The MHC Sweep Capability demonstrator and her three coil boats seen on 2 May during trials in Portland harbor. Source: MOD
The Royal Navy’s first unmanned minesweeping system, an 11m prototype unmanned surface vessel that has been dubbed RNMB Hussar, has been accepted.
The MHC Sweep demonstrator combines the 10-ton ARCIMS USV with a power generation module, with towed magnetic, acoustic, and electrical influences, including up to three coil auxiliary boats
“This autonomous minesweeper takes us a step closer to taking our crews out of danger and allowing us to safely clear sea lanes of explosives, whether that’s supporting trade in global waters and around the British coastline, or protecting our ships and shores. Easily transported by road, sea, and air, the high-tech design means a small team could put the system to use within hours of it arriving in theatre. We are investing millions in innovative technology now, to support our military of the future.”
In development since 2014, ArcIMS says their craft, in addition to mine hunting/sweeping, can perform maritime surveillance, force protection, diver support and ASW roles as well.
HMNZS Manawanui (A09), a 141-foot diving support/mine countermeasures ship was decommissioned 23 February 2018 after 30 years of service to the Kiwi fleet. Prior to that, she had been built in 1979 for commercial service as Star Perseus by Cochrane Shipbuilders Limited, Selby, for the North Sea oil rig service.
HMNZS Manawanui (A09), (Photo: RNZN)
Needing a canceled $14 million overhaul, the New Zealand Navy has put the nearly 40-year old ship on the block and one publication says she would make the perfect fishing vessel:
“It comes with a triple-lock compression chamber and a wet diving bell if you’re keen to go diving for crays. The 13.6-tonne crane means you’ll be able to pull anything on board – and with a range of 5000 nautical miles, trawling for marlin will be no problem,” says Newshub.
The vessel is up for sale “as a going concern, as-is where-is” alongside Devonport Naval Base, Auckland.
RNZN LCDR Muzz Kenneth told The Stuff there has been some interest:
“We’ve already had a guy from Singapore come and have a look, and he wants to take it up to Malaysia and moor it permanently as an accommodation and dive support vessel for dive training,” said Kenneth. “I also know the Mayor of Thames-Coromandel is very keen to get her hands on the ship and sink it as a dive attraction somewhere out in the Hahei reserve.”
I give you, DARPA’s robot subchaser, Sea Hunter, testbed of the ACTUV program, which is now part of ONR.
From DARPA:
DARPA has successfully completed its Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program and has officially transferred the technology demonstration vessel, christened Sea Hunter, to the Office of Naval Research (ONR). ONR will continue developing the revolutionary prototype vehicle—the first of what could ultimately become an entirely new class of ocean-going vessel able to traverse thousands of kilometers over the open seas for month at a time, without a single crew member aboard—as the Medium Displacement Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MDUSV).
The handover marks the culmination of three years of collaboration between DARPA and ONR that started in September 2014. An April 2016 christening ceremony marked the vessel’s formal transition from a DARPA-led design and construction project to a new stage of open-water testing conducted jointly with ONR. That same month, the vessel moved to San Diego, Calif., for open-water testing.
ONR plans to continue the aggressive schedule of at-sea tests to further develop ACTUV/MDUSV technologies, including automation of payload and sensor data processing, rapid development of new mission-specific autonomous behaviors, and exploring coordination of autonomous activities among multiple USVs. Pending the results of those tests, the MDUSV program could transition to U.S. Navy operations by 2018.
Found this recently and, if you are into Civil War history, 19th-century naval conflict, or mine warfare, it could be of interest to you.
Though slim, it covers George and Gabriel Raines, the Confederacy’s “Bomb Brothers” and inventors of the Raines Patent “Landmines and Torpeado’s.”
George ran the Confederacy’s Torpedo and Mine Bureau while his younger brother Gabriel managed the Confederate Powder Works at Augusta, Georgia, which produced some 3-million pounds of powder during the conflict. Raines patented Keg “Torpeado’s and Subterranean Shells” were used to great effect during the Mobile Campaign 1864-65 (Damn the Torpedoes!) and the book has an appendix that covers each use of mines during the war.
You should get a blast out of it!
Confederate Torpedo #817 recovered from Light House Inlet, Charleston SC
Warship Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2017: You just can’t keep those Cramp cruisers down
NH 48569
Here we see, in her gleaming white-and-buff scheme with ornate bow scrolls, the one-of-a-kind protected cruiser TCG Mecidiye (also seen as Mecidiye or Medjidieh in the West and Medzhidiye in the East) of the Ottoman Navy in the yard of her builder, William Cramp & Sons, at Philadelphia in 1903. On the far left is a US armored cruiser of the California class.
Cramp, perhaps the biggest name in iron shipbuilding on the East Coast for years was big in the biz of constructing cruisers both domestically and for overseas customers. Their first overseas customer for a warship, Russia, bought Yard#200, 203, 204 and 205, the “cruisers” (really just fast commercial liners converted with a few 4- and 6-inch guns) Asia, Africa, Evropa, and Zabiyaka in 1877 for use in that country’s war against the Ottoman Empire. They proved so good that the Russians kept them around for decades.
Imperial Russian cruiser Zabiyaka in Port Arthur, 1900. She was a Cramp cruiser with fine lines.
Just a few years later Cramp produced the first U.S. cruisers– USS Newark (C-1), Baltimore (C-3), and Philadelphia (C-4) — as well as the armored cruiser USS New York (ACR-2), followed by the protected cruisers Columbia (C-12) and Minneapolis (C-13). Japan in 1898 bought the 4,900-ton cruiser Kasagi from the Philadelphia ship maker while Russia purchased the 6,500-ton Varyagin 1900. The business was a boomin!
Then, in a fit of attempting to replace worn-out 19th-century vessels, the Ottoman Navy in 1900 went looking for a pair of modern protected cruisers. From Armstrong in Newcastle, they ordered a 22-knot 3,900-ton British-designed cruiser to be named Abdül Hamid (later changed to Hamidiye) equipped with a pair of 150mm and 8x120mm guns. Then, (you have been waiting for this moment), from Cramp they ordered our vessel, the 3,900-ton Abdül Mecid (later changed to Mecidiye, which means “glory”– By note, the Order of Mecidiye, an Ottoman military decoration for honor and bravery instituted in 1851 by Sultan Abdulmejid and disestablished in 1922, is not related to the ship’s name–) in 1901.
While you would think since both ships are the same size and type and ordered while they were the same design– and you are absolutely wrong.
Mecidiye was its own ship altogether different from her step-sister Hamidiye. Whereas the British ship had two Hawthorn Leslie and Co VTE engines and 6 boilers on three shafts with an Armstrong-made main battery, the American ship had two VQE engines on 16 French-designed Niclausse boilers on two shafts with a Bethlehem main battery and Armstrong secondaries. Further, they had a slightly different topside appearance and endurance with Hamidiye having longer legs and a more reliable engineering plant. In the end, while the two shared the same broad design, Mecidiye was visibly shorter in profile and her trio of stacks was more robust, making it easy to tell the pair apart.
Ottoman cruisers Medjidie (Mecidiye, right) and Hamidie (Hamidiye, left) at Golden Horn in 1905. Note the difference in profiles, esp in Mecidiye’s thicker, stubbier stacks. Photo via Turkish Navy
The Ottoman fleet itself, according to the 1897 Naval Plan, would modernize several older armored warships, buy two new battleships, two new armored cruisers, two new light cruisers, and two new protected cruisers. However, only the two lowly protected cruisers managed to be funded.
Completed 19 December 1903, Mecidiye sailed off to join the Ottoman fleet as one of her proudest new vessels, literally making up half of the protected cruisers in service.
Behind the old (c.1876) 9,000-ton coastal defense battleship Mesudiye and the two 10,000-ton former German pre-dreadnoughts Hayreddin Barbarossa (ex-Kurfurst Friedrich Wilhelm) and Turgut Reis (ex-Weissenburg), the two new Anglo-American cruisers were the best things in the Turkish fleet until German Admiral Wilhelm Souchon showed up in 1914.
Mecidiye and her step-sister were something of showboats before the Great War.
French postcard showing off the Ottoman fleet with the old German battleships center and the U.S. and British made protected cruisers to the far left and right respectively. Even in the postcard, you can see that Hamidie’s funnels are taller
French colored postcard The Cruiser Medjidie, c.1905 (Mecidiye Kruvazörü)
Medjidie French postcard
Ottoman Cruiser, Medjidie, Istanbul, 1903. Note her bow scrolls
During the First Balkan War in 1912, when the Greek Navy decided to try and muscle up against the Turks, Mecidiye had the distinction of being the first modern warship attacked by a locomotive torpedo while at sea when the primitive French-built Greek submarine Delfin (460-tons) fired a 450mm torpedo at the Turk’s Cramp cruiser just off the Dardanelles from a range of 800 meters on the morning of 9 December 1912. The torpedo reportedly broached and sailed past the cruiser without doing any damage.
She also took part in the naval skirmish at Elli the next week in the Aegean Sea and in the attempt to break the Greek blockade at Lemnos in 1913. In both instances, when pitted against the Hellenic fleet which included the bruising 10,000-ton Italian-made Pisa-class armored cruiser Georgios Averof, Mecidiye managed to come away unscathed. Hamidiye was not so lucky in the campaign and was damaged by a surface torpedo from Bulgarian torpedo boat Druzki off Varna.
Then came the Great War.
Although the Turks were forced into the war after Churchill seized their brand-new battleships fitting out in the UK and Souchon showed up to sleepwalk them into attacking the Russians in October 1914, the Ottomans rose to the fight with the old foe, and both Hamidiye and Mecidiye, in conjunction with Souchon, sortied out that year and plastered the Russian ports of Feodosia, Yalta, Tuapse, and Batumi, only narrowly dodging the Tsar’s Black Sea Fleet on several occasions.
Then, in April 1915, Hamidiye and Mecidiye set out with orders to conduct a pre-dawn Saturday morning raid on the well-protected Russian naval hub at Odessa. The port proved so well protected that Mecidiye hit an M08 mine and immediately sank in 35 feet of water. Hamidiye grabbed the survivors, left 30 dead behind for the Russians to bury ashore and beat feet after sending a torpedo into the cruiser’s hull to make sure she remained the property of Davy Jones.
With the potential for a great trophy, the Russians immediately went to work on a salvage job. After all, it’s not every day that a scratch and dent American-made cruiser gets dropped off in your front yard.
Introduce the divemaster
Lt. Feoktist Andreevich Shpakovich, a noted diver, and rescue specialist in the Black Sea Fleet. Born in 1879, Shpakovich joined the Navy after he was forced to drop out of engineering school due to family issues and by 1906 was a warrant officer in the diving detachment in Sevastopol. Fast forward a few years and he received his commission after completing courses in St. Petersburg and by 1909 was head of the operation to examine the lost Russian submarine Kambala, sunk in collision with the battleship Rostislav.
Just a week after the Mecidiye sank, Shpakovich and his team were assembled and diving on the wreck.
Divers on the Medjidie In the cap – diving officer FA. Shpakovich
Drawing of damages of the cruiser Medzhidiye by diver officer Shpakovitch
They found two 30-foot holes but little other damage and soon went about patching and pumping– a process that took two months before her keel was afloat again (though drawing 25-feet of water) and Russian navy tugs pulled her into the dock on 25 May, to the salutes of shore batteries and ships alike as the full assembled bands of the fleet played. Soon a cofferdam and dry dock were arranged, and she was to be refitted– with the assistance of builder’s plans provided by Cramp, for a fee, of course.
Her mixed American armament was ditched for a set of 10 good Pulitov 130mm L/55 guns, four high-angle 76mm Canets, and a few machine guns, her boilers cobbled back together at the Ropit Yard with spec-made tubes, and she was commissioned in October 1915 as Prut (Прут), named after the C.1878 Russian minelayer scuttled after a surface action to Goeben one year previously.
Prut Medzhidiye in Russian service
Prut Medzhidiye in Russian service
“Turkish Cruiser Mecidiye – sunk in the Black Sea, has been raised by the Russians and refitted.” Via Pathe
Notably, though she did make at least one cruise to Turkish waters to bombard the Anatolian coast, she was in poor condition, only capable of 18-knots and that for brief periods, and the Russians largely left her in the harbor for the rest of the war. The Tsar ordered a set of new boilers from the U.S. for her in 1916 and, according to some sources, they made it as far as Murmansk but were never installed.
Russian War Ships at Batum on The Black Sea in 1916. Caption: Three vessels together from left: –gunboat KUBANEZ (1887-ca. 1930 later KRASMY KUBANEZ); battleship Rostislav (1896-1922); and in right background: –cruiser PRUT (ex-Turkish MEDJIDIEH, 1903, sunk 1915 and salvaged). Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1893 Catalog #: NH 94411
Russian War Ships at Novorossiysk on The Black Sea in 1916. Caption: Three ships together in 1916, from left: seaplane carrier IMPERATOR NIKOLAI I (1913-1942); Seaplane carrier IMPERATOR ALEKSANDRI (1913-1942); protected cruiser PRUT (1903, ex -TURKISH MEDJIDIEH, salvaged 1915-1916 after mining. Description: Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1893 Catalog #: NH 94409
Then, with the Bolsheviks knocking the country out of the conflict, the Germans marched into Sevastopol in May 1918 and promptly ordered the Russians to amscray from their trophy ship, which was then towed back across the Black Sea to her original owners.
The war soon ended and the Ottoman fleet’s operations were substantially limited as the Allies kept the few working warships inactive in the Golden Horn under the watchful eyes of occupying forces, though they were later restored to the navy of the new Republic of Turkey.
Sinope, Turkey as seen from cruiser USS OLYMPIA in 1919-1920. A Turkish Cruiser in full dress is on the right, possibly Mecidiye. Description: Catalog #: NH 63466
Too worn out to participate in the conflict with Greece (1919-22), Mecidiye was patched up for use as a training hulk with a diminished armament, though a 1927 refit at Gölcük Naval Shipyard through the use of a new floating drydock and included a new set of American-made Babcock & Wilcox boilers returned her to a modicum of regular use.
Hamidiye (L), Mecidiye (R) at Zonguldak in 1930. Again, note the differences in stacks. Also, note the diminished armament
Turkish cruiser Mecidiye in Istanbul, 1932.
However, by WWII, she was static again and used as a cadet training ship along with Hamidiye, obsolete and totally without any AAA defenses. The modern Turkish Republic avoided picking sides in the latter world war until they jumped on the Allied bandwagon about six weeks before Hitler took his own life. Of the 4,800~ men of the Turkish Navy, none fell in WWII.
The Turkish cruiser Mecidiye as cadet training ship 1940s Note she only has 4 guns fitted U.S. Navy All Hands magazine April 1948,
Both ships were stricken in 1947 as the fleet, now a UN and soon to be a NATO member, received surplus U.S. ships in quantity, with Mecidiye dismantled in 1956 and her half-sister following in 1964. Neither ship’s name is on the current naval list of the Turkish Navy.
The ship in some ways is also very well remembered in Russia and Ukraine.
Shpakovich, the salvor of “Prut” later searched for the lost British storeship HMS Prince off Balaklava, hid most of his unit’s gear underwater when the Germans came into the Crimea in 1918 then used some of it later to establish the Red Navy’s EPRON– Special-Purpose Underwater Rescue Party– a group of underwater submarine rescue and salvage unit while crafting the manuals for the service’s dive training school.
EPRON divers in the Crimea, 1923. Shpakovich is front and center
He went on and raise the scuttled Bars-class submarines Gagara, Ledbed, and Pelikan in 1924 and continued such operations throughout the 1930s, as his team salvaged several of the Russian wrecks in the Baltic and the Black Sea left over from the Great War and Civil War before retiring as a Captain, 1st Rank and wore several Orders of Lenin, Red Banner, and Labor. He survived all the purges–rare for a former Tsarist officer– and died in 1964 at age 85. He is remembered as the founding grandfather of the Russian Navy’s deep-water hardhat divers, with over 10,000 hours in his logbook spent underwater.
The Russian Navy Museum has Mecidiye’s old Ottoman ensign preserved and in their collection.
Combrig, the largest producer of models of Russian warships in the world, has made a model of her as both Mecidiye and Prut.
As for Cramp, they continued making cruisers, as well as other ships of course, with the last one they worked on being Yard#536, the USS Galveston (CL-93/CLG-3), which was the last Cramp ship completed in 1958, long after the yard suspended operations. She remained in service until 1970, one of the last big-gun cruisers in any fleet. The end of an era, indeed.
Specs:
TCG Mecidiye 1903 (Protected Cruiser), Aka Russian cruiser Prut, via Combrig, click to big up
Displacement:
3,485 t (normal draught)
3,967 t (full load)
Length:
336 ft. (LOA)
330 ft.) (LPP)
Beam: 42 ft.
Draught: 16 ft.
Speed:22 knots (full speed in trials)
18 knots Russian service
Complement:
302 (1903)
355 (1915)
268 (1916, Russian)
310 (1936)
Armament (Turkish 1901-1915)
2 × 152 mm Bethlehem QF L/45 guns, singles forward
8 × 120 mm Armstrong QF L/45 guns, singles casemate
6 × 47 mm Vickers QF guns
6 × 37mm Vickers QF guns
2 × 457 mm torpedo tubes
Armament (Russian 1916-18)
10 × 130/55 cal guns (later reduced to 8)
4 × 75/30 Schneider high-angle guns
4x 7.62mm MG
Armament (Turkish, 1927-47)
4 × 130/55 cal guns
4 × 7/30 Schneider high-angle guns
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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017: The bruised-up U-boat bruiser of the Outer Banks
Photo NOAA
Here we see the brand-new steel-hulled fishing boat Cohasset in Feb. 1942, just before she assumed her military guise as U.S. Navy Patrol Vessel, District (YP) #389, an anti-submarine trawler, and sailed off into a fateful, if one-sided battle.
Laid down at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts for R. O’Brien and Company of Boston as hull #1512 along with three sister ships on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II, the 110-foot trawler was meant to ply the fishing grounds off Gloucester and the Georges Bank.
R. O’Brien was reportedly a top-notch operation, and one of the first in the country to equip their whole fleet with R/T sets in the 1930s, and they landed in excess of 20 million pounds annual catch at the canneries in the area.
When war seemed unavoidable, the four new boats were quickly evaluated to be useful to the Navy and on 6 December 1940 the sister trawlers Salem, Lynn, Weymouth and Cohasset were signed over to the federal government in lieu of taxes by O’Brien and delivered under their ordered names as they were completed throughout October and November 1941. Cohasset was taken into custody by the Navy in February 1942 as a coastal minesweeper, USS AMc-202. This was changed to YP-389 on 1 May and she was refitted into a patrol craft at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Armed with a single 3″/23cal deck gun taken from naval stores, two Great War-era. 30 cal. Lewis machine guns, six depth charges on a gravity rack and assorted small arms, she was placed under command of one LT. R.J. Philips, USNR who sailed her with a crew that consisted of two ensigns and 21 enlisted (none higher than a PO1) with a mission to keep the U-boats terrorizing the Eastern Seaboard at bay– though she did not have sonar, ASDIC or a listening device of any kind.
(List of USS YP-389 crew and their disposition after the events of 19 June, 1942. Courtesy the National Archives)
In June 1942, USS YP-389 headed south to North Carolina with the primary duty to patrol the Hatteras minefield on her economic 6-cylinder diesels– just 9 knots when wide open.
There, in the predawn hours of 19 June, she came across Kptlt. Horst Degen’s Type VIIIC submarine, U-701, of 3. Unterseebootsflottille operating out of the pens at La Pallice, France.
The battle should have been over before it started, as the patrol boat’s 3-inch popgun was out of operation with a broken firing pin and Degen’s 88mm and 20mm guns far out-ranged the 389‘s Lewis guns. Still, the surface action took place over a 90-minute period and saw the small patrol craft resort to dropping their depth charges set as shallow as possible in the U-boat’s path in an unsuccessful effort to crack its hull.
In the end, the trawler-turned-fighter was holed several times and sank in 320-feet of water, carrying five of her crew with her to Davy Jones’ Locker some five miles off Diamond Shoals. The crew of YP-389 had fired more than 24 drums from her Lewis gun as the gunners took cover behind trawling winches, answered by 50 shells of 88mm. In all, she had been in the Navy for just five months, most of that undergoing conversion.
The 18 survivors and one body floated overnight, with no life rafts or lifebelts, until they were rescued by Coast Guard picket boats (CG-462 and CG-486) the next morning. Four required treatment at Norfolk Naval Hospital.
In 1948, a Naval Board found that her sinking was in large part avoidable, as she was ill-fitted and suited for the detail assigned to her and, in effect, never should have been there.
Here is how Degen described the action to Navy interrogators a few weeks later:
On the night of June 17, U-701 surfaced off Cape Hatteras close to a U-boat chaser which challenged her with a series of B’s from a signal lamp. Thinking he was going to be rammed, Degen put about and drew away, without answering the challenge. The following day he saw what he thought was the same cutter escorting a tanker and a freighter in line ahead. Degen believed the cutter had made contact with him in passing, for as soon as the convoyed ships were out of range, the cutter returned and dropped depth charges near U-701. Degen said that on this occasion he did not hear the “ping” of Asdic.
The next night, June 19, U-701 surfaced off Cape Hatteras and again sighted what Degen took to be the same cutter. He opened fire with his 8.8 cm gun to which the cutter replied with machine-gun fire. U-701 expended a large number of shells. Apparently, the gun crew, groping over-anxiously in the dark, seized every available shell in the ready-use lockers without discrimination. Thus, fire was an unorthodox mixture of SAP, HE and incendiary shell, but it sank the cutter. Prisoners considered this a wasteful and “untidy” piece of work, and the captain gave the impression that he was ashamed of it.
Degen said he approached to look for survivors with the intention of putting them ashore, but he found none. He said he thought the crew made off in a boat. Prisoners gave the position of the attack as near the Diamond Shoals Lightship Buoy.
The 389 was not the only YP lost during the war and no less than 36 were destroyed while at least 17 earned battle stars (one, USS YP-42, the ex-Coast Guard cutter Gallatin, picked up three battle stars on her own). Though many of those lost foundered in heavy weather, sank after collisions, or were written off due to grounding, a number matched our YP’s combat service:
YP-16 (ex-CG-267) lost in Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands YP-17 (ex-CG-275) lost in Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands YP-26 destroyed by undetermined explosion in the Canal Zone, Panama, 19 November 1942. YP-97 lost due to Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands YP-235 destroyed by undetermined explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, 1 April 1943. YP-277 scuttled to avoid capture east of Hawaii, 23 May 1942. YP-284 (ex-San Diego tuna clipper Endeavor) sunk by surface ships off Guadalcanal, 25 Oct 1942. YP-345 sunk southeast of Midway Island, 31 October 1942. YP-346 sunk by surface ships in the South Pacific, 9 September 1942. YP-405 destroyed by undetermined explosion in the Caribbean Sea, 20 November 1942. YP-492 sunk off east Florida, 8 January 1943.
Cover art for David Bruhn’s book provisionally titled, “Yachts and Yippies: the U.S. Navy’s Patrol Yachts and Patrol Vessels.” The painting by Richard DeRosset, titled “Night Action off Tulagi”, depicts the destruction of USS YP-346 by the Japanese light cruiser HIJMS Sendai and three destroyers off Guadalcanal on 8 September 1942. Three Navy Crosses were awarded for this action. Via Navsource
As for U-701?
Commissioned 16 Jul 1941, her career lasted but 12 months and, after claiming YP-389 and 25,390 GRT of merchant ships, was herself sunk on 7 July 1942 off Cape Hatteras by depth charges from an A-29 Hudson patrol bomber of the 396th Bomb Sqn, taking 39 dead to the bottom in 100 feet of water. Degen and six survivors suffered at sea for two days and were taken into custody and interrogated by Naval Intelligence extensively.
U-701 (German Submarine) Survivors are rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, after their boat was sunk off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on 7 July 1942. She was lost just three weeks after she claimed YP-389, ironically just a few miles Diamond Shoals, where her victim rested. NH 96587
Horst Degen, Kapitänleutnant. C. O. U-701 as POW. U.S. Navy Photo
Known to researchers looking for the lost USS Monitor since the 1970s, in 2009, NOAA announced they had verified the wreck of YP-389, and documented the patrol boat and her combat as part of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Photomosaic of USS YP-389 wreck site. Photo: NOAA, Monitor National Marine Sanctuary
U-701 rests near her and is a popular dive attraction in the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Both ships are protected.
Sonar visualization of the U-701 wreck site. Image ADUS, NOAA
Multibeam survey of U-701 wreck site taken by NOAA Ship Nancy Foster, 2016. Image NOAA
Diver taking images of U-701’s conning tower. Photo NOAA
Specs:
Displacement: 170 long tons (170 t)
Length: 110 ft. oal, 102.5 wl
Beam: 22.1 ft.
Propulsion: 4 6cyl diesel engines, 1 × screw
Speed: 9 kts, max.
Crew: 3 officers, 21 enlisted (1942)
Armament:
1 × 3 in (76 mm)/23 cal dual purpose gun (broken)
2 × .30 cal (7.62 mm) Lewis light machine guns
6 depth charges
small arms
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.
Meet KraitArray, a miniaturized towed array for use on drones and opvs from the UK.
It is aimed at smaller platforms such as patrol craft and OPVs that are unable to accommodate a full-sized towed array sonar.
That tail is a towed sonar array small enough to fit in a backpack
Steve Hill, Managing Director clarified:
“It is often physically and operationally impractical for smaller ships to carry a larger diameter towed line array system. KraitArray’s smaller diameter provides effective ASW capability and can be operated from a conventional ship or unmanned assets. By integrating the sonar capability with SEA’s decoy and torpedo launchers, using common configurable software, ships can be fitted with a complete ASW solution”
The name “Pelican” in honor of the large and rather dopey seabird, has always been carried by a mine warfare vessel in the U.S. Navy.
USS PELICAN (AM-27) Caption: With PN-9 #1 on her fantail, after the unsuccessful San Francisco to Hawaii flight in early September 1925. The ship is going to Pearl Harbor Hawaii. Description: Catalog #: NH 44902
The first, AM-27/AVP-6, was a Lapwing-class minesweeper laid down 10 November 1917 at Gas Engine and Power Co., Morris Heights, New York. Commissioned a month prior to Armistice Day, she helped with the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage and was almost blown sky high when a chain of six British mines exploded all around her on 9 July 1919. Heroically saved by her crew and responding ships, the beaten Pelican limped to Scapa and was repaired. Later converted to a seaplane tender, she served in both the Atlantic and Pacific in WWII (including work as a “Tuna boat” Q-ship) before being sold for scrap in November 1946 after 29 years service.
USS Pelican via Navsource
The second Pelican, (MSC(O)-32/AMS-32/YMS-441) was a YMS-1-class minesweeper built at Robert Jacob Inc. City Island, New York. Commisoned with a hull number only in 1945, she assumed Pelican‘s vacant moniker 18 February 1947. She supported the Eniwetok atomic bomb tests and then saw extensive service in the Korean War, including helping to clear the heavily mined port of Chinnampo. Taken out of service in 1955, she was loaned to Japan as the JDS Ogishima (MSC-659) for 13 years before striking in 1968.
The third Pelican, MHC-53, is an Osprey-class coastal minehunter built at the now-defunct Avondale Shipyard, Gulfport, Mississippi, launched 24 October 1992 and commisoned 18 November 1995. Based on the 164-foot Italian Lerici-class minehunters designed by Intermarine SpA in the early 1980s, and built in variants for Algeria, Finland, Malaysia, Nigeria, Australian and Thailand, the Osprey‘s were a good bit larger, at 188-feet overall but could float in just seven feet of water, enabling them to perform littoral sweeping and clear mines from inland waterways.
Below is a slice of her hull sandwich that I have, a two-inch-thick piece of green soap-colored carbon fiber-reinforced polymer resin that has the consistancy of a brick– and is non-magnetic.
The Osprey-class were the largest vessels built at the time, save for the eight-foot longer HMS Hunt-class minehunters, to have fiberglass hulls. This may have been surpassed since then by a mega yacht or two, but I doubt it as most of those are steel hulled.
While most countries still use their Lerci-class vessels (31 are afloat worldwide and Taiwan is building six more by 2023) the 12 Ospreys, after spending their time in the Reserves, were decommissoned 2006-2007 while still relatively young. Eight low-mileage Ospreys had either been transferred to or marked for transfer to other navies: two each to the Hellenic (Greek) Navy, Lithuanian Navy, Egyptian Navy, and Republic of China (Taiwan) Navy, anf four scrapped (!)
Pelican, struck from the Naval Register 16 March 2007, was commisoned by the Greeks as HS Evniki (M61) the same day, and she continues in active service.
Evinki, in the Corinth Canal that connects the Gulf of Corinth with the Saronic Gulf in the Aegean Sea. The rock walls, which rise 300 ft. above sea level, are at a near-vertical 80° angle.
Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock is using what they term a Mine Warfare Rapid Assessment Capability (mRAC) demonstrator which “is a man-portable threat detection and localization system that utilizes an ultra-sensitive magnetometer sensor package to afford operators the ability to conduct an exploratory wide area search more efficiently.”
Or, put in a more basic description: a quadcopter with a magnetometer array linked to an iPad, which is pretty cool. They bill it as working the 0-40 foot surf/littoral area.
Above video shows it in use at the Ship-to-Shore Maneuver Exploration and Experimentation (S2ME2) Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) 2017 at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California.
Laid down, 10 April 1957, at Stephens Bros, Inc., Stockton, CA, YP-655 was a YP- 654-class Training Craft used at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, and apparently the Surface Warfare Officer’s School Command (SWOS) activity on the West Coast until 1994 to “provide the midshipmen professional training course with practical training afloat on a robust platform to conduct professional development in a safe shipboard environment equipped with systems essential to modern seamanship and navigation. Such training is designed to develop within midshipmen the abilities of an officer-of-the-deck, a proficiency in navigation, and a working knowledge of afloat operations.”
A number of the same class were used (briefly) in the Navy’s Craft of Opportunity Program which turned YPs and commercial fishing boats into experimental small coastal mine hunters.
The 81-foot wooden hull uses four 6V-71N Detroit Diesel engines, and, as noted by Navsource, was purchased from DRMS by one Anthony Dibnah and converted to the motor yacht St. Elias, then sold to a Jim Hornung in October 2006, and at first maintained at Alameda, CA then Galveston, TX., under her naval livery, once more as YP-655.
