“Battleship X,” the class leader USS South Dakota (BB-57) fires her forward 16-inch guns of Turrets I and II at the Kamaishi Steel Works on Honshu, Japan, 14 July 1945.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-490175
A young ship turned old pro that saw her first action off Guadalcanal in October 1942, SoDak by this stage of the war was earning her 13th battle star and was an expert at using her radar to target centrally controlled 16-inch guns.
In bombarding the Kamaishi plant, she plastered it with 231 16-inch shells (that’s 219 tons of ordnance!) in 42 salvos between 1211 and 1415, a span of just over two hours. Adding the ship’s on-board Kingfisher spotter planes to the mix to correct shot fall made it cake.
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Warship Wednesday, July 16, 2025: Flat Iron Warrior
Above we see the Norwegian Gor-class gunboat-turned-minelayer KNM Tyr, all 102 feet long with a 4.7″/40 EOC gun forward and mines stowed aft. Downright ancient when the Germans came in 1940, she nonetheless proved a serious thorn in their side.
Norwegian Rendels
Starting in the 1870s, the Norwegians embarked on a program of modern warship construction, including steam engines and iron/steel hulls. Constructed locally at Carl JohansVærns Værft, Horten, they ordered eight 2nd class gunboats (Kanonbåt 2. kl) running between 250 and 420 tons, three first class gunboats of between 720 and 1,280 tons, a 1,045-ton steam corvette, an armed 350-ton minelaying “crane vessel” (Kranfartøy), and 14 assorted (45 ton-to-107 ton) 2nd class torpedo boats by 1902. Meanwhile, four 4,000-ton coastal battleships (Panserskibe) with 8.2-inch guns and up to 8 inches of armor would be ordered from Armstrong in the 1890s.
The eight 2nd class gunboats were all of the “flat iron” or Rendel type, a common format introduced by Armstrong in 1867 and built under contract for or copied by over a dozen fleets around the globe, including Norway’s neighbors Denmark and Sweden. Short and stubby, typically about 100 feet long with a 30-foot beam, they were flat-bottomed and drew a fathom or less, even under a full load. This hull form and their anemic compound steam engines only allowed for a speed in the 8-10 knot region, leaving these as defensive vessels ideal for guarding strongpoints and key harbors.
Armament was typically a single large (8-to-15-inch!) gun that could be lowered and elevated inside a shielded battery but not traversed, with the gunboat coming about to aim the horizonal.
The Norwegian Rendels included KNM Vale and Uller (1874, 1876, 250t); Nor, Brage, and Vidar (1897-1882, 270t); Gor and Tyr (1884, 1887, 289-294t); and Æger (1893, 420t). The first five carried a single Armstrong 26.67 cm (10.5-inch) RML forward and two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns amidships.
Kanonbåt 2 kl Brage’s crew with her Armstrong 26,7cm RML.
Æger toted a more modern 8.3-inch Armstrong breechloader and three small (one 10-pdr and two 4-pdrs).
Æger. This 109-foot 420-tonner was the pinnacle of Rendel development. A one-off design, she was decommissioned in 1932 and her name recycled for a new Sleipner-class destroyer. NSM.000460
Gor and Tyr each carried a single breechloading Krupp 26 cm (10.2 inch) L/30 gun (606-pound shell, 192-pound charge, m/v 1805 ft/secs), the same model gun used on the 3,700-ton Japanese Armstrong-built protected cruisers Naniwa and Takachiho, backed up, like most of the other Norwegian Rendels, by two 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns.
Kanonbåt 2. kl. Gor (b. 1884, Karljohansvern Verft, Horten), note the large Krupp gun forward. NSM.000459
Japanese officers of the protected cruiser Naniwa posing near one of her 26 cm (10.2″) Krupp guns, 1885
Meet Tyr
Constructed as Yard No. 67 at Horten, Tyr was named for the one-handed Norse god of war who sacrificed his other hand to trap the wolf Fenrir. Laid down in 1884, she launched on 16 March 1887 and, fitting out rapidly, joined the Norwegian fleet shortly after.
Norwegian gunboat KNM Tyr from 1887
After 1900, with the looming formal separation from Sweden on the horizon and the prospect of a possible fight on their hands, the Norwegians upped their torpedo boat numbers rapidly to nearly 30 boats as their four new bathtub battleships arrived on hand from Britain. With that, the Rendels transitioned to more static support roles around this time, such as minefield tenders at strategic coastal fortifications and depot ships.
Around this time, most landed their obsolete main gun in exchange for something more contemporary, with most picking up a trainable QF 4.7″/40 Elswick 20-pounder behind a shield. This allowed the removal of their armored bow bulwark. Gor and Tyr also picked up a high-angle 76mm mount, while some of the older boats received a 47mm mount.
Gor as minelegger with mines aft.
After Norway got into the submarine business in 1909 with the small (128-foot, kerosine-engined) German-built KNM Kobben, Tyr became her tender until 1914.
K/B 2 kl Tyr as tender with Norwegian submarine Kobben alongside. MMU.944062
Tyr plan 1913, slick-decked as tender.
With the mine warfare lessons reverberating around the globe after the Russo-Japanese War, it became obvious how easy these broad-beamed shallow-draft craft could be converted to minelayers. This typically meant installing twin port and starboard rail tracks on deck running about 65 feet to the stern for easy planting either via boom over rail drop. On the Gor and Tyr, this allowed for as many as 55 mines stowed on deck.
Tyr as mine planter with her 4″/40 forward and two 37mm 1-pounders on her amidships bridge deck. Model in the Horten Marinemuseet.
Same model, note the mine arrangement. The model omits her 6-pounder 76mm gun.
mines on converted Norwegian 2c gunboat, pre-1940
Same as above
Same as above
1929 Jane’s abbreviated listing of seven of the old Rendel gunboats, including Tyr. Note that Gor is still listed with her old 10-inch Armstrong. The larger Aegir was listed separately and was disposed of in 1932.
War!
September 1939 brought an uneasy time to Scandinavia. The remaining seven Norwegian Rendals, all by this time working as minelayers, bided their time and clocked in on the country’s Nøytralitetsvakt (Neutrality Watch).
Tyr was placed under the command of Orlogskaptein (LCDR) Johan Friederich Andreas Thaulow “Fritz” Ulstrup and stationed at the outer ring Lerøy Fortress overlooking the narrow Lerøyosen south of Bergen. Ulstrup, 43, was a career naval officer who was minted in the Great War and, having studied in France from 1922 to 1924, was serving as an instructor at the Naval Academy in Bergen when the war started.
Ulstrup, who doubled as fortress commander at Lerøy, also had a flotilla of five small armed auxiliary guard boats– Haus (135grt), Lindaas (138grt), Alversund (178grt), Manger (153grt), and Oygar (128grt)– and an old (circa 1898) torpedo boat, Storm, under his control. However, the fort itself, slated in 1939 to receive a 120mm gun battery with four old L/40 French-built Schneider weapons from the decommissioned border forts of Vardasen and Gullbekkasen pointing toward Sweden, instead only had a couple of 65mm Cockerill guns and searchlights.
On the early morning of 9 April 1940, just after midnight, two cruisers appeared off Bergen and flashed that they were the RN’s HMS Cairo and Calcutta, when in fact they were the German Kriegmarine’s light cruiser sisters Koln and Konigsberg, each with nine 15 cm SK C/25 (5.9-inch) guns, as the Gruppe 3 invasion force under RADM Hubert Schmundt. The cruisers were followed by 600 troops of the Wehrmacht’s 69th Infantry Division on the 1,800-ton gunnery training ship (Artillerieschulschiff) Bremse with four 12.8 cm SK C/34s, the torpedo boats Wolf and Leopard, and the E-boat tender Carl Peters shepherding S19, S21, S22, S23, S24, and naval trawlers Schiff 9 and Schiff 18.
Tyr, loaded with live and armed mines picked up at Laksevåg, was at the ocean-front fishing village of Klokkarvik, directly in the path of the Germans.
Klokkarvik harbor during the neutrality watch in 1939/40. In the picture, you can see a mine-armed KNM Tyr at anchor with a Draug-class destroyer at the quay. Note the Royal Norwegian Navy’s Hover M.F.11 floatplane in the foreground. (Source: Naval Museum Horten)
When the Germans began to creep into the fjord and with word of other sets of foreign warships in the Oslofjord, Ulstrup, who had been arguing with Bergan’s overall commander, RADM Carsten Tank-Nielsen all day on the 8th to be able to sow his mines, finally obtained clearance at 0030 for Tyr to hurriedly drop eight mines between Sotra and Lerøy, closing Lerøyosen. However, the 10-14-hour time-delay safety features on the magnetic contacts of the mines meant they were still dormant when the German cruisers passed harmlessly over them. Storm, meanwhile, fired a torpedo at Carl Peters at 0220 but missed.
Ulstrup closed to shore so he could place a quick phone call to Tank-Nielsen to apprise him of the situation, then returned to his minelayer to beat feet toward Bjørnefjord, playing a cat and mouse game with German E-boats and reportedly landing a hit from her 4.7-inch gun on one, receiving several 20mm hits from the Schnellbooten in exchange.
Further up the fjord, batteries at the now-alerted Norwegian inner ring Forts Kvarven (3 x 210mm St. Chamond M.98s) and Sandviken (3 x 240mm St. Chamond L/13s) opened up on the passing Germans at 0358 and soon landed hits on both Konigsberg and Bremse in the darkness of pre-dawn, leaving the former adrift with flooded boiler rooms. While Tyr, Ulstrup, and company managed to withdraw further into the fjords– laying another 16 mines in the Vatlestraumen approaches north of Bergen– Bergen itself fell to the German seaborne force just hours later.
Meanwhile, Tyr’s mines near Vatlestraumen sank the packed German HSDG freighter Sao Paulo (4977grt) on the evening of the 9th, sending her to the bottom in 260 feet of water.
The 361-foot Hamburg-Südamerikanische Dampschiffahrts-Gesellschaft steamer Sao Paulo was lost to one of Tyr’s mines.
In trying to sweep the mines, the German naval auxiliary Schiff 9 (trawler Koblenz, 437grt), and the auxiliary patrol boat Vp.105 (trawler Cremon, 268grt), along with two launches from Carl Peters, were lost on the 11th. Some sources also credit the German steamer Johann Wessels (4601grt), damaged on 5 May, and the German-controlled Danish steamer Gerda (1151grt), sunk on 8 May, as falling to Tyr’s eggs.
Withdrawing down the 114-mile-long Hardangerfjord, Ulstrup was appointed the commander of this new sector on 17 April and, moving ashore to Uskedal, left Tyr to her XO, the 47-year-old Fenrik (ensign) Karl Sandnes. Ulstrup, stripping the 37mm guns from Tyr and two 65mm guns from auxiliary gunboats, mounted them on flatbed trucks as improvised mobile artillery.
A 1937 Chevy flatbed with a 65mm L35 Hotchkiss under Ulstrup’s dirt sailors, April 1940
The next two days saw a series of skirmishes around Uskedal, in which Tyr closed to shore to use her 4.7-inch gun against German positions in improvised NGFS, coming close enough to get riddled by German 8mm rifle fire in return.
A naval clash on the 20th involving the advancing Germans in the Hardangerfjord saw Tyr, under the command of Sandnes, shell the German auxiliary Schiff 18, which beached at Uskedal to avoid sinking. The same battle saw the Norwegian Trygg-class torpedo boat Stegg sunk by Schiff 221 while the Norwegian armed auxiliary Smart was sunk by Bremse. The German minesweeper M.1 went on to capture five Norwegian-flagged steamers that were hiding in the fjord.
With Ulstrup and his force ashore getting ready to displace inland under fire, and Tyr trapped in the fjord, Sandnes brought his command to the shallows and, attempting to camouflage her, hid the breechblock for her 4.7 and evacuated the old minelayer. By forced march, they made it to Matre, some 14 miles on the other side of the mountain, and soon rejoined Allied lines.
Meanwhile, Tyr was soon discovered by the Germans, who towed her back to Bergen and, along with her fellow Rendel gunboat-turned-minelayer cousin, Uller, were soon pressed into service with the Kriegsmarine.
On 30 April, Tyr and Uller left occupied Bergen with German crews on a mission to mine the entrance to Sognefjord, barring it to British ships. This service would be short-lived as a Royal Norwegian Navy Heinkel He 115 seaplane spotted the pair, now under new management, and bombed Uller seriously enough to have her crew beach on a reef and evacuate on Tyr. Uller later lifted off the reef and sank near Gulen, becoming a popular dive spot.
As for Tyr, she saw no further direct combat, although the Germans likely continued to use her in some form of coastal service for the rest of the war.
Post-war
Tyr was still afloat in 1945 when the Germans were run out, and was subsequently sold on the commercial market. Her old hull still in good shape, she was converted to an economical diesel plant and sailed for a time as a heavy lift steamship.
By 1951, she had been converted to the car ferry Bjorn West, a task she fulfilled for three decades. Further converted for service in a salmon farming operation.
Found in poor condition ten years ago, she recently passed to a consortium of Vestfold county municipality, the KNM Narvik Foundation in Horten, and the Bredalsholmen Shipyard and Preservation Centre, who, with Tyr safely in drydock in Kristiansand, plan on restoring her to her 1940 condition. At this point, she is believed to be the last Rendel-type gunboat.
They plan to make her sailable, which isn’t that far-fetched.
Epilogue
The Norwegian Navy has recycled our gunboat/minelayer’s name at least twice.
The first was an Auk-class minesweeper, ex-USS Sustain (AM-119), which was transferred in 1959 and served as KNM Tyr (N47). Three Auk-class sisters transferred with her (ex-USS Strive, Triumph, and Seer) were named Gor, Brage, and Uller, in a nod to the old Rendel boats that saw WWII service.
Ex-USS Sustain (AM-119) as KNM Tyr (N47). Commissioned 9 November 1942, she earned eight battle stars for her World War II service from North Africa to France to Okinawa, helping to sink at least one U-boat in the process. She served the Norwegians from 1959 to 1984.
The third KNM Tyr in Norwegian service, N50, was bought commercially in 1995 and spent two decades mapping and filming dozens of historic wrecks in the country’s waters with her ROVs, including Scharnhorst and HMS Hunter (H35).
The intrepid LCDR Ulstrup continued to resist the Germans after leaving Tyr in April 1940. He crafted a makeshift shoreside torpedo battery, the only torpedo available being salvaged from the wreck of an old torpedo boat, and managed to caravan mines from a storage facility in Sogn to Ulvik to surprise the occupation forces. Once the Allies pulled out in mid-June, he was left to his own devices with a resistance group that became known, logically, as the Ulstrup Organisasjon.
With the heat getting too close for comfort, Ulstrup and a dozen other patriots crowded on the sailing trawler MK Måken (M 366 B)on 19 September 1940 and set out from Alesund for the Shetlands, arriving at Baltasound 11 days later. Welcomed as a hero in London, he was soon in command of the old four-piper HMS Mansfield (G76)(former USS Evans, DD-78), which in April 1941 carried commandos for a raid on Oksfjord, Norway, where the herring oil factory was destroyed.
“HNMS Mansfield, Norwegian Town-class destroyer. She is an ex-U.S. destroyer (USS Evans) and is manned entirely by the Norwegian Navy.” Circa 1941. Note her Norwegian flag. Photo by Harold William John Tomlin, IWM A2725
Once Mansfield was passed on to the Canadians in March 1942 after the Norwegians rode shotgun on 17 Atlantic, Ulstrup, promoted to Kommandørkaptein, was given command of the 11th Department in the Ministry of Defense in London, then subsequently placed in command of the Norwegian forces in Iceland, where he spent the rest of the war.
Returning to Norway with a War Cross with Swords, Ulstrup was promoted to rear admiral in August 1952. After escorting Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie on his tour of Norwegian naval bases, including the Horten shipyards in November 1954, he was made a Grand Officer of the Order of the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II, rounding out his international awards.
Kontradmiral Johan Fredrik Andreas Thaulow Ulstrup, retired, passed in 1956, age 60, having wrapped up a 41-year career.
Tyr’s best-known “kill” of the war, the HSDG steamer Sao Paulo, packed with German military vehicles and stores that never made it to shore, is a favorite of wreck divers.
Meanwhile, in Klokkarvik, a memorial, complete with a mine and a seagull, was dedicated in 2021.
As noted in the town:
The seagull that takes off from the mine is a symbol of optimism. We should be aware of what war brings, but be most concerned with how we can secure peace. We should learn from history, – because it tends to repeat itself. The seagull draws our attention to the sea, the source of everything, our future.
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
***
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Warship Wednesday, July 9, 2025: Gravity Boat
Koninklijke Marine image via the Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) file no. 2173-223-109
Above we see the Dutch Navy’s fully-dressed K XIV-class colonial submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII arriving in Surabaya, Java in what was then the Dutch East Indies, some 90 years ago this week, on 11 July 1935, to a welcome from several Dutch warships, including the destroyer Hr.Ms. Van Galen in the background. Our subject submarine had left Den Helder some eight months and 22,710 miles prior. For reference, the circumference of the Earth around the Equator is approximately 24,901 miles.
At the time, it was the longest unescorted journey by a submarine, just besting a 1926 cruise by another Dutch sub. Shipping aboard the boat was one Prof. Felix Andries Vening Meinesz– a Dutch geophysicist and geodesist known for his work in the field of gravimetry– packing his “Golden Calf,” which was beloved by the crew for reasons we will cover.
Don’t let her bookish origins fool you, K XVIII proved to have teeth when the war started in the Pacific just seven short years later.
The K XIV-class
Paid for by the oil-rich government of the Dutch East Indies in 1930 to serve as “colonial” submarines with the “K” for “Koloniën,” the five K XIV-class boats were designed by Dutch Navy engineer J. J. van der Struyff, who already had the smaller 0 9 and K XI-classes under his belt. A bit larger and more modern than previous Dutch classes, they leveraged input from across Europe. Using a pair of 1,600 hp German-made MAN diesel engines and two 430 kW domestically built Smit Slikkerveer electric motors lined up on two shafts, these 1,045-ton vessels could push their 241-foot welded steel hulls at speeds approaching 17 knots on the surface (they made 19 on trials) and nine while submerged. The plant enabled them to cruise at an impressive 10,000nm at 12 knots, ideal for West Pacific patrols.
Using double hulls with a test depth of 250 feet, they carried both search and attack periscopes provided by Stroud and a periscopic radio antenna that could be used while submerged. Ideally, for their intended use around the 18,000-island East Indies archipelago, they could float in just 13 feet of water and submerge in anything over 50.
When it came to armament, they were outfitted with help from the British, including tubes for a batch of 200 Weymouth-built dialed-down Mark VIII torpedoes (dubbed II53 in Dutch service) that could hit 42 knots and carry a 660-pound warhead– not bad performance for the era.
A British-made II53 torpedo on board the destroyer Hr.Ms. Evertsen in 1929. The Dutch used these on both surface ships and subs. NIMH 2173-224-077
The torpedo tube layout in the class was interesting and not repeated in another Dutch class. They mounted eight 21-inch torpedo tubes–four bows (two on each side of the hull), two in the stern, and a twin external trainable mount forward of the conning tower– with room for 14 fish.
Hr.Ms. K XIV, seen in a Colombo drydock in December 1942, shows a good view of her bow tubes and the inset cavity forward of the fairwater for her trainable twin tubes.
A good view of the twin tubes mounted outside of the hull under the deck, prior to installation in 1931.
Besides their torpedoes, they were armed with a Swedish 88mm/42cal Bofors No.2 deck gun and two British Vickers 2-pdr QF Mark II (40mm/39cal) large-bore AAA machine guns, the latter contained in neat disappearing installations, a novel idea for guns that weighed over 500-pounds including a water-cooled jacket.
The crew of the Dutch submarine Hr.Ms. K XV with her 40mm Vickers “ack-ack” machine gun in position and 88mm Bofors gun pointing over the bow. Note the mixed crew, common for boats in the colonies. Circa late 1930s. NIMH 2158_005757
The first three boats– K XIV,K XV, and K XVI— were ordered from Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij on the same day in 1930 as Yard Nos. 167-169. The final two– K XVII and K XVIII— were ordered in 1931 as Yard Nos. 322 and 322 from neighboring Wilton-Fijenoord, Schiedam. All five were complete and ready to deploy by early 1934.
Dutch submarine Hr.Ms. K XV central control 1935 NIMH 2158_005759
Dutch submarine K XV at Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij Jan 1931 NIMH 2158_008934
Dutch submarine K XV at Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij Feb 22 1934 NIMH 2158_008935
With the class complete, they typically self-deployed some 9,000 miles to the East Indies, stopping along the way at Lisbon, Cadiz, Palermo, Port Said, Suez, Aden, and Colombo. In theory, they could have done this on one tank of diesel oil without having to refuel.
The departure of the submarine Hr.Ms. K XIV and sister Hr.Ms. K XV from Den Helder, Holland, for the Dutch East Indies, 7 February 1934. In the background can be seen sisters K XVI and K XVII, waiting offshore. NIMH 2158_008920
Dutch submarine K XV on the Tagus River, Lisbon, likely on her way to East Asia. Photo via the Direcção-Geral de Arquivos of Portugal.
The arrival of Hr.Ms. K XV in Surabaya, April 1934. In the background is the destroyer Hr.Ms. Van Nes, which would be lost in February 1942, was sunk by Japanese aircraft. The white ship in the distance is Hr.Ms. Koning der Nederlanden, a 70-year-old 5,300-ton ramtorenschip ironclad that had been disarmed and turned into a barracks ship in 1920. NIMH 2173-223-089.
DOZ 3 (Divisie Onderzeeboten), consisting at this time of the colonial submarines Hr.Ms. K-XIV, Hr.Ms. K-XV and Hr.Ms. K-XVI, seen here in anti-aircraft exercises ca 1938. Note, you can see both Vickers 40mm being extended from the sail. You have a good view of the trainable twin external torpedo mounts via the opening just under the deck forward of the 88mm gun and the large escape hatches (drägervests) near the bow and aft of the sail. NIMH 2158_019998
Dutch submarines, including sisters K XVI, K XIV, K XII, and K XV (1933-1946,) along with the older (circa 1925) and smaller (216-feet/688 tons) Hr.Ms. K XI, alongside the supply ship Hr.Ms. Zuiderkruis, circa 1936. Of note, the obsolete little K XI, armed with more primitive Italian-made I53 torpedoes, would complete seven war patrols in WWII. Meanwhile, the 2,600-ton Zuiderkruis would escape from Java in February 1942 and spend the rest of WWII in Ceylon, operating as a depot ship and transport for the British Eastern Fleet. She would return home in 1945 and go on in 1950 after Indonesia’s independence to become the flagship of the Indonesian Navy (as Bimasakti) and President Soekarno’s yacht. NIMH 2158_019986
Circa 1931 scale model of Hr.Ms. K XVIII, a K XIV-class submarine. Note her main deck gun before the fairwater with her AAA gun atop, hull mounted diving planes, net cutters on the bow, extensive running lines, forward trunk, upside down ship’s dingy aft near its crane, and twin screws on either side of a centerline rudder. 2158_054141
A similar model endures today in the collection of the Dutch Marine Elektronisch en Optisch Bedrijf. Note the arrangement of the four periscopes and aerials, but no AAA mount and a torpedo on deck over her external tubes. 0075_15_N0007294-01
A cutaway model gives a better look at her twin stowed AAA guns on either side of the conning tower, and her external tubes are shown forward between two trunks, placed between the deck and pressure hull. NIMH_2024-033_0003
K XVIII’s forward four-pack of torpedo tubes before installation in 1932. 2158_009163
Meet K XVIII
Ordered at the Wilton-Fijenoord shipyard in Rotterdam, the future K XVIII was laid down on 10 June 1931.
Construction of the K XVIII at the NV Dock and Yard Company Wilton-Fijenoord. 2158_009140
Launched 27 September 1932, by the next July, she had completed fitting out and was conducting her first of two months of trials.
K XVIII’s Langroom. Note the ornate brass fan on the bulkhead and wooden cabinetry. 2158_009184
The officers’ quarters. Note the rugs. 2158_009181
The non-commissioned officers’ quarters are seen forward, complete with padlocked lockers, with the firing installation of the deck tubes and one of the four periscopes, probably the antenna array, in the middle. 2158_009186
Construction of the K XVIII at the NV Dok en Werf Maatschappij Wilton-Fijenoord, July-August 1933. The K XVIII is undergoing a sea trial on the Nieuwe Maas. Note her telescoping radio mast and DF gear. 2158_012445
23 March 1933. Her plankowners assembled on deck in winter dress uniforms. Note the main deck gun is not fitted yet, but the forward submergible AAA is stowed with its hatch closed and the wheel on the flying bridge. 2158_009187
Construction of the K XVIII at the NV Dok en Werf Maatschappij Wilton-Fijenoord, July-August 1933. The K XVIII is undergoing a sea trial on the Nieuwe Maas. Note that her main gun has not been fitted. 2158_012442
Having been accepted and delivered, she was commissioned into service on 23 March 1934.
Hr.Ms. Submarine K XVIII, cruising in the North Sea shortly after completion. 2158_005746
Beginning on 20 June 1934, she underwent a six-week summer voyage with a squadron from Nieuwediep through the Baltic and back. The squadron included her sistership, Hr.Ms. K XVII, the old coastal battleship (pantserschip) Hertog Hendrik, and the destroyers Evertsen and Z 5. They called at several ports including Danzig, Konigsberg in East Prussia, Riga, and Copenhagen.
Crew of the submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII at Königsberg during the squadron voyage to the Baltic Sea in 1934. The old (circa 1917) destroyer Hr.Ms. Z 5 is moored behind the K XVIII. 2158_012382
Arrival of submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII in Danzig during the voyage to the Baltic Sea in the summer of 1934. Behind K XVIII, the destroyer Hr.Ms. Z 5. 2158_012405
20.000 Mijlen over Zee!
Returning home in the tail end of August 1934, our brand spanking new submarine was ordered to her intended duty station, with the fleet in the Dutch East Indies.
However, it was determined that this outbound sortie would be a bit more of a slow boat to (Indo)china so to speak, as she was tasked with a series of international port calls and put at the disposal of Prof. Vening Meinesz, who taught geodesy, cartography and geophysics part time at Utrecht University.
Why part-time?
Well, that’s because the good professor, under the auspices of the KNMI (Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute), had been tagging along on Dutch submarines for over a decade on a mission to measure the gravity field of the Earth. You see, it was in the subsurface dives that he could get the best readings, and almost every existing gravity reading up to that time had been done on dry land.
Before arriving on K XVIII, the professor had already shipped out several times on at least five other Dutch subs. The longest of these had been a six-month (27 May-13 December 1926) outward-bound cruise on the older K XI class boat Hr. Ms K XIII, when she deployed from Den Helder for the Dutch East Indies, via the Panama Canal and Hawaii.
Vening Meinesz’s primary instrument was one of his designs, a bronze-cased, wool-packed pendulum apparatus termed a gravimeter for obvious reasons. While the workings of his machine are beyond the scope of this post, the story goes that, to isolate its readings from the activities of working submariners, the best solution was to halt the work of said bluejackets, sending them to their racks, and halting the motors.
Rig for silence indeed.
As compensation for having to put up with the yo-yo work cycle when the professor was doing his thing, the Dutch admiralty authorized an extra guilder per man per dive when the gravimeter required them to secure stations. Thus, the machine became known to the submarine crews as Het Gouden Kalf (the Golden Calf).
The pendulum apparatus of Vening Meinesz, “Slingerapparaat van Vening Meinesz,” also known as “the Golden Calf. Positioned on the left side is the protective casing with the recording instrument on top. On the right side is the pendulum apparatus with the three pendulums at the back. Built in 1923, the instrument has been in the collection of the Delft University of Technology since 1966 and, in its time, had made over 500 submarine dives
The route from Holland to Java would be accomplished in 12 legs, the shortest just 1,200 miles, and the longest running 3,520 miles.
The end of each leg would be rewarded with a liberal port call (sometimes as long as three weeks) to show the flag, refresh supplies, and interact with the locals– with the side benefit of allowing the professor ashore to confer with regional scientific types and take gravimeter measurements in strange new places.
The port calls would include Funchal (Madeira), Saint Vincent (Cape Verde), Dakar, Pernambuco (Suriname), Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo/Buenos Aires/Mar del Plata, Tristan da Cunha, Cape Town (Kaapstad) and Durban in South Africa, Port Louis (Mauritius), and Fremantle in Western Australia before heading north to Surabaya.
NIMH_2024-033_0002
Under 43-year-old Luitenant ter zee 1e klasse (LCDR) Dirk Christiaan Marie Hetterschij, a career officer who joined the Dutch navy as a midshipman in 1910 and held his first seagoing command in 1922, K XVIII made ready for her epic voyage to East Asia. He knew the vessel well, having previously supervised the construction of the submarine.
With a wardroom of five junior officers led by 30-year-old Penang-born LTZ2 Max Samuel Wytema and Officer Marinestoomvaartdienst C. van der Linden (both of whom had sailed with Vening Meinesz previously on K XIII in 1926), a goat locker of eight petty officers, and 20 enlisted, the boat had an all-up complement of 34, skipper included.
The ship’s officers on the eve of leaving Den Helder, with Professor Vening Meinesz dutifully attired in white tropical mufti to match.
And with the whole crew. 2158_012351
13 November 1934. Submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII before departure for the world voyage of 1934-35. Prof. Vening Meinesz foreground. 2158_012349
Submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII leaves the port of Den Helder for her world voyage, 14 November 1934, before an assembled crowd of well-wishers. 2158_012347
The submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII stands out, moored in the harbor of Funchal, Madeira, on 24 November 1934, some 1,680nm down on the initial leg of her 1934-35 cruise. 2158_012354
However, before leaving the Atlantic, she had a side quest.
The Snip
Dutch airline KLM in 1934 was the only operator of a precious group of five triple-engine Fokker F.XVIIIs. With an 80-foot wingspan and 9-ton maximum takeoff weight, they could carry a crew of three and a dozen passengers on convertible sleeping berths on long-range flights, able to span 950 miles in six hours before needing to refuel. They were put into service on epic 7,000-mile Amsterdam-to-Batavia (now Jakarta) runs, once making it in just 73 flying hours.
One of the five KLM Fokker XVIIIs, PH-AIS “Snip” 2161_026829
Named after birds, in December 1934, one of the five F.XVIIIs, PH-AIS “Snip” (Snipe), set out on a history-making flight, KLM’s first transatlantic service to colonial Suriname and the Antilles from Holland.
Unable to make the flight non-stop, it accomplished legs from Amsterdam to Marseille, Marseille to Alicante, Spain; Alicante to Casablanca, and Casablanca to Porto Praia in the Cape Verde Islands. Waiting for the weather to clear to hop the Atlantic and packed with extra fuel, Snip and her four-man crew set out for Paramaribo in Suriname from Praia on 19 December, making the South American strip 17 hours and 35 minutes later, by far the longest leg.
Refueling once again, it went on to Curacao, where it landed on 22 December before a crowd of thousands at Hato airport, covering the 6,516nm from Amsterdam in just under 56 flying hours. While the extra fuel tanks had taken up the normal passenger space, she had carried a cargo of 233 pounds of Christmas mail containing 26,521 airmail letters and at least one bottle of beer.
It was midway on its 2,236nm Atlantic crossing from Praia that K XVIII was waiting, surfaced, lit up, and broadcasting weather conditions and forecasts as a beacon to point Snip in the right direction and be the first on the search should she not make it. While the Dutch KNSM merchant steamships Stuyvesant and Van Rensselaer were nearby, K XVIII was the only naval vessel tasked with support, and her crew heard the plane cross over on the night of the 21st in thick cloud cover.
Snip’s 1934 flight
On December 12, 1934, the Fokker F.XVIII “Snip” departed for KLM’s first transatlantic flight to Suriname and the Antilles. The plane arrived in Curacao 10 days and 6,500 air miles later without an issue, spotted along the way by K XVIII. 2161_026836
K XVIII underway on the surface in rough seas of the Atlantic. Note the barrel of her deck gun. 2158_012391
Anyway, back to our trip
On the way to Dakar in West Africa, the crew and the professor celebrated a somber Christmas on board before a paper tree while three musically inclined crew members formed an ersatz jazz band with a couple of horns and an accordion. They would cross the Equator just after New Year’s 1935 and hold the traditional crossing the line ceremony, dubbed Neptunusfeest in Dutch parlance.
Groot Feest means “big party.” 2158_012387
At each port, K XVIII picked up staged mail and supplies, dropped off beforehand by Dutch merchant vessels. Note the “Por K XVIII, Dakar” stencil on these boxes.
The shortest stop would be an overnight anchor on 22 March 1935 at the lonely island of Tristan da Cunha, a romantic harbor for Dutch mariners as it was where Pieter Groen from Katwijk had famously lived as an uncrowned king for years, becoming the paterfamilias of the largest family on the remote South Atlantic colony. Rarely visited, the crew passed on food and medical supplies to the colony.
Arriving in Cape Town (Kaapstad) on 2 April 1935. Note the deck awning and table forward, as well as the well-mixed uniforms of the crew, all veteran subjects of Neptune Rex (and almost blue noses), some 13,190 nm into her world cruise. 2158_012377
Twin stops in South Africa at Cape Town and Durban brought extensive interaction with the colony’s Dutch expatriates, and the ship’s officers made a pilgrimage to the statue of Jan van Riebeek to adorn it with a wreath. During her call, she was the first submarine to enter False Bay and the first to use the RN dry dock at Simon’s Town, where she was hurriedly scraped and repainted in five days, with her crew pitching in to meet the scheduled ship’s movement.
Then came the longest, 27-day stint across the Indian Ocean from Mauritius to Fremantle. Three dozen men in a 261-foot tin can for 3,520 nautical miles. Importantly, they would skirt a gravitational feature known today as the Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL), a gravity “hole” that formed around 20 million years ago and is the deepest one known to man. Professor Vening Meinesz would only identify the IOGL in 1948 when looking at past data.
The home stretch arrival off Java coincided with the 339th anniversary celebration of the July 1596 arrival of Dutch merchant mariner Cornelis de Houtman in his VOC ship Mauritius after a 15-month voyage from Amsterdam, an expedition that began Dutch influence in the region.
Over the course of the voyage, Vening Meinesz had made 240 measurements while submerged.
Hr.Ms. Submarine K XVIII arriving in Surabaya after her “world voyage,” July 1935. She is being escorted in by a flight of three big Dornier Do J Wal seaplanes while her crew is assembled on deck. Do you have any idea how hard it would have been to keep those whites, white after eight months on a “pig boat?” 2158_005745
The Dutch Marineluchtvaartdienst, or Naval Aviation Service, bought five distinctive twin-engine push/pull Do J Wals from Dornier’s Italian factory in Marina di Pisa in 1926, then purchased a license to assemble a further 41 domestically at Aviolanda’s facility. Able to carry two machine guns and 2,200 pounds of bombs to 500nm, the “Whales” served in the Far East in rescue, reconnaissance, transport, and patrol roles for over a decade. They were replaced in MLD service by 1941 by 34 Dornier Do 24K flying boats and 25 Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boats.
Submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII in the Dutch East Indies, decorated and on parade duty, 11 July 1935. 2158_012424
K XVIII settles into the sheltered submarine docks in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies, after arriving. The Dutch would operate over a dozen subs from the port in the 1930s and early 1940s. Sadly, these were not hardened pens. 2158_012434
Crew members of the submarine Hr.Ms. K XVIII gathered for a welcome speech during Alle Hens, after arriving in Surabaya, Dutch East Indies, 11 July 1935. The suited Professor Vening Meinesz stands out, literally, between grinning skipper LTZ1 Hetterschij and his XO, LTZ2 Wytema. Note the white gloves and (usually German-made) Model of 1882 swords of the Dutch officers. For those curious, Dutch ships carried a very functional Model of 1911 Klewang profile naval cutlass through the 1950s, for enlisted use. 2158_012429
All the crew were presented with a special silver medal (the Draagpenning van de Rijkscommissie voor graadmeting en waterpassing) for the occasion, with Wytema and engineering officer Van der Linden earning a second award as they had earned one previously in 1926 on K XIII.
Skipper Dirk Hetterschij also picked up the Gold De Ruyter medal and was knighted, made an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau. He would similarly be made an Officer in the Belgian Ordre de Léopold II in 1936.
The chapels at the submarine barracks in both Surabaya and Den Helder received a stained-glass window with a tribute to the cruise of K XVIII. Painted by Willem Mengelberg in Zeist, it was paid for by the Stichting Algemeen Nederlandsch Comité “Onze Marine” association and includes a panel with Houtman’s circa 1596 VOC ship Mauritius. I believe they were both lost during WWII. 2158_012437
K XVIII’s XO during her 1934-35 cruise, LTZ2 Max Wytema, would go on to write two different submarine works, Klaar voor onderwater (“Clear for diving”) and, with Van der Linden, Met Hr. Ms. K XIII naar Nederlandsch-Indie (“With Hr. Ms. K XIII to the Dutch East Indies”) about their 1926 cruise. Wytema also shot several hours of amateur film footage during the cruise, which would later be edited by Brand D. Ochse, founder of Filmfabriek Polygoon, into an exotic 96-minute travel documentary, 20.000 mijlen over zee De wereldreis van onderzeeboot K XVIII (“20,000 Leagues of the Sea, The World Voyage of the Submarine K XVIII”).
Carrying a music arrangement by Max Tak, it showed many the first known moving images from such far-off locations as Tristan da Cunha, in addition to stirring sea shots of diving operations of a submarine underway, accompanied by dolphins.
Released in Dutch cinemas with the admiralty’s blessing and approval, the film was well-received and shown in several European countries, reportedly doing well for months in England and Spain.
I managed to find the first reel, which covers up to March 1935, leaving Argentina, in the NIMH, and have uploaded it, below.
Her film and book-worthy cruise behind her, K XVIII got to work as a normal Dutch fleet boat. She spent the next four years in a series of peacetime exercises and maneuvers, the highlight of which was the 23-ship September 1938 fleet review off Surabaya for (but not attended by) Queen Wilhelmina to celebrate her 40th anniversary.
War!
September 1939 brought an uneasy time to the Dutch East Indies. With Japan openly pressuring the colony, the local governor and his forces stepped up preparations to repel what was felt to be a looming invasion. Once metropolitan Holland was occupied in May 1940 by Germany, the DEI, still loyal to Queen Wilhelmina’s government in exile, sent its naval forces on patrol for Axis vessels in the region.
When the Pacific War with Japan kicked off in December 1941, K XVIII was in refit at Surabaya. One of 15 Dutch boats in the Pacific at the time (along with O-16, O-19, O-20, K-VII, K-VIII, K-IX, K-X, K-XI, K-XII, K-XIII, K-XIV, K-XV, K-XVI, and K-XVII), K-XVIII was soon back in the water, making war patrols and pumping torpedoes in the Emperor’s ships, one of the brighter moments in a campaign that was otherwise dark for the doomed ABDA Allies.
Her wartime skipper, LTZ1 Carel Adrianus Johannes van Well Groeneveld, had taken her sister, Hr. Ms K XIV, whose c/o was sick, on two short patrols while K XVIII was in refit in December. During which he torpedoed four Japanese steamers, sinking three for some 23,000 tons, a great start to the war!
With K XVIII back in the water in early January 1942, Van Well Groeneveld rejoined his command and departed Surabaya on his boat’s 1st war patrol on the 14th. After scuttling the evacuated Balikpapan light vessel Orion with gunfire so that it could not function as a beacon to the expected Japanese landing force, K XVIII spent the night of 22/23 January on a series of attacks on said force.
Narrowly missing the Japanese Sendai-class light cruiser Naka with four torpedoes, he sent the transport Tsuruga Maru(7289 GRT), carrying elements of the Sakaguchi Detachment (56th Regimental Group), to the bottom with a second load of four fish.
Tsuruga Maru was built down at Mitsubishi Shipyard as Yard No. 250, a 7,289-ton cargo ship for Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), K.K. (Japan Mail Steamship Co.) in 1916. K XVIII sent her to the bottom in January 1942.
It was while avoiding depth charges from the responding Japanese submarine chaser Ch-12 that K XVIII bottomed and was extremely damaged, cutting her war patrol short. Returning to Surabaya by the 27th, she was still in repair when the Japanese neared the strategic port in March and was ordered scuttled along with 120 assorted Allied vessels in the area.
Before she was set ablaze, her deck gun was used to scuttle the unseaworthy Dutch Admiralen-class destroyer Hr. Ms Banckert.
K XVIII’s wartime boss, the budding sub ace Van Well Groeneveld, while in charge of the Torpedo Works at Surabaya in March 1942, went missing and was believed killed while inspecting faulty demolition charges with two other men during the destruction of the port, just shy of his 36th birthday. Besides a Dutch MWO.4, he earned the British DSO, although he was never able to receive it.
Ignoble service under the Setting Sun
With Surabaya under new management for the next five years, the Japanese had a chance to raise and repair several of the ships that were hastily scuttled there. One of these was K XVIII. Patched up to a degree, she was put into service as an unnamed and lightly armed air warning picket hulk in the shallows of the Madoera Strait in 1944. She was sent to the bottom a final time by HM Submarine Taciturn (P334) on 16 June 1945 alongside the Japanese auxiliary submarine chaser Cha 105 (130 tons). Taciturn described the action with the former pride of the Dutch submarine service as
“A K-16 class Dutch submarine covered with yellow lead and rust, she was very high in the water…Several hits were obtained and the hulk was seen listing shortly afterwards..” Before turning to sink Cha 160. Then, “target was now shifted to the rusty submarine hulk whose machine gun fire became annoying as the range closed. A considerable number of 4″ rounds were fired against her before she was seen to be sinking in position 06°52’S, 112°48’E. One of the hits was a direct hit on her gun.”
Of her four sisters, all gave hard service in East Asia in WWII, opposing the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies. Two were lost during the conflict.
Hr.Ms. K XVI sank the Japanese Fubuki-class destroyer Sagiri on Christmas Eve 1941, then was, in turn, sunk by the Japanese submarine I-66 on Christmas Day, lost with all hands.
Hr.Ms. K XVII was believed lost in a newly laid Japanese minefield on or about 21 December 1941 in the Gulf of Siam and is still on patrol with 38 crewmembers. There are wild rumors she was lost in the “cover-up” in the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory, but they are, most assuredly, groundless.
Class leader Hr.Ms. K XIV (N 22), as we touched on above, was the most successful when it came to chalking up “kills,” is credited with three Japanese troopships — SS Katori Maru (9,848 tons), SS Ninchinan Maru (6,503 tons), and SS Hiyoshi Maru (4,943 tons)– sunk along with a fourth — MS Hokkai Maru (8,416 tons)– damaged in late December 1941 alone. Updated in America, she spent the rest of the war in Fremantle and would damage the 4,410-ton Japanese minelayer Tsugaru and bag numerous small vessels. She was retired in 1946, having completed nine war patrols. Also, like K XV, she languished in Soerabaja during the Dutch war against Soekarno, then was towed out and sunk in deep water following independence.
Hr.Ms. onderzeeboot K XIV (1933-1946) z.g.n. getrimd dieselen. NIMH 2158_005756
The K XIV class Bloedvlaggen, with K XVIII on the far right.
In all, wily “Free Dutch” submarines with nothing to lose accounted for at least 168,183 tons of enemy shipping and warships between May 1940 and August 1945, sinking no less than 69 ships– a figure that doesn’t count the myriad of small craft they also sent to the bottom. They also lost 16 boats, with seven still on eternal patrol.
In an ode to these old K boats, Indonesian rice (Indische rijsttafel) is a staple meal on Dutch submarines today, especially for service in the wardroom as a Blauwe hap (Blue Snack).
Epilogue
Little tangible remains of K XVIII. Her hulk was later raised (again) and scrapped in the 1950s after the Dutch had left. With so much war wreckage around Surabaya post-war, and with an active civil war going on in the islands until Indonesia’s independence in 1949, there was little appetite to set aside the relics of the once-famous submarine.
She is remembered in maritime art, such as on a recently released stamp from Tristan da Cunha.
Incidentally, when 20.000 mijlen over zee hit the theatres, it sparked a shoe drive in Holland for the island’s moccasin-wearing population, which ultimately received 760 assorted new pairs of wooden clogs for its 200 inhabitants. Unsuited for use in the rocky islands, the locals instead appreciated them as they kept the islanders in firewood for six months. K XVIII’s circa 1934-35 skipper, Dirk Hetterschij, after the legendary voyage to East Asia, became commander of the Dutch submarine service in Surabaya for two years, then returned home just in time for the German invasion. During WWII, he remained in the occupied Netherlands, where he played a key role in the Dutch resistance and was later arrested by the Germans for a time, but was released for health reasons. Placed in command of the Loodswezen, the Dutch Pilotage Service, post-war, he was made a rear admiral in 1947, but died in poor health the following year, just 57 years old.
RADM Dirk Hetterschij completed 38 years of honorable service to the Dutch Navy, most of it in submarines, with a dash of science and espionage behind enemy lines when needed. He is buried in Rhenen, with his wife joining him in 1974. As a side note, she had been the third wife of the swashbuckling late Dutch RADM Kaarel Doorman of Java Sea fame.
K XVIII’s multimedia talented XO during her 1934-35 cruise, LTZ2 Max Wytema, likewise continued to serve. The Dutch Naval Control Officer in San Francisco during WWII, he was recognized with a Legion of Merit by the U.S. Navy in 1942. While in California, he settled down and retired there, with his wife Annette passing in 1979. He joined her at age 78 in 1982.
In 2016, Dutch TV network VPRO released a digital version of 20.000 mijlen over zee in two parts. The website is kind of funky and takes a while to build, but it’s interesting to view once you get it going.
And finally, Professor Vening Meinesz, who became akin in his time to a Dutch Neil deGrasse Tyson after 20.000 mijlen over zee, continued his gravitational quest. He shipped out on four further Dutch subs in the late 1930s, including a three-month trip on Hr. Ms. O 16 in 1937. Teaching part-time both at the University of Utrecht and the Delft University of Technology, like his old pal Dirk Hetterschij, he rolled up his sleeves during the German occupation and helped organize the Resistance movement. Post-war, he took students and his instruments aboard a further six Dutch submarines, sailing as late as 1959.
Professor Vering Meinsez passed in 1966, aged 79. Utrecht University has the Vening Meinesz Research School for Geodynamics in his honor, while a crater on the moon also carries his name. Though he never wore a uniform, he earned his dolphins for sure.
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Warship Wednesday, July 2, 2025: Lost Bird of the Baltic
Image via the Farenthold Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command NH 65783
Above we see the Nautilus-class minenkreuzerSMS Albatross in port, likely in Wilhelmshaven or Kiel, just prior to the Great War. A slight cruiser by any measure, she was perhaps better described as a heavily armed minelayer with a profile approaching that of an elegant turn-of-the-century steam yacht.
Put in an impossible situation some 110 years ago today, she was run aground in neutral waters– and that’s where the story really starts.
The Kaiser’s Mine Cruisers
The Albatross and her half-sister ship Nautilus sprang from the lessons learned during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which saw the aggressive use of mine warfare in fleet operations. The two ships were the size (322 feet oal/2,345 tons displacement on Nautilus, 331 ft./2,500-ton Albatross) and speed (20.8 knots) of light cruisers.
They had two stacks to vent their quartet of marine boilers and a pair of 3-cylinder compound engines. Twin military masts with mounted searchlights could accommodate an auxiliary sail rig if needed, but they don’t seem to have ever carried any canvas. They had a 1:10 length-to-beam ratio and looked fast sitting still.
Nautilus, German cruiser minelayer, photographed by Renard of Kiel while passing under the Levensau Bridge of the Kiel Canal in 1907, soon after entering fleet service on 19 March 1907. Note the rakish clipper bow and bowsprit, which Albatross did not share. While 322 feet oal, the waterline length was just 296 feet at the waterline (316 on Albatross). NH 46829
While largely unarmored, they could duke it out against smaller vessels or serve as commerce raiders due to their all-up main battery of eight 8.8 cm/35 (3.46″) SK L/35 C/01 guns in single low-angle shielded mounts. Nautilus originally carried two guns in casemate and six on upper decks, but all were later consolidated on deck, while Albatross always had hers on deck, arranged two forward, two aft, and four amidships in broadside. Magazines held a total of 2,000 15-pound shells for these guns, which had a range of 9,600 yards.
However, rather than torpedoes and secondary batteries as found on other cruisers, these twins had weight and space to accommodate a serious deck cargo of sea mines on a rail system dropping over the stern, with Nautilus rigged for 391 such “eggs” while Albatross could stow 288. With a shallow draft of just 15 feet for both sisters, they could operate in the littorals of the North, Baltic, and Mediterranean Seas, sowing their enemy seaports and strategic roadsteads shut with their mines. Alternatively, they could drop fields quickly in the path of enemy squadrons during fleet actions, covering retreats, or isolating opponents.
The German Elektrische Minen A (EMA), with a charge of 330 pounds of wet gun cotton, was the standard contact (Hertz horn) mine of the Kaiserliche Marine headed into the Great War.
Besides their dual use as mine layers and scout cruisers, both ships were given reinforced bows for service as light icebreakers or “boom chargers” as needed. The simplification of mission between the efficient mine-laying system and the single battery meant these ships had comparatively small crews of just ten officers and 191 men.
Termed Minendampfschiffe A und B on contract, both ships were built at Aktien-Gesellschaft Weser in Bremen with Nautilus (Baunummer 152) and Albatross (No. 162), sandwiched between the future Jutland veteran Nassau class battleship SMS Westfalen and the elegant NDL Reichspostdampfer liner Lutzow. Both cruisers ran 2,879,000 marks each despite the moderate differences in design. While most naval journals consider these to be one class of ship, Jane’s at the time listed each separately.
Nautilus 1914 Janes
Albatross 1914 Janes, note the different hull form.
Meet Albatross
Ordered under the 1906 program, our subject was laid down in Bremen on 24 May 1907. She was at least the second SMS Albatross in the Kaiserliche Marine, following in the path of a Kaiserliche Werft Danzig-built steam gunboat that entered service in 1871 and roamed the world on a series of exotic cruises until she was decommissioned in 1898.
The first SMS Albatross, a 4-gun steamer with a three-masted barque rig, served as a gunboat and later as a station ship and survey vessel. Disposed of in 1899, she was wrecked in commercial service in 1906.
Our Albatross took to the water on 23 October 1907, began sea trials on 19 May 1908, and was accepted and commissioned shortly after. As such, she entered service just 14 months after Nautilus.
She spent her pre-war period in a sleepy series of fleet maneuvers, mine warfare training (as a Minenschulschiff), and the like, based at Cuxhaven. The most notable incident from this time was a minor collision in 1911 with the 5,448 GRT NDL steamer Wartburg (which was later seized in 1917 and used by the Navy in the Great War as the cargo ship USS Wabash on a series of round trips between the U.S. and Saint-Nazaire).
During her antebellum service, Albatross served as a stopover for bright young officers bound for flag rank. Her first three skippers– Korvettenkapitäns Titus Turk, Karl Wedding, and Wilhelm Adelung– all went on to become admirals.
War!
When the Great War kicked off in 1914, Albatross, accompanied by the light cruiser SMS Stuttgart and half a squadron of destroyers on 25/26 August, laid an offensive barrage of 200 mines in the Tyne Estuary, a 13-mile-long field that gave the British a good bit of heartburn.
The same sortie was accompanied by Nautilus, escorted by SMS Mainz and the other half squadron of destroyers, to lay her field of 200 off the Humber.
On the way back to Germany in the fog, according to Corbett, a total of 16 British fishing craft were deep sixed by the destroyers of the two mine laying groups (six by the Albatross group and 10 by the Nautilus group) after first taking the crews prisoner then landing them in Germany for the duration.
The Tyne field laid by Albatross soon claimed the Danish coaster Skeatti Sogeli and the fishing drifter Barley Rig, the latter with the loss of five of her nine crew. Two of the four Admiralty trawlers– HMT Crathie (No.106) and HMT Thomas W Irvin (No.61)— that went to sweep the mines on 27 August were also lost. Five ratings rode the ersatz minesweepers to the bottom. The remaining Admiralty trawlers under CDR R W Dalgety, RN, managed to gingerly clear the rest of the field.
Further tasked with mine operations in the North Sea and Baltic until they froze in the winter of 1914, Albatross went back to it after the thaw in the spring of 1915.
It was on one such mission under Kommodore Johannes August Karl Franz von Karpf, to sow an offensive minefield off the Russian-occupied Aland Islands between Finland and Sweden, saw Albatross screened by armored cruiser SMS Roon (10200t, 4×8.3″,10×5.9″ guns) along with the light cruisers SMS Augsburg (4800 t, 12x 10.5 cm L45s) and SMS Lubeck (3200t, 10×4.1″) and seven torpedo boats (S 126, S 131, G 135, G 141, S 142, G 147, and S 149) assigned in July 1915.
After laying 180 mines north of Bogskar on 1 July and turning back to Germany, Albatross and her screen on the next morning, at 0615, spied Russian RADM Mikhail Bakhirev’s cruiser squadron comprised of the massive British-built armored cruiser Rurik (15000t, 4×10″, 8×8″, 20×4.7″), the French-built armored cruiser sisters Admiral Makarov and Bayan (each 8400 t and carrying two 8″ and eight 6″) and the German-designed protected cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg (each 6700 t and carrying 12×6″). This put the Germans at just 42 guns, none larger than 8-inch, versus 76 Russian guns of comparable bore or larger.
Unknown to Von Karpf, his wireless communications were intercepted and decoded by the Russian admiralty, who cued Bakhirev, originally on a mission to bombard Memel, to intercept. (The Russians were able to listen in on these communications because they had obtained Signalbuch der Kaiserliche Marine nr 151 after the light cruiser SMS Magdeburg ran aground off Odensholm the previous August.)
The running battle ensued with Von Karpf’s dispersed squadron already split in two, with Roon and Lubeck headed toward Libau, while Augsburg, Albatross, and three torpedo boats were closer to Swedish waters. The Russian cruisers Bogatyr and Oleg caught up to the humble Albatross alone, and, with 24 6-inch guns against eight 88mm pieces, it was one-sided.
SMS Albatross is attacked by Russian cruisers in Swedish waters, 2 July 1915, by Wilhelm Malchin. Der Krieg 1914/19 in Wort und Bild, 39. Heft
Oil painting by J Hägg. “Albatross under fire” Swedish Marinmuseum B1397
In the end, it was only the decision of FKpt Georg West to run Albatross inland to the shallows near the Swedish island of Ostergarnsholm that saved his ship. Remember, Albatross only had a 14-foot draft, whereas the heavily armored Bogatyr and Oleg drew 21. Beached just 500 feet offshore, aflame, and riddled with Russian shrapnel, Albatross was left alone by 0830 as Bogatyr and Oleg withdrew to the east to catch up to Roon and Lubeck, with whom they engaged in an ineffective artillery duel, later joined by Rurik.
When the smoke cleared, with the other cruisers on both sides only suffering negligible damage, it was Albatross that was wrecked.
Not only that, but she was also in Swedish territorial waters.
Internment
Sweden was neutral from 1814 to 2024, but during the Great War was for sure more aligned to the Kaiser’s sphere of influence than that of any other.
A traditional enemy of Tsarist Russia, the Swedish and German general staff had met for several loose planning sessions on how best to fight the Russians before 1914, and, once the “lights went out across Europe” in August, exports to Germany, primarily of much-needed iron ore, jumped almost 800 percent. While thousands of Swedish expatriates wore the uniforms of the Allied armies, thousands more volunteered to serve under German flags, especially when it came to fighting Russia in the hope of liberating neighboring Finland– a land that had been part of Sweden for almost 700 years.
This sets the stage for the reception that the wounded FKpt West and his crew received.
Almost immediately after the Russian cruisers left over the horizon, locals began assisting the Albatross, shuttling wounded to shore.
A field hospital was established in the sugar mill at Romakloster for the 49 wounded German sailors. Soon, a detachment of the Gotland Infantry Regiment (I/27) arrived to stand quiet guard on the beach over a grim collection of 26 men who had been killed. One crew member had fallen overboard during the shelling and could not be found.
Recovered German sailors on the beach at Gotland, covered by the naval ensign of SMS Albatross. Note the blue-uniformed Swedish troops standing guard. The fallen sailors were later interred in a mass grave just east of Östergarn Church.
Two of the crew members who died during transportation to Roma were buried at Bjorke cemetery.
Crew of the German minelayer Albatross. Swedish Marinmuseum D 14988:1
Relieved of their ship, some ~210 assorted German internees from Albatross were left in the sugar mill at Romakloster for a period.
Then, with the mill needed for the upcoming beet harvest, they were shuffled about 20 miles away to the naval shooting range at Blahall on the Tofta coast of the Swedish island of Gotland.
Finally, the internees were moved to a military camp in Skillingaryd on the mainland in the autumn of 1917.
There, they were kept under loose guard but allowed to take local employment and generally enjoyed the rest of their war.
The crew crafted a large, tabletop-sized scale model of their lost cruiser and donated it to their captors.
It later found its way into the Swedish Marinmuseum. MM11315
Grey painted model of the German warship Albatross, mounted on an oak board, and in addition, a glass stand. On the stand, a nickel silver plate engraved: “To my friend Ivar Uggla from his albatross friends Christmas 1918”.
As for Albatross, the ship was righted by the Swedish Navy and towed by the Neptunbolaget salvage company, first to the island of Faro on 23 July, then to Karlskrona. Stockholm rebuffed numerous and regular requests from the Russian government to turn her over as an earned war trophy. The Swedish government just as often cited their note of protest over the fact that the battle was largely conducted in their neutral waters.
Albatross being salvaged with Swedish torpedo boats alongside. This image was made into a popular postcard. Swedish Marinmuseum MM10668
Albatross salvaged and afloat in Gotland. She was escorted in by the Swedish destroyers HSwMS Wale and Magne. Swedish Marinmuseum MM11394
As the war wore on, the relationship between Germany and Sweden became more strained. The country suffered more than 900 civilian mariners killed during the conflict, most at the hands of U-boats and German raiders, who sank at least 132 Swedish-flagged vessels at sea. Further, the Swedish navy had lost men and ships while sweeping German mines (the gunboat Gunhild was lost to a mine in the Skagerrak with a loss of 19 lives) while the Swedish submarine Hvalenwas shot up by a German armed trawler who thought she was British, leading to the death of yet another sailor.
Still, the Swedish and German military cooperated in the joint occupation of the Åland Islands off Finland in 1918 (including landing a battalion of the famed Göta Life Guards, I/2, ashore), teaming up to fight the local Reds and disarm miserable Russian garrisons on the archipelago.
Post-war, the disarmed Albatross was sailed to Danzig on her own power, arriving on 31 December 1918, and was returned to German custody. Following the Versailles Treaty and the resulting limitations placed on the then-Weimar Republic’s Reichsmarine, Albatross was deemed surplus and sold for 900,000 marks to a firm in Hamburg to be broken up for scrap in 1921.
While I cannot find out what became of the good FKpt West, the leader of the squadron when she was lost, Johannes von Karpf, went on to fight another day. Commanding the battlecruiser SMS Moltke at Jutland and later the BCs SMS Lutzow and Hindenburg, he ended the Great War as a rear admiral and retired from the Reichsmarine on 5 November 1919. He passed in Hamburg in 1941 after serving on the board of several shipping companies in that port city. The Russian squadron commander, RADM Bachirev, was shot by the Reds in 1920.
Von Karpf, seen left as the last skipper of the Kaiser’s yacht, Hohenzollern.
As for the sister of Albatross, Nautilus continued to see service in the Baltic in the latter part of the war, meeting the Russians on several occasions– including fighting with field guns, mortars, and flamethrowers while supporting German landings in Moon Sound (it pays to be able to float in 15 feet of water!). Still steaming in 1918, she was disarmed and hulked.
Retained for another decade, she was sold to a Danish firm for 180,000 marks and scrapped in 1928.
Epilogue
Albatross forever changed a piece of Sweden’s coast, where July 2 is remembered annually as “Albatrossdagen” or Albatross Day. A small museum was constructed in 1977 near where she grounded, and today it holds more than 700 images, the cruiser’s ensign, two models, uniform items, and numerous relics.
A monument is maintained on the beach near where she grounded back in 1915.
Östergarn cemetery still holds her war dead in a place of honor, complete with a memorial.
It is often visited on Albatrossdagen by the German military attaché from Stockholm. This year, German Defense Attaché Markur Bruggemeier will lay a wreath from Germany at the sailor’s grave.
A detailed 1:100 model crafted by Heinz Zimmermann of Albatross in her wartime livery is in the Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven
Modell (von Heinz Zimmermann) im Maßstab 1:100 des Minenkreuzers SMS Albatross im deutschen Marinemuseum in Wilhelmshaven. (Wiki Commons)
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Official period caption: “Arrival of Northwest Naval Reserves on board USS Gilligan (DE 508) at Seattle, Washington, for training cruise to Acapulco, Mexico, 17 June 1950.” The men were to reactivate the tin can– laid up since 1946– and take her on a four-week training cruise to Mexico, and return.
80-G-421227
Named after a Marine Raider mortally wounded in action at Tulagi in August 1942, Gilligan was a John C. Butler-class destroyer escort built in New Jersey and commissioned less than two years later, sponsored by the namesake’s grieving mother.
By the second anniversary of PFC Gilligan’s passing, the ship named after him was serving in the Pacific, ultimately earning at least one battlestar during antiaircraft and antisubmarine screening efforts around Okinawa and in the Lingayen Gulf, surviving both a dud Japanese torpedo hit and a glancing blow from a kamikaze.
Gilligan detected an incoming Betty twin-engine bomber at 8 miles and finally sighted it at very low altitude at 1,000 yards, firing its nose gun at the ship. In a rarely recorded case of a sailor losing his nerve, a range finder operator jumped from his station down onto the main battery director, knocking it off target, preventing the 5-inch guns from getting off more than one round before the plane struck. The kamikaze flew directly into the muzzles of the No. 2 40-mm gun, killing 12 men and wounding 13, who stayed at their station firing until the very end. Despite a massive fireball, Gilligan’s crew was able to get the fires under control by 0715. Another kamikaze came in for an attack on Richard W. Suesens, who was searching for Gilligan crewmen who had been blown overboard. Despite her damage, Gilligan’s gunners joined in firing on the kamikaze, which was in a near-vertical dive. The kamikaze pilot was probably killed, but the plane’s momentum carried it down, and it clipped the aft 40-mm gun as it crashed into the sea close aboard, wounding 11.
Decommissioned in 1946 and laid up ultimately in Seattle, Gilligan recommissioned there on 15 June 1950 in response to the new war in Korea.
Northwest Naval Reserve Personnel on board USS Gilligan (DE 508) for a four-week training cruise to Acapulco, Mexico, and return, June-July 1950. Hospitalman James R. Piercey administers an anti-typhoid shot to warrant officer, Chief Electrician James H. Ross. 80-G-421217
Northwest Naval Reserve Personnel on board USS Gilligan (DE 508) for a four-week training cruise to Acapulco, Mexico, and return, June-July 1950. Seaman Richard L. Smith takes his turn at peeling the potatoes. 80-G-421216
Personnel from USS Charles E. Brannon (DE 446) and USS Gilligan (DE 508) on liberty while at Acapulco, Mexico, during a four-week training cruise of Northwest Naval Reserves to Mexico. FN Daniel T. O’Donnell and FN Glenn A. Scatterday consume soft drinks, 6-7 July 1950. 80-G-421219
Gilligan remained on the West Coast for the next nine years, conducting training cruises as the Cold War grew colder. Decommissioned on 31 March 1959, she was kept in mothballs “just in case” through Vietnam, then sold for scrapping in November 1973.
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Warship Wednesday, June 25, 2025: Rozhestvensky’s Pirates
Above we see the Imperial Russian Navy’s auxiliary cruiser (vspomogatel’nyy kreyser) Terek, formerly the Royal Spanish Navy’s cruiser Rapido, formerly the Hamburg America Line steamer SS Columbia,
Terek just narrowly avoided combat in 1898 under the yellow and red Pabellon de la Armada, but some 120 years ago this week, she would land the final Tsarist Russian blows against the Empire of Japan at sea.
Kinda
The Tsar’s auxiliary cruisers
When war broke out with Japan in February 1904, the Russian admiralty activated its long-standing plans to cough up a series of armed merchant cruisers. Originally intended in the 1880s and 1890s to chase down British merchantmen should the “Great Game” turn hot, the Russians were able to activate nine large rakish steamers, all capable of making over 18.5 knots. Almost all (six of nine) were three-funnel liners, and all had been built as fine 1st class ships in the best German and British yards. In peacetime, they were operated by Dobroflot, the Russian state-controlled “Volunteer Fleet,” then switched to Navy crews during war.
These nine AMCs activated were generally named after rivers or Cossack hosts that lived along their banks, including: Angara (12,050 tons), Lena (10,675 t), Kuban (12,000 t), Don (10,500 t), Ural (10,500 t), Dnepr (9,500 t), Rion (14,614 t), Rus (8,600 t) and our Terek (10,000 t).
The main batteries typically consisted of a few 120mm/45 (4.7″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns augmented by a secondary of 75mm/50 (2.9″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns and a tertiary of 57mm/6-pdr, 47mm/3-pdr, or 37mm/1-pdr Hotchkiss counter-boat guns. Dedicated magazine space was set aside and rigged for emergency flooding if needed. As their promenade decks didn’t lend well to gun emplacements, most were arranged on the fore and aft well decks, with smaller guns on the poop and forecastle.
4.7-inch guns on auxiliary cruiser Lena
As the cruisers had at least two military masts complete with lookout tops, they would typically carry at least a 1-pounder in each. Two to four large searchlights were fitted as well.
The Illustrated London News on October 8, 1904, details the “Russian Menace to Neutral Shipping” during the Russo-Japanese War, focusing on converted cruisers in neutral waters, including Lena (Kherson), Terek, Peterburg (Dnepr), and Smolensk (Rion).
The presence of these Russian cruisers in neutral ports, particularly the well-armed Lena (35 guns in four diverse batteries), which called at San Francisco in late 1904, caused a huge surge in war risk insurances for vessels of all flags bound for Japan, threatening a general halt in shipments.
Fresno Bee, Sept 14, 1904
Russian auxiliary cruiser Lena in San Francisco, November 1904. Built in 1896 by Hawthorn Leslie, Newcastle– at the time the largest ship built on the Tyne– she sailed with the Volunteer Fleet in peacetime as Kherson. Activated in late 1903 as tensions with Japan grew, she operated out of Vladivostok until she arrived at San Francisco for repairs in September 1904 and was eventually interned for the rest of the war. She later served as Naval Transport N73 in the Black Sea Fleet, then, evacuating Russia with Wrangel’s White navy in 1920, had a short career with the London Steamship & Trading Co, then was broken up in Venice in 1925.
Besides acting as scouts and raiders, a role well-suited to the force due to their large ocean-crossing coal bunkers, they also had lots of spare room in their peacetime passenger cabins to accommodate troops for use as a fast transport, or captured enemy mariners. One, Rus, was used as a balloon aircraft carrier, toting nine Parseval-Sigsfeld kite balloons and making 186 controlled ascents from her deck.
Sailing as a scouting unit with Russian ADM Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific Squadron on its way to its destiny at Tsushima, several also bagged some prizes.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s turn this story back a bit.
Meet Columbia
Ordered in 1888, an express steamer of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) line, the Doppelschrauben-Schnelldampfer Columbia was intended to compete with the fastest liners of the British shipping companies. Built to the same plans as her AG Vulcan-built sister, SS Augusta Victoria, who claimed the fastest maiden voyage across the Atlantic in an east-west direction in May 1889, Columbia was fast.
Some 480 feet overall with a narrow 55-foot beam and knife-like bow, she was HAPAG’s second twin-screw express steamer on the North Atlantic. Equipped with twin VTR engines fed by nine boilers good for 13,300 shp, she made 20.5 knots on trials.
From The Engineer, 8 Nov 1889:
Some 7,300 GRT, she had accommodations for 1,100 passengers (400 first-class, 120 second-class, and 580 third-class).
German maritime artist Alexander Kircher penned several illustrations aboard the Columbia for the publication Die Rudermaschine in 1890.
A series of interior and exterior views upon delivery is in the collection of the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.
However, she and her sister were ready for war if needed. Following the government subsidy provided by the Imperial Postal Steamer agreement (Reichspostdampfervertrages), the Reich could use these steamers in the event of mobilization, and ships built for the service had to pass a Kaiserliche Marine inspection, including weight and space for deck guns and magazines. We saw how this played out with a host of German auxiliary cruisers in 1914 in past Warship Wednesdays.
Columbia was delivered to HAPAG in June 1889 and began her maiden voyage from Hamburg via Southampton to New York on 18 July. Importantly, in July 1895, Columbia and Augusta Victoria transported the guests of honor at the opening of the Kiel Canal.
Besides the American runs, the sisters would cruise in winter to the Mediterranean, in midsummer north to Spitsbergen, and from 1896 also to the West Indies.
It was postcard and poster worthy.
War! (under a Spanish banner)
With Madrid in dire need of modern ships for their looming clash with the U.S., three weeks before war was declared, on 8 April 1898, HAPAG sold the proud Columbia and the slightly larger Normannia to Spain. Normannia became the Spanish auxiliary cruiser Patriota, armed with four 12 cm/L40 Skoda rapid-firing guns and ten 47 mm/L44 QF guns, while the speedy Columbia would enter Spanish service as the auxiliary cruiser Rapido. Her skipper was Capt. Federico Campaño y Rosset.
In Spanish service, Columbia/Rapido would carry four 16.2cm/35s, two 14cm/35s, and six 47 mm/L44s. The conversion, no doubt easy due to the weight and space reserved for guns and shells in her design, only took 12 days.
Originally part of Gruppo E of the Reserve Squadron, intended for action against American lines of communication along the Atlantic coast, both Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were reassigned to RADM Manuel de la Camara’s relief squadron for the Philippines six weeks after Dewey had destroyed RADM Patricio Montojo’s Spanish Pacific Squadron.
Sailing in line with the strongest Spanish ship in the fleet, the 11,000-ton 12-inch gunned battlewagon Pelayo; the armored cruiser Emperador Carlos V, destroyers Audaz, Osado, and Proserpina; and the troop-packed transports Buenos Aires and Panay, the force left Cadiz on 16 June 1898 and made Egypt ten days later, only to fight for coal with the English there for a week.
RADM Manuel de la Camara’s fleet under steam. Columbia/Rapido, with three masts and three stacks, is to the far left with Normannia/Patriota ahead of her. Original Location: Stanley Cohen, Images of the Spanish-American War (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Pub. Co., 1997). Via NHHC.
Rapido, Spanish auxiliary cruiser, at Port Said, Egypt, 26 June – 4 July 1898, while serving with Rear Admiral Manuel de la Camara’s squadron, which had been sent to relieve the Philippines. Copied from the Office of Naval Intelligence Album of Foreign Warships. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 88730
Camara’s squadron in the Suez Canal in 1898. Pelayo is in the foreground, with the rest of his fleet, Columbia/Rapido (visible between Pelayo’s masts) and Normannia/Patriota included. NHHC WHI.2014.36x
However, with Spanish VADM Pascual Cervera’s squadron’s defeat at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba on 3 July, and the fear that metropolitan Spain was left defenseless, Camara’s squadron was recalled home just as it made the Red Sea. Spending the rest of the war in European waters, Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were later used as troop transport to help bring the defeated Spanish forces home from the lost colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, shepherding (often towing) eight smaller, often derelict, vessels behind them back to Cadiz with stops in Martinique and the Canary Islands.
The Spanish admiralty having no further use for Columbia/Rapido, she was disarmed and sold back to HAPAG on 6 July 1899 for a nominal fee. Her career in Spanish service spanned just under 15 months and, as far as I can tell, she never fired a shot in anger during this period.
Meanwhile, Normannia/Patriota was given to the French government to resolve war debts. Renamed L’ Aquitaine, the former Normannia entered service with the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) line in December 1899, and, in poor condition, was scrapped in 1906.
Under a Russian flag
Following a refit and a fresh coat of paint, Columbia spent the next four years in a shuffle of commercial runs from Hamburg via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York.
It was while on a run to the Big Apple in May 1904 that HAPAG unceremoniously sold Columbia, along with her sister Auguste Victoria and the liner Furst Bismarck, for 7.5 million rubles to the Russian Navy, in need of hulls to take the fight to the Japanese. At the same time, NDL sold the Russians the fast little (6963 BRT) liner Kaiserin Maria Theresia.
Auguste Victoria became the Russian auxiliary cruiser Kuban, Furst Bismarck became the cruiser Don, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia the cruiser Ural.
Columbia departed New York after discharging her passengers for the Russian naval base at Libau (now Liepaja, Latvia) in the Baltic, joining Auguste Victoria, Furst Bismarck, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia, who had arrived earlier.
Terek in Libau 1904. Note that the other auxiliary cruisers are in dark military livery
At Libau, Columbia’s German civil crew took trains for the frontier while dock workers began the conversion process. Her deck was additionally reinforced, magazines for ammunition and devices for feeding shells to the upper deck were equipped. Some of the rooms in the emigrant class cabins were adapted to accommodate additional supplies of coal, fresh water, and food. Hatches were cut out for coaling at sea, a task rarely performed by ocean liners. To protect the engines and boilers from enemy shells, additional steel sheets were installed. Columbia was also equipped with additional equipment: two combat searchlights, a powerful wireless telegraph station, etc.
Columbia’s armament was lighter than in Spanish service, consisting of just two 12 cm L/45s, four 7.5 cm L/50s, eight 5.7 cm Hotchkiss guns, and two Maxim machine guns. The Russian naval staff had initially intended for each of the three new-to-them German-made auxiliary cruisers to carry fourteen 6-inch guns, but the ordnance just wasn’t available.
Our subject was named Terek after the fierce Cossack host on the river of the same name in the Caucasus region.
Terek Cossacks
Terek’s inaugural Russian skipper was Capt. (2nd rank) Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov, a 44-year-old career officer who had joined the fleet as a 14-year-old midshipman and had earned sea legs on everything from schooners to armored cruisers. His father, Aleksandr Konstantinovich, was friends with Nakhimov, took part in the Siege of Sevastopol as a battery commander, and retired as a rear admiral.
The rest of the wardroom was light, just four lieutenants and a dozen or so warrant officers and midshipmen rushed into service. Her sole surgeon was seconded from a teaching position at a Petersburg university. The new (again) cruiser’s crew of just over 400 was drawn from depots all over Russia.
As described by a Russian Tsushima veteran, Capt. Vladimir Ivanovich Semenov, of this force, “The naivety is almost touching…”
While Auguste Victoria/Kuban and Furst Bismarck/Don were repainted from their commercial livery to a heavy grey/green scheme, there wasn’t either enough time or paint left to do the same for Terek, and she sailed as-is.
War (against Japan, kinda)
Sent out from Libau on 12 August 1904 to hunt for Japanese merchant ships (or those of other flags carrying Japan-related contraband), Terek sortied out into the Atlantic before making Las Palmas, Vigo, and Lisbon for resupply then haunted the approaches to Gibraltar before she arrived back in the Baltic on 8 October, covering 9,190nm and inspecting 15 suspect vessels with no prizes. She earned enough attention from harassing ships with Red Dusters to be shadowed by the British cruisers HMS St. George and Brilliant.
Terek overhauling the British merchant ship Derwen off Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de San Vicente) off southern Portugal, August 1904.
As noted by Patrick J. Rollins in the 1994 Naval War College Review: “In August 1904, the three largest shipping firms in England, including the great P&O Line, suspended service to Japan. By the end of August, insurance rates on British ships bound for the Far East stood at 20 shillings per hundred, or four times the rate charged to the French and Germans.”
Terek was selected, along with her sister Auguste Victoria/Kuban and the auxiliary cruiser Kaiserin Maria Theresia/Ural, to join VADM Zinoy Rozhestvensky’s “2nd” Pacific Squadron, which was just the Russian Baltic Fleet, on its ill-fated mission to relieve besieged Port Arthur in the Pacific.
However, due to the nature of Rozhestvensky’s straggling fleet, Terek was not released to join the squadron until 18 November, following Ural, which had left four days earlier, and Kuban, which had sailed a full three weeks prior. Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope via Dakar, Terek only managed to link up with Kuban and Ural off Madagascar in January 1905. Dnepr (ex-Petersburg) and Rion (ex-Smolensk), who had spent the summer harassing British shipping off the East Coast of Africa, joined them. The five ersatz cruisers formed the fleet’s Reconnaissance Detachment.
By that time, Port Arthur had fallen and, much like Camara’s squadron in 1898, you would expect Rozhestvensky to be recalled back home. However, this was not to be, and the force, after weeks in Madagascar, was ordered to attempt to run past the Japanese to Vladivostok.
Another of the nine Russian auxiliary cruisers, Angara, was lost in the fall of Port Arthur, pounded into the mud by Japanese heavy artillery.
Once in the Pacific, Rion and Dnepr were detailed to escort a group of transports to Shanghai, then break off for commerce raiding along Japan’s sea lanes in the southern part of the Yellow Sea.
Ural would accompany the main force and would soon end up on the bottom.
According to Rozhestvensky’s order No. 380 of 21 May, the Kuban and Terek were to sail ahead and feint around the east of Japan and work in the area between the island of Shikoku and Yokohama. The cruisers were ordered to “without hesitation sink” all steamships on which military contraband would be noticed, a plan surely designed to draw Japanese Admiral Togo’s forces away from the Tsushima straits.
As noted by Semenov at the time back with the main fleet on 22 May, five days before the run through Tsushima, “Yesterday, the Kuban, and today the Terek, separated from the squadron to cruise off the eastern shores of Japan. May God grant them more noise.”
Kuban spent three weeks off Japan, in terrible weather, and only managed to close with two freighters, the German steamer Surabaya, carrying a cargo of flour from Hamburg to Vladivostok of all places, and the unladen Austrian freighter Ladroma. Down to her last 1,800 tons of coal, and finding out about the destruction of the 2nd Pacific Squadron from the latest issue of the Singapore Free Press newspaper aboard Ladroma, Kuban’s skipper called it quits and sailed for Saigon for coal, then made it back to Libau alone on 3 August.
Rion was able to break a few eggs, so to speak, after the battle. On 30 May, some 60 miles from Cape Shantung, she detained the German steamship Tetartos (2409 GRT), heading from Otaru to Tianjin with railway sleepers and fish, and sank it the next morning. Four days later, while 80 miles from Wusung, she stopped the English steamship Cilurnum (2123 GRT), heading from Shanghai to Moji. The steamship was released after its cargo of beans and cotton was thrown over the side. Her war over, Rion sailed for home, arriving in Kronstadt on 30 July.
Dnepr came across the British steamer St Kilda (3519 GRT) off Hong Kong on 5 June with a cargo that included rice, sugar, and gunnies bound for Yokohama. She then sent said steamer to Davy Jones and landed the crew back in Hong Kong before heading back home.
This left our Terek to strike the last blows. She did so against the British-flagged Ikhona (5252 GRT) of the Indian Steam Navigation Company on 5 June while north of Hong Kong in the Philippine Sea, during the latter’s voyage from Rangoon to Yokohama with a cargo of rice and mail. Taking off the crew, the shipwrecked mariners were transferred to the passing Dutch steamer Periak at sea two weeks later and eventually landed at Singapore. The ship’s skipper, one Capt. Stone reported that the capture and sinking had taken six long hours, with dynamite charges failing to scuttle the steamer before Terek opened up with “quick-firers.”
Ikhona was the fourth British ship lost to the Russians during the conflict after SS Knight Commander, St. Kilda, and the schooner Hip Sang. His majesty’s government later pursued a claim of £250,000 against Russia for the value of the ships and their cargoes, with Ikhona being the most expensive at £100,000.
Continuing in the South China Sea, on 22 June 1905, Terek came across the unlikely victim that was the Kiel-built Danish East Asiatic Company steamer Prinsesse Marie(5416 tons), bound with cargo for Japan, and sank the same. Another bloodless kill by old school “cruiser rules,” her crew was taken off and brought to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies a week later. With the Dutch refusing Terek coal, the Russian cruiser ended her sortie there and was interned for three months until the Treaty of Portsmouth ended the war. Capt. Panferov dutifully offered his flag and sword to the local Dutch naval commander, who refused them.
Det Østasiatiske Kompagni Prinsesse Marie
Ironically, the Danish EAC protested the sinking of Prinsesse Marie under the pretext that, while her cargo was bound for a Japanese port, it was manifested to go to a European concern. It’s possible the Tsar, his mother being a Danish princess, made that one right in the end.
Returning home to Russia, on 10 December 1905, an order was received to Kuban, Terek, and Don of “all weapons and things related to naval affairs,” and investigate the possibility of selling the ships.
On 18 November 1906, by order of the fleet and the Naval Department No. 300, the Terek and her sister Kuban were excluded from the naval lists and were handed over to the port of Libau pending auction. The following February, Vosidlo and Co. paid 442,150 rubles for both vessels and sent them to Stettin to be cut up for scrap metal.
Epilogue
Terek could arguably be listed as one of the most successful ships on the Tsarist side of the Russo-Japanese War. A huge 1:48 scale model of the ship was crafted for the Russian Naval Museum in St. Petersburg following the campaign. Although damaged by fire during German bombs in WWII, it remains on display.
Terek’s only wartime Russian skipper, Panferov, earned both the Order of St. Anne, 2nd degree, and the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree for his service on the cruiser. Promoted to Capt. 1st Rank in 1908, then, switching to a shoreside non-line duty, by 1913, rose to the rank of major general. During the Great War, as chief quartermaster of Kronstadt, he earned the St. Anne 1st degree in 1916. One of the rare senior officers retained by the Red Navy post-revolution, he retired in 1919.
Russian Navy MG Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov. His son, Georgy Konstantinovich Panferov, went on to become a surgeon colonel during WWII and a professor at the Naval Medical Academy (VMMA). His grandson, Yuri Georgievich Panferov, followed in his footsteps and became an officer in the Red Banner fleet.
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
***
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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
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Warship Wednesday, June 18, 2025: Death of a Destroyer
Naval History and Heritage Command photograph 80-G-309163
Above we see a Fletcher-class destroyer, almost certainly USS Twiggs (DD-591), resplendent in her late war Camouflage Measure 32, Design 6D, as she plasters Iwo Jima’s West Beach with 5-inch Willy Pete shells at 1600, 17 February 1945, during the pre-invasion bombardment of the island. Screening UDT Team 14 divers clearing obstacles in the water, the effect was dramatic, and she fired a mix of over 700 5-inch shells ashore that day, closing to within just 300 yards of the beach.
As detailed by Twigg’s report of the action: A fast ship sent in harm’s way, Twiggs‘ career from commissioning to loss– some 80 years ago this week– was a scant 620 days.
The Fletchers
The Fletchers were the WWII equivalent of the Burke class, constructed in a massive 175-strong class from 11 builders that proved the backbone of the fleet for generations. Coming after the interwar “treaty” destroyers such as the Benson- and Gleaves classes, they were good-sized (376 feet oal, 2,500 tons full load, 5×5″ guns, 10 torpedo tubes) and could have passed as unprotected cruisers in 1914.
Destroyer evolution, 1920-1944: USS HATFIELD (DD-231), USS MAHAN (DD-364), USS FLETCHER (DD-445). NH 109593
Powered by a quartet of oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers and two Westinghouse or GE steam turbines, they had 60,000 shp on tap– half of what today’s Burkes have on a hull 25 percent as heavy– enabling them to reach 38 knots, a speed that is still fast for destroyers today.
USS John Rodgers (DD 574) at Charleston, 28 April 1943. A great example of the Fletcher class in their wartime configuration. Note the five 5″/38 mounts and twin sets of 5-pack torpedo tubes.
LCDR Fred Edwards, Destroyer Type Desk, Bureau of Ships, famously said of the class, “I always felt it was the Fletcher class that won the war… they were the heart and soul of the small-ship Navy.”
Meet Twiggs
Our subject was the second warship to carry the name of Georgia-born Major Levi Twiggs, USMC. The son of Major General John Twiggs, the “Savior of Georgia” of Revolutionary War fame, the younger Twiggs was commissioned a Marine second louie at the ripe old age of 19 on 10 November 1813, the young Corps’ 38th birthday. He fought against the British and was captured on the 44-gun heavy frigate USS President in 1815 after a fantastic sea battle against the frigate HMS Endymion.
Returning to American service after the Treaty of Ghent, he continued to serve for another 32 years until he fell in combat– along with almost every other officer and NCO of the Marine Battalion– whilst leading a storming party in the assault on Chapultepec Castle before Mexico City on 13 September 1847.
Twiggs perished in battle at age 54, having spent most of his life leading Marines against all comers. The Chapultepec battle led to the “Halls of Montezuma” in the Marine Corps hymn and the “blood stripe” worn on the service’s dress blue trousers. Photos: NH 119304/Yale University Library/ Library of Congress photo digital ID: cph 3g06207.
The first USS Twiggs was a Wickes-class four-piper destroyer laid down but not completed during the Great War. The hardy warship (Destroyer No. 127) was mothballed on the West Coast from 1922-1930, and 1937-39, but was eagerly accepted by the Admiralty in 1940 as part of the “destroyers for bases” agreement with Britain.
USS Twiggs Description: (DD-127) circa the 1930s. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. NH 67822
Put into RN service as the Town-class destroyer HMS Leamington (G 19), she helped scratch at least two German submarines (U-207 and U-587) while on convoy duty in the Atlantic. Later loaned to the Canadians as HMCS Leamington (G49), she was used in a decent war film and further loaned to the Soviets as the destroyer Zhguchi. She was only scrapped in 1950, ironically outliving the second USS Twiggs.
Speaking of which, our subject, USS Twiggs (DD-591), was built side by side at the Charleston Navy Yard with her sister, the future USS Paul Hamilton (DD-590), laid down on 20 January 1943. The keels were officially laid by striking three arcs simultaneously on the keel of each vessel by the wives of the crews’ junior officers, assisted by their husbands.
205-43 US Navy Yard, SC, January 20, 1943. USS Paul Hamilton (DD 589) & USS Twiggs (DD 591) Keel Laying Ceremonies. DD591 striking the arc and officially laying the keel. Left to right: front row: Mrs. R. G. Odiorne, Mrs. A. A. Rimmer, Mrs. J. W. Clayton, Mrs. T. H. Dwyer. File 14783.” Via Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum.
With resplendent red and haze grey hulls, the two sisters launched side-by-side on 7 April 1943. Twiggs was sponsored by Mrs. Roland S. Morris (Augusta Twiggs Shippen West), the great-granddaughter of the late Maj. Twiggs, whose husband had served as a diplomat under Woodrow Wilson.
Original Kodachrome. USS Paul Hamilton (DD-590) and USS Twiggs (DD-591) are ready for launching at the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, 7 April 1943. 80-G-K-13833
A career surface warfare man, he had learned his trade on the old cruiser USS Chester, then served on the cruiser USS Chicago. His first XO stint was on the humble “Old Bird” minesweeper USS Sandpiper doing survey work in the Aleutians. Then came work on a string of tin cans, earning his first command on the Gleaves-class destroyer USS Gwin (DD-433)from whose deck he picked up both a Navy Cross and a Silver Star off Savo Island and in the Kula Gulf, respectively.
The young CDR Fellows led Twiggs on her shakedown cruise to Bermuda in December 1943. On her way down the East Coast, she was photographed by a Navy blimp from Naval Air Station Weeksville in North Carolina.
She had post-shakedown availability in January 1944 back in Charleston. In April 1944, CDR Fellows was pulled from his command. Bumped upstairs to a crash course at the Army-Navy Staff College in D.C., she was then sent on to the CBI command in India and soon after assigned to the G3 shop in the U.S. 10th Army.
Twigg’s second and final skipper would be CDR George “Geordie” Philip, Jr. (USNA 1935). A former student of the South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City before going to Annapolis, Philip had served on the battlewagons Mississippi and California as well as the destroyer USS Ellet (DD-398) before the war. Once the big show started, he served as the XO and navigator on the early Fletcher-class tin can O’Bannon (DD 450)— the Navy’s most decorated destroyer during the war– off Guadalcanal, earning a Silver Star. Twiggs would be his first command.
She then escorted “Big Ben,” the new (and ill-fated) Essex-class carrier USS Franklin (CV-13) to Hawaii via the Panama Canal and San Diego, arriving at Pearl Harbor on 6 June 1944.
War!
After exercises and drills in Hawaiian waters and escorted convoys operating between Oahu and Eniwetok, Twiggs was added to DESRON 49, which was busy rehearsing with TF 79 for the liberation of the Philippines. Her baptism of fire would be in support of the amphibious assault on Leyte Island in October 1944, providing antiaircraft protection for the transports during the landings.
This included popping star shells every 30 minutes at night over target areas, delivering fire support ashore, sinking floating mines, and engaging numerous air contacts. In doing so, our destroyer expended 345 5-inch, 800 40mm, and 1,600 20mm shells in just five days.
While off Leyte, she also plucked two downed FM-2 Wildcat pilots of Taffy 2’s jeep carriers from the drink: Ensign A.F. Uthoff of VC-27 from USS Savo Island (CVE-78) and LT Abe Forsythe of VC-76 from USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80).
Next, following escort duty back and forth between the PI and Papua New Guinea, came the Mindoro operation in mid-December. This time, she sailed with 14 other destroyers of DESRON 54 as a screen for RADM Ruddock’s TG 77.12 (battleships USS West Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado; cruisers Montpelier and Minneapolis, escort carriers Natoma Bay (CVE-62), Kadashan Bay (CVE-76), Marcus Island (CVE-77), Savo Island (CVE-78), Ommaney Bay (CVE-79), and Manila Bay (CVE-61) which was to provide heavy cover and air support for Operation Love III, the invasion of Mindoro Island.
Twiggs stood by her Boston-built sistership USS Haraden (DD-585)after that destroyer had been hit by a suicide plane on 13 December and picked up two survivors from the ship that had been tossed into the sea. Notably, one of those waterlogged bluejackets had already survived a hit from a Japanese Kate torpedo plane on the destroyer USS Smith (DD-378) during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and rated the impact on Haraden to be more violent. Due to the proximity of other ships, Twiggs had only been able to get off 96 rounds of AAA fire at the enemy planes, mostly 40mm.
As Haraden lay dead in the water, Twiggs came alongside to help with DC and casualty care. Haraden was soon underway on her own power, making 20 knots, after suffering 14 killed and 24 wounded, with seven men transferred to Twiggs for treatment, one of whom later expired from multiple wounds. With the damaged ship having no radio, Twiggs escorted her back out of the area until Haraden linked up with a tow convoy, then returned to the TF.
Mindoro Operation, December 1944. USS Haraden (DD-585) after being hit by a Kamikaze in the Sulu Sea on 13 December 1944, while en route to the Mindoro invasion. USS Twiggs (DD-591) is alongside, rendering assistance. Photographed from USS Kadashan Bay (CVE-76). 80-G-273000
Then came the Luzon/Lingayen operation in early January 1945, with Twiggs acting as an escort for VADM Oldendorf’s TG 77.2 as it sortied toward the PI from Kossol Roads.
Entering the Mindanao Sea on 3 January, late on the afternoon of the next day, she was standing by the jeep carrier Ommaney Bay at 1714 when the latter was zapped by a kamikaze that sparked uncontrollable fires and an order to abandon ship, with all survivors in the water picked up by 1834.
USS Ommaney Bay (CVE-79) exploding after being hit by a kamikaze attack, in the Sulu Sea off Luzon, during the Lingayen Operation, 4 January 1944. Two destroyers are standing by. NH 43063
Twiggs, accompanied by Charleston-built sisters USS Bell (DD-587) and Burns (DD-588), stood by while Ommaney Bay slipped below the waves and transferred the survivors they collected later that night to the battlewagon West Virginia.Twiggs had picked up 26 officers and 185 enlisted from the carrier and its air group, VC-75.
Twiggs continued fighting the Divine Wind off and on during the operation, and also clocked in as a lifeguard once more, picking up a group of downed American aviators just before sunset on 13 January, the crews of a Navy PBY and an Army F-6 (photo P-51 Mustang).
The next morning, she grabbed three more when the crew of an Avenger off another jeep carrier crashed near them, bringing her lifeguard count to a full 224 in less than a fortnight. Twiggs then chopped to TF 54, which sortied from Ulithi on 10 February for rehearsals that brought them as a fighting force off Iwo Jima by 16 February. Using the callsign “Gabriel,” Twiggs was ready to deliver fire ashore as needed.
While supporting the invasion of Iwo with NGFS in the three weeks between 16 February and 10 March 1945, she expended almost 5,000 5-inch shells as well as another 5,000 40mm. Past the initial beach landings, during much of the gunfire support work, she was heaving two 5-inch salvos a minute at targets unseen by the ship, 5,000-6,000 yards inland, spotted by aircraft in real time.
After a short break to rest and restock her magazines, she popped up two weeks later off Okinawa to take part in the preinvasion bombardment, alternating with anti-air picket duty and ASW patrols.
This work grew even more deadly serious on 28 April when a downed kamikaze crashed just feet abreast of Twiggs and exploded, delivering a “glancing lick.” The force carried away much of the destroyer’s running lines and radio antennas, blew in her hull plating along the starboard side from frames 46 to 60, wrecked most of “officer’s country,” and curled back her starboard prop.
This required her to fall out of the operation and retire to Kerama Retto, a safer harbor (though still subject to near continuous air attacks) in the forward area, where she could tie up next to the LST-turned-repair ship USS Nestor (ARB-6) for two weeks in “the boneyard” and get back in the fight.
Filled with a shipload of self-titled “Old Men” of experienced craftsmen drawn from shipyards across the country, many well past draft age, USS Nestor (ARB 6) completed 1,760 rush repair jobs on 47 warships and auxiliaries in her eight months at Kerama Retto, mostly kamikaze-induced. Ironically, besides Twiggs, they helped patch up the battered carrier Franklin, which Twiggs had escorted into the theatre from the East Coast. 80-G-236726
Just 20 days after her destructive near-miss, Twiggs was back on radar picket duties in the western fire support area off Okinawa, providing NGFS on Iheya Shima and Iheya-Aguni.
The end came on 16 June, while, on radar picket duty some 5,000 yards off Senaga Shima, Okinawa’s southern tip, that observers on Twiggs around 2030 observed a single, low-flying enemy aircraft moments before it dropped a torpedo into her port side, adjacent to the destroyer’s number 2 magazine.
Very few men stationed forward survived, in particular, most of the destroyer’s bridge crew, including CDR Philip, were lost in the conflagration.
As told by the ship’s assistant communications officer, LT Oscar N. Pederson. He was one of just three officers to live– all wounded– to tell his story: Not content with just hitting Twiggs with a fish and living to fight another day, the same torpedo bomber circled back around sharply and onto the starboard side of the stricken destroyer, then crashed between her No. 3 and No. 4 guns, starting a whole new set of fires and secondary explosions.
As illustrated in a press release by the Navy entitled “Death of a Destroyer.” The senior NCO still alive, CMM Charles F. Schmidt, one of just five surviving chiefs, led the fire-fighting efforts as best he could, but the hoses had no pressure, and the hand pumps just weren’t making headway. Arriving on deck to find fuel oil spread over the water on both sides of the ship and on fire, and 40mm ready ammo cooking off in all directions, it was Chief Schmidt who ordered Twiggs abandoned.
Directing the efforts to offload the crew astern safely, the last five men trying to get off confessed they couldn’t swim.
Schmidt did what chiefs do: give up his lifejacket, help them as best he could, and then later attribute any lives saved to two other chiefs who were working amidships: Most of those recovered from the water, including Lt Pedersen and Chief Schmidt, were picked up by the destroyer USS Putnam (DD 757), which reported:
Twiggs was burning furiously, particularly around the bridge structure and forward torpedo tubes, midship machine guns, and after deck house, including 5″ mounts three and four. Almost continuous minor explosions were observed, which were believed to be 40mm, 20mm, and 5″ ammunition. Burning fragments were thrown short distances about the ship, around the rescue boats, and further igniting the thick, heavy oil layer on the water. Attempts to close the surface oil fires with the ship at this time to extinguish flames were prevented by the survivors in the water and about the stern, and propellers. At 2129, there was a tremendous explosion on the Twiggs, followed by a momentary inferno of fire throughout the ship, and she sank in less than a minute, leaving a large burning oil fire on the surface, which gradually disappeared.
Speaking of burning fragments, as noted by Navsource, the only known surviving piece of the exploding Twiggs was later found by Earl Bauer, a signalman aboard Putnam who observed this jagged piece of the exploding destroyer land red hot into the Putnam’s flag bag.
He retrieved it the next morning. This blackened, twisted, 2″ long artifact was donated to the National Museum of the Pacific War in November 2022.
Today, Twiggs is believed to rest in deep water near 26º08’N, 127º35’E, while 193 of her crew of 314 lost with the ship remain on duty.
Also lost with the ship was Jeanie, the destroyer’s mascot, along with all five of her pups.
As noted by the NHHC, Twiggs was one of five American destroyers to have more than half their crew killed and wounded in suicide attacks during the battle for Okinawa– the others being Halligan (DD-584), Luce (DD-522), Morrison (DD-560), and Drexler (DD-741).
Epilogue
Twiggs was officially struck from the Navy list on 11 July 1945. She earned four battle stars for her war.
In 1957, her wreck was donated to the government of the Ryukyu Islands.
Twiggs has a memorial plaque at the National Museum of the Pacific War (the Nimitz Museum) in Texas.
As you may surmise, NARA has most of her deck logs and reports digitized.
A few of her crew who survived managed to leave behind oral history interviews. CDR Philip’s family was presented a posthumous Navy Cross. One of 57 members of the Annapolis Class of 1935 in Memorial Hall, the Navy in 1978 named a frigate in his honor, USS George Philip (FFG 12). The greyhound was sponsored by his daughter, Margaret.
USS George Philip (FFG 12) served until 2004, her motto, “Intrepide Impelle” (To Go Boldly)
Twiggs’ first skipper, CDR Fellows, was on Okinawa on joint service with the Army when his old ship went down. He continued to serve, surviving the war, and retired from the Navy as a rear admiral. He passed in 1974.
I can’t find out anything post-war about Chief Schmidt. It seems time has done what the Japanese never could.
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
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Something once incredibly common, a staple then on its last legs.
75 years ago this week, the Gearing-class destroyers USS Epperson (DDE-719), center and USS Sarsfield (DD-837), at right, dropping depth charges during anti-submarine warfare exercises, 15 June 1950. Sarsfield has also fired her Mark 6 K-Gun depth charge projectors, making vertical smoke trails (aft of the ship) and impact splashes to port and starboard.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-415520
First fielded by the U.S. Navy in 1916, when it ordered 10,000 100-pound Mark 1 depth charges, the fleet would place orders for 43,466 “ash cans” during the Great War in seven varieties, with the largest being the mammoth 745-pound Mark IV.
This figure was swamped in WWII with orders for 622,128 depth charges of all types placed by the Navy Department between December 1941 and September 1945, with the 420-pound Mark VI being the most numerous (218,922 built). The last new conventional American DC was the Mark 16, a 435-pounder developed in 1946 that used an advanced acoustic fuse.
Post-WWII, rocket-propelled Hedgehog, Mousetrap, Squid, and Alfa/Alpha devices supplemented and then replaced the more traditional depth charge. Then came dedicated ASW homing torpedoes with the Mk 32 in 1950, followed by the Mk 43 and Mk 46, which helped bring the Rocket Assisted Torpedo (later ASROC) on-line in 1958.
While the 29-pound counter-frogman Mark 10 depth charge remained in limited service, and assorted tactical nuclear depth charges were kept as special weapons, the Navy was eager to remove its huge stocks of WWII-era charges from inventory by the late 1950s due to their high maintenance requirements and outright danger– just recall the final moments of the USS Reuben James.
When the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) program for updating the Navy’s WWII-era destroyers for the Cold War kicked off in 1958, depth charge racks and projectors were “unceremoniously removed.”
Depth charges were unceremoniously removed as a weapon system for destroyers that presentation. As the list of weapon systems (new and old) that would be ‘incorporated in destroyers was being presented. Admiral Burke interrupted at the mention of depth charges and said, “Who included those things?” There was an embarrassing pause. Without comment, I drew a line through “depth charges,” turned toward the admiral, and said, “Sir. depth charges have been removed.” Good,” he said, and that was that.
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Warship Wednesday, June 11, 2025: Germans to the front!
Naval History and Heritage Command photograph NH 48215
Above we see S.M. kleiner kreuzerGefion, part of the German Imperial Navy’s East Asia Squadron in 1899, anchored off Hankou (now Wuhan) after her nearly 600-mile voyage up the Yangtze River to protect the Kaiser’s interests in China– with Willy’s brother aboard.
The unique little cruiser would play a gunboat role in Chinese diplomacy some 125 yeas ago this month before shipping back home for the rest of her career.
Meet Gefion
Our subject was the second warship to carry the name of a Nordic sea goddess (the fourth goddess of Æsir following Frigg, the wife of Odin) to serve in the German Navy. The first was a 48-gun sail frigate (segelfregatte) built for the Royal Danish Navy in 1843 and captured during the war with her southern neighbors in 1849.
The former Danish frigate Gefion under German service. The Germans used the trophy ship as a training ship under her original name until 1880 and then as a coal hulk until 1891. Her bell, figurehead, anchors, and many other relics dot Eckernförde and Kiel.
The second Gefion was originally deemed a Kreuzerkorvette (cruiser corvette) J when designed in the early 1890s, an early attempt by the Kaiserliche Marine to create a cruiser suitable for both reconnaissance and fleet duties, as well as an overseas colonial service ship on independent duty.
Some 362 feet overall with a 43-foot beam, she sported a dagger-like 8.4:1 length-to-beam ratio. Lightly built, she had 0.98 inches of nickel-steel armor over her deck and equivalent armor on her conning tower. A second 0.6-inch steel plate cap was over her engine cylinder heads, backed by 5.9 inches of wood. She had a 4-inch cellulose belt at the waterline.
Steel hulled and using both transverse and longitudinal steel frames, she was sheathed below the water line with wood and copper, held with brass fittings, to help with fouling, especially when in colonial service.
Originally to carry six new 15 cm/35 (5.9″) SK L/35 guns in single mounts, with 810 shells in her magazine, this was later changed to 10 equally new but lighter 10.5 cm/40 (4.1″) SK L/40 mounts with as many as 1,500 shells at the ready. They were arranged two forward, two aft, and eight amidships in broadside, all protected by a thin armored shield. Her secondary battery was a half dozen 5 cm/40 (1.97″) SK L/40 rapid-fire (10 rounds per minute) torpedo boat guns with another 1,500 rounds in the magazine.
She also had a pair of 17-inch above-deck torpedo tubes (down from a planned six). Eight Maxim guns were arranged in her two spotting/fighting tops, they could be dismounted for use ashore. Likewise, almost a third of a 300-man crew could be issued small arms carried aboard and sent ashore. A small 6cm boat gun could back them up.
Gefion, Janes 1914
With six cylindrical two-sided boilers exhausting through a trio of stacks, driving two VTE engines, her plant was good for 9,800 shp. Extensively fitted for electric lights and hoists, she carried three 67-volt, 40-kW dynamos. Designed for 19 knots, on trials she made 20.53 knots at full power on forced draft. Loaded with 900 tons of good coal, she could theoretically steam 6,850nm at 11 knots, or 2,730nm at 18 knots on natural draft, the first German cruiser capable of such a range. This could be extended by rigging a cruising canvas from her two masts and rigging. It turned out that her decks vibrated extensively at full power, she struggled in tough seas, and she had insufficient ventilation below decks.
How she stacked up against contemporary cruisers, from the circa 1900 Professional Notes in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings:
Built for a cost of 5.171 million marks, she was ordered from Ferdinand Schichau’s new Danzig yard, as hull No. 486, and laid down on 28 March 1892. Launched 31 May 1893, she commissioned 27 June 1894.
This made her the forerunner of the 41 later kleiner kreuzers of the Gazelle, Bremen, Konigsberg, Dresden, Kolberg, Magdeburg, Karlsruhe, Graudenz, Pillau, Wiesbaden, Brummer, and Coln classes constructed between 1897 and 1918, all of which carried 4.1 inch guns on similar hulls along with torpedo tubes. The first four classes even carried the same model 4.1-inch SK L/40s as Gefion.
Geifon with her glad rags flying about 1895 IWM (Q 22323)
SMS Gefion was photographed sometime early in her career, between her commissioning date, 27 June 1894, and the receipt of this photo by the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence, 28 June 1895. NH 88636
Her first skipper was Korvettenkapitän Hans Oelrichs, an 1860s veteran of the old Norddeutsche Marine. Gefion’s first assignments were to escort the Royal yacht Hohenzollern to Norway in the autumn of 1894 and attend the inauguration ceremony of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal (Nord-Ostsee-Kanal) the following year when the double locks at Brunsbüttel and Holtenau were opened.
A white-liveried SMS Gefion photographed early in her career, possibly during her 1894-1897 service in home waters. The Levensau Bridge over the Kiel Canal appears in the background; the Canal opened in 1895. NH 88634
Gefion spent the next couple of years as a guardship at Wilhelmshaven while the larger second-class cruiser Kaiserin Augusta did the same at Kiel. During the winter and spring, they served as training grounds for the fleet’s new stokers and artificers. During the summer and fall, they clocked in on fleet maneuvers, performing scouting services for the main battle line, taking breaks to escort Hohenzollern.
In April 1897, Gefion escorted the Swedish passenger ship Rex on the inaugural voyage of the mail steamer line from Sassnitz to Trelleborg. She counted among her wardroom Prince Henry (Heinrich) of Prussia, the Kaiser’s younger brother and a career naval officer, who on at least one occasion hosted Willy and his sons aboard.
Sent abroad
With Gefion’s newness wearing off and new light cruisers joining the German fleet, she was put in overhaul in the summer of 1897, made ready for overseas service, upgrading her smaller generators with a trio of 110-volt, 58-kW sets.
Her new skipper was FKpt Max Heinrich Ludwig Rollmann, a career sailor who joined the German Navy in 1873 as a cadet. A skilled officer and torpedo expert, he was part of the so-called “Torpedobande” (torpedo gang) which influenced Tirpitz and others to warm to the weapons.
Originally to be sent to intervene in the ongoing dispute between Haiti and Germany, Gefion was instead selected to strengthen the Ostasiatischen Kreuzerdivision in the Far East.
Gefion, NH 48216
In December 1897, just ahead of the first winter ice, she left in company with the old 7,000-ton armored cruiser Deutschland and Kaiserin Augusta in a squadron commanded by Prince Henry. When Deutschland broke down in Hong Kong in April 1898 while heading to China, Henry switched his flag to Gefion and proceeded to the German fleet’s Pacific treaty homeport at Tsingtao.
It was with the German East Asian Squadron that Gefion kept tabs on Dewey’s squadron as it smashed the Spanish in Manila later that summer, steamed to Samoa to serve as a station ship in early 1899, and then steam nearly 600 miles up the Yangtze to Hankou (now Wuhan) where she landed 130 armed crew on 28 April to guard the new 103-acre German Concession (Deutsche Konzession) in that river city and escort Prince Henry, then head of the squadron.
Henry was received by the Governor-General of Huguang, Zhang Zhidong, along with the assorted foreign expatriates, and even the British and French Concessions in the city flew the German flag.
Zhang Zhidong entertains Prince Heinrich. The VanDyke-clad FKpt Max Rollman, Gefion’s skipper, is to the far left. After the reception, the Germans toured the local military academy and watched the drills of the Hubei New Army, which included several German officers as instructors, notably Lieutenants Carl Fuchs and Albrecht Welzel, a Sergeant A. Seydel, and a Rittmaster (cavalry master) named Behrensdorf.
Henry laid the cornerstone for the new German bund in Hankou on 30 April, flanked by Gefion’s officers and crew.
War!
After a second tour in Samoa in early 1900, Gefion, now reclassified as a Kreuzer III. Klasse, and the rest of the German Far East Squadron, now under VADM Felix von Bendemann, massed at Tsingtao as trouble rumbled with the anti-Western Boxers in China, who were mounting attacks on churches.
The German force at the time, besides Gefion, included two new 6,700-ton Victoria Louise-class protected cruisers (with 477-member crews), SMS Hansa and SMS Hertha, the Kaiserin Augusta, the light cruisers SMS Irene, Geier, Seeadler, Bussard, and Schwalbe, along with the gunboat Itis.
Die Gartenlaube, by Willy Stower, showing the German cruisers in the Far East, circa 1898. These include Arkona. Prinzeß Wilhelm. Kaiserin Augusta, Kaiser, (Flaggschiff der I. Division) along with. Kormoran, Irene, Gefion, and Deutschland, (Flaggschiff der II. Division)
On 30 May, the Chinese government allowed a force of 400 assorted troops from eight Western nations to land at Tientsin and head to Peking to protect the Legation Quarter there. However, the situation continued to deteriorate as the Boxers cut the rail line between the two cities on 5 June, and a week later, a Japanese diplomat was killed by Chinese regulars.
Cruiser SMS Gefion at Tsingtao, circa 1900
Joining an international task force that included British, Russian, French, and Japanese warships, the combined squadron on 17 June moved to seize the five Chinese forts at Taku (Dagukou) at the mouth of the Hai (Pei-Ho) River, which barred the way to Tientsin (Tianjin), some 40 miles downstream, and Peking (Beijing), 110 miles inland.
The combat was sharp but one-sided, with the forts falling after a six-hour bombardment and short action ashore by naval landing parties.
S.M. Kanonenboot ILTIS im Gefecht mit den Takuforts am 17. Juni 1900 Willy Stöwer, DMM 2000-014-001
Ersturmung von taku by Fritz Neumann, Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection
The Taku forts would remain garrisoned by the Eight Nations through 1902. Looking down the Peiho River toward North Port and Bay, from Northwest Fort, Taku, China. Underwood & Underwood, Publishers, 1901. LC-DIG-stereo-1s48075
The allied fleet also captured the Chinese government’s Dagu shipyard, complete with a gunboat that went to the Japanese and four new German-built Hai Lung class torpedo boats that were split between the British, Russian, French, and Germans.
Chinese Hai-Lung class torpedo boats captured at Taku, June 1900. Some 193 feet oal, these four German-made boats could make 32 knots and carried six Sk 4.7 cm L/35s while two 17-inch torpedo tubes weren’t fitted. Hai-Lung, yard number 608, became the German SMS Taku and was decommissioned after grounding on 30 December 1913. Hai-Ch’ing, yard number 609, became the French Takou and was written off after being grounded on the coast of Vietnam. Hai-Hoa, hull number 610, became the Russian Таку (Taku), and was sunk on 26 July 1904 off Port Arthur by Japanese forces. Hai-Hsi, yard number 611, became HMS Taku and was sold for scrap on 26 October 1916.
A Chinese second-class cruiser (Hai-Chi?) flying an Admiral’s flag was detained outside Taku by Gefion, who was ordered to release the vessel.
This triggered the start of the outright 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking, with some 900 Western troops and civilians, along with 2,800 Chinese Christians, holding out until relieved. The German minister, Baron von Ketteler, was killed by a Manchu officer escorted by Chinese lancers the same day while on his way to negotiate a solution to the incident, which was rapidly spiraling out of control.
A force that had tried to reinforce Peking before the siege was led by British VADM Sir Edward Hobart Seymour, who took the lead and scratched together a column of some 2,127 men drawn from the assorted ships crowding under the Taku forts, with the idea to force the way to Peking via Tientsin. His chief of staff was the young future admiral, Capt. John Jellicoe.
Seymour was able to muster 915 straw-hatted jack-tars and Royal Marines to spearhead the detachment. The Germans chipped in 511. Smaller contingents from allied fleets included 312 Russians, 158 French, 112 Americans, 54 Japanese, 40 Italians, and 25 Austrians.
The German contingent, which consisted of 22 officers, two surgeons, and 487 enlisted men, was organized into two companies and two large platoons, armed with Gewehr 88 bolt-action rifles, single-action M1879 Reichsrevolvers, and four Maxim machine guns. Commanded overall by Kapitän zur See Guido von Usedom, the skipper of the Hertha, the four ships that coughed up landing forces contributed the following, each in turn led by the respective ship’s executive officer:
Hertha: 7 officers, 175 men under KL (CDR) Hecht
Hansa: 7 officers, 153 men, under KKpt (LCDR) Paul Schlieser
Kaiserin Augusta: 5 officers, 85 men, 1 doctor under KKpt Oltmann Buchholz
Gefion: 3 officers, 74 men, 1 doctor under KKpt Otto Weniger
Of course, Seymour thought he was just opposing a rabble of Boxer bandits, not 30,000 Imperial Qing Army regulars (Kansu Braves) who ultimately came out against him. These units consisted of Muslims from the remote Gansu Province, situated between the Qilian Mountains and the Gobi Desert, men renowned for their discipline and loyalty to the empire.
Flying long scarlet and black banners, the Gansu Army wore traditional uniforms but was well-trained and armed with Mauser M.71 repeater rifles and modern breechloading field artillery.
Chinese soldiers in 1899–1901. Left: three infantrymen of the New Imperial Army. Front: drum major of the regular army. Seated on the trunk: field artilleryman. Right: Boxers. Via Leipziger illustrirte Zeitung 1900
With this, the so-called Seymour Expedition was seriously outnumbered and fighting in a foreign land.
They left out for Peking from Tientsin on 10 June– a week before the Taku forts were seized– via five commandeered trains and by 14 June had suffered their first losses, among the Italian contingent. By the 18th, a pitched battle was fought against a key Western position, held by men largely drawn from Gefion.
A German garrison was at a coal depot near Langfang, christened “Fort Gefion” for their ship. Chinese Colonel Yao Wang [of Gen. Dong Fuxiang’s Gansu Army] and Boxer leader Ni Zanqing determined Fort Gefion was the weak point and amassed about 3,000 Qing soldiers and 2,000 Boxers for an attack. On 18 June, Boxers charged at Fort Gefion, teenagers and old men alike barreling into heavy allied fire in never-ending waves. When the Boxers fell, Colonel Yao’s soldiers attacked. Armed with modern weapons, they nearly forced the Germans’ right flank to retreat. British and French sailors reinforced the Germans, driving back the Chinese forces. At the end of the battle, the allied casualties were 10 dead and 50 wounded. The Chinese death toll was 400, over half of the casualties Qing soldiers.
With no hope of reaching Peking, Seymour’s force burned their trains and fought a slow, foot-borne retreat back to Tientsin for the next four days.
Coming upon the Chinese government’s Fort Xigu, the Great Hsi-Ku Arsenal (also seen in Western sources as Fort Hsiku/Osiku), eight miles northwest of Tientsin in the pre-dawn of 22 June, it made sense to occupy the works and wait for relief from the sea.
The problem was that the local Chinese garrison approached 1,500 troops, and the fort, with 16-foot-high mud walls protected by Krupp field guns, was a tough nut to crack.
With the Royal Marines tasked with an attempt to take the complex from the rear, Seymour passed the order, “Germans to the front.”
Leading the German column into the attack was KKpt Oltmann Buchholz, XO of the Kaiserin Augusta, with the men from the Hansa, Hertha, and Gefion behind him. The assault was quick and sharp, with the Germans battering down the front doors, then sweeping through and clearing the complex, turning the good Krupp guns around on their former owners. Inside were found, besides munitions, enough rations and supplies to revitalize the force along with a well-stocked medical clinic.
Buchholz was killed in the effort.
German artist Carl Röchling celebrated the event with his painting “Die Deutschen an der Front” (“The Germans to the front”).
The attack occurred at 0222. Roechling takes a bit of liberty with the amount of sunlight.
Seymour Expedition, 1900, likely at the Great Hsi-Ku Arsenal. USN 901028
A relief column of 2,000 fresh Western troops under Capt. (later RADM of Battle of Coronel fame) Christopher Cradock, RN, and Major (later MG) Littleton Tazewell “Tony” Waller, USMC, relieved Seymour near Fort Hsiku on 25 June, allowing his column to fully withdraw back to Tientsin. Seymour’s international column suffered at least 62 dead and 232 wounded, a casualty rate of about 1:6, during its fortnight in the Chinese countryside.
The German sailors and marines on the Seymour expedition ashore in June 1900 lost 16 killed and 60 wounded, including two young officers from Gefion (LT z. S. Hane v. Krohn from Wilhelmähoven and Frang Bustig from Hanover, both on 22 June in the assault on Fort Hsiku). The bombardment of the Taku forts on 17 June cost the Germans seven killed and 11 wounded, all on the gunboat SMS Itis (including her skipper, who caught 25 shrapnel wounds yet remained on the bridge, earning the Blue Max). Subsequent fighting in and around Tientsin cost the German force another 12 dead and 41 wounded, including three sailors from Gefion’s naval infantry (Wilhelm Wachsmund from Goblenz, on 27 June, along with Heinrich Hamm from Grünendeich and Emil Bonk from Raschang on 13 July). Of note, Hansa’s company suffered the greatest casualties of the German naval contingents during the Boxer rebellion (13 dead and 24 wounded).
Besieged Peking would ultimately be relieved in mid-August by the 20,000-strong force under British Maj. Gen. Alfred Gaselee (although fully half of the force were Japanese troops under Lt. Gen. Yamaguchi Motomi, a general senior in both grade and experience to Gaselee).
The 51 German marines (the fourth largest contingent in the Quarter) of III. Seebataillon under Oberleutnant Graf von Soden, holding out at Peking in the Legation, suffered 12 killed and 14 wounded during the siege, holding their line along the Quarter’s old Tartar Wall shoulder-to-shoulder with the 53 U.S. Marines and bluejackets landed from the USS Oregon and Newark.
German marines Peking 1900, AWM A05904
Peace
Following the arrival of more ships and troops rushed to China from Germany, Gefion was recalled home in September 1901.
Arriving back in German waters in time for Christmas, she was placed in ordinary and sent to Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven for a drawn-out three-year overhaul. This saw her armament retained but relocated for both stability and protection purposes.
Emerging from overhaul in 1905, she was placed in reserve, the German fleet having much better cruisers to choose from at that point.
It was from these mothballs that she was recalled in 1914, but, with no crews available to man her, she was moved to Danzig for use as a barracks ship, her usable equipment and weapons cannibalized for other uses.
At the end of the war, the victorious allies elected not to claim the hulked Gefion as a war trophy, and she was stricken from the German naval list on 5 November 1919.
Ex-Gefion was purchased by the salvage concern of Norddeutsche Tiefbaugesellschaft along with her old Far East buddy Kaiserin Augusta, the cruiser Victoria Louise, several incomplete submarines, and the obsolete (circa 1890) battlewagon Brandenburg. While most of the company’s new assets were soon scrapped in Danzig, Gefion and Victoria Louise were sold to the shipping firm of Danziger Hoch- und Tiefbau GmbH (Behnke & Sieg), along with the four still-crated 1,200 hp MAN four-stroke diesel engines for the unfinished SM U-115 and U-116.
Most of the superstructure and the machinery from Gefion and Victoria Louise were removed, and two cranes and their associated stowage space were installed. Their old coal-fired boilers and VTE engines removed, each picked up a pair of former U-boat diesels. They entered service with DHT in 1920 as the cargo vessels (frachtdampfer) SS Adolf Sommerfeld and Flora Sommerfeld, respectively.
Seen in the 1922 Lloyds Steamers list as SS Adolf Summerfeld (sic). The ex-SMS Victoria Louise is listed in the same volume correctly as Flora Sommerfeld.
However, the Baltic timber route they served had shallow draft harbors, and the thin-waisted former cruisers drew too much water to make the venture successful. By 1923, both were scrapped in Danzig, and their still-young diesels were sold to an electric company.
Epilogue
The German Navy never used the name Gefion again, however, her bell has been spotted a few times since WWII and may be in circulation in private collections.
Several pieces of period maritime art, primarily German postcards, endure.
1902 lithograph of Gefion by Hugo Graf
An exquisite 1:100 scale model of the cruiser in her white overseas livery is on display under glass at the Internationales Maritimes Museum in Hamburg.
As for Gefion’s China-era (1898-1901) skipper, FKpt Max Rollmann returned to Germany, became the captain of the battleship SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, and commanded the 1st Squadron of the High Seas Fleet as a commodore, then the III Squadron as a vice admiral in 1910. Retiring in 1913 after 40 years with the colors, he was made a full admiral on the retired list, decorated with both the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle and the Order of the Crown. Eschewing his pension and returning to work in the admiralty as a civilian during the Great War, he passed in 1942 in Berlin, aged 85. His son, KKpt Max Rollmann, had passed the previous year while serving as the duty officer (Rollenoffizier) aboard the Bismarck.
Charakterisierter Admiral Max Rollmann. As part of his service in China, he carried top-level decorations and honors, including the Russian Order of Saint Stanislaus, the Grand Officer’s Cross of the Order of the Crown of Thailand, and the Commander’s Cross of the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure.
Kapitan zur See Guido von Usedom, the skipper of the cruiser Hertha that led the overall German naval infantry battalion under Seymour, was given a Blue Max and made an ADC to the Kaiser following the campaign. Quick with exotic anecdotes from the Orient to entertain Willy’s guests, he was given command of the imperial yacht Hohenzollern for a couple of years, followed by comfortable desk jobs until he retired in 1910 as a vice admiral after 39 years in the service, promoted to full Admiral on the retirement rolls.
Like Rollman, Von Usedom volunteered his services to the Kaiser once again in 1914 and soon found himself wearing a fez as an admiral in the Ottoman Navy in command of Sonderkommando Türkei. He strengthened the Dardanelles Straits until they became virtually impregnable from the sea in 1915, forcing the disastrous land Gallipoli campaign and earning a set of oak leaves for his 1900 Blue Max. He remained in Turkish service until 1918, when he retired a second time on the outbreak of peace.
Charakterisierter Admiral Guido von Usedom passed in 1925, aged 70. And yes, the center image is him showing a Mameluke-carrying Willy around the Dardanelles in 1915.
Albert Wilhelm Heinrich, Prinz von Preußen, was very much seen as the “Sailor Prince” of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Entering the German Navy at the age of 16 in 1878, he was a professional officer and earned his Großadmiral shoulder boards for sure, having spent decades on sea-going duty. During the Great War, he ably commanded the Imperial German Baltic Sea Fleet (Oberbefehlshaber der Ostseestreitkräfte) in operations against the Russians. He passed in 1929, aged 66.
The German treaty port at Tsingtao fell to an Anglo-Japanese force in 1914, and the Hankou Concession was retrograded by the Chinese in 1917, with the remaining German merchants closing up shop altogether in 1945. The old baroque German consulate in the Hankou Bund, where Prince Henry laid the cornerstone after a trip on Gefion in 1899, survives today on Yanjing Avenue as a Wuhan municipal office building, a red banner flying from its mast.
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
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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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Here we see the Kaiser-built Casablanca-class escort carrier USS Windham Bay (CVE-92) looking worse for wear in Guam in June 1945 after a brush with the same typhoon off Okinawa that Indiana was shown inside yesterday.
“Taken at Guam about 11th of June, 1945, after going through typhoon of off Okinawa, June 5th 1945” Bruce A. Blegen Collection Photo # UA 460.16.01 via NHHC.
On 4-5 June 1945, while steaming with the logistics group in support of TF 38 and the strikes on Okinawa, Windham Bay encountered a typhoon. The heavy storm damage included the collapse of 20 feet of flight deck onto the foc’sle, a warped and ruptured catapult, as well as lost and damaged planes. On 16 June, she cleared the Marianas en route to Oahu. The warship reached Pearl Harbor on the 25th but departed again two days later. She entered port at San Diego on 11 July and immediately began repairs to correct the typhoon damage she had suffered earlier in the month. Those repairs lasted through late August, so that she missed the final weeks of the war.
Still, she earned three battle stars for her yeoman service in hauling Marine and Navy carrier aircraft (as many as 76 at a time) and squadrons across the Pacific for 12 solid months between June 1944 and June 1945.
Post-war, she conducted “Magic Carpet” rides bringing troops home from overseas and was placed in the Reserve Fleet out of commission on 23 August 1946.
When Korea broke out in 1950, she was dusted off for assignment to the Military Sea Transportation Service and, with a civil crew, served as an aircraft ferry (T-CVE-92, later T-CVU-92) for the next eight years shelping tactical aircraft to Japan from the West Coast along with loads of F8F Bearcats to the French in Indochina.
USS Windham Bay (T-CVU-92) passes under the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California, with a cargo of aircraft on her flight deck, 1958. Planes visible are mainly U.S. Air Force F-86D fighters, with a few U.S. Navy F9F and F2H fighters parked near and forward of the ship’s island. Courtesy of Robert M. Cieri, 1982. NH 94307
Decommissioned in January 1959, she was sold to the Hugo Neu Steel Products Corp and scrapped, ironically, in Japan in February 1961.
