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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 5 November 2026: The Soldier Queen

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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 4 November 2026: The Soldier Queen

By Perkins from Fahey Collections, USNI

Above, we see the Regele Ferdinand-class destroyer (distrugătorul) NMS Regina Maria of the Royal Romanian Navy (Marinei Regale Române) early in her career, likely in the 1930s.

Some 85 years ago this week, the long-lived Maria drew blood, credited with sinking the Soviet Black Sea Fleet Malyutka-class submarine M-58 near the Danube estuary, one of at least 16 Russian boats likely killed by the Romanians during WWII.

Romanian Tin Can Backgrounder

The blue water MMR was one of Europe’s youngest navies in the 1930s, tracing its origins to 1880, when the Danube Flotilla Corps of the recently unified Romanian Principalities acquired the 198-foot Trieste-built gunboat NMS Grivița. Armed with two 57mm Nordenfelt 3-pounders and three smaller pieces, Grivița could make 9 knots and was based in newly Romanian Constanța on the Black Sea, the port ceded along with Northern Dobruja by the Ottoman Empire.

Grivița was later augmented by the very small (1,300 ton, 240-foot, four 5.9-inch guns) protected cruiser Elisabeta, built in 1888 by Armstrong, and a trio of French-built Smeul-class torpedo boats for its newly formed Black Sea Division (Divizia de Mare).

Royal Romanian Protected Cruiser NMS Elisabeta, with a full sailing rig, arrived in Romania for the first time in 1889.

A dozen new Vifor-class destroyers had been ordered from Cantieri Navali Pattison, Naples, prior to the Great War, but only four were completed and, impounded in 1915, were used by the Italians during the war as scout cruisers (esploratori= explorers).

Following the country’s occupation during WWI, the Romanian fleet had contracted but was rebuilt in the early 1920s with seven 250t-class torpedo boats received from Austria as war reparations, the former Vifor-class destroyers/Italian scout cruisers Sparviero and Nibbio (entering service as NMS Mărăști and NMS Mărășești), as well as assorted river monitors and gunboats.

The Mărăști and Mărășești, besides seeing their first five years in Italian service, were small ships, at 1,700 tons with a 310-foot overall length. As they had a speedy 34-knot suite and 5.9-inch guns, as well as two twin 17.7-inch torpedo tubes, the Italians had classed them as scout cruisers. Sisters Vifor/Aquila and Viscol/Falco, were retained by the Italians and passed on to Franco during the Spanish Civil War. For Romanian service, they were rebuilt by Pattison in the 1920s with five 4.7″/45 Schneider-Canet-Armstrongs in lieu of the 5.9s.

Romania still wanted more than two destroyers and once again entered into a contract with Pattison for two more improved Vifor/Mărăști types to be completed at the company’s Naples yard. However, because Pattison had a long relationship with British shipbuilders (the Italian Nembo class built by the yard was a modified Thornycroft design, while the follow-on Indomito and Sella classes used many British components, including Parsons turbines), they instead offered the Romanians something different.

In 1916, Thornycroft developed a 2,000-ton/339-foot/5-gunned/6×21-inch torpedo-tubed/38-knot destroyer leader to compete with designs from other British firms, namely Cammell Laird.

The Royal Navy ordered seven Thornycroft DLs, with HMS Shakespeare as the first of just five completed before the Admiralty chose Cammell Laird’s design.

British flotilla leader HMS Shakespeare at sea, IWM 18680, and drawing by AD Baker

Post-war, Thornycroft took their Shakespeare DL design, beefed up the horsepower of its four Yarrow boilers and two Brown-Curtis turbines to push 40 knots, and offered it to overseas clients.

The Spanish adopted the improved design as their domestically produced Churruca-class destroyer, while Argentina ordered a trio in 1927 as the Mendoza class destroyers, built in England by JS White, Cowes. All three 2,125-ton Mendozas exceeded their design speed during sea trials, with ARM La Rioja (E-4) reaching 39.4 knots on her measured mile without exceeding her engines’ limits.

March 1929 East Cowes, Isle of Wight Argentine destroyer ARA La Rioja Mendoza class

The Thornycroft improved DL design by K.C. Barnaby, as built by Pattison in Naples, was even lighter than the Mendozas (1,880 tons) with a 52,000shp suite of four three-drum Thornycroft boilers pushing two Parsons geared turbines for a designed speed of at least 37 knots.

Rather than the twin guns preferred by the Italians, they would use five advanced Swedish-made Bofors 4.7″/50 Mark 4s with a 45-degree maximum elevation, controlled by a Siemens FCS which included a pair of optical rangefinders.

Romanian Regele Ferdinand-class destroyer in late WWII splinter camo with stern 120mm Bofors swung out

They also carried two triple 21-inch ST tubes of Italian make with accompanying Whitehead fish– the first time torpedoes that big had been used by the Romanians.

Two were ordered in 1927 from Pattison: NMS Regele Ferdinand and Regina Maria, laid down side by side in June and both delivered by September 1930, bringing the MMR to a four-destroyer fleet for the first time. Cost per hull was 205,000 pounds, without armament.

Commissioned without pennant numbers, Regele Ferdinand received an Ace of Cups (Asul de Cupa) hull identifier symbol, while Regina Maria received an Ace of Spades (Asul de pica). This made a set with Mărăşeşti (Ace of Clubs) and Mărăşti (Ace of Chariots).

As the old cruiser Elisabeta was scrapped in the 1930s, these four ships formed the Romanian battle line.

Jane’s 1929, with the MMR’s four destroyers listed, the new Ferdinands over the older Vifor/Mărăștis.

This all brings us to…

Meet Regina Maria

Our subject was named for Marie of Romania, née Princess Marie of Edinburgh, the Kent-born bride of the late King Ferdinand I (whose name the class leader carried).

The ceremonial colonel of the 4th Roșiori Cavalry Regiment, Marie volunteered as a nurse in military hospitals during the Great War and opposed signing the May 1918 Treaty of Bucharest with the Germans and Austrians, earning her the description “truly the only man in Romania.” Post-war, she championed Greater Romania’s interests at the Paris Conferences, waving her ministers aside and leading negotiations herself; the country’s size doubled with the acquisition of Transylvania from defeated Hungary without plebiscites, although the region was only about 55 percent ethnically Romanian. This led to her being called “The Soldier Queen.”

Both destroyers arrived at Constanța on 7 September 1930, where King Carol II (son of the destroyers’ namesakes) and Prime Minister Iorga inspected them.

Handsome ships, they often went overseas during their decade of pre-war service to show the flag.

In that vein, Maria represented Romania as one of 17 nations sending ships to join 134 Royal Navy vessels in the May 1937 Spithead Fleet Review off the coast of Portsmouth to celebrate the coronation of King George V.

Romanian destroyer Regina Maria Coronation Fleet Review for King George VI, May 1937

In January 1938, she attempted to carry Crown Prince (later King) Michael to Greece to attend a royal wedding there. On the way to the event, the ship was caught in a maelstrom and forced to return to port.

Maria also sailed in the International Squadron with the British battlewagon HMS Malaya, French cruiser Emil Bertin, Kriegsmarine cruiser Emden, Soviet destroyer leader Moskva, and Greek destroyer Hydra, following the Turkish Navy Destroyer TCG Zafer and battlecruiser Yavuz to carry the coffin of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk the 60 short miles from Sarayburnu Port in Istanbul to Izmit in November 1938.

By 1939, with war on the horizon, in a refit at the Galaţi shipyard, they picked up two Italian depth charge throwers, two German 37mm SK C/30 flak guns, and a pair of French 13.2mm M1929 Hotchkiss machine guns, the latter AAA guns replacing two original 40/67 Škoda guns.

Going into 1940, the MMR had 15,113 all ranks including 1,002 officers, 780 warrant officers (maiștri militari=military foremen), 257 NCOs and 13,074 enlisted. Besides the Black Sea Division and Danube Flotilla, the force had eight coastal artillery batteries and three Marine Infantry (Infanterie Marină) battalions numbered 15th-17th.

War!

In the summer of 1940, Stalin occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in a sharp, undeclared war led by Gen. Georgy Zhukov’s 460,000-man Southern Front, which left 40,000 unprepared Romanian troops captured while inflicting only about 100 casualties on the Russians. The region, of which only about 10 percent of its 3 million inhabitants were Russians, was carved away while Hungary and Bulgaria also pressed territorial claims on Romania. Germany and Italy arbitrated, and Romania lost Northern Transylvania and Southern Dobruja to Hungary and Bulgaria, respectively.

Hurting, Romania joined the Tripartite Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan in November 1940, with Marshal Ion Antonescu in control of the government.

Fully mobilized, the Romanian Third and Fourth Armies were on the front lines to liberate Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina when Romania entered WWII on the Axis side in June 1941 with the Operation Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union.

In response, the much stronger Black Sea Red Banner Fleet soon went on the offensive and raided the MMR’s principal base at Constanza.

Soviet VADM Filipp Oktyabrskiy in the cruiser Voroshilov, with the destroyers Moskva, Kharkov, Bodry, and Dzerzhinsky, began bombarding Constanza at 0400 on the morning of 26 June, on Barbarossa +5, firing 350 shells. In response, the Romanian destroyers Mărăști and Regina Maria and German-manned coastal artillery (three 11-inch SK L/45 Great War-era guns from Nassau-class battlewagons) returned fire while a poorly timed Soviet bomber raid, flying right into the already aroused defenders in broad daylight, was met by Axis fighters and AAA guns, which shot down multiple Soviet aircraft.

When the smoke cleared, Moskva, which had her mainmast brought down by a Romanian 4.7-inch shell, had blundered into a Romanian minefield and sank with 268 sailors killed and 69 survivors captured by the locals. Voroshilov and Kharkov limped off, damaged by a mine and Axis shells, respectively. The raid was an Axis victory by all accounts, with only minor damage done to the port.

Convoys and sub-busting

As the ground war went bad for the Soviets in the summer and fall of 1941, the Romanian fleet left its mine- and gun-protected citadel and began probing toward Odessa, eventually protecting convoys headed to the occupied Russian ports along the Northwest Black Sea coast as well as convoys from the Bosporus to Constanța, safeguarding them from Soviet submarine attack.

It was on such runs that MMR surface ships splashed four M-class boats via depth charges:

  • M-31 by Mărășești on 7 July 1943.
  • M-58 by Regina Maria on 4 November 1941.
  • M-59 by Regele Ferdinand on 17 December 1941
  • M-118 by the Romanian minesweepers Sublocotenant Ghiculescu and Locotenant-Commandor Stihi Eugen on 1 October 1942. Ghiculescu also sank the Leninets-class submarine L-6 in April 1944.

At least three other M-class boats (M-33, M-34, and M-60) went missing, thought to have been lost probing Romanian coastal minefields.

As you can probably tell, the 200-ton Malyutkas (Russian for “baby, little one”) had a rough war, with 34 of their 109-strong class lost between the Arctic, Baltic, Black, and Pacific fleets.

Of note, the “three kings,” the Romanian minelayers NMS Amiral Murgescu, Regele Carol I, and Aurora, would lay fields that also accounted for the Soviet subs S-34, Shch-211, Shch-210, Shch-208, Shch-212, Shch-213, and L-24.

Multiple sources also disagree on how and when the accumulated Soviet subs vanished in the Black Sea in WWII, so there is that.

By early 1944, both Ferdinand and Maria would land their No. 2 4.7-inch Bofors in favor of a German 88mm/42 SK C/30 Flak gun. They would also be fitted with four German 20/65 C/38 Flak guns and an S-Gerat sonar suite.

They also got large recognition flashes and a splinter camo scheme.

Romanian destroyer Regina Maria in dry dock. Note the Ace of Spades and new splinter camo

Royal Romanian Navy destroyer NMS Regina Maria mounting German 88 in 2nd mount

Romanian Dunkirk

When the tide turned on Barbarossa (the Romanians suffered 180,000 casualties at Stalingrad), the Romanian Navy had its own Dunkirk: “Operation 60,000,” the evacuation of Crimea, which pulled out men from the trapped Romanian Mountain Corps and the Wehrmacht’s 17th Army.

Between 14 and 24 April 1944, the Romanians ran 25 convoys out of the peninsula, bringing out 72,358 souls in the path of the Red Army, including 29,494 Germans, 20,779 Romanians, 15,055 Russian volunteers, 723 Slovaks, 2,559 Soviet POWs, and 3,748 civilians.

Regina Maria off Sevastopol, 1944 via Preston

Romanian destroyer Regele Ferdinand

A second round of evacuations, between 9 and 13 May 1944, saw another 47,825 evacuated (28,992 Germans including Gen. Walter Hartmann, 15,078 Romanians, 336 Russian volunteers, 52 prisoners, and 3,367 civilians).

In all, the Crimean withdrawal saw the Romanians bring out 108,000 Axis soldiers– 16,000 of whom were wounded– along with 2,611 prisoners, 7,115 civilians, and 22,548 tons of vital war materials and munitions.

A mix of exhausted faces on Regele Ferdinand during Operation 60,000, the evacuation of the Crimea. You can note Romanian sailors in their jumpers along with beret-clad Vânători de munte mountain troops. Torpedo tubes in the background. Of interest, the 35,000 Romanian mountain troops pulled out of Crimea later provided admirable service to the Soviets, notably in the Tatra Mountains, once Romanian switched sides late in the war.

Running the gauntlet from the Crimea to Constanza in the face of the Red Air Force and Navy cost eight lost freighters, a tanker, and a dozen smaller tugs and lighters.

While the Romanians shot down at least 12 Soviet bombers, others found their marks, and Ferdinand was struck by a large bomb that, while it did not explode, caused enough damage to knock her out of the war.

Red Banner Days

By August 1944, amid the ongoing collapse and the withdrawal of the Romanian Third Army from Bessarabia into the Constanza area, King Michael I led a coup on 23 August that arrested Marshal Antonescu and led Romania to immediately switch sides, join the Allies, and declare war on Germany.

In Constanza, RADM Horia Macellariu (who earned a German Knight’s Cross for Operation 60,000) still amazingly had all four of his pre-war destroyers, but only two were serviceable (our Regina Maria and Marasesti). Meeting with German VADM Helmuth Brinkmann, who had orders to hold Constanța at all costs, agreed to let the Germans in harbor quietly on the night of 25/26 August, with 70 packed vessels shipping south to Bulgaria before dawn.

After that, Georgescu ordered his men to disarm and seize the local German-operated shipping in Romanian coastal waters and up the Danube.

While 60 ships were scuttled, 538 German-Bulgarian vessels, mostly minor, were captured and subsequently passed on to the advancing Red Army and Navy, which arrived at Constanza with a 26-ship battleship-led task force on 5 September. This windfall included 213 barges, 90 coastal tankers, 25 pontoons, 22 tugboats, 20 sloops, 14 motor barges, and many similar vessels.

Speaking of the Red Navy, while they were taking away every captured Axis barge and pontoon the Romanians offered, they also impounded every MMR vessel that could float and moved them across the Black Sea to Caucasian ports.

The takeover of Regina Maria by Soviet Naval Infantry was brutal, with the ship’s skipper, Captain Tudor Nicolae, seriously wounded by several bayonet strikes and rifle blows. The head of the Romanian destroyer group, Căpitan-comandorul Alexandru Dumbravă, blew his head in with a revolver in Maria’s command cabin rather than surrender his vessels.

At 0600 on 12 October 1944, the Romanian Navy noted that the NMS Mărășești, Regina Maria, Mărăști, Regele Ferdinand, Amiral Murgescu, the base ship Constanța, the submarine Rechinul, and three gunboats left the port southward under Soviet control, in an unknown direction.

The older Mărăști and Mărășești, Great War veterans, served in the Red Navy as Lovkiy and Lyogkiy, respectively, until they were returned with most of the other Romanian ships in October 1945, along with two gunboats, two very old torpedo boats, a small submarine, and two hydrographic vessels.

They soon dropped their prefix NMS (Nava Majestății Sale= His/Her Majesty’s Ship) as the fleet was rebranded as the more communist-oriented Marina Republicii Populare Române (Navy of the Romanian People’s Republic).

Ferdinand, repaired in the Soviet Union and painted green, was recommissioned as Likhoy, while Regina Maria became Letuchiy. They continued to serve in the Soviet Black Sea Fleet until July 1951.

Regele Ferdinand as Soviet Likhoy

Romanian Regina Maria as Soviet Letuchiy

Back Home, under a Red Star

Returned as a “donation” to Romania, part of the Warsaw Pact after 1955, Ferdinand and Maria lost their regal names but earned new pennant numbers: first D1 and D2, then D9 and D10.

They likewise served in the outlandishly designated 418th Destroyer Division, which was rebadged as the 101st.

Janes 1954, with Ferdinand and Maria still the best ships in the Romanian fleet. Note Marasti and Marasesti, veterans of two world wars and four flags, are still in service as well!

The same quartet remained in the 1960s. The Romanians at the time still had two of the old Imperial Austrian Navy 250-ton torpedo boats in service, Sborul (ex-SMS T 81F) and Smeul (ex-SMS T 83F), dating to 1913 and given as reparations in 1920.

Having served 30 very hard years, and cut off from support for their Western machinery and weapons, it was only a matter of time before the twins were non-functional. The same could be said for the even older Marasti and Marasesti.

Starting in 1955, as a benefit of being in the co-prosperity sphere, the Romanians took over three Soviet-built Project 122bis and later three Project 204E subchasers. Light ships at some 325 and 500 tons, respectively, they were nonetheless better than the old Italian-built tin cans and ideal for confined Black Sea waters.

With that, the baton was passed.

Ferdinand and Maria, along with Marasti and Marasesti, were stricken in April 1961 and scrapped. Assorted relics from all four of the historic ships were saved, including apparently one set of torpedo tubes from Maria, and are in the collection of the Romanian National Muzeul Marinei.

Epilogue

By the 1980s, the Romanian Navy had moved away from Soviet-built ships and produced six Project Tetal I/II-type Bărbuneanu/Sebastian-class frigates.

Once the Cold War thawed, the Romanian Navy, now the Forțele Navale Române, once again looked west, to an English design.

In 2004, they acquired a pair of surplus British frigates of the Type 22 (Broadsword) class, ex HMS Coventry and ex HMS London. They were duly commissioned in Portsmouth in September 2005 as Regele Ferdinand (F 221) and Regina Maria (F 222), the first time those names had been on the Romanian naval list in 61 years.

Both Regele Ferdinand (F 221) and Regina Maria (F 222) continue in service today.

Some things are cyclical.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Unconquered

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Abbreviated Warship Wednesday, as I am on the road at an industry event in New England.

With that, how about a throwback to “old” England?

Some 85 years ago this week, the 13,000-ton County-type heavy cruiser HMS Kent (54), seen in October 1941, fresh off refit and attached to the 1st Cruiser Squadron, Home Fleet, at Scapa Flow.

By LT R G G Coote, Royal Navy official photographer, IWM A 6165

Ordered under the 1924-25 Estimates from HM Dockyard, Chatham, and commissioned in June 1928, Kent spent most of her pre-war career in the Far East and, ironically, even attended the Grand Coronation Review for the newly-installed Emperor Hirohito in Tokyo Bay.

She looked much different, sporting a gleaming peacetime white-and-buff livery.

British cruiser HMS Kent launched at Chatham dockyard on 16 March 1926. NH 60057

British cruiser HMS Kent, Manila Bay, 20 January 1931. U.S. Navy ONI file. NH 60061

With sisters Berwick, Cornwall, Cumberland, and Suffolk, 1938 Janes

September 1939 found Kent as flag of 5th Cruiser Squadron on the China Station, from where she immediately went out searching for German shipping.

By August 1940, she was transferred to the 3rd Cruiser Squadron for service with the Mediterranean Fleet and was promptly hit by an Italian torpedo bomber while bombarding Fort Capo d’Africa the next month.

Shipped back the long way around Africa via Alexandria, Aden, Mombasa, Simonstown, and Freetown, Kent spent eight months at Portsmouth for repairs and rebuilds, picking up new AAA guns and assorted radars in the process.

She then started clocking in on North Atlantic convoys, particularly on the dangerous Russian run, even carrying Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden on one trip to Murmansk. She ultimately rode shotgun on 44 convoys during the war, including those in the Atlantic (1942-43) and the Indian Ocean in 1940.

Kent spent 1944 in a series of anti-shipping ops off Norway and distant covering for the Normandy landings with the 1st Cruiser Squadron. Then, worn out, was nominated to be paid off in December 1944.

Laid up in March 1945, Kent was placed on the Disposal List in 1947 and sold to BISCO the next year, then towed to Troon for breaking up.

She received three battle honors for her WWII service (Atlantic 1940, Mediterranean 1940, and Arctic 1942-43).

Her motto was Invicta (Unconquered).

Hitchiti’s final mission

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Aerial broadside view of the USS Hitchiti (ATF-103) underway off the coast of Hawaii, 12 January 1970, by Chief Photographer’s Mate T.J. Taylor, National Archives K-81123

Named for a North Florida/South Georgia Creek tribe, the 205-foot Abnaki (Apache)-class fleet tug USS Hitchiti (ATF-103) was built at the Charleston Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. over nine months from August 1943 to May 1944.

Her first of 21 U.S. Navy skippers was LT Harry Alonzo Guthrie, a regular who had volunteered in 1927 and worked his way up through the ranks.

After shakedown in the Chesapeake Bay area, Hitchiti sailed for the Pacific, reaching Pearl Harbor with four tows (AFDL-32, YO-94, YO-95, and YTB-376) on 26 August 1944. She then took part in the Leyte Gulf landings, followed by towing and rescue operations during the hard-fought Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns as the Pacific war drew near to the Japanese home islands in the spring of 1945, earning two battle stars (Luzon operation and Okinawa Gunto operation).

Among other notable missions was shepherding the bomb-damaged USS Blessman (DE-69/APD-48) from Iwo Jima, which had been hit by a Japanese Betty while carrying the men of UDT-15, to safety in Saipan. Hitchiti also escorted USS Hazelwood from Okinawa to Ulithi after a kamikaze had stripped most of her superstructure.

Following occupation service, our tug was sent to the West Coast to be laid up in the Pacific Reserve Fleet, San Francisco Group, in 1948.

Reactivated for Korea, she earned three battle stars there (Communist China Spring Offensive 1951, UN Summer Fall Offensive 1951, and Korean Defense Summer-Fall 1952).

Her third war earned her the Vietnam Service Medal with three campaign stars between August 1964 and August 1967. Hitchiti notably pulled LCU–1494 from a beach near Danang and salvaged a Marine Corps LVT at Phu Thuin in December 1965, picked up the mined Coconino County (LST 603) inside the mouth of the Cua Viet River and delivered her to Danang, and towed Summit County (LST 1146) off the beach after patching her and pumping out the engine room.

Besides the above, she had seven back-to-back Westpac cruises which saw her clocking in for roles as diverse as helping with U.S. nuclear testing at Johnston Island in 1958 (Hardtack I) and 1962 (Fishbowl) and conducting a two-month birdlife study on South Pacific islands for the Smithsonian Institute– the latter cataloged in Folders 7-8 SIC 7 and assorted field books in Record Unit 245 National Museum of Natural History, Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program. She also rescued the USS Diodon (SS 349) after the submarine suffered a fire and lost propulsion, and towed the sub to Yokosuka.

Decommissioned a second time, she was transferred to Mexico by cash sale under the Security Assistance Program in September 1979, renamed ARM Chac (R-55), and served the Armada for another 42 years, though with far fewer wars, retiring in June 2021 as ARM Cora (ARE 04).

The mighty Hitchiti/Chac/Cora completed her last mission earlier this month, sinking off Manzanillo as part of the Sistema Arrecifal Artificial de Colima program so her stripped, cleaned hulk can help develop a sanctuary for local marine flora and fauna.

The steel that served for over 70 years under two flags is now an “opportunity to boost biodiversity, strengthen sustainable tourism, and preserve naval history and culture.”

Notably, her first skipper, LT Guthrie, retired in 1955 as an LCDR, ending a 28-year naval career. He went on to work for the Post Office in Santa Cruz, California, and died in 1988 at age 79.

Shangri-La at 85

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On the road this week, so an abbreviated Warship Wednesday.

Some 85 years ago this week, the final Yorktown-class fleet carrier, USS Hornet (CV-8), was commissioned on 20 October 1941 at Naval Operating Base Norfolk, Capt. Marc Andrew “Pete” Mitscher (USNA 1910) in command.

Laid down on 25 September 1939, three weeks after Hitler crossed into Poland, she had launched at Newport News on 14 December 1940; sponsored by Mrs. Annie Reid Knox (nee Reid), wife of SECNAV Frank Knox.

These below LIFE images from Thomas Mcavoy cover her commissioning, after which she brought the U.S. Navy temporarily up to seven fleet carriers when counting the smallish but still capable Ranger and Wasp. It was a benchmark figure that, after May 1942 with the loss of Lexington, Yorktown, Wasp, and later Hornet herself, that the Navy would not see again until, ironically, an altogether different Hornet (CV 12) would enter the fleet in August 1943.

She would soon receive her “warpaint,” a Measure 12 (Modified) camouflage scheme, and soon after shipped out to the Pacific with it March 1942.

Original Kodachrome. USS Hornet (CV-8) at Hampton Roads, with Measure 12 (Modified) camouflage scheme. She still wears this scheme at the bottom of the South Pacific today. 80-GK-439

USS Hornet Entering Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, May 1942, 80-G-66129

She quickly made a name for herself in the Doolittle Raid, after which FDR remarked the Army B-25s had come from mystical Shangri-La.

Orders In Hand, Capt. Marc A. Mitscher, USN, skipper of USS Hornet, chats with Lt. Colonel James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle before pinning a Japanese “peace medal” to a 500-pound bomb headed for Tokyo with his raiders. (U.S. Air Force Number 84959AC, Official U.S. Navy Photograph W-TR-1-41191)

She then took part in Midway and the Guadalcanal operations, but was lost after being severely damaged in the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942, having completed 372 days of service.

Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, October 1942. USS Hornet (CV-8) is hit by a Japanese “VAL” dive bomber, which dove into the ship’s superstructure after being damaged by anti-aircraft fire, 26 October. More Japanese flames are at right. One frame of a sequence, taken from USS Pensacola (CA-24). National Archives photograph, 80-G-33948.

It was a strong year, one for the record books.

Her replacement, CV-12, decommissioned in 1970 with seven WWII and another seven Vietnam campaign stars to her credit and  and is preserved as a museum ship, but it is long since time that the Navy bring the name back for the ninth USS Hornet.

Long since.

USS Hornet CV-8 by Gordon Grant NH 82718-KN

Update to the USS Texas

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Well, the historic– the only Great War dreadnought preserved– USS Texas (Battleship No. 35) has been in dry dock and ongoing restoration at Gulf Copper in Galveston for just over 4 years (since August 2022).

Thankfully, she is looking great and is sporting much of a new deck.

The updates from the museum include:

New Home?

We’re proud to have finalized an agreement with the Galveston Wharves Board securing Pier 15 as the new home of Battleship Texas. Learn more at https://battleshiptexas.org/coming-soon

What’s Next?

Battleship Texas will remain at Gulf Copper Shipyard for now and restoration will continue until her new home at Pier 15 is ready for her.

Current Projects?

Ongoing work includes replacing the wooden deck, running electrical cabling around the ship, paint prep in interior spaces, replacing the turret watersheds, restoring the 20 mm, 40 mm, and 3″ guns, and other projects.

Touring?

No tours are being offered at this time. Specialty tours, like the Normandy Tour, Gunnery Tour, and Engineering Tour will return after our 2027 reopening.

Reopening?

There is a lot to be done before the ship is ready for touring at her new home at Pier 15, Galveston, Texas. We are targeting 2027 for reopening at Pier 15.

The most recent video update, below:

Warship Wednesday 14 October 2026: The Hard Luck Empress of the Black Sea

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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 and a tale all their own, sometimes taking 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 14 October 2026: The Hard Luck Empress of the Black Sea

Above we see the Tsar Nicholas II touring the pride of his fleet, the newly commissioned dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariya (Empress Maria), her massive Obukhovskii 12″/52 Pattern 1907 guns framing the photo.

Just 15 months after she joined the fleet, she was lost, some 110 years ago this month, in an incident that is still seen by some as controversial.

Tsarist Dreadnought efforts

The Russians lost an incredible 17 pre-dreadnoughts and coastal battleships in two squadrons against the Japanese in the inferno in and around the Tsushima Straits and Port Arthur in 1904-05. Keep in mind this is more than twice the blow that the U.S. suffered to its battle line at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Broken hell Russian Battleship Orel leading 2nd Pacific Squadron last daylight hours during battle of Tsushima Alexander Zyakin 1905

These included eight sunk for good:

  • Navarin
  • Sisoy Velikiy
  • Borodino
  • Alexander III
  • Suvorov
  • Petropavlovsk
  • Sevastopol
  • Osliabia

And nine captured after Tsushima or raised from the mud at Port Arthur, then used as trophy ships:

  • Nikolai I
  • Oshakov
  • Senyavin
  • Apraksin
  • Pobeda
  • Poltava
  • Orel
  • Peresvet
  • Retvizan

Sure, as some were grossly obsolete (the three Admiral Ushakov class vessels, for example) or ancient (Nikolai I had been ordered in the 1880s and could never make more than 15 knots even when new), starting with a clean slate in 1906 had a benefit to the Russian Admiralty entering the post-Dreadnought era.

Plus, they had earned reams of tactical knowledge about battleship design defects the worst way, at the cost of 6,000 sailors’ lives.

Left were the damaged French-built Tsesarevich (hit by 13 large shells and would need significant reconstruction), which was interned in China, 10 that were locked into the Black Sea by the pre-Montreux Convention Bosporus (Ekaterina II, Chesma, Sinop, Georgiy Pobedonosets, Dvenadtsat’ Apostolov, Tri Sviatitelia, Rostislav, Yevstafiy, Ioann Zlatoust, and the mutinous Potemkin), while the Baltic had three ships left that only survived because they had been incomplete when the war started (Andrei Pervozvanny, Imperator Pavel I, and Slava) and the old Alexandr II.

As the Baltic was the most battlewagon poor (the idea of a great Pacfic Fleet had been abandoned, replaced by a miserly Siberian Flotilla), the new 24,000-ton Gangut class (Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk from Baltic Works; Gangut and Poltava from the New Admiralty Yard) which carried a dozen new 12″/52 Obukhov guns in four triple turrets, could steam at 23-knots and were swathed in an 8-inch belt (earning them a battlecruiser brand in Jane’s) were ordered first in 1909 followed by the four massive 32,500-ton Borodino class battlecruisers (12 14″/45 guns, 12-inch belt, 26.5 knots) ordered in 1912.

The Imperial Russian Navy battleship Gangut on the Neva River, in June 1914, before the acceptance trials

The Ganguts were roughly equivalent to the German Helgolands, British Colossus, and American Florida-class 12-inch battleships of the era, and faster than any of the aforementioned, albeit with lighter armor.

All were to be built in yards around St. Petersburg with significant French (loans), German (Krupp armor, Siemens-Schuckert generators, and a shelved Blohm & Voss design), Italian (Vittorio Cuniberti design input) and most importantly, British assistance (machinery designed by John Brown & Company to include Parsons steam turbines and Yarrow small-tube boilers along with Barr & Stroud rangefinders and Pollen Argo range clocks, with Vickers supplying design help with main gun production) assistance with Holy Russian twists such as icebreaking bows, linear (lineinoe raspolozhenie) rather that superfiring main battery turrets, and elaborate Eastern Orthodox chapels.

As for the hate of superfiring turrets and their tall barbettes, the Russians believed that spacing the main-gun turrets and their magazines as far apart as the hull allowed would reduce the risk of a catastrophic ammunition explosion, lower the ship’s silhouette, and improve stability. Read that last sentence twice.

Via Jane’s, circa 1921 edition, you have the Ganguts followed by the Borodinos:

Meanwhile, for service in the Black Sea, the 1911 Naval Program authorized three new battlewagons constructed along its ancient shores, Imperatritsa Mariya and Imperator Alexandr III from Russud in Mykolaiv, and Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya from the Naval Yard (ONZiV) at Nikolayev. The cost was between 27.7 million gold rubles for the Russud-built ships and 29.8 million for Ekaterina. Compare this to the 37 million ruble average cost per hull of the slightly larger Ganguts.

The Imperatritsa Mariyas were slightly smaller (23,000 tons and 551 feet oal vs 24,800 tons and 594 feet) than the Ganguts, but better protected (10-inch belt rather than eight-inch), and could be seen as a modification of the general concept.

Imperatritsa Mariya. An artist’s impression of the ship, copied from the book “Rossiiski IMP. Flot” of 1913 by Jitkov, courtesy of Mr. Boris. V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., NH 95283

Like the Ganguts and Borodinos, the Mariyas used Yarrow boilers and Parsons/Brown-Curtis turbines, though with fewer boilers, giving 26,000shp rather than the 42,000 seen in the Ganguts, and a more pokey 21 knots rather than the Ganguts‘ 24.

Of note, their Yarrow boilers were built under license in Kharkiv. Like the Ganguts, they could spray oil over the coal to superheat it, with oil supplied by nearby Maikop and Baku fields in the Caucasus.

American-style lattice masts were planned, but to speed things up, simple pole masts were used instead.

Wanting something bigger than the 12″/52 Obukhovs as ordered for the Gangut class, the 14-inch guns meant for the Borodinos were still under development, so it was decided just to settle for the dozen 12s with magazine space for 100 shells per gun. They were arranged in much the same linear, spread-out fashion as with the Ganguts, using the same Pulitov-made MK-3-12 triple turrets protected by 10 inches of armor.

Making 12-inch gun mechanisms, Nikolaevski plant, for Russian battleships to include the Imperatritsa Mariya class

Imperatritsa Mariya’s ship’s chaplain seated on deck during this ship’s brief operational career near one of her 12″/52 turrets. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida NH 100054

After post-war tests on captured shells, the British admitted they could fire a 1,038-pound M1911 APC shell to 22,600 yards and that it outperformed their own 12-inch Mark VIIa Greenboys. They were thought capable of defeating 13.85 inches of armor at 10,000 yards– and nothing in the Black Sea had that much armor!

The secondary battery consisted of 20 casemated 5.1″/55 M1913 B-7 Obukhov/Vickers guns on a protected gun deck, rather than the older 6″/45 Pattern 1892 Obukhov/Canet guns seen in the rest of the fleet.

Counter-boat defense was provided by four 3″/48 Canet guns and four 47mm Hotchkiss guns, while a torpedo battery of four small 17.7-inch fixed tubes existed for a dozen Model 45-12 steam torpedoes which had a 2,200-yard range at 43 knots.

To keep the four separate magazines cool, the ship installed a refrigeration plant with two large 10,500 sq. ft. Westinghouse-LeBlanc condensers designed by the G. A. Lessner firm, aiming to keep them at a crisp 59 degrees F if needed, a must in the humid subtropical Black Sea region.

With the Ottomans ordering two modern dreadnoughts (Fatih Sultan Mehmed and Reşadiye) from Vickers in 1911 and, the next year, assuming the contract for a third from Armstrong (the Brazilian Rio de Janeiro, renamed Sultan Osman I), the Russians ordered a fourth, improved Mariya from Russud in 1913. The planned Imperator Nikolay I would have exceeded 27,000 tons and carried a better armor scheme, plus the additional horsepower to manage it, but she was never completed.

As it was, the Turks never saw any of their British dreadnoughts, anyway.

This all brings us to…

Meet Imperatritsa Mariya

Our subject was at least the third warship in the Russian Imperial Navy to carry the name of Empress Mariya Feodorovna Romanov, nee Duchess Sophie Dorothee of Württemberg, who was the strong hand behind the very young Alexander I, leader of the vast Russian Empire after the death of her husband (his father), the detested Tsar Paul I, in 1801.

The first was a two-decked, 84-gun third-rate ship of the line launched in 1827 and served in the Black Sea Fleet until 1843. The second, also an 84-gun man-o-war, was key to the Russian battle line at the Battle of Sinop against the Ottomans in 1853, serving as Admiral Pavel Nakhimov’s flagship.

Nakhimov’s Imperatritsa Mariya under sail, as painted by Alexei Hanzen in 1916 on the occasion of the battleship with the same name joining the fleet. The Khrabryi-class ship of the line was the last all-sail-powered ship of the line built for the Russian Navy. At Sinop, she fired an amazing 2,128 rounds and shrugged off 60 Turkish hits. She was later scuttled during the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, her guns and sailors used to strengthen the city’s defenses.

Laid down at the Russud yard at Nikolayev on 30 October 1911 alongside sister ship Alexandr III, our Mariya took to the water two years later on 1 November 1913.

Her obvious patron was the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar), wife of the late Tsar Alexander III and mother of Nicky.

Imperatritsa Mariya in dry dock NH 84833

Changing the Marine guard detail aboard the Russian battleship Imperatritsa Mariya during World War I. Note the men apparently out of uniform in the left background; these may be civilian dockyard workers on or about the ship’s commissioning. The rifles appear to be Type 30 Arisakas, of which the Japanese sold 600,000 to the Tsar during the Great War. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drapshil of Margate, Florida NH 100131

Alexandr III would follow her down the ways in April 1914.

War!

Delivered to Sevastopol on 30 June 1915, with the Turks very much in the war and the German battlecruiser Goeben running amok in the Black Sea, Mariya was rushed to sea trials, which proved the low-lying dreadnought was a bit of a hog underway, her bow more of a plow.

The battleship Empress Maria passes the Chersonesos Lighthouse 20 August 1915. Note how low to the water she is!

Also, her air-conditioned magazines would have been a welcome relief when the average summer temperature in the Crimea was in the upper 80s and humid, but they didn’t work.

To mitigate the problem, she was lightly loaded forward, trimming anchor chain and reducing No. 1 magazine stowage from 300 12-inch and 980 5.1-inch to 210 and 400, respectively, while keeping her coal and oil bunkers well under their 3,000- and 720-ton full loads.

Even with a half-bunker load, she could still make 1,500nm at 12 knots, more than enough for a short 700-mile roundtrip sortie across the Black Sea to bombard Trabzon, Samsun, or the approaches to the Bosporus.

Mariya’s first skipper was Capt. Casimir Porembski, a 43-year-old Polish-born regular who entered the Naval Academy in 1889 and served as a senior officer on the cruiser Novik during the war with Japan. He reported aboard in November 1913 while she was still under construction and remained her commander through March 1916, in charge of the Black Sea’s most powerful battleship.

By September 1915, she was operational as the flagship of the 2nd Battleship Squadron, alongside the pre-dreadnoughts Panteleimon (ex-Potempkin), Yevstafiy, and Ioann Zlatoust.

She saw her first combat in a raid with her squadron along the Turkish coast at Zonguldak (13-15 October), bombarding Varna (2-4 November) and Euxinograd (6-8 November) Bulgaria, and then provided her 12-inch guns as muscle for the Trebizond operation which saw 15,000 Russians landed at Rizem on 5 March 1916 to envelope the left flank of the 3rd Turkish Army, which at the time was fighting the invasion Russian Caucasian Army, and eventually capture Trebizond by 18 April.

Afterward, the Tsar and Tsarevitch, Empress, and three Grand Duchesses reviewed her in May 1916, leaving a large collection of images from the event.

Czar Nicholas II visiting Black Sea Fleet Dreadnought battleship Императрица Мария Imperatritsa Mariya May 1916 Maria Russian

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Imperatritsa Mariya during the Imperial review, May 12- 14, 1916.

Imperatritsa Mariya during the Imperial review, May 12- 14, 1916. Note the minesweeping bowsprit

Emperor Nicholas II’s visit to the battleship Empress Maria, Sevastopol, 1916. Note her torpedo nets are stowed.

On 8 July 1916, VADM Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak, who had made a name for himself in mine operations against the Germans in the Baltic and would later lead the Siberian theatre of the Russian Civil War, arrived at Sevastopol and assumed command of the Black Sea Fleet, making Mariya his flagship.

Russian Imperatritsa Maryia class battleship

Just days later, he was aboard Mariya off the Turkish coast when they came within 90 cables (about nine miles) of the German light cruiser Breslau (Turkish Midilli), which immediately used her better speed to avoid the Russians’ incoming 12-inch shells and make her getaway in a smoke screen. Still, it was the last Black Sea sortie by Breslau and/or Goeben in 1916, which Russian scholars generally attribute to a lack of appetite for tangling with a proper battlewagon.

It was a precursor to the reason Kolchak was sent south in the first place– the Bosforskuyu operatsiyu, or Bosporus Operation, the planned November 1916 landings to capture the Eastern straits by the newly formed Separate Black Sea Naval Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Alexander Svechin, backed by two Russian army corps, the 29th and 40th.

In the lead-up to the operation, Kolchak ordered 17 minefields laid near the Bosphorus with 4,000 mines deployed, effectively sealing the Turks and Germans in the straits.

Kolchak’s plan hinged on two dreadnoughts, Mariya and her sister Yekaterina Velikaya (Catherine the Great), which would enter service at the end of October, with their combined 24 12-inch guns, leading his pre-dreadnoughts and four seaplane tenders (hydro-aviation transports).

However, Kolchak’s plan soon hit two major roadblocks.

First, when Romania entered the war in late August and collapsed by early December, the two army corps that were to land after his marines were rushed instead into the Danube Delta to join Sakharov’s forces propping up that weak ally.

Then Mariya exploded a half-mile from shore at the Sevastopol roadstead at 0615 on 20 October 1916. The explosion dislodged the forward turret. The conning tower, foremast, and funnel were blown into the air, and the upper deck, up to the second turret, was exposed, killing 320 of her 1,100 crew and sending a 1,000-foot column of black smoke from her bow.

Kolchak, who was ashore, rushed to the scene and was reportedly aboard her 15 minutes after, supervising the flooding of her remaining magazines and evacuation of the 85 injured. He also ordered her newly commissioned sister, Yekaterina Velikaya, and the old Yevstafiy towed to a safer location if the rest of the ship went up in flame.

Suffering from 25 subsequent explosions as the fires spread down her hull, igniting coal, fuel oil, and ammunition, she capsized keel-up at a depth of 8.5 fathoms at 0717.

Cruiser Kagul next to the capsized Russian battleship Imperatritsa Maryia Maria Mariya in Sevastopol

Her skipper at the time, Capt. Ivan Semenovich Kuznetsov, was relieved and put on trial pending an investigation into the loss of his proud ship.

Some believe the “Kontrol-K” spy ring, led by German intelligence officer Viktor Eduardovich Verman, sabotaged the Russian battlewagon. FSB archives (the successor to the KGB) state that Verman was supposedly awarded Germany’s Iron Cross 2nd Class for the deed. He was rolled up in 1932 by the OGPU and executed.

However, Mariya was most likely lost in a magazine explosion, a sadly common hazard for battleships of the era.

Similarly, the French battleships Iéna (1907) and Liberté (1911), the Japanese Kawachi (1918), British HMS Vanguard (1917), and the Italian Leonardo da Vinci (1916) all perished in magazine explosions while in friendly ports. Bagged nitrocellulose cordite, chemically sensitive to temperature, and combustible coal dust inside steel hulls proved notoriously volatile.

Epilogue

While Kolchak’s Bosphoros Operation was kicked down the road to May 1917, when it was thought Mariya’s sister, Imperator Alexandr III, would be complete, the Revolution intervened, and the admiral was instead sent on a naval mission to America on behalf of the Provisional Government to soft shoe for military aid.

By the time the Reds took over the government in the October Revolution, the effects on the fleet were quick, and Mariya’s last skipper, Kuznetsov, was led out and shot along the seawall in Sevastopol along with a group of senior officers.

Her first commander, the Pole Porembsky, was cashiered and escaped the hellfire of the Russian Civil War, given a general’s rank in the newly formed Polish Army, and later transitioned to the Polish Navy, which he led by 1925 as a vice admiral.

Porembsky died in Warsaw in 1933 and is considered a father of the modern Polish Navy.

As for the hulk of Mariya, they raised and refloated her upside down, slowly, from November 1917 to May 1918, by which time Russia had left the Great War, and the Germans were in Sevastopol on occupation duties.

Battlecruiser Yavuz in Sevastopol Bay, 1918, with the salvage operations of Russian Battleship Empress Maria to the left

April 1919 Russian battleship Black Sea Fleet Dreadnought Императрица Мария Imperatritsa Mariya upside down Sevastopol from French Danton Cl Vergniaud

The battleship Empress Maria after docking and pumping out water, 1919.

Mariya was towed to the large drydock at Sevastopol in August 1918, where she was stripped of useful material, including most of her 5.1″/55s, which were quickly used to arm river gunboats and barges during the Russian Civil War. She was eventually scrapped by 1927.

While some sources claim her 12-inch guns ended up in coastal artillery emplacements, that does not seem to hold water. All four turrets and a full dozen guns fell to the seabed after she turned turtle in 1916 and remained there until at least the mid-1930s, when the ERPRON salvage group pulled them up and likely scrapped many of them in poor condition.

Soviet myth had it that:

Shortly before the Great Patriotic War, Epronov’s crews raised these turrets, and in 1939 the battleship’s 305mm guns were mounted near Sevastopol on the renowned 30th Battery, part of the 1st Coastal Defense Artillery Division. The battery heroically defended Sevastopol; on June 17, 1942, during the final assault on the city, it fired at the Nazi hordes that had broken through into the Belbek Valley. Having expended all its shells, the battery fired blanks, holding back the enemy advance until June 25. Thus, more than a quarter of a century after firing at the Kaiser’s cruisers Goeben and Breslau, the battleship Empress Maria’s guns spoke again, raining down 305-mm shells, this time on Hitler’s troops.

However, although the four 12″/52s were of the same type as those salvaged from Mariya, they were purpose-built for the coast artillery task and shipped down to the Crimea in 1928 for the Maxim Gorky Battery 30.

They still exist, served until 1968, and are preserved in a museum.

The Soviets managed to recondition three of Mariya’s salvaged guns and returned them to service as railway guns. One even survived a stint in Finnish service.

In 1938, the Red Army built three railway guns using the 305mm (12-inch) guns from the sunken battleship “Imperatritsa Mariya”. They were used in the 1939-1940 Soviet-Finnish war, and in late 1941 they took part in the defense of the Soviet naval base on Finland’s Hanko peninsula. The Soviets disabled them when they evacuated the base, but Finnish specialists later restored them using guns from the withdrawn Russian battleship “Imperator Aleksandr III”. After the war, the Soviets took them over and kept them operational until 1991. On display in ‘Victory Park’, Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Poklonnaya Hill, Moscow. Via WikiCommons

As for her sisters, Yekaterina Velikaya became Svobodnaya Rossiya (Free Russia) after the Tsar fell, and the Reds towed her from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk in April 1918 to keep the functional battleship out of German hands. She was later scuttled in June, sunk by torpedoes from the Red destroyer Kerch, and later salvaged.

The battleship Empress Catherine the Great guarding transports, 1917

Imperator Alexandr III was never fully completed and was renamed Volia after the Revolution. Captured by the Germans in 1918, she was put in limited service to the Kaiserliche Marine as SMS Volya before passing to Allied control after the Armistice. Transferred to the White Russian fleet, she served as General Alekseyev, its flagship, then sailed into exile with Wrangel in November 1920 to Bizerte, Tunisia, where the French interned her until she was scrapped in 1936, her 12-inch guns going on to circle the globe.

General Alekseyev, photographed at Bizerte, French North Africa, where the ship was interned in 1920 as a unit of the “White Russian” Squadron that departed the Black Sea after the civil war. The ship was built as the Imperator Alexandr III, renamed Volia in 1917, and SMS Volya in 1918. Courtesy of Mr. Boris. V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1983. NH 95288

Imperator Nikolai I was launched in October 1916, and the work on her was suspended the following October. Never brought into service, the Reds renamed her Demokratiya (Democracy). She fell into German hands in 1918, then the Allies destroyed her in 1919 to prevent her from falling back into the Reds’ hands, and the Soviets finally broke her up in 1927.

This left the Russians without a functional Black Sea dreadnought for over a decade until the Gangut-class Parizhskaya Kommuna (“Paris Commune,” formerly Sevastopol) was transferred from the Baltic in 1930.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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To the Frontiers of the World!

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With today being today, you knew this was coming.

I give you the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Columbus (CA-74) at New York Harbor for Columbus Day 1945.

At first, you could almost mistake her for a slimmed-down Iowa-class battleship. That was easy to do with a ship that had a full-load displacement of some 17,000 tons, ran nearly 700 feet long, had a very similar 3+3+3 main gun layout, two funnels, and up to eight inches of armor. Note her abeam name stencil, applied for the event. NH 105562

Same date/location as above. NH 81121

Too late to see combat in WWII, Columbus was still a “war baby,” commissioned on 8 June 1945.

Joining the Pacific Fleet five months after VJ Day, she reached the old German China colony of Tsingtao on 13 January 1946 for occupation duty, serving off and on as the cruiser flagship in Chinese waters through June 1947.

After transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in 1948, she often served as the 6th Fleet’s flagship, as noted above. I mean, why wouldn’t she? She was a beautiful ship worthy of an admiral’s flag.

The Navy still had 12 of her class around in the 1960s.

As detailed by the 1960-61 Janes:

After another spin in the Pacific from 1955-1959, Columbus began a three-year reconstruction conversion from an all-gun cruiser to a huge guided missile cruiser, recommissioning as CG-12 in December 1962 to serve for another 14 years as a Cold War sentinel in the Atlantic and Med.

She had a completely different profile for the final stage of her career.

USS Columbus (CG-12) Steaming off San Diego, California, 19 February 1965.  NH 82722-KN

She was decommissioned on 31 January 1975, capping just under 30 years of faithful service, but never fired a shot in anger beyond her role in the Road’s End scuttling of 24 captured ex-IJN submarines on April Fool’s Day 1946 off Goto-Retto.

Sometimes all you have to do is look mean to get the word across.

Her motto, as befits the explorer whose namesake city it was, was Ad Frontes Mundi, To the Frontiers of the World.

Interdiction, one way or another

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Commissioned 110 years ago this week: the Sampson-class tin can USS Davis (DD-65).

Built in 17 months at Bath Iron Works in Maine, she was commissioned on 5 October 1916 after being christened by the granddaughter of the late Civil War-era admiral.

At just some 315 feet in length and 1,225 tons displacement, she could make 29.5 knots and carried a full dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes in four triple mounts as well as four 4″/50 guns and a 1-pounder balloon gun.

Broadside view of Davis in Hampton Roads, 10 December 1916, clearly showing her main and secondary battery, with 4-inch guns on the foc’sle deck and on the main deck aft, with 1-pounder anti-aircraft guns mounted forward of the bridge and atop the deckhouse, aft. Her port side torpedo tube mounts are in the shadows. U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships Photograph 19-N-1931

10 December 1916. Looking aft from the bow of the USS Davis (DD-65) toward the bridge area and forward guns, a 4-inch gun (closest) and a 1-pounder anti-aircraft gun, 165-WW-335E-29.

She shipped out for Europe on 24 April 1917 and was one of the first six American destroyers to arrive in the British Isles 10 days later.

Serving on convoy and anti-submarine duties, she accidentally fired on one of His Majesty’s submarines (L2, without too much damage), then later plucked 35 of the Kaiser’s U-boat men from the water, survivors of SM U-103.

“German submarine U-103 shown in sinking condition immediately after having been rammed by HMS Olympic off the south coast of Ireland, 3:50 A.M. 12 May 1918. Davis, commanded by Commander W.V. Tomb, U.S.N., rescued 35 of the crew; 9 perished. This painting was made by Pointer, Q.M. 3c of the USS Davis.” Courtesy of Naval Academy Museum. NH 49849

Laid up in 1922, Davis was transferred to the Coast Guard during Prohibition and renamed USCGC Davis (CG-21), running interdiction between Florida and the Bahamas for seven years.

1931 Jane’s showing a few “Coast Guard destroyers”

The more than two dozen Coast Guard Destroyers during Prohibition. Via Rum at War, USCG

USS Davis (DD-65) as Coast Guard Destroyer No. 21 at the Charleston (Boston) drydock, 1920s. By Leslie Jones, Boston Herald.

She returned to the Navy in 1933 and was sold for scrap the next year.

Warship Wednesday 7 October 2026: The Gunslinger of the ‘Unholy Four’

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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 7 October 2026: The Gunslinger of the ‘Unholy Four’

U.S. Navy photo via MARAD, No. 1137_051 (Declassed and in NARA’s RG-19 file).

Above we see, with 459 feet of hull being admirably pushed by a whopping 8,000shp, the attack transport USS Crescent City (APA-21), complete with a bone in her teeth.

If she looks rushed, there is a reason for that, as put the “attack” in attack transport, earning 10 battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation for her WWII service, which took her from Guadalcanal to Okinawa– accounting for at least eight of the Emperor’s aircraft in the process while housing over 90,000 fighting men in her makeshift berths, many just prior to landing on very active enemy held beaches.

The saga of the APAs

As detailed in Troopships of World War II, written by Roland W. Charles, 76 “straight” troopships operated by the Naval Transportation Service performed the yeoman task of shuttling troops from port to port. He makes clear that these were different from the ships we will cover here.

The Navy troopships described herein are those which transported Army personnel on Army schedules. There were other Navy passenger transports for carrying Marines, Sea Bees, etc., and many attack transports (designated APA’s), but these are omitted as not being in harmony with the title.

In short, Troopships (AP) brought the men across the ocean to a safe harbor; Attack Transports (APA) landed troops directly onto the enemy’s beachhead.

With the ramp-up of the U.S. military in the late 1930s, and the obvious fact that said troops would need to be shipped and delivered overseas in great numbers, including onto remote ports and beaches with little or no local handling facilities, the Navy began rapidly acquiring and converting auxiliary transports (AP) as early as August 1940– just after the fall of France.

However, this muddies the water because the differences between what a “standard” AP would do and what an APA would do became very different in the next couple of years, a factor only more confusing as the Navy only established the APA designation on February 1, 1943, retroactively changing 58 then-APs to APAs.

APAs differed from APs in at least eight major ways:

Core Operational Differences

Feature Standard Troopship (AP) Attack Transport (APA)
Primary Mission Long-distance point-to-point administrative transport Direct tactical delivery of troops in amphibious assaults
Destination Secure deep-water ports, piers, or controlled anchorages Unprotected beachheads and hostile shores
Landing Craft (LCVPs/LCMs) Minimal or none (1–4 administrative craft) Fully equipped (typically 20–26 LCVPs and 2–4 LCMs)
Boat Handling Standard cargo booms or stationary cranes Heavy-duty, fast-operating gravity davits and specialized booms
Troop Capacity High (2,000 to 10,000+ troops in up to “five-high” bunks) Moderate (1,000 to 1,600 combat-equipped troops)
Cargo Space Focused on personal gear and general logistics Pre-loaded with combat cargo: combat vehicles, artillery, ammo, and rations
Debarkation Method Gangways at piers or slow debarkation to pierside barges Over-the-side debarkation nets (Jacobs ladders) directly into landing craft
Command & Medical Basic shipboard sickbay and transport administrative space Dedicated Amphibious Task Force command facilities & expanded triage surgical suites
Defensive Armament Light (typically a few 3-inch or 5-inch guns, 20mm/40mm AA) Heavy AA suite (5-inch/38, dual 40mm Bofors, 20mm Oerlikons for shore defense)

Bear with us as we go chronologically for a second, with the first runs of APs that would later be designated APA.

First were eight 21,000-ton, 535-foot “State”-class passenger liners built after WWI, dubbed the Harris class in service. This was quickly followed by two McCawley-class ships (the old passenger liners McCawley and Barnett), then five 14,000-ton Great War-era passenger liners (the Heywood class) in November 1940, and the old passenger liner Exochorda, which became USS Harry Lee before the year was over.

While owning zero APA types in July, by Christmas 1940 the Navy had 16.

Moving into 1941, the Navy began to take new Maritime Commission C3-style passenger-cargo hulls with seven President-class (President Jackson, President Adams, President Hayes, Thomas Stone, Thomas Jefferson, President Polk, and President Monroe) which began to enter service in November 1941; and the Crescent City class (Crescent City later joined by Charles Carroll, Monrovia, and Calvert).

The five-hold Maritime Commission C3-style passenger-cargo hulls ran 459 feet oal and had a 12,000 DWT displacement. They could make a relatively speedy 16.5 knots on either steam or diesel plants, depending on variant.

At least 465 C3s of all types were completed between 1940 and 1947, with many converted during the war to Navy use as not only APAs (President, Crescent City, Windsor, and Bayfield-class) but as Bogue-class escort carriers, Klondike-class destroyer tenders, submarine tenders, and seaplane tenders.

Crescent City and her class, which were C3-P&C type hulls, would be made to shoehorn 42 officers and 478 enlisted passengers in a modicum of style, a figure that could be pushed to as many as 1,800 if packed into all available space and little cargo was loaded. Otherwise, they had a useful cargo capacity of 2,700 tons. They could also carry a huge array of landing craft– many of which were still on the drawing board when they were built.

The profile plans for USS Bayfield (AP-78/APA-33). She was built on a Marcom Type C3-S-A2 hull and was very similar to our preceding Crescent City. She was well traveled and earned not only four battle stars for World War II service and four for Korean War service, but also two for the Vietnam War.

Berths on a Bayfield-class APA.

Boat capacity on a Bayfield-class APA. Note: This is from a 1966 sheet of plans, but it gives a pretty good idea of the space available.

The Capacity Plan for USS Cavalier (AP-82/APA-37), a Bayfield-class attack transport commissioned in 1944. She was built on a Marcom Type C3-S-A2 hull and was very similar to our preceding Crescent City.

The Ingalls-built Middleton class (MC Type C3-P&C hulled) USS Samuel Chase (APA-26) off the Southern France invasion beaches, after discharging her troops, circa August 15, 1944, during Operation Dragoon. Note boarding nets and LCVP alongside. NH 100077-KN

The Navy ended up with 238 Attack Transports (no kidding) across 17 distinct classes. APA-1 through APA-249. Of these, minus the one-offs taken up from transit, they fall into a few different types.

  • Those built on C3-type hulls include the 34 Bayfields (C3-S-A2), the nine Windsors (C3-S-A3), the seven President-class ships (converted C3-Ps taken up from trade), the four converted Delo/Crescent City ships, the three Middletons, and the two Funstons.
  • Those built on S4-SE2-BD1 hulls (the 32 Gilliam class APAs)
  • The 117 Haskells built on simple VC2-S-AP5 Victory ship hulls.
  • One-off conversions and ships taken up from trade.

This all brings us to…

Meet Crescent City

Our subject was an MC Type C3-P&C hull built as Yard No. 4338 (Order No. 239932) by the Bethlehem Steel Shipbuilding Division’s yard at Sparrows Point, Maryland.

She was sold to the Mississippi Shipping Company under the Act of 1936, which intended to operate her as the cargo and passenger liner SS Delorleans (sometimes seen as Del Orleans) for the company’s Delta Line.

She was laid down on 8 May 1939, launched on 17 February 1940 with Mrs. M. L. Pedrick as her sponsor, and delivered to the Delta Line on 23 August 1940.

Founded in 1919 and based in Seattle, the Delta Line specialized in the Gulf of Mexico-to-South America “coffee route,” hauling general cargo and passengers back and forth. The company liked “Del” names such as the above Ingalls-built “Del-Triplets” (SS Del Norte, Del Sud, and Del Mar) built, like Delorleans/Crescent City, on C-3 P&C hulls.

Delorleans’ Maritime Commission status card lists her at 8,988 DWT (7,987 gross) with a cargo capacity of 453,273 cu. ft (bale) or 495,512 if shipping grain and had eight deck cranes to handle her five cargo holds. Designed with 26 staterooms, she could accommodate 67 passengers in addition to cargo and had a small parlor, promenade deck, and dining room for their use.

A set of General Electric geared steam turbines, driven by a pair of Babcock & Wilcox header-type (450 psi, 750°) boilers that could send 8,000shp to her single prop, allowed her to make (and sustain) 17 knots with an impressive unrefueled range of 15,500nm at 15. Three turbo-drive 350 kW 120V/240V D.C. Ship’s Service Generators provided plenty of electricity.

In addition to Delorleans (our Crescent City), Bethlehem Sparrows also built her direct Delta Line Type C3 sisters SS Delbrasil and Delargentino, all delivered within six months of each other. The Navy would eventually take the latter out of service and use them as the troopships USS George F. Elliott (AP 105) and J. W. McAndrew (AP 47), respectively.

SS Delbrasil later USS George F. Elliott (AP 105) later African Endeavor

SS Deltargentino later USS J. W. McAndrew (AP 47) later African Enterprise

Speaking of which, after just a single South American voyage under the Delta house flag, Delorleans was taken over by the Navy on 9 June 1941, and, after a rushed conversion for military use at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co. in Mobile, entered service as USS Crescent City (AP 40) on 10 October 1941.

Her first skipper was CDR Walter Carson Calhoun (USNA 1917), a surface warfare man who had witnessed the surrender of the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet from the deck of the USS Florida in the Great War and would go on to command the new cruiser Baltimore by 1943. Chester Nimitz of the Bureau of Navigation signed Calhoun’s orders to Crescent City. Of interest, all seven of Crescent City’s Navy commanders were Annapolis grads, showing how important the service took the vessel.

As noted by her 32-page War History, “The original crew was organized around a small group of ‘regulars’ supplemented by men of the Naval Reserve units in Dallas, Pittsburgh, Columbus and Miami.”

Her dry cargo storage increased t o 813,300 cu. ft. grain (736,140 bale) while her onboard usable fuel oil spaces amounted to 456,900 gallons plus another 487,000 gallons of cargo oil with fresh water storage at 107,200 gallons.

She also was given some serious boat-carrying abilities, to include large Welland davits for as many as 22 36-foot LCVP Higgins boats, and room on deck for four 50-foot LCM(3)s, although she would later add LCPLs and LCPRs to that mix as those types came online along with the longer 56-foot LCM(6)s.

Her self-defense armament, initially, was a 5″/51 gun on the stern and a few light (.30 cal Lewis) machine guns, along with some limited mechanical minesweeping gear (paravanes).

This soon increased as the war went on, and by 1945 she was carrying a 5″/38 Mk 12, four 3″/50 Mk 20 DPs, six 40mm Bofors in two twin and two single mounts, and 22 20mm Oerlikons in a variety of twin and single mounts as well as an S-series radar.

A great series of photos was captured of the newly dubbed Crescent City in November 1941 with her war paint on at Charleston Navy Yard.

All of these are from the MARAD collection:

With Crescent City on the books, in 1942, three other Delta Lines ships ordered on Type C3-P hulls at Sparrows Point, ex-Del Uruguay and the 2nd ex-Del Argentina and ex-Del Orleans, were given a very similar conversion with only minor changes in internal layout and are traditionally lumped in with our subject as the “Crescent City” class.

Those three follow-ons would become USS Charles Carroll (AP 50/APA 28), Monrovia (AP 64/APA 31) and Calvert (AP 65/APA 32).

War!

Just a week after Pearl Harbor, Crescent City left Norfolk for points West, loaded with troops and equipment of the Army’s 301st Balloon Barrage Battalion and Navy Patrol Wing Three to reinforce the Canal Zone. She then crossed into the Pacific, picked up Navy and Marine passengers in San Diego, and took them to Pearl Harbor. After carrying civilian evacuees back to San Diego, she rushed workers and equipment back to Pearl.

Running men and equipment of the 4th Marine Defense Battalion and Marine Air Group 21 to Efate, New Hebrides, to establish a base there, she returned to San Diego on 22 April 1942. There, along the California coast for the next two months, Crescent City conducted 14 practice landings and embarkations of the 2nd Marine Regiment. Those lessons learned in sweat and toil off San Diego would turn into gold at the Amphibious Training School.

From her War History:

Her boats, armament, and loading as of March 1942:

Dated March 6, 1942, this confidential US Navy document shows the Crescent City’s characteristics and capabilities. Gift in Memory of Lawrence B. Dunlap, 2018.117, via the National WWII Museum.

Then came the orders to prepare to shift some 6,200nm Southwest to a place called Guadalcanal, where the Japanese were building a seaplane base in the occupied British Solomons.

Leaving San Diego on 1 July in a 15-ship convoy screened by the carrier USS Wasp, and after joining a larger force at Tongatabu in the Tongas and following a series of disastrous practice landings at Koro Island in the Fiji chain, the Guadalcanal campaign kicked off with a bang.

Ships of the invasion force steaming out of the Guadalcanal-Tulagi area during the afternoon of 9 August 1942. Photographed from USS Chicago (CA-29), the view looks westward, with Guadalcanal Island in the background. USS Crescent City (AP-40) is on the left. A Curtiss SOC Seagull floatplane is in the foreground, on Chicago’s starboard catapult. 80-G-231855

In defending against incoming waves of Japanese torpedo bombers, Crescent City was credited with downing at least four between 7 and 9 August, between landing men of the 1st Marine Division.

Crashed Japanese bomber burns on the water near USS Crescent City (AP-40), off Guadalcanal, 7-9 August 1942 (USMC Photo 21054763854, Frederick R. Findtner Collection).

Army and Marines on KuKum Beach, Guadalcanal, circa 1942. This scene of apparent confusion was the beginning of an era of close cooperation between the Army and Marine Corps to finish the “housecleaning” job on Guadalcanal. “Again off KuKum. Transport number forty. Which I believe is the Crescent City or the Jackson maybe.” From the Thayer Soule Collection (COLL/2266) at the Archives Branch, Marine Corps History Division.

In October 1942, Crescent City ran a load of drummed avgas and a Marine aviation maintenance unit to Funafuti Atoll in the Ellice chain, then returned to Guadalcanal, making six trips to the island where she brought 7,000 men of the U.S. Army’s 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division.

In was off Guadalcanal that Crescent City, with fellow C3-hulled attack transports USS President Jackson, President Adams, and President Hayes as Task Group 62.1.4, “were dubbed the ‘Unholy Four’ by fellow fleet members and ground forces. It was axiomatic that whenever the Unholy Four traveled together, there was bound to be trouble.”

It was during this “Operation Shoestring” off the Solomons that Crescent City’s second skipper, Capt. Ingolf Norman Kiland (USNA 1919) often found himself as commodore of the Unholy Four as they ran around the theater.

On one such Unholy Four run to take the Americals to the Kukum Beaches on 12 November for a fast drop and run before the Japanese knew the ships were there, “Pistol Pete,” a Japanese howitzer hidden in the hills, opened fire on Crescent City close enough to observe splashes, followed by a noontime attack by enemy torpedo planes, of which two were confirmed down by our fighting transport’s gun crews.

December saw Crescent City haul the 132nd U.S. Infantry and 247th Artillery from Noumena to Guadalcanal, then take off the beleaguered 1st Marines back to Australia, ending their time in the “Green Hell.”

Marines Debarking at Brisbane, First Marine Division Leaving Guadalcanal, circa late 1942. Tired and battered but happy, battle-toughened Marines, relieved from the Solomons, disembark under full pack from a U.S. Navy transport at an allied base in the South Pacific. After a short rest, this outfit trains for another offensive aimed at the heart of Tokyo. “On the dock at Brisbane when we were disembarked from Crescent City.” USMC Archives photo

On 17 February 1943, while off Malaita, the Unholy Four were on the way to take the 8th Marines off the ‘Canal along with the tanker Tallulah and six destroyers, when they ran into a wave of Japanese torpedo bombers.

From her War History:

One plane was observed approaching astern of the Crescent City and her 5″/51 gun opened fire at point-blank range. The projectile exploded directly at the plane, blowing it in two pieces. This is one of the few times during the war that the obsolete 5″/51 was effective as an anti-aircraft gun.

Sadly, that voyage marked the end of the Unholy Four, as the now 15 ‘phibs of the South Pacific Transport Group would typically move in smaller task units, and Crescent City was transferred to Transport Division Eight.

After moving men of the Third Marine Division from Samoa to New Zealand, where our subject spent several weeks in beach-landing drills, she settled into cargo and trooping runs inside the theatre.

On 13 August 1943, while unloading cargo at Lunga Point, enemy torpedo planes swept over the anchorage and sank the ‘phib USS John Penn (APA-23), a veteran of the Torch Landings that had only recently shifted to the Pacific. Crescent City was there, and her skipper ordered his small boats to help take off survivors. Even after a years-long campaign and being officially declared “secured” six months prior, the Canal was by no means a backwater.

Landing troops on unoccupied Vella Lavella on 14 August 1943 and bypassing the Japanese garrison at Kolombangara, Crescent City completed her 14th run to Guadalcanal, landing more than 17,000 men.

November saw the Treasury Island landings, with Crescent City delivering the 9th Regiment, Third Marines, then returning to Guadalcanal to pick up the 129th Infantry and bring them to the party. In December and the New Year, she did the same for the Americal Division and the 21st Regiment, Third Marines.

Spending the first part of 1944 in a series of training evolutions in and around New Zealand, by May Crescent City was taking part in the effort to liberate Guam, which had been under Japanese occupation since just after Pearl Harbor. For the next three campaigns, Crescent City was the flagship of TransDiv 8. Our APA directly delivered the 12th Regiment, Third Marines to the beaches.

After her Marines went ashore, a key change took place: the APA sent medical parties in directly after to stand by for casevac, effectively turning Crescent City into a stopgap hospital ship.

USS Crescent City (APA-21) taking wounded Marines aboard for evacuation, likely 1944

From her War History:

September 1944 brought Peleliu, with the 1st Marine Regiment, led by Chesty Puller, embarked on Crescent City for the landings. Afterward, she received 416 casualties while, for two days, her beach party was the sole contact between the Marines ashore on White Beach and the fleet.

In October 1944, still the flag of TransDiv 8, Crescent City gathered around her at Hollandia some 60 ships of the Seventh Amphibious Force. Packed with U.S. Sixth Army personnel– with Brig. Gen. Philip Guillou Blackmore, Gen. Krueger’s Ordnance officer, aboard– the objective was Leyte Gulf to begin the liberation of the Philippines.

Landing her troops on the 22nd, she narrowly escaped the Battle of the Surigao Strait as she was speeding back to Hollandia to bring up the 127th U.S. Infantry and Maj. Gen. William Gill, commander of the 32nd Infantry Division.

Shipping to Manus in the Admiralty Islands at the end of November, Crescent City would then head to the West Coast for a refit at Bethlehem’s San Francisco yard that saw more guns added, davits strengthened, engines and boilers worked over, additional radar and radios installed, and the signal bridge retrofitted in a nine-week overhaul over the new year. Likewise, many of her “old hands” were rotated off, replaced by men fresh from boot camp and A schools.

Leaving San Francisco on 25 February 1945, Crescent City stopped at Pearl Harbor, where she was converted to a hospital evacuation ship.

Her War History notes: “An additional operating room was installed in the sick bay area, quarters for stretcher patients were arranged in the Number Five hold, and auxiliary dressing stations were established throughout the ship. Additional doctors and pharmacist mates reported aboard for duty, and on 18 March the ship was ready to sail.”

She became instrumental as an evac transport at Okinawa.

Arriving off Kerama Retto on 6 April, a landing ship in her convoy (LST-447) was hit amidships by a kamikaze bomber and lost the next day, while two Victory ships (Logan Victory and Hobbs Victory) were sunk outright and two others damaged.

Shrugging it off and getting to work, Crescent City remained on station for the next two months, settling into a nightmarish routine of fighting off infiltrators, suicide boats, and kamikazes while receiving casualties from 96 Allied ships. Her history notes she handled 2,700 wounded men, administering 500 pints of plasma and 460 pints of whole blood in the process, the latter delivered via seaplane directly from the States.

“Altogether, the job of handling the crippled bodies was a thankless job for everyone.”

Meanwhile, she also doubled as a receiving ship, with 10,500 fresh bluejackets and officers arriving from the fleet to be fed into the force to fill holes popping up off Okinawa. Her troop holds housed these newcomers until they were “called up” and sent out by small boat, with officers and enlisted men berthing side by side on the pipe bunks.

A larger ship among smaller ones, she hosted religious services on Sundays, conducting as many as five of them to handle men coming over for the occasion. She also served as a floating brig, accepting disciplinary cases from cramped DDs and DEs. For part of this time (8 July-23 August), Crescent City’s skipper was designated SOPA in charge of the Naha-Hagushi anchorage, and his staff handled everything from managing tug and salvage operations to coordinating smoke and AAA plans to supply administration. This period also included dealing with two very large typhoons.

On 15 April, her gunners downed their eighth confirmed enemy aircraft of the war and fired on Japanese aircraft at least five times while off Okinawa.

However, all around her ships were not so lucky, with her crew watching helplessly as the cruiser USS Birmingham (CL-62) was hit by a speedy bomb-carrying Hayabusa kamikaze, causing 130 casualties and tearing a hole under the ship’s waterline. Another evacuation transport at Kerama Retto, USS Pinkney (APH-2), was struck by a kamikaze on 28 April, killing 18 crew and 16 patients. Even on the night that hopeful Japanese “peace feelers” were announced over the radio, 10 August, a merchant ship was torpedoed in the anchorage just off Crescent City.

By VJ Day, her crew had been called to General Quarters 215 times off Okinawa alone. However, amazingly, she suffered no casualties or damage attributed to enemy fire or contact not just in that campaign but in the war as a whole.

After the surrender, Crescent City served as Amphibious Force Flagship for almost a month, receiving extra signalmen and staff officers to manage the task. Transferring the role to the USS Blue Ridge on 22 September, she once more hauled the First Marines of Guadalcanal fame, this time to Taku, China. She then trooped men of the 13th and then the 8th Chinese Nationalist Army from Hong Kong to Chinwangtao and Tsingtao in North China to fight the Reds.

On 1 December, her war ended; she left for Seattle, packed with officers and men bound for Home.

Her 10 battle stars earned her a Navy Unit Commendation (NUC). As far as I can tell, no APA had a better record.

  • Guadalcanal-Tulagi Landings, 7 to 9 August 1942
  • Capture and defense of Guadalcanal, 12 November 1942
  • Guadalcanal (Third Savo) 12 to 15 November 1942
  • Consolidation of Southern Solomons, 17 February and 18 May 1943 (including Action off Malaita)
  • Treasury Island landings, 1 and 18 November 1943
  • Bismarck Archipelago operation (Admiralty Island landings), 11 to 12 April 1944
  • Marianas, capture and occupation of Guam, 21 to 25 July 1944
  • Capture and occupation of southern Palau (Caroline) Islands, 8 September to 14 October 1944
  • Leyte landings, 16 to 27 October and 14 November 1944
  • Assault and occupation of Okinawa Gunto, 6 April to 30 June 1945

Her September-December 1945 crew were also eligible for the Navy Occupation Service Medal and China Service Medal (extended).

Her wartime APA sisters, Charles Carroll, Monrovia, and Calvert, all survived the war, seeing almost as much action as Crescent City, picking up a very decent 23 battle stars between them.

USS Charles Carroll (APA-28), on December 11, 1945, Norfolk, wearing camouflage 32/6T. “Lucky Chuck” earned six battle stars from Torch to Sicily to Husky, Normandy, and Okinawa 19-LCM-APA28-1

USS Charles Carroll (APA-28) December 11 1945 Norfolk wearing camouflage 32/6T 19-LCM-APA28-2

USS Charles Carroll (APA-28) December 11 1945 Norfolk wearing camouflage 32/6T 19-LCM-APA28-3

As for her two pre-war Sparrows Point Delta Line sisters, SS Delbrasil/USS George F. Elliott (AP 105) and Delargentino/USS J. W. McAndrew (AP 47), both survived the war and, as they had no extensive APA conversions done to them, were soon back in the commercial trade as SS African Endeavor and African Enterprise, operated by the U.S. based Farrell Lines during the post-war era on passenger and trade routes between New York and South/East Africa. By the 1960s, they were laid up in the Reserve Fleet, then scrapped by 1972.

Cold War

Departing Seattle on 23 January 1946, Crescent City transited back to the East Coast for the first time since 1942, arriving at Norfolk on Valentine’s Day.

The ship was detached from the amphibious forces and was operating as a unit of the Naval Transportation Service (NTS). She operated from New York and Norfolk in the Caribbean for the next 20 months, typically carrying dependents back and forth to the myriad of new U.S. bases down south.

Crescent City at Brooklyn Navy Yard,15 May 1947. Gone are the landing craft, replaced by lifeboats under her davits, although she remains a fully armed and commissioned naval vessel. Other NTS ships also wore the broad black band around the top of the stack at this time. NARA, RG-19-LCM, Photo # 19-N-142584, NY3-142G.

Outboard and inboard profiles of USS Crescent City (APA-21) as a dependents’ transport in March 1947. Drawing from “U.S. Amphibious Ships” and Craft by Norman Friedman.

10 August 1947. Panama Canal Zone. A group of Marines who have finished their tour of duty in the various guard detachments throughout the Canal Zone board the USS Crescent City for the happy voyage back to the Good Old States USMC Photo 167170 via NARA 127-GR-49-167170

Sent back to the West Coast, she arrived at San Francisco on 1 November 1947.

Crescent City was placed out of commission in reserve 30 April 1948 and transferred to the Maritime Commission 3 September 1948. Sister Charles Carroll was laid up the same year.

Two other APA sisters remained in service until 1966 (Calvert) and 1968 (Monrovia), respectively, and were scrapped by 1977.

Crescent City C3 Delta class troopships, 1960 Janes

Crescent City was permanently transferred to the Navy Department’s Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay on 3 September 1958, where she remained at a cost of $118 per month until 9 June 1970, when she was sent to WISCO for a hull survey in hopes she could be of further use.

It turned out that she would

Training Ship

The old Crescent City, aged 30, was transferred from MARAD on loan to the California Maritime Academy on the morning of 28 August 1970.

While I’m not an expert on the CMA’s operations, suffice it to say that Crescent City, disarmed and painted in a white-and-blue livery, sailed as TS Golden Bear II from May 1971 to July 1995, conducting 28 major ocean cruises.

California Maritime Academy training ship TS Golden Bear II passing under the Golden Gate Bridge inbound at San Francisco Bay circa 1993. Vallejo Naval & Historical Museum File name: APA 21 – GBII Circa 1993, via Navsource.

Artship

With the California Maritime Academy done with the 50-year-old APA, ex-Crescent City/Golden Bear was returned to MARAD in July 1995 for layup at the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay.

Four years later, President Clinton signed an order donating her to the Artship Foundation in Oakland in August 1999 after a six-year quest for a vessel to serve as a floating cultural warehouse. Renamed Artship, she was moored at the city’s Ninth Avenue Terminal until a city lawsuit forced the group to renounce the title in 2004, abandoning the social program.

She was sold for $200,000 scrap value to Esco Marine Inc. in Brownsville in February 2004.

A group called the Friends of the USS Crescent City tried to save her, citing that she was the last ship afloat from Guadalcanal, but their efforts fell flat.

Epilogue

Crescent City’s war diaries and war history are digitized in the National Archives and are superb.

Her Guadalcanal commander and commodore of the Unholy Four, Ingolf Kiland, earned a DSM, Navy Cross, and two Legions of Merit during the war. As a rear admiral, Kiland and his amphibious task group took Karama Retto in early 1945, routing out the suicide boat caves scattered on the island and ensuring it could be used as a support for the ensuing assault on Okinawa.

He later commanded all amphibious forces of the Pacific Fleet during the Korean War (COMPHIBPAC)– not bad for a man who started his career as an ensign navigation officer on the four-piper tin can USS Sterett (DD-27) during the Great War. Retiring as commandant of the Fifth Naval District in 1957, capping a 40-year career, VADM Kiland, son of Norwegian immigrants, passed in the warmth of Coronado in 1992 at age 96.

VADM Kiland is buried at Arlington, Section 1, Site 808.

While the Navy has not commissioned a second Crescent City, the fifth USS New Orleans (LPD-18) is a San Antonio-class amphib that joined the fleet in 2007. She is based in Japan, which is fitting.

The U.S. Navy (Pre-Commissioned Unit) San Antonio Class Amphibious Transport Dock Ship USS New Orleans (LPD 18) sails beneath the Huey P. Long Bridge as it moves on the Mississippi River towards New Orleans, La., on March 5, 2007, in preparation for its commissioning ceremony on March 10, 2007. MCS Kurt Eischen, USN.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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Warship Wednesday 30 September 2026: What Friends Are For

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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 30 September 2026: What Friends Are For

NIMH photo, via the Fotoafdrukken Koninklijke Marine, No. 2158_002974

Above, we see the Free Dutch Gerard Callenburgh-class destroyer (torpedobootjager) Hr.Ms. Isaac Sweers (G 83) steaming into the Grand Harbor of Malta circa late 1942, wearing British Atlantic camo.

Some 85 years ago this week, Sweers was part of the epic Operation Halberd, a resupply operation to keep besieged Malta fed, and lent her advanced AAA guns to help swat down Axis torpedo bombers.

All in a day’s work.

Dutch destroyer primer

A fleet based on cruisers, gunboats, and torpedo boats, the Netherlands dipped their first toe in the water of destroyerdom in 1909 with a group of eight Roofdier (Wolf)-class tin cans, the first serial-built Dutch turbine-engine ships, built for service in the East Indies. Small, 510-ton, 229-foot ships with four 3-inch guns and two torpedo tubes, they could make 30 knots on their combination of Krupp-Germania steam turbines and English Yarrow boilers.

The Torpedobootjager Hr. Ms. Fret (Ferret), of the first Dutch destroyer class, was in commission from 1911 to 1922, then used as a target ship until 1930. All of her sisters were named after predators (Roofdiers). Note the canvas sea bridge and knifelike 21-foot beam. NIMH 2158_002538

With the eight obsolete Roofdiers stricken by the 1920s, they were replaced hull-for-hull with a batch of eight 30-knot Admiralen-type tin cans built on a Yarrow design starting in 1925, based on the British destroyer Ambuscade. Built in two batches, the Van Ghents and the Van Galens, they were the same general size (1,640 tons/322-feet) and batteries (4×4.7-inch guns, 6 torpedo tubes); they differed in range. Interestingly, they also had the weight and space for a seaplane.

The Dutch Admiralen types, via the 1938 Jane’s:

Then, by the mid-1930s, with both the Germans beating the war drums in Europe and the Japanese doing the same in the Pacific with an eye towards the Dutch East Indies, it was decided to replace the fleet’s 12 mis-matched and aging T-class (Thornycroft), Z-class (Schelde), and G-class (Fljenoord) torpedo boats– most dating to the Great War, armed with just a deck gun or two and a few 17.7-inch tubes and struggling to make 25 knots– with a dozen much larger and more capable destroyers, outclassing even the Admiralens.

Dutch Callenburg-class destroyers, Janes 1938

This expansion came as part of Vlootplan Deckers, the Deckers Fleet Plan, named after Minister of the Navy, Dr. L.N. Deckers. The plan was to replace aging assets with modern ones and envisioned three light cruisers, another pair of “torpedokruisers” (torpedo/scout cruisers) to serve as flotilla leaders for the 20 modern destroyers (eight Admiralen and 12 Callenburghs), and at least 26 submarines (eight in Europe and 18 in the Dutch East Indies) augmented by 90 land-based Dornier Do 24K three-engine patrol bombers of the Marine-Luchtvaartdienst (MLD). They also added new gunnery training ships and gunboats to serve ancillary wartime duties. By 1938, this ambitious plan was augmented by a new push (Project 1047) to build a trio of hulking 25,000-ton Scharnhorst-style “cruiser killers” with 11-inch guns and swathed in 9 inches of armor, envisioned to join the fleet in 1944.

Moving past the Deckers Plan, let’s just focus on the Callenburghs.

With an overall length of 349 feet and a 35-foot beam, they had a natural 1:10 ratio and could float in just over 10 feet of seawater. Light displacement was 1,628 tons, full 2,240. This made them roughly the same size as the British Tribal-class destroyers.

The Dutch machine factory Werkspoor obtained licenses for Parsons geared steam turbines and Yarrow 3-drum boilers intended to equip the newest fleet of destroyers. Using a powerplant of three oil-fired boilers and twin turbines on twin screws, they could generate 45,000 shp at 475rpm for a designed speed of 36 knots. Of note, the class leader hit 50,100 shp on speed trials at full load by superheating the boilers to 350 °C, reaching 515 rpm and 42 knots. Twin in-line fire rooms and stacks provided redundancy against damage. Range on 560 tons of oil was 5,400nm at 19 knots, which was superior to the 5,700nm @ 15 kts of Tribals.

The intended armament was to be a main battery of five 4.7″/45 Bofors-derived Wilton-Fijenoord guns in two No. 8 twin mounts (one fore, one aft) and one single No. 6 mount amidships between the two stacks.

Built under license from Bofors by the ordnance office of the Wilton-Feijenoord Dockyard in Rotterdam, the Dutch before the war produced 17 4.7″/45s for the ships in armored turrets, and another 22 to equip six coastal batteries along the coast of the Netherlands. Capable of firing 10-12 rounds per minute at 19,500m, the electrically powered turrets were armored to 60mm.

Gerard Callenburgh-class destroyer initial 1937 general plan and longitudinal section, showing the original planned stern Fokker platform. Note the gun and torpedo arrangement. Nationaal Archief

Her secondary battery included two twin 40mm/56 Bofors No. 3 AAA guns (one over each twin 4.7″/45 mount) with Hazemayer fire control systems (more on this later) and two twin water-cooled .50 cal Colt (Browning) export Model 1924 mounts (on each side of the bridge wings), the latter platform also used on Dutch Flores-class sloops, minesweepers, and the minelayer Bloemendaal. The Dutch also trialed the twin air-cooled, Swiss-made Solothurn S-14-200 .50 cals with Zeiss sights, which were installed on the one-off frigate Johan Maurits van Nassau.

Twin Colt Model 1924 water-cooled. 50 cal Browning on a Dutch minesweeper, 1940s 2158_015801

They had eight 21-inch torpedo tubes (lancerbuizen) in two quad turnstiles serviced by a torpedo davit on each side of the deck. Two spare torps could be carried in a magazine behind the first turnstile, giving the destroyers a total capacity of 10 fish.

Maintenance on the torpedoes aboard the destroyer Hr. Ms. Isaac Sweers, circa 1941-42. NIMH 2158_002975

Anti-submarine weapons consisted of four depth charge throwers (dieptebombenwerpers) with space for a dozen cans.

They also had space for 24 sea mines on deck in place of stern depth charge rails and mechanical minesweeping gear in the form of two paravanes and chains, stored by the ship’s boats, which included a 23-foot motor launch and a 26-foot eight-oared rowing sloop with an auxiliary motor (Sloep B IV met hulpmotor).

Like the Admiralen-class, these new destroyers could carry a crane-launched and recovered single-engine seaplane, typically a Dutch-made Fokker C.VII-W.

The plane was initially going to be stowed aft with its tail hanging over the stern 40mm mount when stowed, but this shifted amidships with the single 4.7″/45 No. 6 single mount shifted aft instead, overlooking the stern 4.7″/45 twin No. 8, in the position of the stern 40mm twin mount, which instead was moved to a bandstand between the two torpedo tube turnstiles. The two twin .50-cal water-cooled Colt-Brownings were likewise moved from the bridge wing to flank the second funnel, abeam, port and starboard.

Gerard Callenburgh-class destroyer plan, showing the planned amidships Fokker platform and the reallocated guns. Nationaal Archief NL 4.MST_1921

Gerard Callenburgh-class destroyer finalized rigging plan, showing the planned amidships Fokker platform and the reallocated guns. Nationaal Archief

A Fokker C.VII-W seaplane on the Admiralen-class destroyer Hr.Ms. Witte de With at anchor, Koepang, Timor, Dutch East Indies, September 1934.  NIMH 2173-223-014

The Dutch were the only users of the Fokker C.VII-W, buying 30 of them for the MLD. Capable of a 70 kt cruising speed and 600nm range, these open-cockpit canvas beauties could carry two light bombs and a twin observer-manned Vickers gun on a ring mount.

They were designed for a peacetime complement of 158: 11 officers, 19 NCOs, and 128 enlisted, growing to over 200 in wartime.

Built for service in the Dutch East Indies, it is likely that as much as a quarter of their enlisted would be drawn from Indonesian volunteers. In 1933, the Dutch Navy had about 12,000 officers and men, including around 2,500 indigenous sailors drawn from the DEI, with efforts to train local officer candidates underway in 1940.

The first two members of the class, Callenburgh (Yard No. 208) and Tjerk Hiddes (Yard 207), were laid down six weeks apart at RDM in Rotterdam and constructed side by side.

Construction of -right- the Tjerk Hiddes and -left- the Gerard Callenburgh at the Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij, 9 June 1939. Note the RDM yard numbers on each hull. NIMH 2158_012320

Construction of -right- the Tjerk Hiddes and -left- the Gerard Callenburgh at the Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij, 13 September 1939. Note the RDM yard numbers on each hull.  NIMH 2158_031833

Mrs. G. A. J. Dijxhoorn-Ybes, the wife of the Minister of Defense, christened both.

The next two of the class, our Isaac Sweers and sister Philips van Almonde, were ordered from Koninklijke Mij De Schelde, Flushing.

In Dutch fashion, all were to have name initials as pennant numbers (Gerard Callenburgh was GC, Tjerk Hiddes TH, Isaac Sweers IS, Philips van Almonde PA)

This all brings us to…

Meet Sweers

Our subject is named in honor of Isaak Sweers (also seen as Ysaack Sweerts), Vice-Admiraal van Holland en West-Friesland, a 17th-century naval hero of the Anglo-Dutch wars. Sweers was a swashbuckler who first saw combat in his 20s under Jan van Galen against the Barbary Pirates, then sailed on Michiel de Ruyter’s expedition to West Africa and America. He was killed in a North Sea naval battle by a direct hit from a British 24-pounder cannonball that saved only his torso for the coffin– but left the Dutch with a victory.

Sweers and the painting by Willem van de Velde the Younger, “Night Battle between Tromp and Spragge at Kijkduin,” August 21, 1673; the 227-ship naval battle in which Sweers was mortally wounded, at age 51. Both via the Nationaal Archief

Laid down on 26 November 1938 at Koninklijke Mij. De Schelde, Vlissingen, Zeeland, she was Yard No. 212, while her sister, the planned Philips van Almonde, was laid down four months later as Yard No. 213.

March 1939. The future Isaac Sweers on the builder’s ways on Kon. Mij. De Schelde te Vlissingen. NIMH 2158_002965

The future Isaac Sweers was christened by sponsor (doopster) Mrs. Johanna van den Arend-Keers, wife of LtZ Henry van den Arend, supervisor of the destroyers under construction at the yard. 16 March 1940

The future Torpedobootjager Hr. Ms. Isaac Sweers was launched at Vlissingen, 16 March 1940. NIMH 2158_028945

Torpedobootjager Hr.Ms. Isaac Sweers gereed voor de tewaterlating bij de Kon. Mij. De Schelde te Vlissingen, 16 March 1940. NIMH

Sliding down the ways, 16 March 1940. NIMH 2158_002967

Hr.Ms. Isaac Sweers in Schelde te Vlissingen being fitted out, between April and May 1940. NIMH 2158_028947

Same as the above. NIMH 2158_028946

30 April 1940, the submarine Hr.Ms. O 22 (K XXII) comes back home to Vlissingen following sea trials, passing the fitting out Isaac Sweers. For reference, O 22 escaped incomplete to England when the Germans occupied Holland the next month and went missing off Norway on her fifth war patrol. NIMH 2158_015482

War!

During the first eight and a half months of WWII, although the country was neutral, the Dutch merchant marine was very much at war, with 43 merchant ships lost or severely damaged due to acts of war– and that isn’t even counting the fishing fleet, which also suffered heavy losses.

When the Germans swept into the neutral Netherlands as part of their sweep through the Lowlands on 10 May 1940, the Dutch had no hope of stopping the 29 battle-hardened enemy divisions of Von Bock’s Armee Group B with their nine much lighter divisions– especially with an army that had not seen combat in Europe since 1831. Plus, the Germans had something like a 7:1 local advantage in tactical aircraft, allowing the Luftwaffe to largely control the skies on Day 1.

Most of the Dutch fleet was deployed to the Far East to oppose an increasingly warlike Japan. This included the cruisers De Ruyter, Java, and Tromp; all active Admiralen-class destroyers; 15 submarines; and a myriad of smaller craft, as well as the bulk of the MLD’s combat aircraft —including 37 new Dornier Do 24 K-1 flying boats, soon augmented by 36 PBY Catalinas. Their inferno along the Java Sea would come at the hands of the Emperor’s Combined Fleet in 1942.

Left in Europe was the old 8,000-ton cruiser Hr.Ms. Sumatra, awaiting her mid-life refit in Vlissingen; the new cruiser Jacob van Heemskerck, still fitting out; the four building Gerard Callenburgh-class destroyers; assorted auxiliaries; and 13 submarines, most of which were either under construction or in dry dock for refit. The commander of the Royal Dutch Navy, VADM Johannes Furstner, soon left the country with Queen Wilhelmina and family on Sumatra for England to continue the fight, and issued orders for the rest of the fleet to do the same.

The Admiralen-class destroyer Van Galen, in refit at Rotterdam, was bombed and damaged by Heinkel He 111 aircraft of Kampfgeschwader 4 on 10 May and sank in the Merwedehaven. The same day, the tug De Oceaan, too slow to make a getaway, was scuttled as a block ship.

The 11th saw the old gunboat Braga scuttled in the Waal, while the Luftwaffe sank the Dutch liners Statendam and Veendam, along with the steamer Stella.

The 12th saw the gunboats Bulgia and Friso and the hospital ship Luctor et Emergo sunk by German bombs, joined by the steamers Prinses Juliana and Van Rensselaer.

On the 13th, the torpedo boat Christiaan Cornelis was scuttled by her crew after sustaining crippling battle damage, while the minesweeper M 2 was sunk while doing her job.

The 14th was a day of reckoning for the Dutch Navy. Destroyed by the Germans or scuttled by their crew were the ancient and immobile 5,000-ton coastal battleship Batterijschip IJmuiden, the brave sloop/frigate Johan Maurits van Nassau, the yard-bound submarines O 8, O 11, O 12, O 25, O 26, and O 27; the minesweepers Abraham van der Hulst, M 1, M 3, M 4, and Pieter Florisz, the minelayer Hydra, the gunboats Brinio, Freyr, Hefring, and Tyr; the torpedo boats Jan Danielzoon van de Rijn, G 16, and Z 3; the tug Noordzee II, and the merchant steamers Jan Pieterszoon Coen and Naaldwijk.

Picture postcard with drawings of some of the Dutch warships lost during the May days of 1940. Top left: the gunboat Hr.Ms. Johan Maurits van Nassau (1933-1940), which was sunk by aerial bombs on May 14, 1940, between Petten and Callantsoog. Top right: the torpedo boat Hr.Ms. Z 3 (1920-1940), which was sunk by its own crew near Enkhuizen on May 14, 1940. Below that: the destroyer Hr.Ms. Van Galen (1929-1940), which was sunk by aerial bombs near Rotterdam on May 10, 1940. Below that, on the left: the minelayer Hr.Ms. Hydra (1912-1940), which was heavily damaged by German anti-tank fire in the Zijpe near St. Philipsstad on May 15, 1940, and grounded in shallow water. Next to it on the right are the minesweepers Hr. Ms. Pieter Florisz (1937-1940) and Hr. Ms. Abraham van der Hulst (1937-1940), which was sunk by its own crew near Medemblik and Enkhuizen on May 14. Below that on the left is the accommodation ship in Vlissingen, Hr.Ms. Noordbrabant (1925-1940) was set on fire by its own crew on May 17, 1940. Next to it is the gunboat Hr. Ms. Friso (1915-1940), which was heavily damaged by aircraft bombs on the IJsselmeer on May 12, 1940, and subsequently by gunfire from Hr. Ms. Pieter Florisz (1937-194) was sunk after the crew had abandoned the ship. Additionally, the gunboat Hr. Ms. Brinio (1914-1940), which was sunk by its own crew on Lake IJssel near Enkhuizen on May 14, 1940. Additionally, the minelayer Zr./Hr.Ms. Bulgia (1894-1940), which was sunk during an air raid on Vlissingen on May 12. NIMH 2061-006-001

Looking to fight another day, the cruisers Sumatra and Jacob van Heemskerck, the gunboat Gruno, the minelayers Jan van Gelder and Willem van der Zaan, and seven Dutch submarines (O 9, O 10, O 13, O 21, O 22, O 23, and O 24) escaped from the European mainland to Great Britain, most under strafing attacks by German fighters and a hail of German bombs. Heemskerck had to be towed, and the O 20-series subs were still incomplete.

They were joined by an armada of coasters and merchant vessels that also ran the gauntlet. No less than 39 Dutch coasters took part in the “Miracle from Dunkirk” and the Channel harbors of France over the next month, lifting at least 1,900 Dutch troops away from the maelstrom. In all, more than 1,200 Dutch merchant ships would serve with the Allies during WWII, with estimates hovering at about 525 of those lost.

The Dutch army units, which had not yet linked up with the Allies, laid down their arms on the morning of 15 May.

Dutch RADM Hoyte Jolles, commanding nearly 10,000 stranded sailors, marines, shipyard workers, and recalled reservists at Den Helder, which included several fortified coastal defense sites, wanted to keep fighting until the bitter end and was only narrowly convinced by CiC Gen. Henri Winkelman not to waste his men’s lives.

But what of our four building destroyers?

On the Issac Sweers, MLD LtZ Baron Hugo Anne Victor Raoul van Lawick gathered 10 naval personnel and six shipyard workers, all volunteers, and, with the blessing of KMDS personnel, cast off the incomplete destroyer on the late evening of 10 May 1940.

Using the requisitioned 850-ton L. Smit & Co tugboat Zwarte Zee (Black Sea), the shoestring operation towed the hull 80 miles from Vlissingen to The Downs in England–dodging four German magnetic mines dropped in the tug’s path– arriving late morning on the 11th. Safe, they moved to Spithead the following day.

There, Sweers was tied up, safe from the German advance. Zwarte Zee remained in English waters, joining 12 other Dutch ocean-going tugs, and, despite being sunk at least once, entered the service of the British Admiralty as a salvage vessel and tow boat. Zwarte Zee’s master throughout the war, Teun Vet, was honored with the Dutch Bronze Lion (Bronzen Leeuw).

As for the building, Tjerk Hiddes and Gerard Callenburgh, still being fitted out in Rotterdam, were both scuttled on the Nieuwe Waterweg by naval and RDM personnel, putting them out of the Germans’ hands for at least the time being.

The fourth ship of the class, the building Philips van Almonde, still in the stocks as she was just laid down in March 1939, was blown up at the shipyard in Vlissingen and scrapped by the Germans.

Completion abroad

In June, Isaac Sweers was towed to Thornycroft shipyard at Southampton, where she would be completed, a process that took nearly a year.

Torpedobootjager Hr.Ms. Isaac Sweers in drydock at John I. Thornycroft & Co. Ltd., Southampton, October 1940. Note that her screws haven’t been installed yet. NIMH 2158_002969

Isaac Sweers in drydock at John I. Thornycroft. Note that her 40mm mount is covered, and the radar and fire-control system antennas have been marked out by the censor. Nationaal Archief 934-9828

Although she had most of her intended equipment installed, including her propulsion plant, she lacked her main guns. This left her with three twin British 4″/45 QF Mk XVI mounts rather than the five 4.7″/45 Dutch guns she had planned. The incomplete cruiser Jacob van Heemskerck, likewise without guns, received five of the same mounts.

At Alexandria on the Free Dutch destroyer Issac Sweers (G 83). Dutch sailors off duty, enjoying a yarn beside depth-charges. Note the 4″/45 QF Mk XVI twin mount, 24 December 1941. By LT E.A. Zimmerman, RN. IWM (A 7263)

She also got two Vickers quad .50 cal mounts instead of the planned Colt-Browning twin .50s and British torpedo tubes, but never did get that seaplane fitted. Instead of the Dutch listening gear she had planned, she got a British Type 124 sonar.

Quad .50 cal Vickers mount on Isaac Sweers, at Alexandria, Egypt, 24 December 1941. By LT EA Zimmerman, IWM (A 7264)

Issac Sweers as completed, 1941, with British guns and radar. Dutch Nationaal Archief. 4.MST

Drawing by AD Baker III via British Destroyers from Earliest days to the Second World War by Friedman (Seaforth 2009).

Torpedobootjager Hr. Ms. Isaac Sweers, 1941, Bestanddeelnr 934-9830

The Brits were very interested in her 40mm Bofors mounts, as was her Hazemayer local fire control system, classified as the Range & Direction Finding system 289, or simply called “The Dutch Device” by ASE Plymouth. Sea trials with the primitive radar showed that a Swordfish had a continuously trackable echo out to 4,400 yards, while barrage balloons could be pinged out to 6,600.

Hr.Ms. torpedobootjager Isaac Sweers at Vosper Tornycraft soon after completion. Note the barrage balloons overhead. NIMH 2158_005293

The electric listening device (RDF 289) transmitter-receiver on Isaac Sweers with the J-scope and headphones, shown next to an image of the RDF 289 transmitter section. Sweers had one of these sets in shacks behind each of her two 40mm Bofors mounts. 

The Brits elected to simplify the system for their own use and augment the Dutch ship with a range-only British UHF-band Type 282 fire control radar as well.

As noted by Friedman:

The Royal Navy was most impressed by the twin stabilized Bofors guns aboard Isaac Sweers and other Dutch warships. Both it and the U.S. Navy saw them demonstrated on board a Dutch gunboat in the West Indies. The U.S. reaction was to adopt a simplified (unstabilized) twin-powered Bofors in place of its quadruple 1.1-in anti-aircraft gun; this weapon entered widespread service from 1942 onwards. The Royal Navy was more interested in the mount, which it called a Hazemeyer, after the Dutch manufacturer (which later became Signaal), as a self-contained unit, carrying its own fire-control computer and its own range-only (Type 282) radar. A ship armed with multiple Hazemeyers could engage multiple air targets; a U.S. ship could engage only as many targets as she had off-mount directors (Mk 51 or radar-equipped successors such as Mk 57).

However, the complex mount turned out to be a manufacturing and maintenance nightmare, and the A through to I class destroyers could never be fitted with it. The promise of the Hazemeyer led the Royal Navy to develop the much heavier STAAG, with a next-generation radar (Type 262), and to project an even more elaborate Buster mounting, which would have weighed twenty tons (and was canceled).

The early 40mm Bofors Hazemeyer mount shown is aboard the destroyer Isaac Sweers, probably in mid-1941. The antennas are for the range-only British UHF-band Type 282 fire control radar. In effect, a Hazemeyer combined gun and fire control system, NIMH 2158_053881

A closer look at that Type 282. NIMH 2158_028955

With a 194-man crew drawn from across the assembled Free Dutch naval personnel in the West, Hr.Ms. Isaac Sweers, complete with the British pennant G 83 rather than her Dutch IS, entered service on 29 May 1941. Her first skipper was KtZ Jacques Houtsmuller, RNN, a regular who obtained his commission in 1916.

Hr.Ms. torpedobootjager Isaac Sweers (G 83) after completion in England. IWM (A 30815)

Finally, in the fight!

In June 1941, Sweers took part in a series of trials off Portsmouth and Plymouth, during which she achieved a top speed of 36.7 knots over a measured mile. She continued her workups and exercises at Scapa Flow through July and, on 1 August, arrived at Greenock to join the Western Approaches Command for escort duties.

She soon joined the escort for Convoy WS 10, a slow “Winston Special” headed to Africa from the Clyde.

Then came WS 11, which she took as far as Gibraltar.

Our little Dutch destroyer, sailing with the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, became part of Admiral Somerville’s Operation Halberd at “The Rock,” bound for Malta. Running two convoys totaling 12 freighters packed with supplies for the island, Sweers fell in with 18 other destroyers (including two Poles), five cruisers, the battleships HMS Nelson, Rodney, and Prince of Wales, and the carrier Ark Royal. A force of nine Allied submarines (including the Dutch O 21) patrolled ahead of the Italian fleet.

Speaking of which, the Italian RADM Angelo Iachino sortied out with two battlewagons, five cruisers, and 14 destroyers of his own, while the Italian air force had 500 assorted tactical aircraft based in Sardinia and Sicily that the Halberd force had to sail through.

When the smoke cleared, the Allied escorts and Ark Royal’s Fulmars shot down 21 attacking SM.79 and BR.20 torpedo bombers while only one Allied steamer (MV Imperial Star) was lost along the way. The Allied tin cans of Sweers‘ 4th DF, specifically HMS Gurkha and Legion, sank the Italian sub Adua. Gurkha and Sweers also unsuccessfully chased the Italian submarine Diaspro.

Sweers had at least three “narrow misses” from Italian torpedoes in as many days, two sub-launched torps traveling too deep, and an air-dropped fish missing her bow by 30 meters. She also suffered two men injured from friendly fire splinters.

Arriving back in Gibraltar on 1 October, Sweers ventured out to help escort Convoy OS 9 to Freetown, then came back north as an escort for Convoy SL 90

Back in Gibraltar for Operation Perpetual, one of the Club Run aircraft delivery missions to Malta, Sweers fell in with Force H– the carriers Argus and Ark Royal (the latter packed with Hurricane fighters and Blenheim bombers), battleship Malaya, cruiser Hermione, and six destroyers on 10 November.

Cape Bon

Ordered from Gibraltar to Alexandria via Malta with fellow destroyers HMS Sikh, Legion, and Maori to reinforce the Mediterranean Fleet in December, the four greyhounds sighted the outlines of two medium-sized ships steaming south on the early morning of 13 December near Cape Bon, Tunisia. With the force commodore on Sikh (CDR Graham Stokes) warned about two Italian cruisers (Alberico da Barbiano and Alberto di Giussano) proceeding from Palermo to Tripoli thanks to Ultra intercepts, he immediately presumed them to be these ships, and soon the surface action was afoot.

Sikh, leading the column, went in first, torpedoes and guns opening up at 1,000 yards, followed by Legion and Maori, with 12 torps wrecking the Italian cruisers. Sweers, the last in the column, got off 4-inch rounds at one of the burning cruisers (Alberto di Giussano), then switched fire to an Italian torpedo boat (Cigno) running in close, scoring several hits as the two traded missed torpedoes at close range in the dark.

At the end of the scrap, the Allies suffered no casualties or damage, while both Italian cruisers were on the bottom, with 817 men from their crews. The damaged Cigno returned after dawn to pick up 500 waterlogged survivors.

The four Allied destroyers sailed into Alexandria with a hell of an after-action report on 19 December.

Changing skippers, loss of Gurkha

On Christmas Eve 1941, RN Photographer Lt. E.A. Zimmerman came aboard the Dutch man-of-war at Alexandria and captured her crew at work, then accompanied them for a Christmas ASW patrol.

Zimmerman’s photo essay:

CDR Houtsmuller, captain of the Isaac Sweers (left by one of the ship’s torpedo turnstiles) with RADM Irvine Gordon Glennie, Rear Admiral (Destroyers, Mediterranean Fleet). Glennie, who started the war commanding HMS Hood but had been kicked upstairs before she met Bismarck, retired as a full admiral in 1947, capping 42 years in uniform. By Zimmerman. IWM (A 7258)

At Alexandria on Issac Sweers. Dutch sailors pulling out torpedoes for cleaning, oiling, varnishing, and revision, 24 December 1941. By Zimmerman. IWM (A 7259)

At Alexandria on Issac Sweers. Dutch sailors pulling out torpedoes for cleaning, oiling, varnishing, and revision, 24 December 1941. By Zimmerman. IWM (A 7261)

At Alexandria on Issac Sweers. Members of the gun crew overhauling their pom-poms while in harbor. 24 December 1941. By Zimmerman. IWM (A 7264)

25 December 1941. ASW Patrol. Sending and receiving messages on the Dutch destroyer Isaac Sweers, while the look-out below scans the horizon. By Zimmerman IWM (A 8056)

25 December 1941. ASW Patrol, eastern Med. HMS Napier and HMS Nizam are almost hidden by bow waves from Isaac Sweers in heavy seas.  By Zimmerman IWM (A 8053)

In early 1942, at a ceremony at Admiralty House, a DSO (Houtsmuller), 2 DSCs, and 3 DSMs were presented by Admiral of the Fleet and First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound, to officers of Isaac Sweers, “who participated in the night action in the Mediterranean on 13 December 1941 when two Italian cruisers and an E-boat were sunk and an Italian torpedo boat was heavily damaged.”

By this time, Houtsmuller had been replaced by KltZ Willem Harmsen, RNN, who had commanded the British-loaned destroyer HNMS Campbeltown (I 42) throughout 1941. A regular, Harmsen had earned his first stripe in July 1915.

The new year saw Sweers on cross-Med Convoy ME 8, AT 12, and MW 8A/B. It was on the latter that U-133 (Kptlt Hesse) torpedoed Gurkha off Sidi Barrani on 17 January 1942. Sweers and Maori rushed to her aid and, after towing her out of a burning oil slick, Sweers picked up 240 survivors while Maori screened the rescue and hunted the attacker. Gurkha suffered nine losses.

Royal Navy L-class destroyer HMS Gurkha (G 65), one hour after being torpedoed by U-133 off Sidi Barrani on 17 January 1942. She would be on the bottom just 30 minutes later, with Sweers saving the majority of her crew. The photo was taken by D.J.Hoefsloot, the ship’s barber on Isaac Sweers.

Spared at Java, lost at Torch

On 29 January 1942, with a brand-new war being fought in the Pacific, Sweers was released from the Mediterranean Fleet and ordered to proceed to the Dutch East Indies to reinforce the Free Dutch forces there under pressure from the Japanese.

However, upon arriving in Colombo via Port Said and Aden in late February, the situation in the Java Sea had come to a head, and there was no longer a Dutch fleet for Sweers to join in the Far East.

Falling in with the British Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean, she spent most of March and April escorting the battleship HMS Royal Sovereign, reacting to Operation C, the strong 5-carrier/4-battleship Japanese raid into the region.

Isaac Sweers in the Indian Ocean under British RN orders. Nationaal Archief NL 934-9831

Sweers, likely in a British port in 1942, looking worn. NIMH 2158 028954

After the Japanese retired back to the Pacific, Sweers was released to make her way to England via Durban, Simonstown, Freetown, and Gibraltar.

On 22 June 1942, she arrived at Thornycroft shipyard in Portsmouth for a much-needed refit after a solid year of high-tempo operations. She would remain there for three months. During the refit, Sweers landed her quad Vickers .50s in exchange for four Oerlikon singles and picked up a British Western Approaches-style camo scheme.

Hr.Ms. torpedobootjager Isaac Sweers’ post-camo scheme late in her career. NIMH 2158_005303

After working up and exercises in Scapa Flow, Sweers was attached to the escort for troop Convoy KMF 1 for the Torch Landings in North Africa, and headed back to the Med in October. There, she was detached on 5 November to join Force H, supporting the Eastern (Algiers) and Center (Oran) Task Forces.

On 11 November, Sweers and the British destroyer HMS Porcupine rescued 238 survivors from the Dutch troop transport Nieuw Zeeland, which had been torpedoed and sunk by U-380 about 80 miles east of Gibraltar.

The next day, our subject’s long streak of luck finally ran out.

At 0615  on 13 November, while northwest of Algiers, Sweers was hit by two torpedoes from U-431 (Kptlt Wilhelm Dommes) on the starboard side. One torpedo struck an oil tank, which had just been topped off by the fleet oiler HMS Dingledale, spreading burning oil over the ship and the water. The second torpedo hit the logroom and O quarters, killing all 13 officers sleeping there, with the butcher’s bill topping 108.

The British armed trawler HMS Loch Oskaig picked up the 86 survivors.

A snapshot of Hr. Ms. Isaac Sweers was found on the body of one of her crew after she was lost. The discolored spots are due to fuel oil, with which this survivor was also soaked. NIMH 2158_001537

For what it is worth, U-431 was chased to the ground the following October by RAF Wellingtons off Cartagena and sent to the bottom with all hands. Kptlt Dommes had, however, left the boat by then, sailing to the Pacific to become the Monsun Group commander at Penang, surviving the war with 11 patrols and 40,103 GRT to his credit.

Epilogue

Sweers‘ 1941 skipper of Cape Bon fame, KtZ Jacques Houtsmuller, RNN, survived the war and retired from the Navy in December 1946, capping a 30-year career, and was made an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau. He passed away in 1974, aged 80.

Kapitein ter zee Jacques Houtsmuller, DSO, et, al

Her final skipper, KltZ Willem Harmsen, would go on to command the completed Jacob van Heemskerck in the Indian Ocean in 1943 and 44. He retired in 1946 as Commanding Officer, Naval Forces Rotterdam. He passed away in 1970, aged 77.

The Dutch naval aviator who managed to save the incomplete Isaac Sweers, Baron von Lawick, was killed in a plane crash in the Dutch East Indies in 1941, aged just 31. His only son, naturalist Baron Hugo van Lawick, married Jane Goodall and won eight Emmy Awards for his documentary films.

As for Zwarte Zee, the little tug that saved Isaac Sweers from the Germans in 1940, sailing as W 163, she and 11 other Dutch tugs would take part in Operation Pluto, the breakwater for Normandy, in 1944, when her sister Roode Zee was struck by a German torpedo and sunk with her entire crew. After returning home, Zwarte Zee had a long career, chugging along for 33 years on her original pair of good old Werkspoor crosshead diesels.

On her last voyage to the scrappers in 1966, the old tug sailed slowly along the Nieuwe Maas through the port of Rotterdam, with many on the riverbank to bid farewell to the vessel.

Sleepboot Zwarte Zee waarschijnlijk in het Noordzeekanaal 1933

As for Issac Sweers’ sisters, the scuttled Gerard Callenburgh was salvaged and seized by the Germans in July 1940, then completed and served in the Kriegsmarine with a mixture of her Dutch main guns and German 20mm C/38 (16) and 37mm C/30 (4) flak guns and torpedo tubes, and as ZH1 (Zerstörer Holland 1), commissioned 11 October 1942.

Ex-Gerard Callenburgh, German ZH1, was sunk on 9 June 1944 by Allied destroyers (British HMS Tartar, Ashanti, Eskimo, and Javelin, the Canadian Haida and Huron, and the Polish Blyskawica) in the English Channel 10 miles NW of Ile de Bas by gunfire and torpedoes. NIMH 2158_035728

The scuttled Tjerk Hiddes, raised in June 1942, was planned to become ZH 2 but was never completed as such and was eventually scrapped at Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht.

An illustration of ZH 1 and 2 destroyers Source: “Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe 1815 – 1945, Band 2” book, by Erich Gröner

In a passive resistance kind of thing, the good patriotic employees of Werkspoor, under chief engineer Gerard Jan Lugt, duly disassembled and hid from the Germans eight Werkspoor-Parsons turbines meant for the Gerard Callenburgh class destroyers, along with plans and machinery for their production, through a variety of subterfuges including offsite storage (including at the company’s vast railcar plant at Utrecht), disassembly, and burying them under scrap and rubbish piles until 1945.

Post-liberation, they were coupled with new Babcock boilers and recycled into the power plants of four new, albeit smaller and more modern, Type 47A (Holland) class submarine hunter (onderzeebootjager) ASW destroyers built in the early 1950s, sailing into the mid-1970s in Dutch service, with one later serving in Peru well into the 1980s.

The Type 47A Onderzeebootjager Hr.Ms. Holland, complete with a pair of quad Bofors 375mm ASW mortars forward of the bridge. She served from 1954 to 1977 with the Dutch, then until 1986 with Peru as BAP Garcia y Garcia (DD75)– and did it all with pre-WWII engines ordered for the Gerard Callenburgh class– and Holland broke 40 knots on builder’s sea trials! NIMH 2158_002863

Speaking of carrying a legacy forward, the Dutch reused the name of VADM Sweers for an NDSM-built Van Speijk (Dutch Leander)- class frigate (F 814), commissioned in 1968. She served the Koninklijke Marine until 1990, when she was decommissioned as part of a post-Cold War drawdown. Still young and in good condition, she was sold to Indonesia, where she remains in service as the Ahmad Yani-class frigate KRI Karel Satsuitubun (F 356), now 58 years old.

HNLMS Isaac Sweers (F814) during her Cold War service in the Royal Netherlands Navy. She continues to ply the Pacific under an Indonesian flag, serving alongside four of her sisters.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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