Category Archives: World War One

Great War British Sub and German Torpedo Boat found side by side…in parking lot

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Kaiser Willy’s Schichau-Werke-built V1-class torpedo boat SMS S24 had a very active career that included firing her steel fish (unsuccessfully) at the British destroyers HMS Garland and HMS Unity at Jutland.

Schlacht vor dem Skagerrak, Deutsche Schlachtschiffe und Torpedoboote in Aktion (German battleships and torpedo boats in action during the Battle of Jutland, May 31, 1916) by Claus Bergen

Meanwhile, HM Submarine E-52, commissioned in 1917, surprised and sank the German U-boat UC-63 near the Goodwin Sands before the year was up, with her skipper earning the DSO.

Three RN E-class boats, including E-52, circa 1917.

By 1921, with a tepid peace on the Continent (at least in Britain), both ex-E52 and ex-S24 had been disposed of and sold to Brixham Marine & Engineering Company.

Towed to Brixham’s yard on the River Dart, rather than being broken up for their value in scrap, the vessels were apparently used to strengthen a bank in Coombe Mud, then over time buried to create what is now Coronation Park.

Now, RN has reported that a team from the University of Winchester, working on research from RN LT Tom Kemp, believes they have found the intact hulks under the surface of the park, as verified by ground penetrating radar.

Via Metro.UK

“It’s been my personal hobbyhorse for the better part of the past year,” says Tom. “Confirming the final resting place of one of His Majesty’s Submarines – and a pretty successful one at that – would serve to remind and reiterate that our naval heritage is all around us and can often be clawed back from obscurity. Our time and energy could scarcely be better spent.”

 

Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel

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

Warship Wednesday, July 12, 2023: Mr. Gallatin’s Shallow Water Angel

Halftone photo from “War in Cuba,” 1898. Official U.S. Navy Photograph. NH 191

Above we see the fine Harlan & Hollingsworth-built schooner-rigged steam yacht Almy, with her summer of 1898 warpaint on, as the gunboat USS Eagle during the Spanish-American War. Late of the New York Yacht Club and rushed into naval service, she won what would turn out to be an unexpected victory over the much larger and better-armed Compañía Trasatlántica Española (CTE) steamer Santo Domingo some 125 years ago today.

Fine lines and good bones

In addition to making steam engines and railcars, Wilmington’s Harlan & Hollingsworth were one of the earliest iron shipbuilders. Constructing 347 hulls between 1844 and 1904 when they were acquired by Bethlehem Steel, besides their bread and butter fare like barges, ferries, and tugs, they also won a few Navy contracts (the monitors USS Patapsco, Napa, Saugus, and Amphitrite; the sloop USS Ranger, destroyers USS Hopkins and Hull, and torpedo boat USS Stringham).

Starting in the 1870s, they began a string of more than 30 fine hermaphrodite steam yachts including Dr. William Seward Webb’s Elfrida, William Astor’s Nourmahal, H W Putnam’s Ariadne, W. K. Vanderbilt’s Alva, Cass Canfield’s magnificent Sea Fox, Florida shipping magnate H. M. Flagler’s Alicia, and William DuPont’s Au Revoir.

Another of these yachts was contracted from H&H by New York attorney Frederick Gallatin. A resident of 650 Fifth Avenue (now a 36-story office tower adjacent to Rockefeller Center), he was a grandson of early Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin and from old Hamptons money. Married to Almy Goelet Gerry (daughter of Tammany Hall “Commodore” Elbridge Thomas Gerry, with the title coming as head of the NYC Yacht Club) it was only logical that Gallatin would order a yacht from H&H named for Almy.

Hull No. 256 was 177 feet long overall with a 24-foot beam, she had a nice stiletto-like 7.5:1 length-to-beam ratio and had a draft of just 7 feet with a 14-foot depth of hold. Powered by a single-ended cylindrical boiler pushing a T.3 Cy (18″,23″ & 42-33″) steam engine with a nominal 101 NHP (850ihp) venting through a single stack, she had an auxiliary two-mast sail rig and was good for a stately 12 knots although on her trials she made 15.5 knots. Coal stowage was 85 tons.

View of the engine room, of USS Eagle, built as yacht Almy, at Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. 31 August 1916. Note the builder’s plaque on the bulkhead and disassembled engine parts on the deck. NH 54333

Steel-hulled with a 364 GRT displacement, she carried electrical lighting in every compartment as well as topside and was reportedly very well-appointed. Her normal crew, as a yacht, was four officers and 20 mariners.

Delivered to Gallatin in August 1890– just in time to catch the end of “the season”– the New York Times mentioned Almy in its yachting news columns more than a dozen times in the next eight years including one mention in 1895 of an epic blue fishing trip to Plum Gut where “he landed some of the finest fish captured this season.”

Typically, Gallatin would ply her during the summer and, every October, send her back down to winter at the builder’s yard where she would be drydocked and freshly painted every spring, ready to do it all again.

Then came war

As part of the general rush to avenge the lost USS Maine on 15 February, the scions of the NY Yacht Club soon offered up their yachts to be converted to fast dispatch boats and scouts. Ultimately, the Navy bought no less than 28 large yachts, including 13 that topped 400 tons, in addition to almost 70 other auxiliaries for support duties to the fleet.

Several yachts took part in fights with Spanish forces including three, USS Gloucester, Hist, and Vixen, which were present during the Battle of Santiago. Among the former NYYC H&H-built yachts that went to the Navy for the war with Spain were Flagler’s Alicia (renamed USS Hornet after purchase for $117,500) and Dr. Webb’s Elfrida (which was taken in service as USS Elfrida for $50,000).

The 28 yachts converted to armed auxiliaries in 1898. Via The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, click to big up.

While negotiations continued with a Navy purchasing agent, Gallatin allowed Almy to go to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 26 March to begin her conversion to an armed picket ship. Eventually, he let Almy go for $110,000 on 2 April 1898 and the Navy renamed her USS Eagle, the fourth such vessel to carry that name.

Given a coat of dark paint and armed with a quartet of 6-pounder 57mm deck guns (two forward, two aft) and two Colt machine guns forward of the deck house, her early admission to BNY allowed her to be commissioned three days later under the command of LT William Henry Hudson Southerland (USNA 1872).

Other changes from her civilian life, as detailed by The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, Vol. VI, 1898, included:

  • Magazines for supplying ammunition to the above battery were built under berth deck, just forward of the fireroom bulkhead, with ammunition cranes to the hatches, directly over.
  • Steel plating 7/8 inch thick and 8 feet wide was worked on outside of the vessel for the length of the engine and boiler space.
  • Her foremast was cut down and made a signal mast, while the mainmast and fittings were entirely removed.
  • The ornate dining room was cleaned out and fitted up as crew space while extensive wood and brass works were removed.
  • The vessel was drydocked, cleaned, and painted throughout. All plumbing, drainage system, and auxiliaries were overhauled and put in order. The entire exterior of the vessel, including spars and metal deck fittings, was thickly painted a “lead color.”

She carried 75 men to war, drawn largely from the Naval Militia, when she left New York on 17 April headed for duty with the North Atlantic Squadron on blockade and dispatch duty in Cuban waters. She was at sea when war was declared on 25 April.

By 28 April, Eagle, along with the gunboat USS Nashville and the Montgomery-class unprotected cruiser USS Marblehead, established a blockade off Cienfuegos. The next morning, Nashville seized the Spanish steamer Argonauta which had Col. Corijo of the Third Cavalry Regiment (Regimiento de Caballería “Montesa” N.º 3) and 19 men of its headquarters troop aboard. This sparked a 25-minute naval gunfire duel between Eagle and Montgomery versus three Spanish torpedo boats coming out of the river to contest the affair under cover from a shore battery.

Southerland reported to RADM William T. Sampson that Eagle fired 59 rounds of No.4 shell in the engagement and suffered no casualties, although, ” Two of the enemies shot passed close over this vessel, another close astern, and another within a few feet of the bowsprit.”

On 29 June, Eagle shelled the Spanish battery at Rio Honda, showing that, while her little six-pounders were small, they could still breathe fire.

On 5 July, while Eagle was on the blockading route in the vicinity of the Isle of Pines, she sighted the provision-laden Spanish schooner Gallito five miles to the South and immediately gave chase.

As detailed by James Otis in “The Boys of ’98”:

The schooner ran in until about a quarter of a mile from the shore, when she dropped her anchor, and those aboard slipped over her side and swam ashore. Ensign J. H. Roys and a crew of eight men from the Eagle were sent in a small boat to board the schooner. They found her deserted, and while examining her were fired upon by her crew from the beach. Several rifle shots went through the schooner’s sails, but no one was injured. The Eagle drew closer in and sent half a dozen shots toward the beach from her 6-pounders, whereupon the Spaniards disappeared. The Gallito was taken into Key West.

A week later, on 12 July, Eagle came across her biggest prize yet. The Govan-built iron-hulled CTE screw steamer Santo Domingo, some 344 feet in length. Formerly the D. Currie & Co’s Dublin Castle (which carried British troops during the Zulu War), she had been sold in 1883 to Spanish interests and by 1886 was sailing for CTE on a regular Havana to New York service.

Santo Domingo

Otis describes the event:

The auxiliary gunboat Eagle sighted the Spanish steamer Santo Domingo, fifty-five hundred tons, aground near the Cuban coast, off Cape Francis, and opened fire with her 6-pounders, sending seventy shots at her, nearly all of which took effect.

While this was going on, another steamer came out of the bay and took off the officers and crew of the Santo Domingo. When the men from the Eagle boarded the latter, they found that she carried two 5-inch and two 12-pounder guns, the latter being loaded and her magazines open. The steamer had been drawing twenty-four feet of water and had gone aground in twenty feet.

The men from the Eagle decided that the steamer could not be floated, and she was set on fire after fifty head of cattle, which were on board, had been shot.

The Santo Domingo carried a large cargo of grain, corn, etc. While the steamer was burning, the vessel which had previously taken off the crew emerged from the bay and tried to get off some of the cargo, but failed. The Spanish steamer burned for three days and was totally destroyed.

It made big news back home.

On 30 July, Eagle supported the gunboat USS Bancroft with the seizure (twice) of a small Spanish schooner in Sigunea Bay. I say twice because, once taken by two rifle-armed sailors from Bancroft’s steam launch and tied near the wreckage of Santo Domingo devoid of crew, the Spanish promptly sailed out in two small boats to reclaim her, an event that ended with Eagle and Bancroft, by this time joined by the gunboat USS Maple, in a chase and possession of all three small enemy vessels.

Hostilities ceased on 13 August, capping the 16-week conflict. 

Continued peacetime service

Post-war, Eagle was painted white, two of her four 6-pounders landed, and she was retained for survey work, a role she was suited for with her extremely shallow 7-foot draft. She then spent much of the next two decades working to compile new charts and corrected existing ones for the waters surrounding Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti– all central to American interests. In this task, she typically had a team of civilian engineers and surveyors aboard.

USS Eagle (1898) at anchor off Norfolk, VA. Jan. 19, 1899. UA 461.33 Henry Bundy Collection

As detailed by DANFS:

Troubled conditions throughout the Caribbean often interrupted Eagle’s surveying duty and she gave varied service in protecting American interests.

She patrolled off Haiti in January and February 1908 and again in November and December and off Nicaragua in December 1909.

In June 1912 she transported Marines to Santiago de Cuba and Siboney to protect American lives and property during a rebellion in Cuba and continued to investigate conditions and serve as base ship for the Marines until 1914.

She also had gunboat duty with a cruiser squadron during the Haiti operation of July 1915 to March 1916 and was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for her creditable performance of widely varied duty. 

She then headed back home for a much-needed dry docking and overhaul.

In dry dock at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, N.H. in September 1916. Note bt this time she had her second mast reinstalled. NH 54334

Then came another war

Eagle as she appeared in early 1917. NH 64949

Once America entered the Great War, Eagle returned to Cuban waters as part of the American Patrol Detachment, Atlantic Fleet, and throughout 1917 and 1918 was continually on patrol off Cuba and the southern coast of the U.S. This was while the Ford-built “Eagle boats” were being cranked out in Detroit.

Eagle in Havana Harbor, Cuba, October 1917 NH 54335

At one point, Eagle was detailed to protect an American-owned sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in early 1917, and did so by putting ashore a modest landing force including hauling one of the ship’s 6-pounders and machine guns ashore– half her armament. It was thought the mill would be an easy target for a German U-boat. A machinist’s mate among the crew, John G. Krieger, had a small portable camera and captured a great array of snapshots during this period.

Men from the Eagle with a mail bag and flag, at Manati, Cuba, in 1917, when the ship’s crew was protecting a local sugar mill. Note the sailors’ crackerjacks are whites that have been “tanned” via the use of coffee grounds. The officer is Ensign Hubert Esterly Paddock, who was with Eagle as Surveying Officer. The donor comments that Paddock surveyed with a motorboat and took regular watches at sea. Of note, Paddock would go on to command the destroyer tender USS Dobbin (AD 3) in WWII and retire post-war, passing in 1980, one of the last U.S. Navy officers left from the Great War. Photographed by John G. Krieger. NH 64955

Mounted Guard furnished by USS Eagle to protect a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba in 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Note the motley uniforms and M1903 Springfields. The officer is the ship’s XO, LT (JG) Jerome A. Lee, a skilled electrician who had served on Arctic expeditions before his time on Eagle and would continue to serve through WWII. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64957

Ford Automobile armed with a Colt M1895 “potato digger” machine gun complete with AAA shoulder rests, staffed by members of the Eagle’s crew, who were guarding a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, shortly after the U.S. entered World War I. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64958

Eagle crew members with machine gun-equipped “Gas Car” railway work wagon, assigned to the protection of a sugar mill at Manati, Cuba, in 1917. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger and donated by him in 1966-67. NH 64959

A six-pounder gun mounted in a tower at Manati, Cuba, in 1917 by Eagle’s crew. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64960

Her 1916-17 skipper, LT Henry Kent Hewitt (USNA 1906), seen ashore on service in Cuba with Eagle’s landing party and on the bridge of his gunboat. He would go on to earn a Navy Cross commanding the destroyer USS Cummings escorting Atlantic convoys in 1918 and command the amphibious landing forces for the Torch, Husky, and Dragoon Landings in WWII. After chairing a post-war Pearl Harbor investigation, he would retire as a full admiral. The Spruance class destroyer USS Hewitt (DD-966) was named in his honor, christened at Pascagoula by his daughters. Photographed by Mr. John G. Krieger. NH 64953/64952

The entire landing party, about 40 strong– half the crew– posed for Krieger. NH 64956

Eagle in the Ozama River, Santo Domingo, in July 1917. U.S. Navy Coal Barges Nos. 300 and 301 are in the foreground. NH 64948

Post-war, with that Navy no longer needing a 30-year-old converted yacht with a pair of 6-pounders, Eagle was detached from her southern climes and ordered to Portsmouth Navy Yard in April 1919 to pay off, being decommissioned there on 23 May 1919.

Epilogue

Disarmed and sold by the Navy on 3 January 1920, the former pride of the NYC Yacht Club soon appeared as the tramp coaster Reina Victoria owned by one M.F. Kafailovich, sailing out of Santiago de Cuba.

She was listed in Lloyds as such from 1921 to 1927 and then disappeared.

Her final fate is not known.

As far as relics from Eagle, I can’t find any that exist other than the pennant and ensign of the Santo Domingo which were installed among the 600 banners installed in the United States Navy Trophy Flag Collection in 1913.

Gallatin? His dear Almy passed in 1917 and their $7 million estate was subsequently divided among their six adult children. After this, he withdrew to the Hotel Plaza where he passed in 1927, aged 86. His NYT obit memorialized him by saying “he was well known as a yachtsman.”

Eagle’s Span-Am War skipper, LT William Henry Hudson Southerland, would go on to serve as hydrographer of the Navy from 1901 to 1904, commanding the gunboat USS Yankee as well as the battleship New Jersey (BB-16), taking part in the Great White Fleet’s circumnavigation. Appointed rear admiral in 1910, he later became commander of the Pacific Fleet and was the final Civil War naval veteran (he was a 12-year-old powder monkey in 1865 before becoming a naval apprentice and attending Annapolis) still in active service.

Captain William H. H. Southerland, USN. A circa 1907 photograph was taken at the time he served as Commanding Officer of New Jersey (BB-16). NH 45029

RADM Southerland retired in early 1914 after 49 years of service, just missing the Great War, and passed in 1933. The Allen M. Sumner– class destroyer USS Southerland (DD-743) was named in his honor.

Curiously, other than a WWII Q-ship, USS Eagle (AM-132), which was quickly renamed USS Captor during her construction, the Navy has not elected to use further use the name USS Eagle.

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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First of Ford’s Subusters Hits the Water

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Here we see, 105 years ago today, “Patrol Eagle (PE) Boat #1” ready to be Launched at the Ford River Rouge Plant, on the outskirts of Detroit, 11 July 1918. The vessel is seen sliding bow-first from the mammoth construction that was “Building B,” which was considered a temporary structure at the time

Ford Motor Company. Photographic Department. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. THF97490

And there she goes…THF270203

During World War I, Ford built “Eagle” anti-submarine patrol boats at a new plant on the Rouge River. Ford assembled the boats using the same mass-production assembly-line techniques it perfected for its automobiles. The launching of the first Eagle, above, was cause for celebration.

The Rouge Plant consisted of a 1,700-foot assembly line that would spit out a 200-foot patrol boat at the end, ready to take on the Kaiser’s undersea pirates. When fully operational, it could do so at a rate of 25 vessels a month. It was initially thought that 125 Eagles would be a good number to start with.

During World War I, Ford Motor Company built “Eagle” anti-submarine patrol boats for the U.S. Navy. Henry Ford called on industrial architect Albert Kahn to design the Eagle factory, located at the mouth of the Rouge River. Kahn created three principal structures: a fabricating shop, a main assembly building, and a fit-out shop. Via the Henry Ford Museum

Eagle No. 1 had her keel laid on 7 May 1918, was launched on 11 July, and was commissioned on 27 October, a span of 173 days. This rate never really shortened, and, by Eagle No. 11, which was completed post-war, was stretching well over a year. 

Inside Building B at Rouge. Construction of Ford Eagle Boats (200′ Patrol Boats #1 to 60) Ford Motor Company, Detroit, Michigan. March 29, 1918. NH 112098

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

These boats had a solid cement bow, specially built for ramming and sinking submarines– a popular early Great War ASW practice. They were equipped with 4-inch guns on the bow and stern and also carried depth charges and primitive sound gear. Here, class leader, USS PE-1. NH 85434

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

Note the depth charge stern racks and projectors. Via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

Ford Built Eagle Boat No 1 via Hampton Roads Naval Museum

However, the war ended four months later, before any of the boats saw combat, and, in the end, just 60 were built. Only the first three were in commission on Armistice Day. 

Downright ugly and generally seen as being unsuccessful due to poor speed and range, they were largely disposed of by the early 1930s without ever firing a shot, although eight survived long enough to see limited CONUS WWII service. It was in that later conflict that one, PE-56, was sunk on 23 April 1945 by the German submarine U-853 off Portland, Maine just two weeks before VE Day. 

Meanwhile, after Eagle production ended, Ford exercised its option to buy the production “B” Building from the federal government, which postwar became the core of Ford’s Rouge factory complex. It was from that building that “everything from Model As to Mustangs” were made. It remained in use until 2004.

The Ford has an extensive online resource on the Eagles.

Army Officially out of the Chemical Weapons Biz After 106 years

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The U.S. Army’s final Sarin (GB) nerve agent-filled M55 chemical rocket was destroyed on July 7 at the Blue Grass Army Depot, Kentucky. It was the last crumb of the more than 30,000 tons of chemical weapons agents on-hand in U.S. arsenals in 1986 when Congress pulled the plug on using the category of weapons, then later pivoted to destroying it.

Operators pose with the last GB nerve agent rocket as it is loaded for destruction at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant on July 7, 2023. The destruction of this munition marked the completion of the destruction of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile. U.S. Army photo.

The rocket was the last “of more than 100,000 mustard agent and nerve agent-filled projectiles and nerve agent-filled rockets” destroyed at BGAD since 2019, including 51,000 M55s.

In addition, a team of companies in Colorado wrapped up the destruction of more than 780,000 mustard agent-filled 155mm and 203mm projectiles at U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot on June 22.

“This is a momentous day for the U.S. chemical demilitarization program,” said Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth. “After years of design, construction, testing, and operations, these obsolete weapons have been safely eliminated. The Army is proud to have played a key role in making this demilitarization possible.”

1917 Beginnings

With the Germans, British, French, and Russians all neck deep in the active use of chemical weapons when the U.S. entered the Great War in 1917, General Pershing established the Gas Service to supervise chemical warfare activity in the AEF on 3 September. Back home, The Committee on Noxious Gases National Research Council was formed in early 1917 with a mixture of Army Medical Department and U.S. Bureau of Mines personnel.

A large-scale production plant at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland was established that eventually produced chlorine (CL), chloropicrin (PS), mustard (H), and phosgene (CG) filled in assorted 75mm, 155-mm, 4.7-inch, and Livens projectiles.

Edgewood Arsenal produced more than 935 tons of CG and 711 tons of H by 1918. Meanwhile, contractors made an additional 150 tons of Lewisite and 681 of CG.

The first U.S.-made and filled shell was tested in April 1918 although none of the US-manufactured chemical-filled rounds would reach Europe prior to the end of the conflict. Fundamentally, this means that no “warshot” lethal American CW has ever (officially) been used in battle. 

However, the Army did have a unit that got its hands in the war.

The first dedicated Army unit trained to use chemical weapons was constituted on 15 August 1917 in the Regular Army as the two-battalion 30th Engineer (Gas and Flame) Battalion (later Regiment) under the command of Col. Earl J. Atkisson.

Sent to France, it would deliver phosgene via British-supplied Livens projectors to German lines on the Western Front, assisting British gas troops in their use as early as March 1918 suffering their first casualty, Pvt. William K. Neal of Company B was killed at Cite St. Pierre by a German shell.

Their first all-American gas attack was against the “Boche” at Bois de Jury in the Toul Sector on the early morning of 18 June 1918. The unit was supported by 100 loaned French Tirailleurs Sénégalais, who helped emplace its hundreds of projectors. 

Livens projectors: simple 8-inch steel tubes fitted with a 28-pound baseplate and single 65-pound projectile (filled with 30 pounds of agent) and electrically fired. The 30th Engineers would use as many as 900 of these at a time, typically in 20-tube batteries set well back behind the lines to prevent enemy observation. Once fired, they had to be dug up and reset before firing again as their azimuth would be screwed. The range was out to 1850 yards, depending on the angle. The Army kept these around well into WWII.

Soon the 30th would be converted and redesignated 13 July 1918 as the 1st Gas Regiment and by that time was using British-supplied 4-inch Stokes mortars to deliver not only gas, but also thermite, and high-explosive shells and earned the nickname “The Hell Fire” battalion.

Demobilized on 28 February 1919, at Camp Kendrick, New Jersey, the 1st Gas earned campaign ribbons for Lys, Aisne-Marne, St. Mihel, Meuse-Argonne, Flanders 1918, and Lorraine 1918. They suffered 39 killed or died of wounds between 21 March and 10 November 1918. Today, the 2nd Chemical Battalion, which remained an offensive combat unit until 1958, carried the lineage of the old Hell Fire Boys 

It wasn’t until 28 June 1918 that the Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) was established, with seven main departments. By the end of the conflict, it would contain 1,680 officers and 20,518 enlisted, albeit most involved in chemical warfare defense.

WWII stockpiles

Between 1940 and 1945, the CWS produced roughly 146,000 tons of chemical agents at locations throughout the United States. These included: 

  • 500,000 4.2-inch mortar shells, 25,000 AN-M78 500-pound bombs, 63,000 AN-M79 1,000-pound bombs, and 31,000 7.5-inch aerial rockets filled with CG.
  • Hydrogen Cyanide (AC) was used to fill 5000 1,000-pound bombs.
  • Some 25 million pounds of Cyanogen chloride (CK) procured by the CWS in WWII went into 33,347 M78 500-pound bombs, each holding 165 pounds of agent, and 55,851 M79 1000-pound bombs, each holding 332 pounds.
  • Mustard gas, the American favorite for decades, filled no less than 2 million gallon-sized land mines as well as “540,746 4.2-inch mortar shells were filled and stored. For the artillery, 1,360,338 75-mm. Mk 64, 1,983,945 105-mm. M60, 784,836 155-mm. Mk 2A1, 290,810 155-mm. M110, and smaller quantities of other shells, were readied…The service procured 594,216 M70 and M70A1 115-pound bombs, developed by the Ordnance Department, and 539,727 M47A1 and M47A2 100-pound bombs.” The service also procured 92,337 M10 30-gallon airplane spray tanks. “A plane flying at an altitude of 100 feet and carrying four of these tanks could spray mustard over an area 75 to 80 yards wide and 600 to 700 yards long.”

Cold War

On August 2, 1946, the CWS became the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, which is still around today (despite the efforts of Creighton Abrams). Post-Korea, the Army looked to field more modern CW weapons including the 115mm M55 chemical rocket, capable of carrying 10 pounds of Sarin (GB) or Venomous Agent X (VX) nerve gas to 6 miles, as well as the M23 landmine and assorted modernized 105mm, 155mm, and 203mm artillery shells.

Along with the new TMU-28/B VX spray tank and MC-1 and MK94 GB bombs.

Meanwhile, much of the WWII mustard gas, with the exception of 155mm shells, were burned or deep-sixed off the coast. The NOAA chart for the Mississippi Sound and Florida panhandle has listed “mustard gas” dumps all my life.

Fielding an offensive BW program until 1969, the U.S. stopped production of new chemical weapons the same year and later de facto halted the ready availability of CW to the service in 1986 then soon began to destroy those still on hand.

By 2012, the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity completed the destruction of nearly 90 percent of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, then stored at six U.S. Army installations across the U.S. and on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, closing all but Pueblo and BGAD.

That figure hit 100 percent last week.

“Following the elimination of the U.S. stockpile, the facilities will be closed in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and mutual agreements between the Secretary of the Army and the governors of Colorado and Kentucky.”

For a deeper dive, check out this 519-page official circa 1988 history of the Chemical Warfare Service branch.

Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: The Tsar’s Jutland Veteran

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

Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: The Tsar’s Jutland Veteran

Archivio Centrale dello Stato

Above we see the Italian light cruiser Bari moored at Patras in Axis-occupied Greece in May 1941. Note her laundry out to dry, her 5.9-inch guns trained to starboard, and her crew assembled on the bow with the band playing. A ship with a strange history, a wandering tale, she was lost some 80 years ago today.

The Muravyov-Amurskiy class

No fleet in military history was in desperate need of a refresh as the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1910s. Having lost 17 battleships (depending on how you classify them), 13 cruisers, 30 Destroyers, and a host of auxiliaries to the Japanese in 1904-1905, the Russians were left with virtually no modern combat ships except those bottled up in the Black Sea by the Ottomans. Also, with lessons learned from the naval clashes, it was clear the way of the future was dreadnoughts, bigger destroyers, and fast cruisers.

To fix this, the Russian Admiralty soon embarked on a plan to build eight very modern 25,000-ton Gangut, Imperatritsa Mariya, and Imperator Nikolai I-class battleships augmented by a quartet of massive 32,000-ton Borodino-class battlecruisers. With the age of the lumbering armored cruiser over, the Russians went with a planned eight-pack of fast new protected cruisers of the Svetlana and Admiral Nakhimov classes (7,000 tons, 30 knots, 15 5.1-inch guns, 2 x torpedo tubes, up to 3 inches of armor) as companions for the new battle wagons.

And, with Russia all but writing off its larger Pacific endeavors, eschewing rebuilding its former battle fleet there in favor of a much more modest “Siberian Military Flotilla” based out of often ice-bound Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk, the Tsar’s admirals deemed that just two light scouting cruisers were needed for overseas use in the Far East, typically to wave the flag, so to speak.

That’s where the Muravyov-Amurskiy class came in.

The two cruisers, at 4,500 tons displacement and 426 feet overall length, were generally just reduced versions of the Svetlana/Admiral Nakhimov classes being built in Russian yards already.

Planned to be armed with eight 5.1-inch guns and four torpedo tubes, they were turbine powered and expected to be fast– able to touch 35 knots at standard weight for short periods although published speeds were listed as 27.5 knots.

Mine rails over the stern allowed for up to 120 such devices to be quickly sown– a Russian specialty.

Their armor was thin, never topping three inches, and spotty with just a protective deck above machinery spaces, a protected conning tower, and 50mm gun shields.

Muravyov-Amursky class in 1914 Janes.

It should be noted the Russian cruisers feel very much like a follow-on to the experimental “cruiser corvette” SMS Gefion (4,275 t, 362 ft oal, 10 x 4-inch guns, 1-inch armor) that Schichau built at Danzig in the mid-1890s for overseas service. 
 

SMS Gefion, commissioned in 1895, would serve briefly in East Asia before she was laid up in 1901. After service as an accommodation hulk through the Great War, she was converted to use as a freighter, Adolf Sommerfeld, in 1920, only to be broken up a few years later.

The two new vessels were to be named after historic 19th Century Russian figures who had expanded the country’s reach towards the Pacific: General Count Nikolay Nikolayevich Muravyov-Amursky, a statesman who proposed abolishing serfdom; and Admiral Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy, a noted polar explorer.

General Muravyov-Amursky and Adm. Nevelskoy.

They were ordered in the summer of 1913 from F. Schichau’s Schiffswerft in Danzig, as yard numbers 893 and 894.

The choice to have a German firm build the new cruiser class wasn’t too unusual for the Tsarist fleet as the Russian cruiser Novik and four Kit-class destroyers was built at Schichau in the 1900s while Krupp delivered the early midget submarine Forel at about the same time. The Russian protected cruiser Askold, one of the most successful of her type, was built at Kiel by Germaniawerft while the cruiser Bogatyr was ordered from AG Vulcan’s Stettin shipyards, also in Germany.

Besides German orders and construction at domestic yards along both the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Russians also ordered warships and submarines from France, Britain, Denmark, and the U.S.– they needed the tonnage.

The planned future Muravyov-Amursky at Schichau-Werke, Danzig, on the occasion of her launch, 29 March 1914 (Old Style), 11 April (N.S.).

Ironically, this was at the same period that Russia’s primary military ally was France, whose principal threat was from Germany. However, most Russian Stavka strategists and statesmen of the era assumed that they would be far more likely to fight the Ottomans or Austrians– perhaps even the Swedes– long before the Germans.

Then came August 1914 and relations between Germany and Russia kind of took a turn.

Kreuzer Pillau

When Germany declared war on Imperial Russia, Muravyov-Amursky had been launched just four months prior and was fitting out with an expected delivery in the summer of 1915. Sistership Admiral Nevelskoy was still on the ways with her hull nearly complete. With the Kaiserliche Marine hungry for tonnage, they seized the two unfinished Russian cruisers and rushed them to completion.

Muravyov-Amursky was renamed after the East Prussian town of Pillau, and Nevelskoy after the West Prussian port city of Elbing. Muravyov-Amursky/Pillau was completed in December 1914 and Nevelskoy/Elbing was delivered the following September.

To keep them more in line with the rest of the German battleline, they were fitted with slightly larger (and better) 15 cm/45 (5.9″) SK L/45 guns, the same type used as secondary armament on German battleships and battlecruisers as well as later on most of their cruisers built during the Great War.

Pillau as seen during her German career. Courtesy of Master Sergeant Donald L.R. Shake, USAF, 1981. NHHC Catalog #: NH 92715

SMS Elbing of the Pillau class, circa 1915-16

SMS Pillau shortly after entering service, 1915

Pillau had her baptism of fire in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915– ironically against the Russians– while Elbing took part in the bombardment of Yarmouth in April 1916. Both were assigned to the High Seas Fleet’s 2nd Scouting Group (II. Aufklärungsgruppe), commanded by Contre-Admiral Bödicker, and took a key role in the Battle of Jutland.

While Jutland is such a huge undertaking that I won’t even attempt to showcase it all in this post as I would never have the scope to do it properly, Elbing scored the first hit in the battle, landing a 5.9-inch shell against HMS Galatea from an impressive distance of about 13.000 m at 14.35 on 31 May. In the subsequent night action, she was accidentally rammed by the German dreadnought SMS Posen and had to be abandoned, with some of her crew saved by the destroyer S 53 and others landed on the Danish coast by a passing Dutch trawler.

As for Pillau, she was hit by a single large-caliber shell– a 12-incher from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible— that left her damaged but still in the fight while she is credited with landing hits of her own on the cruiser HMS Chester. In all, Pillau had fired no less than 113 5.9-inch shells and launched a torpedo in the epic sea clash while suffering just four men killed and 23 wounded from her hit from Inflexible.

Her chart house blown to memories and half of her boilers out of action but still afloat, Pillau then served as the seeing eye dog for the severely damaged battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz— hit 21 times by heavy-caliber shells, twice by secondary battery shells, and once by a torpedo– on a slow limp back to Wilhelmshaven with the dreadnought’s bow nearly completely submerged.

German battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz, low in the water after Jutland. The image was likely taken from Pillau, who led her back to Wilhelmshaven from the battle

SMS Seydlitz after the Battle of Jutland, 1916. Amazingly, she only suffered 150 casualties during all that damage and would return to service by November– just six months later. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Then, her work done, Pillau had to lick her wounds.

SMS Pillau in Wilhelmshaven showing heavy damage to her bridge, caused by a 12-in shell hit from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible.

She only suffered 27 casualties at Jutland while her sister, Elbing, was lost.

The entry wound, so to speak

Repaired, Pillau took part in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917 as well as other more minor operations before the end game in October 1918 in which her crewed mutinied and raised the red flag rather than head out in a last “ride of the Valkyries” suicide attack on the British Home Seas Fleet.

SMS Pillau passing astern of a ship of the line, winter 1917

SMS Pillau on patrol in Helgoland Bay, 1918 note AAA gun forward

Incrociatore Bari

Retained at Wilhelmshaven as part of the rump Provisional Realm Navy (Vorläufige Reichsmarine) under the aged VADM Adolf von Trotha while 74 ships of the High Seas Fleet surrendered to the British in November 1918 to comply with the Armistice, Pillau was saved from the later grand scuttling of that interned force seven months later at Scapa Flow.

The victorious allies, robbed of the choicest cuts of the German fleet, in turn, demanded Pillau be turned over for reparations along with a further nine surviving battleships, 15 cruisers, 59 destroyers, and 50 torpedo boats. Pillau was therefore steamed to Cherbourg and decommissioned by the Germans in June 1920.

It was decided that Pillau was to go to the Italians as a war prize, with the Regia Marina renaming her after the Adriatic port city of Bari in Italy’s Puglia region. The Italians also were to receive the surrendered German light cruisers SMS Graudenz and SMS Stassburg, the destroyer flotilla leader V.116, and the destroyers B.97 and S.63. Italy would further inherit a host of former Austrian vessels including the battleships Tegtthof, Zrinyi, and Radetzky; the cruisers Helgoland and Saida; and 15 destroyers.

The future light cruiser Bari seen in rough shape, with the provisional denomination “U” painted on her bow, right after being ceded to Italy, Taranto, 5 May 1921.

Embarrassingly, just after she entered service with the Italians, Bari ran aground at Terrasini and was stuck there for a week before being refloated.

Aerial photos of Bari stranded at Terrasini, 28 August 1925.

Still, she went on to have a useful and somewhat happy peacetime service with the Italian fleet.

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s a

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s, seen from the port side.

Bari, fotografiado en Venecia en el año 1931

Italian cruiser Bari, in Venice in the early 1930s. Colorized by Postales Navales

Cruiser Bari (ex SMS Pillau ) in floating dock, 1930s

Italian light cruiser Bari (formerly the German SMS Pillau) moored at the pier in 1933

Italian Light Cruiser RM Bari pictured at Taranto c1929 

Bari would be extensively rebuilt in the early 1930s, including a new all-oil-fired engineering suite that almost doubled her range but dropped her top speed to 24 knots. This reconstruction included several topside changes to appearance as well as the addition of a few 13.2mm machine guns for AAA work.

Bari crosses the navigable canal of Taranto after the second round of modification works, circa 1933-40. Compare this to the postcard image shown above taken at the same angle and place that shows her mid-1920s appearance

Bari in the 1931 Janes Fighting Ships

She took part in the Ethiopian war in 1935 and would remain in the Red Sea as part of the Italian East African Naval Command well into May 1938. She then returned home for further modernization at Taranto in which her torpedo tubes were removed and a trio of Breda 20mm/65cal Mod. 1935 twin machine guns were installed and two twin 13.2/76 mm Breda Mod. 31s.

Bari, as covered by the U.S. Navy’s ONI 202, June 1943.

When Italy joined WWII, Bari was soon sent to join the invasion of Greece where she conducted minelaying and coastal bombing missions in the Adriatic and the Aegean. She served as the flagship of ADM Vittorio Tur’s Special Naval Force (Forza Navale Speciale, FNS), an amphibious group that was used to occupy the Ionian Islands including Corfu, Kefalonia, Santa Maura, Ithaca, and Zakynthos. She would also participate in naval gunfire bombardment operations on the coast of Montenegro and Greece against partisans and guerrillas.

Bari in Patras in occupied Greece, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale, May 1941

Another shot from the same above.

Bari moored in Patras, around 18 June 1941, with the ensign of Ammiraglio Comandante Alberto Marenco di Moriondo aboard.

ADM Tur and the FNS, with Bari still as his flag, would go on to occupy the French island of Corsica in November 1942 during the implementation of Case Anton, the German-Italian occupation of Vichy France after the Allied Torch landings in North Africa.

Bari anchored at the breakwater of the harbor of Bastia, Corsica, on 11 November 1942, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale that was then occupying the island after Operation Torch.

The cruiser in Bastia on November 11, 1942, during the Italian landings. Note the steel-helmeted blackshirt troops in the foreground

In January 1943, with the FNS disbanded and ADM Tur assigned to desk jobs, Bari retired to Livorno where she was to be fitted as a sort of floating anti-aircraft battery, her armament updated to include a mix of two dozen assorted 90mm, 37mm, and 20mm AAA guns.

This conversion was never completed.

On 28 June 1943, she was pummeled by B-17s of the 12th Air Force and sank in the industrial canal at Livorno, deemed a total loss.

From 10 June 1940 to the sinking, the Bari had conducted 47 war missions and steamed 6,800 nautical miles.

After the Italian armistice, the Germans attempted to salvage the cruiser for further use but in the end wound up scuttling it once more in 1944. Post-war, she was stricken from the Italian naval list in 1947 and raised for scrapping the following year.

Epilogue

Very few remnants of these cruisers endure.

A painting by German maritime artist Otto Poetzsch was turned into a series of widely circulated Deutsches Reich postcards, used to depict both Pillau and Elbing.

Elbing‘s wreck has been extensively surveyed and studied over the years and is generally considered to be in good shape after spending a century on the bottom of the Baltic. Besides her guns, she has china and glassware scattered around the hull.

The Russian scale model firm Combrig makes a 1/700 scale kit of Pillau.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

How a Trench Knife in a French Cemetery Led to Honoring a Fallen Great War GI

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The Disson M1917 and later M1918 trench knives, or “knuckle dusters” were a uniquely American item in the Great War

In February 2018, a French undertaker working in a cemetery in Villers-sur-Fere, a village about 60 miles northeast of Paris, discovered a set of undocumented remains. The fallen warrior was found with assorted field equipment that included a steel helmet, a trench knife, and an ammo belt full of 30.06 cartridges.

The undertaker contacted authorities and, it was discovered that American forces battled German forces in the village in the summer of 1918. This led to calling in a Great War archaeology expert and the American Battle Monuments Commission.

ABMC historians consulted the memoir of famed Army Chaplain Francis P. Duffy, which describes the burial of U.S. Soldiers from the 42nd “Rainbow” Infantry Division in the location where the remains were discovered. Notably, three Soldiers of the 42nd’s 150th MG Battalion earned the Distinguished Service Cross at Villers-sur-Fere in July 1918, one posthumously.

They were not the only ones, as the main color in the Rainbow division in France was red.

During its time on the Western Front, the 42nd participated in six major campaigns across 264 days in combat in 1917-1918 and incurred 14,000 casualties– a whopping one-out-of-sixteen casualties suffered by the American Army as a whole during the war. The fallen included poet Sgt. Joyce Kilmer– -the author of the poem “Trees“-who was killed in action.

In the end, the lost Joe discovered at Villers-sur-Fere in 2018 was laid to rest with full military honors alongside 6,000 of his fellow countrymen this week at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France.

The ceremony is reportedly the first burial of an unknown U.S. Soldier from World War I since 1988 and the first burial at Oise-Aisne since 1932.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade carry a casket with the remains of a World War I unknown soldier at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France, June 7, 2023. Photo By: Russell Toof, American Battle Monuments Commission. VIRIN: 230606-D-GJ885-005

Notably, Kilmer, who was killed near Oise-Aisne, is buried at the same cemetery, (Plot B, Row 9, Grave 15).

With that, Kilmer’s “Rouge Bouquet,” a tribute to the 19 Americans killed by a German artillery bombardment in the Rouge Bouquet wood near Baccarat, France in March 1918 comes to mind. An excerpt reads:           

“In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet

There is a new-made grave to-day,

Built by never a spade nor pick.

Yet covered with earth ten metres thick

There lie many fighting men,

Dead in their youthful prime…”

Warship Wednesday, May 17, 2023: Hugo’s Everlasting Clouds

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

Warship Wednesday, May 17, 2023: Hugo’s Everlasting Clouds

Swedish Marinmuseum photo identifier D 8751

Above we see a nice view of the Royal Swedish Navy drawn up at Karlskrona, circa 9 July 1904, dressed for Queen Sofia’s 68th birthday. The line includes an array of immaculate coastal battleships (pansarbat) and cruisers to the left including Oden, Aran, Wasa, Tapperheten, Thule, Thor, and Gota; the sleek new Yarrow-built destroyer (Sweden’s first) Mode, center, and, foreground, the 850-ton torpedkryssare (torpedo cruiser/torpedo boat tender) Psilander.

Directly in front of the dowdy Psilander is the old training brig Falken. To the right, floating like clouds, are the twin new gleaming skeppsgossefartygeten (ships boys ships) Najaden and Jarramas.

While everything you see has long since been scrapped, the two tall ships have endured.

HM Övningsfartyg

Designed by famed Swedish naval engineer Hjalmar Hugo Lilliehøøk– who had a hand in every single one of the above vessels– Najaden (Swedish for Naiad, or water nymph) was the first of the twins and was built at Orlogsverftet in Karlskrona in Sweden in 1897 as a training ship (Övningsfartyg) for the Swedish Navy. As such, she would be at the disposal of the Skeppsgossekaren (The Ship’s Boy Corps), a formation that dated back to 1685 and was responsible for recruiting, raising, and training young boys in the art of seamanship.

The beautiful three-masted full-rigger– claimed by many to be the smallest made– Najaden was compact, at just 160 feet overall, counting her bowsprit, and could carry a full 24 sheets including jibs and staysails although the typical 16-sheet rig used covered over 8,000 sq. ft. of canvas by itself.

With a draft of just 12 feet, she was capable of speeds as fast as 17 knots, her main mast towering 82 feet above her deck.

Swedish Royal Navy sail training ship HMS Najaden

At some 335 tons, she was much larger than the circa 1877-built Falken (Falcon), which drew only 110 tons on her 77-foot length. This allowed Najaden to carry a crew of 20-25 professional cadre and as many as 100 naval cadets and boy sailors, easily three times those on the smaller Falken. Her typical complement was 118, including 92 boys. Her regular year-round crew consisted of 5 officers, 6 NCOs, a ship’s doctor, and 14 ratings, almost all of which served as instructors as well.

For an armament, used primarily for training and signaling, she carried a small arms locker of rifles and pistols, a pair of 3-pounder 47mm guns, and a quartet of 1-pounder 37mm pieces.

Najaden proved so successful that an updated sister ship, Jarramas, was ordered from the same yard in 1899. The pair differed in construction when it came to hull material, with Najaden sporting an iron hull and Jarramas using steel. As such, Jarramas was the last sailing vessel to be built at Orlogsverftet, the end of an era. She carried the name of King Charles XII’s famed circa 1716 frigate, which was a Swedish corruption of the Turkish word for “mischievous.”

Jarramas proved even faster than her sister, logging 18.3 knots on at least one occasion. Neither ship was ever fitted with engines although by most accounts they did have generators for electrical lights and ventilation fans.

Övningsskepp typ Jarrasmas och Najaden

Jarramas under segel. Note the colorized accents to the flags and bow crest. D 14975_1

Jarramas under inspektion D 8874

Jarramas MM01916

HM Övningsfartyget Jarramas DO14939.126

Every spring the ships were rigged to run summertime trips to Bohuslän on Sweden’s West Coast or along the Gulf of Bothnia on the East Coast, stopping at various Baltic ports. Happy duty.

Najadens besättning 1902 D 8766

Wars

During the Great War, both ships canceled their summer trips and were used by the Swedish Navy as receiving ships and dockside training vessels, their classroom space was used to school recruits.

Once the guns of August fell silent again, they resumed their former schedules.

Najaden 1923 D 15061_14

Najaden 1923 D 15061_12

Najaden 1923 D 15061_3

Jarramas 1924, Lübeck D 15061_49

Gruppbild ombord Najaden 1923 D 15061_2

Swedish Royal Navy sail training ship HMS Najaden photographed off Karlskrona in 1933, sister Jarramas in the distance

Jane’s 1931 listing for Falken, Najaden, and Jarramas. Falken would be disposed of in 1943 after 66 years of service.

In 1939, the old Skeppsgossekaren was replaced by the newer Sjömansskolan, which still exists.

Najaden at the time was demasted and laid up, used during WWII as a stationary receiving ship.

Postwar, she was then towed to Torekov just south of Halmstad to serve as a breakwater. Her name was quickly reissued to a Neptun-class submarine that would commission in 1943 and serve through the 1960s.

Neptun-class Ubat Najaden underway, July 1953, at Hårsfjärden.

Meanwhile, Jarramas lingered in service until 1948, including use as a training ship in protected waters during WWII.

Post War Rescue

Najaden, in poor material condition and without her masts, canvas, or rigging, was saved by an outpouring of support by the people of the west coast city of Halmstad, who in the 1950s paid for a non-sailing restoration at Karlskrona that saw new masts stepped and some of her rigging plan restored.

She endured this “town ship” mission until 2013, during which she was twice again rebuilt (1989 and 1990-1996) and would host sea scouts, festivals, local events, and parties. A floating fixture of the community. In 2014, she was sold to a new group of enthusiasts who towed her to a new homeport in Fredrikstad in Norway, where her preservation continues.

Although not seaworthy, she is still used for seminars and conferences, lectures, concerts, and other activities, lying by the quay.

They hope to one day make her seaworthy once again, under a Norwegian flag. Of note, when she was built, Norway and Sweden were unified, so in a sense, she has a bit of Norwegian heritage as well. 

As for Jarramas, replaced by the new 128-foot training schooners HMS Gladan (S01) and HMS Falken (S02) in 1947, her days in the Swedish Navy came to an end.

However, just as Najaden was saved at Halmstad, Jarramas was saved by the city of Karlskrona where she was preserved as a museum ship and coffee shop of all things. Extensively renovated over the years, she reportedly requires extensive continuous maintenance, which led her to be taken over by the Marinmuseum in 1997.

Today, Jarramas is the centerpiece of the Marinmuseum in Karlskrona, preserved as Sweden’s last full rigger, alongside the minesweeper HMS Bremön, the motor torpedo boat T38, the Cold War era fast attack craft HMS Västervik, and the submarines HMS Neptun and HMS Hajen.

The minesweeper Bremön (rear), the FAC Västervik, and the full rigger Jarramas at the pier by the Marinmuseum in Karlskrona.

It’s great to see that both sisters are still with us.

Meanwhile, the Swedes still use the gleaming white circa 1940s skolfartyg schooners Gladan and Falken as the nation’s tall ship training squadron.

HMS Falken (S02)

They are assigned to the Skonertdivisionen at the Naval Academy and are based in Karlskrona, nearby the old Jarramas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, May 3, 2023: Where Dewey and Halsey Intersect

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

Warship Wednesday, May 3, 2023: Where Dewey and Halsey Intersect

Via the estate of Lieutenant C.J. Dutreaux, U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. WHI.2014.21

Above we see the splinter-riddled and abandoned Spanish Navy Velasco-class unprotected cruiser (crucero desprotegido) Don Juan de Austria as she appeared some 105 years ago this week, her hull on the bottom of Manila Bay, the first week of May 1898. Lost on the same day with two of her sisters of the “Escuadra Negra,” she would go on to serve a further two decades, albeit under a different flag.

The Velasco class

Built in three Spanish yards (La Carraca, Cartagena, and Ferrol) as well as at the Thames Iron Works in Blackwall, these very slight cruisers were meant for overseas colonial service and diplomatic representation in Spain’s far-flung global territories, not for combat against the armored fleets of modern states. Ridiculously small vessels by any measure, they ran just 210 feet overall with a 1,100-ton displacement. However, they could float in just two fathoms, which was important for their taskings.

Beautiful three-masted iron-hulled barque-rigged steamers with a bowsprit, they carried a quartet of British Humphrys cylindrical boilers to feed on a pair of horizontal compound steam engines that could turn a centerline screw for speeds up to 15 knots, although they typically only made about 12-13 in practice.

The eight-ship class included Velasco, Gravina, Cristóbal Colón, Isabel II, Don Antonio de Ulloa, Don Juan de Austria, and Infanta Isabel, all traditional Spanish naval heroes and regal names.

Only the first two, Velasco and Gravina, carried their maximum armament of a trio of British-made Armstrong M1881 BL 6-inch guns and two smaller 70mm/12cal Gonzalez Hontorias.

Cruiser Gravinia, Spanish Velasco class. The period illustration shows her sailing rig

The six follow-on vessels would carry a more homogeneous four-gun battery of 4.74-inch/35 cal M1883 Hontorias in single shielded mounts amidships, augmented by four five-barreled 37mm Hotchkiss anti-torpedo boat gatling guns, another quartet of 3-pounder Nordenfelts, and two 14.2 inch Schwartzkopff torpedo tubes along the beam.

Period line drawing of Conde de Venadito, note the two broadside sponsons supporting her 4.7-inch guns

The four 12-cm. B. L. Hontoria M1883s on the last six cruisers of the class had a range of 10,500 meters but were slow to reload. Here, is a blistered example seen on the Spanish Cruiser Isla de Cuba.

Our subject, named for the 16th-century Bavarian-born illegitimate son of King Charles I of Spain who went on to become a noted general and diplomat, was laid down at the Arsenal del Cartagena in 1883 and completed in 1889.

Constructed and delivered between 1879 and 1891, they saw much overseas service, with sister Infanta Isabel— the first metal-hulled warship built in Spain– especially notable for her appearance in American waters during the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World.

Infanta Isabel in New York. (1893), Note the great view of her guns and masts

Infanta Isabel at the International Columbian Naval Review in New York in April 1893. Description: Courtesy of Ted Stone, 1981.NH 92029

Infanta Isabel in New York 1893

Spanish Velasco-class Unprotected Cruiser Infanta Isabel towing Nao Santa María out of Havana April 1893

Another, Conde de Venadito, would later transport the remains of Christopher Columbus from Havana to Seville at around the same time.

Cruisers Sánchez Barcaíztegui and Conde de Venadito, Havana, 1895

Spanish Cruiser of the Infanta Isabel Class photographed in U.S. waters, likely either Conde de Venadito or Infanta Isabel, with the river steamer Angler in the background, circa the 1880s or 1890s. NH 46866

As noted by the above images, the class typically carried a gleaming white scheme, which led to sisters assigned to the Philippines who carried more practical, black-painted hulled derided as “the Black Squadron.”

Sadly, they would also prove extremely unlucky to their crews. The English-built Gravina would be wrecked in a typhoon while in Philippines waters in 1884 just three years after she was completed. Meanwhile, the Carraca-constructed Cristóbal Colón ran aground in the Los Colorados shoal near Mantua Pinar del Río Cuba in 1895 then was destroyed by a hurricane before she could be pulled free.

Some saw extensive combat.

For instance, Conde de Venadito provided naval gunfire support during the Margallo War against the Rif in Morocco in 1893. Ulloa was continually active against Philippine insurgents in Mindanao in 1891 then again in 1896-97 in the Tagalog Revolt. Similarly, Velasco would unleash her guns on insurgents in Manila in 1896 and in Bacoor, Vinacayan, Cavite, Viejo, and Noveleta the following year.

Others fought Cuban rebels and those trying to smuggle munitions to them from time to time prior to 1898.

This brings us to…

The Crucible of the Spanish-American War

While fine for service as station ships in remote colonial backwaters, a floating sign to the locals that Spain’s enduring empire still had a modicum of prestige remaining, they just couldn’t slug it out with other modern warships of any size. Of the eight Velascos, two had been lost in pre-war accidents. Conde de Venadito, Isabel II, and Infanta Isabella were in Cuba, with the latter laid up in need of a refit.

Meanwhile, Velasco, Don Antonio de Ulloa, and our Don Juan de Austria were in the Philippines where they had been for a decade.

Their fight in the Battle of Manila on 1 May 1898 was brief.

Don Juan de Austria was the first Spanish ship in Admiral Don Patricio Montojo’s battleline to spot Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron, at 0445.

Battle of Manila Bay, May 1, 1898. With Manila, Philippines, in the top center, and the Spanish fleet in the upper right, the U.S. Navy ships listed descending on the left to bottom are: Colliers; USS McCullough; USS Petrel; USS Concord; USS Boston; USS Raleigh; USS Baltimore; and USS Olympia – signaling “Remember the Maine.” Color lithograph by Rand McNally. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Placed adjacent to the old Aragon-class wooden cruiser Castilla (c1869, 3342t, 4×5.9-inch guns, 2×4.7-inch guns) to give that ship some protection, by 0630 both vessels were taking hits and were increasingly disabled by American shells (at least 13 large caliber hits on Don Juan de Austria alone) that also killed or wounded several men. By 0830, both were abandoned.

A U.S. Navy boarding party from the gunboat USS Petrel went aboard later that day and set her upper works on fire.

Halftone reproduction of an artwork by E.T. Smith, 1901, depicting a boat party from USS Petrel setting fire to Spanish gunboats near the battle’s end. The party was under the direction of Chief Carpenter’s Mate Franz A. Itrich, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for this operation. Copied from Deeds of Valor, Vol.II, page 354, published by the Perrien-Keydel Co., Detroit, Michigan, 1907. Photo #: NH 79948

Wreck of the Spanish cruiser Castilla off Cavite, shortly after the battle. In the background are (left-to-right): the cruisers USS Olympia, USS Baltimore, USS Raleigh, and two merchant ships. Copied from the USS Baltimore album, page 27. NH 101344

Sister Don Antonio de Ulloa got an even tougher beating, receiving 33 hits (four 8-inch, three 6-inch, one of 5-inch, and the rest of 3- and 6-pounder). Her commander, Capt. José de Iturralde, was killed as were half of her 130-man crew. In a pyrrhic victory, one of her 3-pounder Hotchkiss rifles was credited with firing the last shot at Dewey’s fleet in the battle.

Wreck of Spanish cruiser Don Antonio de Ulloa NHHC WHI.2014

Later that day, Velasco, laid up pending repairs and without her guns installed, was destroyed while anchored in the company of the gunboat General Lezo in the Spanish yard at Cavite.

Wreck of Spanish cruiser Velasco at Cavite, May 1898. NHHC WHI.2014.24

Meanwhile, sisters Infanta Isabella and Conde del Venadito, in poor condition in Cuban waters, survived the war (largely because they did not fight) with the latter hulked soon after her return to Spain. Isabel II, who fought in the battles of San Juan and survived, was likewise scrapped just a few years later.

By 1907, only Infanta Isabella remained in Spanish service from the eight-ship class.

Infanta Isabella’s 1914 entry in Jane’s. She had been rebuilt between 1910 and 11, removing her tubes, old machinery, and guns and replacing them with a single Skoda 70 mm gun and 10 Nordenfelt 57 mm guns. Once she returned to Spain, she continued extensive overseas service in the Canary Islands, the Gold Coast, and Guinean possessions, soldiering on until 1926, a full 39-year career, benefiting from parts from the stripped Conde del Venadito and scrapped Isabel II.

But the battered Don Juan de Austria would sail again.

U.S. Service

Salvaged and repaired in nearby Hong Kong, our Spanish cruiser was commissioned into American Navy as USS Don Juan de Austria on 11 April 1900. Re-rated as a gunboat due to her small size and low speed, she was rearmed with American ordnance to include two 4-inch mounts, eight rapid-fire 6-pounders, and two rapid-fire 1-pounders. Her waterlogged Spanish machinery was replaced with four straight-away cylindrical boilers, and one 941ihp horizontal compound engine, allowing her to make 12 knots.

In this respect, she mirrored another raised Spanish cruiser, the second-class protected cruiser USS Isla de Luzon, which was also one of Admiral Montojo’s warships lost in Manila Bay. A third Spanish cruiser, the Alfonso XII-class Reina Mercedes, sunk as a blockship in the entrance channel of the harbor at Santiago de Cuba, was also raised and put into U.S. Navy service under her old name, becoming USS Reina Mercedes despite the fact she could not even sail under her own power and would serve her second career wholly as a receiving/barracks/prison ship. In each case, the old Spanish Navy names were carefully retained to highlight the fact they were war trophies.

More mobile than USS Reina Mercedes, which earned the unofficial title of the “Fastest Ship in the Navy,” USS Don Juan de Austria did manage to get around quite a bit once her name was added to the Navy List. Her first American skipper was CDR Thomas C. McLean, USN, fresh off his job as commanding officer of the torpedo station at Newport, Rhode Island.

Officers of USS Don Juan de Austria. Photograph taken while at Canton, China, circa September 1900. Note her newly installed USN quarterdeck board. The officers listed are numbered as follows: 1. Lieutenant Junior Grade John D. Barber, Asst. Paymaster, USN; 2. Naval Cadet Allen Buchanan, USN; 3. Lieutenant John L. Purcell, USN; 4. Ensign William L. Littlefield, USN; 5. Naval Cadet Ralph E. Pope, USN; 6. Lieutenant Henry B. Price, USN; 7. Commander Thomas C. McLean, USN, CO; 8. Lieutenant Harold A. Haas, Asst. Surgeon, USN; and 9. Lieutenant Armistead Rust, USN. NH 104885

She soon spent the next three years alternating between standing station off China to protect American interests there, and action in the Philippines where the U.S. was fighting a tough insurgency throughout the archipelago. 

USS Don Juan de Austria in Chinese waters circa 1900. Note she now has a white hull, two much-reduced masts, and extensive awnings. NH 54544

Per DANFS:

She was employed in the Philippines in general duties in connection with taking possession of the newly acquired territory, supporting Army operations against the insurgent native forces, transporting troops and stores, blockading insurgent supply routes, and seizing and searching various towns to ensure American control.

USS Don Juan de Austria photographed in the Philippine Islands, circa 1900. Inset shows one of the ship’s boats. Courtesy of Captain R. E. Pope, USN (Ret.) NH 54546

In this, her crew could be nearly halved to send as many as 75 bluejackets ashore as an armed landing force. 

Her crew would even take into custody one of the insurgency’s leaders.

Aguinaldo, a cousin of Emilio, Guiando, Captured by the Don Juan De Austria 1900. NH 120409

She departed Hong Kong on 16 December 1903 for the United States, sailing by way of Singapore, Ceylon, India, the Suez Canal, and Mediterranean ports to arrive at Portsmouth Navy Yard on 21 April 1904, where she was placed in ordinary for 18 months’ worth of repairs and refit. This saw her small 4- and 1-pounders removed, and another four 4-inch mounts added, giving her a total of six. Four Colt machine guns were also added.

In December 1905, a young Midshipman by the name of William Frederick Halsey, Jr. (USNA 1904) was transferred to the USS Don Juan de Austria. Promoted to ensign while aboard her the following February, Mr. Halsey served as the gunboat’s watch and division officer for the next two years.

USS Don Juan de Austria, the scene in the wardroom with officers reading circa 1906. Tinted postcard photo. Courtesy of Captain Ralph C. McCoy, 1974. NH 82781-KN

USS Don Juan de Austria, a group photo of the ship’s officers and crew, circa 1907. The officer at the extreme lower right is Ensign William F. Halsey. Note the breechblock of the 4-inch gun to the left. Courtesy of the U. S. Naval Academy Museum NH 54547

Assigned to the Third Squadron, Atlantic Fleet, USS Don Juan de Austria with Halsey aboard would spend most of 1906 off the Dominican Republic “to protect American interests,” clearly swapping being a colonial Spanish cruiser to one on the same mission for the White House.

However, with a new series of much more capable small cruisers joining the fleet, such as the 4,600-ton scout cruiser USS Chester (CL-1)-– which packed eight 5- and 6-inch guns, carried a couple inches of armor protection, and could make 26 knots– Don Juan de Austria was no longer needed for overseas service. With that, she was placed out of commission at the Portsmouth Navy Yard on 7 March 1907. As for Halsey, he joined the brand new USS Kansas at her commissioning five weeks later and made the World Cruise of the Great White Fleet in that battleship.

Nonetheless, the Navy still needed functional warships for state naval militias to drill upon in the days prior to the formation of the USNR, and USS Don Juan de Austria soon shipped by way of the St. Lawrence River to Detroit, where she was loaned to the Michigan Naval Militia.

Likewise, the former Spanish cruiser USS Isla de Luzon, was also loaned at this time to the Illinois Naval Militia, stationed at Chicago, meaning both of these one-time Armada vessels were deployed to the Great Lakes in the decade before 1917.

Our little cruiser became a regular around Detroit and Windsor.

Don Juan de Austria (on the right) is seen looking upriver from the Belle Isle Bridge in Detroit, Michigan during the Parke Davis Excursion. Sometime between July 1907 and April 1917. Library of Congress photo LC-D4-39089

USS Don Juan de Austria, pre WWI postcard, likely while in Naval Militia service. Courtesy of D.M. McPherson, 1976 NH 84404

USS Don Juan de Austria postcard photo, taken while serving as Michigan Naval Militia Training Ship in the Detroit River, circa 1910. Courtesy of Kenneth Hanson, 1977. NH 86031

USS Don Juan de Austria, photographed during the Perry centennial Naval parade, 1913, possibly at Erie, Pennsylvania. She was a training ship of the Michigan Naval Militia at the time. Courtesy of Rear Admiral Denys W. Knoll USN ret., Erie Pennsylvania. NH 75676

Great War recall

USS Don Juan de Austria, 1914 Janes. Compare this to Infanta Isabella’s entry from the same volume above. Note by this time her armament had morphed to two 4″/40 rapid fire mounts, eight 6-pounder rapid fire mounts, two 1-pounder rapid fire mounts and she would later also carry two temporary 3-pounders.

Once the U.S. entered WWI in April 1917, USS Don Juan de Austria would soon leave her familiar birth in Detroit and sail for Newport, where she became a patrol asset for use off of New England.

USS Don Juan de Austria, ship’s Officers, and Crew pose on board, circa 1917-1918. Photographed by C.E. Waterman, Newport, Rhode Island. Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski, 2008. NH 105498

Under the command of a USNRF lieutenant, by August 1918 she was escorting slow convoys to Bermuda and a group of submarines back to Newport. Among her final missions was, in April 1919, to escort the ships carrying the 26th Infantry “Yankee Division,” formed from New England National Guard units, back from “Over There” and German occupation duty back home to Boston.

USS Don Juan de Austria in the foreground leading USS America (ID # 3006) up Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, on 5 April 1919, the 26th INF Div aboard. The transport is the former 22,000-ton German Hamburg-America liner SS Amerika, seized by the Navy at Boston in April 1917 where she had been interned for three years. NH 54586

Similarly, Isla de Luzon was used as a recruit training ship in Chicago until September 1918 when she arrived at Narragansett Bay for assignment to the Naval Torpedo Station. There, armed with torpedo tubes for the first time since 1898, she would pull duty with the Seamen Gunner’s Class through the end of the year and remain a yard craft for the Station until disposed of in mid-1919.

USS Don Juan de Austria was decommissioned at Portsmouth on 18 June 1919 and sold on 16 October 1919 to one Mr. Andrew Olsen. She lingered until 1926 when mention of her arose as “abandoned.” I have no further information on her final disposition although it is marginally conceivable, she may have been converted to a tramp steamer.

Epilogue

Few items remain from the Velascos besides a handful of removed Spanish guns that have been on display, typically in small American towns, since 1898.

Also saved is the Hotchkiss rifle captured from the Spanish cruiser Don Antonio De Ulloa which fired the last shot at Dewey’s fleet, preserved at the National Museum of the U.S. Navy.

They endure in period maritime art. 

Spanish Armada’s Training Squad before the Spanish-American War of 1898, although the represented ships never sailed together. Oil on canvas painted and signed with initials A.A. by Antonio Antón e Iboleón, around 1897. From left the Battleship Pelayo with insignia, followed by the cruisers Cristóbal Colón, Infanta María Teresa, and Alfonso XIII; to the right, the cruiser Carlos V with insignia, Oquendo and Vizcaya. On the starboard side of the Pelayo sails the Torpedo-gunboat Destructor, and two Terror-class torpedo boats sail on the bows of the Carlos V.

USS Don Juan de Austria almost outlasted her sisters, the Cadiz-built Infanta Isabel, which was only stricken by the Spanish in 1926, and Count of Venadito, which, hulked in 1902, was sunk as a target by the battleship Jaime I and the cruisers Libertad, Almirante Cervera, and Miguel de Cervantes in 1936.

A fitting end to the class.

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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Interested in a Curious Film-Used Mauser?

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From time to time, large movie and TV productions leave a mark on firearms history and the market for such items. For instance, trailer loads of resin (heavy dense rubber or plastic) M1 Garand/Carbine, M1918 BARs, MP40 SMGs, and 98K rifle prop guns manufactured for Tom Hanks’ epic Saving Private Ryan, have been sold and resold over the past two decades– some even going on to cause heartburn at airports. This is in addition to a handful of live-fire capable “hero” guns used in close-ups.

Well, it seems that some movie flotsam in the form of stacks of original antique Mauser Infanterie-Gewehr 71/84 rifles in the original 11x60mm (.43 Mauser) are now up for grabs after serving some extra time in the movies.

These guns were originally sold by Navy Arms’ President, Val Forgett III, to Motion Picture Weapons, the company that supplied the prop guns for the Tom Cruise movie “The Last Samurai” and whose owner, Robert “Rock” Galotti, served as Weapons Master on the film, Mr. Galotti recently sold back these guns to Navy Arms and has also supplied letters of authentication, by serial number, for each rifle.

The I.G. 71 was the first bolt-action breechloader ever built by the Mauser brothers and later upgraded to the 71/84 standard that included an 8-round tubular magazine designed by Alfred von Kropatschek, becoming the German Army’s (and Mauser’s) first repeating rifle.

Jager of the Imperial German Army in 1875 By Auguste Legras from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, note his Mauser 71 rifle

Besides being used by Germany until the Mauser 98 came along to replace the 8x57mm Gewehr 88 rifle in front-line service, the basic Mauser 71 and its later 71/84 would be exported throughout Europe, Africa, Latin America and Asia, seeing the elephant in any number of more local dust-ups from the Easter Rising in Ireland in 1916 to defending Ethiopia from Mussolini in the 1930s, with some German Volkssturm units still issued these antiques as late as 1945.

Now the 71/84s used in The Last Samurai are, sadly, not 100 percent correct, having been modded to appear as the more (and brand new) period-appropriate I.G. 71 for the film, complete with new stocks made for the movie including the identical cartouches to the originals and a new black leather sling.

After all, it would have seemed funny had the Emperor’s new model troops been carrying guns with already-worn furniture. However, all metal parts are original.

Navy Arms apparently is selling these in two grades via their Old West Scrounger sister company including a $995 Grade I (shows wear, dents, and scratches, but does not have cracked stocks), an $895 Grade II (which comes complete with a cracked stock).

Being made in the 1880s, you can purchase these rifles and have them shipped directly to your door, as antiques they do not require any paperwork or shipping to an FFL. Plus, you get a rifle that is both a legit warhorse with its own pre-Tom Cruise martial history and a tiny slice of movie magic.

They also have $399 screen used replicas made from solid rubber and painted to have the look and feel of the originals (but the bolts do not move, etc).

Warship Wednesday, April 19, 2023: Norway’s Fair-haired Bruiser

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

Warship Wednesday, April 19, 2023: Norway’s Fair-haired Bruiser

Norwegian Marinemuseet image MMU.942036

Above we see the proud crew of the Royal Norwegian Navy Tordenskjold-class panserskipet (battleship) KNM Harald Haarfagre (also seen as Harald Hårfagre) posed around her aft 8.26-inch Armstrong main gun in the fall of 1914. Besides the large range clock on the mast, note the crews’ German-style wool jumpers and flat caps, as well as the uniforms of the officers, arrayed to the right.

Coastal battleships

Ordered from Sir WG Armstrong, Mitchell & Co’s Low Walker yard in 1895 as Yard Nos. 648 and 649, respectively, Harald Haarfagre and Tordenskjold at the time were the largest warships envisioned for the Norwegian fleet. Essentially smallish slow armored cruisers, the pair went 304 feet long overall (279 at the perpendiculars), displaced some 3,800 tons, and were swathed in up to 8-inches of Harvey steel armor– including a 174-foot long by 6.5 foot 7-inch main belt.

The cost was on the order of $925,000 per ship.

Armstrong blueprint for Norwegian Tordenskjold Class Coastal Defense Ship HNoMS Harald Haarfagre

Harald Haarfagre by Geoff Gray, pg 60 in the 1900 edition of Brassey’s Naval Annual. Their peacetime Norwegian livery was of black hulls with yellow funnels and gun shields, and white superstructure and masts.

Lead Ship, Coastal Defence Ship HNoMS Tordenskjold at Armstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd Yards. (Low Walker Shipyard), Newcastle upon Tyne, March 18th, 1897. 

Tordenskjold at Armstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd Yards. (Low Walker Shipyard), Newcastle upon Tyne, March 18th, 1897.

Panserskipet Harald Haarfagre, via Tyne Museum. Note the ram bow

Powered by three cylindrical boilers driving two R & W Hawthorn Leslie Co-built engines, each on their own screws, they were rated for 16 knots– surpassing this by hitting 17.2 on builder’s sea trials in 1897.

Built for the often narrow confines of Norway’s craggy and unpredictable coast, they could float in just 16.5 feet, which is comparably shallow for a well-armored steel-hulled warship.

The sisters carried a single 8.2″/44 Armstrong B forward and a second aft in well-protected turrets clad in up to 8 inches of armor and fed by electric hoists from magazines well below deck.

HNoMS Tordenskjold at Armstrong Whitworth & Co. Ltd Yards. (Low Walker Shipyard), Newcastle upon Tyne, March 18th, 1897, showing her stern 8.2″/44 Armstrong turret.

Their main guns proved a common focal point for crew and wardroom portraits over the years.

Offisersbesetningen på PS Harald Hårfagre 1897. Note the 12-pounder in the background. MMU.940805

Panserskipet Harald Hårfagre første offiserbesetnig 18. Des 1897 9.mars 1898. Note the 12-pounders in the background MMU.942040

Panserskipet Harald Hårfagre besetnigen 1899 MMU.942037

Panserskipet Harald Hårfagre besetningen 1910 MMU.942035

Panserskipet Harald Hårfagre besetningen 1921 MMU.942034

Secondary and tertiary batteries included six 4.7″/44 Armstrong Model Y guns in shielded mounts, six shielded Armstrong N 12-pounder singles, six Hotchkiss 37mm three-pounders in fighting platforms on the masts, and two submerged torpedo tubes (17.7 inch in Haarfagre and 18 inch in Tordenskjold) along the beam for Mr. Whitehead’s devices.

Harald Haarfagre, seen in Horten, October 1903, with a good view of her gun decks. Note the 4.7″/44s and smaller 12-pounders along with the three-pounders in the mast. Also note the extensive small boat storage facility, with most boats apparently off-ship at the time of the photo. Photo via Norsk Maritimt Museum, Anders Beer Wilse Collection.

Another Anders Beer Wilse photo from the same period at Horten shows her crew in gun-loading exercises in summer whites towards the stern of the gun deck. Note the 4.7-inch Armstrong on deck, with the 12-pounders above. Also, note the crew’s bayonets and Krag rifles at the ready on racks. The officers stand ready with sabers. Note the ornate “For Konge Og Fedreland Flaggets Heder!” (For the honor of the King and Fatherland Flag) crest. Photo via Norsk Maritimt Museum, Anders Beer Wilse Collection.

Panserskipet Harald Hårfagre Styrbord side MMU.940381

They were seen by many at the time as being effectively just miniature versions of the British circa 1892 Centurion class battleships (10,000 tons, 390 ft oal, 2×2 10 inch, 9-12 inches armor, 17 knots).

Centurion class battleship HMS Barfleur, 1895. The Tordenskjolds were about half as heavy but of a similar arrangement and with smaller guns. Symonds and Co Collection, IWM Q 20993.

As such, the Tordenskjolds were considered a close match for the three new Swedish Oden class pansarbats, or coastal battleships (3400 tons, 278 ft oal, 1 or 2x 10″/41, 9.5 inches of Creusot or Harvey armor, 16 knots). This was important as, although the two countries were a United Kingdom under a Swedish king since 1814, the union’s dissolution was on the horizon, and some thought it could lead to bloodshed.

Tordenskjold was named in honor of Peter Jansen Wessel Tordenskiold, the famed 18th Century Scandinavian admiral and naval hero who perished at the ripe old age of 30 in a duel. Meanwhile, Haarfagre was named for the famed “Harald Fairhair” (Haraldr inn hárfagri), the storied 9th Century first king of a united Norway.

Portrayed by Peter Franzén in the recent Vikings TV show, the semi-fictionalized Harald is celebrated throughout Norway and Iceland going back to the sagas of his era, and numerous monuments stand throughout Norse lands honoring the old king, his reputation is akin to King Arthur in the Anglo-Saxon culture.

Quiet peacetime service

Completed in early 1898 and delivered to the Norwegian navy, the twin Tordenskjolds remained the strongest ships in that fleet until the two slightly heavier (4,100-ton) Armstrong-built Norge class panserskipene were delivered in 1901. 

1931 Jane’s listing for the Norge class and Tordenskjolds, very similar ships built by the same yard, only differing in armor type (Krupp vs Harvey) and engineering plants. The Norwegians regarded all four ships as sisters of the same class. Note the 3-inch AAA guns mounted on the turrets, added in 1920.

This quartet of Norwegian coastal battleships would serve side-by-side for three decades, giving the country the bulk of its maritime muscle going into the tense six-month 1905 crisis with Sweden that almost led to a real shooting war between the two and the ultimate founding of today’s Norway and Royal Norwegian Navy, with the cipher of Sweden’s King Oscar II being replaced by that of his grandnephew, Prince Carl of Denmark who would rise to the Norwegian throne under the regnal name of Haakon VII.

The new Royal Norwegian Navy in 1905, besides the four coastal battleships, included 34 coastal torpedo boats (led by the unique torpedobåtjager Valkyrjen), a dozen gunboats of assorted types, and four elderly monitors.

Norwegian torpedo boats. 1900. The country had these craft as the backbone of littoral naval forces at the time

Had it gone to war against Sweden, they faced at the time not only the three Odens, but also four larger Aran-class coastal battlewagons, the one-off battleship Dristigheten, the three old but reconstructed Svea-class coastal battleships, five 800-ton destroyers labeled by the Swedes as torpedo cruisers (torpedokryssare), a small Italian-built submarine, and about 40 assorted torpedo boats. Although the Swedes had the advantage in terms of big guns, the Norwegians would surely have fought on their home turf which would have been interesting, to say the least.

Besides the 1905 crisis, the panserskipene also would stand guard over Norway’s coast during the Great War, enforcing Oslo’s neutrality against all comers. This came as the British seized a new pair of 5,000-ton 9.4-inch gunned Bjørgvin-class coastal battleships that were building in the UK. Of note, the planned KNM Bjørgvin and KNM Nidaros would enter RN service as the monitors HMS Glatton and HMS Gorgon and never flew a Norwegian flag.

Other than that, before 1940 at least, the Tordenskjolds were happy ships, and many peacetime photos exist from that period, often calling at other European ports.

Norwegian Norway coastal battleship Tordenskjold. How about that beautiful bow scroll

Norwegian Panserskipet Tordenskjold, note her stern scroll

HNoMS Harald Haarfagre

Skaffing på banjeren på PS Harald Hårfagre MMU.940449

HNoMS Harald Haarfagre 

HNoMS Harald Hårfagre or HNoMS Tordenskiold at the roadstead of Trondhjem 1906

Panserskipet Harald Hårfagre, Aktenfra MMU.940387

Køyestrekk om bord i PS Harald Hårfagre MMU.940448

Harald Haarfagre crew at mess. Photo via Norsk Maritimt Museum, Anders Beer Wilse Collection.

Harald Haarfagre’s crew practice signals. Photo via Norsk Maritimt Museum, Anders Beer Wilse Collection.

Harald Haarfagre’s bridge, circa 1903. Note her extensive brass fittings and the impressive whiskers of her officers and quartermasters

The Norwegian coastal defense ship HNoMS Harald Haarfagre in drydock at Karljohansvern naval base, 1903. Photo via Norsk Maritimt Museum, Anders Beer Wilse Collection.

The Norwegian coastal defense ship HNoMS Harald Haarfagre in drydock at Karljohansvern naval base, 1903. Photo via Norsk Maritimt Museum, Anders Beer Wilse Collection.

Harald Haarfagre in dry dock, 1903. Note her extensive bow scroll. Photo via Norsk Maritimt Museum, Anders Beer Wilse Collection.

In the 1920s, they were modestly modernized, landing their old low-angle 37mm guns and dated torpedo tubes in exchange for a pair of more modern 76mm AAA guns.

By the early 1930s, with defense kroner at an all-time low, the Norwegians decided it was better to partially strip and sideline the older Tordenskjolds and sort of modernize the better-protected Norge class panserskipene (which were transferred to a reserve status), as the fighting line of old had been augmented by six American L-class coastal submarines built under license at Karljohansvern and a planned eight fast new Sleipner– and Ålesund-class destroyers.

This saw Tordenskjold and Harald Haarfagre land most of their armament (which was recycled in many cases for use in coastal forts) and retained for use as training vessels and accommodation hulks at Karljohansvern (Horten), out of commission.

WWII

When the Germans blitzed into Norway in April 1940 without a declaration of war, in an action billed as a preemptive move to forestall Allied occupation, the toothless Tordenskjold and Harald Haarfagre were captured. The vessels had raw recruits and some reactivated retired reserve cadres on board, and, lacking all but a few small arms, were captured intact.

This inglorious fate came as their near-sisters Eidsvold and Norge, hopelessly obsolete, were sunk in very one-sided surface engagements with the Kriegsmarine.

Panserskipet Eidsvold and Norge at Narvik in early April 1940, still with their range clocks. Reactivated from mothballs the previous year and undermanned, they were outdated and outclassed by just about any period cruiser or battleship, and lost their only battle. A total of 276 men died on these two vessels, while just 96 were plucked from the freezing water, the largest single loss of life for the Norwegian navy in WWII

The Germans soon converted the captured pair of old “bathtubs” to floating batteries (Schwimmende Batterien or Schwimmende Flakbatterie, or Norwegian luftvernskrysser) with Tordenskjold rechristened as Nymphe, and Harald Haarfagre as Thetis. The conversion saw a much modernized German armament of six 4.1-inch SK C/32 guns, two 40mm Bofors guns, and nine 20mm Oerlikon guns– the latter two salvaged from Norwegian stores.

PS HARALD HÅRFAGRE ombygget til tysk luftvernskrysser THETIS i Tromsø 1945 MMU.940250

Flakschiff Nymphe, German Anti-Aircraft Ship, 1940. Formerly Norwegian Tordenskjold, anchored in a Norwegian harbor during World War II. Note her 105mm A.A. guns with camouflaged barrels, and crew members standing in formation on deck. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 71445

Flakschiff Nymphe, German Anti-Aircraft Ship, 1940. Formerly Norwegian Tordenskjold, surrounded by torpedo defense nets, in a Norwegian harbor during World War II. Note her camouflage. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 71444

Their German naval service, which was restricted to the Norwegian littoral and apparently included protecting Tirpitz and other key Kriegsmarine surface ships against RN Fleet Air Arm and RAF raids during the war, is poorly documented.

Nonetheless, the sisters survived the war, with Tordenskjold/Nymphe bombed and deliberately run aground by her German crew at Helleford in May 1945 to prevent sinking.

Harald Haarfagre/Thetis was still capable of steaming and, returned to limited Norwegian service, would carry German POWs back to their Fatherland post-war.

Both ships remained as barracks and accommodation vessels (losjiskip) as late as 1948, when the last two Norwegian panserskipene were broken up at Stavanger.

Epilogue

The dozen German 4.1-inch SK C/32 guns salvaged from Harald Haarfagre/Thetis and Tordenskjold/Nymphe were recycled for use in vessels such as thCorvettete Nordkyn and in coastal forts. At least one survives.

This German BVV-made 10,5cm SK C/32, Nr 755, circa 1932, was used as the main gun on board the corvette Nordkyn until 1956, then was dismounted and transferred to the Coast Artillery (Kystartilleriet) who mounted it at Fort Tangen (HKB Langesund), located at the far end of Langesundstangen, as cannon 3 in 1966.

Active into the 1990s, it is preserved today. MMU.071018

They also were immortalized in period maritime art.

Hårfagre and Tordenskjold, surrounded by torpedo boats, by Zacharias Martin Aagaard, circa 1902

Today, Harald Haarfagre is remembered by the Norwegian military as the shore establishment KNM Harald Haarfagre at Stavanger, tasked with training both Navy and Air Force personnel since 1952.

They have the old battleship’s circa 1897 bell on their quarterdeck for ceremonies.

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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