Category Archives: military history

Warship Wednesday 26 November 2025: A Sad Affray

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

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

Warship Wednesday 26 November 2025: A Sad Affray

Above we see HM Submarine Affray (P421).

One of a class of 16 British A (Amphion/Acheron) class boats designed for use in the Pacific against the Empire of Japan in the latter stages of WWII, she commissioned 80 years ago this week and, while she did not get to fire a torpedo in anger against the Imperial Japanese Navy, Affray did go on to leave a tragic mark on naval history.

The A-class boats

By 1943, the writing was on the wall at the Admiralty that the naval war would soon shift to the Pacific and would be very different than that in the European theatre. Whereas small subs were ideal for work in the cramped English Channel, North Sea, and Mediterranean, larger hulls, more akin to American “fleet boats,” would be needed for far-ranging Pacific service.

The answer was the A-class boats, Britain’s only full-sized subs designed during WWII, which offered faster surface speeds, improved habitability under tropical conditions (they were the first RN boats to have air conditioning), and a double-hull structure. They used all-welded pressure hulls and welded fuel tanks inside, with ballast tanks adapted for extra diesel storage. With their 280-foot length, they were only a little shorter than the typical 311-footers seen in U.S. service while still being much larger than the  Royal Navy’s preceding 204-foot “Long hull” V-class submarines of the 1941–42 Programme. Even the RN’s vaunted T-class only ran 276 feet oal.

By comparison, the A boats could make 18.5 knots on the surface (with a 10,500nm range at 11) as compared to the 15.5 knots (8,000nm @ 10) of the T-class, and downright pokey 11.25 knots (3,000nm @ 9) of the V-class. The operating diving depth of the A-class was 350 feet (max 600), versus 300 on the riveted V and T classes.

The As were also heavily armed with 10 21-inch tubes: six at the bow (two external) and four (two external) at the stern. Besides the 10 loaded tubes, they could cram another 10 Mark VIII fish inside the pressure hull for reloads, although typically just six were carried. Instead of torpedoes, 18 1,700-pound Mark II/Type G ground mines could be carried and deployed. Deck guns included a QF 4″/40 Mk XXII in the sail, a 20mm Oerlikon, and up to three .303 Vickers guns. Sensors included a Type 267W air warning radar, which could function at periscope depth, as well as Types 138 and 152 sonars.

The 1943 Programme called for the construction of 46 Type A boats built across six yards: Vickers-Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness; Cammell Laird, Birkenhead; Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock; Chatham Dockyard, Plymouth Dockyard, and Vickers-Armstrongs, Walker-on-Tyne.

Only two of the 46, the Barrow-built HMS Amphion (P439) and HMS Astute (P447), were commissioned before the end of hostilities, in March and June 1945, respectively. Even at that, they never arrived in the Far East in time to conduct a war patrol, spending their wartime career in workup and tests.

The 14 sister boats– Acheron, Aeneas, Alaric, Alcide, Alderney, Alliance, Ambush, Anchorite, Andrew, Artemis, Artful, Auriga, Aurochs, and our Affray— were completed between late 1945 and April 1948.

HMS Alliance on sea trials, August 1946, off Barrow. Ref: CRTY 2017/139/776/1.

British Amphion-class submarine HMS Alcide (P415). Note her sail-mounted 4″/40 gun and original WWII profile. The photo was taken in 1947 at Plymouth Sound

Two more, the would-be Ace (P414) and Achates (P433), were not fitted out but, launched and afloat, were in turn converted into target boats.

The order for the remaining 28 units (Adept, Andromache, Answer, Antagonist, Antaeus, ANZAC, Aphrodite, Admirable, Approach, Arcadian, Ardent, Argosy, Atlantis, Agile, Asperity, Austere, Aggressor, Agate, Abelard, Acasta, Alcestis, Aladdin, Aztec, Adversary, Asgard, Awake, Astarte, and Assurance) was cancelled.

A-class submarines, 1946 Janes

Meet Affray

Our subject was laid down at the Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead on 16 January 1944, launched on 12 April of that year.

The future HM Submarine Affray after launching at the Cammel Laird ship yard, Birkenhead, 1944 LT CH Parnall, photographer. IWM A28195

Affray commissioned on 25 November 1945, and her first skipper was LCDR Ernest John Donaldson Turner DSO, DSC, RN, a submarine service steely regular who had commanded HMS Sibyl (P 217) for 17 war patrols in 1943-44 and had earned his DSO earlier in the war as XO of HMS L 23 (N 23).

Only two of Affray’s Cammell-built sisters, Aeneas and Alaric, would be completed.

Cold War service

Designed for the Pacific, Affray soon left to join the 4th Submarine Flotilla in Hong Kong, centered around the tender HMS Adamant (A164), and with her four sisters, HMS Amphion, Astute, Auriga, and Aurochs, replacing eight T-class boats that Adamant had been supporting since 1945.

By 1949, Affray and, along with the rest of her class, had received a 60-foot “Snort” device, based on captured late-war German snorkel designs, during regular overhauls back home.

HM Submarine Affray (P421), after her 1949 refit. Note the 4″/40 on her fairwater had been deleted, and she has a forward torpedo tube open. 

The device overall proved successful. On 9 October 1947, Alliance dived off the Canary Islands to commence a 30-day “snort cruise,” covering 3,193 miles to Freetown, all while submerged. Andrew later made a 2,500nm run from Bermuda to the English Channel in 15 days.

Previously, British submarines could only spend a maximum of 48 hours submerged, and that was largely stationary.

.A class submarine HMS Aeneas off Gosport, circa late 1940s/early 1950s, sans 4″/40 and with her “Snort” fitted

However, Affray’s Snort reportedly leaked “like a sieve” during dives in the Med, and by January 195,1 the hard-used boat had been placed in reserve at Portsmouth, with the globe-trotter having logged more than 51,000nm in just her first five years of service.

Final Dive

Reactivated and under the command of experienced sub vet LT John Blackburn, DSC, in April 1951, Affray was detailed to participate in a detached simulated war exercise named “Training Spring.”

It would be a multi-day operation including “a war patrol, dummy attacks on shipping, combining with mock hostile aircraft attacks, Marine Commandos to be landed by cockle-type canoes for a simulated sabotage and enemy observation exercise, then re-embark.”

Instead of her regular crew, she had to land all but 24 experienced members while the boat was crowded with 24 ratings drawn from a new submarine class, a team of four Royal Marine Commando canoeists, and 22 members of a junior officer Executive and Engineering training class.

In all, 75 souls crammed into a boat built for 60~ with only about a third of them being “old salts.”

Affray had dived 30 miles South of the Isle of Wight, some 60 odd miles southwest of St Catherine’s Light, at 2115 on 16 April, and was due to transit to a position 20 miles southeast of Start Point. However, she failed to report her position on 17 April, and a SUBMISS/SUBSMASH alert stated search operations that eventually numbered over 50 ships, including 24 NATO warships.

These efforts continued fruitlessly until 19 April, with only an oil slick observed over Hurd’s Deep, by which point she was considered lost.

During the search, 161 sustained sonar contacts and as many as 70 uncharted wrecks, including another submarine, the 1944-lost U-269, were discovered, each requiring fruitlessly sending down a diver to verify if it was the lost Affray.

On 14 June, after two months, the frigate HMS Loch Fyne (K429) made the first contact with the wreck of Affray on her ASDIC equipment and sent the signal to the Admiralty in Whitehall.

The submarine rescue ship HMS Reclaim arrived on scene soon after and dropped a diver with a Siebe Gorman oxy-helium helmet to a depth of over 200 feet, who reported what could be a submarine below.

To confirm, Reclaim sent down her new underwater television apparatus on 16 June.

The camera container and lights in their frame, on board HMS Reclaim. IWM A 31970

When it neared the bottom at 260 feet, the first grainy image of the wreck, including the word “Affray” on a conning tower, appeared topside on Reclaim’s TV screen.

A picture of the name Affray on the side of the conning tower of the submarine, as documented by Reclaim’s camera rig. IWM (A 32110) Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205163026

There is no shortage of educated theories as to what happened to the submarine, the last British boat lost at sea. What is known is that her Snort mast was broken, and all hatches and hull seemed otherwise intact.

Hopefully, it was over quickly.

As noted by Submarinefamily.uk:

Her loss is still a matter of controversy, and the exact reason for her loss may never be known, as she is now protected as a grave for those who died in her. The most likely cause is that her snort mast broke off while she was at periscope depth and that the induction hull valve had failed to operate satisfactorily, resulting in water entering the submarine through a 10-inch hole. With her buoyancy destroyed, she would have sunk very quickly.

Epilogue

The 75 men lost on Affray have their names recorded in the Submariners’ Book of Remembrance in the chapel at HMS Dolphin, Gosport. Their names are also listed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, the Submarine Museum Memorial wall at Gosport, and Braye Harbour, Alderney, among others.

A dedicated website to H.M. Submarine Affray endures.

The four lost SBS men are also recorded in the Royal Marines Roll of Honour.

Of note, one of the divers from Reclaim working on Affray was LCDR Lionel “Buster” Crabb, OBE, GM, who later became famous when, in 1956, he disappeared in Portsmouth harbor during the visit of a Soviet cruiser with Khrushchev aboard.

The rest of Affray’s class had a happier and much longer service.

At least 10 of her sisters served at one time or another between 1954 and 1967 with the Royal Navy’s 6th Submarine Squadron out of HMC Dockyard, Halifax (stone frigate HMS Ambrose) as “clockwork mice” for ASW training with Canadian and NATO surface ships– with active service deployed North-East of the Grand Banks to warn if Soviet submarines were active during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although not in RCN service, they typically had several “Canucks” as part of their crews, which helped the RCN’s transition to the trio of new Canadian Oberon-class submarines, which began entering service in 1965. The Submarine Room at the Naval Museum of Halifax contains many of their relics, including at least one ship’s bell from HMS Aurochs.

Fourteen received a further modernization akin to the American GUPPY conversions, which removed the old sail and replaced it with a more modern fairwater, as well as a streamlined hull profile. Although their four external tubes and the deck guns were removed, they could still carry 18 more modern Mark 8 Mod 4 torpedoes or 26 1,930-pound Mark V/type Q magnetic/acoustic mines. They also received new sonars (Types 186 long-range passive, 187 medium-range search/attack, and 197 intercept). The big Type 187 attack sonar required a large bulbous dome on the bow, giving the updated Amphions a similar profile to the 1960s Oberon class boats.

When they finished their refit, the GUPPY-fied Amphions received updated S-series hull numbers in place of their old P-series numbers.

HMS Alliance (S67), almost unrecognizable after her modernization.

HMS Artful, Amphion-class submarine, S96

Ironically, despite the original deck guns being removed during modernization in the late 1950s, a very non-streamlined replacement 4″/33 Mark XXIII S gun was installed starting in 1960 on several A boats to counter blockade-running junks during the Indonesian Confrontation with the Singapore-based 7th Submarine Squadron.

Modernized Amphion-class submarine HMS Andrew (S63) leaving Singapore at the end of her service with 7th Submarine Squadron (7SM), in 1968. The crew lining the deck wearing broad terandak hats while a sign hanging from the side reads “Mama Sam’s”. Within two hours of departure, the crew rescued two Malaysian fishermen whose boat had sunk and returned them to Singapore. Andrew was one of the many submarines to leave Singapore in the late 1960s when the decision was made to repatriate all British military “East of Suez”. 7SM closed in 1971. IWM HU 129718

HMS Alliance, in camouflage pattern off Malaysia, 1965. IWM HU 129708

Aerial starboard-bow view of modernized Amphion-class submarine HMS Alliance (S67) seen in 1965 during her service with 7th Submarine Squadron, note her deck gun. She is wearing a camouflage paint scheme appropriate for operations in the shallow waters around Malaysia during the Indonesian Confrontation. IWM HU 129708

Jane’s page on the class, 1960.

The class made appearances in several films, with Andrew filling in for a U.S. nuclear submarine in the 1959 post-apocalyptic film On the Beach.

Sistership Artemis appeared in an RN training film entitled Voyage North, from which stock submarine footage was lifted and reused in movies and TV shows for decades.

Aeneas, however, one-upped her sisters by appearing in the classic Bond film You Only Live Twice in 1967. She later went on to become an SSG, carrying an experimental mast-mounted SAM launcher. 

The last of the class in service, HMS Andrew, paid off in May 1977 and was also the final British sub to carry a deck gun.

HMS Alliance, although decommissioned in 1973, would continue to serve as a static training boat until 1979, and survives today.

Alliance has been preserved since 1981 as a museum boat at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, Portsmouth.

HMS Alliance, Gosport

Among her relics is a replica wreath of daffodils, carnations, tulips, and lilies of the valley modeled after the one Alliance’s crew dropped over the resting place of Affray.

The Submarine HMS Alliance lays a wreath over the spot where submarine HMS Affray failed to surface during a training dive in 1951 (Manchester Mirror)

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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The Hard fighting 13th

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85 years ago this week.

30 November 1940, Scotland. Officers and NCOs of the Free French Navy submarine Minerve (P26), seen while the boat was refitting for further service. She was not alone. 

Note the 3″/35 M1928 deck gun. Réf. : LONDRES R-12-206 Photographe inconnu/ECPAD/Défense

At least the 13th warship with the name under the French flag, going back to 1757, Minerve was commissioned on 5 September 1936 under the pennant number Q185.

The leader of her class of 223-foot coastal submarines, she hit the scales at 870 tons submerged and could make 14 knots on the surface.

Her armament was varied, including a 3″/35 M1928 deck gun, two 13.2mm HMGs, six 21.7-inch internal torpedo tubes (four bow, two stern), each with a single reload. Outside of her pressure hull, she had three smaller yet trainable 15.7-inch tubes with no reloads.

Refitting in FFN service with a new pennant number on the sail. Note that her three external tubes are rotated out

In the early days of WWII, she carried out a surveillance of the Canary Islands for German blockade runners and then rode escort on seven convoys between Gibraltar and Liverpool. Towed out of Brest to avoid being captured by the Germans during the Fall of France in June 1940, she was seized by the British, then commissioned under the pennant number P26 in the Free French Navy with a new crew in January 1941 and soon took part in the chase of the German battleship Bismarck.

De Gaulle seen leaving the Free French submarine sisters, Junon and Minerve, in late 1940. Note Minerve’s win 13.2mm AAA mount. Photo by Harold William John Hamlin, IWM A 2173

Surviving the war, though heavily damaged in a blue-on-blue attack by British aircraft, she was wrecked in September 1945 while being towed back to France.

Of her six boat class, only two others survived the war.

A 14th Minerve (S647), a Daphné-class submarine, was lost in 1968 with a crew of 52 in the Gulf of Lion, one of four modern submarines mysteriously lost that year.

Waking up the Dragon

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Some 75 years ago this week.

The mothballed Iowa-class fast battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) is towed up the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge to the New York Navy Yard, 22 November 1950, for reactivation as a fire support platform for use in the Korean War.

She had been recommissioned at Bayonne the day before.

She would be refitted with SK-2 search radar, MK 12/22 radar on her MK 37 directors, and retained her 20mm Oerlikons, although most of her 40mm Bofors are gone

USS New Jersey (BB-62) commissioning at Bayonne, 21 November 1950, for Korean War reactivation

Already the recipient of nine battle stars for her WWII service, New Jersey had been decommissioned at Bayonne on 30 June 1948, so her hull had only languished on “red lead row” for 28 months and, notably, was still a very young ship, having been commissioned the first time at Philadelphia on 23 May 1943.

After a quick refit and shakedown, New Jersey left for the Seventh Fleet, where she arrived off the east coast of Korea on 17 May 1951 and spent the next seven months as fleet flagship. The recalled battleship’s big guns opened the first shore bombardment of her Korean career at Wonsan just two days later.

Over the next two years, she would pick up another four battlestars.

The battleship New Jersey (BB-62) fires a full nine-gun salvo of her 16″ rifles at a target in Kaesong, Korea, on 1 January 1953. Official USN photograph # 80-G-433953 in the collection of the National Archives,

USS New Jersey (BB-62) fires a nine 16-inch gun salvo during bombardment operations against enemy targets in Korea, adjacent to the 38th parallel. The photo is dated 10 November 1951. Smoke from shell explosions is visible ashore, in the upper left. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-435681

As noted by DANFS:

During her two tours of duty in Korean waters, she was again and again to play the part of seaborne mobile artillery. In direct support to United Nations troops, or in preparation for ground actions, in interdicting Communist supply and communication routes, or in destroying supplies and troop positions, New Jersey hurled a weight of steel fire far beyond the capacity of land artillery, moved rapidly and free from major attack from one target to another, and at the same time could be immediately available to guard aircraft carriers should they require her protection.

New Jersey would be decommissioned a second time on 21 August 1957, was brought back in 1968 to rain 6,000 shells on NVA positions in Vietnam, then decommissioned a third time the next year, and brought back a fourth and final time in 1982.

Big Mamie, returns

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The fifth (completed) U.S. Navy vessel named for the Bay State, the future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798), was delivered to the service from Newport News on 21 November. She is the 25th Virginia/774-class submarine, the 12th delivered by the yard, and the seventh of 10 planned Block IV configured boats. Her commissioning is set for 2026.

Future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798) on builder’s acceptance trials. 251008-N-MQ094-002

Future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798) on builder’s acceptance trials. 251008-N-MQ094-001

Future USS Massachusetts (SSN 798) on builder’s acceptance trials. 251008-N-MQ094-003

The first USS Massachusetts was a 4-gun screw steamer built in 1845 and fought during the Mexican-American War.

The second, a 6-gunned screw steamer, fought in the Civil War– the bane of the Confederates on the Mississippi Coast and still has a fort named after her on Ship Island– while the third, an Indiana-class battleship (BB-2), fought in the Spanish-American War.

The last and most famous USS Massachusetts (BB-59) was commissioned in 1942 as a South Dakota-class fast battleship, earning 11 battle stars for exceptional service in WWII from Casablanca to Okinawa before being decommissioned in 1947. She remained in the Reserve Fleet until stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in June 1962 and continues to serve as a floating museum.

USS Massachusetts underway somewhere in the Pacific (1943)

Nice to see the name back on the Naval List.

Bat ‘Truders

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How about this great shot some 50 years ago today, showing a quartet of full-color Grumman A-6A Intruder aircraft (BuNo 155623, 155624, 155625, 157014) of U.S. Marine Corps All-Weather Medium Attack Squadron (VMA(AW)) 242 flying in echelon formation on 21 November 1975.

Photo by Sgt. C. Quinn, USMC, VIRIN: DM-SC-84-04345

Commissioned on 1 July 1943 at MCAS El Centro, California as Marine Torpedo Bombing Squadron (VMTB) 242 with an insignia that included Bugs Bunny riding a torpedo, the squadron flew TBM Avengers throughout the Westpac in the last 20 months of the war, operating from bases ranging from the Solomons to Iwo Jima.

Inactivated post-war and stood back up in 1960, they first flew Skyhawks and then Intruders, stacking up a tally of 16,783 combat sorties delivering 85,990 tons of ordnance in successive tours in Vietnam, where they switched to the “Bats” nickname. One of the last Marine A-6 squadrons, they only transitioned to the F/A-18D Hornet in 1990, which they used to great effect in air support missions in Iraq in 2005.

Today, the Bats of VMFA-242 operate F-35Bs tasked to MAG-12 (1st MAW) out of MCAS Iwakuni. Of note, while they started off looking for Japanese carriers to sink in 1944, the unit recently was the first F-35 squadron to conduct operational testing on the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter carrier JS Izumo, the country’s first “big deck” fixed-wing carrier since WWII.

The dusty cardboard box of Kaiser Karl

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The Habsburgs by the 1860s had at least five assorted life guard units in their Household Division, with probably the most elite of them– on regular watch anyway– being the Imperial-Royal Trabant Lifeguards (k.k. Trabantenleibgarde).

Composed of long-serving Army officers and career NCOs, the half-company-sized Trabantenleibgarde was responsible for mounting the interior guard at the imperial residences of Hofburg and Schönbrunn in Austria. A larger force of picked enlisted men, the Leibgarde Infanterie Kompanie, handled day-to-day exterior guard work. The castles and residences in Hungary were guarded by dedicated Hungarian units.

When the last Habsburg emperor, Charles (Kaiser Karl I of Austria/King Károly IV of Hungary), left Schönbrunn Palace for the final time in the quiet pre-dawn hours of 12 November 1918, he personally dismissed the men of the Trabantenleibgarde without relief, their watch concluded.

However, Charles forgot to change the non-commissioned officer on duty in the Hall of Mirrors. Legend has it that the guard remained at his post until overcome by fatigue and drowsiness; he fell asleep on he shiny floor. He was found the next morning lying next to his white-crested helmet.

Emperor Karl I of Austria-Hungary inspecting troops of the Polish Auxiliary Corps in Bukovina, 10 December 1917. The officer on horseback is probably Lieutenant Colonel Michał Żymierski (IWM)

While Charles beat feet to Schloss Eckartsau, east of Vienna, and issued a proclamation that was ultimately taken as an abdication-in-waiting with the hope that his people would recall him, the old Empire was shattered to pieces in the wake of the country’s Great War defeat and ruin.

Leaving Austria for good in March 1919 for Switzerland and finally Portugal, where he died in exile in 1922, the Austrian Parliament pulled the plug on the monarchy in April 1919 and barred Charles and his male descendants from ever returning unless they formally renounced their rights to the throne.

Well, it seems like Charles and his wife Zita got the last laugh as a literal treasure trove of jewels, including the famous 137-carat Florentine Diamond, thought lost to history and unseen since 1918, just surfaced in the hands of male Habsburg descendants.

Long feared broken up, it turned out that Zita carried the cardboard box full of jewels away and locked the trove in a Canadian safe deposit box in the 1940s, where they remain today.

The family secret was kept on the condition that at least 100 years had passed since the last Austrian Kaiser’s death before it would be revealed.

The family wants to put the jewels on display in a Canadian institution, but the Austrian government is already making noise about getting the items, some of which have been in the personal collection of the Habsburgs since the 1700s, back.

You have to give it to Charles, Zita, and their offspring, though. The jewels could have easily been passed on in private sales at any point since 1919, but have been kept intact and safe. Worse, they could have abandoned them to history. Keep in mind that since they left Austria, the country descended into a spiral of Nazi and later Allied occupation that lasted 23 years, bracketed by cycles of oddball socialist governments. Had the jewels been left at Schönbrunn, they very well may have vanished.

Remember that the 12th-century Holy Crown of Hungary, also known as the Crown of Saint Stephen, which last rested on Charles’s head in 1916, was recovered in the remote mountain hamlet of Egglesberg, Austria, by the U.S. 86th Infantry Division in April 1945 and kept in Fort Knox until 1978, when it was handed over to the Hungarian government.

At least the secret was kept, clad in pasteboard, and the last post has finally been relieved.

Warship Wednesday 19 November 2025: Pride of the Scouting Group

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

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

Warship Wednesday 19 November 2025:  Pride of the Scouting Group

Photographed by A. Renard of Kiel, Germany, via the Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 45198

Above we see the Roon-class armored cruiser (panzerkreuzer) SMS Yorck of the Kaiserliche Marine, passing under the famous Levensauer Hochbrücke along the Kiel Canal prior to the Great War.

She was commissioned 120 years ago this week and, a beautiful ship, had a short but tragic peacetime career and even shorter and more tragic wartime service without ever firing a shot in anger.

The Roons

In the 1890s, the German Imperial Navy moved to field several armored cruisers, initially rebuilding old (circa 1870s) ironclads with newer and more modern guns and updated engineering plants.

Then came the majestic 11,500-ton SMS Fürst Bismarck, the country’s first purpose-built armored cruiser, laid down in 1896. Built for 18 million gold marks, Fürst Bismarck was capable of 18.7 knots and carrying a main battery of four 9.4″/40s and a secondary of 12 5.9″/40s, while clad in up to 7.9 inches of armor plate. Bismarck was followed in 1898 by the smaller (and cheaper, at 16 million marks) SMS Prinz Heinrich (9,800t, 2×9.4″/40, 10x5.9-inch SK L/40s, 20 knots, 5.9-inch armor).

Then came the twin SMS Prinz Adalbert in 1900 and Friedrich Carl in 1901, which were basically a three-funneled improvement of the preceding Prinz Heinrich, while carrying a different main armament (four 8.27-inch SK L/40 C/01s rather than 2×9.4″/40s) and thinner but better armor with the secondary armament (10×5.9″/40s) housed in a central armored citadel amidships and a 21 knot speed on a 18,500shp plant.

Jane’s 1914 entry for the armored cruisers SMS Prinz Adalbert and Friedrich Carl.

Continuing that vein, the 1902-03 Naval Program ordered a pair of essentially improved Prinz Adalbert-class cruisers, dubbed initially Ersatz (more or less “replacement”) Kaiser and Ersatz Deutschland as they were replacing the old ironclad/armored cruiser conversions on the German Navy List. The differences between the new cruisers and their Adalbert-class half-sisters came in the fact that they had four funnels rather than three, with 16 boilers rather than 14 on a more powerful 20,000 shp plant.

Ersatz Kaiser/Ersatz Deutschland, future SMS Roon/SMS Yorck, concept Brassey’s Naval Annual 1906

Armament was largely the same primary (four 8.27″40s with 380 rounds) and secondary batteries (ten 5.9″/40s with 1,600 rounds), while the tertiary battery was slightly larger (14 24-pounders with 2,100 rounds vs 12 24-pounders with 1,800 rounds). Four 17.7-inch torpedo tubes were fitted below the waterline– one each in the bow and stern, and one on each side approximately at the level of the forward twin turrets– with 11 torpedoes in the magazine.

The two new cruisers, Ersatz Kaiser and Ersatz Deutschland, entered the fleet as SMS Roon and SMS Yorck, constructed eight months apart at Kaiserliche Werft, Kiel, and Blohm & Voss, Hamburg, respectively.

Jane’s 1914 entry for the armored cruisers SMS Roon and Yorck.

Brassy’s line drawing on SMS Roon and Yorck.

A 1917 ONI publication on the armament and armor of Roon.

For reference, the Germans liked the design of Roon and Yorck so much that they ordered another pair of armored cruisers in 1904 to an improved design, the larger (and 25 percent more expensive, at 20-million marks each) Scharnhorst and Gneisenau of later Maximillian Von Spee fame.

Jane’s 1914 entry for the armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. These were just bigger Roon-class cruisers with more speed and range but roughly the same armament and armor.

Following Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the Germans in 1906 ordered their last armored cruiser, the huge 15,000-ton 12x 8.4″/45 gunned SMS Blücher (which cost 28.5 million marks), then shifted gears to battlecruisers with the 21,000-ton 11-inch gunned SMS Von der Tann (36.5 million marks) in 1907.

With that…

Meet Yorck 

Our subject carries the name of Johann David Ludwig Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, a Prussian feldmarschall and statesman of the early 19th century.

An ardent patriot, Yorck resented Prussia’s subservience to Napoleon and, in 1812, defied the orders of Wilhelm Friedrich III by initially refusing to join the French emperor’s great invasion of Russia. With Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, Yorck seized the opportunity for liberation and negotiated a separate peace treaty (the Convention of Tauroggen) for his Corps with Russian General Ivan Ivanovich Dibich-Zabalkansky over the Christmas holiday of 1812 without the consent of their respective monarchs. He went on to fight Napoleon for the next three years and retired from the Prussian Army in 1821, passing nine years later.

Yorck, a thorn in Napoleon’s side, later became a favorite icon of the newly unified Germany.

Laid down as Ersatz Deutschland (Baunummer 167) at the Blohm & Voss in Hamburg on 25 April 1903, the hull of the future SMS Yorck was launched into the water on a warm 14 May 1904, christened by Josephine Yorck von Wartenburg, the 45-year-old granddaughter of the famous field marshal. Speaking of field marshals, the 71-year-old Gen. Wilhelm Gustav Karl Bernhard von Hahnke, then the Oberkommando in den Marken over state functions, read the dedication to the new cruiser.

Yorck, launched. Note her ram bow

Yorck, despite being laid down eight months later, managed to be completed six months earlier than her sister Roon, commissioning on 21 November 1905, while the class leader entered service on 5 April 1906.

Yorck’s construction costs were 16,241,000 goldmarks, while Roon came in at a comparatively cheaper 15,345,000 goldmarks. Still, they both came in cheaper than the previous twins, the 16.4 million mark Prinz Adalbert and the 15.7 million mark Friedrich Carl. Roon is listed as costing £875,733 (£660,469 hull and machinery, £195,695 guns, £19,569 torpedo armament) in a British journal.

She and her sister joined the fleet’s reconnaissance force (Aufklärungsstreitkräfte), with Yorck taking over the task of flagship from Friedrich Carl. The flagship role would remain with Yorck until May 1908, then again from March 1909 to April 1910, and intermittently in 1912 and 1913. Whenever she wasn’t the direct flagship, she typically carried the recon force’s second or third commander and staff.

Yorck Mai 1910 Hansestadt Bremisches Amt Bremerhaven, Bild-Nr. S1 F 22-1

She spent the next several years in a series of fleet maneuvers and squadron cruises into the Atlantic, ranging as far as Spain and Norway.

Roon and Yorck with the Aufklärungsstreitkräfte in Puddefjorden, Bergen, Norway, between 1907 and 1911.

Roon and Yorck with the Aufklärungsstreitkräfte in Puddefjorden, Bergen, Norway, between 1907 and 1911.

Roon and Yorck with the Aufklärungsstreitkräfte in Puddefjorden, Bergen, Norway, between 1907 and 1911.

She not only looked good but could shoot as well. Yorck won the Emperor’s Shooting Prize (Kaiser Preis) for large cruisers in both 1908 and 1910.

Meanwhile, sister Roon, unburdened by flagship roles, even managed a sortie to escort ships to the far east and attend the 1907 Jamestown Exhibition naval parade in New York City along with the protected cruiser SMS Kaiserin Augusta.

SMS Roon 1907 Jamestown Exhibition, NYC. LOC ggbain 28287

S.178

While practicing counter-torpedo boat operations on the night of 4 March 1913, just northeast of Heligoland, Yorck inadvertently rammed the low-lying and fast-moving S.178, driving the 800-ton ship under the waves, and sending 69 men with her to the bottom. Just 15 survivors were saved through the combined efforts of fellow torpedo boat S.177, Yorck, and the battleship SMS Oldenburg.

The 242-foot S.138-class torpedoboot S.178 was cut in half by Yorck in March 1913 but was salvaged (during which one of the salvage vessels, Unterlebe, capsized in heavy seas, carrying another seven men to the bottom). Her two pieces reconstructed, she survived the Great War and was surrendered to the British, who scrapped her in Dordrecht in 1922.

Doldrums

As the Kaiser built out his shiny new High Seas Fleet and a fresh batch of battlecruisers joined it, the still young but smaller, weaker, and slower armored cruisers were put to pasture to free up their crews for reassignment. Prinz Heinrich was laid up from 1906 to 1908 and then put into limited service as a training ship. Likewise, in 1909, Friedrich Carl was withdrawn from front-line service and re-tasked as a torpedo training ship. Prinz Adalbert became a gunnery school and test ship in 1912.

Roon was laid up in September 1911 after just five years of service, while Yorck soon followed her sister and was laid up on 21 May 1913, having completed less than eight years of service. It probably didn’t help that the high-profile ramming of S.178 had occurred just ten weeks prior. Most of Yorck’s crew, including the skipper, transferred to the newly completed battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz.

Yup, that Seydlitz.

SMS-Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like at Jutland, by Carl Becker

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were only on active service in 1914 due to their overseas assignment with the East Asian Squadron, while Blucher was, well, a proto if under-gunned battlecruiser. If you ask me, it’s likely that on a long enough timeline, the Germans would have replaced von Spee’s armored cruisers with battlecruisers in the same way that the Moltke-class BC SMS Goeben was stationed in the Mediterranean from 1912 onward.

Anyhow…

War!

Yorck, photographed in 1914. Courtesy of Master Sergeant Donald L.R. Shake, USAF, 1981. NH 92713

When the lights went out across Europe in August 1914, Yorck and Roon were pulled out of reserve and rushed back into service, both attached to the III. Aufklärungsgruppe, with Roon, made the group flag.

The squadron initially operated in the Baltic Sea, then later shifted to the North Sea.

On 2 November, the 3rd Scouting Group helped cover the first offensive operation of the High Seas Fleet– the bombardment by the battlecruisers of the 1st Scouting Group of Yarmouth, the first attack on British soil in 250 years. While no casualties were suffered on either side and the Germans retired in good order, Yorck would upend that empty victory.

While wrapped in fog in the inner Jade estuary on the morning of 4 November, Yorck’s skipper, KzS Waldemar Pieper– a skilled professional officer who had signed up in 1887 as a cadet and had commanded both the armored cruisers Prinz Adalbert and Blucher before the war– had reason to believe his ship’s water supply was contaminated and ordered her to weigh anchor and proceed to Wilhelmshaven without pilots. The pilot had refused to take over the conn due to the poor visibility and the considerable risk of German defensive minefields, which were known but subject to tidal drifting.

At 0410, Yorck struck a mine, then turned away to escape the field and hit a second one, soon capsizing and turning turtle, entombing fully half of her crew. If not for the efforts of the old Siegfried-class coastal defense ship (küstenpanzerschiffen) SMS Hagen rushing out to her rescue despite the mines, the other half (the chagrined Pieper among them) would surely have succumbed to hypothermia.

SMS Yorck mined near Wilhelmshaven, on return from Yarmouth, 4th November 1914. The ship is on her side. Reichs Marine Sammlung Collection, IWM (Q 48420)

The German armored cruiser SMS Friedrich Carl was sunk by a pair of Russian mines in the Baltic Sea almost a year to the day later, in November 1915

Yorck and Friedrich Carl were in the club of over a dozen cruisers claimed by mine warfare between 1904 and 1942, including the British cruisers HMS Cassandra, Amphion, Hampshire, and Neptune; the Japanese cruisers Miyako, Saien, and Takasago; the Italian cruisers Carlo Alberto Racchia, Carlo Mirabello, and Cesare Rossarol; the Russian cruisers Boyarin, Peresvet, and Ladgoda; USS San Diego (ACR-6), the French cruiser Kléber, and the Ottoman cruiser Mecidiye.

Yorck’s sister Roon was decommissioned in Kiel on 4 February 1916 and, after being disarmed and used as a training hulk for U-boat crews, was slated for conversion to a seaplane carrier.

Roon’s planned seaplane carrier conversion which never completed. Found at Kiel after the war in poor condition, she was scrapped by 1921. Drawing by Dr Dan Saranga, Blueprints.com

Epilogue

Lost in shallow water with some elements of her wrecked hull at the time just 10 feet below the surface, between 1926 and stretching to 1983, Yorck was slowly blasted and salvaged, then later broken up in place on the seabed as a navigational hazard, finally being dredged under to effectively bury what remained.

These days, about the only relics of Yorck that endure are period postcards.

The Germans may have tried to recycle the name of our cruiser in the lead ship of the nascent Ersatz (replacement) Yorck-class of battlecruisers, whose two sisters would have, at least initially, been named Ersatz Gneisenau and Ersatz Scharnhorst. Big 38,000-ton beasts with a planned 90,000shp on tap from a suite that included 32 boilers and four geared steam turbines, the Ersatz Yorcks were a sort of Super Mackensen type that would have made 27 knots while still carrying eight 15″/45 guns (as opposed to SMS Mackensen’s eight 13.8″/45s) and as much as 10 inches of armor plate. Ersatz Yorck had her keel laid at AG Vulcan in Hamburg in July 1916, but with production resources pivoting to U-boats, she never stood a chance and was eventually abandoned and broken up on the ways after the war. Her design did reportedly prove a starting point for the Kriegsmarine’s later Scharnhorst-class battleships, however.

Drawing of proposed Ersatz Yorck-class (1916), the German Imperial Navy’s final battlecruiser design, which never saw the water.

Our Yorck’s captain’s cabin was an important stepping stone for several future German admirals.

Her first skipper, KzS Leo Jacobson, by 1918 was a vice admiral and the fortress commander of Wilhelmshaven.

Her second commander, KzS Arthur Tapken, went on to head the Navy’s intelligence section, led a scouting squadron early in the Great War from the bridge of the battlecruiser SMS Von der Tann, and ended the war as a vice admiral and the fortress commander of Kiel.

Her fourth commander, KzS Ludwig von Reuter, went on to be the ignoble final commander of the High Seas Fleet, interned at Scapa Flow, and would order it to scuttle in June 1919.

KzS Max Köthner, Yorck’s fifth skipper, was director of the torpedo department at the shipyard in Wilhelmshaven, retiring in 1919 as a rear admiral.

Our cruiser’s sixth skipper, KzS Moritz von Egidy, famously commanded the Swiss-cheesed battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz at Jutland and ended the war as commandant of the Mürwik Naval Academy.

As for her seventh and final skipper, Waldemar Pieper was court-martialed in Wilhelmshaven for the sinking of the Yorck and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in a fortress for disobeying orders and negligence. However, requested by name by Admiral Wilhelm Souchon as an artillery expert, he was paroled and seconded in February 1915 to Ottoman Turkey on probation, where he later distinguished himself to such an extent that Kaiser Willy commuted his sentence in December 1915. An Ottoman Pasha and major general, by 1916, he was the head inspector of the Turkish ordnance plants (Türk Silah Dairesi ve fabrikalari komutani) clustered around Constantinople, with 700 German experts supervising 14,000 local munitions workers. He returned to Germany in July 1917 to serve in the weapons bureau, and Pieper was later retired as a rear admiral (Konteradmiral) in 1919. He passed in early 1945, aged 73.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Destroyer Escort vs German torpedo, 2025 edition

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Norwegian Oslo-class frigate Trondheim (F302), in 2004, back when she was having a much better day

Recently, during exercise Ægir 25 in September 2025, the Norwegian Ula (U-Boot-Klasse 210) class submarine KNM Uthaug (S304) fired one of its Atlas Elektronik DM2A3 Seehecht torpedoes at the decommissioned Oslo (Dealey) class frigate ex-KNM Trondheim (pennant number F302), intending to sink the battered target vessel off the coast of Andøy in Andfjorden.

The 2,100-ton Trondheim, decommissioned in 2007, had already been the target of Naval Strike Missiles launched by the frigates HMS Somerset and KNM Thor Heyerdahl as well as previous NSM tests in 2013.

As noted by NATO, “The purpose of the shot was to verify and demonstrate the striking power that the weapon and the submarine represent. A submarine has long endurance, operates covertly, and has a unique ability to dictate the battle.”

NATO Allied Joint Force Command released the video on 17 November 2025, and it really shows you why you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a 576-pound torpedo warhead.

Van Galen of Shanghai Fame

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Following up on last week’s Warship Wednesday of the Dutch Admiralen-class torpedobootjager (destroyer) Hr. Ms. Banckert, I would be remiss not to mention the China Station saga of her sistership, Hr. Van Galen (VG).

This continued a legacy of Dutch involvement in the Boxer Rebellion in which 35 Marines (Korps Mariniers) helped defend the Peking Legation Quarter, and remained in attendance of the country’s embassy into the 1920s.

Commissioned 22 October 1929, Van Galen was soon dispatched to the Dutch East Indies, where all seven of her sisters would eventually serve (until destroyed while fighting the Japanese in 1942).

However, Van Galen would make China a specialty, and spent several deployments in the waters there over the 1930s, protecting Dutch interests during the turbulent era.

Torpedobootjager Hr.Ms. Van Galen (far right) in Shanghai, along assorted British and American cruisers. 2158_013844

On 22 February 1932, Van Galen was deployed to Shanghai during fighting between the Chinese and Japanese in the city, putting ashore a naval landing division (landingsdivisie) and Marine detachment on 1 March, to protect the international district there following the bombardment of the city by the Japanese navy.

The ship and her ashore detachment would remain in the city for two months.

Detachement mariniers van de torpedobootjager Hr.Ms. Van Galen te Shanghai, in tropentenue 2158_061491

Marines from the destroyer HNLMS Van Galen marching along Nanking Road in Shanghai. March 1932.

Bayonet exercise by marines from the destroyer HNLMS Van Galen on the training ground in Shanghai, 1932. NIMH 2158_061489

Dutch destroyer Van Galen mariniers marines, Shanghai 1932, 2158_061488

The detachment boarded the destroyer on 27 April 1933 and returned to her homeport at Soerabaja (Surabaya).

She would return in 1935 for a port call, though she did not land any troops.

The destroyer returned to Shanghai on 23 August 1937, during a period of heavy fighting between the opposing forces involved in the Second Sino-Japanese War. During this stay, in addition to her ship’s landing forces, the ship disembarked a contingent of 150 Dutch marines (talk about cramped on a 1,600-ton tin can!) to help protect and evacuate European citizens residing in Shanghai. The detachment was housed ashore at the British Union Jack Club during its 11-week deployment.

A detachment of Dutch marines from the destroyer HNLMS Van Galen at the jetty on the Bund in Shanghai, August 1937. “SMJRMARNS Hein Harfst reports the detachment to LT1MARNS H. Lieftinck.” Note the 6.5x53mm Geweer M. 95 Dutch Mannlicher carbines, M23/27 helmets, and traditional klewang cutlasses. NIMH 2158_061492

Detachement mariniers van de torpedobootjager Hr.Ms. Van Galen in Shanghai 1937 2158_061487

After the withdrawal of the defeated Chinese troops, the detachment embarked on 17 November, and Van Galen returned to the Dutch East Indies.

She would return to Chinese waters off and on until war came to Europe, and she alone was the only member of her class recalled to the metropolitan Netherlands in late 1939. There, while under refit in May 1940, she would attempt to come to the assistance of Rotterdam and was sunk by 30 successive Luftwaffe air attacks, presaging the fate of her seven Pacific sisters.

Het wrak van de Van Galen na de berging in de Merwehaven Oct 1941 2158_005609

As for the remaining Dutch in Shanghai, the Japanese ended the Foreign Concessions there in December 1941, and the Dutch consulate was taken over by Japanese troops.

By that time, the embassy at its Marine detachment had been moved to Chongqing, situated 500 miles further inland, in territory firmly under KMT control. Dutch consulate personnel captured in Beijing were detained at their homes for about eight months before being sent aboard the Italian liner SS Conte Verde to Lorenço Marques, Portuguese Mozambique, for an exchange.

Meanwhile, a later 2,400-ton destroyer of the same name but different pennant number (D 803)– formerly the British N-class destroyer HMS Noble (G84)— would serve twice in nearby waters during the Korean War, earning two ROK Presidential Unit Citations as well as numerous accolades from COMSEVENTHFLT.

But that is another article.

Torpedobootjager Hr.Ms. Van Galen (D 803) in Korean waters, circa 1951-52 NIMH 2158_005596

Sun Shines on the Commissioning of the final Indy LCS

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The brand-spanking-new Independence-variant littoral combat ship USS Pierre (LCS 38) was brought to life in a ceremony held in Panama City over the weekend in shorts and flip-flop weather, “Under the Bright Florida Sky.”

This came while the landlocked namesake city of Pierre, South Dakota, was basking at a high temperature of 45 degrees.

We’ve posted numerous images of Pierre over the past year during her fitting out at Austal in Mobile, where she was the last of 19 Indies built. Fincantieri is still building the last LCS, the 16th Freedom-class variant, USS Cleveland (LCS-31).

The fact that Pierre was commissioned at PC is telling, as the Indies are seemingly tasked as fast minesweepers, and NSWC Panama City is the Navy Research, Development, Test & Evaluation Laboratory dedicated to mine warfare. In fact, it was established in 1945 as the U.S. Navy Mine Countermeasures Station.

Three Indies– the USS Canberra (LCS 30), Santa Barbara (LCS 32), and Tulsa (LCS 16)— are currently forward-deployed to Bahrain with new MCM mission modules, replacing the legacy Avenger-class ships that have served in Task Force 55 for over 30 years

The current Pierre is the second warship to carry the name, after a 173-foot patrol boat, PC-1141, which served from 1943-58. Hopefully, the new one bests the previous namesake’s 15-year record of service.

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