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Warship Wednesday, July 16, 2025: Flat Iron Warrior

Posted on July 16, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

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

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

Warship Wednesday, July 16, 2025: Flat Iron Warrior

Above we see the Norwegian Gor-class gunboat-turned-minelayer KNM Tyr, all 102 feet long with a 4.7″/40 EOC gun forward and mines stowed aft. Downright ancient when the Germans came in 1940, she nonetheless proved a serious thorn in their side.

Norwegian Rendels

Starting in the 1870s, the Norwegians embarked on a program of modern warship construction, including steam engines and iron/steel hulls. Constructed locally at Carl JohansVærns Værft, Horten, they ordered eight 2nd class gunboats (Kanonbåt 2. kl) running between 250 and 420 tons, three first class gunboats of between 720 and 1,280 tons, a 1,045-ton steam corvette, an armed 350-ton minelaying “crane vessel” (Kranfartøy), and 14 assorted (45 ton-to-107 ton) 2nd class torpedo boats by 1902. Meanwhile, four 4,000-ton coastal battleships (Panserskibe) with 8.2-inch guns and up to 8 inches of armor would be ordered from Armstrong in the 1890s.

The eight 2nd class gunboats were all of the “flat iron” or Rendel type, a common format introduced by Armstrong in 1867 and built under contract for or copied by over a dozen fleets around the globe, including Norway’s neighbors Denmark and Sweden. Short and stubby, typically about 100 feet long with a 30-foot beam, they were flat-bottomed and drew a fathom or less, even under a full load. This hull form and their anemic compound steam engines only allowed for a speed in the 8-10 knot region, leaving these as defensive vessels ideal for guarding strongpoints and key harbors.

Armament was typically a single large (8-to-15-inch!) gun that could be lowered and elevated inside a shielded battery but not traversed, with the gunboat coming about to aim the horizonal.

The Norwegian Rendels included KNM Vale and Uller (1874, 1876, 250t); Nor, Brage, and Vidar (1897-1882, 270t); Gor and Tyr (1884, 1887, 289-294t); and Æger (1893, 420t). The first five carried a single Armstrong 26.67 cm (10.5-inch) RML forward and two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns amidships.

Kanonbåt 2 kl Brage’s crew with her Armstrong 26,7cm RML.

Æger toted a more modern 8.3-inch Armstrong breechloader and three small (one 10-pdr and two 4-pdrs).

Æger. This 109-foot 420-tonner was the pinnacle of Rendel development. A one-off design, she was decommissioned in 1932 and her name recycled for a new Sleipner-class destroyer. NSM.000460

Gor and Tyr each carried a single breechloading Krupp 26 cm (10.2 inch) L/30 gun (606-pound shell, 192-pound charge, m/v 1805 ft/secs), the same model gun used on the 3,700-ton Japanese Armstrong-built protected cruisers Naniwa and Takachiho, backed up, like most of the other Norwegian Rendels, by two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns.

Kanonbåt 2. kl. Gor (b. 1884, Karljohansvern Verft, Horten), note the large Krupp gun forward. NSM.000459

Japanese officers of the protected cruiser Naniwa posing near one of her 26 cm (10.2″) Krupp guns, 1885

Meet Tyr

Constructed as Yard No. 67 at Horten, Tyr was named for the one-handed Norse god of war who sacrificed his other hand to trap the wolf Fenrir. Laid down in 1884, she launched on 16 March 1887 and, fitting out rapidly, joined the Norwegian fleet shortly after.

Norwegian gunboat KNM Tyr from 1887

After 1900, with the looming formal separation from Sweden on the horizon and the prospect of a possible fight on their hands, the Norwegians upped their torpedo boat numbers rapidly to nearly 30 boats as their four new bathtub battleships arrived on hand from Britain. With that, the Rendels transitioned to more static support roles around this time, such as minefield tenders at strategic coastal fortifications and depot ships.

Around this time, most landed their obsolete main gun in exchange for something more contemporary, with most picking up a trainable QF 4.7″/40 Elswick 20-pounder behind a shield. This allowed the removal of their armored bow bulwark. Gor and Tyr also picked up a high-angle 76mm mount, while some of the older boats received a 47mm mount.

Gor as minelegger with mines aft.

After Norway got into the submarine business in 1909 with the small (128-foot, kerosine-engined) German-built KNM Kobben, Tyr became her tender until 1914.

K/B 2 kl Tyr as tender with Norwegian submarine Kobben alongside. MMU.944062

Tyr plan 1913, slick-decked as tender.

With the mine warfare lessons reverberating around the globe after the Russo-Japanese War, it became obvious how easy these broad-beamed shallow-draft craft could be converted to minelayers. This typically meant installing twin port and starboard rail tracks on deck running about 65 feet to the stern for easy planting either via boom over rail drop. On the Gor and Tyr, this allowed for as many as 55 mines stowed on deck.

Tyr as mine planter with her 4″/40 forward and two 37mm 1-pounders on her amidships bridge deck. Model in the Horten Marinemuseet.

Same model, note the mine arrangement. The model omits her 6-pounder 76mm gun.

mines on converted Norwegian 2c gunboat, pre-1940

Same as above

1929 Jane’s abbreviated listing of seven of the old Rendel gunboats, including Tyr. Note that Gor is still listed with her old 10-inch Armstrong. The larger Aegir was listed separately and was disposed of in 1932.

War!

September 1939 brought an uneasy time to Scandinavia. The remaining seven Norwegian Rendals, all by this time working as minelayers, bided their time and clocked in on the country’s Nøytralitetsvakt (Neutrality Watch).

Tyr was placed under the command of Orlogskaptein (LCDR) Johan Friederich Andreas Thaulow “Fritz” Ulstrup and stationed at the outer ring Lerøy Fortress overlooking the narrow Lerøyosen south of Bergen. Ulstrup, 43, was a career naval officer who was minted in the Great War and, having studied in France from 1922 to 1924, was serving as an instructor at the Naval Academy in Bergen when the war started.

Ulstrup, who doubled as fortress commander at Lerøy, also had a flotilla of five small armed auxiliary guard boats– Haus (135grt), Lindaas (138grt), Alversund (178grt), Manger (153grt), and Oygar (128grt)– and an old (circa 1898) torpedo boat, Storm, under his control. However, the fort itself, slated in 1939 to receive a 120mm gun battery with four old L/40 French-built Schneider weapons from the decommissioned border forts of Vardasen and Gullbekkasen pointing toward Sweden, instead only had a couple of 65mm Cockerill guns and searchlights.

On the early morning of 9 April 1940, just after midnight, two cruisers appeared off Bergen and flashed that they were the RN’s HMS Cairo and Calcutta, when in fact they were the German Kriegmarine’s light cruiser sisters Koln and Konigsberg, each with nine 15 cm SK C/25 (5.9-inch) guns, as the Gruppe 3 invasion force under RADM Hubert Schmundt. The cruisers were followed by 600 troops of the Wehrmacht’s 69th Infantry Division on the 1,800-ton gunnery training ship (Artillerieschulschiff) Bremse with four 12.8 cm SK C/34s, the torpedo boats Wolf and Leopard, and the E-boat tender Carl Peters shepherding S19, S21, S22, S23, S24, and naval trawlers Schiff 9 and Schiff 18.

Tyr, loaded with live and armed mines picked up at Laksevåg, was at the ocean-front fishing village of Klokkarvik, directly in the path of the Germans.

Klokkarvik harbor during the neutrality watch in 1939/40. In the picture, you can see a mine-armed KNM Tyr at anchor with a Draug-class destroyer at the quay. Note the Royal Norwegian Navy’s Hover M.F.11 floatplane in the foreground. (Source: Naval Museum Horten)

When the Germans began to creep into the fjord and with word of other sets of foreign warships in the Oslofjord, Ulstrup, who had been arguing with Bergan’s overall commander, RADM Carsten Tank-Nielsen all day on the 8th to be able to sow his mines, finally obtained clearance at 0030 for Tyr to hurriedly drop eight mines between Sotra and Lerøy, closing Lerøyosen. However, the 10-14-hour time-delay safety features on the magnetic contacts of the mines meant they were still dormant when the German cruisers passed harmlessly over them. Storm, meanwhile, fired a torpedo at Carl Peters at 0220 but missed.

Ulstrup closed to shore so he could place a quick phone call to Tank-Nielsen to apprise him of the situation, then returned to his minelayer to beat feet toward Bjørnefjord, playing a cat and mouse game with German E-boats and reportedly landing a hit from her 4.7-inch gun on one, receiving several 20mm hits from the Schnellbooten in exchange.

Further up the fjord, batteries at the now-alerted Norwegian inner ring Forts Kvarven (3 x 210mm St. Chamond M.98s) and Sandviken (3 x 240mm St. Chamond L/13s) opened up on the passing Germans at 0358 and soon landed hits on both Konigsberg and Bremse in the darkness of pre-dawn, leaving the former adrift with flooded boiler rooms. While Tyr, Ulstrup, and company managed to withdraw further into the fjords– laying another 16 mines in the Vatlestraumen approaches north of Bergen– Bergen itself fell to the German seaborne force just hours later.

However, the crippled Konigsberg would be hammered by a strike of RNAS Sea Skuas out of Orkney once the sun came up and caught five 500-pound bombs, sinking her in the harbor on 10 April.

Meanwhile, Tyr’s mines near Vatlestraumen sank the packed German HSDG freighter Sao Paulo (4977grt) on the evening of the 9th, sending her to the bottom in 260 feet of water.

The 361-foot Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampschiffahrts-Gesellschaft steamer Sao Paulo was lost to one of Tyr’s mines.

In trying to sweep the mines, the German naval auxiliary Schiff 9 (trawler Koblenz, 437grt), and the auxiliary patrol boat Vp.105 (trawler Cremon, 268grt), along with two launches from Carl Peters, were lost on the 11th. Some sources also credit the German steamer Johann Wessels (4601grt), damaged on 5 May, and the German-controlled Danish steamer Gerda (1151grt), sunk on 8 May, as falling to Tyr’s eggs.

Withdrawing down the 114-mile-long Hardangerfjord, Ulstrup was appointed the commander of this new sector on 17 April and, moving ashore to Uskedal, left Tyr to her XO, the 47-year-old Fenrik (ensign) Karl Sandnes. Ulstrup, stripping the 37mm guns from Tyr and two 65mm guns from auxiliary gunboats, mounted them on flatbed trucks as improvised mobile artillery.

A 1937 Chevy flatbed with a 65mm L35 Hotchkiss under Ulstrup’s dirt sailors, April 1940

The next two days saw a series of skirmishes around Uskedal, in which Tyr closed to shore to use her 4.7-inch gun against German positions in improvised NGFS, coming close enough to get riddled by German 8mm rifle fire in return.

A naval clash on the 20th involving the advancing Germans in the Hardangerfjord saw Tyr, under the command of Sandnes, shell the German auxiliary Schiff 18, which beached at Uskedal to avoid sinking. The same battle saw the Norwegian Trygg-class torpedo boat Stegg sunk by Schiff 221 while the Norwegian armed auxiliary Smart was sunk by Bremse. The German minesweeper M.1 went on to capture five Norwegian-flagged steamers that were hiding in the fjord.

With Ulstrup and his force ashore getting ready to displace inland under fire, and Tyr trapped in the fjord, Sandnes brought his command to the shallows and, attempting to camouflage her, hid the breechblock for her 4.7 and evacuated the old minelayer. By forced march, they made it to Matre, some 14 miles on the other side of the mountain, and soon rejoined Allied lines.

Meanwhile, Tyr was soon discovered by the Germans, who towed her back to Bergen and, along with her fellow Rendel gunboat-turned-minelayer cousin, Uller, were soon pressed into service with the Kriegsmarine.

On 30 April, Tyr and Uller left occupied Bergen with German crews on a mission to mine the entrance to Sognefjord, barring it to British ships. This service would be short-lived as a Royal Norwegian Navy Heinkel He 115 seaplane spotted the pair, now under new management, and bombed Uller seriously enough to have her crew beach on a reef and evacuate on Tyr. Uller later lifted off the reef and sank near Gulen, becoming a popular dive spot.

As for Tyr, she saw no further direct combat, although the Germans likely continued to use her in some form of coastal service for the rest of the war.

Post-war

Tyr was still afloat in 1945 when the Germans were run out, and was subsequently sold on the commercial market. Her old hull still in good shape, she was converted to an economical diesel plant and sailed for a time as a heavy lift steamship.

By 1951, she had been converted to the car ferry Bjorn West, a task she fulfilled for three decades. Further converted for service in a salmon farming operation.

Found in poor condition ten years ago, she recently passed to a consortium of Vestfold county municipality, the KNM Narvik Foundation in Horten, and the Bredalsholmen Shipyard and Preservation Centre, who, with Tyr safely in drydock in Kristiansand, plan on restoring her to her 1940 condition. At this point, she is believed to be the last Rendel-type gunboat.

They plan to make her sailable, which isn’t that far-fetched.

Epilogue

The Norwegian Navy has recycled our gunboat/minelayer’s name at least twice.

The first was an Auk-class minesweeper, ex-USS Sustain (AM-119), which was transferred in 1959 and served as KNM Tyr (N47). Three Auk-class sisters transferred with her (ex-USS Strive, Triumph, and Seer) were named Gor, Brage, and Uller, in a nod to the old Rendel boats that saw WWII service.

Ex-USS Sustain (AM-119) as KNM Tyr (N47). Commissioned 9 November 1942, she earned eight battle stars for her World War II service from North Africa to France to Okinawa, helping to sink at least one U-boat in the process. She served the Norwegians from 1959 to 1984.

The third KNM Tyr in Norwegian service, N50, was bought commercially in 1995 and spent two decades mapping and filming dozens of historic wrecks in the country’s waters with her ROVs, including Scharnhorst and HMS Hunter (H35).

The intrepid LCDR Ulstrup continued to resist the Germans after leaving Tyr in April 1940. He crafted a makeshift shoreside torpedo battery, the only torpedo available being salvaged from the wreck of an old torpedo boat, and managed to caravan mines from a storage facility in Sogn to Ulvik to surprise the occupation forces. Once the Allies pulled out in mid-June, he was left to his own devices with a resistance group that became known, logically, as the Ulstrup Organisasjon.

With the heat getting too close for comfort, Ulstrup and a dozen other patriots crowded on the sailing trawler MK Måken (M 366 B) on 19 September 1940 and set out from Alesund for the Shetlands, arriving at Baltasound 11 days later. Welcomed as a hero in London, he was soon in command of the old four-piper HMS Mansfield (G76) (former USS Evans, DD-78), which in April 1941 carried commandos for a raid on Oksfjord, Norway, where the herring oil factory was destroyed.

“HNMS Mansfield, Norwegian Town-class destroyer. She is an ex-U.S. destroyer (USS Evans) and is manned entirely by the Norwegian Navy.” Circa 1941. Note her Norwegian flag. Photo by Harold William John Tomlin, IWM A2725

Once Mansfield was passed on to the Canadians in March 1942 after the Norwegians rode shotgun on 17 Atlantic, Ulstrup, promoted to Kommandørkaptein, was given command of the 11th Department in the Ministry of Defense in London, then subsequently placed in command of the Norwegian forces in Iceland, where he spent the rest of the war.

Returning to Norway with a War Cross with Swords, Ulstrup was promoted to rear admiral in August 1952. After escorting Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie on his tour of Norwegian naval bases, including the Horten shipyards in November 1954, he was made a Grand Officer of the Order of the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II, rounding out his international awards.

Kontradmiral Johan Fredrik Andreas Thaulow Ulstrup, retired, passed in 1956, age 60, having wrapped up a 41-year career.

Tyr’s best-known “kill” of the war, the HSDG steamer Sao Paulo, packed with German military vehicles and stores that never made it to shore, is a favorite of wreck divers.

Meanwhile, in Klokkarvik, a memorial, complete with a mine and a seagull, was dedicated in 2021.

As noted in the town:

The seagull that takes off from the mine is a symbol of optimism. We should be aware of what war brings, but be most concerned with how we can secure peace. We should learn from history, – because it tends to repeat itself. The seagull draws our attention to the sea, the source of everything, our future.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, July 2, 2025: Lost Bird of the Baltic

Posted on July 2, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

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, July 2, 2025: Lost Bird of the Baltic

Image via the Farenthold Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command NH 65783

Above we see the Nautilus-class minenkreuzer SMS Albatross in port, likely in Wilhelmshaven or Kiel, just prior to the Great War. A slight cruiser by any measure, she was perhaps better described as a heavily armed minelayer with a profile approaching that of an elegant turn-of-the-century steam yacht.

Put in an impossible situation some 110 years ago today, she was run aground in neutral waters– and that’s where the story really starts.

The Kaiser’s Mine Cruisers

The Albatross and her half-sister ship Nautilus sprang from the lessons learned during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which saw the aggressive use of mine warfare in fleet operations. The two ships were the size (322 feet oal/2,345 tons displacement on Nautilus, 331 ft./2,500-ton Albatross) and speed (20.8 knots) of light cruisers.

They had two stacks to vent their quartet of marine boilers and a pair of 3-cylinder compound engines. Twin military masts with mounted searchlights could accommodate an auxiliary sail rig if needed, but they don’t seem to have ever carried any canvas. They had a 1:10 length-to-beam ratio and looked fast sitting still.

Nautilus, German cruiser minelayer, photographed by Renard of Kiel while passing under the Levensau Bridge of the Kiel Canal in 1907, soon after entering fleet service on 19 March 1907. Note the rakish clipper bow and bowsprit, which Albatross did not share. While 322 feet oal, the waterline length was just 296 feet at the waterline (316 on Albatross). NH 46829

While largely unarmored, they could duke it out against smaller vessels or serve as commerce raiders due to their all-up main battery of eight 8.8 cm/35 (3.46″) SK L/35 C/01 guns in single low-angle shielded mounts. Nautilus originally carried two guns in casemate and six on upper decks, but all were later consolidated on deck, while Albatross always had hers on deck, arranged two forward, two aft, and four amidships in broadside. Magazines held a total of 2,000 15-pound shells for these guns, which had a range of 9,600 yards.

However, rather than torpedoes and secondary batteries as found on other cruisers, these twins had weight and space to accommodate a serious deck cargo of sea mines on a rail system dropping over the stern, with Nautilus rigged for 391 such “eggs” while Albatross could stow 288. With a shallow draft of just 15 feet for both sisters, they could operate in the littorals of the North, Baltic, and Mediterranean Seas, sowing their enemy seaports and strategic roadsteads shut with their mines. Alternatively, they could drop fields quickly in the path of enemy squadrons during fleet actions, covering retreats, or isolating opponents.

The German Elektrische Minen A (EMA), with a charge of 330 pounds of wet gun cotton, was the standard contact (Hertz horn) mine of the Kaiserliche Marine headed into the Great War.

Besides their dual use as mine layers and scout cruisers, both ships were given reinforced bows for service as light icebreakers or “boom chargers” as needed. The simplification of mission between the efficient mine-laying system and the single battery meant these ships had comparatively small crews of just ten officers and 191 men.

Termed Minendampfschiffe A und B on contract, both ships were built at Aktien-Gesellschaft Weser in Bremen with Nautilus (Baunummer 152) and Albatross (No. 162), sandwiched between the future Jutland veteran Nassau class battleship SMS Westfalen and the elegant NDL Reichspostdampfer liner Lutzow. Both cruisers ran 2,879,000 marks each despite the moderate differences in design. While most naval journals consider these to be one class of ship, Jane’s at the time listed each separately.

Nautilus 1914 Janes

Albatross 1914 Janes, note the different hull form.

Meet Albatross

Ordered under the 1906 program, our subject was laid down in Bremen on 24 May 1907. She was at least the second SMS Albatross in the Kaiserliche Marine, following in the path of a Kaiserliche Werft Danzig-built steam gunboat that entered service in 1871 and roamed the world on a series of exotic cruises until she was decommissioned in 1898.

The first SMS Albatross, a 4-gun steamer with a three-masted barque rig, served as a gunboat and later as a station ship and survey vessel. Disposed of in 1899, she was wrecked in commercial service in 1906.

Our Albatross took to the water on 23 October 1907, began sea trials on 19 May 1908, and was accepted and commissioned shortly after. As such, she entered service just 14 months after Nautilus.

She spent her pre-war period in a sleepy series of fleet maneuvers, mine warfare training (as a Minenschulschiff), and the like, based at Cuxhaven. The most notable incident from this time was a minor collision in 1911 with the 5,448 GRT NDL steamer Wartburg (which was later seized in 1917 and used by the Navy in the Great War as the cargo ship USS Wabash on a series of round trips between the U.S. and Saint-Nazaire).

During her antebellum service, Albatross served as a stopover for bright young officers bound for flag rank. Her first three skippers– Korvettenkapitäns Titus Turk, Karl Wedding, and Wilhelm Adelung– all went on to become admirals.

War!

When the Great War kicked off in 1914, Albatross, accompanied by the light cruiser SMS Stuttgart and half a squadron of destroyers on 25/26 August, laid an offensive barrage of 200 mines in the Tyne Estuary, a 13-mile-long field that gave the British a good bit of heartburn.

The same sortie was accompanied by Nautilus, escorted by SMS Mainz and the other half squadron of destroyers, to lay her field of 200 off the Humber.

On the way back to Germany in the fog, according to Corbett, a total of 16 British fishing craft were deep sixed by the destroyers of the two mine laying groups (six by the Albatross group and 10 by the Nautilus group) after first taking the crews prisoner then landing them in Germany for the duration.

The Tyne field laid by Albatross soon claimed the Danish coaster Skeatti Sogeli and the fishing drifter Barley Rig, the latter with the loss of five of her nine crew. Two of the four Admiralty trawlers– HMT Crathie (No.106) and HMT Thomas W Irvin (No.61)— that went to sweep the mines on 27 August were also lost. Five ratings rode the ersatz minesweepers to the bottom. The remaining Admiralty trawlers under CDR R W Dalgety, RN, managed to gingerly clear the rest of the field.

Further tasked with mine operations in the North Sea and Baltic until they froze in the winter of 1914, Albatross went back to it after the thaw in the spring of 1915.

It was on one such mission under Kommodore Johannes August Karl Franz von Karpf, to sow an offensive minefield off the Russian-occupied Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden, saw Albatross screened by armored cruiser SMS Roon (10200t, 4×8.3″,10×5.9″ guns) along with the light cruisers SMS Augsburg (4800 t, 12x 10.5 cm L45s) and SMS Lubeck (3200t, 10×4.1″) and seven torpedo boats (S 126, S 131, G 135, G 141, S 142, G 147, and S 149) assigned in July 1915.

After laying 180 mines north of Bogskar on 1 July and turning back to Germany, Albatross and her screen on the next morning, at 0615, spied Russian RADM Mikhail Bakhirev’s cruiser squadron comprised of the massive British-built armored cruiser Rurik (15000t, 4×10″, 8×8″, 20×4.7″), the French-built armored cruiser sisters Admiral Makarov and Bayan (each 8400 t and carrying two 8″ and eight 6″) and the German-designed protected cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg (each 6700 t and carrying 12×6″). This put the Germans at just 42 guns, none larger than 8-inch, versus 76 Russian guns of comparable bore or larger.

Unknown to Von Karpf, his wireless communications were intercepted and decoded by the Russian admiralty, who cued Bakhirev, originally on a mission to bombard Memel, to intercept. (The Russians were able to listen in on these communications because they had obtained Signalbuch der Kaiserliche Marine nr 151 after the light cruiser SMS Magdeburg ran aground off Odensholm the previous August.)

The running battle ensued with Von Karpf’s dispersed squadron already split in two, with Roon and Lubeck headed toward Libau, while Augsburg, Albatross, and three torpedo boats were closer to Swedish waters. The Russian cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg caught up to the humble Albatross alone, and, with 24 6-inch guns against eight 88mm pieces, it was one-sided.

SMS Albatross is attacked by Russian cruisers in Swedish waters, 2 July 1915, by Wilhelm Malchin. Der Krieg 1914/19 in Wort und Bild, 39. Heft

Oil painting by J Hägg. “Albatross under fire” Swedish Marinmuseum B1397

In the end, it was only the decision of FKpt Georg West to run Albatross inland to the shallows near the Swedish island of Ostergarnsholm that saved his ship. Remember, Albatross only had a 14-foot draft, whereas the heavily armored Bogatyr and Oleg drew 21. Beached just 500 feet offshore, aflame, and riddled with Russian shrapnel, Albatross was left alone by 0830 as Bogatyr and Oleg withdrew to the east to catch up to Roon and Lubeck, with whom they engaged in an ineffective artillery duel, later joined by Rurik.

When the smoke cleared, with the other cruisers on both sides only suffering negligible damage, it was Albatross that was wrecked.

Not only that, but she was also in Swedish territorial waters.

Internment

Sweden was neutral from 1814 to 2024, but during the Great War was for sure more aligned to the Kaiser’s sphere of influence than that of any other.

A traditional enemy of Tsarist Russia, the Swedish and German general staff had met for several loose planning sessions on how best to fight the Russians before 1914, and, once the “lights went out across Europe” in August, exports to Germany, primarily of much-needed iron ore, jumped almost 800 percent. While thousands of Swedish expatriates wore the uniforms of the Allied armies, thousands more volunteered to serve under German flags, especially when it came to fighting Russia in the hope of liberating neighboring Finland– a land that had been part of Sweden for almost 700 years.

This sets the stage for the reception that the wounded FKpt West and his crew received.

Almost immediately after the Russian cruisers left over the horizon, locals began assisting the Albatross, shuttling wounded to shore.

A field hospital was established in the sugar mill at Romakloster for the 49 wounded German sailors. Soon, a detachment of the Gotland Infantry Regiment (I/27) arrived to stand quiet guard on the beach over a grim collection of 26 men who had been killed. One crew member had fallen overboard during the shelling and could not be found.

Recovered German sailors on the beach at Gotland, covered by the naval ensign of SMS Albatross. Note the blue-uniformed Swedish troops standing guard. The fallen sailors were later interred in a mass grave just east of Östergarn Church.

Two of the crew members who died during transportation to Roma were buried at Bjorke cemetery.

Crew of the German minelayer Albatross. Swedish Marinmuseum D 14988:1

Relieved of their ship, some ~210 assorted German internees from Albatross were left in the sugar mill at Romakloster for a period.

Then, with the mill needed for the upcoming beet harvest, they were shuffled about 20 miles away to the naval shooting range at Blahall on the Tofta coast of the Swedish island of Gotland.

Finally, the internees were moved to a military camp in Skillingaryd on the mainland in the autumn of 1917.

There, they were kept under loose guard but allowed to take local employment and generally enjoyed the rest of their war.

The crew crafted a large, tabletop-sized scale model of their lost cruiser and donated it to their captors.

It later found its way into the Swedish Marinmuseum. MM11315

Grey painted model of the German warship Albatross, mounted on an oak board, and in addition, a glass stand. On the stand, a nickel silver plate engraved: “To my friend Ivar Uggla from his albatross friends Christmas 1918”.

As for Albatross, the ship was righted by the Swedish Navy and towed by the Neptunbolaget salvage company, first to the island of Faro on 23 July, then to Karlskrona. Stockholm rebuffed numerous and regular requests from the Russian government to turn her over as an earned war trophy. The Swedish government just as often cited their note of protest over the fact that the battle was largely conducted in their neutral waters.

Albatross being salvaged with Swedish torpedo boats alongside. This image was made into a popular postcard. Swedish Marinmuseum MM10668

Albatross salvaged and afloat in Gotland. She was escorted in by the Swedish destroyers HSwMS Wale and Magne. Swedish Marinmuseum MM11394

As the war wore on, the relationship between Germany and Sweden became more strained. The country suffered more than 900 civilian mariners killed during the conflict, most at the hands of U-boats and German raiders, who sank at least 132 Swedish-flagged vessels at sea. Further, the Swedish navy had lost men and ships while sweeping German mines (the gunboat Gunhild was lost to a mine in the Skagerrak with a loss of 19 lives) while the Swedish submarine Hvalen was shot up by a German armed trawler who thought she was British, leading to the death of yet another sailor.

Still, the Swedish and German military cooperated in the joint occupation of the Åland Islands off Finland in 1918 (including landing a battalion of the famed Göta Life Guards, I/2, ashore), teaming up to fight the local Reds and disarm miserable Russian garrisons on the archipelago.

Post-war, the disarmed Albatross was sailed to Danzig on her own power, arriving on 31 December 1918, and was returned to German custody. Following the Versailles Treaty and the resulting limitations placed on the then-Weimar Republic’s Reichsmarine, Albatross was deemed surplus and sold for 900,000 marks to a firm in Hamburg to be broken up for scrap in 1921.

While I cannot find out what became of the good FKpt West, the leader of the squadron when she was lost, Johannes von Karpf, went on to fight another day. Commanding the battlecruiser SMS Moltke at Jutland and later the BCs SMS Lutzow and Hindenburg, he ended the Great War as a rear admiral and retired from the Reichsmarine on 5 November 1919. He passed in Hamburg in 1941 after serving on the board of several shipping companies in that port city. The Russian squadron commander, RADM Bachirev, was shot by the Reds in 1920.

Von Karpf, seen left as the last skipper of the Kaiser’s yacht, Hohenzollern.

As for the sister of Albatross, Nautilus continued to see service in the Baltic in the latter part of the war, meeting the Russians on several occasions– including fighting with field guns, mortars, and flamethrowers while supporting German landings in Moon Sound (it pays to be able to float in 15 feet of water!). Still steaming in 1918, she was disarmed and hulked.

Retained for another decade, she was sold to a Danish firm for 180,000 marks and scrapped in 1928.

Epilogue

Albatross forever changed a piece of Sweden’s coast, where July 2 is remembered annually as “Albatrossdagen” or Albatross Day. A small museum was constructed in 1977 near where she grounded, and today it holds more than 700 images, the cruiser’s ensign, two models, uniform items, and numerous relics.

A monument is maintained on the beach near where she grounded back in 1915.

Östergarn cemetery still holds her war dead in a place of honor, complete with a memorial.

It is often visited on Albatrossdagen by the German military attaché from Stockholm. This year, German Defense Attaché Markur Bruggemeier will lay a wreath from Germany at the sailor’s grave.

A detailed 1:100 model crafted by Heinz Zimmermann of Albatross in her wartime livery is in the Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven

Modell (von Heinz Zimmermann) im Maßstab 1:100 des Minenkreuzers SMS Albatross im deutschen Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven. (Wiki Commons)

Speaking of models, Combrig markets a 1:700 scale kit.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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Warship Wednesday, June 4, 2025: Tiny Hull, Heart of Oak

Posted on June 4, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, June 4, 2025: Tiny Hull, Heart of Oak

“Goliath Wins,” painting by former RN FAA veteran and well-known marine and aviation artist, the late Jim Rae.

Above we see the Tree-class Admiralty type minesweeping trawler, HMT Juniper (T123), as she engages in a one-sided artillery duel with the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in the Norwegian Sea on 8 June 1940, some 85 years ago this week.

The Trees

The British, with thousands of hardy blue water fishing boats and generations of crews along their coast in the 20th Century, were quickly able to mobilize these home-grown assets as sort of a “pirate fleet” with little effort, much akin to how the USCG almost overnight was able to deploy their 2,000-boat so-called Hooligan Navy or Corsair Fleet during WWII.

The Brits already had volumes of experience with such transformation in the Great War, ordering 609 “Admiralty” military type steel hulled trawlers specifically for naval use, along with another 1,400 boats taken up from trade.

Trawlers on patrol at Halifax, 1918, CWM

The concept in the Great War was simple: take a boat, add a deck gun, radio set, and searchlight; crew it largely with experienced trawlermen in uniform led by a reserve officer or two, and then specialize it into either anti-submarine work with listening gear and depth charges or minesweeping with sweep gear, sort said “battle trawlers” into flotillas, and turn them loose.

When 1935’s Italian invasion of Ethiopia, followed by Hitler’s abrogation of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles with the reoccupation of the Rhineland by German troops and rearmament to include U-boats, signaled a new war on the horizon, the Royal Navy dusted off its trawler plan as a quick way to boost coastal forces.

This led to the prototype for the British ASW/minesweeping trawlers of the next decade, with HMT Basset (T68) built by Robb in Leith, being launched before the end of 1935.

Coal-burning with a single boiler and VTE engine good for a humble 12.5 knots, Basset ran 160 feet oal, could float in just 10 feet of seawater, and displaced 521 tons. Armament was a 3″/40 12pdr 12cwt QF Mk I/II/V taken from a WWI-era destroyer and mounted on a “bandstand” on the bow, along with weight and space saved for as many as 30 depth charges and mechanical minesweeping gear.

Basset led to a series of nearly two dozen vessels for the Royal Indian Navy and a few for the Canadians, while the design was tweaked for the follow-on Gem and Tree classes.

The first WWII-era Admiralty standard minesweeping trawler type was the 20-member Tree class, so dubbed as all its members were named after trees. These were just barely larger than the Basset (Dog) class, hitting 545 tons standard (770 full) and running some 164 feet long.

Armament, like Basset, relied on a single old 12-pounder forward, a twin 50-cal Vickers rear (sometimes replaced with a second 12-pounder) a pair of Vickers .303s, two depth charge throwers and two depth charge racks with provision for 30 ash cans, along with the novel new Oropesa Mk II mechanical mine sweep or LL-type magnetic mine sweep.

A trawler’s gun crew manning the 12-pounder on the fo’castle. Photographer LT FA Hudson IWM (A 17176)

A trawler’s crew manning a 12-pounder. Photographer LT FA Davies IWM (A 12317)

Ordered from nine small yards around Britain, all were laid down on the eve of the war, augmented by 67 other trawlers purchased from trade.

HMT Birch, a Tree-class trawler

British Tree class naval trawler HMT Rowan, Pennant No T119 FL18332

British Tree-class naval trawler HMT Walnut, Pennant No T103

British Tree class naval trawler HMT Acacia, Pennant No T02, IWM FL 46

HMT Bay, Tree class Trawler, IWM A 6694

HM Trawler Pine – a “Tree” class minesweeper, she was torpedoed and sunk off Beachy Head by a Kriegsmarine Schnellboot with the loss of 10 of her crew.

HMT Walnut, Tree tree-class trawler

Crews were up to 40 souls, but typically more like 35, relying on a skipper and two junior officers, a couple of ratings from the RN or RNR, and the rest members of the newly stood up Royal Naval Patrol Service (RNPS).

Trained at the “stone frigate” HMS Europa, the commandeered Sparrows Nest Gardens in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the ad-hoc nature of the enterprise soon led to the force being known as “Harry Tate’s Navy” after a popular comedian of the era who had problems getting his car started and soon found it falling apart all around him but carried on with confidence nonetheless. In short, something akin to the “Rodney Dangerfield Navy.”

Meet Juniper

Our subject was the second warship to carry the name in the Royal Navy, with the first being an 8-gun Napoleonic-era Shamrock-class schooner that distinguished herself on Sir Arthur Wellesley’s campaigns in Portugal and Spain.

Ordered along with her future sister, HMT Mangrove from Ferguson Brothers (now Ferguson Marine) in Glasgow, Juniper was laid down as Yard No. 344 in August 1939 while Mangrove, built side-by-side, was No. 345. Their hull numbers would be T123 and T112, characteristically out of sequence, a class trait.

Juniper launched on 15 December 1939, as the Germans were digesting newly conquered western Poland, and commissioned in March 1940, as they prepped to turn West. She was modified while under construction and fitted with a more comprehensive AAA suite: three 20mm Oerlikons in place of the twin .50 cal Vickers.

20mm Oerlikon mounting on a British trawler. LT FA Davies IWM (A 12318)

Juniper’s first (and only) skipper was 42-year-old LCDR (Emergency) Geoffrey Seymour Grenfell, RN. An 18-year-old midshipman of impeccable background during the Great War (grandson of ADM John Pascoe Grenfell, grandnephew of Field Marshal Francis Grenfell, and the nephew of a VC holder killed with the 9th Lancers in 1914) he fought at Jutland on the famous HMS Warspite, a vessel holed 150 times in the sea clash by five German battleships. Leaving active service in 1920 as a lieutenant, after nine years with the colors, he was moved to the Emergency List, where he was made a LCDR in 1928 and remained there until activated in 1939.

Grenfell was a little bit famous at the time, having married the high-profile Countess of Carnarvon in 1938, an American heiress and descendant of the Lee Family of Virginia who had just divorced the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, leaving her son to inherit the title. Of note, the family home was the real Victorian Highclere Castle, the setting of the fictional Downton Abbey. Grenfell and the Countess’s marriage was important enough to be carried across the Atlantic in the NYT’s society pages.

The rest of Juniper’s tiny wardroom was made up of Probationary Temporary (Acting) Sub-Lieutenant Neville L. Smith, RNVR, and Probationary Temporary Lieutenant Ronald Campbell Blair Arnold Daniel, RNVR. Daniel, 40, was an architect in the Richmond practice of Partridge and a proud member of the Petersham Horticultural Society, having just joined the colors in April 1940.

War!

Rushed northward in June 1940 to take part in Operation Alphabet, the Allied evacuation of Norway, on the morning of 8 June, having departed Tromso the day before as the sole escort for the Aberdeen-bound 5,600-ton tanker SS Oil Pioneer, Juniper spotted a large cruiser on the horizon off Harstad.

It turned out to be the 14,000-ton Admiral Hipper, which at the time flew the signals of the British cruiser HMS Southampton.

Hipper off Norway, 1940

Realizing the ruse too late and being too slow to make a getaway, Juniper put the “battle” in battle trawler and made ready for a surface action. Signaling her merchantmen to evade as best they could, she began a cat-and-mouse artillery action with Hipper.

Some reports state that it took 90 minutes. Others are just 15. No matter how long it took to play out, the outcome was certain, and Juniper was smashed below the waves by Hipper’s secondary 4.1-inch SK C/33 battery, the bruiser saving its big 8-inch guns for more worthy prey. Any of Hipper’s four escorting destroyers, Z7 Hermann Schoemann, Z10 Hans Lody, Z15 Erich Steinbrinck, and Z20 Karl Galster, would have been more than a match for our trawler.

An on-board camera crew captured the event.

Shortly after, the nearby KM Gneisenau caught Oil Pioneer and sank her with a combination of gunfire and a torpedo from the destroyer Schoemann, leaving one reported survivor.

The bulk of Juniper’s crew were listed simply as missing or “Missing Presumed Killed” (MPK).

ALEXANDER, Ivor, Ordinary Seaman, LT/JX 179311, MPK
AUSTWICK, Clarence H, Engineman, RNR (PS), LT/X 59952 ES, missing
BARGEWELL, Arthur, Stoker, RNPS, LT/KX 106123, missing
BROWNJOHN, Denis E, Telegraphist, C/WRX 1246, missing
CHAPMAN, Charles, Seaman, RNR (PS), LT/X 20188 A, missing
COOPER, Robert, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 183134, MPK
DANIEL, Ronald C B A, Py/Ty/Lieutenant, RNVR, MPK
GEORGE, William, Stoker 2c, RNPS, LT/KX 104599, MPK
GRENFELL, Geoffrey S, Lieutenant Commander, MPK
HIND, Wilson K, Leading Seaman, RNR, D/X 10320 B, missing
JILLINGS, Henry A, Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 177687, missing
MARSHALL, William D, Stoker, RNPS, LT/KX 104048, missing
NEWELL, George W, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 172789, MPK
PENTON, Thomas S, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 176379, missing
PERKINS, James K, Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 177711, missing
PHILLIPS, Peter R S, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 183136, MPK
SAWKINS, Eric W, Ordinary Signalman, RNVR, P/SDX 1535, missing
SEABROOK, William H, Telegraphist, RNW(W)R, C/WRX 124, missing
SMITH, Neville L, Py/Ty/Act/Sub Lieutenant, RNVR, MPK
SUMMERS, George, Engineman, RNR (PS), LT/X 318 EU, missing
TIMMS, Ernest S, Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 180470, missing
VENTRY, Vincent, Seaman Cook, RNPS, LT/JX 185635, missing
WEAVER, Edgar A, 2nd Hand, RNPS, LT/KX 181715, missing

Those survivors picked up by the Germans were taken to Trondheim and eventually made their way to the Stalag IID Stargard in Pomerania. One of these survivors, Telegraphist Charles Roy Batchelor (499/X4624), though grievously wounded, survived the war and left a detailed account of his post-Juniper experience. He was repatriated home in October 1943 due to his wounds and would endure a series of skin and bone grafts for another 18 months. He went on to make a life for himself in to the 1980s and had a family, but walked with a limp, carried facial scars, and had difficulty chewing until the very end.

Soon after sending Juniper and Oil Pioneer to the bottom, Hipper found the empty troopship SS Orama (19,840 GRT) and made it a hat-trick.

German destroyer Z10 Hans Lody picking up survivors from British troop transport SS Orama, June 8, 1940

On the same afternoon as Juniper was lost and only a few miles away, the German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst would meet up and sink the carrier HMS Glorious, including her defending destroyers HMS Acasta and Ardent, with the loss of over 1,500 lives. That much larger disaster overshadowed our trawler’s ride to Valhalla.

Epilogue

Despite the heroic charge of Juniper, I cannot find where the vessel or her crew were decorated. British LCDR Gerard Broadmead Roope, skipper of the G-class destroyer, HMS Glowworm, sunk by Hipper under very similar circumstances in April 1940, earned a VC.

The only post-war mention I can find of the good LCDR Grenfell is a notice of the settlement of his estate, published in October 1941.

His wife, the former Countess of Carnarvon, mourned for a decade before taking her third husband in 1950, and passed in 1977.

The Trees had a tough war. Besides Juniper, five of her 19 sisters were lost in action: HMT Almond (T 14), Ash (T 39), Chestnut (T 110), Hickory (T 116), and Pine (T 101).

The British lost an amazing 122 minesweeping trawlers during the war.

The Royal Naval Patrol Service numbered some 66,000 men during WWII, manning 6,000 assorted small vessels. At least 14,500 of these “Sparrows” lost their lives, and no less than 2,385 RNPS seamen “have no known grave but the sea.”

Today, the Lowestoft War Memorial Museum at Sparrow’s Nest remembers their sacrifices. Bronze panels at the Museum hold the names of the 2,385 MPK, including those lost on Juniper, recorded on Panels No. 1 and No. 2.

“Harry Tate’s Navy” echoes into eternity.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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

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Warship Wednesday, March 19, 2025: Bucoup Malchanceuse

Posted on March 19, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, March 19, 2025: Bucoup Malchanceuse

Naval History and Heritage Command, NH 64442

Above, we see the unique cuirasse d’escadre Bouvet of the French Marine Nationale sitting quietly at anchor, likely in the Mediterranean in the 1900s. More a floating castle than a man-o-war, this tumblehome-hulled battlewagon would find herself very unlucky in the Dardanelles some 110 years ago this week.

The “Sample Fleet”

While France and Britain were at peace since 1815, there was still enough lingering animosity between the two traditional enemies that, when the Royal Navy began work on a series of eight new 1st rate warships that would become the Royal Sovereign-class battleship in 1888– vessels that hit 14,000 tons, carried four 13.5-inch guns, and were clad in as much as 18 inches of armor but could still make 17 knots or better– the French knew they needed a response.

This led the French naval ministry to order four, and later a fifth, new and experimental battleship around a series of mandatory specs: 14,000 tons or less, a “diamond” gun arrangement with turreted 12-inch guns fore and aft and 10.8-inch guns amidships, an armor plate topping out at 18 inches, and a speed of at least 17 knots. Dubbed the “flotte d’échantillons” (sample fleet), the idea would be that the ministry would pick and choose what worked best from these one-off prototypes and come up with the best design moving forward.

The first four ships were all designed by four different esteemed French naval architects and built at four different domestic yards at roughly the same time to cut down on the suspense:

Charles Martel, designed by Charles Ernest Huin, built at Arsenal de Brest 1891-1896
Jauréguiberry, designed by Amable Lagane, built by F et C de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-sur-Mer 1891-96
Carnot, designed by Victor Saglio, built at Arsenal de Toulon 1891-1896
Masséna, designed by Louis de Bussy, built at A et C de la Loire, Saint-Nazaire 1891-1897

French pre-dreadnought battleship Masséna, alongside one of her sisters

Before any of the above Echantillons had entered service, Charles Ernest Huin received the singular honor of drafting a fifth design that would begin construction at Arsenal de Lorient in January 1893. Regarded as a bit of a genius by the French, the 57-year-old Huin had graduated from the École Polytechnique during the Crimean War, sat on the Gavres Commission on artillery development, and became general director of the Gironde Shipyards in Lorient in 1881 where he designed the early battleships Hoche, Brennus, and Marceau before his Charles Martel design, picked as first of the Echantillons to be laid down, drew interest.

Hoche, seen operating in relatively flat waters along France’s Atlantic coast in 1890, was one of Huin’s babies

Huin’s swansong is our subject.

Meet Bouvet

Although a continuation of the sample fleet concept, our Bouvet would be a testbed for several new technologies. Whereas the other four Echantillons used Lagreafel d’Allest boilers, Bouvet would carry 32 (!) more modern Indret-Bellville boilers arranged on three engines driving three shafts (three of the four sample ships were twin shafters). She went a bit heavier than the preceding battleships, but with 15,000 shp available, she was designed to make 18 knots in theory and could steam 4,000nm on 10 knots with 980 tons of good coal in her bunkers.

While she carried a similar armor plan, Bouvet’s was improved Harvey nickel steel face-hardened armor with a higher tensile strength against incoming projectiles than that used on previous French ships. Further, while she had roughly the same hull type, it was not cut down to the main deck at the stem, and she carried a downsized superstructure with a pair of smaller military masts compared to the previous Echantillons, all of which suffered from dramatic stability issues in any sort of seas.

Her drawings on paper seem elegant.

She also had more modern guns, albeit of the same caliber as the four prior sample ships. Rather than two single Canon de 305 mm/45 (12″) Model 1887s as on Charles Martel, she had updated 305 mm/40 (12″) Model 1893s as her main armament. Capable of firing 770-pound AP shells to 13,000 yards at about one round per minute, these guns would later be mounted in two twin-gun turrets on the follow on the Gaulois, Iena, Suffren, Republique, and Liberte battleship classes.

Bouvet, bow shot, showing off her forward 12-inch gun

Note all the light guns in her superstructure

The secondary battery was a pair of 274 mm/45 (10.8″) Model 1887/1893s in amidship single gun turrets, an experimental model only carried on Bouvet and the sample ship Massena. Her sloping tumblehome hull form was largely to allow these “wing” guns a wider field of fire.

Battleship Bouvet beam turrets.

The tertiary armament was downright wild, with eight single 5.5″/45 M1891s, another eight 3.9″/45 M1891s, a dozen single 47mm/40 M1885 3-pounders, five single 37mm/20 M1885 1-pounders, and a pair of Hotchkiss 37mm 5-barreled Gatling-style guns. This was deemed more than enough to tackle incoming waves of enemy torpedo boats.

Bouvet, Janes 1914

Speaking of torpedoes, she maintained four separate 17.7-inch torpedo stations, two amidships above water with single tubes on trainable turnstiles, and another two submerged forward with fixed tubes that simply fired 90 degrees outward from the beam. Each station had its own magazine, and Bouvet could carry a dozen M1892 Whitehead-type fish, which had a 1,100-yard range and carried 220 pounds of guncotton.

Modern, she carried four dynamos that allowed for force ventilation belowdecks, electrical lighting, and six high-output searchlights. Heady stuff for 1892.

The Salad Days

Bouvet was ordered 8 April 1892 from Lorient Arsenal at a cost of £1.2 million, or 21 million French francs. Laid down to a completed design by Huin on 16 January 1893, she was launched 27 April 1896, her hull decorated with trees.

Named for the trio of famed 18th/19th century French navigator/admirals Bouvet, our battleship was at least the third to carry the name under the Tricolor, preceded by a steam aviso famously sunk off Haiti in 1871 in a storm just after she fought the German gunboat SMS Meteor off Havana (see: Warship Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020: A German and a Frenchman walk into a Cuban bar…).

Bouvet fitting out

Bouvet was completed and was commissioned in June 1898, amid the spectacular naval developments of the Spanish-American War.

Bouvet circa 1900, Symond & Co photograph, IWM Q 22256

She joined the Mediterranean squadron and visited the Italian sovereigns in 1900, before becoming flagship of the entire French fleet for a couple of years. She then participated in several diplomatic voyages to Spain, Italy, Greece, the exotic Ottoman ports, and other spots in the region before taking part in numerous maneuvers and exercises in the Med.

For a time, she was a favorite subject of naval postcards.

Notably, she participated in the large French naval review at Cherbourg in July 1900, suffered a minor collision with the battleship Gaulois in 1903, and assisted in the international response to the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy.

It was a quiet life.

By 1907, she was given an overhaul that included deleting her above-deck torpedo tubes and other minor efforts to help trim her top-heavy design. By the summer of 1908, with better battleships taking their place in the fleet’s 1st and 2nd Battleship Divisions, Bouvet was downgraded an assignment in the 3rd.

In and out of ordinary, her roles increasingly took on a more auxiliary tasking outside of the spotlight, no longer the proud flagship of her early career.

Battleship Bouvet in Toulon harbour 1912, BNF image

By 1913, the French Navy had a surplus of steel-sheathed, steel-hulled battlewagons, each class generally better than the last in an evolutionary sense, and all more advanced than Bouvet. Going past the Echantillons, they had three 11,000 ton Charlemagnes, the one-off 9,000-ton Henri IV, the 12,725-ton Suffren, two 15,000-ton Republiques, three 14,000-ton Democraties, six 18,000-ton “semi-dreadnought” Dantons, four modern 23,000-ton Courbets mounting a full dozen 12″/50 guns, three brand-new 24,000-ton Bretagnes with ten 13.5″/45s, and a class of five 25,000-ton Normandie class dreadnoughts under construction. With all that– including 13 legit dreadnoughts and six semi-dreadnoughts for the battle line and 10 still functional pre-dreadnoughts for expeditionary use– the need to keep the cranky and grossly obsolete Echantillons on the Navy List any longer was fading.

The four earlier sample ships were soon withdrawn. Charles Martel was placed in reserve in 1912 before being decommissioned outright in early 1914, permanently disarmed to become a floating barracks hulk at Brest. Carnot was placed in reserve in January 1913 and, disarmed, was used as an accommodation ship at Toulon. Massena, suffering an explosion in 1913, was withdrawn from service and hulked, pending scrapping.

Jaureguiberry and Bouvet were transferred to the Division de complément (Supplementary Division) and assigned to fire control development and gunnery training, respectively, surely the last stop before being laid up. These two ships were reportedly left in poor condition, with maintenance funds diverted to newer and more capable battleforce elements. After all, why waste money on ships earmarked for disposal?

War!

The Great War saved Bouvet and fellow sample battleship Jaureguiberry from the scrappers. Ordered to arm up and make ready for combat– with German and Austrian ally Italy thought ready to enter the conflict at any moment and German RADM Souchon’s Mediterranean Squadron at large– the two dated but still useful warships were soon escorting troopships in the Med. These included both French colonial troops heading to the Metropolitan Republic and British/Indian troops likewise headed to the Western Front.

Bouvet, May 1914, BNF

Once Souchon’s squadron, the battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the cruiser Breslau, had fled to the Dardanelles under the protection of Ottoman guns, and Italy gave assurances they had no immediate intention of honoring their pact with Berlin and Vienna, Bouvet soon shifted to Greek waters to join the force gathering there should the German ships attempt to break back out into the Med.

This force soon made the logical transition to supporting the doomed Franco-British Gallipoli campaign in 1915 once the Turks found themselves in the war. By late February 1915, a force of 16 British battleships under VADM John de Robeck and four French ones (Suffren, Bouvet, Charlemagne, and Gaulors) under RADM Emile Guepratte, augmented by a host of cruisers (including a random Russian) and destroyers, began to try to force the straits.

Among the 230 artillery pieces that supported the Dardanelles, defenses were at least 10 aging Krupp 24 cm (9.4-inch) K L/35 fortress guns from a batch of 30 pieces shipped to the country in 1889. They could heave a 474-pound shell via bagged charges out to a range of 8.1 miles.

Ottoman 24 cm artillery at the Rumeli Medjidieh battery Bouvet. That shell hoist would dramatically fail on 18 March 1915

Relatively obsolete by the Great War, they could still be deadly should an enemy ship obligingly get close enough to find out. Four of these were installed in the masonry fort at Rumeli Mecidiye Tabyası (Fort No. 13) on the European shore of the peninsula, backing up a pair of larger but less capable 28cm L/22s.

Ottoman 24 cm artillery at the Rumeli Medjidieh battery, 1915. Shown are the battery commander, Captain Mehmet Hilmi (Şanlıtop) Bey, and 2LT Fahri Bey.

Beyond the guns, the Turks had sown almost 400 mines in 10 fields, most laid by the humble little Ottoman minelayer Nusret.

Turkish Minelayer Nusrat

On the morning of 18 March 1915, a three-part attack was launched to reduce the Ottoman’s central forts, with the four most powerful British battlewagons (HMS Queen Elizabeth, Lord Nelson, Agamemnon, and Inflexible) kicking off the assault with a heavy two-hour bombardment from 8 miles out, followed by a second prong– the four French ships– boldly sailing to within just 5,000 yards to destroy the fortifications at point blank range, relying on their heavy armor to shrug off any remaining Turkish guns. Meanwhile, the 12 remaining British battleships would line up in a third division in three groups to provide covering fire and then follow the French in.

The problem with that plan was that the first bombardment was nowhere near as effective as the British thought it would be, and Nusret had crept in to sow an 11th minefield that the British and French didn’t know about.

The day would prove very bad for the Allied forces.

Inflexible, Queen Elizabeth, and Agamemnon in the British first line, along with Irresistible and Ocean in the second line, started taking hits, most from the little Rumeli Mecidiye battery but also other guns at Dardanos and Sogandare.

The French, drawn point blank with the forts, got the worst of it, with Suffren, flagship of RADM Guepratte, receiving 14 hits in 14 minutes and set ablaze, effectively out of the fight. Gaulois was hit twice, with one lucky shell plunging and penetrating her hull under the waterline, forcing her to retreat and beach on Tavsan in the Rabbit Islands to keep from sinking, the wounded Charlemagne at her side.

Bouvet received at least eight hits from Rumeli Medjidieh’s 9.4-inch guns, riddling her masts and funnels and putting her forward turret out of action. Not grievously injured, she answered the signal to withdraw and promptly stumbled into one of Nusret’s mines at 13:58 just under her starboard 10.8-inch mount.

Never having an abundance of stability, she quickly started to roll and, with water pouring down her funnels, turned turtle and sank in less than a minute, taking a stunning 660 of her 710 crew down with her.

Bouvet sinking after being mined 18 March 1915. Note how close to shore she is. Photo via the Surgeon Parkes collection. IWM SP 682A

A handful of waterlogged and shocked survivors were plucked from the water by the battle-damaged Agamemnon.

Survivors from the French battleship Bouvet coming on board the battleship HMS Agamemnon on 18 March 1915 during the Anglo-French naval attempt to force the Dardanelles. The Bouvet struck a Turkish mine and sank with the loss of over 600 of her crew. IWM HU 103301

With Roebuck ordering his ships to withdraw from the failed effort to reduce the forts, Irresistible and Ocean likewise struck Turkish mines and quickly sank within sight of Bouvet’s watery grave. Irresistible sank with the loss of only 12 of her 780 crew and had her survivors rescued by Ocean then, following the holing by that ship, she slowly sank and the combined crews were taken off by the destroyers HMS Jed, Colne, and Chelmer which were able to come alongside. Of note, the British battleships, while similarly dated, were not tumblehome designs, and Ocean only lost a single crewman in the battle.

Epilogue

Both at the time of the sinking and in modern Turkey, the loss of Bouvet was widely celebrated and remembered.

Le Bouvet aux Dardanelles

Illustrated First World War, Sinking of Bouvet

German wartime postcard depicting the sinking of Bouvet

Sinking of Bouvet

“Bouvet’nin Çanakkale’de Batışı (The Sinking of Battleship Bouvet at the Dardanelles)” by Turkish maritime artist Diyarbakırlı Tahsin Bey

Charles Huin didn’t live long enough to see his penultimate battleship fail so spectacularly. Retiring from the French navy in 1902 after almost 50 years of service as a Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, he was struck by a car and killed on a Paris street at age 76 in December 1912 while on his way to collect his pension from the Ministry.

Charles Ernest Huin

RADM Guepratte, who commanded the French force on the fateful day that Bouvet was lost, was relegated to a desk job at Bizerte for the rest of the war and then retired. He passed in November 1939, gratefully missing out on the twin humiliations of Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940 and Toulon in November 1942. Post-war, historians rehabilitated his record and came to the conclusion he got a bad rap, and he is generally seen as a naval hero of sorts today in France, with a destroyer (D632) and frigate (F714) named after him. After all, he was ordered by Roebuck and Carden to take his four obsolete battleships right down the Turks’ throat and by all means should have lost all four.

The French Navy went on to recycle the Bouvet name twice- for a Free French auxiliary in WWII and a Cold War era Surcouf-class destroyer (D624) in operation between 1952 and 1981.

For years, it was believed that Bouvet sank only due to the 9.4-inch coastal artillery hits.

The Ottoman battery commander who landed the hits on Bouvet and several of the other ships, Capt. Mehmet Hilmi Şanlıtop, despite winning a series of decorations, including the Iron Cross, was cashiered post-war in the aftermath of the end of the empire. Welcomed into the ranks of the newly formed Turkish Army in 1920, he eventually retired as a colonel of artillery. He wrote a book about his service and passed in 1946. A statue of him stands near the location of the battery today, which is now a museum.

The Rumeli Medjidieh site, disarmed in 1919, today contains a single 9.4-inch Krupp fortress gun, albeit one moved from another fort. The site has bronze statues of Capt. Şanlıtop and his XO, along with Corporal Seyit Ali Cabuk, who famously hand-carried three 474-pound shells up to one of the 9.4s from the magazine to the breech after the shell hoist failed during the latter stages of the Allied attempt to force the Dardanelles on 18 March 1915, the rounds credited with hitting Ocean.

The story of Bouvet’s ultimate loss by mine strike caught up to the public.

The Ottoman minelayer Nusret, retired from naval service in 1955, was sold to commercial concerns and, derelict, sank in 1989.

Raised in 2002, she has been reconstructed on land at the Tarsus Çanakkale Park.

Nusrat Tarsus Çanakkale Park wiki commons

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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

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

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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025: Walking the Beat

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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025: Walking the Beat

National Museum of Denmark photo THM-6216

Above we see the Danish inspektionsskibet— classed as a “fishery cruiser” at the time in Jane’s— Fylla in rough seas on her patrol route, likely off Iceland, in the late 1920s.

Armed with a pair of 4.7-inch guns and another set of 6-pounders, she replaced Denmark’s only proper cruiser just after the Great War but started her life under service to a different king.

The “Cabbage” Class

When the British slammed into the largest naval war in history up to that time, the Royal Navy found themselves in urgent need of small purpose-built fleet escorts and minesweepers and a class of ultimately 112 vessels in five distinct groups ordered under the Emergency War Programme would prove suitable to both needs.

British Flower (Arabis) class minesweeping sloop HMS Wisteria IWM SP 827

The so-called Flower or Cabbage-class minesweeping sloops were triple hulled forward to allow them survivability when working minefields or dodging torpedoes but still constructed to merchant rather than naval standards, allowing them to be produced quickly (typically in just five months from keel laying to delivery) by commercial yards while Royal Dockyards and the like could be left to the business of building “proper” warships for the Grand Fleet.

All were 250 feet long at the waterline (267 oal), with a simple two-boiler/one engine-screw-funnel power plant good for at least 15 knots. Designed to carry two medium-sized (3, 4, or 4.7-inch) and two light (3-pounder/47mm or 6-pounder/57mm) guns, there was much variation through the builds. Allowance was made for mechanical minesweeping gear, although not all were fitted with it.

The Flowers were built in five sub-classes spanning three in the original “slooper” format: 36 Arabis (sloop-sweepers with 2×4.7″/40 QF, 2×3-pdr/47mm), 12 Azalea (sloop-sweepers with 2×4″/40 QF, 2×3-pdr/47mm), 12 Acacia (sloop-sweepers with 2×12-pdr/3″ QF, 2×3-pdr/47mm) and two as “Warship Q” vessels: 12 Aubrietia (Q-ships with 2x 4″ guns, 1×3-pdr/47mm, depth charge throwers), and 28 Anchusa (Q-ships with 2x 4″ guns, 2x 12-pdr/3″ guns, depth charge throwers).

Arabis-class sloops of the Flower typeNo less than 15 yards built the Cabbages including Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Wallsend; Earle’s Shipbuilding & Engineering Co, Kingston upon Hull; Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock; Barclay Curle & Company, Whiteinch; Lobnitz & Company, Renfrew; Charles Connell and Company, Scotstoun; Napier & Miller, Old Kilpatrick; Archibald McMillan & Son, Dumbarton; Greenock & Grangemouth Dockyard Company, Greenock; Bow, McLachlan and Company, Paisley; William Simons & Company, Renfrew; D. & W. Henderson & Company, Glasgow; Workman, Clark and Company, Belfast; Richardson, Duck and Company, Thornaby-on-Tees; and Dunlop Bremner & Company, Port Glasgow.

Meet Asphodel

Named for the lily connected via Greek legend to the dead and the underworld, our sloop, HMS Asphodel, was one of six Cabbages (five Arabis type) built by D. & W. Henderson in Glasgow alongside the yard’s bread and butter– War Standard “A” tramp ships.

Asphodel was D&W Hull No. 498, completed with a T3Cy 22½”36½”60″x27″ 180psi 2,000ihp engine, launched 21 December 1915 and commissioned 28 January 1916, with CDR Reginald Gay Copleston, R.N., Retired List, as her first skipper. Copleston, who had voluntarily moved to the Retired List in 1911 after 15 years of service, was the Librarian at the Royal Naval War College when the War started. Asphodel was his first seagoing command since the old Apollo-class second-class protected cruiser HMS Sirius in 1909.

Ordered to the Mediterranean, Asphodel sailed into Alexandria on 19 March to join the East Indies and Egypt force under VADM John Michael de Robeck, First Baronet. There, she joined several other sloops including several sisters (HMS Amaryllis, Cornflower, Nigella, Verbena, and Valerian) supporting the old Majestic-class pre-dreadnoughts HMS Hannibal and Jupiter along with five monitors and seven cruisers.

A grey-painted HMS Jupiter in Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta, March 1915. Jupiter, which joined the fleet in 1897, left the Med in November 1916 and paid off at Devonport to provide crews for antisubmarine vessels. Hannibal, who had given up her main battery of four BL 12-inch Mark VIII guns to arm the monitors HMS Prince Eugene and HMS Sir John Moore, would endure until 1919. Photo by Surgeon Oscar Parkes. IWM SP 77.

Asphodel had a quiet life, as she was typically used as a fleet messenger on the 1,000-mile run between Alexandria and Malta, leaving once a week for a round-trip back and forth, with Hannibal listing her arriving and departing in her logs over 200 times across the next 42 months.

Fleet Messengers at Malta: HMS Asphodel and HMS Ivy. By Frank Mason. IWM ART 3109

Copleston commanded Asphodel until being appointed Commander of Patrols, Malta on 18 August 1917, replaced by the younger CDR James Charles Wauhope, formerly of the unsuccessful Q-ship HMS Carrigan Head (Q4) out of Queenstown. Wauhope would command her for the remainder of her RN career.

Asphodel was assigned to the newly-formed Twelfth Sloop Flotilla in June 1918, a force that grew to as large as 19 such vessels.

She outlasted her consort Hannibal, which was paid off for disposal in Malta on 25 October 1919, and left Malta with her own paying off pennant in December 1919, bound for decommissioning on 27 April 1920 and storage in the Home Isles pending disposal.

Asphodel, as far as I can, tell never saw combat during WWI but she did lose three men at once– all outbound to the Devonport Naval Dockyard– drowned in Malta on 2 April 1918. They are among the 351 Commonwealth Great War burials in Malta’s Capuccini/Kalkara Naval Cemetery.

ADAMS, Charles W, Able Seaman, J 17911
CARROLL, John, Petty Officer 1c, 190285
GREEN, Cyril G, Armourer’s Mate, M 5081

A fourth Asphodel man, Able Seaman John Browning Smale, 21, died in an accident on 5 October 1918 and is buried with his shipmates at Capuccini.

The war was not otherwise kind to the Cabbages, with eight lost while on Q-ship duty and four on more traditional naval work, with Asphodel’s direct sisters HMS Arabis sunk by German torpedo boats off the Dogger Bank in 1916, HMS Primula sent to the bottom in the Med by SM U-35, and HMS Genista sunk by SM U-57 in the Atlantic the same year.

Post-war, most were paid off, sold either to the breakers or for mercantile use in the early 1920s and the few kept around were hulked as drill ships for the RNVR or tasked with ancillary uses such as fisheries patrol.

A few went on to be sold or donated to other governments, as military aid. This included HMS Zinnia heading to the Belgian Navy as a fishery protection vessel, HMS Pentstemon becoming the Chinese gunboat Hai Chow, HMS Gladiolus and HMS Jonquil becoming the Portuguese “cruisers” NRP República and NRP Carvalho Araújo, and HMS Geranium heading down south to become HMAS Geranium.

HMAS Geranium, 1930s. SLV 9916498703607636

This brings us to Asphodel’s second career.

Danish Service

For some 30 years, the Danes made steady use of the British-built 3,000-ton krydserkorvetten (cruiser corvette) Valkyrien, a close cousin of the Armstrong-built Chilean protected cruiser Esmeralda. She cruised the world and waved the Dannebrog as far away as Siam and Hong Kong and is most notable for overseeing the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) to the U.S. in 1917.

The white-hulled Valkyrien in the harbor at St. Thomas as the Danish flag comes down in the Virgin Islands, 31 March 1917. Behind her is the Danish-flag-flying grey-hulled transport USS Hancock (AP-5), which carried American Marines to the islands for the transfer. DH009717

Denmark’s only true cruiser, by the early 1920s, the ram-bowed Valkyrien was hopelessly obsolete and needed replacement.

However, after a wartime mobilization that saw the Danish military swell to over 75,000 and construct the 23 km-long Tunestillingen line of defenses near Copenhagen, the Danish fishing and merchant marine fleets had to absorb the losses of more than 324 ships to both sides during the conflict, and the economic burden of the reunification of economically depressed Southern Jutland (Northern Schleswig) from Weimar Germany in 1920, the Danes were flat broke and had little appetite for more military spending.

This led the government to the bargain basement deal that was HMS Asphodel.

A good deal lighter than the Valkyrien (1,250 tons vs 3,000) as our sloop had zero armor plating other than the shields of her main guns, she was nonetheless the same length (267 feet oal) while a lighter draft (11 feet vs 18 feet) allowed her to enter more colonial ports and harbors. While Asphodel only carried two 4.7-inch guns and another pair of 6-pounders, Valkyrien by 1915 only carried two aging 5.86″/32s and six 3″/55s. But the substantial savings was in crew, with Valkyrien requiring a minimum of 200 men even in light peacetime service (albeit allowing space for another 100 cadets), while Asphodel could be placed in full service with only 75 men in her complement.

As a no-brainer, the surplus ex-Asphodel was acquired for her value in scrap metal from the Admiralty in June 1920 and then sent for an overhaul at Orlogsværftets in Copenhagen.

Following her last summer cruise to Greenland and Iceland in 1921, Valkyrien was laid up in 1923 and sold for scrap the next year. Her spot was taken by the newly dubbed Fylla— the fourth Danish warship to carry the name, with the first two being sail-powered frigates (fregaten) completed in 1802 and 1812, respectively.

The name had previously been carried by an Orlogsværftets-built 8-gunned steam-powered armored schooner that joined the Danish fleet in 1863– just in time to fight the Germans– but spent her career cruising as a station ship in the Danish West Indies and around the Faroes, Greenland, and Iceland.

The third Danish warship Fylla, a 157-foot armored schooner launched in 1862 and decommissioned in 1894, accomplished several polar mapping and exploration cruises, leaving at least one geographic feature named after her in Greenland. She was kept as a pier side trainer and barracks ship for another decade, scrapped in 1903. The name comes from an old Norse verb which means roughly to fill or complete. THM-18183

She was rearmed at least thrice in her career, shifting from 60- and 30-pounder muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons to 3-inch rifled breechloaders in her final form. THM-18182

Our Fylla’s first Danish skipper was CDR Prince Axel, a swashbuckling 32-year-old grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark and at the time the fourth in line to the throne. Axel, who nursed a love of sports, flying, and fast cars his whole life, was a career naval officer, having joined the service in 1909 and cut his teeth on numerous Danish coastal battleships including tense Great War neutrality patrols threading the needle between the British and the Germans, later becoming one of the Danish Navy’s first aviators. In 1918, he led the Danish Naval Mission to America and returned to Europe in company with the dynamic Assistant SECNAV, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Axel had married a popular Swedish princess in 1919 and had only narrowly avoided an effort to draft him to fill a nascent throne in newly independent Finland.

Her inaugural cruise in late 1920 was captured in photos.

Fylla riding light with signal flags, THM-3927

Fylla off Godthab, Greenland, 27 September 1920 ES-167772

Fylla at anchor off Iceland THM-13968

Inspection ship Fylla returning around 1920 from her first patrol THM-41465

Fylla typically was employed as the station ship in Iceland and would patrol the Faeroes to the southeast and Greenland to the northwest as well, with the occasional visits to Holland, England, and Norway.

At the time, the Danes only had two smaller inspection ships on the same beat and they were significantly older and less well-armed: Island Falk (entered fleet 1906, 730 tons, 183 feet oal, 13 knots, 2×3″ guns) and Besytteren (entered fleet 1900, 450 tons, 142 feet oal, 11 knots, 2x57mm guns), so Fylla was the queen of the overseas fleet.

Postcard Reykjavik, harbor area with, among others, the inspection ship Fylla, circa 1926

English trawler Lord Ernle who had lost its propeller, was taken in tow by Fylla in the Denmark Strait and towed to Reykjavik, in the summer of 1931. THM-6220

Fylla raising ensign circa 1933. Note her stern 4.7″ gun THM-18491

Fylla, THM-18471

Fylla, THM-18477

Fylla, with a 20mm Madsen AAA gun fitted late in her career THM-18849

Fylla Greenland THM-18891

Danish Flower-class sloop Fylla ex-Asphodel

Danish Flower-class sloop Fylla, Jane’s 1929, ex-Asphodel

Fylla in Icelandic waters 1920s via Sapur, Icelandic National Museum

She would carry King Christian X to the Faeroe Islands and Iceland in June 1930, one of the first visits by a sitting Danish monarch to the far-flung Atlantic colonies. On the return leg, escorting the coastal battleship ship Niels Juel, the ships visited Oslo and saluted King Haakon VII.

Niels Juel and Fylla in Oslo, Norway July 7, 1930. The paintings show the Danish coastal defense ship Niels Juel (left) and the gunboat Fylla saluting the Norwegian King in Olso. The two vessels carried the Danish king Christian X to the Faeroe Islands and Iceland from June 1930, so this visit must have been on their way home to Copenhagen. Benjamin Olsen seems to have been part of the entourage. By Benjamin Olsen 1930 via the Forsvarsgalleriet.

She was graceful enough in Danish service that she caught the eye of maritime artist Christian Benjamin Olsen who captured her in at least three of his period works, several of which are in the Royal Danish Naval Museum in Copenhagen. Of note, Olsen visited the Faroe Islands and Iceland in 1921, 1926, and 1930, having frequent chances to see Fylla in action.

Inspektionsskibet Fylla at sea by Christian Benjamin Olsen

Inspektionsskibet Fylla off Iceland by Christian Benjamin Olsen

However, all good things come to an end. When the two large new aircraft-equipped inspection ships, Hvidbjornen (1,050 t, 196 feet oal, 2x87mm, 1 floatplane, 14 knots, circa 1928) and Ingolf (1,180 t, 213 feet oal, 2×4.7″/45, 1 floatplane, 16.5 knots, circa 1932), were ordered in the late 1920s/early 1930s, the need to retain the aging Fylla was removed.

At that, Fylla was withdrawn from service in 1933, disarmed, and sold for scrap.

Epilogue

Little remains of our subject.

Of her RN skippers, Copleston returned to England after the war and reverted to the Retired List in December 1918. A cricketer from a family of cricketers, he died in Devon in 1960, aged 85.

Meanwhile, the younger CDR James Charles Wauhope would post-Armistice volunteer for transfer to the Royal Australian Navy from which he would retire in 1929. Returning to England pre-war after working a claim in the Wewak goldfield in New Guinea for years, he rejoined the RN in WWII, ultimately serving as Naval Officer in Charge, Stornoway. Capt. Wauhope died a pauper in General Hospital Paddington, London in 1960, aged 76.

The Royal Navy commissioned a second HMS Asphodel, appropriately a Flower-class corvette (K56) in September 1940. She was sunk on 10 March 1944 off Cape Finisterre by U-575, with only five survivors.

Flower class Corvette HMS Asphodel K56 under tow on the Tyne, circa 1943, IWM FL 1109

Fylla’s first Danish skipper, Prince Axel, continued his military service albeit from a desk and was appointed a rear admiral on the naval staff in 1939. He was also simultaneously the director of the Danish East Asiatic Company shipping concern from 1934 to 1953 and had previously commanded the 8,100-ton SS Alsia under the EAC flag. During the war, although under surveillance by the Gestapo, he reportedly endorsed the scuttling of the Danish fleet in 1943 to keep it out of German hands, and quietly blessed the work of EAC’s fleet-at-large in Allied service– with the company losing at least six ships during the conflict. He also cultivated contacts with several of the Danish resistance groups. Promoted to a perfunctory full admiral in 1958, his youngest son, Prince Fleming, a naval cadet in 1945, served on active duty with the Danish Navy for several years as a submariner. Axel passed in 1964, aged 75, and was buried in his naval uniform.

Prince Flemming Valdemar (L), son of Prince Axel, cousin of King Christian X of Denmark, with members of the Danish Resistance in Copenhagen Denmark – 7-9 May 1945. Note Flemming is armed with a Swedish M37/39 Suomi SMG, the resistance member behind him has a Sten Mk II SMG. IWM – Pelman, L (Lt) Photographer. IWM A 28475

The Danes commissioned a fourth Fylla, a 1,700-ton Aalborg-built inspection ship (F351) that entered the fleet in 1963. She served until 1991.

Inspection ship F351 Fylla, 1986, in Greenland’s Prins Christians Sund med Ministerflag

Of Asphodel/Fylla‘s 111 sister Cabbages, a dozen had been lost in the Great War, one (HMS Valerian) was lost at sea in a hurricane off Cuba in 1926, one sunk by the Japanese in 1937 (ex-HMS Pentstemon/Hai Chow), at least three (ex-HMS Buttercup/Teseo, HMS Laburnum, and HMS Cornflower) were sunk in WWII. The last in RN service– and the last active coal-burner on the Admiralty List– HMS Rosemary, had been a fishery protection ship interbellum then was pressed into service as an escort during WWII, was only sent to the breakers in 1947.

Just one Cabbage is believed to remain, the Anchusa group Q-ship HMS Saxifrage, which continued to serve as RNVR President from 1922 through 1982 as a moored drillship sans guns or engines. Sold to private interests, she has changed hands several times in the past few decades and, carrying a wild dazzle paint scheme, is currently owned by a charitable trust that is seeking to preserve her. Laid up at Chatham Dock with much of her topside razed, she may not be around much longer.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025: The 80 Eightballs

Posted on January 22, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

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Warship Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025: The 80 Eightballs

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 50755

Above we see the Lapwing-class “Old Bird” USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) underway off Shanghai, China, circa the late 1920s, following conversion for river gunboat service. Note the sampan in the foreground. She rescued 24 shipwrecked Japanese sailors some 85 years ago this week.

The favor would not be repaid a year later.

The Lapwings

When a young upstart by the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt came to the Navy Department in 1913 as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he helped engineer one of the largest naval build-ups in world history. By the time the U.S. entered World War I officially in 1917, it may have been Mr. Wilson’s name in the role of Commander in Chief, but it was Mr. Roosevelt’s fleet.

One of his passions was the concept of the Great North Sea Mine Barrage, a string of as many as 400,000 (planned) sea mines that would shut down the Kaiser’s access once and for all to the Atlantic and save Western Europe (and its overseas Allies) from the scourge of German U-boats. A British idea dating from late 1916, the U.S. Navy’s Admiral Sims thought it was a bullshit waste of time but it was FDR’s insistence to President Wilson in the scheme that ultimately won the day.

While a fleet of converted steamships (and two old cruisers- USS San Francisco and USS Baltimore) started dropping mines in June 1918, they only managed to sow 70,177 by Armistice Day and accounted for a paltry two U-boats gesunken (although some estimates range as high as 8 counting unaccounted-for boats).

And the thing is, you don’t throw that many mines in international shipping lanes without having a plan to clean them up after the war (while having the bonus of using those mine countermeasures ships to sweep enemy-laid fields as well).

That’s where the 54 vessels of the Lapwing-class came in.

Review of the Atlantic Fleet Minesweeping Squadron, November 1919. USS Lapwing (AM-1) and other ships of the squadron anchored in the Hudson River, off New York City, while being reviewed by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels on 24 November 1919, following their return to the United States after taking part in clearing the North Sea mine barrage. The other ships visible are USS Lark (Minesweeper No. 21), with USS SC-208 alongside (at left); and USS Swan (Minesweeper No. 34) with USS SC-356 alongside (at right). Heron was there but is not seen in the photo. U.S. Navy photo NH 44903. Note the crow’s nest for sighting floating mines.

Inspired by large seagoing New England fishing trawlers, these 187-foot-long ships were large enough, at 965 tons full, to carry a pair of economical reciprocating diesel engines (or two Scotch boilers and one VTE engine) with a decent enough range to make it across the Atlantic on their own (though with a blisteringly slow speed of just 14 knots when wide open on trials.)

Lapwing class 1944 profile USS Kingfisher AM-25 ATO-135

They could also use a sail rig to poke along at low speed with no engines, a useful trait for working in a minefield. Their two masts stood 73 feet high above the LWL.

Lapwing-class sister USS Falcon AM-28 in Pensacola Bay 1924 with the Atlantic submarine fleet. Note her rig

While primarily built to sweep mines, their battery amounted to a pair of 3″/50 singles with 20 ready rounds in the chest on her superstructure deck and 200 below deck. Capable of landing a squad ashore as needed, the standard small arms locker for a Lapwing class sweeper included a single Lewis light machine gun, 10 rifles (M1903s), and five revolvers (likely M1917s).

Their electrical system included two 25 kW generators as well as a smaller oscillator and radio generator which powered two 24-inch searchlights, a submarine signal apparatus, a radio outfit as well as her lights. Deck machinery included three stern hoisting winches for sweeping gear, an anchor hoist, and towing engine, and a capstan engine. Small boats amounted to a 30-foot motor launch, a 28-foot whaleboat, and a 16-foot dingy, allowing a total capacity of carrying 82 persons. Their onboard workshop included a lathe, a shaper, and a drill press along with assorted hand tools.

Crew amounted to four officers, six CPOs, and 40 ratings.

The class leader, Lapwing, designated Auxiliary Minesweeper #1 (AM-1), was laid down at Todd in New York in October 1917 and another 53 soon followed. While five were canceled in November 1918, the other 48 were eventually finished– even if they came to the war a little late.

This leads us to the hero of our tale, the humble Penguin.

Meet Penguin

Our subject is the second U.S. Navy ship to carry the name of the Antarctic flightless bird.

The first was a 155-foot screw steamer armed with a quartet of 32-pounders and a single 12-pounder that served with distinction on the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron and along the Gulf of Mexico during the Civil War.

Bombardment and Capture of Port Royal, South Carolina, 7 November 1861 Engraving published in “Harper’s Weekly”, July-December 1861. It depicts Federal warships, under Flag Officer Samuel F. DuPont, USN, bombarding Fort Beauregard (at right) and Fort Walker (at left). The Confederate squadron commanded by Commodore Josiah Tattnall is in the left-center distance. Subjects identified below the image bottom are (from left): tug Mercury, Fort Walker, USS Wabash (DuPont’s flagship), USS Susquehanna, CSS Huntsville, Commo. Tattnall, USS Bienville, USS Pembina, USS Seneca, USS Ottawa, USS Unadilla, USS Pawnee, USS Mohican, USS Isaac Smith, USS Curlew, USS Vandalia, USS Penguin, USS Pocahontas, USS Seminole, Fort Beauregard, USS R.B. Forbes and “Rebel Camp”.NH 59256

The second Penguin (Minesweeper No. 33) was laid down on 17 November 1917 at Elizabethport by the New Jersey Dry Dock & Transportation Co.; launched on 12 June 1918 and commissioned on 21 November 1918– just 10 days after the Armistice.

Sent to New York, she spent the next six months in minesweeping and salvage work for the Third Naval District.

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) liberty party gathered on the ship’s stern, preparing to go ashore after reviewing the Fleet in New York Harbor, on 26 December 1918. NH 59647

Working the Barrage

Outfitted with “electrical protective devices,” Penguin set out for Scotland in late March 1919 to join the North Sea Minesweeping Detachment.

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33) underway near USS Scranton (ID # 3511), probably circa 28 March 1919. Photograph from the USS Scranton photo album kept by J.D. Bartar, one of her crew members. NH 99458

USS Penguin close astern of USS Scranton (ID # 3511), as a Chief Petty Officer, is putting the heaving line 60 ft. between the two ships, circa 28 March 1919. Note the line’s weight in the air above Penguin’s bow. Photograph from the USS Scranton photo album kept by J.D. Bartar, one of her crew members. NH 99450

Beginning operations in June 1919, Penguin was on hand near Scapa Flow when the 72 ships of RADM Ludwig von Reuter’s interned former German High Seas Fleet elected to scuttle rather than have their ships turned over to the Allies. She raced to the scene to help save what could be kept above the waves.

USS Penguin steaming at full speed for Scapa Flow, on 21 June 1919, during an unsuccessful effort to arrive in time to save some of the German warships, scuttled there on that day. Note the identification letters PD on her bow. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by DeLong, of USS Black Hawk, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 38. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99472

In all, Penguin would spend four months plumbing the depths of the North Sea for mines. This included picking up damage in two different explosions. One of these, a mine going off in her kite, resulted in three days in the yard for repair. The second caused more extensive destruction that required her to be repaired at Chatham for a month.

Three explosions between Lapwing and Penguin

USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33), at left, and USS Lapwing (Minesweeper # 1) coming up to repass sweep gear, after exploding a mine during the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage in 1919. Note the identification letters on the ships’ bows: PD on Penguin and W on Lapwing. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by DeLong, of USS Black Hawk, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 59. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99473

The Buoy Laying Division in Kirkwall Harbor From left to right, in the center: USS Osprey (Minesweeper # 29), USS Penguin (Minesweeper # 33), and USS Lapwing (Minesweeper # 1) moored together in Kirkwall Harbor, Orkney Islands, during the sweeping of the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919. Note the identification letters on the ships’ bows: A on Osprey, PD on Penguin, and W on Lapwing. Halftone reproduction of a photograph taken by Kitress, of USS Swan, published in the cruise book Sweeping the North Sea Mine Barrage, 1919, page 63. Donation of Chief Storekeeper Charles A. Free. NH 99474

Her repairs at Chatham were completed, and she set off back across the Atlantic with the tug USS Concord on October 31, sailing via the Azores.

For her dangerous service in the Barrage between 5 June and 30 September 1919, Penguin earned a Great War Victory Medal

Peacetime service

Once returning stateside, Penguin was transferred to the Pacific and laid up at Pearl Harbor on 1 June 1922.

With a need for shallow draft gunboats in the Asiatic Fleet to work China’s civil war-torn inland waterways during the country’s Warlord Era, Penguin landed her sweeping gear and, recommissioned 13 October 1923 along with sister USS Pigeon (AM-47), would spend the next seven years on China station ala “The Sand Pebbles.”

USS Penguin (AM-47) in Chinese waters 1920s

As related by her XO at the time, LT (later VADM) Felix L. Johnson, Penguin made it from Pearl to Shanghai with the help of rigged auxiliary sails, which were good for nine knots. Once there, things often got hairy.

From his oral history:

We spent the next two years steaming up and down the Yangtze, protecting missionaries when they had a rough time and looking after American rights. We could only go as far as Ichang, the foot of the gorges, where we began to strike the rapids. We had two little gunboats, the USS Palos (PG-16) and Monocacy (PG-20), which did the run further up from Ichang to Chungking. Some bandits and Chinese were beginning to take cracks at us. We put an armed guard, eight enlisted men, and one officer, on each American merchant ship running the 200–300 miles to Chungking. I’ve made the run many times,the first time I was ever fired on.

Another anecdote from Johnson:

This was the time of the Chinese warlords, and we were always afraid that Chiang So Lin, the warlord of the north, was going to come down and knock everything off the river. Wo Pei Fu was the other warlord. As long as they were suspicious of each other they did not bother us much. One time, the American Consul got word that a group was going to try to take over the consulate. Our Herman Barker took about 40 men, marched from the Standard Oil dock up to the consulate, and spent the night. Just a few shots were fired, but the next day Barker had to march backward all the way, a mile and one half to the dock, because the Chinese were following. The captain fired off a couple of the ship’s 3-inch guns, just up in the air. We never had anybody killed. The objective of the bandits was plunder.

For her tense China service, between June and July 1925, Penguin, along with the destroyers and gunboats Edsall, Elcano, Hart, Isbel, MacLeish, McCormack, Noa, Parrott, Peary, Pillsbury, Pope, Preble, Sacramento, Stewart, and Truxtun earned the (Shanghai) Expeditionary Medal.

She was stationed at Kluklang (near Hankow, now Wuhan) starting in February 1927 for several months, as the sole foreign naval presence in the city during the conflict between the Guomindang army and warlord Sun Chuanfan.

For her 13-month period patrolling along the broad and often very wild banks of the Yangtze River, between 26 September 1926 and 21 October 1927, Penguin’s officers and men aboard during that frame earned the Yangtze Service Medal.

Lapwing class, 1929 janes

The “Old Duck” Lifesaver

Her China service was taken over by newer and more purpose-built gunboats, and Penguin was reassigned to work out of Guam as the territory’s guard ship around 1930. Nicknamed the “Old Duck,” the reports of the Asiatic Fleet from the 1930s frequently note minor problems and mechanical issues with the aging gunboat.

As the Navy had opened mess attendant and steward positions to CHamoru volunteers– with some 700 authorized by 1941 (12 were killed at Pearl Harbor) it made sense for four of Penguin’s crew to be drawn from the local population.

Penguin proved a godsend to many on the sea around Guam during this quiet decade, patrolling the new transpacific air routes and shipping lanes.

Among those plucked from the waves were the 24 mariners of the 91-foot wooden hulled Japanese fishing schooner Daichs Saiho Maru (Seiho Maru No. 1) which wrecked– in a restricted area– on a reef off Guam’s southeast tip on 15 January 1940. Not sure if a fishing schooner needs a 24-member crew, but hey…

A week later, after negotiations by the Navy governor of Guam, Penguin transferred these survivors to the passing Japanese Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) liner Suwa Maru after the Imperial Navy refused access to land them on nearby Saipan itself. Not weird.

Drums of War

With the march towards open combat in the Pacific, the forces on Guam, under Navy Capt. George Johnson McMillin (USNA 1911) as military governor, was sparse.

In the summer of 1940, two .50 caliber water-cooled machine guns were fitted to each AM (Penguin included) and DM in the Pacific Fleet, and Admiral Kimmel, in his 1941 report, recommended additional guns. He also noted that portable depth charge racks- that didn’t interfere with sweeping– each carrying eight ash cans, were being provided to the Mine Divisions.

To help out Penguin, the Navy in October 1941 shipped two “Yippee” yard boats, USS YP-16 and YP-17 to the island as deck cargo aboard the oiler USS Ramapo (AO-12). These were recycled Prohibition-era USCG “six-bitters,” 75-foot wooden hulled patrol boats (ex-CG-267 and ex-CG-275, respectively), each armed with light machine guns and crewed by eight men commanded by a CBM, augmented by four Chamorros. Both of these craft, along with the rest of the island, were seriously damaged in a typhoon in November.

The territory’s station ship, the 4,800-ton freighter USS Gold Star (AK-12), with much of her crew made up of Chamorros, natives of Guam, was in the Philippines in December 1941 on a regular inter-islands cargo run. A small 5,380-ton tanker, USS Robert L. Barnes (SP-3088), had been a fixture in Apra Harbor since 1920 where she had been used as a stationary oil storage vessel, towed every few years to Cavite for maintenance.

That’s it for afloat assets.

Still, the Navy, in June 1941, ordered Penguin to patrol off the Harbor entrance each night, a responsibility only occasionally alternated with the YP boats after October. This order came with a new skipper, the Old Duck’s 16th and final, LT James William Haviland (USNA 1925).

Ashore, a coastal defense battery of 6-inch guns that had been installed in 1909 to defend the station had been withdrawn due to budget cuts in the 1930s along with a Marine aviation unit.

This left 274 Navy personnel (including Penguin’s crew) between the Naval Yard at Piti, the Hospital (which had 70 Medical Corps personnel including five female nurses), and the radio stations at Agana and Libugon. A force of 150 Marines, barracked at Sumay under Lt. Col. William K. McNulty, which was not a combat unit. The Marines had the primary mission to train the recently formed 240-member territorial militia (the Guam Insular Force Guard) which had only been established in April 1941 and the local civilian police force (the Guam Insular Patrol).

Besides the revolver-equipped Insular Patrol, the Insular Guard was armed with just three Lewis guns, four Thompson submachine guns, six BARs, and 85 Springfield M1903 rifles which may have been just for drill purposes (perhaps early low-number ’03s that had been withdrawn by the War Department as unsafe) as several reportedly bore labels that said “Do not shoot. For training only.” There were no mortars, artillery pieces, or heavy machine guns available to the ashore forces. Nothing in a larger caliber than .30-06.

Guam Insular Force Guard parade, displaying of Guam Flag, 1941. Note the Navy whites and turned down “Donald Ducks.” Guam Public Library System Collection

The improvements in the outlying U.S. Navy outposts around the Hawaiian islands from ADM Kimmel’s summer 1941 report, covering Palmyra Reef, Johnston Island, Wake, American Samoa, and Guam, painted a hopeful picture so long as the war could be put off until after 1943:

With war warnings ramping up, the base evacuated its 104 civilian dependents aboard the steamer SS Henderson to San Francisco in October.

On 5 December 1941, the Navy signaled Capt. McMillin to begin burning his classified materials. At the same time, ADM Thomas C. Hart, the commander of the Asiatic Fleet, ordered Guam’s station ship, Gold Star, to delay sailing back to her homeport and instead remain in the Philippines.

It was clear no one expected Guam to hold if things went hot, and no one was coming in the short term to help them.

War!

As detailed post-war by Capt. McMillin:

0545, 8 December [local] 1941, a message was received which had been originated by the Commander in Chief, Asiatic fleet, to the effect that Japan had commenced hostilities by attacking Pearl Harbor, prior to a declaration of war.

This kickstarted the local plans which included standing up the Insular Guard, arresting known Japanese nationals (including three of eight infiltrators who recently arrived from Saipan), shutting down the navigational lights and beacons, and evacuating local civilians away from potential military targets.

Immediately post-Pearl Harbor, a group of 24 local American civilians on Guam, 17 of which were retired military, mustered into their own group and volunteered to help defend their home. Fighting with the Insular Guard, at least two would go on to perish in Japanese POW camps.

As Penguin, which was out on her regular nightly patrol, had a broken radio (!), one of the Yippie boats was sent out to warn them that a war was on but the minesweeper was already heading back in, with a third of the crew already departed the Old Duck on their way to Recreation Beach to make initial preparations for an afternoon beach party.

As told by a member of her crew, CBM Robert William O’Brien:

The beach had been frantically trying to radio us since early morning, but naturally, they couldn’t reach us, as we had no means of communication. We were still without it and would be until the end because our one and only radioman was in that first boatload of men already ashore. He had gone after spare parts.

Well, you can imagine our consternation. There we were, moored to a buoy right in the middle of the harbor with our boilers dead, as we had doused them upon arrival as we could see the repair barge on the way out from the little Navy Yard in Piti.

Raising steam and getting underway with a reduced crew and no radio, the scratch-and-dent Penguin broke out the ammo for her two water-cooled .50 cals and her two 3-inchers and was as ready as she could be when the first wave of Japanese bombers from Saipan arrived overhead at 0827.

At least one Japanese plane would turn back from Penguin, smoking, while Ensign Robert White, head of one of the gun crews, was killed. A trio of bombs landed so close as to open her seams. Soon, LT Haviland, her skipper, wounded, ordered the men to take to the boats and pull the plug on the Old Duck in 200 fathoms of water so that she couldn’t be salvaged.

“The ship was gallantly fought, but was soon in a sinking condition,” reported McMillian. “The ship was abandoned in a sinking condition and sank in deep water off Orote Point. There several men were injured, but all of the crew succeeded in getting ashore on life rafts, bringing Ensign White’s body with them.”

Then came the fight ashore. Penguin’s men– most of which had lost their shoes in the swim ashore– joined with the under-armed Marines, Insular Guards, and self-mobilized civilians to resist a force of Japanese that, unknown to them, would amount to nearly 6,000 infantry and Naval Special Landing Force members.

A Japanese illustration of the main landing on Guam by the 144th Infantry Regiment, South Seas Detachment. Painting by Kohei Ezaki.

Weapons were scarce.

“I shared a .45 with seven other men,” said Chief O’Brian, who had caught shrapnel in the sinking of Penguin. “If I got it, number two took the gun; if he got it, number three took the gun, and so on.”

The ground combat, which began on the morning of the 10th, was sharp but soon over. Seven further Navy men– six from Penguin— were killed, with the men lost from the minesweeper executed on the beach they were defending.

From Chief O’Brien:

We were waiting for them when they approached Agana, and they had to give themselves away for a group of our Penguin men, six in all, had been established at the power plant. The power plant was on the beach and when they saw the Japanese moving up on the beach, instead of falling back to the Plaza a half mile inland, as had been their orders, they decided to attack the Japanese. They did, and the initial surprise worked well for a few minutes. They had one BAR with them and they moved down a good number. However…in moments they recovered from their surprise and killed all six of our boys quickly.

The Japanese showed their later-to-be-learned attitude by butchering these six so they were beyond recognition. Later one of the Fathers was permitted to take some CHamorus and bury them, and none could be identified, they were so badly mutilated.

The six Minemen killed on the beach:

Ernst, Robert Walter, SM3c, 3812969, USN, USS Penguin
Fraser, Rollin George, BM1c, 3110965, USN, USS Penguin
Hurd, Seba Guarland, SM3c, 3371486, USN, USS Penguin
O’Neill, Frank James, BM1c, 3282372, USN, USS Penguin
Pineault, Leo Joseph, Cox, 2044461, USN, USS Penguin
Schweighhart, John, GM1c, 2282954, USN, USS Penguin

Penguin altogether had 22 of her crew wounded in action– almost half her complement– between the attacks on their ship on the 8th, Japanese air attacks on Guam on the 9th, and the ground combat on the 10th.

Seven Navy bluejackets evaded initial capture and escaped into the jungle: four from the Agana Radio station– RM1c Albert Joseph Tyson and George Ray Tweed, YM1c Adolphe Yablonsky, and Chief Aerographer Luther Wilbur Jones; one from the Piti Naval Yard– CMM Malvern Hill Smoot; and two from Penguin, Chief Motor Machinist’s Mate Michael L. Krump and MM1c Clarence Bruce Johnston. All but Tweed were found during the Japanese occupation and beheaded, with Krump and Johnston holding out until October 1942, an amazing 10 months behind enemy lines.

The Insular Guard lost four killed and 22 wounded, almost all in the short 10 December ground battle.

MacNulty, the 49-year-old Marine barracks commander, was a fighter, having earned a Silver Sar in the Argonne in 1918 and the Navy Cross in Nicaragua in 1926. He lost a full one-third of his men (13 dead and 37 wounded) as casualties and probably would have gone down swinging an empty rifle if Capt. McMillin hadn’t ordered the surrender.

“I was captured in the Reception Room of my quarters about twenty minutes after the cease-firing signal. The leader of the squad of Japanese who entered my quarters required me to remove my jacket and trousers before marching me into the Plaza, where officers and men were being assembled, covered by machine guns,” said McMillin.

Forced to run a gauntlet of rifle butts, the surrendered Americans were forced to strip and lay face up in the sun until noon when they were herded indoors.

They had a whole new war ahead of them.

The POW chapter

Penguin, sunk in deep waters, escaped the Japanese as did Gold Star, which would survive the war carrying precious cargo throughout the South Pacific.

The old tanker Barnes, left strafed and abandoned, was pressed into Japanese service and, recovered at war’s end, was taken into British merchant service until 1949.

The Yippies, YP-16, and YP-17 were strafed by the Japanese and set to the torch by their crews.

In all, 487 people were taken prisoner of war on Guam in December 1941, according to research by Roger Mansell. They were shipped to Japan on 10 January 1942 aboard the transport Argentina Maru. This included not only the legitimate American military POWs but also 13 local Catholic clergy (two of whom were Spanish citizens), 11 Pan-American Airways employees, and six civilian sea cable employees.

At least 19 of the Guam POWs would perish over the next 3.5 years in captivity.

A handful (the nurses, Spanish clergy, a military wife, and her newborn baby) were repatriated in 1942.

The officers, medical corps POWs, and senior NCOs were largely sent at first to the Zentsuji “model camp” which was shown off to the International Red Cross.

Group portrait of POWs from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified are Ensign Walter Senchuk, United States (US) Navy Reserve, and USS Penguin (extreme right), the other men are unidentified. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

Group portrait of prisoners of war (POWs) from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified, left to right: Lieutenant (Lt) James W Haviland, United States Navy, USS Penguin; Lt John L Nestor, US Navy, USS R L Barnes; Major G V Porter, US Army; Mr H P Havenor, US Bureau of the Budget; and Lt Arnold J Carlson, US Navy, Supply. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

Group portrait of prisoners of war (POWs) from Zentsuji Camp at Shikoku, Osaka, Japan. Identified, left to right: unidentified; Ensign Edwin Wood, United States (US) Navy, USS Penguin; Ensign Hugh Mellon, US Navy Reserve (USNR); Ensign Joseph Martin Jnr, USNR; and Warrant Officer Robert C Haun, US Navy, Supply. Most of the men in the camp were Allied officers captured in the early battles of 1941. The camp was a ‘show camp’ used by the Japanese for propaganda purposes, but after 1942 conditions worsened.

A group of about 80 prisoners (at least 65 of which had been captured on Guam), considered by the Japanese to be hard cases, were made to work as stevedores on the docks at Osaka Camp No.1 “until they gave the guards so much trouble that they shipped them to a new camp at Hirohata in August 1943 where they acquired the nickname ‘The 80 Eightballs.”

These Eightballs included several men from Penguin.

Of the 55 men from Penguin that Mansell noted as surviving the Battle of Guam and becoming POWs, Capt. Sidney E. Seid, the captured U.S. Army Medical Corps officer at Hirohata, treated at least 10 of Penguin’s crew while at Hirohata for various ailments and injuries. One member of her crew, SK3c Robert Brown MacLean, died of pneumonia in 1944 while a POW.

In total, of the four officers and 60 enlisted among Penguin’s pre-war crew, including regulars, reservists, and Chamorro, 10 were killed in action, died in prison camps, or were executed by the Japanese. Those who survived– 22 of them wounded in action– earned every grain of their POW medals, spending even longer under the Empire’s locks than even the “Battling Bastards of Bataan.” At least one of the ship’s POWs, a young seaman, would suffer a complete mental breakdown and spend the rest of his long life in VA hospitals.

Chief O’Brien, who weighed 175 pounds going into the war, was down to 120 at the end of it.

During the last summer there, the ill effects of living on dried sweet potato vines and dock sweepings finally commenced showing up in a big way. Everyone seemed to be sick at once. The Japanese felt the same way about human beings as they did about their work animals; if sick, cut down the food. If they died… oh, well.

Penguin’s skipper, LT Haviland, was held at the Rokuroshi camp outside of Osaka. Liberated post-war, he was advanced to Captain and presented with a Silver Star. He retired as a rear admiral and passed in 1960 aged 55.

Both Capt. McMillin, the Naval Governor of Guam, and Marine Lt. Col MacNulty would survive the war in the camps as well. McMillin, liberated in August 1945 by Soviet paratroopers at Mukden in Manchuria, would go on to retire as a rear admiral in 1949, then go on to work as a postmaster before passing in 1983, aged 93. MacNulty, also held at the Rokuroshi, retired as a brigadier general in 1946 and passed in 1964, aged 72.

Epilogue

The Marines, with help from the Navy and Coast Guard, returned to liberate Guam in July 1944. RM1c George Tweed emerged from his cave, having evaded capture for 31 months.

The Navy recycled the name “Penguin” during WWII for the lead ship (ASR-12) of a class of submarine rescue and salvage vessels. Commissioned 29 May 1944. She spent a lengthy career working out of New London with the Second Fleet and Rota with the Sixth and, while she conducted hundreds of drills and dozens of tows, she gratefully was never called on to conduct rescue operations for an actual submarine disaster. She decommissioned in 1970.

USS Penguin (ASR-12) photographed on 21 June 1953. NH 105502

Sadly, the Navy has been without a “Penguin” on the Navy List for the past half-century, and neither Haviland, McMillin, nor MacNulty have had a ship named in their honor. That should change.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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

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Warship Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025: Go Long

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Warship Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025: Go Long

Naval History and Heritage Command photo NH 51351

Above we see the Clemson-class “flush decker” USS Long (Destroyer No. 209), taking water over the bow, during her squadron’s experimental Alaska cruise, in 1937.

Don’t let her Great War-era good looks fool you, Long would go on to earn nine battle stars in the Pacific in WWII and be lost some 80 years ago this month.

The Clemsons

One of the massive fleets of 156 Clemson-class flush-decker destroyers, like most of her sisters, Long came too late to help lick the Kaiser. An expansion of the almost identical Wickes-class destroyers with a third more fuel capacity to enable them to escort a convoy across the Atlantic without refueling, the Clemsons were sorely needed to combat the pressing German submarine threat of the Great War.

At 1,200 tons and with a top speed of 35 knots, they were brisk vessels ready for the task.

Inboard and outboard profiles for a U.S. Navy Clemson-class destroyer, in this case, USS Doyen (DD-280)

Meet Long

Our subject is the only warship named for the Secretary of the Navy during the Spanish-American War, John Davis Long, one of the fathers of the “New American Navy.”

Laid down by William Cramp & Sons at Philadelphia on 23 September 1918– just Pershing’s Doughboys came out on top in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel– Long was just too late for the Great War. Launched on 26 April 1919, she was commissioned on 20 October 1919.

Of note, Long was a bit different from the rest of her Clemson-class sisters. While they were mostly completed with four single 4″/50s as a main battery, Long and her sister USS Hovey (DD 208) were completed with four twin 4″/50 mounts, doubling their guns.

Besides Long and Hovey, only the old (Caldwell-class) destroyer USS Stockton (DD 73) carried this Mk 14 mount, and she only did as a single experimental model mounted forward.

Stockton with her twin 4″/50 Mk 14

Hovey and Long carried four of these mounts, one forward and aft and two amidships.

USS Hovey (DD-208) view looking down from the foremast, showing the twin 4/50 gun mounts atop her midships deckhouse, along with a loading practice machine (in the lower left), ready service ammunition stowage, and three of the ship’s smokestacks. Taken during the mid-1930s. Collection of Rear Admiral Elmer E. Duval, Sr., who was Hovey’s Commanding Officer at the time. NH 99573

Postbellum service and a decade-long nap

While she didn’t get a chance to fire her guns in anger during the war itself, Long was nonetheless sent “Over There” following her East Coast shakedown cruise, assigned to DesDiv 26, she was assigned to the war-torn Adriatic and Mediterranean in the tense post-war era and served in the region as a station ship.

USS Long (DD-209) dressed in her glad rags next to one of her sisters in the Mediterranean, and two other dressed warships to the rear, circa 1919-1920. Courtesy of Jack Howland, 1982. NH 93979

Remaining overseas, she was sent to the exotic climes of the Asiatic Fleet in late 1920, based at Cavite.

USS Long (DD-209) and another destroyer of the Asiatic Fleet, c 1920s. Note the local vessel traffic– junks etc.– and extensive awning fits, common in the Pacific inter-war. Courtesy of Capt. G. F. Swainson, USN, 1969 NH 67244

Ordered back home after her globetrotting overseas service, Long was mothballed due to peacetime budget cuts– the Navy shrank from 752 ships in 1919 to just 379 by the end of 1922.

With that, Long decommissioned at San Diego on 30 December 1922, but she was kept on emergency standby if needed.

The 62 mothballed Clemsons at San Diego in the 1920s were, under Special Plan Orange (a Pacific war against the Empire of Japan), considered able to reactivate within 30 days as Category B assets after receiving an officer and 13 men from as a “nucleus” crew from an active duty sister– Long would get hers from USS Henshaw (DD 278) while Hovey would get her baker’s dozen from USS Moody (DD 277).

Another 21 rates would come from the Fleet Reserve pool. The balance of the recommissioning crew, 3 officers and 80 men, would be recalled reservists in the Third Naval District (New York). In all, this would give these tin cans an authorized 4 officers and 114 men, a force that could be fleshed out by a truckload of new recruits right from the depot if it fell short.

The rates drawn for the nucleus crew and Fleet Reserve:

Thirty-four mothballed destroyers of the U.S. Navy decommissioned in 1921 and tied up at the San Diego Naval Base, being hauled from their berths by tugs to replace ships of the 11th and 12th squadrons that were being laid up. USS Long (DD-209) can be seen as tugs prepare to move her out, on 21 September 1929. Courtesy of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, San Francisco, California, 1969. NH 69123

Salad days

Between 1930-31, 60 Navy high mileage active duty flush-deckers with worn-out Yarrow boilers were decommissioned and disposed of– it was cheaper to scrap them than rebuild them. This required a dip into the reserve fleet to reactivate 60 of the low-mileage tin cans that had been growing algae on their hulls to take their place.

That meant Long, which recommissioned at San Diego on 29 March 1930, had her hull cleaned and was brought back to life, this time assigned to the Pacific Fleet.

A circa 1930s photo of USS Long, note her giant hull numbers, which were typical of the period. NARA 80-G-1025957

She maintained the standard peacetime operational tempo common to the fleet in the 1930s, alternating between training cruises and large fleet problems.

Battleship USS Maryland (BB-46) and escorting destroyers USS Hovey (DD-208), and USS Long (DD-209) (ships listed left to right) In the Miraflores Locks, while transiting the Panama Canal during the annual inter-ocean movement of the U.S. Fleet, 24 April 1931. Note the distinctive twin 4″/50 Mk 14 gun mountings carried by Hovey and Long. 80-G-455918

Part of the combined U.S. fleet moored in Balboa harbor on 25 October 1934. Ships present include two battleships at dock, three cruisers, while the leviathan destroyer tenders USS Whitney (AD-4) and Dobbin (AD-3) nurse more than 40 destroyers. Among the latter are McFarland (DD-237), Goff (DD-247), and Long (DD-209). 80-G-455966

In the summers of 1936 and 1937, the Navy sent destroyer squadrons (along with the carrier USS Ranger) into Alaskan waters to get a feel for fleet operations in that increasingly valuable territory. As Alaska was far removed from the CONUS, and its Aleutians chain rather close to Northern Japan– with Attu island just 1,300 miles from Hokkaido while some 2,800 miles from Seattle– the writing was on the wall that the territory could find itself a difficult battleground should war come between the U.S. and the Empire.

Following these deployments, at the urging of a report by RADM Arthur J. Hepburn’s board, the Navy in 1938 recommended the construction of a naval base on sprawling Amaknak Island, at Dutch Harbor, with the first troops arriving there in June 1941.

Long and her direct sister Hovey, accompanied by half-sisters USS Dallas (DD-199), Wasmuth (DD-338), Zane (DD-337), and Trever (DD-339), made the 1937 sortie.

The photos from the cruise show an idyllic window into what would be an interbellum period.

Talk about a recruiting poster! USS Long (DD-209) underway during an Alaskan cruise, circa 1937. Note her twin 4/50 gun mountings. She was one of two ships of her class to carry these weapons and would trade them in during WWII for a quartet of 3″/50s. NH 63243

Destroyers USS Long (DD-209) and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) in Chelkate Inlet with the Kakuhau Range Mountains in the background during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109579

USS Long (DD-209) leading USS Wasmuth (DD338), during the Alaskan cruise of 1937. NH 51845

Clemson class destroyers maneuvering at sea during an Alaska cruise. Left to right: USS Wasmuth (DD-338), Long (DD-209), USS Zane (DD-337), and USS Trever (DD-339), 1937. NH 109560

Destroyers in Wrangell Narrows, after view of USS Dallas (DD-199), USS Wasmuth (DD-338), and USS Long (DD-209) following North Flat South end lights in Wrangell Narrows during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109578

Destroyers USS Long (DD-209) in front with USS Trever (DD339) and USS Zane (DD-337) in the rear during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109581

Destroyers USS Wasmuth (DD-338) and USS Long (DD-209) maneuvering while flying their flag signals during an Alaska cruise, 1937. NH 109582

During the 1937 Alaska cruise, destroyer USS Dallas (DD-199) noses her bow toward the city of Juneau, the capital of the Alaska Territory, situated on the Gastineau Channel with a population of about 4,500 people. USS Long (DD-209) and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) are already docked in the foreground, with a 250-foot Lake class Coast Guard cutter of the Bering Sea Patrol to the right. NH 109568

Now that is MWR! Sailors from USS Dallas, Long, and Wasmuth fishing in Auan Creep Hump Back Bay, Alaska NH 118928

Destroyers docked at Skagway, Alaska: USS Dallas (DD-199), USS Long (DD-209), and USS Wasmuth (DD-338) as they dock side by side at Skagway, Alaska, with snow-covered mountains in the background, 1937. NH 109565

The cruise would also see some dramatic images captured, with Long leading the pack of greyhounds.

USS Long (DD-209) leading other destroyers in a change of course, during the Alaska cruise, in 1937. NH 51353

USS Long (DD-209) leading sister USS Wasmuth (DD 338) through Fitzhugh Sound, British Columbia, during the Alaskan cruise of 1937. NH 51847

Long rolling, during the Alaska cruise, in 1937. NH 51350

Destroyer tender USS Dixie (AD-14), was photographed in early 1940 with USS Long (DD-209) alongside. NH 89401

DMS Conversion

With the class having so many hulls, and the Navy steadily building more advanced classes of destroyers, the Clemsons saw many of these aging greyhounds converted to other uses including as “green dragon” fast troop transports (ADP) able to put a battalion ashore via davit-carried LCVPs, fast minelayers (DMs) carrying 80 mines, small seaplane tenders (AVD) capable of supporting a squadron of flying boats such as PBYs, and fast minesweepers (DMS).

In late 1940, nine of the class– Chandler, Southard, Hovey, Hopkins, Zane, Wasmuth, Trever, Perry, and Long, became ersatz minesweepers. Long became DMS-12 on 19 November 1940.

The DMS conversion meant the installation of mechanical sweep gear, primarily a pair of paravane cranes on the stern (port and starboard), along with large deck-mounted cable winches, and space for four vanes and kites.

They still had their depth charge racks (repositioned forward and angled outboard), guns (which were downgraded), and two Y-gun depth charge throwers to continue to work as escorts, as well as (eventually) an SC radar. Gone were the torpedo tubes and, as they didn’t need to be too fast, they landed the No.4 boiler and had their exhaust vented into three shortened funnels, with the fourth removed. Generator sets were upgraded to provide 120kw vs the original 75kw. This still allowed a 25-knot speed.

From Long’s 29 October 1943 plans at Mare Island, detailing her crew at the time as well as her battery (four 3″50 Mk 20 DPs, five 20mm Oerlikons) and powerplant:

Her profile, 29 October 1943, as DMS-12, note the shadow of her original four tall stacks now replaced by three smaller ones:

Compare the difference between her 1930s four-piper profile and the one seen during WWII:

NH 67630 compared to NH 81358

It was in this configuration that Long found herself when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

War!

Based at Pearl Harbor with several of her sisters as part of Mine Squadron 2, Long escaped the Japanese attack on 7 December 1941 due to the fact she and four DMS sisters were at sea as escort for the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA‑35) at the time some 800 miles southwest conducting a simulated naval bombardment of remote Johnson Island.

From Indy’s War Diary:

Returning to Pearl with the cruiser-DMS force on 9 December, Long steamed into the still-smoking harbor, then soon after began a series of antisubmarine patrols around the islands.

Long alternated this duty over the past six months with running coastal escorts among the Hawaiian Islands and with runs to Midway, Palmyra, and far-off Canton, where the Navy was building an airstrip.

Then came a stint in Alaskan waters following the Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor and the occupation of Attu and Kiska. Serving in the familiar old territory for the next 15 months, she narrowly avoided destruction in a collision with the destroyer USS Monaghan (DD‑354) in heavy fog, and fired her first shots in anger, on 31 January 1943 against Japanese air attacks on Amchitka’s Constantine Harbor with three fellow Clemsons.

In May 1943, she was assigned to TG 51.3 of RADM Francis Rockwell’s TF 51, the Attu Assault Force. Standing out of Cold Harbor as part of the screen for Rockwell’s flag on the battlewagon USS Pennsylvania on 4 May, seven days later she and the fellow fast minesweepers USS Elliot (DMS-4) and USS Chandler (DMS 9) broke off from the main force and swept the lanes to the landing beaches on Japanese-held Attu.

The 12th saw a repeat, this time in Massacre Bay.

The rest of the month saw Long revert back to her destroyer DNA and provide escort and ASW patrol around the island, including the spirited pursuit of a sonar contact on the 15th.

While there were known Japanese midget submarines based in the Aleutians, and larger subs passing through, post-war records didn’t support a “kill” claim for this incident.

Then came the Kiska and Adak operations until, finally, Long was dispatched back to Pearl Harbor in September 1943 for some warmer service.

USS Long (DMS-12) photographed during World War II. Courtesy of D. M. McPherson, 1974. NH 81358

Following a refit and escort and patrol operations in Hawaiian waters, Long was dispatched to the Southwest Pacific to join in the New Guinea operations in February 1944. Operating as part of TF 76, she supported the landings there and in the Admiralties and Hollandia, (Operations Reckless and Persecution) both sweeping mines and escorting.

It was at Humboldt Bay on 22 April 1944 that she was able to both run her paravanes and get hits on shore targets, firing 253 rounds of 3″/50 and 660 of 20mm on the landing beaches of Cape Tjeweri, Cape Djar, and Cape Kassoe, just prior to the LVTs and LSTs carrying the 162nd and 186th Regiments of the 41st “Jungleers” Division hitting the beach.

Switching gears and sailing north to the Marianas, Long was on hand for the occupation of Saipan in June and the liberation of Guam in July, in each cases conducting preinvasion mine sweeps to clear lanes, then providing radar picket and guard ship duties, followed by convoy work.

Similar operations in the Palaus in September and October included a very hectic week during the landings during which Long, Hovey, and fellow DMS vessels were zapping mines left and right. In all, Long destroyed at least 45 Japanese mines during the Palau operation, all via 3-inch gunfire– some as close as 100 yards– following sweeping.

A sample day:

This brought Long into the drive to liberate the Philippines after nearly three years of Japanese occupation.

Sailing under orders with Minesweeping Unit 1 in early October, she spearheaded the invasion of the PI at Leyte Gulf, successfully clearing Japanese mines off Dinagat and Hibuson, as well as in the Dulag‑Tacloban approach channel and the soon-to-be-infamous Surigao Strait, all while fighting off Japanese air attacks.

A sample of these operations, that of 19 October 1944:

She spent the Battle of the Surigao Strait guarding empty transports bound in convoy for Manus, narrowly avoiding contact with the Japanese surface.

Late December saw her return to the PI to sweep for the landings at Lingayen Gulf. Just after the New Year, while in the Mindanao Sea, she survived a series of furious Japanese air attacks, continuing her yeoman job of sweeping.

Long’s luck ran out on 6 January.

Two Japanese Zeke 52s approached from low over the beach, dropping down to just 25 feet of the deck, with one strafing and crashing into (DD-232/APD-10) and the other coming fast at Long broadside on her port side. Although LT Stanley David Caplan, Long’s 16th and final skipper, rang up 25 knots and ordered everything on board to fire on the incoming planes. Despite three 3″/50s and three 20mm Oerlikons opening up and hits being observed, it was already over.

As detailed in an 11-page report by Caplan, who survived the maelstrom:

Her old twin, Hovey, was on hand and immediately stood by to help, as did her sister Chandler, and the fleet tug USS Apache (AT-67).

Caplan observed a five-foot hole in Long’s side, penetrating to the officer’s wardroom and the forward living compartment, with fire observed just over the No. 1. magazine. Nonetheless, 26 men responded to Caplan’s call for volunteers to attempt to reboard and save their faithful old tin can.

While organizing the return from Apache’s deck, disaster struck.

Waiting overnight, by the next morning, Long’s main deck, just after the forecastle about midships, was underwater, while her screws were showing on the stern. Her back was broken. There was nothing left to save. Landing on the sinking ship with 12 volunteers to make sure the ship’s sensitive gear was wrecked, Caplan and party soon departed after just five minutes, leaving just “30 seconds to a minute to the good” before the destroyer capsized then went down in two pieces at 1115 on 7 January.

Six men were killed in the attack on Long, with two others later passing from their injuries.

Sadly, Hovey would perish a few hours before her sister took her final dive, hit by a Japanese Kate torpedo bomber, carrying a fish, around 0455 on the 7th. By dawn, she was lost, and the men she had taken off Long, some 120 survivors, went back into the water. The Chandler and Apache moved in to make their second extended rescue in 24 hours.

Some 35 bluejackets injured in Long’s initial kamikaze strike and another 28 from her that picked up wounds while on Hovey were transferred to the large sick bay on the battleships USS California and USS West Virginia. Two dozen men from Brooks and Long who were aboard Hovey when she sank were never found.

Both Hovey and Long earned Navy Unit Commendations for their service, both for action at Palau.

Besides the NUC, Long earned at least night battle stars during her WWII service including:

11 May 43 – 31 May 43 Attu occupation
2 Feb 44 – 8 Feb 44 Western New Guinea operations
29 Feb 44 – 4 Mar 44 and 7 Mar 44 – 11 Mar 44 Admiralty Island landings
18 Apr 44 – 25 Apr 44 and 2 May 44 Hollandia operation (Aitape Humbolt Bay-Tanahmerah Bay)
13 Jun 44 – 18 Jul 44 Capture and Occupation of Saipan
12 Jul 44 – 25 Jul 44 Capture and Occupation of Guam
6 Sep 44 – 14 Oct 44 Capture and occupation of southern Palau Islands
12 Oct 44 – 20 Oct 44 Leyte landings (as well as 4 Jan 45 – 18 Jan 45), and Battle of Surigao Strait

Epilogue

Long’s war diaries are in the National Archives along with her circa 1943 plans.

The Navy never saw fit to recycle the name, despite her nine battlestars and NUC. The same goes for Hovey.

The twins rest somewhere in the Lingayen Gulf, very close to each other, near position 16º12’N, 120º11’E.

LT Caplan, born in 1915 in Elmira, New York, and commissioned via ROTC in 1940, had already survived Pearl Harbor with a commendation for his actions that day. He likewise survived the war and passed in 1999 on dry land in Florida, aged 84.

There are no Clemsons preserved. No less than 16 sisters in addition to Long and Hovey were lost during WWII.

For more information on the Clemsons and their like, read CDR John Alden’s book, “Flush Decks and Four Pipes” and/or check out the Destroyer History Foundation’s section on Flushdeckers.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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

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Warship Wednesday on a Friday Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

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Warship Wednesday on a Friday, Dec. 27, 2024: Taking a Licking

Via Navsource.

Above we see the Balao-class fleet submarine USS Bergall (SS-320) upon her triumphal return to Freemantle, Australia, some 80 years ago this week, on 23 December 1944, on completion of her epic Second War Patrol. The path of a 278-pound 8-inch shell fired from the Japanese heavy cruiser Myoko is clearly marked, having passed from port to starboard through the sub’s pressure hull.

But you should see the other guy!

The Balaos

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

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75 day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk 14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

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

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

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

We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Spikefish and USS Greenfish, the rocket mail-slinging USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, the Busy Bug that was the USS Bugara, and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Meet Bergall

Bergall was named for a small fish (Tautogolabrus adspersus) found along the East Coast.

Via the State of New York Forest, Fish, and Game Commission, 1901, painted by SF Denton.

Laid down on 13 May 1943 at Electric Boat in Groton, Bergall launched just nine months later and commissioned on 12 June 1944, her construction running just 396 days.

Electric Boat Company, Groton, Connecticut. Shipway where future USS Bergall (SS-320) is under construction, circa summer 1943. Two welders are at work in the foreground. 80-G-K-15063

Her plankowner skipper, T/CDR John Milton Hyde, USN, (USNA 1934), had already earned a Silver Star as executive officer of the Salmon-class submarine USS Swordfish (SS-193) across four Pacific war patrols that bagged 11 Japanese ships and commanded that sub’s sister, Snapper (SS-185) while the latter was under overhaul.

Bergall carried out shakedown operations off New England for three weeks then, following post-shakedown availability at New London, set out for the Pacific via the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, pausing to rescue the two fliers of a crashed Army training plane in the Mona Passage off Puerto Rico.

She arrived at Pearl Harbor on 13 August and was soon ready for battle.

War!

Made the flagship of SubRon 26’s SubDiv 262, Bergall departed from Pearl Harbor on 8 September 1944 on her First War Patrol, ordered to hunt in the South China Sea.

Arriving off Saipan on the 19th, she soon had her first encounter with the Empire’s fighting men:

Her first contact with the enemy came a day and a half west of Saipan when in the high periscope she sighted a small boat containing five Japanese infantrymen. Bergall closed, attempting rescue, but the efforts were abandoned when the Japanese made gestures that indicated that they wanted us to leave them alone and that we were the scum of the earth. The Americans marveled at the pride and insolent bearing of the enemy, admired their courage, and pitied their stupidity.

Continuing West, she damaged a small Japanese transport vessel with gunfire east of Nha Trang, French Indo-China on 3 October with an exchange of 5-inch (20 rounds) and 40mm (40 rounds) gunfire, and six days later sank a small (700-ton) Japanese cargo vessel just south of Cam Ranh Bay with a trio of Mark 14 torpedoes.

She followed up on that small fry on 13 October by stalking a small four-ship convoy off the coast of Vietnam and sent the tanker Shinshu Maru (4182 GRT) to the bottom via four Mk 23s– and survived a five-hour-long depth charging in retaliation.

On the 27th, she torpedoed and sank the big Japanese tanker Nippo Maru (10528 GRT) and damaged the Japanese tanker Itsukushima Maru (10007 GRT, built 1937) south-west of Balabac Strait, a heroic action seeing the two vessels were protected by a thick escort of four frigates.

On her way back to Freemantle on 2 November, she sank, via 420 rounds of 20mm, a small junk loaded with coconuts and chickens east of the Kangean Islands. Hyde noted in his patrol report “Regret the whole affair as picayune.”

Bergall’s very successful First War Patrol ended at Freemantle on 8 November 1944, covering 15,702 miles. Seventh Fleet authorized a Submarine Combat Insignia for the patrol and credited the boat with sinking 21,500 tons of Japanese shipping.

Not a bad first start!

Hyde would pick up his second Silver Star while the boat’s XO, LCDR Kimmel was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V.”

Cruiser Shootout

On 2 December 1944, Bergall departed Fremantle for her Second War Patrol, ordered once again to hunt in the South China Sea.

On 13 December, nearing sunset, our boat spotted a large ship at 35,000 yards off Royalist Bank and made a plan to attack after dark.

Over the next couple of hours, running in just 12-to-14 fathoms of water, she fired six Mk 23s while on the surface and received gunfire back. It turned out she blew the stern off the heavy cruiser Myoko and left her dead in the water. In return, the surfaced submarine was bracketed by shells typically credited as being 8-inchers from Myoko but more likely 5-inch shells from the escorting Japanese destroyer Ushio. One of these zipped right through Bergall’s pressure hull, a disaster that kept the submarine from surfacing while floating some 1,200 miles inside Japanese territory.

Her patrol report on the attack:

While the shell impact left no personnel casualties, the sub was severely damaged and, with no welding capability, repairs consisted of a mix of brazed and bolted plates, plugged with pillows and mattresses:

With all guns manned, demolition charges set for scuttling, and her damage patched up as best as possible, Bergall headed for home and was grateful when, on the morning of 15 December, she rendezvoused with the Gato-class submarine USS Angler (SS-240).

Transferring 2/3rds of her crew (54 men and one officer, the junior ensign) to Angler, Hyde noted of the attempt to make the Karimata Strait:

“if mandatory we could dive in shallow water and sit on the bottom. With Angler near at hand the enterprise didn’t seem too bad for the skeleton crew and officers. To have scuttled our ship in itself seemed unthinkable and it wasn’t much further to deep water in the right direction that it was in the wrong. The weather was very much in our favor too. The sky was heavily overcast with rain storms coming from the west-northwest.”

The men who remained aboard, all volunteers, comprised eight officers and 21 crew, the latter including at least three chiefs. This allowed an underway watch bill with two officers on the bridge, two men (helm and radar) in the tower, three (Chief of Watch, Aux, and I.C.) in the control room, and one EM in the maneuvering room.

By the end of the 16th, Bergall and Angler cleared the Karimata Strait without incident.

By the 18th, they cleared the Lombok Strait– just skirting Japanese patrol boats in the dark.

Making Exmouth on the tip of Western Australia’s North West Cape on the 20th, Bergall was able to remove the lightly brazed plating from the torpedo loading hatch and had new plates arc welded in place, enabling her to make for Freemantle on the 23rd where she ended her abbreviated patrol.

Hyde would receive the Navy Cross for the patrol and three other officers received the Silver Star.

The patrol was later dramatized in an episode of The Silent Service coined, “The Bergall’s Dilemma.” Hyde appears at the end of the episode for a brief comment.

As for Myoko, arriving at Singapore via tow on Christmas day, she would never sail again under her own power and surrendered to the Royal Navy in September 1945.

Japanese Heavy Cruiser Myōkō in Singapore four days after surrendering to Royal Navy units, tied up alongside the submarines I-501 (ex U-181) and I-502 (ex U-862) – September 25, 1945 IWM – Trusler, C (Lt) Photographer IWM A 30701

Captain Power visits the damaged Japanese cruiser. 25 September 1945, Singapore. In May 1944, five ships of the Twenty-Sixth Destroyer Flotilla attached to the British East Indies fleet, led by HMS Saumarez, with Captain M L Power, CBE, OBE, DSO, and BAR, as Captain (D), sank the Japanese cruiser Haguro in one hours action at the entrance to the Malacca Strait. When Saumarez entered Singapore Naval Base, Captain Power with his staff officers, paid a visit to Myoko, the sister ship of Haguro, now lying there with her stern blown off after the Battle of the Philippines. Crossing to the deck of the Myoko via the conning tower of a German U-boat, Captain Power and his party were met by Japanese officers who took them on a comprehensive tour of the ship. Two British naval officers examine what is left of the Myoko’s stern. IWM A 30703

Cuties

Patched up and taking on a supply of diminutive new Mk 27 passive acoustic torpedoes– dubbed Cuties as they only went about half the size of Mk 14s and 23s— Bergall left Fremantle on 27 January 1945 for her Third War Patrol, ordered to scour the Lombok Strait of small Japanese escorts and move on to the South China Sea.

However, with a short range (just 5,000 yards), the shallow-water Cuties had to be used up close to work. Carrying a warhead with just 95 pounds of Torpex, they were meant for killing small escorts.

Between 27 January and 7 February, Bergall made five nighttime attack runs with Cuties while in the Lombok, each time allowing a single slow (12 knots) Mk 27 to swim out at ranges as close as 200 yards. The result was in sinking of the Japanese auxiliary minesweeper Wa 102 (174 tons)– picking up two survivors and making them POWs– and damaging the store ship Arasaki (920 GRT).

Moving toward the Philippines, Bergall sank the Japanese frigate Kaibokan 53 (745 tons) and damaged the tanker Toho Maru (10,238 GRT) off Cam Ranh Bay.

Then, on 13 February, working in conjunction with fellow subs USS Blower and Guitarro off Hainan island, she came across a ripe target for any submariner– a pair of Japanese battlewagons– the hybrid battleship/carriers Ise and Hyuga.

She ripple-fired six Mk 14s in a risky daylight periscope attack from 10,000 yards– without success.

She ended her patrol on 17 February at recently liberated Subic Bay, PI, having traveled 6,070 miles.

The “Cutie Patrol” would be immortalized in an episode of The Silent Service, “The Bergall’s Revenge.”

The hits keep coming

The boat’s uneventful Fourth War Patrol (5 March to 17 April) which included a special mission (typically code to land agents) and rescuing four USAAF B-25 aircrew from the water, ended at Freemantle.

Bergall then left Australia on 12 May 1945 on her Fifth Patrol, bound to haunt the coast of Indochina.

On the morning of the 18th, she battered a small Japanese coastal freighter in the Lombok Strait but didn’t get to see it sink as enemy aircraft were inbound.

Joining up with an American wolfpack in the Gulf of Siam including USS Bullhead (SS-332), Cobia (SS-245), Hawkbill (SS-366), and Kraken (SS-370), she sighted a small intercoastal convoy of tugs and barges in the predawn moonlight of 30 May, and sank same.

Then, on 13 June, she swept a mine the hard way while chasing an enemy convoy.

Ironically, the minefield, a mix of three dozen acoustic and magnetic-induction type mines, had been laid by Allied aircraft out of India in March and was unknown to the Seventh Fleet command. While the mine, which had at least a 490-pound explosive charge, was believed to be some 90 feet away from the hull when it went off, and Bergall’s hull retained integrity, it nonetheless rocked the boat severely.

From her damage report:

The impact of the detonation jarred the entire ship. Personnel were knocked off their feet, tossed out of bunks, and in the maneuvering room were thrown up against the overhead. Lighting failed in the maneuvering and after torpedo rooms. The overspeed trips operated on Nos. 2 and 3 main Diesel engines, which were on propulsion, and No. 1 main Diesel engine, which was charging the batteries, causing all three engines to stop and thereby cutting off power to the main propulsion motors.

However, just 20 minutes after the explosion, Bergall had restarted her engines and was motoring away. While still capable of operations, her engineering suite was so loose and noisy it was thought she would be unable to remain operational and she was ordered to Subic, arriving there on 17 June.

Quick inspection at Subic found that the facility was unable to effect repairs and Bergall was ordered to shlep some 10,000 miles back to New London via Saipan, Pearl Harbor, and the Panama Canal.

Arriving at New London on 4 August 1945, she was there when the war ended.

Bergall earned four battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation (for her 2nd patrol) for her World War II service. Her unconfirmed record at the end of the war included some 33,280 tons of enemy shipping sunk across five sunken warships and five merchantmen along with another 66,000 tons damaged.

Her WWII battle flag carried an upside-down horseshoe with the number “13” inside of it since so many incidents in her service had occurred on the 13th day of the month.

CDR Hyde, when he left the vessel in September 1945, was given a farewell watch by his crew. Engraved on its back was a large “13.”

As for Myoko, she towed to the Strait of Malacca in 1946 and scuttled off of Port Swettenham (Port Klang), Malaya.

Cold Warrior

Finishing her repair and overhaul– she picked up new sensors including an SV radar– Bergall rejoined the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in December 1945 and, as part of SubRon1, would spend the next five years stationed in Hawaii. This typically involved a series of reserve training dives, simulated war patrols and cruises between the West Coast and Hawaii, ASW exercises with the fleet, and acting as a tame sub for maritime patrol squadrons.

From December 1948 through February 1949, she roamed to the West Pac, visiting Australia and Japan for a bottom mapping exercise, a cruise that earned her a Navy Occupation Service Medal and a China Service Medal.

Bergall at Brisbane in December 1948, note she is still largely in her WWII configuration. Via Navsource. Photo courtesy of John Hummel, USN (Retired).

Transferring to the Atlantic Fleet in June 1950, she had her topside streamlined, landing her deck guns and receiving a new sail, then, between November 1951 and April 1952, received a Fleet Snorkel conversion at Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Bergall circa 1950, with her topside streamlined but before her snorkel conversion.

USS Bergall (SS-320), 22 July 1952. USN 479940

Bergall, in the spirit of her “lucky 13” nature, lost her periscope twice within five years during her peacetime service.

The first, in 1949, was to a passing Van Camp tuna boat off the California coast.

The second, during LANTFLEX on Halloween 1954, had her periscopes and radar masts where sliced through by the destroyer USS Norris (DDE-859)’s bow, luckily without any casualties.

Ironically, USS Angler, the same boat that stood by Bergall after she was holed in the fight against Myoko a decade prior, stood by her and escorted the sub into port.

Bergall (SS-320) as a causality on 2 November 1954. Photo and text i.d. courtesy of Mike Brood, bergall.org.

Repaired, she completed two Mediterranean cruises (9 Nov 1955-28 Jan 1956 and 31 Aug -6 Dec 1957), and, once she returned, was reassigned to Key West Naval Station for preparations to be handed over at military aid.

Bergall 1958, returning from Bermuda just before she was handed over to a NATO ally as military aid. Via Bergall.org

Turkish Guppy Days

Between May 1948 and August 1983, the Turkish Navy would receive no less than 23 second-hand U.S. Navy diesel submarines, all WWII-era (or immediately after) fleet boats.

These would include (in order of transfer): ex-USS Brill (SS 330), Blueback (SS 326), Boarfish (SS 327), Chub (SS 329), Blower (SS 325), Bumper (SS 333), Guitarro (SS 363), Hammerhead (SS 364), Bergall (SS 320), Mapiro (SS 376), Mero (SS 378), Seafox (SS 402), Razorback (SS 394), Thornback (SS 418), Caiman (SS 323), Entemedor (SS 340), Threadfin (SS 410), Trutta (SS 421), Pomfret (SS 391), Corporal (SS 346), Cobbler (SS 344), Tang (SS 563), and Gudgeon (SS 567).

Our Bergall would sail from Key West on 26 September 1958, bound for Izmir, Turkey, where she would arrive 19 days later.

On 17 October, she was decommissioned and handed over in a warm transfer to the Turkish Navy in a ceremony that saw her renamed Turgutreis (S-342), officially on a 15-year lease.

The highlights of the handover ceremony, in Turkish:

Ex-Bergall/Turgutreis (S-342) in Turkish service. She would take part in the Cyprus War in 1974, among other operations with the Turkish fleet.

Turkey’s collection of Snorkel and GUPPY modified U.S. Navy fleet boats via the 1960 edition of Janes, to include Bergall/Turgutreis.

While in Turkish service, Bergall in the meantime had her name canceled from the Navy List in 1965 and was stricken from the USN’s inventory altogether in 1973, with ownership transferred to Istanbul.

Following the delivery of new Type 209 submarines from West Germany, Bergall/Turgutreis was no longer needed for fleet operations and in April 1983 she was decommissioned.

Renamed Ceryan Botu-6, she was relegated to pier side service at Golcuk Naval Shipyard for another 13 years, where she was stripped of parts to keep other American boats in operations while serving as a battery charging boat with a 15-man crew, primarily of electricians.

In June 1999, Ceryan Botu-6/Turgutreis/Bergall was pulled from service and sold for scrap the following year.

Turkey only retired its last two ex-USN “smoke boats,” Tang and Gudgeon, in 2004

Epilogue

Few lingering relics remain of Bergall.

Her War History and deck logs are in the National Archives.

Her wartime skipper, John Milton Hyde (NSN: 0-73456), retired from the Navy following Korean War service as a captain with a Navy Cross and three Silver Stars on his salad bar. He passed in 1981, aged 71, and is buried in Arlington’s Section 25.

“The Old Man” completed 12 war patrols, five of them on Bergall.

The Navy recycled the name of its rough-and-tumble Balao for another vessel, SSN-667, a Sturgeon-class hunter-killer built, like her namesake, at EB, ordered on 9 March 1965.

USS Bergall (SSN-667) conducts an emergency surfacing test off the east coast, in September 1969. K-77428

Commissioned on 13 June 1969 (!) her ship’s crest carried five stars in a salute to the old Bergall’s five WWII Pacific war patrols. In another, less Navy-approved similarity to her namesake, she suffered a casualty-free peacetime collision with the submarine rescue vessel USS Kittiwake (ASR-13).

Notably, SSN-667 was the first submarine in the fleet to carry the Mk 48 heavy torpedo on deployment, as well as the first east coast-based submarine to carry a DSRV, and earned two Navy Unit Commendations. She decommissioned on 6 June 1996.

A vibrant veterans’ group saluting both Bergalls endures.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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

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Life on one of the ‘Small Boys’

Posted on October 11, 2024 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Following up on our Warship Wednesday this week, which covered the Great War-era Admiralty Strath-class “battle trawler” HMT William Barnett (3632) and its later life as the French Navy’s auxiliary minesweeper Roche Noire during WWII, how about a great series of related period maritime art?

British portrait painter, landscape artist, and printmaker Francis Edgar Dodd, RA, turned 40 as the “lamps are going out all over Europe.”

Volunteering to serve as an Official War Artist during World War I, he spent some time at sea with the hired trawler HMT Mackenzie (Adty No 336) during the conflict.

One of more than 1,400 British trawlers taken up from trade— some dating back to 1880– Mackenzie was built in 1911 (Hull-reg H.349) and retained her original name while in naval service. A craft of some 335 tons, she was hired in August 1914 and would remain in RN service, armed with a single 6-pounder Hotchkiss gun, likely taken from an old torpedo boat or battleship fighting top.

Primarily serving as a minesweeper, Mackenzie was returned to her owner in 1919.

She was one of the lucky ones. Of the 1,456 hired trawlers used by the British during the war, 266 were lost during the conflict including no less than 142 to enemy action. They fought a war very much as real as those with the Grand Fleet at Jutland.

Dodd captured the life on Mackenzie in great detail. You can almost smell the pipes’ smoke and coal dust.

All of these pieces are from the Imperial War Museum Collection, which has some 80 of Dodd’s wartime pieces digitized and viewable online.

The After Cabin, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 904) image: four sailors sit around a large table, upon which are plates and cutlery, while behind are cabin windows; one sailor is seen full length, the others half body. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7556

A Cook in the Galley, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 896) image: three-quarter portrait of a man in overalls and cap, holding a mug in his left hand. He is sitting in a galley, with a large range, a pot, and a kettle on the left Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7548

Cleaning the Gun, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 898) image: standing on the left a sailor, wearing a life jacket, is thrusting a pole into the breech of a deck gun, most of the mechanism of which is to the right. Rigging and a white ensign are visible behind the gun, and other ships are visible on the horizon. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7550

Cards in the Fo’c’s’le, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 931) image: below decks in a confined space, five sailors stand and sit around a table playing cards, while two others look on. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7584

The Engine Room, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 897) image: two men stand in an enclosed space surrounded by the heavy machinery of a ship’s engine room. The man to the right, wearing a cap, has his left hand on the engine-room telegraph apparatus, while the man to the left, with a pipe in his mouth, has his right leg up on a step. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7549

Forward from the Wheelhouse, HM Trawler Mackenzie: the figures are just about to slip the ‘kite’ used to sink the wire hawser to the required depths for sweeping (Art. IWM ART 905) image: a view of the bow, mast, and starboard forward deck of a ship at sea. Two figures are bending over equipment on the deck, while a third stands on a ladder resting over the side of the ship. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7557

The Stokehold, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 903) image: in a cramped enclosed space of metal plating and machinery, a stoker is bent over shoveling coal from a bunker into a boiler. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7555

Sweeps to Starboard: HMT Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 909) image: in the foreground is a view over the side of a ship with minesweeping equipment deployed. Behind, a broad seascape with several other trawlers in the distance. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7562

The Wheelhouse, HM Trawler Mackenzie (Art. IWM ART 933) image: a view inside the wheelhouse of a ship, with two officers to the left and a sailor controlling the wheel, all in left profile. A binnacle is in the left foreground and another trawler is visible through the wheelhouse windows. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7586

Nijmegen Ducks

Posted on September 27, 2024 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

80 years ago today: American DUKWs transport supplies to waiting British troops and American paratroopers across the River Waal at Nijmegen, Holland, the day after German frogmen of Marine Einsatzkommando (MEK) 65 dropped the East-West bridge’s central span via floating mines, 30 September 1944

Midgley, A. N. (Sergeant), No. 5 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM B 10435

Same as above, IWM B10434

During the war, the Arsenal of Democracy cranked out over 21,000 of this six-wheel-drive amphibious modification of GMC’s 2+1⁄2-ton CCKW “Jimmy” trucks.

With a 7-ton curb weight, they were capable of 50 mph on paved roads and 6 knots in the water via its stern propeller and could carry 24-ish troops or as much as 5,000 pounds of payload while operated by a single driver.

DUKW Amphibious vehicles in the canals of Venice, Italy, during World War II. c. May, 1945

They remained in service post-war well through Korea while Allies such as France (Indochina), Britain (Malaya/Borneo), and Spain (Africa) would keep them in service into the 1980s.

DUKW of the Spanish Infantería de Marina in a Madrid parade, late 1960s

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