In PATFORSWA, the Coast Guard’s now 20-year-long mission in the Persian Gulf/Straits of Hormuz/Gulf of Oman, a trio of its longest-serving patrol boats– 110-foot Island-class WPBs– have been quietly put to pasture.
Via USCG PAO:
Yesterday three Island-class patrol boats were decommissioned in a ceremony at Naval Support Activity Bahrain.
Rear Adm. Keith Smith, deputy commander of U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area, attended the ceremony and commemorated 102 years of combined active service by USCGC Maui, Monomoy, and Wrangell.
“For nearly two decades, these cutters and the Coast Guardsmen that crewed them have worked closely with our U.S. Naval Forces Central Command partners and served as the heart of Coast Guard operations in the Middle East,” said Smith.
Maui was originally homeported in Miami and conducted counter-narcotics and other law enforcement activities near the United States for 18 years.
Monomoy was previously homeported in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The ship helped secure New York City’s harbor immediately following the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
In 2004, Maui and Monomoy arrived in the U.S. 5th Fleet region where they have remained for the next 18 years in support of U.S. 5th Fleet maritime security operations.
Previously homeported in Portland, Maine, Wrangell conducted counter-narcotics and maritime patrol operations along the East Coast of the United States before deploying to the Middle East in 2003.
With the retirement of these three patrol boats, and the looming retirement next month of stateside sisters such as USCGC Cuttyhunk (WPB-1322), few of the 110s remain in inventory as the new and much more capable 154-foot Sentinel-class Fast Response Cutters (designated WPCs) are slated to replace the Island-class.
110 foot Island class cutters compared to the new 154-foot Sentinel (Webber) class FRCs
But that doesn’t mean PATFORSWA is going away. Six of the new Sentinel-class FRCs are headed there to replace the retired Islands on a hull-for-hull basis, with three already in theatre.
Coast Guard fast response cutters Glen Harris (WPC 1144), Wrangel (WPB 1332), Emlen Tunnel (WPC 1145), Maui (WPB 1304), transiting the Gulf of Oman Feb. 26
Coast Guard fast response cutters Glen Harris (WPC 1144), Wrangel (WPB 1332), Emlen Tunnel (WPC 1145), Maui (WPB 1304), transiting Gulf of Oman Feb. 26
Besides their stabilized MK 38 25mm gun and half-dozen M2 mounts, the FRCs headed to Bahrain are equipped with the CG-HALLTS system, a hailer that has laser and LRAD capabilities, as well as a special S-band Sierra Nevada Modi RPS-42 pulse doppler with full-time 360-degree coverage, and other goodies to include four Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) on the O-1 deck. Additionally, the already experienced cutter and boarding crews of PATFORSWA have to go through 5-6 weeks of Pre Deployment Training (PDT) with the service’s Special Mission Training Center at Camp Lejune.
Back at the height of the Red Storm Rising days of the Cold War, the Soviet Project 1164 Atlant (Slava-class) guided missile cruisers were scary. At 611-feet overall and 11,500-tons full load, they were bigger than anything the West had with the exception of the one-offs USS Long Beach (CGN-9) and HMS Blake (C99).
After all, with a COGOG suite that allowed for at least 32 knots, powerful (for the Soviets) over-the-horizon sensors, and 16 bus-sized SS-N-12 Sandbox anti-ship missiles– each capable of carrying 2200-pounds of high explosives or a tactical nuke at Mach 3+ to ranges thought to exceed 300nm– they looked a lot like carrier-killers, especially if used in congested waters and/or in conjunction with waves of cruise-missile carrying Backfire/Bear bombers.
It should be no surprise that the ONI made a special effort to capture and disseminate good images of Slava and her sisters, back in the days when HUMINT behind the Iron Curtain often ended up in a basement with a Makarov.
A bow view of the Soviet cruiser SLAVA, 8.11.1986 Note those 16 big SS-N-12 Sandboxes. DN-ST-86-11108
A vertical view of the Soviet guided missile cruiser SLAVA underway, 6.20.86 DN-SN-87-06825
A port quarter view of the Soviet guided missile cruiser SLAVA underway 1.29.86 DN-SN-87-06829
A port beam view of the Soviet guided missile cruiser SLAVA underway 1.28.86. She has carried several hull numbers over the years, with the most recent being 121. DN-SC-86-03642.
While ADM Sergey Gorshkov– Brezhnev’s decoration-girded Mahan, Tirpitz, or Jacky Fisher– planned for at least 10 of these big cruisers, only three were completed by the end of the Cold War. Bigtime prestige ships that signaled the old powerful days of Yakov Smirnoff jokes, the modern Russian Navy kept those three in flagship roles– with Slava (now Moskova) in the Black Sea Fleet, Ustinov in the Northern Fleet, and Varyag in the Pacific Fleet– even if they rarely left port.
ex-Slava, 2022 Russian Black Sea flagship Moskova (121), in a pre-Ukrainian War photo. Certainly still a handsome ship even at 40 years old.
With the Montreux Convention limiting foreign naval assets deploying into the Black Sea and Turkey, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria having nothing comparable, Slava/Moskova has been the most powerful warship afloat in those ancient waters for some time.
She gained prominence in the Snake Island (“F You, Russian Warship”) incident last month (yes, I know those guys didn’t die) and the Ukrainians even issued– this week, a stamp to commemorate it, showing a sole Border Guard with an AK standing off with Slava/Moskova.
All of which leads us up to the news that Moskova has reportedly been hit by two Ukrainian RK-360MC Neptune shore-launched anti-ship missiles yesterday as the ship’s very formidable air defenses were being diverted by a low-flying TB-2 drone or two.
These big guys:
Able to operate well inland from the coastline with OTH targeting cues, the domestically produced AShM is a rough equivalent of Harpoon based on the Soviet Kh-35 (SS-N-25 Switchblade) anti-ship missile with a smaller warhead and longer range.
There seems to be some fire to the proverbial smoke on this, and the Russian Defense Ministry had issued a statement, repeated on state media, that a fire had caused munitions to explode and the crew had been fully evacuated.
This jives with reports that the big Russian cruiser was broadcasting SOS messages in morse and over voice channels in the clear.
Timeline:
01.00 Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation announced the fire and the following explosion of ammunition on the Moskova. The department is talking about the fire on the cruiser. The causes of the fire are being established.
01.05 from Moskova, an SOS signal was sent
01.14 as a result of fire and explosion, Moskova began evacuation and listed to port.
01.47 On Moskova, the power has completely disappeared. Everything is bad.
02.07 In Turkey, they claim that 99.99 percent within an hour Moskova may sink (54 sailors from the cruiser were saved by a Turkish ship. )
02.48 In Turkey and Romania, new outlets say that the cruiser Moskova has sank.
Likewise, the Montreux Convention means Russia cannot replace any losses of ships in the Black Sea Fleet with other Russian Navy vessels.
If Moskova has in fact been sunk, it would be the largest warship since ARA General Belgrano (C-4)/ex-USS Phoenix (CL-46), was sent to the bottom almost exactly 40 years ago in the Falklands, dispatched by a trio of three WWII-era unguided Mk 8 mod 4 torpedoes from HMS Conqueror (S48).
It would also be the first Russian cruiser sunk since the Admiral Nakhimov-class light cruiser Chervona Ukraina was sunk in November 1941 by German aircraft (Ju 87, Stuka’s from II./StG.77) at Sevastopol.
Chervona Ukraina (Soviet Cruiser, 1915-41) photographed in 1935 or later, probably at Istanbul. Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 89395
As an interesting sidenote, Chervona Ukraina was laid down at Nikolayev on the Black Sea as Nakhimov under the Tsar and was renamed Bogdan Khmelnitsky while on the ways by the Skoropadskyi Ukrainian breakaway government in 1919, making her kinda-sorta a Ukrainian cruiser for a minute.
Nonetheless, increasingly, it appears the Russians have feet of clay.
Warship Wednesday, April 13, 2022: The Example and Inspiration Remain
Here we see the sail of the British U-class submarine HMS/m Upholder (N99)with her only skipper, LCDR Malcolm David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, RN, pointing in the distance for the camera as the White Duster flaps in the breeze behind the boat’s attack periscope. Upholder is a legend, which we will get into, although her short yet brilliant career came to a tragic end 80 years ago this week.
The U-class was “Small Patrol Submarines” and simple, under 200-feet overall, and able to float in just 16 feet of water. Even in their largest format and ballasted down they only weighed about 700 tons. Carrying two diesels and two electric motors with no direct diesel drive they weren’t the fastest boats in the sea, capable of just 11 knots in a surface attack, but they made up for it in wartime use in the congested seas of the Mediterranean.
Armed with four 21-inch bow tubes and a few .303 Vickers guns, they were fitted with a single 3-inch deck gun forward of the sail.
They carried a single QF 3-inch 20 cwt gun forward, with shells handed up by hand from below decks
Standard U-type plan, with four forward tubes and none to the rear as there just wasn’t the space.
While most had “U” names, nine only received alpha-numeric designations (P32, P33, P36, P38, P39, P41, P47, P48, and P52) and four had “V” monikers (Varangian, Vandal, Varne, and Vox).
The first completed, HMS/m Undine (N48), joined the fleet on 21 August 1938 and the 49th, HMS/m Vox (P73) commissioned on 20 December 1943 while five units (Ulex, Unbridled, Upas, Upward, and Utopia) were canceled.
Our boat was a little different and was one of the seven (Undine, Unity, Ursala, Unique, Upright, and Utmost) completed with an extra pair of bow tubes, which gave them six forward tubes and a total load of 10 torpedoes, while the other members of the class just carried four and eight.
A great shot of Ursula tied to a buoy where you can note her extra two bow tubes and distinctive “nose.” Upholder and five others had this same arrangement. Of interest, Ursula fired the first British submarine torpedoes of the war when she attacked the German U-35 just eight days after Hitler crossed into Poland and would also count coup on the light cruiser Leipzig shortly after. IWM FL 20784
English built at Vickers Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness, Upholder was one of a dozen sisters on 4 September 1939 just hours into WWII, was laid down 30 October 1939, and was commissioned one year and one day later on Halloween 1940.
Her skipper from shakedown through loss was “Wanks” Wanklyn, who, of note, was colorblind, a fact that never seemed to affect his nighttime attacks at sea.
Lt Commander Malcolm David Wanklyn VC, DSO, left, with his First Lieutenant, Lt J R D Drummond, both of HMS Upholder, 13 January 1942. IWM A 7293, Russell J E (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer.
Born in British India in 1911, he stoked an early interest in the sea and applied to the Royal Navy in his early teens, leaving for Dartmouth Naval College at age 14 and finishing at the top of his class as a mid in 1929. After service on Great War battlewagons HMS Marlborough and Renown, he was a lieutenant in the Submarine Service by 1933, serving on HMS/m Oberon, L56, and Shark in the lead up to the war, including tense service in the Spanish Civil War. Starting WWII as the first lieutenant on HMS/m Otway in the then-sleepy waters of the Med, he was given his first command, the cramped little HMS/m H31, in early 1940, and commanded that boat on its 5th and 6th War Patrols in the North Sea, sinking the German auxiliary patrol vessel UJ 126/Steiermark (422 GRT, built 1938) on 18 July off the Dutch coast then bringing his boat back safely after the ensuing depth charge attacks by her fellow surface escorts.
In short, Upholder’s first skipper was a regular officer with a decade of service– most of it in subs– under his belt and was ready for a fight.
Malta!
After trials and working-up in Home waters at the end of 1940, covering her first two War Patrols, Upholder was dispatched to join the 10th Submarine Flotilla in Malta on 10 December. The 10th, composed of over a dozen U-class boats (including two sailing under Free Polish control), was in January 1941 put under the control of Commander George Walter Gillow “Shrimp” Simpson, RN as Commander (Submarines), Malta. Based at Lazaretto, near Grand Harbour, Shrimp had one marching order: to stop all supplies from Italy making for the Axis troops in North Africa.
HMS/m Urge inboard of HMS/m Upholder at Malta in WWII as part of the 10th Submarine Flotilla. Observe the difference between the two classmates as Upholder has her twin external bow tubes plus four internals, giving her a prominent nose, whereas Urge only has the quartet of bow tubes. Of note, Urge was also remarkably successful, sinking the Italian cruiser Giovanni dalle Bande Nere among some 74,669 tons of shipping and damaging the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto. She was lost after meeting a minefield in late April 1942, on passage from Malta to Alexandria with all hands including Bernard Gray, a reporter for Sunday Pictorial, who was unlucky enough to gain passage through the offices of his friend, Lord Gort.
Besides daily harassment from Axis air raids at Malta, the life of the 10th Flotilla was anything but business as usual.
As detailed in British Submarines of WWII:
The Mediterranean is a very difficult hunting ground for submarines, in some places deep and clear, the outline of a submerged craft is visible for miles. In many places where the 10th Flotilla operated, the sea was very shallow and was poorly charted at that time, causing many a submarine to bump along the bottom during an attack. Ultra-shallow seas forced submarines to caution in those areas where the depth was such to allow the laying of mines, and closer to the coast they would be avoiding hordes of small craft housed in many bases to hunt down and attack submarines. The whole operating area for the Malta submarines was within the range of land-based reconnaissance aircraft. Mirages also created confusion as land and other objects appeared to be distant aircraft carriers or enemy ships. Another problem, mainly encountered near the Northern coasts, was that of the many rivers emptying fresh water into the Mediterranean; this would cause serious ‘layering’, where a submarine might ‘drop’ 100 feet in seconds in the less buoyant water. Off the Tunisian coast, another problem was encountered, what to do about enemy ships in French territorial waters. With the advance of the enemy along the North African coastline, more ports became available for the handling of the essential supplies, resulting in a greater dispersal of shipping.
Nonetheless, Upholder was off on her first of 26 Mediterranean War Patrols on 24 January 1941 and was off to a busy campaign. On 25 April, she sank the 5,428-ton Italian freighter Antonietta Lauro, then a week later bagged the German cargo ships Arcturus (2,576 GRT) and Leverkusen (7,382 GRT).
While on her 10th Med War Patrol on the night of 24 May, despite his Sub’s vital listening gear being out of action, Upholder came across a heavily escorted troop convoy just east of Siracusa, Sicily, and picked as her target a ripe troopship.
From her report:
2030 hours – Sighted three very large two-funnel liners in position 36°48’N, 15°42’E. Course was 215°. Closed to attack. It was later seen that there were at least four destroyers but most likely six.
2043 hours – Fired the last two torpedoes at the centre ship which was the biggest. The nearest destroyer (a Grecale-class) was then only 400 yards ahead. Upholder went to 150 feet upon firing and retired to the East. Two explosions were heard about a minute after firing.
2047 hours – Depth charging started. In all 37 depth charges were dropped. The last four at 2107 hours were very close. No damage was sustained.
2120 to 2125 hours – The target was heard to sink.
2250 hours – Surfaced and passed a report to Malta. There was a strong smell of fuel oil in the breeze upon surfacing.
Her victim that night was the 18,000-ton former trans-oceanic passenger liner SS Conte Rosso, built in 1922, sunk with the last of Upholder’s torpedos. The Scottish-built liner was pressed into service as a troopship then torpedoed and sunk on 24 May 1941 in a convoy to North Africa by Upholder. Of the 2,729 soldiers and crew aboard headed to Tripoli, she instead took 1,297 to the bottom with her.
Italian Line’s SS Conte Rosso is shown with her neutrality markings on her side in a photo taken in the late 1930s. NH 91277
The incident, specifically the heavy depth charging after, was dramatized in the 2018 cable series, Hell Below: Defying Rommel.
Stacking up the tonnage
Upholder would soon sink a further three freighters– including the Italian cargo ship Laura Cosulich (6,181 GRT) which carried a vital load of explosives– then move firmly into the history books during her 17th War Patrol. On 18 September 1941, accompanied by HMS/m Unbeaten, Upright, and Ursula, Upholder torpedoed three large escorted Italian transports off Tripoli, sinking two and damaging a third.
Closing at night at full speed on the surface the little submarine managed to get into a good firing position despite six escorting Italian destroyers and her torpedoes mortally wounded the converted liners Neptunia and Oceania, each of 19,500 tons and full of reinforcements for North Africa.
From her report:
0350 hours – Sighted convoy of three lines escorted by four destroyers bearing 045°. Range was about 6 nautical miles. Closed to attack.
0406 hours – In position 33°01’N, 14°49’E fired four torpedoes from 5000 yards.
0408 hours – Dived and retired to the South.
0410 – 0411 hours – Two explosions were heard. Two of the liners had been hit by one torpedo each. No depth charges were dropped following the attack.
0445 hours – Surfaced and sighted one large vessel stopped in the area of the attack. One destroyer was nearby. A second large vessel was making to the Westward at 5 knots with another destroyer as escort. Set course to the East to reach a favourable attack position to attack again after dawn when the torpedo tubes would have been reloaded.
0530 hours – Dived and approached while reloading in the meantime.
0630 hours – Sighted one Oceania-class ship still stropped with one destroyer nearby. Closed to attack.
0756 hours – When about to open fire a Navigatori-class destroyer was spotted close by. Went deep. The destroyer went overhead when Upholder was at 45 feet but did not drop any depth charges.
0759 hours – Dived under the target while at 70 feet to obtain a new attack position.
0851 hours – In position 32°58’N, 14°50’E fired two torpedoes from 2000 yards. Both hit. The liner [Oceania] sank after 8 minutes. Again no counter attack by the destroyers followed.
A huge rescue operation mounted by the destroyers managed to save 5,400 German and Italian troops, who were sent back to Europe soggy and sans equipment, but the sea claimed at least 384.
Italian troopship Oceania as she sinks after being torpedoed by HMS Upholder on September 18, 1941
Detail of the above
Besides sidelining whole brigades of Italian soldiers, Upholder also took a toll on the Regia Marina, sinking the Italian Maestrale-class destroyer Libeccio, the minesweeper Maria (B 14), as well as the submarines Tricheco and Ammiraglio Saint-Bon.
Libeccio survived the disastrous Naples-Tripoli BETA (Duisburg) Convoy– annihilated midway across the Med by Bill Agnew’s cruiser and destroyers of Force K on 8 November– only to be torpedoed the next day by HMS Upholder.
At the height of Upholder’s success, Wanklyn was presented a VC in a quiet ceremony in Malta in January 1942, surrounded by his boat’s happy crew.
The problem is every story has an ending and some have a noticeably short third act.
On her 28th War Patrol– her last sortie before she was to head to Britain for refit– Upholder was sent on 6 April 1942 to land two SIS agents in Tunisia then patrol the western approaches to Tripoli along with sistership Urge. While the agents were safely put ashore on 10 April, Upholder was not heard from again.
On 16 April, Urge heard the distant explosions of continuous depth-charging. Two days later, Italian radio reported an Allied submarine had been sunk.
With Upholder and the 33 souls aboard missing, Shrimp Simpson wrote:
I hope it is not out of place to take this opportunity of paying some slight tribute to Lt Cdr David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, and his company in HMS Upholder, whose brilliant record will always shine in the records of British submarines and in the history of the Mediterranean Fleet in this war. The Upholder would have returned to the United Kingdom on completion of this patrol. She had carried out 23 successful attacks against the enemy, and the targets attacked had almost always been heavily escorted, or else enemy war vessels.
Epilogue
On 18 April 1942, the Admiralty reported HMS/m Upholder missing, perhaps mined off Tripoli.
On 22 August, with no contact from Wanklyn and crew for over four months, the Admiralty announced (emphasis mine):
It is seldom proper for the Their Lordships to draw distinction between different services rendered in the course of naval duty, but they take this opportunity of singling out those of HMS Upholder, under the command of Lt.Cdr. David Wanklyn, for special mention. She was long employed against enemy communications in the Central Mediterranean, and she became noted for the uniformly high quality of her services in that arduous and dangerous duty. Such was the standard of skill and daring set by Lt.Cdr. Wanklyn and the officers and men under him that they and shier ship became an inspiration not only to their own flotilla, but to the Fleet of which it was a part and to Malta, where for so long HMS Upholder was based. The ship and her company are gone, but the example and inspiration remain.
While debate ensues on what happened to Upholder— theories include a sinking by the Italian Orsa-class torpedo boat Pegaso, German bombers, or a minefield– Upholder remains on eternal patrol and her wreck has not been found. She is keeping her secrets.
In terms of tonnage, the Upholder is considered to be the most successful of all British submarines.
According to U-boat.net, the “official” Admiralty figures are a bit overstated, but even the trimmed down data is impressive:
Postwar it was reported that HMS Upholder had sunk two destroyers, three submarines, three transports, ten supply ships, two tankers and one trawler, totaling 128353 GRT during her career. This figure was a bit optimistic, Given our detailed history listed below, HMS Upholder sank one destroyer, two submarines, nine supply ships (including three large troop transports and no tankers. Total tonnage sunk was 93031 GRT.
One of her victims, the 6,100-ton freighter Laura Cosulich, has gone on to a sort of infamy of her own. Sunk in shallow water off Saline Ioniche, Calabria, her 1,500-ton cargo of munitions has been extensively farmed by illegal salvagers for the benefit of the Mafia, who have used it as a “bomb supermarket” over the decades. The Italian navy sealed it off in 2015 and it is inspected routinely.
Upholder has been remembered extensively in maritime art and special stamp runs.
May 1981 40th anniversary of Upholder’s loss special issue
Zambia 948 MNH Royal Navy Submarines, Commander Wanklyn
HMS Upholder sinking Italian destroyer Libeccio by Raymond Dominic Agius
As is Wanks, who has an official portrait that he never had a chance to sit for, handing in a place of honor at the RN’s Submarine Museum.
Wankins’ portrait at RN Submarine Museum
The Submarine Museum has a mockup of her jolly roger on display as well.
In September 1944, with so few Axis targets left, the hardworking 10th Submarine Flotilla disbanded just three months after the last British boat sunk in the Mediterranean, HMS/m Sickle, became the Royal Navy’s 45th submarine loss in the ancient sea. Between June 1940 and the end of 1944, RN submarines in the Med had accounted for over 1 million tons of enemy shipping including three cruisers, at least 30 destroyers, torpedo boats, and several German and Italian submarines.
To be sure, had Rommel benefited from all the gear and stores that Shrimp Simpson’s dozen U-class boats, Upholder included, deep-sixed, Montgomery’s 8th Army would have had a tougher go of it as the Afrika Korps and its Italian allies would have been a much bigger gorilla to spank. This could have drawn the North African campaigns out longer, pushing the Atlantic Allies’ invasion of Sicily, Italy, and France even further down the calendar, and given Stalin a bigger role in the end game.
As for Shrimp Simpson, he would retire to New Zealand in 1954 as a Rear Admiral, after having served as Flag Officer Submarines/NATO COMSUBFORLANT.
Of Upholder’s sisters, the U-class itself took lots of lumps, losing besides class leader HMS/m Undine early in the war along with Unity (N66), Umpire (N82), Unbeaten (N93), Undaunted (N55), Union (N56), Unique (N95), Urge (N17), Usk (N65), Utmost (N19), Usurper (P56), P32, P33, P36, P38, P39, P41 (sailing as HNoMS Uredd under Free Norwegian command), P48, Vandal (P64) (who had the shortest life of any British submarine, lost just four days after commissioning), for a total of 19 submarines sunk– 13 in the Mediterranean and six in the Atlantic and the North Sea. This jumps to 20 if you count HMS/m Untamed (P58) which was lost while during training in 1943 due to a bad sluice valve then salvaged and recommissioned as HMS/m Vitality only to be scrapped less than two years later.
Postwar, with the class considered too small and slow by late 1940s standards, the survivors were quickly passed on to allies needing low-mileage and easy-to-use submarines (P47 to Holland, P52 to Poland then later Denmark, Untiring and Upstart to Greece, Upright to Poland, Varne to Norway, Vox to France, Unbroken, Unison and Ursula to Russia) or scrapped (Ultimatum, Umbra, Unbending, Una, United, Unrivalled, Unruffled, Unruly, Unseen, Ultor, Unshaken, Unsparing, Universal, Unswerving, Uproar, Uther, and Varangian).
Janes only listed 7 U-class submarines as being active in the Royal Navy in the 1946 edition.
The final units in British hands were withdrawn by 1950.
The last repatriated from overseas loans (Untiring and Upstart after service with the Greeks as Xifias and Amfitriti respectively) were sunk as sonar targets by the Royal Navy in 1957 and 1959. The holdout of the nearly 50 mighty British U-class boats, HNoMS Ula (P66), ex HMS/m Varne, continued in Norwegian service until 1965, when she was broken up, ironically, in Hamburg, having served just 23 years, most of them for King Haakon VII.
HNoMS Ula (P66), ex HMSm Varne in Norwegian service
Upholder was the first RN warship to carry the name while the second was given to the lead ship of the Type 2400 Patrol Submarines– Britain’s last diesel-electric boats.
HMS Upholder (S40), like her namesake built at VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness, led a class of four boats that repeated at least two of the names of the old U-class: Unseen, Ursula, and Unicorn. While MoD retired the class early, they were sold to the Royal Canadian Navy where they continue to serve today as the Victoria class, sadly, under new names.
Canadian submarine HMCS Victoria, ex HMS Upholder
Specs:
HMS-upholder-submarine by Dr Dan Saranga Blueprints.com
Displacement Surfaced – 540 tons standard, 630 tons full load Submerged – 730 tons Length 191 ft Beam 16 ft 1 in Draught 15 ft 2 in Propulsion 2 shaft diesel-electric 2 Paxman Ricardo diesel generators + electric motors 615 / 825 hp Speed 11+1⁄4 knots max. surfaced 10 knots max. submerged Complement: 27–31 Armament 4 × bow internal 21-inch torpedo tubes, 2 externals 10 torpedoes 1 × QF 3-inch 20 cwt gun
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Born in Pascagoula, the class leader of the 418-foot Legend-class National Security Cutters, USCGC Bertholf (WMSL-750), joined the fleet in 2008 and since then, nine of the ships have replaced the circa 1960s 378-foot Hamilton-class high endurance cutters in the Coast Guard’s inventory. The service uses these light frigate-sized vessels in overseas deployments to the Med and West Pac, as well as in patrols of the North Pac– monitoring 900,000 square miles of the U.S. exclusive economic zone off the Alaskan coast– which can be demanding.
In other National Security Cutter news, shipbuilders at Ingalls just completed the longest translation on record for the shipyard with future USCGC Calhoun (WMSL 759) before officially launching the ship into the water in Pascagoula.
In November of 2020, the ninth NSC, Stone (WMSL 758)— named after the service’s famed first aviator— was delivered to the Coast Guard and proceeded to conduct an unprecedented 68-day shakedown patrol, which resulted in a drug bust within two weeks of sail away and an extensive illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing enforcement patrol off the coast of South America.
Calhoun, the 10th NSC, is scheduled to be christened at Ingalls Shipbuilding in June 2022 and is expected to be delivered in early 2023.
The 11th, and planned final (unless the USCG gets more money), NSC, USCGC Friedman (WMSL-760), will be delivered around 2024.
Swedish coastal defense battleship HSwMS Gustav V, using extensive camouflage, a serious tactic used to great extent by the Swedes, especially for air defense
The Swedish navy has had a long history of camouflaging their ships while hidden next to rocky isolated inlets and islands, even large capital ships.
The above, with the ship highlighted after the fact
After all, in a country whose craggy, rocky, geography gives it a 2,000 mile-long coastline along the Baltic, and whose fleet in modern times has never topped 100 warships, the concept of hiding among said crags and rocks– with the aid of a bit of extra concealment via tarps and vegetation– is an easy sell.
Speaking of which, the Swedes are still at it, with Saab’s Barracuda Camouflage system, which is already used on tanks and vehicles and includes IR blocking, has a Marine Solution that works not only against the MK 1 Mod 0 eyeball, but also defeats “90 percent” of near-infrared (NIR), shortwave infrared (SWIR), thermal infrared (TIR) and broadband radar wavelengths.
Note the below images of a 52-foot Stridsbåt 90 H(alv)/Combat Boat 90 (CB90)– a fast military assault craft developed by Swedish boat maker Dockstavarvet, a part of Saab subsidiary– with Barracuda camouflage panels installed, then against a rocky coastline, and finally with the camouflage net fully deployed.
Via Saab:
Barracuda’s Camouflage Marine Solution has been uniquely designed to offer complete confidence to soldiers operating from the water, whether cutting through waves at breakneck speeds or moored to the coastline. Comprised of interlocking, fully customizable panels and an advanced multispectral camouflage net, this innovative solution delivers unrelenting protection from state-of-the-art enemy sensors in times when uncertainty could mean defeat.
If Saab could make a jungle and reef variant, I could see serious uses for this among the atolls of the Western Pacific.
Soldiers of Bravo Battery, 1-1 ADA (Air Defense Artillery), 38th Air Defense Artillery Brigade based out of Okinawa, Japan made history last week as they conducted the first-ever amphibious insert of a Patriot Minimum Engagement Package. The MEP was landed in Aparri, Philippines on 28 March as part of Balikatan 22, something that can potentially up the Marine’s Ground-Based Air Defense game in the littoral.
After boarding USS Ashland (LPD 48), the MEP was loaded on LCACs 29 and 80 from Naval Beach Unit Seven. Marines from Alpha Company, 9th Engineer Support Battalion (3d Marine Logistics Group) prepared the landing site and guided the LCACs ashore so they could emplace in their fighting positions
While the Marines have some organic expeditionary ADA, it largely consists of MANPADS centered on the Low-Altitude Air Defense (LAAD) Battalions of Marine Air Wings. This whoopie cake was all that the Corps was left with after they disbanded their Hawk Light Anti-Aircraft Missile battalions in 1997 and then failed to fund the SLAMRAAM (Surface Launched AMRAAM) which mounted 4-6 AMRAAMs on the back of a Hummer, which could be slung loaded under a CH-53 or brought in by a single LCU or LCAC.
What could have been, and without needing two LCACs to land!:
“A High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) with AMRAAM’s is waiting to be tested to prove that the AMRAMM can be fired from a HUMVEE vehicle. The combination has been nicknamed HUMRAAM by some of the testers,” 8/19/1996, Okaloosa Island, Florida, Eglin AFB test area. National Archives Identifier: 6499260
Besides reports of assorted recent mine warfare in the Ukraine littoral— a pastime that goes back to 1877 in the region– random floating sea mines are being found by NATO navies in their home waters. Russian state media says 420 Ukrainian sea mines had somehow gone adrift in a recent storm and were loose in the Black Sea, meanwhile, the Ukrainians have denied this, thus leaving the origin a bit hazier.
On Saturday, the Turkish Navy discovered an “old type” Russian-made mine that had been found by fishermen in the upper Bosphorus strait and their EOD types from the Aydin-class mine-hunting vessel TCG Akcay blew it in place off the coastal village of Rumelifeneri.
Between Istanbul and Odessa, the Romanians have also picked up a mine of their own. On Monday, the Cosar-class minelayer Viceamiral Constantin Bălescu (F274) put divers in the water to tackle a mine 39 miles off Capu Midia.
The device, according to the interwebs, is a small Soviet M1943 MyaM-type shallow water (inshore/river) contact mine of the type licensed to both Iran and Iraq back in the 1980s with very fresh Ukrainian naval markings.
Mine marked to the 4th brigade of underwater mine enclosures of the Ukrainian Navy, based in Koblevo.
As the horns are still covered, it would seem the mine was unarmed, pointing to the fact it could have A) been in storage and accidentally hit the water somehow, or B) is a little false flag bluster to make the Ukrainians look bad while shutting down commercial traffic in the Black Sea.
Warship Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2022: Mines, Yes, but also U-Boats!
Photograph FL 18955 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums
Here we see the Royal Navy Halcyon-class “sloop minesweeper” HMS Sharpshooter (N68/J68)in September 1938, at around the time Hitler sent troops into the Sudetenland and a year before he was to send them into Poland, sparking WWII. Not a very imposing ship, some 80 years ago this week she would single-handedly send a Jerry U-boat to the bottom of the Barents Sea.
Based on the Grimsby-class sloops-of-war– a baker’s dozen 1,500-ton, 266-foot slow-moving (16 knots) sub chasers built in the early 1930s and capable of hauling almost 100 depth charges along with some light guns– the 21-unit Halcyon-class were slightly smaller, running 245-feet overall, and logically lighter at 1,400-tons. Outfitted with two QF MK V 4″/45 singles and a smattering of machine guns (both .50 cal Vickers and .303 Lewis guns), they shipped with manual sweep gear rather than ASW equipment.
The first five Halcyons (ordered 1933-35) were fitted with forced lubricating compound engines, and the next two with reciprocating steam (VTE) engines, while the latter 14 (ordered 1936-37 as Europe was ramping up for war) used Parsons steam turbines, with all versions being able to hit at least 16.5 knot-ish while the latter upgrades able to touch 17. All were named for Great War-era destroyers or minesweepers.
Our little sweeper, Sharpshooter, was of the latter “turbine” type and was laid down at HM Dockyard Devonport on 8 June 1936, the fifth (and as of 2022, the last) RN warship to carry the name dating back to a 12-gun Archer-class gunbrig of the Napoleonic era. Commissioned 17 December 1937 with pennant N68, this later shifted to J68.
Assigned to the 1st Minesweeping Flotilla based at Portland (soon shifting to Scapa) her pre-war service included searching for the lost T-class submarine HMS Thetis (N25), which sank during sea trials in Liverpool Bay in the summer of 1939.
War!
Once the war began (see U-boat.netand Halcyon-class.co.uk for an extensive chronicle of her WWII service) Sharpshooter worked mine sweeping assignments in the North Sea and off Scotland, then in November transferred to Stornoway for Atlantic convoy escort duties with her Flotilla, then transferred to the 6th MS Flotilla in April 1940.
The seven sweepers of the 6th MSF, Sharpshooter included, moved to the Dover area in May, where, in response to the Blitzkrieg of the Lowlands, conducted sweeps of the coastal shipping routes off Holland. Often under German air attack on this detail, two units of the Flotilla (sisterships Hussar and Harrier) were damaged by Luftwaffe bombs before the month was up.
Called close to the beaches of Dunkirk on 28 May to help pull off members of the BEF desperate to escape the Fall of France, Sharpshooter arrived off the beaches at 0115 on 29 May and began putting boats in the water to fight the inshore surf and remove men directly from the sand—after all, she and her sisters could float in just 9-feet of water.
Dunkirk 26-29 May 1940 British troops line up on the beach at Dunkirk to await evacuation IWM
By noon on the 29th, she landed 100 soggy but safe soldiers at Dover.
On the 30th, she disembarked 273 troops at Dover, then, headed back to the beaches late that night, had a collision with the French steamer St. Helier which was pulling off French troops. This forced her to be towed back to Dover sans any more Tommys, facing a repair that would put her out of the war until mid-September.
Sharpshooter finished 1940 based at Scapa conducting fleet minesweeping/route clearance duties.
In January 1941, she was part of the sweeping screen to the north of Rockall for the battleship HMS King George V, which was taking Lord Halifax across the Atlantic to his post as the new British Ambassador at Washington.
Following that, Sharpshooter became a facet on North Atlantic convoy work, clocking on with HX 125, OB 334, PQ 8, PQ 9/10, PQ 12, PQ 13, QP 8, QP 9, PQ 18, QP 14, and QP 15 across 1941 and 1942, alternating with minesweeping operations in North Russian waters and off Allied-occupied Iceland. This duty usually consisted of riding shotgun on slow-moving Russia-bound convoys from Reykjavik to Murmansk/Archangel and back, being targets in the massive Barents Sea shooting gallery off German-occupied Norway which meant deadly threats from shore-based bombers, U-boats, and the bulk of the Kriegsmarine’s surface assets.
This brings us to Sharpshooter’s encounter with the Type VIIC submarine U-655 (KrvKpt. Adolf Dumrese) of Wolfpack Ziethen. Our minesweeper, part of Convoy QP 9 on a return run from Murmansk to Reykjavik, spotted Dumrese’s surfaced U-boat at very close range on the morning of 24 March 1942 south-east of Bear Island– and promptly rammed it.
U-655 turned over and sank without survivors while the minesweeper suffered no losses.
This required Sharpshooter to return to the dockyard for 10 weeks of repairs to her bow and post refit trials. Meanwhile, her skipper, LCDR David Lampen received the DSO on 25 August “awarded for skill and coolness in successful actions against enemy submarines while serving in HMS Sharpshooter.”
By April 1943, Sharpshooter was dispatched to the Mediterranean for minesweeping off the North African coast then, as summer went on, for the Operation Husky Sicily landings. She remained in the Med through most of 1944, where she reportedly suffered a partial (?) torpedo hit in April.
Arriving back in the UK in September 1944, she conducted sweeping off the coast of France and Belgium before switching to North Sea operations into early 1945.
A second career
With no shortage of minesweepers and proper sloops, and the war in Europe over, the Admiralty in April 1945 made the call to disarm Sharpshooter (along with her sister ships HMS Seagull, Franklin, and Scott) then convert them to survey ships.
The 1946 Jane’s listing for the Halcyon class survey ship conversions, including HMS Sharpshooter
Sharpshooter emerged with a white scheme in May 1946 and was soon dispatched for hydrographic duties in the shipwreck-plagued South Pacific, based in Singapore, later picking up the auxiliary pennant A310.
Returning to the UK in December 1948, she spent the next several years on surveys of the Home Islands’ West coast and, just in time for the 1953 Coronation Review, was renamed HMS Shackleton after the famed British explorer. She and her two sisters located and logged many war-time wrecks while re-surveying coastal Great Britain.
A familiar sight from Portsmouth to the Irish Sea, Sharpshooter/Shackleton was reduced to reserve status in 1961 and laid up at Devonport.
On the disposal list in 1965, she was sold to BISCO on 3 November for breaking up at Troon by the West of Scotland Shipbreaking Co. Ltd.
Epilogue
The Halcyons suffered terribly during WWII. Sphinx, Skipjack, Gossamer, Niger, Leda, Bramble, Hebe, Hussar, and Britomart were all sunk in enemy (or blue-on-blue) action off Iceland, Dunkirk, Normandy, the Barents Sea, and in Russia’s Kola Bay– all the same waters where Sharpshooter narrowly avoided destruction herself.
As peace settled into a frigid Cold War, these slow and well-worn sweeper sloops were not needed, and most were immediately laid up.
Just four Halcyons were listed as active in the 1946 edition of Jane’s, the rest lost during the war or converted to survey ships.
The Royal Navy sold almost all of Sharpshooter/Shackleton’s remaining sisters by the mid-1950s. The only outlier to this was HMS Scott, which had likewise been tasked with survey work, and was sold for scrap in 1965 along with Sharpshooter.
Sharpshooter, her name not since reused by the Admiralty, is at least remembered by a Displate.
While Shackleton, his name recently very much in the news, gets much more attention and maritime art exists of Sharpshooter in this post-war survey guise.
Displacement: 815 long tons std; 1,394 tons, full load Length 245 ft 3 in Beam 33 ft 6 in Draught 9 ft Propulsion: Two Admiralty 3-drum water-tube boilers, two Parsons steam turbines, 1770 shp, two shafts Speed 17 knots Range 7,200 nmi at 10 knots on 264 tons oil Sensors (1944): Type 123 ASDIC, Type 271 RDF Complement: 80 Armament:
(1938) 2 x QF 4 in Mk. V guns, single mounts HA Mk.III One quad QF 0.5 in Mk.III Vickers machine gun, HA Mk. I Assorted .303 Lewis guns
(1944) 1 x QF 4 in Mk.V guns, single mounts HA Mk.III 2 x 2 and 2 x 1 20mm/80 Oerlikon AAA cannons Depth charges– two double depth charge chutes with two depth charges each, two single chutes with one depth charge each, and two throwers with 40 depth charges.
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Besides your typical maritime harassment seen in the area in the past few years– GPS jamming, AIS spoofing, communications jamming, electronic interference, and cyber-attacks– Lloyds and NATO warn shipping that “collateral damage or direct hits on Civilian Shipping in the North-Western Black Sea area are considered VERY HIGH.”
This includes mines, which the 2,100 dwt Estonian-owned, Panama-flagged cargo ship MV Helt may have sunk by last week off Odessa.
Word is that the Russians may have forced the vessel to act as a lane-clearer in the aspect that “any ship can sweep for mines…once.”
Millennial Spirit (IMO 7392610), a 2,200-ton Moldavian-flagged chemical tanker, was attacked on 25 February and burned for two days.
Namura Queen (IMO 9841299), a Japanese-owned Panama flagged 85,065-dwt kamsarmax, was hit on 25 February.
Yasa Jupiter (IMO 9848132), a Turkish-owned Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier, with 11 Filipino crew, was hit on 24 February but was able to make it to port in Turkey.
In other naval news from the Black Sea, it has been confirmed that the Ukrainian Navy scuttled their flagship and only frigate, the Krivak III-class Hetman Sahaidachny (U-130).
The lightly armed 3,500-ton OPV had been in a maintenance availability at Mykolaiv and was ordered wrecked to prevent her from falling into Russian hands.
The Ukraine Navy ship Slovyanks (P190)— formerly the 110-foot Island-class USCGC Cushing— is allegedly sunk, with the parents of several of her crewmembers posting pleas for information. According to a Russian report (so hold your breath) the Mayor of the city of Yuzhne, Volodymyr Novatsky, said the patrol boat was sunk on 3 March by an anti-ship missile of Russian naval aviation.
110 foot Islands Slavyansk and Starobilsk in better times. They are the former Bollinger-built Islands, ex-USCGC Cushing (WPB-1321) and ex-USCGC Drummond (WPB-1323).
The Ukrainians have managed to get one lick in, though.
On Monday night, Ukrainian Naval Infantry units reportedly hit the 1,800-ton Russian corvette, RFS Vasily Bykov off Odessa with a shore-based anti-ship missile (some chatter is that it was a GRAD rocket or even an ATGM instead). Heavily damaged and forced to retreat, it reinforces how dangerous it is to work in the littoral, even when you have control of the sea.
Russian corvette, RFS Vasily Bykov, has reportedly been heavily damaged by shore-based fires near Odessa this week.
In one report, Ukrainian small boats okie-doked the Russian Project 22160 patrol boat to chase them towards a camouflaged firing position, where he (Russian vessels are always “he”) was shelled and hit with at least one lucky shot. Dawn showed the vessel on fire offshore.
Dornier Flugzeugwerke’s all-metal three-engined Do 24 flying boat was designed in the mid-1930s to replace the Dutch Navy’s Dornier Do J Wal (whale) aircraft flown in the Dutch East Indies.
Below we see a Dornier Wal, taking off next to the Dutch cruiser Java, somewhere in the Dutch East Indies. As pointed out by Georgios Nikolaides-Krassas, an avid LSOZI reader, the Wal was “Do-24s ‘grandfather,’ so to speak, and predecessor in the Netherlands Naval Aviation Service (Marineluchtvaartdienst-MLD). Judging by the presence of the 75 mm/55 cal. Bofors/Wilton-Fijenoord Mark 4 AA guns and the awnings, the photograph must have been taken in the Dutch East Indies at some point between 1926, when the Do-J was introduced in MLD service, and the refit in the early 1930s that saw the removal of said AA guns, a few years before the first flight of the prototype of Do-24 (which, it must be pointed out, was developed to meet a requirement by the MLD).”
The Do 24 was a big, beautiful aircraft, with an 88-foot wingspan– nearly as wide as the famed PBY Catalina. With a 150kt cruising speed, the ability to carry over 2,600-pounds of ordnance under its wings, and a 1,600nm range, they could pose a serious threat to approaching sneaky enemy fleets.
Bomb suspension of the first Dornier Do 24K-1 maritime patrol flying boat (German: Hochsee-Aufklärungsflugboot) of the Naval Aviation Service (MLD), built by Dornier in Friedrichshafen (South Germany). They could carry six 200 kg (440-pound) bombs, three under each wing. Also, note the searchlight on the engine cowling.
The Dutch wanted 90 of the aircraft, with the first third built by Dornier in Germany and the rest under license by Aviolanda in Holland.
A formation of nine Dornier Do-24K maritime patrol flying boats and six smaller Fokker T.IV naval bombers over ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy, circa 1939.
However, by 1940, this plan was dead in the water.
When the Germans swept through the Lowlands in May 1940, they captured 26 incomplete aircraft in Holland and went on to build another 159 for the Luftwaffe on the Dutch line, substituting BMW-made Braamo engines– the same type used in the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, some 37 Do.24s were in service in the Dutch East Indies, concentrated mostly at Naval Air Station Morokrembangan near Soerabaja in eastern Java, and proved vital in the short three-month campaign for those islands.
De Dornier Do-24K-1 maritieme patrouillevliegboten X-2 (1938-1941) en X-3 (1938-1942)
It was a Do.24 that alerted the Dutch garrison at Tarakan that the Japanese invasion fleet was over the horizon, allowing the important oil fields there to be put to the torch.
Dornier 24 flying boat of the Royal Netherlands Navy sights the Japanese invasion fleet off Kuching, British Borneo, 23 December, 1941
The Japanese Fubuki-class destroyer Shinonome met her end on the morning of 17 December 1941 while part of the Borneo invasion force at the hand of a Do 24.
0650 [Tokyo time; Dutch time local 0550] While in distant company of HIYOSHI MARU and W-7 the SHINONOME was attacked shortly after dawn by Dutch flying boat X-32 of GVT-7 (GVT = Groep Vliegtuigen = Aircraft Group) off Miri, Borneo (04-24 N, 114 E). Five bombs were dropped, with two direct hits and one near-miss observed. One of them detonated an aft magazine: SHINONOME came to a stop, heeled over, and went down by the stern within five minutes.
0700 HIYOSHI MARU and W-7 attacked by Dutch Flying Boat X.33. Attack ended.
1020 MURAKUMO sees a huge column of white water erupting from the sea in the area of Baram Lighthouse and a huge underwater shock is felt at the same time. It seemed like a deep super depth charge in its concussion.
1246 To investigate, MURAKUMO cast off from No.3 TONAN MARU after having first refueled. The destroyer thereafter discovered a ten-meter long patch of oil about fifteen kilometers off Baram Lighthouse containing relatively little debris. Most poignantly, the only recognizable item was a barrel of radishes, known to have been embarked by SHINONOME from the supply ship SURUGA MARU at Camranh Bay.
1930 MURAKUMO gave up searching for survivors, having found not a single one. Returned to Miri and assigned patrol duties. Thus Lt.Cdr. Sasagawa and all hands – some 221 officers and men – perished.
After it became apparent that the Dutch East Indies could not be held in the face of the overwhelming Japanese effort, 11 surviving Dorniers were able to evacuate to Australia in late February 1942– some 80 years ago today.
Three days later, an air raid on Roebuck Bay left five of the remaining Do.24s sunk, along with four Dutch PBYs.
“A Japanese air raid on Tuesday morning 3 March 1942 resulted in the loss of nine MLD flying boats, which were moored in Roebuck Bay near Broome (Western Australia). These were the Dornier Do-24K-1 flying boats X-1, X-3, X-20, X-23, X-28, and the Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina flying boats Y-59, Y-60, Y-67, and Y -70. The photo shows the smoke development, which presented a sinister spectacle over the bay just after the attack.”
The final six Do 24s served with the Australians, absorbed in No. 41 Squadron RAAF as A49 1-6, serving as amphibian transports between Australia and New Guinea until late in the war.
Lake Macquarie, Australia’s largest coastal saltwater lake, C. 1943. A Dornier Do 24 Of the Dutch Royal Marine Airforce flies low over the lake. AWM 044610.
The exiled Do.24s mirrored the work of the Free Dutch No. 320 (Netherlands) Squadron RAF, which was formed from Marineluchtvaartdienst personnel that escaped from Holland to the UK with eight Fokker T.VIIIW twin-engined patrol seaplanes. The latter squadron finished the war flying Hudsons.
