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Warship Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024: Inadvertent Records

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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, Aug. 28, 2024: Inadvertent Records

Above we see a great action shot of the late Victorian-era Hermes class protected cruiser HMS Highflyer living up to her name while fighting the Atlantic, circa 1905.

Although a dated design by the time of the Great War, Highflyer still made short work of a faster and larger German auxiliary cruiser some 110 years ago this week.

The Hermes Class

The Admiralty, starting in 1889, began to order several successive batches of “second-class” protected cruisers: rakish steel-hulled steamers capable of 20 or so knots (fast for their age) and, while girded with an internal curved steel armored deck protecting their vital machinery spaces, weren’t meant primarily for fleet-on-fleet action but instead tasked with the role of overseas patrol and protection.

With an armament of 6 and 4.7-inch QF guns and a few torpedo tubes, as well as the ability to land 100 or so Tars armed as light infantry for work ashore, these vessels were seen as capable of keeping the peace against either local rebellions or foreign interlopers short of a battleship during times of peace. In times of war– something not seen against a European power by the Royal Navy since the Crimea– such warships could both capture enemy shipping, using the very gentlemanly “cruiser prize rules” and protect the crown’s own merchantmen from the enemy’s own raiders.

In the short period between just 1889 and 1898, the Royal Navy ordered 38 of these cruisers: 21 Apollo-class (3,600t, 19.75kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 4x 14″ TT), 8 Astraea-class (4,360t, 19.5kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 1x 18″ TT), and 9 Eclipse-class (5,600t, 18.5kts, 5×6″, 6×4.7″, 3x 18″ TT).

Following in the wake of this hectic building spree, the Admiralty ordered a further five vessels in the Estimates of 1896-1901, laid down in five different yards. Repeats of the Eclipse class with a few tweaks, the Hermes (or Highflyer) class were roughly the same size, a little faster, and carried a more homogenous armament of 11 6″/40 (15.2 cm) QF Mark I guns instead of the mixed 6-inch/4.7-inch batteries.

These were arranged in single open mounts, one forward, two aft, and eight arranged in broadside. Armored with a 3-inch thick steel front shield, these mounts were capable of lobbing a 100-pound HE shell to 10,000 yards at a rate of fire of 5-to-7 rounds per minute depending on crew training.

Two 6″/40 (15.2 cm) guns on the aft quarterdeck aft of HMS Hermes.

The 373-foot Hermes/Highflyer class, second-rate protected cruiser HMS Hyacinth pictured c1902. This three-color peacetime livery shows off her waist broadside 6-inchers well.

For countering torpedo boats, these new cruisers would carry nine 3″/40 12pdr 12cwt QF Mk Is and a half-dozen 47mm/40 3pdr Hotchkiss Mk I guns. Their torpedo battery consisted of two 18-inch tubes below the waterline on the beam. Two Maxim machine guns and an 800-pound QF 12-pounder 8 cwt landing gun on a carriage were also carried for the ship’s ashore force.

Carrying 500 tons of Harvey armor, this ranged from 6 inches on the CT to 5 inches over the engine hatches with a 3-inch deck.

Powered by 18 Bellville boilers which drove a pair of 4-cylinder VTEs on two screws, the designed speed was 20 knots with a planned endurance, on 1,100 tons (max load) of good coal, of 3,300nm at 18 knots. On builder’s trials, over an eight-hour course at full power, most beat the 20-knot guideline while, when driving at 30 hours on 3/4 power, still ranged from 17.34 to 19.4 knots. Not bad for the 1900s.

Published builder’s speed trials for 1899, with three of our class, Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, listed in the middle:

With a 21-foot draft (more when carrying a double load of coal), these cruisers carried a flotilla of small boats including two 36-foot sail pinnaces, a 32-foot steam cutter, a 30-foot gig, and several smaller gigs and whalers as ship-to-shore connectors.

Listed in journals as having a 450-man ship’s company, this size was often larger during peacetime overseas sailing– especially when an RM platoon was embarked– and drastically reduced while in ordinary.

The class consisted of five cruisers: the first flight Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, then the follow-on modified (with heavier boilers) Challenger and Encounter.

Jane’s 1914 listing for the class.

Meet Highflyer

Our subject is the fourth Royal Navy vessel named Highflyer, a tradition that began with the (brief) capture and reuse of the 5-gun American privateer of that name in 1813 by the HMS Poictiers. The second was a small 2-gun tender while the third was a well-traveled 21-gun wooden-hulled screw frigate that served in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War with time out to bombard the Arab fort at Al Zorah.

Ordered alongside class leader Hermes (Yard No. 401) at Fairfield, Govan, Highflyer was Yard No. 402 and was laid down on 7 June 1897. Launched on 4 June 1898, she was completed on 7 December 1899– the last RN cruiser commissioned in the 19th Century.

Peacetime career

Dispatched to serve as the flagship of RADM Day Bosanquet’s East Indies Station, Highflyer set out in February 1900 for Trincomalee, Ceylon. There she remained for over three years, cruising around the region as directed, and served the same mission for the next East Indies Station commander, RADM Charles Carter Drury.

HMS Highflyer NH 60585

Next came a stint as flag for the North America and West Indies Station, again under RADM Bosanquet until 1908 when she was rotated back to England for drydocking and refit.

HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 42674)

Again deploying overseas, she left for East Indies Station in early 1911 to relieve her sister Hyacinth, and carried the flag of RADM Edmond Slade until April 1913.

Relieved by HMS Swiftsure, Highflyer was sent back to England to join the 3rd Fleet, detailed as a training ship for the new Special Entry Cadet scheme which took lads 17½ to 18½ years of age and gave them up to 18 months of training before sending them to the fleet. Such training meant hours and hours of holystoning decks, chipping and painting bulkheads, polishing brightwork, and drills, drills, drills.

HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 75385)

Her “lucky 13th” skipper, Capt. Henry Tritton Buller, assumed command on 1 July 1913.

Her complement was nearly doubled during this period, as noted by this log entry while at Chatam in late 1913.

Officers: 32
Seamen: 164
Boys: 24
Marines: 50
Engine-room establishment: 134
Other non-executive ratings: 466

She undertook a three-month Med training cruise in the Spring of 1914, roaming to Malta from Devonport with stops at Villefranche, Tangier, Naples, Algiers, and Gibraltar.

War!

With Europe under tension of war, on 13 July 1914 at 0100, Highflyer logged a note to mobilize for fleet service and began receiving Marines and ratings from the Devonport depots and hospital. Three days later, she weighed anchor for Spithead via Bournemouth, leading the Astraea-class protected cruiser HMS Charybdis and class leader HMS Eclipse out to sea.

Putting in at Portsmouth, she soon took on ammunition and coal. With Sarajevo on fire from Austrian shells and the Kaiser sending his troops into Belgium, on 3 August, Highflyer’s complement– augmented by fresh reservists arriving every day– began fuzing lyddite shells and arranging torpedoes.

With the news of war declared against Germany flashed at 23:23 on 4 August, Highflyer made ready to prepare for battle and sortied out into the Channel with the Arrogant-class cruiser HMS Vindictive.

On the morning of the second day of Britain’s war, Highflyer spotted the 13,000-ton Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd liner SS Tubantia and promptly stopped her for inspection. Returning from Buenos Aires with £500,000 in gold destined for German banks, the liner’s steerage berths held 150 German military reservists returning home from South America and a cargo of Argentine grain likewise destined for the Vaterland.

With such a floating violation of neutrality, Highflyer’s prize crew directed the liner to Plymouth with the cruiser closely escorting. Once there on 6 August, Royal Marines escorted the German reservists off while the gold was confiscated– along with her German-bound mail which included bundles of rubber and wool– and taken ashore.

Tubantia, relieved of contraband, was later released and allowed to resume her voyage.

Putting back to sea to patrol the Bay of Biscay for German blockade runners, Highflyer sailed to Gibraltar and, with orders for Cape Verde, it was off the Spanish Northwest African enclave of Río de Oro
that she spotted a familiar ship on the morning of 26 August.

The Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, at 24,000 tons and 649 feet overall, was the largest ship in the world when she put to sea in 1897.

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69220

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69219

Capable of carrying as many as 1,500 passengers, the liner’s Baroque revival decor, overseen by Johann Poppe, can be seen in this view of her smoking cabin, North German Lloyd pamphlet c. 1905. LC-DIG-ppmsca-02202

Size comparison by the Gray Lithograph company for the lines North German Lines of the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with the Trinity Church, the St. Paul Building in New York, the Washington Monument, and the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-50050

One of the fastest ships in the world as well, she twice captured the Blue Riband, sustaining a 22.3 knot Atlantic crossing in 1898.

By July 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse caught orders to chop over to the Kaiserliche Marine and, while at Bremerhaven, quickly converted to become an auxiliary cruiser (hilfskreuzer) under the command of Fregattenkapitän Max Reymann. While she had been designed to carry as many as eight 5.9-inch and four 4.7-inch guns as well as up to 14 Spandau machine guns, only four old 4.1-inchers were on hand for the conversion.

Ordered to sea on 4 August to take a route northeast of Iceland, Reymann took his barely converted cruiser to sea, with orders to make for the South Atlantic. He promptly sank three British ships, taking 126 of their crew aboard. Several other ships were stopped but the enemy passenger problem was getting out of hand so Reymann simply disabled their wireless and allowed them to proceed.

KWdG’s brief raiding record:

7 August: trawler Tubal Cain (227 GRT), sunk.
15 August: passenger ship Galician (6,757 GRT), allowed to proceed.
15 August: passenger ship Arlanza (15,044 GRT), allowed to proceed.
16 August: frozen meat freight Kaipara (7,392 GRT) and Nyanga (3,066 GRT), sunk.
16 August: coal steamer Arucas, captured for use as an escort ship with a prize crew.

Needing a breather from the Royal Navy dragnet looking for him, Reymann put into Río de Oro for a couple of days on 17 August to take coal from Arucas and two German ships (Magdeburg and Bethania) sheltering there.

Reymann never got to finish his cruise before Highflyer appeared on the horizon on the 26th in what was, technically, a breach of neutrality.

A series of signals were exchanged between the two ships:

Highflyer: “Surrender.”

Highflyer: “I demand your surrender.”

KWdG: “German warships will not surrender. I request you to respect Spanish neutrality.”

Highflyer: “This is the second time you have been coaling in this harbor, I demand that you surrender; if not, I will open fire on you immediately.”

KWdG: “This is the first time I’m coaling here, and besides, this is a Spanish matter.”

Highflyer: “Surrender immediately.”

KWdG: “I have nothing more to say to you.”

Putting ashore his prisoners and non-combatant complement, Reymann figured the end was near, and, sailing out, Highflyer soon opened up at 1515, with the German replying.

Although KWdG was faster, Highflyer had an excellent position and continued to exchange fire with her larger guns at ranges past 7,500 yards while the artillery duel between the two lasted until 1615 when the German ship ceased fire and, smoking, withdrew behind some sand hills.

Reymann, low on ammunition and with two men dead and zero chance of escaping, smashed his wireless, scuttled his ship (she had rolled on her side by 1710), and put his crew ashore via lifeboats.

The shipless Fregattenkapitän and his men landed on a Saharan beach five miles from the Spanish fort at Villa Cisneros (Al-Dakhla) where they were interred.

Buller, ever the gentleman, attempted to send his own medical teams to help the crew of the German cruiser but recalled them once he determined they were not needed. Highflyer suffered one killed– RJ Lobb, Leading Carpenter’s Crew, ON M.2882– and 10 wounded during the engagement. A prize court would later grant Highflyer’s crew £2,680 for the sinking.

The battle made Highflyer famous, and newspapers around the globe celebrated the fight. 

Assuming the flag of the Cape Verde station by October, Highflyer remained on a sharp lookout for German raiders and runners for the next two years without the same sort of brilliant luck she had in the first three weeks of the war. She spent much of this time combing the seas off West Africa, often haunting Sierra Leone and St. Vincent.

By 1917, she was engaged in cross-Atlantic convoy escorts from Halifax to Plymouth as part of the North American Squadron.

May 1917,”S.S. Durham Castle with [S.S.] Ayrshire and HMS Highflyer ahead.” Exterior view from the deck of the SS Durham Castle looking fore at two ships ahead. Lt. Irvine of the RAMC, having just graduated in medicine, was shipping out on the SS Durham Castle to the campaign in German East Africa. The image is from an album chronicling the wartime experiences of Archibald Clive Irvine (1893-1974) in East Africa. During this time he would meet Dr John W Arthur which in turn would lead to his missionary work at Chogoria in Kenya. Acc.12016/1 (reference number), International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection), National Library of Scotland (subcollection), NLS DOD ID: 97047298 (file).

It was while at Halifax on 6 December that Highflyer had a ringside seat for the great Halifax explosion when a collision between the relief ship SS Imo and the munitions ship SS Mont Blanc sent the latter sky-high in the world’s largest pre-atomic explosion, killing over 1,900.

With the Mont Blanc ablaze and abandoned by its crew, six volunteers from Highflyer rowed almost a mile across the harbor to the ship to offer assistance. All perished but one when the Mont Blanc’s cargo exploded when the whaler was only 300 feet away.

The survivor, Second Class Able Seaman William Becker, J5841, was propelled 1,600 yards across the harbor by the explosion. Becker swam through the icy water to safety and lived until 1969. He earned an Albert Medal and was entered in the Guinness Book as the “Farthest-Flying Human Projectile (Involuntary).”

From Highflyer’s deck log:

8:40 am: Port watch of stokers landed for route march.
8:45 am: Collision between IMO (Belgian relief ship) and S.S. MONT BLANC (French) .
8:48 am: Fire broke out on MONT BLANC.
8:55 am: Commander Triggs and Lieutenant Ruffles proceeded in whaler to investigate.
9:08 am: Mont Blanc exploded (cargo, ammunition previously unknown) causing large wave and setting Richmond on fire. Damage was done to HIGHFLYER and to most of its boats. The skiff was sent to find the whaler’s crew and picked up Murphy AB who was unconscious and later died. Becker AB was found on the shore, having swum there. No trace of the remainder of the whaler’s crew was found. HIGHFLYER received wounded from other ships, made temporary repairs and cleared debris. The ship had to be unmoored at one point because of the danger from its proximity to the PICTON and the fires. The watch of stokers which had been landed administered first aid on shore.
Casualties
Killed
Jones, Robert DCS 270699 ERA 1st class
Kelly, Francis DK 21331 Sto. 1st class
Rogers, Edn. Benjamin DK 33240 Sto. 1st class
Murphy, Joseph DJ 2308 Able Seaman, [who was picked up in the water] (whaler’s crew)
Missing (Whaler’s crew)
Triggs, Tom Kenneth Commander
Ruffles, James Rayward Lieutenant RNR
Rushen, Claude Eggleton LS DCS 234241
Fowling, James Able Seaman DCS 22261
Prewer, Samuel David Able Seaman DCS 236276
Wounded: 2
Slightly Wounded 25
Minor Injuries 20
Several Officers with facial injuries and injured tympanic membranes who carried on with their duties.
From other ships:
2 Pte. of Composite Regiment
2 of crew of Tug HILFORD (one, Perrin, Charles died later)
5 from S.S. PICTON
6 from S.S. IMO
3 others injured
55 other survivors, several with minor injuries were accommodated on board

Halifax explosion, with HMS Highflyer shown in the channel, via the Halifax Naval Museum

Repaired at Devonport, Highflyer was sent to Bermuda to serve as a guard and station ship for the first half of 1918 then returned to convoy work, escorting Yanks to Europe. She was off Glasgow on one such run when the Armistice was announced on 11 November.

Late-war she apparently had a dazzle scheme drawn up by British Vorticist (the very English modernist movement that grew out of Cubism) artist Edward Wadsworth who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the Great War.

HMS Highflyer, 1917 dazzle camo, Edward Wadsworth Art.IWM DAZ 37

Following a post-war refit at Devonport, Highflyer was sent once more to assume the role of flagship for the East Indies Station. Hoisting the flag of RADM Hugh H. D. Tothill, she held down the station from July 1919 to January 1921.

Paid off, she was sold for scrap at Bombay on 10 June 1921, at the time, she was the last Victorian-era cruiser in RN service.

Epilogue

The RN has not reissued the name “Highflyer” to another vessel.

However, in a salute to her extensive service on the East Indies Station– which was both her first and last posting– the “stone frigate” of the Royal Navy shore establishment in Trincomalee was named HMS Highflyer from 1943 until 1958 when the dockyard, wireless station, hospital, and headquarters facility was taken over by the Royal Ceylon Navy. I believe the old cruiser’s bell was located there during WWII but I can’t discern if/where it still exists. 

Our cruiser is remembered in maritime art.

HMS Highflyer by Alma Claude Burlton Cull 1880-1931

As well as in Delandres vignettes from the period.  

Of her sisters and half-sisters, Hermes was converted to a seaplane carrier in 1913, and sunk on 31 October 1914 by SM U 27.

HMS Hermes, sank after being struck by a torpedo from U-27 on October 31, 1914

Hyacinth spent her Great War career off Africa and assisted in the blockade of the German cruiser SMS Konigsberg there. She was decommissioned in 1919.

HMS Hyacinth listed to increase the range of her 6-inch guns, firing on German positions north of Lukuledi River, Lindi, German East Africa, 11th June 1917.

Near-sisters Challenger and Encounter, the latter in Australian service, spent the Great War off Africa and in the Pacific. While Challenger was broken up in 1920, Encounter would endure as a disarmed depot ship for the Royal Australian Navy throughout the 1920s until she was scuttled in 1932.

Modified Hermes class Challenger class protected cruiser HMAS Encounter IWM (Q 75381)

As for Highflyer’s hard-charging early war skipper, who captured Tubantia and sank Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, Admiral Sir Henry Tritton Buller, G.C.V.O., C.B., went on to command three different battleships and HM yachts before moving to the retired list in 1931. He passed in 1960, aged 86.

Meanwhile, KWdG’s skipper, Max Reymann, released himself from Spanish custody and managed to make it as far as Switzerland before the war ended. The bulk of his crew, some 350 men, were not as lucky and, catching a ride to the U.S. aboard the Spanish steamer Bethania, were intercepted in the Caribbean by the British armored cruiser HMS Essex and spent the rest of their war in a POW camp in Jamacia. Reymann returned to service, was appointed president of the Marinefriedenskommission (Naval Peace Commission) with the post-war Reichsmarine, and retired as a vice admiral in 1923. He passed in 1948, aged 76. He is remembered on the Ehrenrangliste der Kaiserlich Deutschen Marine (list of honorable men of the Imperial German Navy.)

Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, partially salvaged, is still in Rio de Oro, now in Moroccan waters. What is left of her wreck was located in shallow waters in 2013 and can be dived, with the proper permission.

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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Saipan Stomach Pills

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Some 80 years ago, the 25 August 1944 issue of “Yank” magazine carried a wide shot of a “Tanker in the Marianas” on the cover, showing said helmeted armored vehicle crewman amidst a scene of urban wreckage, his trusty mount behind him and seemingly camouflaged by various sheet metal bits and local signage.

The shot, from a series by Yank’s own SGT Bill Young and LIFE’s Peter Stackpole, is of 20-year-old CPL Thomas O’Neal of the 2nd Marine Division’s 2nd Tank Battalion as he rests against his Fisher-made M4A2 Sherman Tank after securing the town of Garapan during Operation Forager, the Battle of Saipan, in late July 1944.

Of note, only the Marine Corps, the Russian Army, and the Free French Forces predominantly used the diesel-powered M4A2 Sherman, while the Army had standardized the M4A3, with its gasoline-fueled Ford GAA engine, for its own mass production.

The ad behind O’Neal, printed by Saichi in Nakajima, is for Yuchu “stomach disease tameyui” of the Makoto Sheiro Yutada gastrointestinal and pulmonary medicine company, based in Osaka City, Tennoji Mito. In short, for stomach pills (almost) good enough for the Emperor himself!

While on Saipan, both 2nd and 4th Tanks shrugged off hits from Japanese 47mm guns and teamed up to decimate a battalion of the Emperor’s Type 95 Ha-go light tanks– one of the few large tank-on-tank fights seen in the Pacific in WWII.

O’Neal, his M1938 helmet still plugged into his tank and an M1911 in a shoulder holster across his chest, seems less than impressed.

Thomas “Tom” Everett O’Neal was born on 28 April 1924 in Long Beach, California, and enlisted in the Marines at the ripe old age of 17 just a week after Pearl Harbor. Volunteering for tanks, he fought at Guadalcanal and Tarawa before the landings on Saipan.

O’Neal survived the war without injuries and returned home to his high school sweetheart to start a family. Called back to active duty in July 1950 to head to Korea, he fought with the Marines at Inchon, Seoul, Wonsan, and around the Chosin Reservoir before returning home to later retire from the Los Angeles Police Department in the late 1960s. He then moved with his wife to Oregon and took up woodworking, belonging to the Oregon Old Time Fiddlers “where Tom played the guitar.”

Thomas O’Neal passed away in 2007 at the age of 83, leaving behind a “wife of 65 years, two sons and two daughters, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.”

As for 2nd Tanks, formed on 20 December 1941, at Camp Elliott, San Diego, they cased their colors in 2021, capping 80 years of service to the Marines. It was the final Marine tank unit, a decision that could lead many future Devil Dogs to take stomach pills. 

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

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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 (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

Library and Archives Canada MIKAN 3374382

Above we see Able Seaman Carl Carlson of the F (River) Class destroyer HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) on 16 August 1944 mugging with one of the bulkheads of his ship that had been neatly peeled open by an enemy 88mm shell during an action against three German VP boats off Brest the month prior. The plucky tin can gave as good as she got and left her assailant at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay before she headed back across the channel.

The well-traveled Qu’Appelle had inflicted worse on the Kriegsmarine earlier in the war– but that was when she was known by a different name.

The E&F’s

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, £319, 455) and Ambuscade (1,173 tons, £326,616), each capable of making 37 knots on superheated 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.

The 1927 program destroyer type, of which the Royal Navy would keep in production into 1940. M0064

Further, these ships were super modern for their time and were among the first built with all-steel (rather than fabric) bridges, had a higher freeboard and improved cabin accommodations, and a larger radius of action than preceding classes. Moreover, induced ventilation could be supplied throughout the vessel, for service in the Tropics.

With a little tweak to include more torpedo tubes and newer 4.7″ guns, these became the circa 1928-29 Programme 20-ship A&B class (1,350 tons std, 328 feet oal, 35 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), so referenced as the ships generally used names that started with As and Bs. Every 10th ship was built as a slightly larger flotilla leader with space for a commodore and staff.

This quickly followed with the minimally improved 14-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1929–1931 Programme C&D class (1,375 tons std, 329 feet oal, 36 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges).

This naturally led to the 18-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1931-32 Programme E&F class (1,405 tons std, 329 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which, as Worth describes, “closely resembles the D class with increased subdivision.” In short, they had an improved hull form over the preceding C&Ds and had three boiler rooms instead of two as well as other minor updates.

The RN similarly kept this incrementally improved line going with the 24-ship (including two leaders) circa 1934-35 Programme G&H class (1,370 tons std, 323 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which is beyond the scope of this post, but you can easily see the lineage of these 78 closely related interwar produced British destroyers

The E flight (Echo, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escapade, Escort, Esk, Express, and flotilla leader Exmouth) and F flight (Fame, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, Forester, Fortune, Foxhound, Fury, and flotilla leader Faulknor) were constructed in just 26 months between March 1933 and June 1935 because contracts were placed at 10 different yards simultaneously — HM Dockyard Portsmouth, Wm Denny, Hawthorn & Leslie, Scotts, Swan Hunter, Yarrow, Parsons, Cammell Laird, J. Samuel White, and John Brown.

With a full load that approached 2,000 tons in wartime, like the rest of the A&B, C&D, and follow-on G&Hs, the E&F’s main battery was four 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns, arranged curiously to where they could only elevate some 40 degrees, which gave them poor AAA performance.

HMS Foxhound off Freetown, Sierra Leone in August 1943. One of the many British destroyers built during the 1930s with 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns. These are CPXVII mountings which allow elevations of +40 degrees. IWM Photograph A 18772.

Anti-ship punch was in the form of two quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes on amidships turnstiles, with no reloads. The standard torpedo across all of these destroyer classes was the Mark IX, which was designed in 1928 and introduced in 1930. It carried a 750-pound warhead to 10,500 yards at 36 knots. By 1939, the updated Mark IX** which had a larger 805-pound Torpex warhead and a 15,000-yard range was the standard.

HMS Foxhound’s torpedo crew practice with fish in the tubes. In charge (in white shirt) is the Torpedo gunner. Note the Carley float and water jar lashed to the tubes to save space in the destroyer. IWM (A 18779)

Rounding out the armament for the class were two quad Vickers .50 cals (subsequently added to after 1940), two depth charge throwers, depth charge racks for 20 ash cans, and mechanical minesweeping gear. Importantly, they left the builder’s yards with a Type 121 sonar, a good set with a range of some 2,500 yards, installed.

Meet Foxhound

Our subject was the sixth in Royal Navy service to carry the “Foxhound” moniker going back to an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop during the Napoleonic Wars. As apt for the name of the small and fast English hunting dog, the Admiralty reissued the name several times in the 19th Century to swift little warships. This legacy gave her two existing battle honors (Basque Roads 1809, Dardanelles 1916) to carry forward.

The fourth and fifth HMS Foxhound, respectively, a 125-foot Forester-class 4-gun screw gunboat launched that served from 1877 through 1897 (but endured in the commercial trade on the Thames until 1975!); and a Beagle class destroyer (H16) that served in the Dardanelles with distinction during the Great War and was sold to the breakers in 1921. (IWM Q 40750 & RMG collection)

HMS Foxhound (H69) was constructed alongside sister HMS Fortune (H70) at John Brown, Clydebank, and, unlike the rest of their sisters, this pair received Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines rather than the more standard Parsons sets for no downgrade in speed (36 knots), performance (36,000shp), or range (6350nm at 15 on 471 tons of fuel oil).

Foxhound was commissioned on 6 June 1935 after a 22-month construction period, just five weeks off from her John Brown-made sister Fortune.

She was sleek and beautiful.

Foxhound H69, prewar Valentine Postcard

Foxhound, pre-war, with her glad rags flying.

Another nice prewar view of Foxhound

With the Es assigned to the Home Fleet’s 5th Destroyer Flotilla while the new Fs made up the 6th DF, Foxhound, and her sisters saw service in the tense period just before WWII, including flotilla-sized cruises to the Red Sea– where the Royal Navy was keeping tabs on the Italian invasion/occupation of Ethiopia–and off Spain where the Civil War was raging.

The Royal Navy at Gibraltar, 1938. Including elements of the Mediterranean Fleet (light grey) and the Home Fleet (dark grey). In addition to the 6 battleships (HMS Nelson, Rodney, Warspite, Malaya plus two R-class), 2 battlecruisers (Hood and Repulse), 2 carriers (Glorious and Furious), and 11 cruisers, whole flotillas of destroyers can be seen including our own Foxhound, to the right, and her shipyard twin sister Fortune, to the left. (click to big up) 5495×1295

War!

Just five months before the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Es in the 5th DF and the Fs in the 6th DF were changed on paper to the 7th and 8th Flotillas respectively.

Our destroyer was in the group that sank the first of 1,162 German U-boats sent to the bottom in the war, just a fortnight after Hitler sent his troops into Poland.

Operating as a screen for the carrier HMS Ark Royal (91), Foxhound along with sisters HMS Faulknor and Firedrake, sent the Type IX U-boat U-39 (Kptlt. Gerhard Glattes) to the bottom on 14 September 1939 west of the Hebrides. In a case rare for what was to come, Glattes and all 43 of U-39’s crew survived the encounter and were among the first German POWs in England.

A beam view of HMS Foxhound with her war paint on. IWM (A 18777)

Foxhound soon became very well-traveled.

Besides 14 convoy runs between the time she joined Halfax-to Clyde TC 01 in December 1939 and left MKF 022 in September 1943, including the vital Suez to Sydney Pamphlet convoy in February 1943 that carried 30,000 Australian troops back home from Egypt once the Japanese entered the war, our little destroyer seemed to be everywhere.

Foxhound H69

She was in Norway, harassing German shipping early in the war in Operation SK and looking for the seized American merchant vessel SS City of Flint (which a German prize crew from the pocket battleship Deutschland sailed to then-neutral Murmansk).

Masthead look-out of HMS Foxhound goes aloft in sou’wester and oilskin. IWM (A 18778)

She was with the force, centered around HMS Rodney, that chased the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in February 1940. Later that year, in December, she would search for the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. She was also in the great Hunt for the Bismarck in May 1941, screening the carrier HMS Ark Royal.

She took part in Operation Du, a cruiser-destroyer anti-shipping raid into the Skagerrak in which Foxhound chased down several vessels– which all turned out to belong to neutrals.

Foxhound underway IWM FL 13264

Foxhound returned to Norway in early April 1940, where on the 13th she took part in the second Battle of Narvik where nine British destroyers, supported by Swordfish from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious and the offshore guns of the battleship Warspite, ended the Kriegsmarine’s plans for U-64 (the first sunk by aircraft), and eight desperately needed German destroyers, all of which were sunk or scuttled by the end of the day.

Foxhound rescued 11 survivors of the destroyer Erich Giese Z12 from the freezing water that day but two would succumb to their injuries.

Kriegsmarine Zerstörer Z19 Hermann Künne on fire in Trollvika, 13. April 1940

Burning wreck of the destroyer Erich Giese (Z12) 13. April 1940

In June 1940, with the fall of France imminent, Foxhound found herself in Gibraltar as an escort for Ark Royal and battlecruiser HMS Hood. On 26 June, the carrier, battlecruiser, and their hounds were sent towards the Canaries looking for the curiously missing French battlewagon Richelieu, which eventually made for Dakar in the French West African colony of Senegal.

With relations deteriorating with the now kind-of-out-of-the-war French, Foxhound soon found herself with VADM Somerville’s strong Force H off the French Force de Raid’s Algerian anchorage at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940 (Operation Catapult).

In this, Foxhound, with Capt. C.S. Holland, of the Ark Royal (formerly Naval Attaché at Paris) along with two other officers recently employed as liaisons with the French fleet, was detailed to sail forward and parley with VADM Marcel-Bruno Gensoul. When negotiations fell through, Somerville ordered the shameful bombardment of the anchored French ships, a one-sided gunfight that left 1,300 French sailors dead. Sadly, Foxhound was close enough to see it all– observers in her motorboat recorded the fall of shell– although she suffered no damage.

French battleship Bretagne, on fire and visibly low by the stern, at Mers-el-Kébir, 3 July 1940

She continued to fight against the Vichy with Operation Ration in which Foxhound and four other destroyers intercepted the Casablanca-to-Oran French convoy K 5 in 30 December 1940. They seized the cargo liner Chantilly (9986 GRT), tanker Octane (2034 GRT), and freighters Suroit (554 GRT) and Sally Maersk (3252 GRT), sailing with them back to Gibraltar. K5’s sole escort, the armed trawler La Touilonnaise (425 GRT) offered no resistance and was allowed to continue to North Africa, sans convoy.

Foxhound sailed on several Malta relief missions (Operations Hurry and Operation White in 1940, Operations Splice, Tracer, Railway, and Rocket in 1941), escorting carriers bringing Hurricane fighters and Skua bombers to the embattled island as well as other runs in the Med.

For help fighting off Italian and German bombers, Foxhound and almost all of her remaining sisters had four Oerlikon and a 3-inch/45 QF Mk I AAA installed in place of their quad Vickers .50 mount and one set of torpedo tubes. They also picked up Type 271 Air Search and Type 286/M/P radars.

In February 1941, she helped screen the battlewagons HMS Renown and Malaya, along with the cruiser HMS Sheffield, during Operation Grog, the bombardment of Genoa that left four Italian cargo ships sunk in the harbor.

On 18 June 1941, Foxhound, along with sisters HMS Faulknor, Fearless, Forester, and Foresight, bagged her second U-boat of the war, Oblt. Franz Gramitzky’s Type IID U-138, which was sunk just west of Gibraltar off Cadiz, Spain. Like U-39 prior, Gramitzky and all his crew were saved by the British destroyers, then dutifully interrogated and placed in a POW camp for the duration.

By March 1942, Foxhound was assigned to the Eastern Fleet operating in the Indian Ocean to blunt the sortie of the 1st Japanese Carrier Fleet. She would remain in the region for over a year, operating from Colombo to Durban to Bombay to Aden on convoy support missions, adding such exotic ports as Kilindini, Diego Suarez, and Mombasa to that list.

Foxhound H69 IWM A 18776

Recalled to the Atlantic in May 1943, she sailed back home by working slow long-range convoys as part of West Africa Command to Freetown and Gibraltar, finally arriving at Rosyth three months later.

Foxhound, LAC 3199021

She then put into Humber for a refit as an anti-submarine escort destroyer that would see one of her 4.7-inch guns landed to make room for a 24-cell Hedgehog ASW RL device, two more K-gun depth charge throwers, and another 70 depth charges (for a total of 125!). She was also to receive a Type 291 air-warning radar and an American SG-1 surface-search radar, along with a Type 144 sonar.

By August 1943, Foxhound had tallied some 240,000nm since the beginning of the war, ranging from the Bay of Bengal to Iceland and back. This brought an Admiralty photographer to the ship at Sheerness to document the “fine fighting record” of this hardy little vessel and her U-boat-busting crew.

The Quartermaster sounding “eight bells” on the Foxhound’s bell while at Sheerness. Note the Fox’s brush hanging from the clapper. It was presented by one of her officers. August 1943 IWM A 18775

An officer of HMS Foxhound, a South African, watching a British port come into sight as the destroyer completed her 240,000 miles of record steaming. IWM (A 18774)

While in British service, our little hound earned five battle honors (Atlantic 1939-41, Narvik 1940, Norway 1940, Malta Convoys 1941, and Mediterranean 1941).

Canadian Service

To help make good on the loss of the Canadian destroyers HMCS Fraser (H48), Margaree (H49), and Ottawa (H60) earlier in the war, the Admiralty decided in the summer of 1943 to transfer three (very well-used) E&Fs.

These ships included HMS Express (H61) and the shipyard sisters Fortune and Foxhound. The trio, in line with Canadian naming conventions, took on North American river names and became, respectively,  HMCS Gatineau, HMCS Saskatchewan, and Qu’Appelle while retaining the same pennant/hull numbers.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), fresh from her refit, was commissioned in the RCN on 8 February 1944.

HMCS Qu’Appelle, 1944, with her new Western Approaches style camo scheme. LAC 3921890

Soon after she was assigned to Escort Group 12, which was forming up in the Channel ports for the planned Overlord/Neptune invasion of Normandy in June. Foxhound spent the next three months in a series of ASW exercises off Tobermoy and Lough Foyle.

EG 11 and EG 12 were “all Canadian” in makeup and would patrol off Falmouth and Lands End to the deep water curve off the Brittany Coast on D-Day and immediately after.

While supporting the landings on D+2, on 08 June 1944, Qu’Appelle was reportedly attacked Gnats from U-953 (Oblt Karl-Heinz Marbach) with the acoustic torpedoes exploding in the ship’s wake leaving with no damage to the destroyer.

U-953 and a second German boat stalked EG 12 ruthlessly but without joy due to defective torpedoes, as detailed in Normandy 1944: The Canadian Summer: 

Lieutenant Commander Alan Easton RCNR, the commanding officer of EG-12’s HMCS Saskatchewan [ex-HMS Fortune] recalled in his memoir, 50 North, that the evening of 7 June was like a “summer excursion” as the group patrolled northeast of Ushant: The four of us were gliding along in line abreast, listening for the sound of U-boats beneath the quiet sea. It was like drawing a net through the water, stretched tightly between the ships, so that it would snag the big fish while letting through the small unwanted ones. But the net did not always hang down as it should temperature gradients sometimes interfered with it.

In the late evening, however, “a low rumble was heard, the unmistakable sound of an underwater explosion.” Presuming it to be a torpedo hitting the bottom or exploding prematurely, EG-12 searched but saw or heard nothing else. An hour later a violent blast shook Saskatchewan, and 70 meters off the ship’s port quarter “a solid column of water shot a hundred feet in the air “when a torpedo exploded just before reaching the destroyer.

By the grace of “a miracle,” in Easton’s words, “this fast-moving, fish-like machine had self-triggered when only four seconds short of wreaking havoc in the bowels of its target.” As the destroyers continued to hunt through the night and the following morning, two other torpedoes exploded close by while another narrowly missed Skeena.

Easton described his frustration:

Where was the enemy who was so persistently endeavoring to sink us? Where were the other U-boats? We had not the slightest idea except that we knew the one who attacked us was probably within a mile or so. The ASDIC could pick up nothing except useless echoes. It was extremely aggravating.

On D+12, Foxhound, with sister Fortune/Saskatchewan and fellow Canuk tin cans HMCS Restigouche and HMCS Skeena, escorted the battleship HMS Anson from Scapa Flow to Plymouth, the latter on her first leg to head to the Pacific.

By July, the primary Kriegsmarine assets in the Bay of Biscay were 50~ Vorpostenboote (Outpost Boats) of 7. Vorpostenflotille, armed trawlers typically equipped with an 8.8cm Flak or two as well as some smaller guns and some primitive chain-based minesweeping gear. They screened the remaining U-boats in Brest whenever they came and went.

Your typical Vorpostenboot, of which the Germans fielded hundreds. Bild 27479778312

Foxhound and her three fellow Canuk DDs, as part of Operation Dredger in the Bay of Biscay off the Pierres Noires lighthouse on the night of 5/6 July, scrapped it out with three German VP-boats that were trying to escort U-741 out to sea. The running battle left V 715 (Alfred I) sunk and V 721 (Neubau 308) crippled and beached. U-741 would be chased down and sunk by British destroyers a month later. Both Saskatchewan and Qu’Appelle caught hits from the VP boats but suffered no casualties. Radar-equipped destroyers vs armed trawlers is almost a predetermined outcome.

By late July, Qu’Appelle was assigned to Operation Kinetic, a plan to ramp up the blockade of the Bay of Biscay by ending the semi-regular German coastal convoys off the west coast of Brittany between Brest and La Rochelle.

As part of Kinetic, on the night of 10/11 August 1944, Qu’appelle, along with Skeena, Restigouche, and HMCS Assiniboine, dismantled a German convoy in Audierne Bay near Brest. Those sunk included the Vorpostenboot V-720 (Neubau 720/307) while two trawlers were forced ashore by a burning farmhouse and the ersatz minesweeper Sperrbrecher 157 (1,425 tons) limped off only to be sunk three days later by the light cruiser HMS Mauritius. However, in the confusion of the running night surface action fought in shallow waters at close range, Skeena’s bow collided with Qu’Appelle’s stern as the Canadian destroyers retired.

This photograph shows the damage to the destroyer HMCS Qu’appelle after a collision with HMCS Skeena during a night-time battle off the French coast. Sailors, including one standing within the ship’s hull (lower right), examine the damage. George Metcalf Archival Collection. CWM 19830436-011

Personnel examining the damaged tiller flat of HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), England, 16 August 1944 LAC 3596854

Following repair, Foxhound arrived “home” in Canada for the first time on 29 November 1944 when she arrived at Halifax. Sent to Pictou for refit in preparation for service in the Far East, she emerged again on 31 March 1945.

Rather than ship out for the Pacific, Qu’Appelle served as a troop transport on four trips between Greenock and Halifax, bringing Canadian forces back from Europe, and, post-VJ-Day, was paid off on 11 October 1945.

By the 1946 Jane’s, Saskatchewan/Fortune had already been disposed of and the E&Fs in RCN service were listed as the “Gatineau class.”

Qu’Appelle lingered around for another at the Torpedo School at Halifax, serving as a stationary training ship and sometimes tender to Canada’s two captured German Type IXC/40 U-boats, HCMS U-190 and U-889. 

Broadside view of the snow-dusted HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) 28 February 1947, likely with HMCS U-190 alongside. In October 1947, the Canadian Navy sank U-190 as a target during Operation Scuttled, a live-fire naval exercise off Halifax. LAC 3209066

Added to the disposal list on 12 Jul 1947, Qu’Appelle was sold later that year for breaking up at Sydney, NS.

HMCS Qu’Appelle earned three battle honors (Atlantic 1944, Normandy 1944, and Biscay 1944) while in Canadian service, adding to her five battle honors earned with the RN earlier in the war.

Epilogue

Some relics of Qu’Appelle endure in Canada, including her 1944 marked bell that she carried off Normandy and in the Biscay blockade. It is preserved at the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum.

While she has “Qu’Appelle” on the front, it is the destroyer’s original bell, and still says “Foxhound 1935” on the reverse side.

Her RCN service is commemorated in an excellent For Posterty’s Sake page.

Speaking of which, the Canadians recycled her name for a Cold War-era Mackenzie-class destroyer escort (DDE 264) who, in a salute to the old Foxhound, carried an insignia and logo was the head of a fox. She also utilized the old WWII H69’s bell.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (DDE 264) was in service with the RCN from 1963 until 1992, almost all of it in the Pacific.

After DDE-264 was gone, the name was used for the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets Summer Training Centre and is still retained by the Cadet’s Manitoba division as the Qu’Appelle River meets the Assiniboine River in Manitoba.

Of Foxhound/Qu’Appelle’s 17 E&F class sisters, ten were lost during the war: Exmouth, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escort, Esk, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, and Fury, with the Germans, Italians, and Japanese all accounting for the job. Post-war, besides the three sent to Canada, Fame was sold to the Dominican Republic, and Echo was loaned to Greece. All in Commonwealth service were scrapped by 1947 while the Greek and Dominican sisters endured until 1956 and 1968 when their runs were terminated.

Korvettenkapitän Gerhard Glattes, the skipper of U-39 which Foxhound and company bagged in September 1939, spent more than seven and a half years as a POW, only being released in April 1947. His stint was the second longest imprisonment of any U-boat commander, beaten only (by one day) by Kptlt. Günther Lorentz of U-63 (Busch and Röll, 1999). The three torpedoes Glattes fired at Ark Royal— which had no hits– were his only shots of the war. Glattes returned to a very different Germany and passed in 1986, aged 77. He had been preceded in death by U-138’s Kptlt. Gramitzky, who only served five years as a POW passed in Germany in 1978.

Meanwhile, the destroyer Z12 Eric Giese is a popular dive spot in Narvik. 

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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Wombat Gun

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Private Peter Fyfe of Midway Point, Tasmania (pop. 2,000), assigned to the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australia Regiment (3RAR) refilling his canteen in a local waterway during operations in Phouc Tuy Province, Republic of Vietnam in April 1971.

Photographer: Philip John Errington. Accession number: AWM PJE/71/0234/VN

Note Fyfe’s camouflaged weapon, the ubiquitous Springfield Armory-designed 40mm M79 grenade launcher. The single-shot break-action breechloader could be fired at ranges anywhere from 30 meters (the minimum distance to arm the grenade) out to 400 meters for indirect fire. It could be surprisingly accurate against bunker/vehicle-sized objectives.

Known by a host of nicknames among American troops in Vietnam including the “Thumper” and the “Blooper” (read “The Phantom Blooper” by Gustav Hasford), Ozzies tended to label it the “Wombat gun” for their own regional reasons.

From 1962 to 1973, more than 60,000 Australians served in the Vietnam War. Some 523 died as a result of the war (including no less than 28 men of 3RAR) and almost 2,400 were wounded

The World’s Leading Distributor of MiG Parts

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While Naval Aviators– Phantom drivers of VF-21 from the carrier USS Midway— shot down the first MiGs in air-to-air combat over Southeast Asia when they splashed a pair of two North Vietnamese MiG-17s on 17 June 1965, the USAF soon got in the game as well.

Of the 196 MiGs zapped in air-to-air combat over Vietnam, 59 were by a mix of Navy/Marine Corps A1-Hs, F-8C/E/Hs, F-4B/D/Js, and an A-4C (which flamed a MiG-17 with a Zuni rocket!), it was the Air Force that managed the lion’s share, mostly MiG-21s via F-4s.

The below chart via the USAF:

Of course, keep in mind that the USAF’s F-86s shot down an amazing 792 MiG-15s in Korea while the USAAF had over 15,000 aerial victories in WWII– almost exclusively up-close gun actions.

Loading up Gabby’s Jug

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From some 80 years ago this month comes this amazingly detailed and vibrant period Kodachrome.

Original Caption: “Armament men must exercise extreme caution in loading .50 cal. machine guns of a plane. 8th AF. Extreme caution must be exercised in loading .50 cal. machine guns of a P-47 fighter. It may mean the life of the pilot of another victory. These men are experts as you can see by the number of Jerries shot down by the pilot of the plane who is none other than Lt. Col. Francis Stanley “Gabby” Gabreski, Oil City, Pa., leading ace in the ETO, with 28 planes to his credit. Left to right: Sgt. John A. Koval, Rochester, NY, and Sgt. Joe Di Franza, East Boston, Mass.”

8th AF Photo K 2618, rec’d September 1944 (but taken in July 1944) from BFR, Filed War Theatre #12– England– Armarment and Gunnery. National Archives Identifier 325596069. Local ID: 342-C-K-2618

If you look at the loading door, there is a belt loading diagram. Of note, the P-47 could carry as many as 425 rounds per gun, with eight .50 cals, giving it a “throw” of some 3,400 rounds, which was tremendous compared to other U.S. fighters (1,840 rounds for the 6-gunned P-51 Mustang and 2,400 for the similarly armed F4U Corsair.) Also note that rather than a mix of tracers and other ammo, the belts all seem to hold standard M8 “silver tipped” armor-piercing incendiary (API) ammo belts ammo, which means this could just be a publicity shot and not a real “war load.”

Take count of “Gabby’s” scorecard, at the time, of 28 Nassi victories, dating the image to around July 5/6 1944.

Born in Franciszek Stanisław Gabryszewski in 1919 to immigrants from Frampol, Poland, Gabreski went through the USAAF’s Aviation Cadet program while at Notre Dame in 1940, and by late 1941 he was a 2nd LT in the 45th Pursuit Squadron of the 15th Pursuit Group at Wheeler Army Airfield, Hawaii, where he tried unsuccessfully to engage the Japanese on 7 December from behind the controls of an obsolete P-36 Hawk. Volunteering to work as a liaison with the Free Polish pilots of the RAF in England, Capt Gabreski was flying Spitfire Mark IXs with No. 315 (Dęblin) Squadron by January 1943 before he was tapped to lead the new 61st Fighter Squadron that summer, flying the P-47.

And the rest, as they say, is history, putting in 300 flying hours with the Eight Air Force on 166 combat sorties logged in just over 13 months and was officially credited by the USAAF with 28 aircraft destroyed in air combat and 3 on the ground between 24 August 1943 and 5 July 1944, making the 25-year-old the leading American ace at the time. 

Lt. Col. Gabreski was shot down on 20 July 1944, spending the rest of the war with 9,000 other Allied airmen at Stalag Luft I in Western Pomerania, liberated in April 1945 by the Soviet Red Army.

Post-war, he chopped over to the newly formed USAF, while at the controls of an F-86 shot down 6.5 MiG-15s in Korea for 123 combat missions, totaling 289 for his career with 34.5 “kills.”

Gabreski retired on November 1, 1967, at the time commander of a wing of F-101 Voodoos. When he left the military, he had over 5,000 flying hours. 

He earned the DSC, DSM, Legion of Merit, 2 Silver Stars, 13 DFCs, a Bronze Star, and 7 Air Medals. He passed in 2002, aged 83.

They Kept Coming: D+1 and Beyond

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More than 150,000 Allied troops from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Free France, and Norway made it ashore on D-Day– suffering some 12,000 casualties.

However, with the beachheads firmly secured, they kept coming.

The build-up of Omaha Beach. Reinforcements of men and equipment moving inland, D+2, 8 June 1944. Original caption: “Roadways appear as if by magic as long lines of men and materiel stream ashore at a beach in northern France. With the beach situation well under control, there is an increasing flow of troops and supplies to reinforce the units now in combat. 8 June 1944.” Note the heavy guns, mobile cranes, DUKWs, and other vehicles on the beach roads; the former German pillbox in the lower left; LCTs unloading at low tide; and shipping offshore. USS LCT-572 is at left, broached at the high tide line. Signal Corps Photo SC 193082

By the end of D+5, 11 June, more than 326,000 Allied troops had crossed the Channel, along with 50,000 vehicles and more than 100,000 tons of equipment.

Speaking to this immediate buildup, which would lead to the liberation of Paris by August, Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson has the excellent below program from the National WWII Museum (formerly the D-Day Museum). If you have a spare hour, it makes a good listen.

Just in case: Aircrew Bail Out Handguns

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One peculiar thing that has endured from the ages of the Red Baron through today is the custom of pilots and aircrews carrying so-called “bail-out guns” to be used on the ground should they lose their main ride. 

The first instance of opposing aircraft encountering each other while over the battlefield is thought to have occurred when high-flying American soldiers of fortune Dean Ivan Lamb and Phil Rader, each at the controls of early fabric-covered biplanes, fired pistols at each other in the first “dogfight.” The action while flying for rival sides during the Mexican Revolution in November 1913 was bloodless, but the habit of Yankee flying birdmen carrying hog legs with them aloft persisted.

During the Great War, while Americans flew more advanced British- and French-made fighters against the Germans, the pilots often carried their M1917 Colt and S&W .45 ACP revolvers and M1911 pistols with them, even while Vickers and Lewis machine guns were their primary weapons. 

Not just a preux chevalier throwback, the handguns became mandatory to a degree, part of the survival kit with the plane – often for good reason. 

In 1924, during the famed “First Around the World Flight,” Army pilot Maj. Frederick Martin and his mechanic, Sgt. Alva Harvey, were forced to walk for 10 days across Alaska to civilization after their plane crashed into the side of a mountain in the fog. 

Note the pistol belt on Harvey’s hip, complete with a revolver. (Photo: National Archives 342-FH-3B-7971-11517AS)

More in my column at Guns.com.

 

Tiger Stripe Redux

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Spotted in the PI recently, 1st Group guys are channeling a very 1969 Southeast Asia vibe with Tiger Stripe pattern cammies to include boonie hats and full-color patches. I think it is a great look for a peacetime training deployment, especially because Apocalypse Now was filmed in the Philippines and the obvious Vietnam-era tie-in to the pattern in that region.

A U.S. Army Green Beret from 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) overlooks movement on an objective alongside a service member with the Philippine National Police Special Action Force the, during Balikatan 24 in Rizal, Palawan, Philippines, April 27, 2024. BK 24 is an annual exercise between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and U.S. military designed to strengthen bilateral interoperability, capabilities, trust, and cooperation built over decades of shared experiences. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Asa Bingham)

U.S. Army Green Berets from 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) meet with service members from the Armed Forces of the Philippines Special Operations Command with 5th Scout Ranger Company, 5th Scout Ranger Battalion, 1st Scout Ranger Regiment-1st Light Reaction Company, 1st Light Reaction Battalion, Light Reaction Regiment, and the Philippine National Police Special Action Force to discuss training in Rizal, Palawan, Philippines, during Balikatan 24, April 27, 2024. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Asa Bingham) (Portions of this image have been blurred for security reasons.)

A U.S. Army Green Beret from 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) conducts an after-action review with service members from the Armed Forces of the Philippines Special Operations Command during Balikatan 24 in Rizal, Palawan, Philippines, April 27, 2024. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Asa Bingham) (Portions of this image have been blurred for security reasons.)

A U.S. Army Green Beret from 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) practices military movement techniques alongside service members from the Armed Forces of the Philippines Special Operations Command 5th Scout Ranger Company, 5th Scout Ranger Battalion, 1st Scout Ranger Regiment during Balikatan 24 in Rizal, Palawan, Philippines, April 27, 2024.  (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Asa Bingham) (Portions of this image have been blurred for security reasons.)

For reference, check out this below shot of an ERDL-clad SGT Curtis E. Hester firing his M-16 rifle, while Tiger-striped SGT Billy H. Faulks calls for air support, Co D, 151st (Ranger) Inf., Vietnam, 1969.

For those curious about Tiger Stripe and its effectiveness, check the below.

Warship Wednesday, April 10, 2024: Mongolia by way of Massachusetts

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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 10, 2024: Mongolia by way of Massachusetts

Photo by Geo. H. Russell. Library of Congress, Box PAN US Military-Army No.92 (E size). Control number 2007664426

Above we see, 105 years ago today (10 April 1919), the well-armed troopship USS Mongolia (ID 1615) arriving at Boston with the returning hometown boys of the 26th “Yankee” Division aboard.

Don’t let her passenger liner appearance fool you, she was a fighter and had the honor of the first surface engagement between U.S. Naval personnel and sailors of the Kaiserliche Marine.

The Beautiful Twins of the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.

Founded in 1848 originally to service the Panama Route across the isthmus during the California Gold Rush, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company had flown its red, white, and blue house flag from more than 60 passenger steamers before the 19th Century was out.

While the majority of these were smallish (2,000-3,000 ton) coastwise vessels, by the late 1890s the company had ordered four progressively larger liners– SS China (10,200 tons), SS Nile (11,000 tons), SS Korea (18,000 tons), and SS Siberia (18,500 tons)– to build its reputation and expand its reach across the Pacific, kicking off its Trans-Pacific service.

By 1901, it moved to pick up two new liners– SS Mongolia and SS Manchuria— that would be its crown jewels.

The sister ships, ordered from the nascent New York Shipbuilding Co in Camden, were huge for their era at 615 feet oal with a registered gross tonnage of 13,363 tons. They could carry 1,712 passengers in four different classes, with speeds sustained at 16 knots, intended for cruises from San Francisco to ports in China and Japan, with a midway stop in Hawaii. The service was later extended to Hong Kong and Manila.

At the time, they were the largest passenger vessels constructed in America, with class leader Mongolia delivered in February 1904. 

“Speed and Comfort” Pacific Mail Steamship Co. poster with artwork by Fred Pansing, showing Mongolia and citing the names of her fellow Trans-Pacific line vessels. LOC LC-DIG-ppmsca-58680

S.S. Mongolia at Manila, Philippine Islands, in 1913. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 45962

By August 1915, with a downturn in Pacific sailings, both Mongolia and sister Manchuria, along with the smaller Korea and Siberia, were sold to the Baltimore-based Atlantic Transport Line and soon began working from the East Coast.

As a war was going on in the Atlantic (ATL had already lost several of its ships to government requisition and U-boats), Mongolia made nine wartime crossings while the U.S. was neutral, carrying munitions and foodstuffs to a hungry England.

In this role, she had “American S. S. Mongolia” painted in large white letters along the sides of her hull flanked by American flags.

S.S. Mongolia, painted with neutrality markings, circa 1915-1917. 165-WW-274A-004

War!

On March 13, 1917– still three weeks away from the U.S. declaration of war– Secretary of the Navy Josephus “Cup of Joe” Daniels issued regs governing the conduct of armed American merchant vessels, on which Navy personnel designated as Armed Guards manned the guns. The Bureau of Ordnance would follow up on the directive and issue guidance to the fleet for the removal of 20 5-inch/51-caliber, 20 6-inch/40-caliber, 4 5-inch/50-caliber, and 26 3-inch/50-caliber guns from storage and warships in reserve for use on merchantmen.

Talk about armed neutrality!

The first to be armed would be the passenger liners Manchuria, Mongolia, and St. Louis, along with the steamships New York, Philadelphia, Kroonland, Aztec, and St. Paul.

Just two days after the SECNAV’s orders, the New York Navy Yard completed the installation of deck guns aboard Manchuria, St. Louis, Aztec, and New York, and on the 16th of March, Manchuria— outfitted with two 4-inch guns forward, one 6-inch gun aft, two 1-pounders, and two Lewis guns– left NYC to become the first American armed merchantman to sail for the European war zone.

Mongolia would receive three 6″/40 Mark 4s, two forward and one over her stern, and later add two additional mounts, giving her a total of five of these large guns– the rough equivalent of a light cruiser. Her initial Armed Guard, consisting of one officer (Massachusetts-born LT Bruce Richardson Ware, Jr., USNA ’07) and 22 enlisted (a size that would later double), likewise carried sidearms and had a locker of rifles and a pair of Lewis guns at their disposal as well.

S.S. Mongolia. One of the ship’s forward six-inch guns, taken while Mongolia was at sea in April 1917. These guns were manned by Armed Guard crews supplied by the U.S. Navy. NH 41973

Mongolia, 1917. Note 6″/40 on stern. 165-WW-335D-021

Mongolia would make history on the early morning of 19 April– the Anniversary of the Battle of Lexington– when, at 0522, the Armed Guard aboard her engaged and drove off a U-boat with their stern 6-inch gun—No. 263, nicknamed “Teddy Roosevelt”—while some 7 miles southeast of Beachy Head in the English Channel. She fired on the submarine, wrecking the periscope and conning tower, and forced it to submerge. These are considered the first shots by the U.S. Navy against Germany in the Atlantic.

S.S. Mongolia. Two officers on board the ship soon after her 19 April 1917 action with a German submarine. They are identified in the original photo captions as Lieutenant Charles F. (or Bruce R.) Ware, USN, and First Officer Waldo E. Wollaston (or Mollaston). Note the right-hand officer’s high boots, communications gear, and .45 caliber M1911 pistol; binoculars worn by both; and non-U.S. Navy insignia on the left-hand officer’s cap. NH 52704

USS Mongolia. The ship’s after six-inch gun, with several shells, circa 1918. This gun was nicknamed Teddy, after former President Theodore Roosevelt. The original image is printed on postcard (AZO) stock. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2009. NH 106599

S.S. Mongolia. The ship’s after six-inch gun and its crew, April 1917. The two officers at right are identified, in the original photo caption, as Lieutenant Ware and Captain Emory Rice of the U.S. Naval Reserve Force. Note shells on deck, painted with letters: T-E-X-A-S and T-E-D-D-Y. NH 781

The news was electric and widely reported on both sides of the Atlantic, eventually passing into the post-war record.

The engagement was the subject of an art piece by Joseph Christian Leyendecker, used widely in reference to the Mongolia vs U-boat fight, with the gunners, in Leyendecker fashion, shirtless.

As noted by press accounts of interviews given by the ship’s skipper, Capt. Emery Rice:

“It was twenty-two after five o’clock in the morning of the 19th that we sighted the submarine. The officer commanding the gunners was with me on the bridge where, in fact, we had been the most time throughout the voyage.” Captain Rice continues, “There was a haze over the sea at the time. We had just taken a sounding for we were getting near shallow water, and we were looking at the lead when the first mate cried: “My God, there’s a submarine off the port bow!”

“The submarine was close to us, too close in fact for her purpose, and the boat was submerging again in order to maneuver into a better position for torpedoing was where we sighted her.” Rice continues “We saw the periscope go down and the swirl of the water. I quickly ordered the man at the wheel to put her to starboard and we swung the nose of the ship toward the spot where the submarine had been.”

“We were going at full speed ahead and two minutes after we first sighted the U-boat it emerged again about 1,000 yards off. Its intention probably had been to catch us broadside, but when it appeared he had the stern gun trained full on it. The gun crew commander, Lieutenant Ware gave the command “1,000 yards, Scale 50” and the big gun boomed. Gunner’s Mate James A. Goodwin was on the gun at the time, and he actually fired the shell that hit the U-boat. We saw the periscope shatter and tumble end over end across the water and the submarine disappeared. I can’t speak too highly of the cool manner in which the lieutenant handled his crew of gunners. It was a fine exhibition of the efficiency of American Naval men.” The whole encounter lasted only about two minutes. Lt. Ware gave the order to fire, and Gunner’s mate Goodwin pulled the lanyard firing the first shot, which missed. Reloading quickly, the gun crew fired again, and this time they were right on target hitting the conning tower of the U-boat. This shell exploded and hit the area of the conning tower. Quickly in a foamy froth of bubbles, the German slipped beneath the sea. America had just inflicted its first blood at sea against Germany, and it was over as quickly as it had started.

Captain Rice continues, “I assure you we did not stop after the incident, but steamed away at full speed, for it was not improbable that there was another submarine about. The one I got undoubtedly had been lying on the bottom at the spot waiting for the ship and came up when it heard our propellers. I immediately sent a wireless stating that a submarine had been seen.” Rice ended his statement with this “That’s about all the story except this. The gunners had named the guns on board the Mongolia and the one which got the submarine was called “Teddy” after Theodore Roosevelt; so Teddy fired the first gun of the war after all.” Captain Rice stated that Teddy Roosevelt was from Allison, Massachusetts, and that the encounter with the submarine occurred on the date when Massachusetts was celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington.

Ware’s version was less verbose:

We were just leaving New York Harbor when word reached us that Congress had declared war. On the way over we had daily gun practice and some ill luck with our 6-inch fixed ammunition. By the time we reached the submarine zone, our two bow guns had damaged bores and were not firing true. It was at dawn on the morning of the 19th of April, the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, that we sighted the U-boat coming at us off the bow. Realizing that our forward guns were unreliable, we swung the Mongolia hard to starboard. The submarine, delighted to see us offering a broadside target for its torpedo, also swung around, coming into the range of our port guns. Our first shot caught the sub square on the conning tower beneath the periscope. There was a splash and when the water cleared away, there was no more submarine.

Post-war analysis doesn’t show a U-boat lost in these waters at the time Mongolia reported the incident, but it is posed by some that the boat involved may have been S.M. UB 40, an extremely successful member of the Flandern Flotilla, which reported taking gunfire in the same area without significant damage around this time.

Both Ware and Rice (who was sheep-dipped as a USNRF officer) were soon issued the Navy Cross.

While widely celebrated, the Armed Guards of Mongolia received what was possibly more press coverage due to an accident that occurred on a later voyage the following month.

On 20 May 1918, while just a few hours out of New York, while conducting target practice with the famed Teddy, an accident occurred that left a group of Red Cross nurses crossing over to France, who were observing the crew at work, with two dead and a third injured.

As noted by the SECNAV’s office at the time:

When about 100 miles to sea, in accordance with the usual procedure, guns were fired to test mounts, ammunition, and to practice the navy crew in their use. The guns were of the 6-inch caliber for which the shell and powder are loaded separately into the gun. The powder charge is contained in a brass case and there held in place by a pasteboard wad, distance pieces, and a brass mouth cup that fits closely, thus making a moisture-tight joint in order that the powder may always give the velocity and pressure intended. When the gun is fired this brass cup is propelled some distance, sometimes whole and sometimes in pieces, but always in front of the gun. Several nurses who were watching the firing were sitting on the promenade deck some 175 feet abaft and 10 feet above the gun. On the third shot the brass mouth cup struck the water peculiarly, boomeranged directly back to the ship, struck the stanchion near where the nurses were sitting and broke. Its pieces instantly killed Mrs. Edith Ayres and Miss Helen Burnett Wood, of Chicago

“Miss Helen B. Wood, the Chicago Red Cross nurse who was instantly killed in a gun accident while the gun crew of the armed American liner Mongolia was at target practice at sea,” followed by an ARC photo of Miss Edith Ayres. Signal Corps 165-WW-55B-84 via NARA/LOC LC-A6195- 4962

For what it is worth, later Congressional hearings into the incident charged that the fuzes involved were of “inferior workmanship” and that the Navy had not inspected them before accepting them from the Raleigh Iron Works, which was in the midst of rushed war work. In the hearings, the makers of the fuzes rebutted the charge, and the whole thing was written off as a terrible, but freak, accident.

Mongolia and her guard, then under one LT Philip Seymour, would, on 1 June 1917, engage another U-boat in a surface action. As noted in Seymour’s Navy Cross citation, the “enemy submarine fired a torpedo at that vessel, which, through quick maneuvering, missed the ship. Four shots were fired at the periscope when the submarine disappeared.”

On 9 April 1918, SECNAV Daniels announced that seven Army-run War Department transports and store ships—Finland (ID-4543), Pastores (ID-4540/AF-16), Tenadores, Henry R. Mallory (ID-1280), Lenape (ID-2700), Mongolia (ID-1615), and Manchuria (ID-1633)—were to be taken over by the Navy.

This led USS Mongolia to be commissioned in the Navy on 8 May 1918, with CDR E. McDowell in command. She went on to make 13 cross-Atlantic voyages from the U.S. to France, transporting over 33,000 troops, before decommissioning on 11 September 1919 for return to her owner. Likewise, her sistership Manchuria had bested that number, carrying 39,000 troops in 13 round trips to Europe (nine of them after the Armistice).

World War I Troop Transport Convoy at Sea, 1918. The most distant ship, in the left center, is the USS Mongolia (ID # 1615). The nearer ship, misidentified on the original print as USS Mercury (ID # 3012), is USS Madawaska (ID # 3011). Note the small destroyer ahead of the forward ship. Photographed by V.J.M. Donation of Charles R. Haberlein Jr., 2008. NH 106288

USS Mongolia (ID # 1615) at the New York Navy Yard, 28 June 1918, after being painted in pattern camouflage. NH 50252

USS Mongolia (ID # 1651) In port, while painted in dazzle camouflage, circa 1918. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2008. NH 105722

Nurses of Mobile Hospital #39, onboard Mongolia. A.T.S. Base Section #1. St. Nazaire Jan. 20. 1919 111-SC-46348

Homeward-bound troops taking their afternoon walk. St. Nazaire, Jan. 20 1919 111-SC-46349

USS Mongolia. Brest, 1919 111-SC-158226_001

102nd Artillery 26th Division loading on the Mongolia. Brest 3.31.19 111-SC-158223_001

103rd Artillery, 26th Division loading on the S. S. Mongolia. Brest, Finistere, France 3.31.19 111-SC-158225_001

LC-DIG-ggbain-23572

With troops aboard. Note her 6″/40. LC-DIG-ggbain-28781

Officers and men of Mongolia

Camouflaged U.S. Navy transport in harbor with barge and a passenger ferry alongside, circa 1918 or very early 1919. This ship is probably the USS Mongolia (ID # 1615). Donation of Charles R. Haberlein Jr., 2009. NH 106646

Returning to Trade

Post Versailles, Mongolia and Manchuria were operated by the rebooted New York‑Hamburg steamship line, making regular trips to Weimar-era Germany.

SS Mongolia at the St. Pauli Landing Stage, Hamburg, Germany, while in commercial service after World War I. Donation of Captain Stephen S. Roberts, USNR (Retired), 2008. NH 105919

Re-acquired by the Panama Pacific Lines in 1925, within a few years she was under the flag of the Dollar Steam Ship Lines, then in 1938, under the ownership of the American President Lines, was renamed SS President Fillmore.

Mongolia in Gaillard Cut March 17, 1926 185-G-1094

During the first days of WWII, she was sold to Wallam & Co. on 2 February 1940 and would sail for Cia Transatlantica Centroamericana under the Panamanian flag named (wait for it) SS Panamanian, and would carry commercial cargo through the conflict, managing to avoid further U-boat activity.

After suffering a fire at Freemantle’s North Quay while carrying a 10,000-ton cargo of flour in January 1945, she was scrapped at Shanghai in 1946.

As for her sister Manchuria, she had a similar interbellum history but, as the American-flagged President Line’s SS President Johnson, was requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration in 1941 and carried troops throughout the Pacific during WWII. 

Sold post-war to a Panamanian firm, she continued sailing as SS Santa Cruz, typically carrying European war refugees to South America, and was scrapped in 1952.

Epilogue

Mongolia’s naval plans are in the National Archives, as are her USS and USAT deck logs.

One of her 6″40s, No. 155, is preserved at Gosport Park, in Portsmouth, Virginia.

Speaking of Mongolia’s Armed Guard, Ware, its Navy Cross-wearing commander, went on to become an instructor at the Naval Academy then, after passing through the Naval War College program and later the Army War College, would become the XO of the transport USS Gold Star in the 1920s and then filled the same billet on the dreadnought USS West Virginia— during which the battlewagon was first in gunnery in the fleet. He also published extensively.

Retiring from the Navy as a captain in 1935, he passed in San Diego and is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

Mongolia is well remembered in the period of maritime art and postcards. 

S.S. Mongolia artwork, printed on a postal card issued by the Jewish Welfare Board to Soldiers and Sailors of the U.S. Army & Navy, during World War I. NH 45961

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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