Category Archives: submarines

So Long, Bob

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A big part of my life as a kid was watching Bob Newhart and, looking back, developing my own, slightly deadpan, sense of humor largely from those hours of steady Bob-isms.

Drafted into the Army during the tail-end of the Korean War, 5′ 8″ Bob had a business management degree from Loyola under his belt so spent most of his two-year stint in OD Green as an enlisted clerk. This made his first film, Hell is for Heroes, so perfect. At the time doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs around Hollywood and just a few years out of the service, Newhart portrayed a hapless Army clerk who stumbled into the high-action combat and provided comedic relief.

Bob as PFC Driscoll in Hell is for Heroes. SGT Newhart had just left the Army seven years prior

While he didn’t do many other war films, his portrayal of Major Major Major in 1970’s Catch-22 is classic.

And any bubblehead from the Cold War has probably heard his still very funny “USS Codfish” bit. 

An interesting anecdote from when I was a kid that was Bob-adjacent was when the old battlewagon USS Wisconsin was towed to Ingalls for reactivation during the Reagan/Lehman 600-ship Navy build-up, the crew unofficially named her three main 16″/50 turrets “Larry, Darryl, and Darryl” due to the then running gag on the Newhart Show, which was a big hit at the time.

I remember seeing those t-shirts all over Pascagoula for years after Wisconsin left.

Mr. Newhart, you will be missed.

Warship Wednesday, July 3, 2024: Brace for Ramming

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, July 3, 2024: Brace for Ramming

U.S. Navy photograph, 80-G-700007, now in the collections of the National Archives.

Above we see, just south-east of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the mine-filled shattered bow of the German Type XB U-boat, U-233, pointing to the sky just before plunging to the bottom after the submarine was rammed by the Cannon-class destroyer escort USS Thomas (DE 102) some 80 years ago this week– 5 July 1944. The unlucky U-233 was on her first combat patrol, tasked with sowing mines off key Canadian and American harbors.

She never made it that far and was one of Thomas’s three U-boat kills during the war.

And that was just in the destroyer escort’s first career.

What were the Cannons?

USS Cannon (DE-99) Dravo builder’s photo. USN CP-DE-99-19-N-51457

The Cannon class, ordered in 1942 to help stem the tide of the terrible U-boat menace in the Atlantic, was also known as the DET type from their Diesel Electric Tandem drive. The DET’s substitution for a turbo-electric propulsion plant was the primary difference from the predecessor Buckley (“TE”) class. The DET was in turn replaced with a direct drive diesel plant to yield the design of the successor Edsall (“FMR”) class.

Besides a heavy ASW armament, these humble ships carried a trio of Mk.22 3″/50s, some deck-mounted torpedo tubes to be effective against larger surface combatants in a pinch, and a smattering of Bofors/Oerlikon AAA mounts.

In all, although 116 Cannon-class destroyer escorts were planned, only 72 were completed. Some of her more well-known sisters included the USS Eldridge, the ship claimed to be a part of the infamous Philadelphia Experiment. The vessels were all cranked out in blocks by four yards with Thomas— along with class leaders Cannon and Bostwick— among the nine produced by Dravo.

Meet Thomas

Our subject was the second warship named for LT Clarence Crase Thomas (USNA 1908). A son of Grass Valley, California, Thomas served pre-war in the USS Maryland (ACR-8), USS Yorktown (PG-1), USS Denver (C-14), USS Cleveland (C-19), USS West Virginia (ACR-5), and battleship USS Florida. Once the U.S. entered the Great War, he was detailed to command the naval armed guard det on the merchant steamship SS Vacuum in April 1917.

Lost to a German U-boat just two weeks later, Thomas was the first U.S. naval officer to lose his life in the war with Germany and was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross.

His name was almost immediately issued to a Wickes-class destroyer (DD-182) then under construction, and sponsored by LT Thomas’s widow, Evelyn. That four-piper flush deck greyhound was decommissioned in 1922 and laid up until 1940, then transferred to the Royal Navy as part of the “bases for destroyers” deal, becoming first the Town-class destroyer, HMS St Albans (I15), then the Free Norwegian Navy’s HNoMS St Albans, and finally the Soviet destroyer Dostoyny/Dostojnyj before being scrapped in 1949.

Meanwhile, our subject, the second Thomas, DE-102, was laid down on 16 January 1943 by Dravo and commissioned on 21 November 1943 at Portsmouth, her build time spanning just 310 days.

War!

Assigned to Escort Division 48 as flagship, she was surrounded by five sisters– USS Bostwick, Breeman, Bronstein, Baker, and Coffman. Her shakedown took place off the East Coast and she spent the Christmas 1943/New Year’s 1944 holiday in Bermuda.

07 December 1943: Portsmouth, Va. – A starboard quarter view of Thomas taken near the Norfolk Navy Yard. U.S. Navy photo #CP-DE-102-19-N-60229

Her first bite at Dönitz’s grey sharks came as part of the hunter-killer group attached to the jeep carrier USS Block Island (CVE-21) for six weeks in February-March 1944. This included the 1 March 1944 kill north of the Azores of a submarine credited by the Navy as the Type VIIC U-boat U-709 (Oblt. (R) Rudolf Ites), sunk with all hands. Alternatively, some reports hold this was actually U-441, which was severely damaged but escaped.

Then came a stint riding shotgun on Convoy UGS 39 and its return (GUS 39) from the U.S. to the Med.

Then came more hunter-killer taskings.

USS Thomas was taken on 5 July 1944 from the escort carrier USS Card (CVE-11). 80-G-366262

On 5 July 1944, sisters Thomas (DE-102) and USS Baker (DE-190), from the jeep carrier USS Card’s hunter-killer force (Task Group 22.5), ran U-233 (Kptlt. Hans Steen) to ground off Halifax, Nova Scotia. The action began at 1910 when Baker picked up a sound contact at 1,500 yards.

Just 17 minutes and two depth charge patterns later, a submarine’s bow broke the surface and Baker took the enemy boat under surface fire, with Thomas closing in and opening up with her deck guns shortly after. The end came when Thomas rammed the shell-riddled U-boat on its starboard side just aft of the fairweather. By 1947 it was all over and the tin cans were plucking survivors from the water.

From the 12-page report filed by LCDR David M. Kellog, Thomas’s skipper:

A great series of shots captured from Thomas show the last dive of U-233.

German U-Boat, U-233, sinks as it is rammed. 80-G-700006

80-G-700005

Thomas picked up 20 of U-233’s 69-man crew, including Kptlt. Steen, who later died of wounds. The survivors, along with two Enigma coding wheels recovered from the pockets of one of the men, were transferred to Card.

Interrogations later revealed U-233’s mission and her cargo of 66 new type Drückunterschiedsmine (pressure differential mines) along with four T-5 and three G7e torpedoes, none of which the boat had a chance to use.

As far as Thomas was concerned, she suffered only minor damage from her ramming kill, chiefly in two flooded peak tanks and a leaking chain locker. Proceeding to Boston Navy Yard for repairs, she was back on duty by 18 July and spent the next six weeks shepherding new submarines out of Portsmouth and Groton undergoing shakedown in Long Island Sound.

USS Thomas (DE-102) underway while supporting submarine operations off the U.S. East Coast, 21 August 1944. Note the track of a torpedo that is passing under the ship. The ship is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 3D. Her hull number is painted atop the front of her bridge to assist identification by aircraft. NH 107610

September 1944 found her back with the Card hunter-killer group, surviving hurricane-force winds at least twice at sea before the end of the year as the task group roamed the stormy North Atlantic.

She would continue to serve with the Card group into 1945, alternating going to the rescue of sinking ships and chasing down sonar contacts. On 30 April 1945, Thomas, along with the frigate Natchez (PF-2), and sisterships Coffman and Bostwick, came across what is cited by the Navy as the advanced Type IXC/40 U-boat U-548 just east of Cape Hatteras but is now generally believed to be sister U-879 (Kptlt. Erwin Manchen), sending her to the bottom with all 52 hands.

Post VE-Day, Thomas would spend the next four months in a series of exercises before she was detailed to New York to take part in the massive Navy Day celebrations there and in November was tasked to escort the infamous Type IXC/40 U-boat U-530 (Oblt. Otto Wermuth), which had surrendered in Argentina two months after the end of the war in Europe.

Following a series of war bond tours with Thomas and U-530, the latter was utilized for a series of tests and deep-sixed in torpedo drills off Cape Cod.

USS Toro (SS-422) torpedoed the surrendered German submarine U-530, during tests 40 miles northeast of Cape Cod. Photo released 28 November 1947. Note the effects of torpedo explosion. 80-G-704668

However, by that time, Thomas had been decommissioned at Green Cove Springs, Florida, in March 1946 and added to the 500-strong mothball fleet that swayed at a series of 13 piers built there just for the purpose.

USS Thomas (DE-102) likely in Green Cove Springs, Florida. Photo by Ensign Carl Gene Coin, USN, via Wikimedia commons.

She was not even listed in that year’s Jane’s Fighting Ships entry for her class.

Jane’s 1946 listing for the 57-strong semi-active Bostwick class, noting numerous transfers to overseas allies.

Thomas received four battle stars for World War II service.

Plank owner LCDR Kellogg, who earned the Legion of Merit for the U-233 ramming and commanded the vessel throughout the war, faded into history and I cannot find any further information on him.

A long second life

While Thomas’s initial service would last just three years, others could desperately put the low-mileage destroyer escort to good use.

Ultimately 14 of the Cannon/Bostwick class went to France and Brazil during the war, followed by another eight to the French– who apparently really liked the type– four to Greece (including USS Slater which returned home in the 1990s to become the only destroyer escort afloat in the United States), three to Italy, two to Japan, six to the Dutch, three to Peru, five to the Philippines, two to South Korea, one to Thailand, and two to Uruguay.

When it comes to Thomas, she and three sisters: Bostwick, Breeman, and Carter, in a short ceremony on 14 December 1948, were transferred to Nationalist (Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT) China. Thomas became class leader Taihe (also seen in the West as ROCS Tai He and ROCS Tai Ho) with the hull/pennant number DE-23.

The four destroyer escorts were soon put into emergency use. During the last phase of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the 26 loyal ships of the ROCN engaged in the protection of supply convoys and the withdrawal of the Nationalist government and over 1 million refugees to Taiwan.

These ships were captured in great detail during this period in Nationalist use by LIFE magazine.

In this image, she still has her 3″/50 Mk22s up front

Fuzing 40mm Bofors rounds. Note the traditional crackerjack and flat cap used by the Nationalists

Crackerjacks combined with M1 helmets and US Navy Mk II talker helmets

The No. 3 mount now has an additional 3″/50 rather than the 40mm Bofors. Also, that is A LOT of depth charges for those 8 throwers and two rails! Ash cans a-go-go

Needing bigger guns for the work envisioned of them, the Chinese quickly upgraded their two forward 3-inchers to a pair of 5″/38 singles in open mounts, as well as substituting the stern 40mm mount for one of the same which gave the ships a 2+2 format with twin 5-inchers over the bow and a 5-inch over a 3-inch over the stern. 

The 1950s saw the fleet heavily involved in the pitched and tense engagements around Kinmen (Quemoy), Matsu, and the Yijiangshan and Dachen Islands in the Taiwan Straits as well as the clandestine Guoguang operations in which the KMT tried to retake the mainland by landing would-be guerilla organization teams in Red territory.

Taihe notably took part in the Battle of Pingtan Island in August 1949, covered the retreat from Hainan Island in April 1950, the Battle of the Wanshan Islands in May 1950 (where she is credited with sinking the gunboat Jiefang and the LCI Guishan), the running Battle of the Tohoku Islands where she escaped a trap set by six Red corvettes and frigates, damaging the Changsha (216)– formerly the Japanese Type D coastal defense ship No. 118– in the process; rescuing the torpedoed destroyer Taiping (DE-22, ex USS Decker DE-47) during the Battle of Yijiangshan Island in November 1954, and conducting a series of tense patrols in the Spratly Islands in 1956.

Propaganda shells fired into Red-controlled areas. By John Dominis LIFE

In all, Thomas and her three sisters continued to hold the front lines of the Taiwan Straits for 25 years and, for the first decade of that, were the most powerful assets available to the ROCN, a title they held until two Benson-class destroyers (USS Benson and USS Hilary P. Jones) were transferred in 1954.

They were also later fitted in the 1960s with Mk.32 12.75-inch ASW torpedo tubes for Mk 44s– which were a lot more effective than depth charges.

Taizhao, ex Carter anchored at the Kaohsiung Xinbin Wharf, late 1940s.

Jane’s 1973-4 listing for the Taiwan Bostwicks, including Carter.

As part of the pressure on Communist China at the tail end of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Nixon administration transferred a huge flotilla of more advanced warships to Taiwan between late 1970 and early 1973 that included two GUPPY’d Tench-class submarines (one of which is still active), five Gearing-class destroyers, six Sumner-class destroyers, four Fletchers, and USS McComb (DD-458)— a late Gleaves-class destroyer that had been converted to a fast minesweeper. With all these “new-to-you” hulls, the long-serving destroyer escorts could be retired and, by the end of 1973, Thomas and her three sisters in Formosan service had been disposed of for scrap. 

Epilogue

Few relics remain of Thomas in the U.S. Her war history and diaries are in the National Archives.

A painting of Thomas ramming U-233 by maritime artist John G. Gromosiak of Cincinnati is in the U.S. Naval Museum at Annapolis but I can only find this small image of it, via Navsource.

The U.S. Navy has yet to recycle LT Thomas’s name for a third vessel, which is a shame.

Besides the museum ship USS Slater (DE-766), now sitting dockside in Albany New York, and the pier side training ship USS Hemminger (DE-746) (now HTMS Pin Klao DE-1) in Thailand, there are no Cannon-class destroyer escorts still afloat.

USS Slater is the only destroyer escort preserved in North America– and is Thomas’s sistership

The Destroyer Escort Sailors Association honors the men of all the DEs, regardless of class. Sadly, their 45th annual convention in 2020 was their last as their numbers are rapidly declining.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, June 26, 2024: A Tin Can with Teeth

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, June 26, 2024: A Tin Can with Teeth

Photograph by LT. L. Pelman, Admiralty Collection, Imperial War Museum catalog number A 20319.

Above we see a group of ratings aboard the Beagle class destroyer HMS Bulldog (H 91) with their mechanical mascot “which does everything but eat,” on 11 November 1943, at Portsmouth. Don’t let the clever lads and their tin pup fool you, Bulldog’s crew had already accomplished more in the war for the Atlantic than any other destroyer men would and, just six months after this image was snapped, add to their war record by bagging their second U-boat of the conflict.

The A/Bs

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

HMS Amazon (D39) underway at sea in 1942. She and near sister HMS Ambuscade (D38) formed the basis for British destroyer designs from 1927 until the Tribal class was ordered in 1936. IWM FL 515.

The lessons learned from these two test vessels led to two runs of very similar ships, the 8-hull A class (Acasta, Achates, Active, Antelope, Anthony, Ardent, Arrow, and Acheron) along with a destroyer leader with room for a commodore (HMS Codrington), a second flight 8-hull B class (Basilisk, Beagle, Blanche, Boadicea, Boreas, Brazen, Brilliant and Bulldog) with corresponding destroyer leader (HMS Keith), and two further A’s for the RCN (HMCS Saguenay and Skeena). In all, some 20 ships.

The A/B class destroyers, from the 1931 Janes.

Powered by two Parsons geared steam turbines, each with their own shaft, using steam provided by three Admiralty water-tube boilers equipped with superheaters, these 1,350-ton (standard) 323-foot greyhounds were extremely fast, able to hit 35 knots. Armed with four more modern QF 4.7″/45cal Mk IX singles and a pair of quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes, they could hold their own. Able to (kind of) sweep mines, they initially carried little ASW gear as, after all, when they were designed, the Versailles Treaty had barred Germany from making or owning U-boats. Of course, that would change.

Meet Bulldog

Our subject was the sixth HMS Bulldog (or HMS Bull Dog) in RN service in a tradition going back to 1794 that included two ships that fought the French, a steam-powered paddle sloop that saw hot service from Palermo to Haiti, an Ant-class gunboat in the last half of the 19th Century, and a Great War-era Beagle-class destroyer that struck Turkish mine off Gallipoli. This earned our destroyer five battle honors (Toulon 1793, St Lucia 1796, Baltic 1854-55, Dardanelles 1915-16, English Channel 1915-16) before she was even commissioned.

Ordered on 22 March 1929 under the 1928 Programme as Yard No. 1411 from Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd, Wallsend, the future HMS Bulldog (H91) was laid down on 10 August 1929, launched the following December, and completed on 8 April 1931 at £221,408.

Dispatched to join the 4th Destroyer Flotilla with the Mediterranean Fleet, Bulldog showed the flag, participated in fleet exercises, and came to the rescue of those affected by the 1932 Ierissos earthquake in Greece.

Bulldog in Venice, pre-war

Reassignment to the Home Fleet in September 1936 brought an almost non-stop series of tense patrols off the Spanish coast during the Civil War in that country, alternating with yard periods, for the next three years.

War!

When the declaration of war between Germany and Great Britain hit in September 1939, Bulldog was in Alexandria as escort and plane guard for the carrier HMS Glorious.

HMS Glorious November 1939 at Socotra in Yemen destroyer HMS Bulldog alongside

With German raiders and blockade runners at large in the Indian Ocean, a hunting group (Force J) consisting of Glorious, Bulldog, the destroyer HMS Daring, and the old battleship HMS Malaya was sent to those waters for the rest of the year.

April 1940 saw Bulldog join in the screen escorting the carriers Glorious and Ark Royal back to UK Home Waters for the Norwegian campaign, during which our destroyer was tasked with supporting other operations. It was shortly after she broke with the carriers that Bulldog came to the rescue of the torpedoed K-class destroyer leader HMS Kelly (F01)-– commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten– and towed the ship back to Tyne.

Assigned to the 1st Destroyer Flotilla for the evacuation of the BEF from France in June 1940 (Operation Cycle), Bulldog received three bomb hits off Le Harve on 10 June and had to spend the next three months in repair, returning to service in September with a raid with three other destroyers on the port of Cherbourg.

Convoy duties, Enigma, and Sub-busting

Bulldog then spent the rest of 1940 on escort and sheepdog duty. In February 1941, she was nominated for escort service in the Western Approaches and, between 17 March 1941 when she joined HG 055, and 14 March 1945 when she left MKS 087G, would ride shotgun on no less than 50 convoys.

While part of the 3rd Escort Group accompanying convoy OB 318, Bulldog, HMS Broadway, and the corvette HMS Aubretia engaged the German Type IXB submarine U-110 (Kptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp) east of Cape Farewell, Greenland on 9 May 1940.

After depth charging her to the surface a boarding party from Bulldog under SLt David Balme including stoker Cyril Lee, telegraphist Allen Long, and Able Seamen Sidney Pearce, Cyril Dolley, Richard Roe, Claude Wileman, Arnold Hargreaves and John Trotter, spent six hours aboard the sinking German submarine and managed to bag its intact Enigma machine, in its entirety, to include the prized current Kurzsignale preset codes book.

B Class Destroyer HMS Bulldog with U-110 in the background on May 9th, 1941

As detailed by the Independent in 2016:

They arrived soon after midday to windward of her. Balme clambered up her curved, slippery surface, and, revolver at the ready, mounted the fixed ladder of the 12ft conning tower. Going down inside, he had two hatches and more ladders to negotiate. It meant replacing the weapon in its holster to grip with both hands and descend bottom-first. If any Nazi crewman had stayed on board, he thought, I’m an easy target.

An eerie blue light bathed the U-boat’s nerve center in the chamber below, an array of unfamiliar wheels and dials. A hissing came from somewhere, and he could hear the ocean slosh against the hull. There might be booby traps; there might be scuttling charges set to explode. He went up to the bow: nothing; the stern, too, was empty.

He formed his men into a chain to pass out books and documents. They included a stoker, Cyril Lee, and a telegraphist, Allen Long. The stoker’s job, to restart the engines, proved too risky, but the telegraphist at once told Balme: “This looks like an interesting bit of equipment, Sir.” It resembled a typewriter but lit up strangely when Long pressed the keys. It was a German naval “Enigma” cipher machine. The party found daily settings and procedures for its use. Written in soluble ink, they risked being lost if dropped in the sea, but, Balme recalled: “Nothing even got wet.”

As noted by the National Museum of the Royal Navy, “This discovery was one of the greatest ever intelligence coups and undoubtedly saved thousands, if not millions, of lives.” No less a person than King George VI called the find “perhaps the most important single event in the whole war at sea.”

Balme received the Distinguished Service Cross while the other members of the away team were Mentioned in Despatches, and skipper CDR Addison Joe Baker-Cresswell, RN, received the Distinguished Service Order.

A party from HMS Bulldog prepares to board U-110. IWM HU63114

Bulldog kept U-110 afloat for 17 hours then let the towline slip, ordered to let the submarine go to the bottom to preserve the Enigma capture secret.

HMS Bulldog (H-91) moored to a buoy on the east coast, on 17 April 1945

Bulldog would also chalk up a solo kill against the Type VIIC U-boat U-719 (Oblt. Klaus-Dietrich Steffens) on 26 Jun 1944– 80 years ago today– north-west of Ireland. All hands were lost on the German boat.

Operation Nest Egg

It was aboard the cramped decks of our little destroyer that the nearly five-year German occupation of the Channel Islands ended. She was the headquarters ship for Force 135, Operation Nest Egg, commanded by Brigadier Alfred Ernest Snow, OBE, which was sent to liberate the islands.

A week after Hitler’s suicide, HMS Bulldog, escorted by her sister Beagle, arrived off St Peter Port in Guernsey and a declaration of unconditional surrender was signed t 0714 on 9 May 1945 by Generalmajor Siegfried Heine, deputy commander of the German garrison, after some back and forth between Brigadier Snow, chief of the British “Omelet” delegation, and one young Kapitänleutänant Armin Zimmerman, the aide to the garrison’s overall commander, Vizeadmiral Friedrich Hüffmeier, late of the KMS Scharnhorst.

The surrender party was transported by the German minesweeper M4613 to Bulldog.

A scene on board HMS Bulldog during the first conference with Captain Lieutenant Zimmerman before the signing of the surrender document which liberated the Channel Islands. Left to right around the table are: Admiral Stuart (Royal Navy), Brigadier General A E Snow (Chief British Emissary), Captain H Herzmark (Intelligence Corps), Wing Commander Archie Steward (Royal Air Force), Lieutenant Colonel E A Stoneman, Major John Margeson, Colonel H R Power (all of the British Army) and Kapitänleutänant Armin Zimmerman,(Kriegsmarine). IWM D24595

Generalmajor Siegfried Heine, German deputy commander of the Channel Islands (right), has his identification papers checked as arrives at HMS Bulldog to sign the document of surrender. IWM D 24601

Immediately after the surrender document was signed, the initial Allied force, led by Colonel H.R. Power and Lt.Col Stoneman and consisting of four officers and 21 men, including several from Guernsey, landed at the White Rock at 07:50, the first British forces on the island since June 1940.

Colonel H.R. Power, Chief Civil Affairs Officer, walking across the gangplank from German Harbor Protection Vessel FK04, about to shake the hand of Attorney-General J.E.L. Martel on the White Rock. The St. Peter Port seafront can be seen in the background. Approx. 7:50am, 9th May 1945 Guernsey Museum Object No. GMAG 2006.193.36

In all, the German garrisons in the Channel Islands numbered 26,909 men on 9 May (Jersey: 11,671, Guernsey: 11,755, Alderney: 3,202, and Sark: 281), which had kept a populace of some 40,000 locals under the thumb for a half-decade. Not a bad haul for a couple of worn-out tin cans.

Paid off shortly after, Bulldog earned two somewhat understated battle honors for her WWII service (Atlantic 1941-45 and Arctic 1942-44)

The war was hard on these ships. Of the 20 A/B-class destroyers, 13 were lost or crippled during WWII including Acasta and Ardent, sunk in a surface action with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off Narvik while trying to defend HMS Glorious; Achates lost in the Barents in a one-sided fight with the German cruiser Admiral Hipper; Acheron and Blanche lost to mines, Arrow wrecked in an explosion in Algiers, Codrington and Brazen sunk by German bombers off Dover during the Battle of Britain, Skeena wrecked off Iceland, Keith and Basilisk claimed by the Luftwaffe during Dunkirk, and Boadicea sent sky high by Fritz X missiles fired by KG 100 Dornier Do 217s off Portsmouth a week after D-Day. Saguenay, who lost both her bow and stern in two different incidents, finished the war as an unpowered training hulk.

Of the seven remaining class members– Active, Antelope, Anthony, Beagle, Boreas, Brilliant, and our Bulldog— obsolete for postwar work and thoroughly worn out, they were soon paid off and scrapped by 1948.

Epilogue

Few relics remain of Bulldog.

A set of her 1940 bomb damage repair plans are in the National Archives.

The IWM has two works of art in their collection with Bulldog as the subject.

This evacuation from France was remembered in a period watercolor by maritime artist Richard Harding Seddon.

Signaling HMS Bulldog from the Shore, near Veulette: 10th June 1940. a view of some British soldiers signaling from a beach to HMS Bulldog. The soldiers stand on an unusual white rock formation, the sunset casting long shadows across the beach. Art.IWM ART LD 5986

Bulldog and her sisters Beagle and Boadicea were also portrayed off Bear Island while on Arctic duty in 1943 in a painting by Colin McMillan.

Three Royal Navy destroyers sail in choppy Arctic waters near Bear Island (Bjørnøja), with HMS Boadicea in the immediate foreground. All the ships sail from left to right and beams of sunlight emerge from breaks in the cloud in the background. Art.IWM ART 16598

As for Enigma machine burglar David Edward Balme, naval officer, and wool broker, DSC 1941, he finished the war as an LCDR and later served in the cruiser HMS Berwick and the battle-cruiser HMS Renown before leaving the service in 1947. He died in Lymington, Hampshire 3 January 2016.

Bulldog’s skipper during the Enigma/U-110 capture, CDR Addison Joe Baker-Cresswell DSO, RN, left the service in 1951 having gone on to command the cruiser HMS Caradoc (D 60). A gentleman farmer, he passed in 1997, aged 96.

Post-war, the Royal Navy would recycle the name for the seventh HMS Bulldog (A317), the lead ship of her class of four 189-foot steel-hulled armed survey ships. Commissioned in 1968, she was the last of the four still in service– and the last active RN ship with a wooden deck– when she was paid off in 2002.

Built by Brooke Marine, Lowestoft, the Bulldogs sported a bulbous bow and a high flared forecastle, giving them rather yacht-like lines, in addition to their suite of echo sounders and a Marconi Hydrosearch sector scanning sonar.

The Admiralty in 2021 announced the names for the “Inspirational” Type 31 (Babcock Arrowhead 140) frigate class would include the eighth HMS Bulldog, which had her keel laid in 2023.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Reading Material

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A list of yearly magazine subscriptions for the Gato-class fleet boat USS Drum (SS-228), circa 1944, numbering 16 titles, two copies each, for a cost– “less clubbing discount”– of $58. While some titles make sense in a 72-man crew full of 20-ish WWII American males, others are more curious.

Drum, laid down at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in September 1940, commissioned just five weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor and received a full dozen battle stars for her WWII service, across 14 war patrols, with a tally of some 80,580 tons of Japanese shipping on her scoreboard– with her crew apparently thumbing back-issues of Cosmo and True Detective between depth charge attacks.

Post-war, she was never given the GUPPY treatment and instead was used as a pierside USNR training hulk in the D.C. area’s Potomac River Naval Command until 1967 when she was finally retired. As part of the USS Alabama Museum since 1969, she is the oldest American submarine on public display– and one of the few in her correct WWII arrangement– and I took the above photo while on a tour of her.

Austal Gets $500 Million for New TAGOS

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From Thursday’s DOD Contracts:

Austal USA, Mobile, Alabama, is awarded a $516,481,569 fixed-price incentive (firm-target) contract modification to a previously awarded contract (N00024-23-C-2203) to exercise an option for ordering long lead time material, continue/complete detail design and Construction of the Lead Ship of the T-AGOS 25 Class. Work will be performed in Mobile, Alabama (42%); Houma, Louisiana (13%); Camden, New Jersey (13%); Shelton, Connecticut (6%); Cincinnati, Ohio (5%); Grove City, Pennsylvania (3%); Semmes, Alabama (3%); Chesapeake, Virginia (2%); Milford, Delaware (2%); New Orleans, Louisiana (1%); and various locations across the U.S., each less than 1% (10%), and is expected to be completed by May 2028. Fiscal 2024 Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy funds in the amount of $516,481,569 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire through the delivery date of T-AGOS 25. Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity (N00024-23-C-2203).

The Navy in FY2022 procured the first of a planned class of seven new TAGOS-25 class ocean surveillance ships for $434.4 million, with Austal picking up the prime contractor nod— with a potential value of $3.195 billion– in May 2023.

The planned MSC-manned TAGOS-25

The small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) vessel, so built to utilize the huge (64-ton) AN/UQQ-2 Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS) active and passive sonar arrays, is key to U.S ASW strategy in the Western Pacific.

Of note, the Navy’s five aging TAGOS ships–four Victorious (TAGOS-19) class ships (TAGOS 19 through 22) that entered service in 1991-1993, and one Impeccable (TAGOS-23) class ship that entered service in 2000– all use the same SWATH/SURTASS package and are based at Yokohama, Japan. 

TAGOS-25 will be the largest of her type, as compared with this chart from the CRS:

The bonus for replacing five older, smaller, and slower TAGOS vessels with the seven newer and more capable TAGOS-25s gives the obvious yield of putting more eyes in more places on the underseas goings on in the Pacific.

Nice to see the program is getting some funding.

Eye in the Sky

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Some 80 years ago this month, a USN PB4Y-1 (B-24) Liberator on an anti-submarine operational flight, 22 May 1944, out of Naval Air Field, Port Lyautey, French Morocco. Note the Portuguese-flagged coaster, navio-motor Costeiro Terceiro (66,96m/ 1.212,87gt/ 9,5 knots; 09/1941) below.

U.S. Navy Photo, via the National Archives. 80-G-227968

As far as I can tell, the above aircraft is likely Consolidated B-24J-20-CO, BuNo 32192 (USAAF 42-73170), of the “Night Owls” of VB-114, one of the 46 Block 20 B-24Js (42-73165 through 42-73214) handed over to the Navy, which represent just a fragment of the more than 900 PB4Y-1 Liberators and PB4Y-2 Privateers that were sent to the blue side during WWII.

PB4Y-1 Liberator from US Navy Patrol Squadron VP-114 on the ramp at Norfolk, Virginia, United States, circa Aug 1943.

As detailed by the Dictionary of American Naval Aviation Squadrons, VB-114 was established on 26 August 1943 and was redesignated VPB-114 in October 1944.

80-G-44506: U.S. Navy Aircraft: PB4Y-1. Navy Patrol Bomber, PB4Y-1, Liberator. Photograph received July 1944. U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (2014/6/5).

VB-114’s first overseas deployment was to NAF Port Lyautey (“Craw Field”) which was an improved 6,000-foot strip taken over in January 1944 from the French military. Operating beside assorted PBY-5 squadrons, VB-114 arrived starting in mid-February 1944, with their heavy equipment arriving later the next month aboard the Barnegat-class small seaplane tender USS Rockaway (AVP 29).

Operating under the control of FAW-15, the squadron suffered from a lack of targets, and, by June 1944, a detachment of six 50 million candle-watt searchlight-equipped birds (the squadron was the only American night-time patrol bomber unit in the Atlantic at the time), was deployed to RAF Dunkeswell, England “to provide low altitude ASW and anti-surface conduct in advance of and during the Normandy Invasion.”

They joined three other Navy Liberator squadrons (VB-103, VB-105, and VB-110) in roaming the Bay of Biscay, with the others roaming during the day and the Owls at night. 

U.S. Navy Aircraft: PB4Y-1. Consolidated PB4Y-1 “Liberator” Patrol Bomber in flight circa 1943-45. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Accession #: 80-G-K-5175

By mid-July 1944, the elements of VB-114 left in Morocco were shifted to Lagens Field, Terceira Island, Azores, where they were painted in British markings as the Portuguese had agreed to fly RAF aircraft out of the islands, not American.

VPB-114 PB4Y-1 with US and British markings at Lajes Field in 1944

Post-war, VPB-114 shifted operations to Florida and became one of the first hurricane hunter weather squadrons, redesignated VP-HL-6. This endured until 1948 when they went back to being a full-time patrol squadron and were redesignated a final time to become the “Tridents” of VP-26.

Since then, they have flown P-2Vs, assorted P-3B/C Orion, and now P-8 Poseidon.

Wreck of ‘Hit em Harder’ confirmed

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One of the 52 WWII American submarines considered on Eternal Patrol, the resting place of the Gato-class fleet boat USS Harder (SS 257), which received six battle stars for her wartime service, has been confirmed.

Laid down at EB in Groton a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Harder was commissioned on 2 December 1942 and earned the Presidential Unit Citation through five wildly successful wartime patrols.

The recently commissioned Harder (SS-257) steaming on the surface of Narragansett Bay, 20 January 1943.

Harder, accompanied by sisters Hake (SS-256) and Haddo (SS-255) departed Fremantle on 5 August 1944 for her sixth war patrol, assigned to haunt the South China Sea off Luzon. Two weeks later the American wolf pack splashed four Japanese cargo ships while Harder and Haddo attacked and destroyed the escort ships Matsuwa and Hiburi on 22 August.

By 24 August, with the out-of-torpedo Haddo returned to base, Harder and Hake had one final joint engagement, one that Harder would not survive.

As noted by DANFS:

Before dawn on 24 August 1944, Hake sighted the escort ship CD-22 and Patrol Boat No. 102 (ex-Stewart, DD-224.)  As Hake closed to attack, the patrol boat turned away toward Dasol Bay. Hake broke off her approach, turned northward, sighting Harder’s periscope 600 to 700 yards dead ahead. Swinging southward, Hake sighted CD-22 about 2,000 yards off her port quarter. To escape, Hake went deep and rigged for silent running. At 0728 Hake’s crew reported hearing 15 rapid depth charges explode in the distance astern. Hake continued evasive action, returning to the attack area shortly after noon to sweep the area at periscope depth – only finding a ring of marker buoys covering a radius of one-half mile. Japanese records later revealed that Harder fired three torpedoes at CD-22 in a “down-the-throat” shot, which the enemy vessel successfully evaded. At 0728, she launched the first of several depth charges, which sunk the American submarine.  

The Navy declared Harder presumed lost on 2 January 1945. Her name was stricken from the Navy Register on 20 January.

She is in remarkable condition after sitting on the floor for almost 80 years, sitting upright under the crush of more than 3,000 meters of sea.

4D photogrammetry model of USS Harder (SS 257) wreck site by The Lost 52. The Lost 52 Project scanned the entire boat and stitched all the images together in a multi-dimensional model used to study and explore the site. Tim Taylor and The Lost 52 Project grants the US Navy permission to use their image for press release of the discovery of the USS Harder with photo credit given to Tim Taylor and the Lost 52 Project.

And so we remember Harder and her 80 souls. 
 
There are no roses on sailors’ graves,
Nor wreaths upon the storm-tossed waves,
No last post from the King’s band,
So far away from their native land,
No heartbroken words carved on stone,
Just shipmates’ bodies there alone,
The only tributes are the seagulls sweep,
And the teardrop when a loved one weeps.
 

(Photo: Chris Eger)

The Ghosts of Da Gama off Greenland

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We’ve covered the hectic op-tempo of the Portuguese Navy’s submarine force a few times in recent years. Their pair of very modern fuel cell AIP variants of the German Type 209PN/Type 214PNs, including NRP Tridente (S160) and NRP Arpão (S161), in particular, have been clocking in around the globe, with the latter accomplishing a 120-day patrol last year that included transiting the length of the African continent, while completely submerged, in just 15 days.

Well, Arpão, just left Portugal on 3 April for another 70-day stint as part of NATO’s Operation Brilliant Shield, with her first stop being the frigid waters of the Davis Strait off Greenland where she will be the first submarine of the Marinha Portuguesa to navigate under the Arctic ice, where she will be in operations with the militaries of Canada, Denmark, and the U.S.

After lengthy practice dives, she made a port call at Gl.atlantkaj, Godthab, Greenland on 26 April.

Danish Arktisk Kommando (Joint Arctic Command) has said in a statement that the 1,800-ton Knud Rasmussen class patrol vessel HDMS Ejnar Mikkelsen (P571) acted as her support ship. She may also be an OPFOR, as the little vessel carries what has been described as a “mine-avoidance sonar” and has a fit for possible MU90 Impact ASW torpedoes.

Mikkelsen has also been hosting a Danish Navy MH-60R Seahawk helicopter of 723 Sqn off and on.

Meanwhile, in the nearby Faeroes Islands, NATO exercise Dynamic Mongoose is going on with 10 ships, 5 submarines and 9 aircraft, including the Danish 3,500-ton Thetis class OPV HDMS Hvidbjørnen (F360)-– with a SaabTech CTS-36 hull-mounted active sonar and towed Thomson Sintra TSM 2640 Salmon variable depth passive sonar– as well as the Faroese Fisheries Patrol (Fiskimanlastyrid) vessel Brimil out of Torshaven.

The Thetis-class’s Thomson Sintra TSM 2640 Salmon variable depth sonar fit

This comes as the Danish parliament has proposed a defense update that will include plans to put more Mark 54 ASW torpedoes on more platforms (which they have fielded since 2018) and call up 5,000 conscripts a year from 2026 (including women), up from the current 4,700, on six-to-nine-month tours.

Welcome back, Awesome Aggie

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Carrying the name of the legendary Greek king, the first HMS Agamemnon in the Royal Navy had earned a host of battle honors when in her prime. By 1805, she was an aging 64-gun third-rate that had seen better days and rightfully should have been condemned. Still, given a reprieve from the shipbreakers to serve as part of Nelson’s weather column at Trafalgar, she closed with and helped force the surrender of the first-rate 112-gun Spanish four-decker Nuestra Señora de la Santísima Trinidad, complete with the deafened and injured RADM Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros aboard. Her “Trafalgar 1805” battle honor joined a quartet (Ushant 1781, The Saints 1782, Genoa 1795, Copenhagen 1801) she had already picked up.

Incidentally, Agamemnon was one of five ships that Nelson had commanded, and is regarded as his favorite. 
 

An 1807 composite painting by Nicholas Pocock showing five of the ships in which Nelson served as a captain and flag officer from the start of the French Wars in 1793 to his death in 1805. The artist has depicted them drying sails in a calm at Spithead, Portsmouth, and despite the traditional title, two of them were not strictly flagships. The ship on the left in bow view is the ‘Agamemnon’, 64 guns. It was Nelson’s favorite ship, which he commanded as a captain from 1793. Broadside on is the ‘Vanguard’, 74 guns, his flagship at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 flying a white ensign and his blue flag as Rear-Admiral of the Blue at the mizzen. Stern on is the ‘Elephant’, 74 guns, his temporary flagship at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. She is flying the blue ensign from the stern and Nelson’s flag as Vice-Admiral of the Blue at her foremast. In the center distance is the ‘Captain’, 74 guns, in which Nelson flew a commodore’s broad pendant at the Battle of St Vincent, 1797. Dominating the right foreground is the ‘Victory’, 100 guns, shown in her original state, with open stern galleries, and not as she was at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. She is shown at anchor flying the flag of Vice-Admiral of the White, Nelson’s Trafalgar rank, and firing a salute to starboard as an admiral’s barge is rowed alongside, amidst other small craft. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Caird Collection)

The second Agamemnon, a 91-gun steam second rate, added a battle honor to the name in the Crimea.

The third, an early 8,500-ton Ajax class battleship armed with 12.5-inch ML rifles and clad in as much as 18 inches of cast iron armor, spent much of her 20-year career primarily in the East Indies and off Zanzibar and Aden, showing the White Ensign.

The fourth, a more modern 17,000-ton Lord Nelson-class battleship, had the rare distinction of shooting down the German Zeppelin in 1916 and earned a battle honor for the Dardanelles before she was disposed of in 1927 in line with the interbellum naval treaties.

9.2″/50 Vickers Mk XI guns of HMS Agamemnon firing on Ottoman Turkish forts at Sedd el Bahr on 4 March 1915. IWM HU 103302

HMS Agamemnon has her BL 12-inch Mk X guns replaced during a refit at Malta in May–June 1915, IWM Q 102609.

The fifth Agamemnon (M10) was an unsung WWII minelayer, and, since 1946, the Royal Navy has not had the name on its list…well, until now.

The sixth and future HMS Agamemnon (S124), coincidentally the sixth Astute-class hunter-killer, has been under construction alongside sister HMS Anson at BAE Systems’ yard in Barrow-in-Furness, since 2010 and was christened inside the cavernous Devonshire Dock Hall on 22 April.

As noted by the RN:

HMS Agamemnon will act as both sword and protector – able to strike at foes on land courtesy of her Tomahawk cruise missile – and fend off threats on and beneath the waves with Spearfish torpedoes.

“Awesome Aggie” is expected to enter the fleet later this year.

Warship Wednesday, April 24, 2024: A Flower So Nice They Painted Her Thrice

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

Warship Wednesday, April 24, 2024: A Flower So Nice They Painted Her Thrice

Imperial War Museum Collections FL 5516 (RCN)

Above we see a detailed image of the plucky little Flower-class corvette HMCS Snowberry (K166) of the Royal Canadian Navy underway during World War II. She is pictured in the above just after she left Charleston Navy Yard in South Carolina following a much-needed refit that saw her both refreshed and her fo’c’s’le extended to provide better handling of the stubby 925-ton escort while on North Atlantic convoy runs, her staple employment for the duration of the war.

The Flowers

A handy little sub-buster that could be cranked out in record time but was still very capable of escorting slow-moving merchantmen from the Americas to Europe during the Battle of the Atlantic, the Admiralty would order more than 300 Gladiolus/Flower-class corvettes from 1939 onward.

Essentially a stretched version of the Smith’s Dock’s 582 GRT, 160-foot steam-powered whaler design built in 1936 for the Southern Whaling & Sealing Co. Ltd (SWSC), they were single-screw vessels powered by a pair of cylindrical Scotch marine boilers feeding a single VTE engine that could, when turning at maximum RPMs, generate a theoretical 2,750 h.p., enough to push the little tub 16 ish knots while an economical load of 230 tons of fuel oil would get them 3,500nm at 12 knots, enough to make it across the Atlantic on the 2,700-mile Halifax to Liverpool route with some fuel left for maneuvering.

The Flowers were based on the SWSC’s Southern Pride, shown here in her pre-war whaler service. The vessel would be requisitioned by the RN (K 249) in 1940 and lost in 1944 off Freetown. 

Using the simpler boiler pattern and including enough space for a crew of 80 officers and men (later to swell to as much as 110), the dimensions shifted from a 160-foot whaler to a 205-foot corvette. With a correspondingly wide 33-foot beam, they had a stubby 1:6 length-beam ratio.

Armament was slight: a single 4″/45 BL Mk IX forward, a 40mm/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII pom-pom on a “bandstand” platform aft, a couple of depth charge throwers and two depth charge racks over the stern, with provision for up to 40 ash cans. They also had a perfectly adequate Type 123 or Type 128 sonar and (eventually) a Type 271 or Type 286 radar. Of course, there were extensive modifications to this and tweaks across the massive production line, but you get the idea. Late war fits included as many as 70 depth charges, a Hedgehog ASW device, and a half-dozen 20mm Oerlikons.

 

Drawing of a Flower Class Corvette showing the ship’s layout by John W. McKay – 1992. Source: “Corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy 1939-1945” by Ken MacPherson and Marc Milner

Built to merchant (Lloyds) standards rather than to those of the Admiralty, they could be churned out rapidly at about any small coastwise commercial shipyard and several dozen shipyards participated in the program in the UK and Canada. Some 13 Canadian yards alone (Burrard, Canadian Vickers, Collingwood, Davie & Sons, Davie SB, Kingston SB, Marine Industries, Midland SY, Morton Eng. & D.D. Co, Port Arthur SB, Victoria Machinery, and Yarrows Esquimalt) made a whopping 122 Flowers during the conflict.

The average construction time was 6-8 months, a process often sped up by the fact that the armament and sensors would be installed post-delivery at a nearby naval yard, sometimes in stages, a problem that meant some Flowers had to deploy for months before they received all their gear.

No less than 111 Flowers were assigned to the RCN at one point or another, of which 7 were canceled while still under construction, 80 were built from the start for the Canadians, and 24 RN corvettes (many of which were built in Canadian yards) transferred on loan.

RCN corvette in drydock. Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4950910

Three Flower class corvettes tied up at St. Johns.

Meet Snowberry

Our subject, laid down for the Royal Navy on 24 February 1940 at Davie Shipbuilding (now Chantier Davie Canada Inc. but still in business) at Lauzon, Quebec, was named, in line with the convention used for the rest of the Flowers, after Symphoricarpos albus-– the common snowberry. Launched just six months later, she was delivered to the RN and commissioned at Quebec City on 26 November 1940, the gestation period of HMS Snowberry (K166) lasted but eight months.

War Baby

Manned by a Canadian crew led by LT Roy Stanley Kelly, RCNR, Snowberry sailed for Halifax to pick up her armament and then, after crossing the Atlantic with her first convoy (HX.108) she finished her fitting out process at Greenock, Scotland. Following a stint with Western Approaches Command, she was loaned to the Royal Canadian Navy and commissioned as HMCS Snowberry on 15 May 1941 with the same pennant number. In June 1941, she sailed for Newfoundland and would get to arduous work there in convoy service.

This image depicts a Canadian corvette as it comes alongside a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in April 1943

In all, Snowberry took part in an impressive 74 convoys between 3 February 1941 (HX.108) and 15 April 1945, broken down into 15 in 1941, 19 in the hellish year that was 1942, 16 in 1943, just 11 in 1944, and a baker’s dozen in just the first four months of 1945.

Most of these (29) were dangerous HX or ON convoys from New York/Halifax to Liverpool and vice-versa but she did manage to venture into the Caribbean every now and then on TAW, GN, and AH convoys.

HMCS Snowberry (K166), Charleston, South Carolina, May 1943, NARA

HMCS Snowberry (K166), Charleston, South Carolina, May 1943, NARA

Her two most notable brushes with the Jerries included the sinking of the brand-new Type IXC/40 U-536 (Kptlt. Rolf Schauenburg), on 20 November 1943 in the North Atlantic northeast of the Azores in conjunction with her Canadian Flower sister HMCS Calgary (K231) and the British River-class frigate, HMS Nene.

Schauenburg, on only his second war patrol of 2. Flottille out of Lorient, survived along with 16 of his men to become POWs.

From the official report of the sinking of U-536.

1943 Devonport Dockyard, Nov 25, 1943, U-536 survivors brought in by crews of HMCS Snowberry, HMS Tweed, and HMCS Calgary. Note the Lanchester SMG

LOSERS IN THE ATLANTIC BATTLE. 25 NOVEMBER 1943, PLYMOUTH, DEVONPORT DOCKYARD. MORE U-BOAT PRISONERS; 17 OFFICERS AND MEN BEING LANDED BLINDFOLDED IN THE SOUTH-WEST PORT FROM A CONVOY ESCORT SHIP WHICH PICKED THEM UP AFTER THEIR SUBMARINE HAD BEEN SUNK. (A 20600) U-Boat prisoners arriving at Devonport blindfolded. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205153048

The second notable incident with the Germans was in the first use of glider bombs against Allied shipping, deployed by the famous II.Gruppe/KG 100.

As detailed by Uboat.net:

On the 25th of August 1943, the Canadian 5th Support Group (Cdr. Tweed), consisting of the British frigates HMS Nene, HMS Tweed, and the Canadian corvettes HMCS Calgary, HMCS Edmundston and HMCS Snowberry were deployed to relieve the 40th Escort Group. While this was in progress the ships were attacked at 1415 hrs by 14 Dornier Do-217s and 7 Ju-88s. with the new German weapon, the Henschel radio-guided glide bomb, (the “Hs293 A-1”) designed by the German Professor Herbert Wagner. The sloops HMS Landguard and HMS Bideford of the 40th Escort Group were the first of the Allied and R.N. ships to be attacked and damaged by them. This was the first time their being brought into action against Allied ships. Several sailors were injured on HMS Bideford and one sailor was killed, the light damage as the 650-pound warhead did not detonate.

Snowberry finished the war with the Portsmouth Command and was handed back to the RN at Rosyth on 8 Jun 1945.

However, the Brits were not keen to keep any of these converted whalers around and quickly disposed of them wholesale. Ex-Snowberry was sunk as a target vessel off Portsmouth in 1946, then her hulk was raised by a salvage company and broken up at Thornaby-on-Tees in 1947.

During WWII, Canadian vessels escorted over 181 million tons of cargo across the pond, sinking 27 German U-boats in the process (14 of which were bagged by RCN corvettes) as well as accounting for a further 42 Axis surface ships.

In return, the Canadians lost 24 ships of their own during the war, along with 1,800 men with hearts of steel. Of those 24 vessels, 10 were Flower class corvettes including HMCS Alberni, sunk by U-480; HMCS Charlottetown, sunk by U-517; HMCS Levis, sent to the bottom by German torpedoes in 1941; HMCS Louisburg, sunk by Italian aircraft off Oran; HMCS Shawinigan, sunk by U-1228; HMCS Trentonian, sunk by U-1004; along with HMCS Regina and HMCS Weyburn, lost to mines.

Epilogue

A crew site has been established for the diligent little corvette through the For Posterity Sake initiative.

Snowberry has been immortalized at least three times since the 1970s. The first was by renowned British maritime artist John Hamilton now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.

The corvette HMCS Snowberry making way in a heavy sea by John Hamilton. She is shown starboard side on. IWM ART LD 7400

Another is from a Canadian artist. 

Snowberry Painted by Fread Thearle in 1988 Beaverbrook Collection of War Art. “Thearle’s painting depicts her crashing through heavy seas. Wind and weather constantly challenged Canada’s navy in its wartime roles during the Second World War. Large numbers of corvettes were produced during the war and used as convoy escorts. Their simple design made it possible to build them quickly in smaller shipyards, like the one at Lauzon, Québec, where the Snowberry was launched in 1940.” CWM 20060128-003

The German scale model company Revell in 2015 debuted a 1:144 version of Snowberry.

The kit included breathtaking box art by Danijel Frka.

Sadly, neither the Royal Navy nor RCN has seen fit to commission a second Snowberry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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