Category Archives: canada

Dragging Stern

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Here we see this amazing shot, some 80 years ago this week, of the Ruler (Bogue) class Royal Navy escort carrier HMS Nabob (D 77) as she doggedly returns to base, very well trimmed aft, her stern low down in the water, after being hit by a German torpedo on 22 August 1944.

She lost 21 of her crew but the survivors couldn’t quit her.

Hudson, F A (Lt) Royal Navy official photographer Imperial War Museums (collection no. 4700-01) A 25368.

Constructed in Seattle under the name USS Edisto (ACV/CVE-41), Nabob instead entered British service on 7 September 1943, with over two-thirds of her crew being Canadian.

Less than a year later and half a world away, Nabob, loaded with Wildcat Mk V fighters and Avenger Mk.IIs from 852 and 856 Naval Air Squadrons, were in the main force attacking KMS Tirpitz in that German battlewagon’s Norwegian stronghold during Operation Goodwood.

It was then, after the first strike was recovered, that a Type VIIC U-boat on its 8th patrol, U-354 (Oblt. Hans-Jürgen Sthamer), encountered our little “jeep” carrier and pumped a spread of FAT torpedoes into her just after 01.14 hours on 22 August 1944. One hit, blowing a 32-foot hole below her waterline aft of the engine room and causing extensive flooding.

Sthamer tried to finish off the wounded carrier with a Gnat torpedo but it was instead soaked up by the Buckley-class destroyer escort HMS Bickerton (K 466), sending the greyhound to the bottom of the Barents Sea with 38 dead.

The British sloop HMS Mermaid and the frigate HMS Loch Dunvegan would in turn send U-354 and all hands to the cold embrace of the sea floor courtesy of dozens of depth charges.

Nabob, her engine room shored up against the open ocean, managed to limp to Scapa Flow some 1,070 miles at a steady ten-knot clip. She somehow even managed to get a few of her Avengers airborne when a sonar contact suggested another U-boat blocking her path.

As her galley and mess facilities were out of service, the skeleton crew that shepherded their hogging carrier back to Scotland had to get by on “short rations and rum for the five days it took to get the ship home.”

It was a marvel of damage control and was cited as an example to emulate in RN publications for years.

Declared a constructive loss as repair to her warped shaft could not realistically be accomplished she was returned to U.S. Navy custody in March 1945.

Sold for scrap the next year to a breaker’s yard in Holland, she was in fact found still serviceable and, converted to mercantile service, steamed for another 30 years.

Never doubt a Jeep carrier.

Often regarded by some as Canada’s first aircraft carrier, her ship’s bell was retained by the RCN and is in the Naval Museum of Halifax, CFB Halifax. Although her crew cut off her guns and jettisoned several of her planes to cut weight and correct trim lest water poured into her hangar deck from the stern, they couldn’t bring themselves to 86 the bell. 

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 22, 2024: Ghosts of Gagil Tomil

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile 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

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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 22, 2024: Ghosts of Gagil Tomil

Via the U.S. Navy SEAL Museum.

Above we see UDT-10 swimmers (left to right) S1c Leonard Barnhill, SP(A)1c John MacMahon, LT M.R. Massey, SP(X)1c Bill Moore, and QM3c Warren Christensen on the cramped mess deck of the Balao-class fleet boat USS Burrfish (SS-312) on the early morning of 17 August 1944. Note the hearty “welcome home” breakfast of eggs, bacon, and coffee fortified with medicinal 6-year-old Overholt straight rye whiskey along with the diver’s working uniform of grease, grenades, knives, and swim trunks.

These men would mount the first and only submarine-launched reconnaissance operation accomplished by the Pacific UDTs during WWII, some 80 years ago this month.

Some of them are still missing.

The Balao Class

A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. Unlike those of many navies of the day, U.S. subs were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.

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

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

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

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

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

Meet Burrfish

Our subject is the only U.S. Navy warship to carry the name of the tiny Atlantic swellfish. Built by the Portsmouth Navy Yard, she was laid down on 24 February 1943, launched that June, and commissioned on 14 September– her construction spanning just 202 days.

Officers and crewmen salute the colors as the Burrfish (SS-312) slides into the Atlantic at Portsmouth Navy Yard, Portsmouth, N.H., 18 June 1943 via Subvets

Her first skipper was 32-year-old LT (T/Cdr) William Beckwith Perkins, Jr., USN (USNA 1932), late of the Panama Canal Zone’s guardian submarine “Sugar Boat” USS S-11 (SS 116). A Keystoner born in Upper Turkeyfoot Township, Pennsylvania, he was the grandson of a swashbuckling horse soldier, Isaac Otey Perkins, who rode with the 5th Virginia Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War. Meanwhile, his uncle, Col. Nathaniel James Perkins, was head of the Fork Union Military Academy, which LT Perkins attended before his appointment to Annapolis.

After a four-month 8,000-mile shakedown cruise from New London to Key West– where she took part in two weeks of ASW exercises– through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor where Burrfish arrived on 6 January 1944, she prepped for her first war patrol. This included 11 underway exercises (four at night), degaussing, and sound listening tests.

1943-1944 USS Burrfish commanding officer William Beckwith Perkins, Jr. on the right in the second row.

War!

Getting into it, Burrfish departed Pearl Harbor on 2 February 1944 for her 1st War Patrol. She was ordered to patrol in the Caroline Islands area. She was a new boat with a green crew. It was the first war patrol for not only her skipper but also for 53 of her 83-member crew– some of which were added just a day before sailing. Her XO, LT Talbot Edward Harper (USNA 1937), had made five patrols already on the USS Greyback.

Burrfish met the enemy for the first time on 10 February– a Betty bomber while she was on the surface– and both left unharmed.

Sailing through a Japanese convoy on Valentine’s Day 1944 and firing off four unsuccessful Mark 14 torpedoes, she was depth charged for two hours, counting 22 strings of cans while she went deep– 500 feet– to avoid death. Keep in mind test depth on Balaos was listed as 400 feet.

She was depth charged again by a Japanese destroyer (8 cans) on 17 February.

This pace continued for the rest of the month, concluding on Leap Day when she fired three unsuccessful Mark 14s at a large Japanese freighter accompanied by two escorts and received 33 depth charges in return.

March likewise brought a three-torpedo attack on an escorted transport on the 3rd, which was unsuccessful.

Recalled, Burrfish ended her 1st War Patrol at Midway on 22 March, with several leaks from depth charge attacks and her unusable No. 1 torpedo tube which was jammed in two feet. She had counted 30 Japanese air contacts and 13 ship contacts in her 9,561-mile, 53-day sortie but failed to claim any.

A Combat Insignia for the patrol was not authorized by ComSubPac.

Three weeks later, repaired, rearmed, restored, and refueled, she left on her 2nd War Patrol on 14 April, ordered to stalk the Japanese Home Islands, east of Kyushu and south of Honshu. Her crew at this point was mostly made up of men who had earned their “dolphins” and she carried fish with updated warheads.

Logging 16 shipping contacts, mostly trawlers, Burrfish hit paydirt on the early morning of 7 May when she came across a tanker and, after stalking it for three hours, pumping three Mk 14-3As into its hull.

Post-war review boards confirmed she sank the German oiler Rossbach (5984 GRT) formerly the Norwegian A/S Norsk Rutefart-operated D/T Madrono, south of Murotosaki, Japan. She had been seized by the Hilfskreuzer Thor in June 1942.

The Britsh-built Madrono was caught by Thor while traveling in ballast from Melbourne to Abadan. While her Norwegian crew spent the rest of the war in Yokohama, Burrfish sent the tanker to the bottom with her German prize crew aboard.

Burrfish ended her second patrol at Pearl Harbor on 4 June, having covered 9,370 miles in 52 days, and was allowed her first Combat Insignia for her successful patrol. Her original XO, Talbot Harper, left the boat to receive command of USS Kingfish (SS 234), which he would take out on four war patrols and bag seven Japanese ships, earning the Silver Star in the process.

Then came the Yap operation

Frogman mission

With the need to map Axis-held beaches and clear obstacles for follow-on landings, the Navy began standing up what would become Navy Combat Demolition Units and later Underwater Demolition Teams in the early summer of 1943. Basic training was conducted in a nine-week program at Fort Pierce, Florida, later followed by six weeks of advanced training at the NCDT&E depot in Maui for Pacific-bound UDTs. The first teams to see combat were UDT-1 and UDT-2, which hit the beach during Operation Flintlock at Kwajalein and Roy-Namur in January 1944.

These “Demolitioneers” were primarily recruited from the Seabee dynamiting and demolition school but also included bluejackets from the fleet and the occasional Coast Guardsman. In the end, some 34 UDT teams were formed, 21 of which saw combat. Organized in four dive platoons and one HQ section, the units consisted of 13 officers (plus an Army and Navy liaison officer) and 70 (later 85) enlisted men. One team, UDT-10, absorbed five officers and 24 enlisted who had been trained as OSS Special Maritime Unit combat swimmers whose group, Operational Swimmer Group (OSG) II had been pushed into more mainstream use by Nimitz.

It was in early June that it was decided, by request of 3rd Amphibious Force Commander, VADM Teddy Wilkinson to ComSubPac, that a submarine make a reconnaissance of the Japanese-occupied Palau Islands so that Wilkinson and his staff knew what they were up against.

Burrfish drew the duty and was specially modified to carry a pared-down UDT platoon and its equipment. Two 7-man LCRS rubber rafts and several sets of oars were stored deflated in a pair of free-flooding, ventilated, 8-foot-long cylindrical tanks fitted to the sub’s deck abaft the conning tower. The boats were inflated topside through the use of a special valve fitted to her whistle line. Four torpedoes were landed from her forward torpedo room and the empty skids were arranged with mattresses for the 11-man team.

Special equipment, a German-made Bentzin Primarflex camera on a custom bracket, was rigged to allow the sub to take panoramic photos via her periscope while submerged. The trick had been learned on the USS Nautilus off Tarawa by her XO, LT Richard “Ozzie” Lynch who had tried and failed with three Navy-issued cameras before experimenting with his own personal Primarflex to outstanding results.

The Navy soon acquired a dozen of the German cameras, primarily second-hand via discreet classified ads in photography magazines, for submarine surveillance use.

Burrfish was also detailed to collect hydrographic data on the ocean currents in and around the islands.

The UDT Special-Mission Group assigned to Burrfish comprised Lt. Charles Kirkpatrick as commander, an unnamed support member, and nine assorted swimmers. Five of these divers– QM1c Robert A. Black, Jr. (8114404); SP(A)1c John MacMahon (4027186); SP(X)1c William Moore (6339607); S1c Leonard Barnhill (8903302); and QM3c Warren Christensen (8697250)– were OSS OSG II men from the newly formed UDT-10 which had only arrived from Fort Pierce that June and was just wrapping up its advanced training in Maui. Two (LT M.R. Massey and CGM Howard “Red” Roeder) were instructors tapped from UDT-1’s battle-hardened Maui training cadre. While two senior men (CBM John E. Ball and CM3c Emmet L. Carpenter) were drawn from the staff of Sub Base, Pearl Harbor.

This 11-member UDT det was carried in addition to Burrfish’s 72-member crew, 53 of which had already earned their dolphins on prior patrols.

Burrfish departed from Pearl Harbor for her 3rd War Patrol with her frogmen on 11 July, topping off her tanks at Midway on the 15th before continuing West. Starting on the 22nd, she began experiencing severe Japanese air activity whenever she surfaced and observed the patrol planes to be DF-ing her radar so she secured her SD and SJ sets and relied on her primitive APR-1 radar warning receiver and SPA-1 pulse analyzer equipment for the rest of the mission.

Closing with Angaur and Yap Islands by 29 July, she spent the next three weeks inspecting the beaches each morning and conducting submerged pericope photography– filling 16 rolls of 35mm film– and closely verifying and updating the pre-war Admiralty charts she had on hand for the islands. Bathythermograph cards were scrutinized and carefully logged to note thermoclines.

Night drifting on the surface with the UDT recon team posted as topside lookouts while the radar gang listened to the APR/SPA gear allowing Burrfish to effectively discover and map out the four Japanese search radars in the area.

On 9 August, Burrfish rendezvoused with sister USS Balao some 20 miles offshore. After challenging and confirming each other from 30,000 yards via quick SJ radar blips, a rubber boat was sent over at 2300 to transfer the film and data collected thus far so that, should Burrfish be lost in her subsequent inshore beach recon via swimmer, at least the collected intel would get back to VADM Wilkinson’s staff.

Between 11 and 18 August, Burrfish closed in close enough (3,000 yards) to send recon swimmers ashore three times via their man-powered rubber rafts, swimming the final 500 yards to deploy two pairs of swimmers while a fifth man remained behind with the raft. The UDT men visited the southeast tip of Peleliu Island and Yap on the first two trips, saving the northeast coast or Gagil Tomil for the third mission.

It was at Gagil Tomil on the night of 18/19 August that three men– Black, Roeder, and MacMahon– failed to return to Burrfish before dawn forced the sub to withdraw and submerge.

As noted by the DPAA on the three missing men: 

After setting out, one team returned to the boat after one of the swimmers became exhausted in the surf. His partner then returned to the island. The two men now in the boat waited until past the appointed rendezvous time for the swimmers to return. With no sign of the others, the men in the boat rowed closer to shore to investigate. They risked discovery by using flashlights to attempt to make contact, but received no response. Finally, the two men were forced to abandon the search and return to the submarine.

Scouting the shoreline the next day from dangerously close in, Burrfish failed to catch sight of the trio.

They repeated the same forlorn wait on the 20th.

Ordered to leave, LCDR Perkins regretfully complied. All three of the missing swimmers eventually received the Silver Star, posthumously.

Crew members of UDT 10 on submarine Burrfish at Peliliu. L-R Chief Ball, John MacMahon (MIA), Bob Black (MIA), Emmet L. Carpenter, Chief Howard Roeder. Via the U.S. Navy SEAL Museum.

Perkins noted in his report, “In this officer’s experience, this group of men was outstanding – both professionally and as shipmates. They have had a long and difficult cruise in the submarine but have acquitted themselves admirably. It is a tragedy that Roeder, MacMahon, and Black are not on board.”

Burrfish concluded her 3rd Patrol at Majuro in the Marshall Islands after 47 days at sea on 27 August, logging 10,600 miles. It was deemed a successful patrol due to the quantity and quality of information obtained, with a Combat Insignia authorized by ComSubPac. However, all further UDT operations in the Pacific would be via littoral capable surface ships, typically APDs (converted destroyers, aka “Green Dragons”) and LCIs/LSTs.

On return to Hawaii, the three remaining OSS OSG II members of the UDT Special Mission Group (Christensen, Barnhill, and Moore) were put in for silver stars (all others recommended for bronze) and rolled into the Maui cadre to train incoming swimmers from the states.

With Station HYPO decoding subsequent enemy transmissions that the three missing UDT men were captured alive by the Japanese and interrogated by notoriously brutal Intelligence specialists who labeled them as members of a “Bakuha-tai” (demolition unit), the pending invasion of Yap was scrubbed, and the group was bypassed in line with the U.S. island-hopping strategy, her 6,000 man garrison surrendering post-war.

Meanwhile, the operation to capture Palau and Peleliu (Operation Stalemate II) would kick off in mid-September.

By that time, Burrfish was already on another war patrol.

Wolfpack Nights

Following a three-week turnaround alongside the sub tender USS Sperry, Burrfish departed from Majuro for her 4th War Patrol on 18 September 1944, bound for the Bonin Islands.

The patrol would be an extended operation in two parts, conducted as an element of a Yankee Wolfpack (Coordinated Attack Group 17.24) under the overall command of CDR Thomas “Burt” Klakring, commander of SubDiv 101, who would fly his flag on USS Silversides (SS 236) as afloat commodore.

The group, unofficially dubbed “Burt’s Brooms,” included not only Silversides and Burrfish but also USS Saury (SS 189), Tambor (SS 198), Trigger (SS 237), Sterlet (SS 392), and Ronquil (SS 396). While several of the boats were very seasoned– Saury, Silversides, and Trigger were on their 11th and 12th War Patrols (and would retire from combat service at the end of the patrol) — others were decidedly green, with Ronquil and Sterlet only on their second patrols.

The first phase, which lasted 48 days in the Nansei Shoto area, saw the Burrfish claim a pre-dawn 27 October kill (not confirmed by post-war boards) on an 8,500-ton cargo ship after she fired six torpedoes into a Japanese convoy and heard three explosions.

She also survived an encounter on 30 October in which an armed vessel fired a 6-round salvo at her before she submerged and another pack member sank her attacker. It is nice to have friends.

Then came a five-day diversion (5-10 November) to Saipan to tie up next to the tender USS Fulton (AS-11), during which Klakring and all of his pack’s skippers would plan their anti-patrol boat sweep between the Bonins and Japan proper. The reason for the sweep was to sterilize the zone ahead of Halsey’s Task Force 38 which was scheduled to raid the Home Islands so that the picket boats couldn’t alert Tokyo of the approaching carriers. However, as Halsey was forced to cancel the raid due to lingering fighting over Leyte at the last minute, the subs were left holding the bag and ran the sweep as more of a dress rehearsal.

Plagued by terrible surface conditions which made torpedo attacks all but useless and gun actions more dangerous to the crews than the enemy, the 15-day/7 submarine sweep only managed to bag just four Japanese pickets as a group (15 November: Silversides sank guard boat Nachiryu Maru No. 12 while Saury bagged the guard boat Kojo Maru. 16 November: Tambor sank Taikai Maru No. 3.).

The fourth came in a surface action on 17 November 1944 Burrfish and Ronquil got in a gunfight with what turned out to be the Japanese auxiliary patrol boat Fusa Maru (177 GRT) south of Hachiro Jima, Japan. In the fight, Burrfish was hit by Japanese gunfire. Two men, Cox. H.A. Foster and S1c R.D. Lopez, were wounded.

It was a close-up affair, with the trawler within 700 yards, and Burrfish received superficial small caliber hits to her after conning tower. Ammunition expended was 9 4-inch (2 Common, 7 HC), 720 rounds of 20mm, and 500 rounds of 30.06 from her M1919s.

Meanwhile, Ronquil also suffered damage from the premature detonation of one of her 40mm Bofors shells which blew two holes in her pressure hull and required a risky topside underway repair (by her XO no less) to be able to dive again.

With Burt’s Brooms disbanded, Burrfish wrapped up her 4th War Patrol at Pearl Harbor on 2 December by tying up alongside USS Pelais, having logged some 15,700 miles across 75 days.

It was at Pearl that LCDR Perkins would depart his submarine, handing command over to LCDR M.H. Lytle, formerly of USS Sturgeon (SS 187) and with eight war patrols to his credit, just before Christmas.

USS Burrfish (SS-312) at Pearl Harbor, circa 1945. Courtesy of H. Leavitt Horton, Sr. NH 92322

Lifeguard Days

Following the Christmas and New Year holidays, Lytle took Burrfish out to sea on 3 January 1945 to begin her 5th War Patrol. She was ordered to take up station south of Japan’s Nanpo Shoto area to serve as a floating lifeguard and weather station to support B-29 raids on the Home Islands. Arriving at the station on the 23rd, she spotted her first incoming “aluminum overcast” wave that afternoon– with her SJ radar set picking up contacts as far off as 34,000 yards.

When USS Pogy (SS 266) and Ronquil entered the area the next day, Lytle, as senior officer afloat, assumed command of the three-boat wolfpack (TG 17.29) and parked astride the Hachija Shima-Chichi Jima shipping lane with the hopes of bagging something between B-29 sorties.

Unfortunately, shipping was slim and the only action Burrfish saw during the patrol was a trio of long-range (15,000 yards) Mark 18 torpedoes sent after a 300-ton Japanese patrol craft on the horizon on 11 February– for which she had to suffer a severe depth charging that required her to put in to Midway for three days of emergency repairs.

Burrfish ended her 5th War Patrol alongside USS Apollo at Guam on 24 February, having covered 8,130 miles in 52 days. ComSubPac did not authorize a Combat Insignia for the patrol.

With repairs pushing back her normal three-week turnaround cycle, Burrfish didn’t begin her 6th War Patrol until 25 March, with orders to patrol the Luzon Strait and off Formosa. A sleeper cruise, her war history notes “Thirty successive days were spent on lifeguard station for the 5th Air Force but no opportunity for rescue presented itself.”

The only “action” seen was in deep-sixing some floating mines and a derelict abandoned 40-foot sampan with her deck guns and in a pre-dawn gunfire raid on the Japanese radio station on Batan Island.

Burrfish ended her 6th war patrol at Saipan on 4 May 1945 after 65 days and 13,600 miles. ComSubPac, in its message not authorizing a Combat Insignia for the patrol, wished “better luck next time” but there would be no next time.

Sent back to her birthplace at Portsmouth Navy Yard at Kittery, Maine for a major overhaul, where she arrived in late June, she was still there when VJ Day hit.

She was decommissioned on 10 October 1946 at Sub Base New London and laid up there as part of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.

Burrfish is listed as one of the Balaos in Jane’s 1946 entry.

Burrfish received five battle stars for her World War II service and claimed 13,600 tons across her six (three successful) patrols.

Cold War SSR Days

Recommissioned on 2 November 1948 after just two years in mothballs, she went back home to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for conversion to a Radar Picket Submarine and was redesignated SSR-312 on 27 January 1949.

A total of ten old fleet boats were converted to SSRs under the Migraine I, II & III (SCB-12A) programs.

Burrfish Thames River, circa 1948, on the way to her SSR conversion, via Navsource. Note she has a snorkel and no guns.

Her “Migraine I” conversion included landing her 4-inch gun as well as half of her torpedo tubes and gaining a bunch of radar gear. She retained her open fairwater, with the bridge being shifted to the forward cigarette deck, and a 40 mm Bofors taking the place of her old gun in an instance of one of the final new installations of cannon on an American submarine. Only one other SSR received the Migraine I conversion, the Tench-class boat USS Tigrone (SS-419).

As described by the Submarine Force Library and Museum Association: 

In this modification, the space formerly used as the crew’s mess and galley was turned into a CIC, and the after torpedo tubes were removed to allow the entire after torpedo compartment to be used for berthing. Two of the forward tubes were also eliminated to make additional room for storage and equipment. More importantly, however, the two radar antennas were raised on masts, with an AN/BPS-2 search radar sprouting from the after portion of the sail, and the height finder mounted on a free-standing tower just abaft it. This put the 15-foot search antenna some 40 feet above the water, with the height finder only a little below.

Burrfish returned to duty with the active fleet on 7 February 1950 and was assigned to Submarine Squadron 6 at Norfolk.

Burrfish broadside view during her trials as an SSR, conducted on 27 January 1950, via Navsource

Burrfish as radar picket in Med. Note that her 40mm gun has been removed by this time.

Burrfish as radar picket in Europe, French postcard, 23 May 1952. She still has her Bofors.

Between February 1950 and June 1956, she completed three lengthy deployments with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean and “participated in several major type and inter-type exercises and operated along the eastern seaboard as a radar picket ship.” During this time she also earned an Occupation Clasp for service in the Med (29 Sep 50 – 23 Jan 51).

As part of SubDiv 62, all of the Atlantic-based radar pickets were collected including Burrfish’ old “Burt’s Brooms” buddy, Requin, two Migraine II conversions: Burrfish (SSR-312) and Tigrone (SSR-419), and the Migrane IIIs Pompon (SSR-267), Ray (SS-271), and Redfin (SSR-272) along with Sailfish. 

USS Yellowstone (AD-27) in Augusta Bay, Sicily, during her Mediterranean cruise, May- October 1950. Alongside her are (l-r): USS Sea Robin (SS-407); USS Torsk ( SS-423); USS Sea Leopard (SS-483); USS Burrfish (SSR-312); USS John R. Pierce (DD-753); USS Barton (DD-722); USS Shea (DM-30). In the background is the USS Harry F. Bauer (DM-26). 80-G-428712

On 5 June 1956, with the SSR program winding down and new SSNs arriving in the fleet, Burrfish sailed from Norfolk to New London where she reported for inactivation.

She was placed out of commission, in reserve, on 17 December 1956.

Canadian Service

As we have covered prior, the Royal Canadian Navy had a series of fits and starts that included a pair of small (144-foot, 300-ton) American-built coastal boats, HMCS CC-1 and CC-2, which served in the Great War, another pair of American-made 435-ton H-class submarines (HMCS CH-14 and CH-15) which served briefly in the 1920s, and two ex-Kriegsmarine U-boats (HMCS U-190 and U-889) which served (or at least floated) for a couple years after WWII.

Looking to regrow their nascent submarine arm in 1960 after a 13-year break, the RCN inspected 10 American mothballed diesel boats and picked Burrfish with an initial five-year loan and the agreement that Ottawa would pay for the cost of reactivation and modification. It made sense as Burrfish had only been laid up at this point for three years and had already received both a snorkel and improved higher-capacity batteries in her 1949 SSR conversion.

The mission set for the new boat was to be one of an OPFOR for Canada’s very professional ASW force, with the RCN noting, “During and after the war it had been the custom of the RN to provide ‘tame’ submarines for anti-submarine training in Nova Scotia waters. By 1961, with a growing fleet of new anti-submarine ships based at Esquimalt, it had become desirable to have a submarine stationed there as well.”

She received the name HMCS Grilse (S 71) after a Great War era yacht turned fast torpedo boat and was commissioned into the RCN on 11 May 1961. Notably, while the Canadians had run six different subs prior, Grilse was the first to have an actual name rather than just a number. 

HMCS Grilse. Note her “clean” appearance with SSR radars removed and no mounted guns.

H.M.C.S. Grilse – Esquimalt,BC – Aug. 22, 1966

HMCS Grilse

HMCS Grilse

HMCS Grilse

USS Burrfish SS-312 (Balao class) was loaned to Canada and commissioned as HMCS Grilse (71) on May 11th, 1961, seen here at Esquimalt with RCN WWII submarine vets aboard for a tour. Note the details of her snorkel and radar arrangement.

Keeping her slightly longer than her five-year loan, Grilse was withdrawn in December 1968, returned to U.S. Navy custody at Bremerton, and was struck from the Naval Register on 19 July 1969.

Grilse proved such a good investment for the Canadians that they sought to purchase four new Barbel-class diesel boats from the U.S., giving them two boats each at Halifax and Esquimalt, but the ever-thrifty government instead opted for a trio of British Oberon-class boats ordered from HM Royal Dockyard Chatham. These three, HMCS Ojibwa (SS 72), Onondaga (SS 73), and Okanagan (SS 74), entered Canadian service between 1965 and 1968.

On 2 December 1968, the mothballed USS Argonaut (SS 475) was sold to the RCN for $150,000 and renamed HMCS Rainbow (SS 75), named after one of the first ships ever to enter service with the Canadians back in 1910, giving the Canadian a solid four boats until 1975 when the old Tench-class fleet boat was retired, opting for an all-Oberon force until 2000.

On 19 November 1969, ex-Burrfish/Grilse was expended in a SINKEX, destroyed on the surface while under remote control by the brand new Mk 46 ASW torpedo dropped by a SH-3 Sea King helicopter off San Clemente Island in an early test of that weapon system.

November 19, 1969: HMCS Grilse submarine was sunk by USN off California

Epilogue

Neither the Americans nor the Canadians have used the names Burrfish or Grilse since our SS/SSR-312/S-71 was disposed of.

Her bell, marked Burrfish on one side and Grisle on the other, is on display at CFB Esquimalt.

Burrfish’s war history, plans, deck logs, and patrol reports are in the National Archives.

Her Canadian vets have a For Postery’s Sake page for Grilse’s Cold War service.

Six Balao-class submarines are preserved (for now) as museum ships across the country.

Please visit one of these fine ships and keep the legacy alive:

-USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
–USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
–USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii.
–USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
– USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California, (which played the part of the fictional USS Stingray in the movie Down Periscope).
–USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

The three UDT swimmers left behind at Palau– Specialist First Class (Athletic Instructor) John Churchill MacMahon, Quartermaster First Class Robert A. Black Jr., and Chief Gunner’s Mate (Aviation) Howard Livingston Roeder, are among the 72,040 unaccounted for U.S. military personnel from WWII as tracked by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. They were memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines and at the UDT/SEAL Memorial Wall at Fort Pierce. The search for their remains continues, with their cases marked in the DPAA category of “Active Pursuit.”

Recent expeditions to Palau to help find more information about the trio were mounted by Project Recover in conjunction with the National Navy UDT -SEAL Museum. The case is personal for the Naval Special Warfare community, as it is the only combat mission ever accomplished by NSW operators where men were lost in action and their remains never recovered.

As for the rest of UDT-10, it went on to see much action in at Anguar Island, Palau, and in the Philippines before it was disestablished at Fort Pierce on 2 February 1946. It was not one of the four (UDT-11 and 12 at Coronado, 21 and 22 at Little Creek) downsized teams formed for post-war service. It was never stood back up.

Burrfish’s plank owner skipper, William Beckwith Perkins, who commanded her on her first four war patrols, and who was at her combat periscope when she sank the tanker Rossbach and fought off Fusa Maru, remained in the Navy after the war and retired as a rear admiral in 1959 after 26 years of service. Of the 465 American submarine skippers who pulled at least one war patrol, only about 60 ever managed to earn a star in the promotion-slim postwar sub force (a club he shared with Burrfish’s first XO, Talbot Harper).

Perkins passed in 1992, age 81, at Fork Union, Virginia, and is remembered as a distinguished alumni of the Fort Union Military Academy and Annapolis.

His son, who inherited his papers, has been influential in documenting the loss of the UDT men at Gagil Tomil.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile 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

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

Library and Archives Canada MIKAN 3374382

Above we see Able Seaman Carl Carlson of the F (River) Class destroyer HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) on 16 August 1944 mugging with one of the bulkheads of his ship that had been neatly peeled open by an enemy 88mm shell during an action against three German VP boats off Brest the month prior. The plucky tin can gave as good as she got and left her assailant at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay before she headed back across the channel.

The well-traveled Qu’Appelle had inflicted worse on the Kriegsmarine earlier in the war– but that was when she was known by a different name.

The E&F’s

Moving on from their Great War-era tin cans, the Admiralty ordered a pair of modern destroyer prototypes in 1927– HMS Amazon (1,352 tons, £319, 455) and Ambuscade (1,173 tons, £326,616), each capable of making 37 knots on superheated oil-fired steam turbine plants and armed with four old-style BL 4.7″/45 Mk I dual purpose guns and six 21-inch torpedo tubes.

The 1927 program destroyer type, of which the Royal Navy would keep in production into 1940. M0064

Further, these ships were super modern for their time and were among the first built with all-steel (rather than fabric) bridges, had a higher freeboard and improved cabin accommodations, and a larger radius of action than preceding classes. Moreover, induced ventilation could be supplied throughout the vessel, for service in the Tropics.

With a little tweak to include more torpedo tubes and newer 4.7″ guns, these became the circa 1928-29 Programme 20-ship A&B class (1,350 tons std, 328 feet oal, 35 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), so referenced as the ships generally used names that started with As and Bs. Every 10th ship was built as a slightly larger flotilla leader with space for a commodore and staff.

This quickly followed with the minimally improved 14-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1929–1931 Programme C&D class (1,375 tons std, 329 feet oal, 36 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges).

This naturally led to the 18-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1931-32 Programme E&F class (1,405 tons std, 329 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which, as Worth describes, “closely resembles the D class with increased subdivision.” In short, they had an improved hull form over the preceding C&Ds and had three boiler rooms instead of two as well as other minor updates.

The RN similarly kept this incrementally improved line going with the 24-ship (including two leaders) circa 1934-35 Programme G&H class (1,370 tons std, 323 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which is beyond the scope of this post, but you can easily see the lineage of these 78 closely related interwar produced British destroyers

The E flight (Echo, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escapade, Escort, Esk, Express, and flotilla leader Exmouth) and F flight (Fame, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, Forester, Fortune, Foxhound, Fury, and flotilla leader Faulknor) were constructed in just 26 months between March 1933 and June 1935 because contracts were placed at 10 different yards simultaneously — HM Dockyard Portsmouth, Wm Denny, Hawthorn & Leslie, Scotts, Swan Hunter, Yarrow, Parsons, Cammell Laird, J. Samuel White, and John Brown.

With a full load that approached 2,000 tons in wartime, like the rest of the A&B, C&D, and follow-on G&Hs, the E&F’s main battery was four 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns, arranged curiously to where they could only elevate some 40 degrees, which gave them poor AAA performance.

HMS Foxhound off Freetown, Sierra Leone in August 1943. One of the many British destroyers built during the 1930s with 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns. These are CPXVII mountings which allow elevations of +40 degrees. IWM Photograph A 18772.

Anti-ship punch was in the form of two quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes on amidships turnstiles, with no reloads. The standard torpedo across all of these destroyer classes was the Mark IX, which was designed in 1928 and introduced in 1930. It carried a 750-pound warhead to 10,500 yards at 36 knots. By 1939, the updated Mark IX** which had a larger 805-pound Torpex warhead and a 15,000-yard range was the standard.

HMS Foxhound’s torpedo crew practice with fish in the tubes. In charge (in white shirt) is the Torpedo gunner. Note the Carley float and water jar lashed to the tubes to save space in the destroyer. IWM (A 18779)

Rounding out the armament for the class were two quad Vickers .50 cals (subsequently added to after 1940), two depth charge throwers, depth charge racks for 20 ash cans, and mechanical minesweeping gear. Importantly, they left the builder’s yards with a Type 121 sonar, a good set with a range of some 2,500 yards, installed.

Meet Foxhound

Our subject was the sixth in Royal Navy service to carry the “Foxhound” moniker going back to an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop during the Napoleonic Wars. As apt for the name of the small and fast English hunting dog, the Admiralty reissued the name several times in the 19th Century to swift little warships. This legacy gave her two existing battle honors (Basque Roads 1809, Dardanelles 1916) to carry forward.

The fourth and fifth HMS Foxhound, respectively, a 125-foot Forester-class 4-gun screw gunboat launched that served from 1877 through 1897 (but endured in the commercial trade on the Thames until 1975!); and a Beagle class destroyer (H16) that served in the Dardanelles with distinction during the Great War and was sold to the breakers in 1921. (IWM Q 40750 & RMG collection)

HMS Foxhound (H69) was constructed alongside sister HMS Fortune (H70) at John Brown, Clydebank, and, unlike the rest of their sisters, this pair received Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines rather than the more standard Parsons sets for no downgrade in speed (36 knots), performance (36,000shp), or range (6350nm at 15 on 471 tons of fuel oil).

Foxhound was commissioned on 6 June 1935 after a 22-month construction period, just five weeks off from her John Brown-made sister Fortune.

She was sleek and beautiful.

Foxhound H69, prewar Valentine Postcard

Foxhound, pre-war, with her glad rags flying.

Another nice prewar view of Foxhound

With the Es assigned to the Home Fleet’s 5th Destroyer Flotilla while the new Fs made up the 6th DF, Foxhound, and her sisters saw service in the tense period just before WWII, including flotilla-sized cruises to the Red Sea– where the Royal Navy was keeping tabs on the Italian invasion/occupation of Ethiopia–and off Spain where the Civil War was raging.

The Royal Navy at Gibraltar, 1938. Including elements of the Mediterranean Fleet (light grey) and the Home Fleet (dark grey). In addition to the 6 battleships (HMS Nelson, Rodney, Warspite, Malaya plus two R-class), 2 battlecruisers (Hood and Repulse), 2 carriers (Glorious and Furious), and 11 cruisers, whole flotillas of destroyers can be seen including our own Foxhound, to the right, and her shipyard twin sister Fortune, to the left. (click to big up) 5495×1295

War!

Just five months before the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Es in the 5th DF and the Fs in the 6th DF were changed on paper to the 7th and 8th Flotillas respectively.

Our destroyer was in the group that sank the first of 1,162 German U-boats sent to the bottom in the war, just a fortnight after Hitler sent his troops into Poland.

Operating as a screen for the carrier HMS Ark Royal (91), Foxhound along with sisters HMS Faulknor and Firedrake, sent the Type IX U-boat U-39 (Kptlt. Gerhard Glattes) to the bottom on 14 September 1939 west of the Hebrides. In a case rare for what was to come, Glattes and all 43 of U-39’s crew survived the encounter and were among the first German POWs in England.

A beam view of HMS Foxhound with her war paint on. IWM (A 18777)

Foxhound soon became very well-traveled.

Besides 14 convoy runs between the time she joined Halfax-to Clyde TC 01 in December 1939 and left MKF 022 in September 1943, including the vital Suez to Sydney Pamphlet convoy in February 1943 that carried 30,000 Australian troops back home from Egypt once the Japanese entered the war, our little destroyer seemed to be everywhere.

Foxhound H69

She was in Norway, harassing German shipping early in the war in Operation SK and looking for the seized American merchant vessel SS City of Flint (which a German prize crew from the pocket battleship Deutschland sailed to then-neutral Murmansk).

Masthead look-out of HMS Foxhound goes aloft in sou’wester and oilskin. IWM (A 18778)

She was with the force, centered around HMS Rodney, that chased the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in February 1940. Later that year, in December, she would search for the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. She was also in the great Hunt for the Bismarck in May 1941, screening the carrier HMS Ark Royal.

She took part in Operation Du, a cruiser-destroyer anti-shipping raid into the Skagerrak in which Foxhound chased down several vessels– which all turned out to belong to neutrals.

Foxhound underway IWM FL 13264

Foxhound returned to Norway in early April 1940, where on the 13th she took part in the second Battle of Narvik where nine British destroyers, supported by Swordfish from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious and the offshore guns of the battleship Warspite, ended the Kriegsmarine’s plans for U-64 (the first sunk by aircraft), and eight desperately needed German destroyers, all of which were sunk or scuttled by the end of the day.

Foxhound rescued 11 survivors of the destroyer Erich Giese Z12 from the freezing water that day but two would succumb to their injuries.

Kriegsmarine Zerstörer Z19 Hermann Künne on fire in Trollvika, 13. April 1940

Burning wreck of the destroyer Erich Giese (Z12) 13. April 1940

In June 1940, with the fall of France imminent, Foxhound found herself in Gibraltar as an escort for Ark Royal and battlecruiser HMS Hood. On 26 June, the carrier, battlecruiser, and their hounds were sent towards the Canaries looking for the curiously missing French battlewagon Richelieu, which eventually made for Dakar in the French West African colony of Senegal.

With relations deteriorating with the now kind-of-out-of-the-war French, Foxhound soon found herself with VADM Somerville’s strong Force H off the French Force de Raid’s Algerian anchorage at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940 (Operation Catapult).

In this, Foxhound, with Capt. C.S. Holland, of the Ark Royal (formerly Naval Attaché at Paris) along with two other officers recently employed as liaisons with the French fleet, was detailed to sail forward and parley with VADM Marcel-Bruno Gensoul. When negotiations fell through, Somerville ordered the shameful bombardment of the anchored French ships, a one-sided gunfight that left 1,300 French sailors dead. Sadly, Foxhound was close enough to see it all– observers in her motorboat recorded the fall of shell– although she suffered no damage.

French battleship Bretagne, on fire and visibly low by the stern, at Mers-el-Kébir, 3 July 1940

She continued to fight against the Vichy with Operation Ration in which Foxhound and four other destroyers intercepted the Casablanca-to-Oran French convoy K 5 in 30 December 1940. They seized the cargo liner Chantilly (9986 GRT), tanker Octane (2034 GRT), and freighters Suroit (554 GRT) and Sally Maersk (3252 GRT), sailing with them back to Gibraltar. K5’s sole escort, the armed trawler La Touilonnaise (425 GRT) offered no resistance and was allowed to continue to North Africa, sans convoy.

Foxhound sailed on several Malta relief missions (Operations Hurry and Operation White in 1940, Operations Splice, Tracer, Railway, and Rocket in 1941), escorting carriers bringing Hurricane fighters and Skua bombers to the embattled island as well as other runs in the Med.

For help fighting off Italian and German bombers, Foxhound and almost all of her remaining sisters had four Oerlikon and a 3-inch/45 QF Mk I AAA installed in place of their quad Vickers .50 mount and one set of torpedo tubes. They also picked up Type 271 Air Search and Type 286/M/P radars.

In February 1941, she helped screen the battlewagons HMS Renown and Malaya, along with the cruiser HMS Sheffield, during Operation Grog, the bombardment of Genoa that left four Italian cargo ships sunk in the harbor.

On 18 June 1941, Foxhound, along with sisters HMS Faulknor, Fearless, Forester, and Foresight, bagged her second U-boat of the war, Oblt. Franz Gramitzky’s Type IID U-138, which was sunk just west of Gibraltar off Cadiz, Spain. Like U-39 prior, Gramitzky and all his crew were saved by the British destroyers, then dutifully interrogated and placed in a POW camp for the duration.

By March 1942, Foxhound was assigned to the Eastern Fleet operating in the Indian Ocean to blunt the sortie of the 1st Japanese Carrier Fleet. She would remain in the region for over a year, operating from Colombo to Durban to Bombay to Aden on convoy support missions, adding such exotic ports as Kilindini, Diego Suarez, and Mombasa to that list.

Foxhound H69 IWM A 18776

Recalled to the Atlantic in May 1943, she sailed back home by working slow long-range convoys as part of West Africa Command to Freetown and Gibraltar, finally arriving at Rosyth three months later.

Foxhound, LAC 3199021

She then put into Humber for a refit as an anti-submarine escort destroyer that would see one of her 4.7-inch guns landed to make room for a 24-cell Hedgehog ASW RL device, two more K-gun depth charge throwers, and another 70 depth charges (for a total of 125!). She was also to receive a Type 291 air-warning radar and an American SG-1 surface-search radar, along with a Type 144 sonar.

By August 1943, Foxhound had tallied some 240,000nm since the beginning of the war, ranging from the Bay of Bengal to Iceland and back. This brought an Admiralty photographer to the ship at Sheerness to document the “fine fighting record” of this hardy little vessel and her U-boat-busting crew.

The Quartermaster sounding “eight bells” on the Foxhound’s bell while at Sheerness. Note the Fox’s brush hanging from the clapper. It was presented by one of her officers. August 1943 IWM A 18775

An officer of HMS Foxhound, a South African, watching a British port come into sight as the destroyer completed her 240,000 miles of record steaming. IWM (A 18774)

While in British service, our little hound earned five battle honors (Atlantic 1939-41, Narvik 1940, Norway 1940, Malta Convoys 1941, and Mediterranean 1941).

Canadian Service

To help make good on the loss of the Canadian destroyers HMCS Fraser (H48), Margaree (H49), and Ottawa (H60) earlier in the war, the Admiralty decided in the summer of 1943 to transfer three (very well-used) E&Fs.

These ships included HMS Express (H61) and the shipyard sisters Fortune and Foxhound. The trio, in line with Canadian naming conventions, took on North American river names and became, respectively,  HMCS Gatineau, HMCS Saskatchewan, and Qu’Appelle while retaining the same pennant/hull numbers.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), fresh from her refit, was commissioned in the RCN on 8 February 1944.

HMCS Qu’Appelle, 1944, with her new Western Approaches style camo scheme. LAC 3921890

Soon after she was assigned to Escort Group 12, which was forming up in the Channel ports for the planned Overlord/Neptune invasion of Normandy in June. Foxhound spent the next three months in a series of ASW exercises off Tobermoy and Lough Foyle.

EG 11 and EG 12 were “all Canadian” in makeup and would patrol off Falmouth and Lands End to the deep water curve off the Brittany Coast on D-Day and immediately after.

While supporting the landings on D+2, on 08 June 1944, Qu’Appelle was reportedly attacked Gnats from U-953 (Oblt Karl-Heinz Marbach) with the acoustic torpedoes exploding in the ship’s wake leaving with no damage to the destroyer.

U-953 and a second German boat stalked EG 12 ruthlessly but without joy due to defective torpedoes, as detailed in Normandy 1944: The Canadian Summer: 

Lieutenant Commander Alan Easton RCNR, the commanding officer of EG-12’s HMCS Saskatchewan [ex-HMS Fortune] recalled in his memoir, 50 North, that the evening of 7 June was like a “summer excursion” as the group patrolled northeast of Ushant: The four of us were gliding along in line abreast, listening for the sound of U-boats beneath the quiet sea. It was like drawing a net through the water, stretched tightly between the ships, so that it would snag the big fish while letting through the small unwanted ones. But the net did not always hang down as it should temperature gradients sometimes interfered with it.

In the late evening, however, “a low rumble was heard, the unmistakable sound of an underwater explosion.” Presuming it to be a torpedo hitting the bottom or exploding prematurely, EG-12 searched but saw or heard nothing else. An hour later a violent blast shook Saskatchewan, and 70 meters off the ship’s port quarter “a solid column of water shot a hundred feet in the air “when a torpedo exploded just before reaching the destroyer.

By the grace of “a miracle,” in Easton’s words, “this fast-moving, fish-like machine had self-triggered when only four seconds short of wreaking havoc in the bowels of its target.” As the destroyers continued to hunt through the night and the following morning, two other torpedoes exploded close by while another narrowly missed Skeena.

Easton described his frustration:

Where was the enemy who was so persistently endeavoring to sink us? Where were the other U-boats? We had not the slightest idea except that we knew the one who attacked us was probably within a mile or so. The ASDIC could pick up nothing except useless echoes. It was extremely aggravating.

On D+12, Foxhound, with sister Fortune/Saskatchewan and fellow Canuk tin cans HMCS Restigouche and HMCS Skeena, escorted the battleship HMS Anson from Scapa Flow to Plymouth, the latter on her first leg to head to the Pacific.

By July, the primary Kriegsmarine assets in the Bay of Biscay were 50~ Vorpostenboote (Outpost Boats) of 7. Vorpostenflotille, armed trawlers typically equipped with an 8.8cm Flak or two as well as some smaller guns and some primitive chain-based minesweeping gear. They screened the remaining U-boats in Brest whenever they came and went.

Your typical Vorpostenboot, of which the Germans fielded hundreds. Bild 27479778312

Foxhound and her three fellow Canuk DDs, as part of Operation Dredger in the Bay of Biscay off the Pierres Noires lighthouse on the night of 5/6 July, scrapped it out with three German VP-boats that were trying to escort U-741 out to sea. The running battle left V 715 (Alfred I) sunk and V 721 (Neubau 308) crippled and beached. U-741 would be chased down and sunk by British destroyers a month later. Both Saskatchewan and Qu’Appelle caught hits from the VP boats but suffered no casualties. Radar-equipped destroyers vs armed trawlers is almost a predetermined outcome.

By late July, Qu’Appelle was assigned to Operation Kinetic, a plan to ramp up the blockade of the Bay of Biscay by ending the semi-regular German coastal convoys off the west coast of Brittany between Brest and La Rochelle.

As part of Kinetic, on the night of 10/11 August 1944, Qu’appelle, along with Skeena, Restigouche, and HMCS Assiniboine, dismantled a German convoy in Audierne Bay near Brest. Those sunk included the Vorpostenboot V-720 (Neubau 720/307) while two trawlers were forced ashore by a burning farmhouse and the ersatz minesweeper Sperrbrecher 157 (1,425 tons) limped off only to be sunk three days later by the light cruiser HMS Mauritius. However, in the confusion of the running night surface action fought in shallow waters at close range, Skeena’s bow collided with Qu’Appelle’s stern as the Canadian destroyers retired.

This photograph shows the damage to the destroyer HMCS Qu’appelle after a collision with HMCS Skeena during a night-time battle off the French coast. Sailors, including one standing within the ship’s hull (lower right), examine the damage. George Metcalf Archival Collection. CWM 19830436-011

Personnel examining the damaged tiller flat of HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), England, 16 August 1944 LAC 3596854

Following repair, Foxhound arrived “home” in Canada for the first time on 29 November 1944 when she arrived at Halifax. Sent to Pictou for refit in preparation for service in the Far East, she emerged again on 31 March 1945.

Rather than ship out for the Pacific, Qu’Appelle served as a troop transport on four trips between Greenock and Halifax, bringing Canadian forces back from Europe, and, post-VJ-Day, was paid off on 11 October 1945.

By the 1946 Jane’s, Saskatchewan/Fortune had already been disposed of and the E&Fs in RCN service were listed as the “Gatineau class.”

Qu’Appelle lingered around for another at the Torpedo School at Halifax, serving as a stationary training ship and sometimes tender to Canada’s two captured German Type IXC/40 U-boats, HCMS U-190 and U-889. 

Broadside view of the snow-dusted HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) 28 February 1947, likely with HMCS U-190 alongside. In October 1947, the Canadian Navy sank U-190 as a target during Operation Scuttled, a live-fire naval exercise off Halifax. LAC 3209066

Added to the disposal list on 12 Jul 1947, Qu’Appelle was sold later that year for breaking up at Sydney, NS.

HMCS Qu’Appelle earned three battle honors (Atlantic 1944, Normandy 1944, and Biscay 1944) while in Canadian service, adding to her five battle honors earned with the RN earlier in the war.

Epilogue

Some relics of Qu’Appelle endure in Canada, including her 1944 marked bell that she carried off Normandy and in the Biscay blockade. It is preserved at the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum.

While she has “Qu’Appelle” on the front, it is the destroyer’s original bell, and still says “Foxhound 1935” on the reverse side.

Her RCN service is commemorated in an excellent For Posterty’s Sake page.

Speaking of which, the Canadians recycled her name for a Cold War-era Mackenzie-class destroyer escort (DDE 264) who, in a salute to the old Foxhound, carried an insignia and logo was the head of a fox. She also utilized the old WWII H69’s bell.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (DDE 264) was in service with the RCN from 1963 until 1992, almost all of it in the Pacific.

After DDE-264 was gone, the name was used for the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets Summer Training Centre and is still retained by the Cadet’s Manitoba division as the Qu’Appelle River meets the Assiniboine River in Manitoba.

Of Foxhound/Qu’Appelle’s 17 E&F class sisters, ten were lost during the war: Exmouth, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escort, Esk, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, and Fury, with the Germans, Italians, and Japanese all accounting for the job. Post-war, besides the three sent to Canada, Fame was sold to the Dominican Republic, and Echo was loaned to Greece. All in Commonwealth service were scrapped by 1947 while the Greek and Dominican sisters endured until 1956 and 1968 when their runs were terminated.

Korvettenkapitän Gerhard Glattes, the skipper of U-39 which Foxhound and company bagged in September 1939, spent more than seven and a half years as a POW, only being released in April 1947. His stint was the second longest imprisonment of any U-boat commander, beaten only (by one day) by Kptlt. Günther Lorentz of U-63 (Busch and Röll, 1999). The three torpedoes Glattes fired at Ark Royal— which had no hits– were his only shots of the war. Glattes returned to a very different Germany and passed in 1986, aged 77. He had been preceded in death by U-138’s Kptlt. Gramitzky, who only served five years as a POW passed in Germany in 1978.

Meanwhile, the destroyer Z12 Eric Giese is a popular dive spot in Narvik. 

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Bertholfs Hitting it Hard

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The Coast Guard only has 10 Legend (Bertholf) class National Security Cutters to its name.

Ordered starting in 2005 to replace the long-serving Vietnam-era 378-foot Hamilton-class cutters that had almost 50 years on their hulls, the Bertholfs are the largest non-logistics/icebreaker cutters the service has ever had, pushing 418 feet oal with a 4,600-ton displacement.

They have a lot going for them, with an economical CODAG engineering plant that allows for a 12,000nm range when on patrol and bursts of “over 28 knots,” they have extensive helicopter/UAV support facilities and a modest self-defense capability.

When it comes to sensors, while they aren’t in the same category as a true frigate, they have decent air/surface-search radars, IFF/TACAN, a SLQ-32 EW suite, and a sonar that reportedly has mine-hunting capabilities.

While great for busting smugglers and policing duties, the NSCs are armed akin to an LCS…

Importantly, they have all the goodies needed to operate as part of a modern naval task force including Link 11 and Link 16 and underway replenishment gear, allowing them to both tank and transfer from larger vessels and send to smaller ones– which allows them a “mother ship” role to smaller cutters on a deployment.

As some proof in the pudding, three of the service’s Bertholfs were recently underway in three different parts of the world, adding a speck of white to otherwise haze gray formations.

USCGC Midgett (WMSL-757), taking part in RIMPAC ’24 off Hawaii, was captured in a great shot last week conducting a dual transfer with the Italian Thaon di Revel-class offshore patrol vessel ITS Raimondo Montecuccoli (P432) from the Royal Canadian Navy replenishment ship MV Asterix.

Photo by Royal Canadian Navy Sailor First Class Brendan McLoughlin.

Meanwhile, the crew of the USCGC Stone (WMSL 758) returned to their home port in North Charleston last week following a 63-day patrol in the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea in support of homeland defense and counterdrug operations.

During her deployment, she steamed in tandem with U.S. Second Fleet and Canadian Joint Task Force-Atlantic maritime forces.

Canadian Halifax-class frigate HMCS Ville de Québec (FFH 332) and U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Stone (WMSL 758) steam in formation, on June 9, 2024, while underway in the Atlantic Ocean. Stone and Ville de Québec operated in the Atlantic Ocean in the U.S. 2nd Fleet area of operations in support of maritime stability and security in the region. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Ensign Alana Kickhoefer)

Likewise, the crew of the USCGC James (WMSL 754) returned to their home port in North Charleston last week after completing a 98-day patrol in the South Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

While down south, James worked along with the George Washington Carrier Group, called in several Latin American ports, conducted a live fire exercise, and steamed alongside ships from Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil.

Legend-class cutter USCGC James (WSML 754), left, and Brazilian navy Niterói-class frigates União (F 45) and Independência (F 44) operate in formation with Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) as part of a bilateral exercise between the U.S. and the Brazilian navy in the Atlantic Ocean, May 18, 2024. Porter is deployed as part of Southern Seas 2024 which seeks to enhance capability, improve interoperability, and strengthen maritime partnerships with countries throughout the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility through joint, multinational, and interagency exchanges and cooperation. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class David C. Fines)

Besides these three Bertholfs, keep in mind that a fourth member of the class, USCGC Waesche (WMSL-751), is still underway in the Westpac and has been operating in the South China Sea with white hulled partners from South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.

(U.S. Coast Guard photo by Ensign Julia VanLuven)

Going further, a fifth Bertholf, USCGC Kimball (WMSL-756), has been bird-dogging a Chinese task force that was poking around the Aleutians earlier this month.

That’s five very busy hulls out of the ten the Coast Guard has. Talk about punching above its weight class.

A Lot Has Changed in the Arctic Since 2019

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A force of 37 U.S. and Canadian Soldiers was tactically inserted in 50 below F weather by a ski-equipped LC-130H Hercules onto Arctic Ocean ice just east of Little Cornwallis Island in Nunavut, Canada, during exercise Guerrier Nordique 23 on March 15, 2023. Notably, almost all involved were reservists with the LC-130 coming from the New York Air National Guard’s 109th Airlift Wing– the only ski-equipped airlift squadron in U.S. service– while the soldiers were largely from the Vermont and Utah National Guard and Canadian 35th Brigade Group, 34th Canadian Brigade Group, and the Canadian Rangers. 230315-A-FN054-945

The Pentagon this week released its 2024 DOD Arctic Strategy, which is the first update to DOD’s approach to the region since 2019. A lot has changed in the region in the past half-decade, with Russia and China getting more active in the Arctic while Sweden and Finland are now NATO allies.

Note that Thule Air Base is now Pituffik Space Base, under Space Force command since 2020, and still operates the POGO station under the aegis of the 821st Space Base Group. Also note the old Shemya Air Force Base in the Aleutians is Eareckson Air Station and is primarily just a 10,000-foot emergency strip with a small group of about 100 contractors, similar to the facility at Wake Island.

“The Arctic region of the United States is critical to the defense of our homeland, the protection of U.S. national sovereignty, and the preservation of our defense treaty commitments,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. “Our Arctic strategy will guide the Department’s efforts to ensure that the Arctic remains a secure and stable region.

The 29-page document is here.

Warship Wednesday, July 17, 2024: Under Four Flags

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile 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

Warship Wednesday, July 17, 2024: Under Four Flags

Above we see the sailors of the Northern Red Banner Fleet loading the 24-spigot Hedgehog ASW device on their new (to them) Wickes/Town-class destroyer, Zhivuchy/Zhguchiy (“Tenacious”), which they took over from the British some 80 years ago this week, on 16 July 1944.

By this point in the war– her second– she had already passed through American, British, and Canadian hands and still had some fighting left on her dance card.

The Wickes

Our ship was one of the iconic first flights of “Four Piper” destroyers that were designed in 1915-16 with input from no less an authority as Captain (later Admiral) W.S. Sims. Beamy ships with a flush deck and a quartet of boilers (with a smokestack for each) were coupled to a pair of Parsons geared turbines to provide 35.3 knots designed speed– which is still considered fast today, more than a century later.

The teeth of these 314-foot, 1,250-ton greyhounds were four 4-inch/50 cal MK 9 guns and a full dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes.

They reportedly had short legs and were very wet, which made long-range operations a problem, but they gave a good account of themselves. Originally a class of 50 was authorized in 1916, but once the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917, this was soon increased and increased again to some 111 ships built by 1920.

Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Inboard Profile / Outboard Profile, June 10, 1918, NARA NAID: 158704871

Wickes class USS Yarnall (DD-143): Booklet of General Plans – Main Deck / 1st Platform Deck / S’ch L’t P’f’m, S’ch L’t Control P’f’m, Fire Control P’f’m Bridge, Galley Top, After Dk. House and 2nd Platform Deck. / June 10, 1918, Hold NARA NAID: 158704873

Wickes class. A close-up of her stern top-down view of plans shows the Wickes class’s primary armament– a dozen torpedo tubes in four turnstiles and stern depth charges.

Of the 111 Wickes completed, there were three subclasses besides the 38 standard-design vessels built at Bath Iron Works, Cramp, Mare Island, and Charleston. Then came the 52 Bethlehem-designed ships built at the company’s Fore River (26 ships) and Union Iron Works (26 ships) led by USS Little, the Newport News-built variants (11 ships) starting with USS Lamberton, and New York Shipbuilding-built variants (10 ships) led by USS Tattnall.

The subclasses were constructed to a slightly different set of plans modified by their respective builders, which made for some downright confusing modifications later. In addition, the Bethlehem-designed Little variants tended to have shorter legs and proved unable to cross the Atlantic in a single hop without stopping in the Azores for refueling or completing an underway replenishment.

Anyway…

Meet Fairfax

Our subject, USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93), was the first ship named in honor of Virginia-born RADM Donald McNeil Fairfax whose distinguished service in the Civil War included command of USS Cayuga, Nantucket, and Montauk.

Rear Admiral Fairfax, seen as an LCDR/CDR above, served with distinction in the Civil War and retired on 30 September 1881 after 43 years of service. He died at Hagerstown, Maryland, on 10 January 1894, aged 75.

Our tin can was laid down on 10 July 1917 at Vallejo by the Mare Island Navy Yard; named Fairfax (Destroyer No. 93) on 14 July 1917 in General Order No. 311; launched on 15 December 1917; sponsored by the daughter of the yard commandant.

The future USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) is being prepared for launching, at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, circa 15 December 1917. NH 70607

Fairfax was commissioned on 6 April 1918, almost a year to the day that America entered the Great War.

She was beautiful in her original dazzle pattern war paint.

Possibly the best Wickes class profile I’ve ever seen. USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) at anchor in the San Francisco Bay area, 21 May 1918. Photographed by the Mare Island Navy Yard during the ship’s trials. NH 2025

USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) making smoke while steaming at 25 knots during trials in the San Francisco Bay area, 21 May 1918. NH 55612

USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) making smoke while running at 25 knots, during trials in the San Francisco Bay area, 21 May 1918. Photographed by the Mare Island Navy Yard. Note this ship’s pattern camouflage. NH 23

USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) at anchor in the San Francisco Bay area, 21 May 1918. Photographed by the Mare Island Navy Yard during the ship’s trials. NH 54131

USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) at anchor in the San Francisco Bay area, 21 May 1918. NH 54132

War!

A war baby born an ocean away from the fighting, Fairfax soon found herself with orders for Hampton Roads, where she arrived in early June to escort a convoy across the Atlantic, a role she would continue for the rest of the year.

Destroyers Israel and Fairfax with battleship Virginia in the distance. NH 109504

U.S. Navy Destroyer on convoy duty in 1918. This ship may be USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93), whose camouflage scheme was very similar, though not identical, to that seen here. Courtesy of Jack L. Howland, 1983. NH 95211

While on a Hampton Roads to Brest convoy on 18 October, she raced to a distress signal from the 6,744-ton American cargo ship SS Lucia, torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine SM U-155 (ex-Deutschland, Korvettenkapitan Ferdinand Studt, commanding) some 1,200 miles off the U.S. East Coast.

SS Lucia, built in 1912, was an Austrian-flagged merchant ship that was interned at Mobile, Alabama in 1914 while the U.S. was still The Great Neutral. Seized by the United States Government in April 1917, she was operated by the U.S. Shipping Board and later by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps as ID # 3090. Signal Corps Photo # 165-WW 274A-10 while in Mobile, circa 1917, via NARA.

S.S. Lucia (Austrian/American Freighter, 1912) sinking in the western Atlantic after she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-155, on 17 October 1918. A boatload of survivors is in the process of leaving the ship. This ship was intended to become USS Lucia (ID # 3090) but was lost before the Navy could acquire her. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2005. NH 51459-A

Luckily, Lucia took 22 slow hours to submerge fully, allowing Fairfax to rescue 86 survivors. The only souls lost were four killed in the torpedo explosion. The steamer had been fitted at great cost with controversial Donnelly buoyancy boxes that made her “unsinkable,” which may have had something to do with her slow death.

USS Fairfax Description: (Destroyer # 93) underway with the survivors of S.S. Lucia on board, circa 18 October 1918. They were later transferred to the USS Huntington (Armored Cruiser # 5). NH 54134

Sinking of S.S. Lucia 17 October 1918. Motor launch arrives alongside USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) with a load of survivors from the American steamship Lucia. This boat is from the USS Huntington (Armored Cruiser # 5). NH 41727

Sinking of S.S. Lucia 17 October 1918. Motor launch from USS Huntington (Armored Cruiser # 5) leaving USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) with survivors from the American steamship Lucia. Fairfax is visible in the background. NH 41728

Immediately after the conflict came to a halt, Fairfax remained overseas, and, on 3 December 1918, she deployed to the Azores to the troop transport George Washington (Id. No. 3018) carrying President Woodrow Wilson, and escort her to Brest so that Wilson could attend the Versailles Peace Conference.

USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) view of the ship’s forward and midship superstructure, probably taken at Brest, France, in late 1918 after she shed her camouflage. Photographed by Zimmer. Note the small identification number painted below her pilothouse, canvas weather screens, and the 1-pounder automatic anti-aircraft gun mounted by her forward smokestacks. NH 54135

USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) in harbor, circa late 1918. Photographed by Zimmer. NH 54136

That mission completed, she sailed for home on 28 December, arriving at Norfolk on 8 January 1919.

Quiet Peacetime Interlude

No more camo! USS Fairfax (Destroyer # 93) at anchor, 11 October 1919. NH 54137

While many of the Navy’s new Wickes-class destroyers were soon mothballed following the “War to End all Wars”– and many of those later disposed of or converted to other roles such as minelaying/sweeping or tending seaplanes in the 1920s and 30s– the sun shined on Fairfax and, after helping shepherd the historic first aerial crossing of the Atlantic made by Navy seaplanes (towing the crippled NC-1 to shore), she was only laid up for not quite eight years, from 19 June 1922 to 1 May 1930, then recommissioned.

Incidentally, it was in 1920 that she served as the first command of LCDR (later VADM) Willis Augustus (Ching) Lee Jr. (USNA 1908), just after Lee returned from winning seven medals in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics and two decades before he would teach the Japanese just how good radar-controlled gunnery can be at night.

Once brought out of her short stint in mothballs, Fairfax’s peacetime role consisted primarily of conducting training cruises for both East and West Coast members of the Naval Reserve and summer cruises out of Annapolis carrying midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy to the Caribbean. She alternated this duty with regular gunnery exercises, fleet reviews, and fleet problems, a stint with the Special Service Squadron out of Balboa in the Canal Zone, and patrols in Cuban waters.

She was captured alongside at Annapolis on 18 March 1939 when the remains of Hiroshi Saito, the late Japanese Ambassador to the United States, were transferred to the cruiser USS Astoria (CA-34) for return to Japan.

Note the large hull numbers. Page from the Japan Times Weekly, published in Tokyo, 20 April 1939, page 523, NH 76141

She also participated in the 1939 New York City World’s Fair.

USS Fairfax (DD-93) at Poughkeepsie, New York, 17 June 1939. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. NH 67728

War, again

When Europe blew the lights out again in September 1939, Fairfax was assigned to the increasingly tense Atlantic neutrality patrol.

All was not calm on this duty, and a sistership, USS Greer (DD–145), was fired upon by German submarine U-652 in September 1941, leading to FDR’s “shoot on sight” order for threatening ships under American escort while supposedly at peace. The next month the destroyer USS Reuben James (DD-245) was sunk by U-552 near Iceland, still six weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

However, by that point, Fairfax had already been transferred to the Admiralty.

White Ensign

With Europe again at war, on 2 September 1940, FDR signed the so-called Destroyers for Bases Agreement that saw a mix of 50 (mostly mothballed) Caldwell (3), Wickes (27), and Clemson (20)-class destroyers transferred to the Royal Navy in exchange for limited basing rights on nine British overseas possessions. Canada would receive seven of these ships including five Wickes, doubling the number of destroyers in the Canadian Navy in days. 

In respect of Canada’s naming tradition for destroyers, all seven RCN flush deckers were named for Canadian rivers (repeated in 2024 by the way), ideally, those that ran in conjunction with the U.S. border, a nice touch. In British service, they would receive names of small cities, and be known therefore as the Town class.

Sailed by scratch USN crews from Philadelphia the “flush deckers” sailed to Halifax in several small groups to prepare for a warm handover.  

Transfer of U.S. destroyers to the Royal Navy in Halifax, Sept 1940. Wickes-class destroyers USS Buchanan (DD-131), USS Crowninshield (DD-134), and USS Abel P. Upshur (DD-193) are in the background. The sailors are examining a 4-inch /50-cal deck gun. Twenty-three Wickes-class destroyers were transferred to the RN, along with four to the RCN, in 1940 under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. (Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3199286)

Group of U.S. Navy and Royal Navy ratings who took part in the transfer of destroyers to the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, ca. 23-24 September 1940. LAC A104093

Naval ratings unloading a torpedo before the refit of an unidentified Town-class destroyer of the Royal Canadian Navy, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, March 1941. LAC A105202

Ratings of the Royal Navy taking over former U.S.N. destroyer at Halifax, 1940. LAC A104109

Union Jacks hoisted aboard former U.S.N. destroyers transferred to the Royal Navy, Halifax, 1940. LAC A104096

Decommissioned from the U.S. Navy on 23 October 1940 (she wasn’t struck from the U.S. Navy List until 8 January 1941), Fairfax was taken into custody by RCN personnel in Halifax on 26 November 1940, pending the arrival of an RN crew that would take her to St. Johns for repairs and across the Atlantic to Devonport for fitting British equipment.

During this period, she was commissioned as the sixth HMS Richmond (G 88) on the RN’s list going back to 1655. As such, she carried forth a trio of previous battle honors from those vessels: Quebec, 1759 – Havana, 1762, and Chesapeake, 1781.

Ready for action by June 1941, she was assigned to the 17th Escort Group based in Newfoundland and would ride shotgun on 11 convoys by the end of the year (HX 132, SC 034, OB 339, SC 037, HX 138, ON 001, TC 012B, HX 148, ON 017, SC 047, SC 048, and UR 017).

HMS Richmond G88 passing McNab’s Island, Halifax, NS, via Forposterity’s Sake

In her first convoy of 1942, UR 017, she had the misfortune of encountering the 10,000-ton type EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship SS Francis Scott Key, which crumpled her bow on 31 March 1942. This forced her to Liverpool for five months of repair, after which she was sent back to Halifax to rejoin her convoy defense mission. However, this was cut short when she suffered a collision with the Norwegian cargo steamer SS Reinholt (4801 gt), sending her back to Liverpool for repairs until June 1943.

Oh, Canada

Sent to Halifax once again to get back to convoy work, the twice-cracked Fairfax/Richmond was sheep-dipped into the Royal Canadian Navy, becoming HCMS Richmond in July 1943.

While in Canuk service, she chalked up another nine convoy runs (ON 198, ONS 016, HX 255, SC 142, ONS 018, XB 076, ON 204, HX 262, and ON 207) between just 22 August and Halloween.

The Red Banner

With the Soviets pouting over not getting an immediate slice of the surrendered/interned Italian Navy in late 1943, the Western Allies made a big push to send a nice package of mixed destroyers, submarines, subchasers, cruisers (USS Milwaukee), and even battleships (HMS Royal Sovereign) to appease Stalin. Of course, many of these ships were extremely worn out, mechanically unreliable, and had been repeatedly repaired– so you know Fairfax/Richmond was lumped into this bag.

With that, Fairfax reverted to RN service, arrived back in the Home Isles on 27 December 1943, was paid off, de-stored, and laid up in the Tyne where she sat until taken up by Palmer’s Yard for a brief refit pending transfer to the Russkis.

Her new crew arrived in early July for a fortnight of training on their new vessels, and, officially transferred on 16 July 1944 as Zhivuchy (011), after the name of a destroyer sunk in the Black Sea in 1916, she set out the next day for Loch Ewe as escort for HMS Royal Sovereign (now dubbed Archangelsk), along with seven other high-mileage Wickes/Clemson tin cans that had been part of the Bases for Destroyers deal (Derzkij, Dejatelnyj, Doblestnyj, Dostojnyj, Zarkij, Zguchij, and Zostkij), and 11 SC-497 class 105-foot subchasers. Interestingly, these “Town” class Wickes/Clemsons would be known as the Zhivuchy-class in Soviet service. 

Tagging along with the 33-ship RN convoy JW59 for the White Sea, this little hodge podge of most third-hand warships sortied from Loch Ewe on 15 August and arrived in Soviet waters at the Kola Inlet ten days later. In the running ASW battle to get there, the convoy lost the British sloop HMS Kite (U 87) to U-344 (ace Kptlt. Ulrich Pietsch) which was in turn sunk by a Swordfish from the jeep carrier HMS Vindex (D 15). As a bonus, U-354 (ace Oblt. Hans-Jürgen Sthamer) was sunk on 24 August by HMS Mermaid and HMS Loch Dunvegan.

In Soviet service, Fairfax/Richmond/Zhivuchy, under Captain 3rd Rank Nikolay Dmitriyevich Ryabchenko, spent her career in ASW patrols in the frozen Barents and White Seas. While on such a beat with Dejatelnyj (ex-HMS Churchill, ex-USS Herndon, ex-CG-17) on 8 December, they came across a German U-boat that they had been bird-dogging for three days. When the steel shark broke the surface, Ryabchenko ordered Zhivuchy to ram.

According to Russian sources, it is believed Zhivuchy sank U-387 (Kptlt. Rudolf Büchler) with all hands, although Western sources generally chalk that boat up to the British corvette HMS Bamborough Castle (K412), in roughly the same area at the same time.

Sadly, Dejatelnyj would be sunk just a month later on 16 January 1945 by U-956 (Mohs), taking the commander and 116 men with her. Only seven men were picked up by the Derzkij.

The Northern Fleet destroyer Zhivuchiy (011) is seen wearing her Soviet pennant.

As for the end of her career, the Soviets kept their Wickes/Clemsons for several years after VJ-Day, even if they didn’t need them. Heck, the last one wasn’t returned until 1952!

Fairfax/Richmond/Zhivuchy was eventually repatriated to Rosyth in poor condition on 24 September 1949, scheduled immediately for disposal, and then broken up for scrap by BISCO at Grangemouth the following summer.

She earned two battle honors while under British/Canadian service: Atlantic 1941-43 – Arctic 1942.

Epilogue

Few relics remain of Fairfax. Her engineering drawings and some logs are in the National Archives.

Neither the U.S. nor Canadian fleets have added a second Fairfax or Richmond to their naval lists, however, the Royal Navy has commissioned a seventh Richmond, a Type 23 frigate (F239) that has been in service since 1995.

020612-N-9407M-518 The Atlantic Ocean (Jun. 11, 2002) — British frigate HMS Richmond (F-239) launches an AGM-84A “Harpoon” missile during a joint U.S. and British exercise in which the decommissioned ship USS Wainwright was sunk in the Atlantic Ocean. Ships used in these types of exercises are inspected and made environmentally safe before sinking, and are disguised to create reefs for marine life. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Isaac Merriman. (RELEASED)

She recently deployed to the Red Sea and fired the first Sea Ceptor combat launch in RN history.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Canadian Mosquitos in Full Color

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How about this great original Kodachrome of Type G class torpedo boats of the 29th Canadian Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla. The lead boat, MTB-460, was lost to a German mine off the coast of Normandy on 2 July 1944, some 80 years ago this month, with a loss of 10 officers and men.

Library & Archives Canada MIKAN No. 4950981

As well as two more taken at the same time:

MIKAN 4821111

MIKAN 4821109

Displacing some 44 tons, these 71.75-foot MTBs had a beam of just 20 feet and could operate in anything over 6 feet of water at a combat load. Capable of 39 knots on a trio of Rolls-Royce V-12s running on 100 octane avgas, they carried a single 6-pounder forward, a twin 20mm AAA DP gun aft, and a pair of forward-firing 18-inch torpedo tubes. Complement was 3 officers and 14 men, about the same as the standard American 80-foot Elco PT boat which had a heavier armament. They were constructed by the British Power Boat Company at their Hythe, Southampton boat yard and originally designed as motor gun boats (MGBs) but modified to carry torpedoes.

The RCN fielded two squadrons of MTBs during the last two years of WWII, the aforementioned 29th Flotilla which exclusively used BPB-made G-Type MTBs (No. 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 485, 486, and 491) and the 65th, which used earlier Fairmile D types (Nos. 726, 727, 735, 736, 743, 744, 745, 746, 748, and 797).

As detailed by the Royal Canadian Navy:

Motor torpedo boats (MTBs) were small warships about 22 metres long and six metres wide. Equipped with powerful engines, torpedoes, light naval guns, and machine guns, the Canadian MTBs operated chiefly at night in the English Channel as fast attack boats that disrupted enemy shipping off the coast of occupied Europe and defended Allied shipping from the German’s own fast attack boats and midget submarines. The MTBs also played an important role on D-Day when they helped protect the huge Allied fleet from German warships.

The MTB crews had an extremely dangerous job – their boats were small, the seas of the English Channel were rough, and German guns and mines were never far away.

The worst day in the history of the 29th MTB came on 14 February 1945 when five boats of its remaining eight boats were destroyed in a conflagration in Oostende which left 26 of its members dead.

Oddball is woofing with Jesus now

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I always thought this was perhaps the best hype scene in the best war movie.

“Hey look, you just keep those Tigers busy and we’ll take care of the rest.”

“It’s a wasted trip, baby. Nobody said nothing about locking horns with no Tigers.”

Just lay off the negative waves…

QOR on the Line

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80 years ago today, on D+ 14 (20 June 1944) while in the recently liberated French town of Bretteville-Orgueilleuse, the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada had a war correspondent stop by and take a series of photos that capture the moment in time.

STEN-armed Rifleman R.G. Bodie, Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, on guard in the front line, Bretteville-Orgueilleuse, France, 20 June 1944. 

Lieutenant E.M. Peto (left), 16th Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers (R.C.E.), with Company Sergeant-Major Charlie Martin and Rifleman N.E. Lindenas, both of “A” Company, Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, planning where to lay a minefield, Bretteville-Orgueilleuse, France, 20 June 1944.

Rifleman R.A. Marshall, Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, pointing out a hole in his helmet made by a German sniper’s bullet on D-Day. Bretteville-Orgueilleuse, France, 20 June 1944.

Rfn B. Brueyere, Rfn D.J Briere, Rfn W.J. Simpson, and Rfn H.G.Payne interrogating a local

Cpl W. Lennox watching his arcs in Bretteville-Orgueilleuse with the courtesy of a recently acquired second-hand German MG42.

As noted by The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada Regimental Museum and Archive, the war diary for 20 June included:

0530 Two bombs are dropped in D coy MR91957180 area and a good bit of concussion is felt however luckily there are no casualties.

0800 3 Cdn Inf Div Sitrep Rep

Patrol report for night of 19/20 Jun 44
Proposed Patrols for night 20/21 Jun 44
Daily Int Summary QOR of C
Int Summ #10 18 Jun 44
Trace of enemy dispositions as soon from C coy

1000 It appears at first sight as though we are being invaded by the Free French Army but it soon develops that they are the French Cmdrs of the district and are putting the regular Gendarmes back into local power. There will be five of them in the town and they will control the local population but will report to us each day for any instructions. We are also giving them transportation to enable them to bring flour into the district as they only have a supply enough to last 24 hours.

1115 Several high officers of the 15 Scottish Div arrive to recce the ground for their attack through us. Put all them together with the French Officials still around it looks like an Army HQ.

Formed on 26 April 1860– predating the Confederation of Canada by seven years– as the Second Battalion Volunteer Militia Rifles, The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada (a title it earned in 1882) is the country’s oldest continuously serving infantry regiment, a lineage acquired after 1953 when it was amalgamated with the 1st and Canadian Rifle Battalions to form the current unit. After serving in the Fienan Wars, the North-West Rebellion, fighting the Boer, and earning two dozen battle honors on the Western Front against the Kaiser, the Queen’s Own Rifles got into WWII combat at Normandy.

The QOR, part of the 8th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, hit Juno Beach at Bernieres-sur-mer at 0812 on D-Day, with A Company on the right and B Company on the left in the first wave while C and D companies along with the Battalion Headquarters coming in just eight minutes later, losing 61 men that morning.

In all, they would remain in combat all through France and across Northeast Europe until VE Day, earning 10 more battle honors and paying for them with the last full measure of 463 of the Queen’s Own killed in action and buried in Europe. Meanwhile “almost 900 were wounded, many two or three times. Sixty more QOR personnel were killed serving with other units in Hong Kong, Italy, and Northwest Europe.”

Post-WWII, they saw service in Korea, NATO duty in Germany, UN duty in Cyprus, and more limited deployments to Cambodia, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Darfur, and Sudan.

Today, the Queens Own Rifles are garrisoned in Moss Park Armoury, Toronto, as part of the 32 Bde Group.

The regiment’s motto is In Pace Paratus (In peace prepared).

Crerar’s Chariot

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80 years ago today. Original Kodachrome color Image of Lt-General Henry Duncan Graham Crerar, commander of the First Canadian Army, seen on the open bridge aboard the Canadian V-class destroyer HMCS Algonquin (R17), while part of the Normandy Operation Neptune fleet, 18 June 1944.

Via Library and Archives Canada

Built 1942-43 as HMS Valentine (R17) and transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy on completion, Algonquin opened up with her 4.7-inch QF guns on German targets off Juno Beach at 0645 on D-Day and spent the next 48 hours providing very active NGFS for the British and Canadian troops until their advance inland had outstripped her range.

A 4.7-inch (12 cm) gun crew of the destroyer HMCS Algonquin piling shell cases and sponging out the gun after bombarding German shore defenses in the Normandy beachhead. LAC 4950888

Bofors and gunner and white ensign on HMCS Algonquin. LAC 4950797

Putting back in at Portsmouth on 9 June, she carried VADM Percy W. Nelles, RCN, and his staff to Normandy the next day and would return to carry Gen. Crerar to France as shown above.

Graduating from the Royal Military College in 1909, Crear served with distinction in the artillery during the Great War, witnessing the hell of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, and Vimy Ridge, and was ready to finish up a 30-year career as colonel commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada when Hitler marched into Poland. He had led the 2nd Canadian Division and I Canadian Corps in Italy before Normandy.

Going on to see much Arctic service in the rest of the war, including sinking a trio of German subchasers off Norway, Algonquin would be modernized to a Type 15 frigate (pennant DDE 224) in 1953 and continue to serve into the 1970s when she was scrapped, her name passed on to the lead ship of a new class of destroyers for the RCN.

Gen. HDG Crerar, CH, CB, DSO, CD, PC, would retire from the Army in 1946 and go on to the diplomatic service. He passed in 1965, age 79.

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