian Navies. The exercises included the British submarine HMS Telemachus, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney, four New Zealand frigates-HMNZS Taupo, Rotoiti, Tutira, and Pukaki-the Australian frigate HMAS Murchison, the destroyers HMAS Bataan and Warramunga, and the cruisers HMNZS Bellona and HMAS Australia. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1370-313-12

March 1950.Aircraft and crew on the deck of HMAS Sydney (note her 805 Squadron Hawker Sea Furies and 816 Squadron Fairey Fireflies) with an unidentified frigate behind during combined naval exercises of the Royal New Zealand and Australian navies in Akaroa Harbour. The exercises included the British submarine HMS Telemachus, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney, four New Zealand frigates-HMNZS Taupo, Rotoiti, Tutira, and Pukaki-the Australian frigate HMAS Murchison, the destroyers HMAS Bataan and Warramunga, and the cruisers HMNZS Bellona and HMAS Australia. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1370-313-18

On 12 May 1950, LCDR Peter James Hill Hoare, RN, assumed command of Tutira. Born just months before Jutland, the 34-year-old Hoare had graduated from the Nautical College at Pangbourne and earned his lieutenant’s stripe in 1938, going on to command the sloop HMS Bridgewater (L 01) and frigate HMS Hoste (K 566) on Atlantic convoy duties during WWII. He would soon be in his and Tutira’s second war.

Korea

Just three days after North Korea invaded its democratic neighbor to the South, New Zealand answered the call of the United Nations and said it would be dispatching two warships.

Those ships were our Loch Morlich/Tutira and Loch Achanalt/Pukaki, which ironically were two-thirds of the Lochs that had served with the Canadians during WWII.

As noted by the NZ Navy Museum, Torpedo Bay:

On the 3rd of July, HMNZS Tutira and Pukaki left Auckland. The ships arrived in Korea on the 27th of July and were given an escort role with up to four convoys a week. The assigned task of the frigates was described as the most thankless of the sea war – ‘dull, daily routine patrol’. However, this work was of vital importance to the United Nations cause in Korea. The commander of the U.S. Naval Forces, Vice Admiral Joy, noted ‘The unspectacular role of carrying personnel and supplies to Korea was perhaps the Navy’s greatest contribution’.

Skipped over in that description is the fact that the two NZ frigates were on hand for the famed amphibious landings at Inchon on 15 September 1950 as part of TG 90.7 (the screening and protective group) and patrolled the waters just off the bridgehead to guard the Marines ashore from potential seaborne attack.

Then came use with the U.S. Navy task group off Wonson in October. It was there that one of Loch Morlich’s crew, Petty Officer Henry Matthew Blizzard, was killed by shrapnel from an exploding mine, one of just three RNZN personnel killed during the war.

The NZ frigates remained in Korean waters until early November, when they were sent to Sasebo, Japan, for quick refit.

An RN photographer caught up to Tutira in Japan in November 1950 and captured some great images of her crew, which included several English lads and at least one Scot.

November 1950. The Asdic team of the Tutira kept constant watch for 42 days. In the harbor, they are engaged in depth charge equipment. A/B M Anderson, Tekuiti, North Island, New Zealand; A/B M M Clark, Wellington, New Zealand; L/S J Belcher, Torbay; A/B M W Bailey, Waitara, N Island, New Zealand; A/B R Allister, Liverpool; A/B M R Lewis, Christchurch, New Zealand. IWM 31760.

AB J Teaika, Christchurch, New Zealand, Tutira’s Quartermaster. IWM A 31759.

HMNZS Tutira’s port Oerlikon crew at action stations. Note the old tin plate helmets, certainly quaint in 1950. Leading Seaman B J Mason, Taihape, N Island, New Zealand; and Able Seaman A B Tripp, Wembley, England. IWM A 31754.

HMNZS Tutira. On the signal platform, left to right: Signalman R H (Curly) Richardson, Masterson, North Island, New Zealand; Signalman R P Davies, Morden, Surrey, England; Signalman C J Pitcher, Ringwood, Hants, England; Leading Signalman P J Stewart, Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand. IWM A 31755.

Tutira Galley staff, right to left: P/O Cook R Lowndes, Worthing, Sussex; Cook D Hornsby, Sheffield; Cook D W Jackman, Guildford, Surrey; Cook (O) A Davidson, New Plymouth, New Zealand; Cook M Pickard, Christchurch; Cook T Goddard, Southampton. IWM A 31757

Some of Tutira’s engine room company. Stoker Mech V G Brightwell, Auckland; Stoker Mech W Coppins, Ashford, Kent; Stoker Mech J O’Grady, Manchester; Stoker R A Blann, Epsom, Surrey; Stoker P/O J V Murray, Hythe, Kent; Stoker P/O A C Cameron, Auckland; Stoker Mech B A Gabb, Larkworth, New Zealand; Stoker Mech K D Bickham, Auckland, New Zealand; Stoker Mech W A Page, Deptford; ERA W S Watson, Christchurch, New Zealand; Stoker P/O J Adams, Aberdeen, Scotland; ERA C J de Larue, Auckland, New Zealand. IWM A 31758

Early 1951 saw Tutira and Pukaki patrolling Korea’s coast, supporting the evacuations from Inchon and Chinampo, and later supporting ROKN mine-clearing operations. In particular, they took turns operating with the South Korean Navy minesweepers YMS 502 and YMS 503 between 15 March and 7 April.

RNZN frigate crews in Korea often went ashore in several “Nelsonian” night raids against coastal targets and took several prisoners for intelligence gathering. One of Tutira’s former sailors, Able Seaman Robert Marchioni, who joined the crew of her sister Rotoiti, was killed ashore on 26 August 1951 on one such nocturnal raid near Sogon-ni while trying to do a prisoner grab on a Chinese gun emplacement. Marchioni’s body was never recovered.

While Pukaki was relieved by sister Rotoiti in February 1951, Tutira remained on station for three more months until relieved by sister Hawea, only arriving back home in Devonport on 30 May, having steamed 35,400 miles and having been away from New Zealand for nearly 11 months. LCDR Hoare and two ratings were awarded a Mention in Despatches, and the ship earned her only battle honor (Korea 1950-51).

New Zealand’s naval involvement in the Korean War lasted three years and involved all six of its Lochs, with the last, Kaniere, returning home on 2 March 1954. Almost half the manpower of the RNZN– approximately 1,350 officers and ratings-  shipped out for Korean waters over those nearly four years. In their eight tours (Rotoiti and Hawea both went twice), the New Zealand Lochs steamed 339,584 nautical miles and fired 71,625 rounds of ammunition in action.

Kayforce, a New Zealand Army artillery and engineer detachment that served in Korea from December 1950 onward with the 27th British Commonwealth Infantry Brigade, saw 4,600 men rotate through its ranks before it was finally brought home in July 1957, suffering 42 deaths and 79 wounded.

New Zealand’s 16 Field Regiment fired 800,000 rounds in the Korean War- far more than any Kiwi regiment fired in World War II- and the conflict was described as an “artilleryman’s paradise.” National Library PA1-f-113-1861

End time

After service with the 11th Flotilla and fleet exercises with the Australians, in August 1953, the well-traveled Tutira was put into reserve at Auckland, then partially refitted and given limited sea trials in late June 1954. Following these trials, she was partially cocooned and not modernized as her sister vessels had been. Placed in extended reserve, she was slowly and extensively cannibalized for parts to keep her active duty sisters on the job.

In February 1957, with the realization that, under SEATO, a future Pacific War would likely see combat against roaming Soviet submarines, the NZ government ordered a pair of Type 12 (Rothesay) class ASW frigates to be built eight months apart in Britain at Thornycroft and White, respectively. Named HMNZS Otago (F 111) and Taranaki (F 148), the 2,500-ton frigates were modern with a Seacat missile system, Limbo depth charge mortars, and a twin 4.5-inch turret. They were followed by a third, improved Type 12 (Leander) class, HMNZS Waikato (F 55) in 1966, while a fourth Type 12, HMS Blackpool (F 77) was leased from the RN.

These new vessels meant the New Zealand admiralty could divest itself of its obsolete WWII-era cruisers and frigates. Black Prince reverted to RN control and was scrapped in Japan in 1962, while Royalist was decommissioned in 1966, likewise reverting to the RN for disposal.

New Zealand Lochs, Jane’s, 1960

Of the Lochs in NZ service, Taupo and Tutira were sold for scrap to a Hong Kong-based broker on 15 December 1961, with Hawea and Pukaki following in September 1965. The final pair, Rotolti and Kanire, by then classed as 2nd Rate Escorts, served until they were disposed of in 1966.

October 1961. The frigates HMNZS Tutira F517 (right) and HMNZS Taupo (left) off Cape Reinga en route to Hong Kong, where they were sold for scrap. In the center, the Otapiri tows the tug Atlas to Whangaparāoa Harbor for repairs after its towline fouled the seabed five miles north of Cape Reigna. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1370-029-22-02

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 1370-029-22-03

HMNZS Rotoiti paying off, 1965, Loch class frigate. Image AAR 0032 

As far as her Loch class sisters still afloat elsewhere, the RN kept a couple in service as F-pennant frigates (Loch Lomond and Loch Killisport) until as late as 1965, while Loch Fada served as a missile test bed until 1970– vetting Sea Wolf. One interesting sister who began life as Loch Eil was converted to a Bay class AAA frigate (Herne Bay), finally became the survey ship HMS Dampier, and was kept until 1968.

Of interest, Dampier, limping along with a broken shaft from Freetown to Chatham in December 1967, hoisted three lug sails and a set of square sails made from awning canvas to gain an extra knot or two to make England just in time for Christmas– thus is the pluck of frigatemen.

HMS Dampier (A303) – ex Loch-class frigate, survey ship. 1967 under sail

The South Africans kept their trio of Lochs active well into the 1970s, with the last, SAS Good Hope (ex-Loch Boisdale) scuttling in December 1978, the final member of the class. She remains part of an artificial reef some 101 feet under False Bay near Cape Town.

Epilogue

One of the Loch Morlich’s/Tutira’s 3-pounder guns has been preserved ashore at the stone frigate HMNZS Philomel, the RNZN base at Devonport, Auckland.

Her 1944-marked HMCS Loch Morlich bell, presumably removed before she went to New Zealand, has long been in private hands and was sold at auction in Boston last year for less than $3,000.

A For Posterity’s Sake page exists for Loch Morlich’s RCN veterans.

She and her sister Pukaki are also remembered in maritime art, immortalized on their Korean deployment.

Painting of HMNZS Pukaki and HMNZS Tutira at Inchon by Colin Wynn.

CDR Peter James Hill Hoare, OBE, Tutira’s Korean War skipper, retired from the RN on 29 January 1966, capping 28 years in uniform. He passed away in 1984, aged 68.

The Loch Class Frigates Association was formed in 1993 but held its last reunion in 2019 and disappeared from the internet in 2023. Before they faded away, they established a memorial cairn at Alrewas in 2005, finished with stones from each of the 28 Lochs completed.

Colin Sweett via IWM

Likewise, a Loch class frigate is featured on the Korean War memorial plaque at Devonport, New Zealand, dedicated by the New Zealand Korea Veterans’ Association in 2000. It rests upon a stone donated by the city of Pusan.

As you may remember, Devonport Naval Base is where Tutira and Pukaki sortied from for Korea on 3 July 1950.

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 3003-0217

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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