During World War II, the 50-ship-strong LST-491 class of tank landing ships, and the hundreds of follow-on LST-542-class near-sisters, proved both effective and remarkably versatile. Some 3,640-tons, these 328-foot vessels could shelp a full-strength infantry company or between 1600 and 1900 tons of cargo, landing them directly to the beach while launching landing craft from their davits to lead the way.
USS LST-755, built by the American Bridge Co., Ambridge, PA, was commissioned in August 1944 and would spend 1945 earning her stripes in the Lingayen Gulf and Mindanao landings in the liberation of the Philippines.
After a stint in occupation duty, LST-755, along with her sisters, passed into mothballs in 1946.
By 1948, LST-755 was stricken and passed over to the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the ROCS Chung Hai (LST-201).
Chung Hai would serve Taiwan for over 60 years, and would account for a Chicom patrol boat in a 1958 surface action
She would be joined by more than 30 sisters and, throughout an amazing second career with the ROCN, steamed 75,126hrs and 556,728nms before she was retired in 2010.
Over the past decade, it was thought she would be retained as a museum ship but the plans repeatedly fell through.
The ship was sold for scrapping, 19 May 2020 after bidding for NT$14 Million according to United Daily News. In poor condition after 76 years afloat, she was reportedly slowly taking in water and sinking.
The sale drew condemnation from historians and military enthusiasts who saw the ship as an important cultural heritage artifact.
Even the scrap dealer was concerned about the backlash of public opinion if he were to dismantle the ship.
The navy then decided to postpone signing the sales contract with the winning bidder for one month, while relevant government agencies come up with a plan to possibly keep and restore the ship as an historic monument.
The Kinmen County Government issued a press release earlier this evening saying that it is coordinating with the Ministry of Defense to seek an alternative solutions, and to preserve “this important historical asset.”
Warship Wednesday, May 27, 2020: The Showboat and the Speedboats
Photograph by Walter E. Frost, City of Vancouver Archives Photo No. 447-2863.1
Here we see the lead ship of her class of “treaty-era” heavy cruisers, HMS York (90) looming out of the fog in Vancouver, British Columbia, on 10 August 1938.
Sometimes referred to as the “Cathedral” class cruisers, York and her near-sister HMS Exeter (68) were essentially cheaper versions of the Royal Navy’s baker’s dozen County-class cruisers, the latter of which were already under-protected to keep them beneath the arbitrary 10,000-ton limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Weighing in at 8,250 tons, the Yorks were intended not for fleet action but for the role of sitting on an overseas station and chasing down enemy commerce raiders in the event of war.
York mounted six 8″/50 (20.3 cm) Mark VIII guns in three twin Mark II mounts. Fairly capable guns, they could fire a 256-pound SAP shell out past 30,000 yards at a (theoretical) rate of up to six rounds per gun per minute. Importantly, they carried 172 rounds per gun, up from the 125-150 carried by the preceding County-class, a factor which allowed a slightly longer engagement time before running empty.
Bow turrets of HMS York. Photograph by Mrs. Josephine Burston, via Navweaps
Rounding out the cruisers’ offensive armament was a half-dozen deck-mounted 21-inch torpedo tubes and a battery of DP 4-inch guns and Vickers machine guns to ward off aircraft, the latter of which was apparently never installed. Built with overseas service in mind, they could cover 10,000nm at 14 knots. Able to achieve 32.3 knots due to having 80,000-ship via Parsons geared steam turbines, they sacrificed armor protection for speed and magazine space, with just 1 inch of steel on their turrets and a belt that was just 3 inches at its thickest.
As noted by Richard Worth in his excellent tome, Fleets of World War II:
In trimming down the County layout, designers managed to retain several features, though sea keeping suffered. Protection also received low priority; the armor scheme (similar in proportion to the County type) included some advances, but all in all, the Yorks seemed even more vulnerable, especially in the machinery spaces.
Ordered 1926 Build Programme, York was the ninth such RN vessel to carry the name since 1654 and was constructed at Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, Jarrow. Commissioned on 1 May 1930, she was a striking vessel for her age. A true peacetime cruiser.
British Royal Navy heavy cruiser HMS York (90) secured to a buoy 1930 IWM FL 4185
York’s motto was Bon Espoir (“Good Hope”) borrowed from Edmund Langley, First Duke of York, and she exemplified that in her early career.
For the next decade, she would embark on a series of “waving the flag” port visits around the globe as she shifted between North America and West Indies Station to the Mediterranean Fleet.
HMS York sails past the Finnish sea fortress Suomenlinna on September 3, 1933, Mosin
A beautiful ship, she was often the subject of amazing period photos and newsreel footage.
HMS York in Admiralty Floating Dock No. 1 at Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda in 1934. York served as the flagship of the 8th Cruiser Squadron on the America and West Indies Station based at the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island in Bermuda. She left Cartagena, Colombia, on 29 April 1934, arriving in Bermuda for the first time (along with her sister ship Exeter from Jamaica) on 4 May 1934 to begin a refit.
A British man of war at Washington, D.C. H.M.S. York, the flagship of the British West Indian Fleet, docks at the Navy Yard at Washington, D.C. She brought Vice Admiral, the Hon. Sir Matthew R. Best, K.C.B., D.S.O., M.V.O., R.N., to Washington where he will be the guest of honor at a round of social functions, 30 October 1935. Harris & Ewing photo in LOC collection.
The same day, with bluejackets inspecting the British man-o-war from the Navy Yard docks. Note her Fairey IIIF floatplane, an anemic biplane that dated back to the Great War. LOC Photo.
Same day. This photograph was made from the deck of the USS Sequoia, the yacht used by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. LOC Photo.
HMS York in the port of Montreal 20 June 1937 via the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Vieux-Montréal, photo P48S1P01697
“Picking up the Plane at 20 MPH.” Note her 4-inch DP gun in the foreground. The new Supermarine Walrus floatplane was picked up in late 1936. As noted by Leo Marriot, in his book, Catapult Aircraft: Seaplanes That Flew From Ships Without Flight Decks, “By no stretch of the imagination could the Walrus be considered a graceful aircraft and it was universally and affectionally known as the ‘Shagbat.'” Photo via Robert John Terry’s excellent galleries on HMS York https://sites.google.com/site/robertjohnterry/hms-york-gallery-2
HMS York entering Havana, Cuba, with the historic Morro Castle in the background, 14 January 1938. Created from a personal photograph in the collection of RN CPO(Tel) George A (“Art”) Browness, “Sparks” (Wireless Telegraphist) onboard HMS York, by Ian Browness, his son. Via Wikimedia Commons
In the summer of 1939, York received a new skipper that would see her throughout the war, CAPT Reginald Henry Portal, DSC, RN, a naval aviator turned surface warfare officer who earned his DSC in 1916, “For conspicuous gallantry during a combat with an enemy aeroplane in the Dardanelles.”
CAPT Reginald Henry Portal by Walter Stoneman, bromide print, January 1943, NPG x164616
By February 1940, she was reassigned to the 1st Cruiser Squadron, Home Fleet at Scapa Flow, and worked with the Northern Patrol looking for Axis blockade runners trying to make it back to the Fatherland. With a degree of success in the latter, she sent the 3,359-ton German freighter Arucasto the bottom of the Atlantic off Iceland on 3 March.
HMS York (Capt. R.H. Portal, DSC, RN) intercepts the German passenger ship Arucas, via U-boat.net
HMS York (Capt. R.H. Portal, DSC, RN) intercepts the German passenger ship Arucas, via U-boat.net
April through June saw her extensively involved in the Norway campaign from supporting landings at Andalsnes to the evacuation of Narvik.
Transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in August, she ran the gauntlet from Alexandria to Gibraltar for the next several months, escorting UK-to-Egypt troopship convoys, and often brushing up against the Italian fleet. Once such instance found York stumbling upon the Italian Soldati-class destroyer Artigliere, stopped, and on fire after the Battle of Cape Passero on the morning of 12 October.
Artigliere struck her flag, cleared her crew, and was promptly finished off by a brace of torpedoes from York.
The Italian destroyer Artigliere was finished by torpedoes from HMS York at 9.05 on the morning of October 12th, 1940, after the battle of Cape Passero. The ship’s stern ammunition magazines exploded after the torpedo hit. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
HMS York Alexandria 1940. In the foreground, Cruiser Mk II and Mk VAT combat cars
A lucky ship thus far in the war, York screened the carrier HMS Illustrious during the famous Operation Judgement airstrikes on the Italian Fleet at Taranto and increasingly became a player in the actions off Crete, as well as keeping the supply lines open to Malta. This saw her in 1941 start to fend off sustained air attacks by German aircraft.
In March, she took part in Operation Lustre, the move of Allied troops from Egypt to Greece, shepherding fast 3-day convoys from Alexandria to Piraeus. This left her in Suda Bay, Crete, with the bulk of the Mediterranean Fleet cruiser force, safely behind a triple torpedo net array that left her impervious to attack from the sea.
Enter Xª Flottiglia MAS
On the night of 25/26 March, the old Italian destroyers Francesco Crispi and Quintino Sella hove-to some 10 miles out from Suda Bay. Using special cranes, they deployed LT (Tenente di Vascello) Luigi Faggioni of the 10th MAS Flotilla and his five shipmates. Faggioni & Company each helmed an 18-foot Motoscafo da Turismo (Modified Tourism Motorboat).
The MTs, 18-foot long boats powered by a 95-hp Alfa Romeo AR outboard motor, could make 33 knots while floating in just a few inches of water– shallow enough to jump over torpedo nets.
With the single boat operator hanging 10 off the end of the MT, the bow of the vessel was filled with a 660-pound high-explosive warhead that could be rigged to either detonate on impact or be detached and allowed to sink alongside a target for a later, timed explosion.
Not intended to be a suicide craft, akin to the Japanese Shinyo/Maru-ni, the operator ideally would bail out over the back of the boat on the final leg of the attack run, and paddle to safety on their backrest, which, predating today’s air travel briefing, doubled as a flotation device.
To make a long story short, three MT boats managed to penetrate the harbor and braved the near-freezing water to make the final attack just before dawn. Two boats, piloted by future admiral Angelo Cabrini and petty officer Tullio Tedeschi, hit York’s portside– although it should be noted that numerous wartime reports state that just one boat struck the British cruiser.
The York speedboat attack depicted via Corriere dei Piccoli, 1964
The third boat, piloted by Emilio Barberi, hit the 8,324-ton Norwegian tanker Pericles. Faggioni’s boat hit a pier.
The 1954 Dino De Laurentiis action film, Siluri umani, released as “Human Torpedoes” in English-speaking markets, highlighted the MTMs of Xª Flottiglia MAS and the Suda Bay raid.
York, crippled, was beached with two of her crew dead, five men injured, and most of her below-deck machinery spaces full of water.
The British continued to use York as an AAA battery for another two months with her hull resting on the bottom of the Bay as her engineering gang tried to pump out and shore up her spaces in the hope of putting to sea for Alexandria and more repairs.
To provide power to her ship’s systems, the submarine HMS Rover tied up alongside and arranged electrical lines enough to work the big ship’s guns and communications. This, however, left her in a fixed position in an increasingly German part of the globe, which left her a target.
Various sources list a range of German air attacks by JU-88 bombers on 12, 21, 22, and 24 April– two of which caused further damage to the ship– with one such raid leaving a pair of divers working over the side on her broken hull dead from a near miss.
At the same time, some of the ship’s company were detailed to provide beach parties for the evacuation of Greece.
On 18 May, the party was over and York was hit and seriously damaged by a German JU-87 dive-bomber attack, ending her usefulness, at the time the largest surface ship chalked up by Stuka pilots (Hans-Ulrich Rudel would later be able to claim a kill on the Great War-era Soviet Battleship Marat/ex- Petropavlovsk in Leningrad in November).
With the endgame in Crete being written and the German airborne invasion starting on the 20th, York was abandoned and blown up in place on the 22nd, her remaining crew withdrawn to Egypt where the understrength Mediterranean Fleet was licking their wounds.
The hype
By June, the Italians outnumbered the British in the Eastern Med four operational battleships to two and with 11 cruisers stacked up against three; nonetheless, this would soon be rectified by coming events after December.
Sir Henry, York’s skipper, would go on to become the commander of the battleship Royal Sovereign, serve as an ADC to King George VI, become a member of the Bath in 1946, and retire as an admiral in 1951.
As a result of her damage from the Luftwaffe, the Germans claimed to have destroyed York in battle for the remainder of the war, although the Italian Navy cited their own MTM attack as her principal method of death. Half a dozen of one, six of the other, I suppose.
Both countries circulated images of her smashed hull and deck spaces for their purposes.
Ex. Yugoslavian MTB Dinara, now the Italian MS43 moored next to another warship in Suda Bay, Crete, circa April 1942. In the background, the sunken York.
Epilogue
After the war, the rusty hulk of York was raised and towed to Bari, where it was scrapped by an Italian shipbreaker in March 1952.
Her only sister, Exeter, would famously go toe-to-toe with the “pocket battleship” KMS Adm. Graf Spee in December 1939 and be left nearly crippled after seven 11.1-inch shells found a home in her spaces. Patched up, she would be sunk at the Java Sea by 8-inch Japanese shells in 1942.
York’s name was recycled in 1981 for a new Batch III Type 42 Destroyer, HMS York (D98), the last of her class. She was decommissioned in 2012 after more than three decades of hard service to the Crown and is the 12th in an exceptionally long line of HMS Yorks.
Type 42 Destroyer, HMS York (D98) making a turn on her 2005 Far East deployment. MOD Photo 45145563 by LA(Phot) Kelly Whybrow. She was broken up in Turkey in 2015, and the name “York” has not appeared on the RN List since.
As for the MTM drivers, the six Italian frogmen were picked up floating around Souda Bay by the British and kept as POWs until after the Italian armistice in 1944 although they would be decorated in absentia with the Medaglia d’Oro al Valor Militare, Italy’s highest military honor. Faggioni would become an admiral, working with COMSUBIN commandos after the war, and died in 1991.
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.
Note this official Christmas card of Kaiser Wilhelm II sent to Hugh, 5th Earl of Lonsdale in 1910. The card features a portrait of the Kaiser with his first grandson Wilhelm, eldest son of the Kaiser’s heir, Crown Prince Wilhelm. The card bears the Kaiser’s handwritten greetings in English.
IWMHU68361
Although the Kaiser fled his country for exile in Holland in November 1918 and never returned to Germany, a number of his sons and grandsons remained in the Vaterland, often falling back on the “family business” of becoming Army officers.
While the Crown Prince had nominally led an Army Group in the Great War (and was held by the French as a war criminal because of it in 1945), he was blackballed and kept under close Gestapo surveillance after 1933, lest he would go on to inspire monarchists.
Ironically, the Crown Prince’s brother, Prince August Wilhelm, was allowed to serve in the SA, reaching the rank of SA-Obergruppenführer. Another brother, Prince Oskar, who had been wounded twice in the great war, was allowed to join the Wehrmacht as a “Generalmajor zur Verfügung” (Major general, unassigned). Prince Louis Ferdinand, an aviation buff, flew in the recently-restored Luftwaffe.
Further, two of the Crown Prince’s sons, Prince Hubertus– who joined the Wehrmacht in 1934 and served as an officer in the 8th Infantry Regiment– and Prince Wilhelm, the young boy seen with his grandfather at the top, saw line service in WWII. Tragically, their first cousin, Prince Oskar’s son, Prince Oskar Wilhelm Karl Hans Kuno, was killed as a lieutenant in the opening act of the conflict on 5 September 1939 at Widawka in Poland, aged 24.
Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the former Kaiser’s favorite grandson and the former Crown Prince’s no. 1 son, died of wounds in a field hospital in Nivelles on 26 May 1940, aged 33. At the time, he was an Oberleutnant der Reserve in Kleffel’s 1. Infanterie-Division, serving as a company commander in the elite 1st Regiment.
The high profile of his death, and that of Prince Oskar Wilhelm’s death in Poland the previous September, led Hitler to issue the so-called Prinzenerlass, or “princes’ decree” which removed all of the remaining Hohenzollerns from the German military.
Nonetheless, they would not be the last of their line to die for Germany.
In 1977, Prince Louis Ferdinand Oskar Christian of Prussia, grandson of the Crown Prince and great-grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was killed while on maneuvers with the Bundeswehr, which he had joined in 1967 as a reserve officer. He was 33.
The Royal Armouries this week posted a great 6-minute short film. Shot from the first-person perspective, the viewer bumps into a shotgun-equipped Local Defense Volunteer– soon to be a Home Guardsman– in late 1940.
It is pretty informative, and entertaining.
Enjoy.
If you like the above, the National Army Museum has also been doing a similar program as part of the 75th VE Day Festival.
Check out this detail of the 1940s Tommy’s marching kit.
(Shorter than normal due to events beyond my control)
Warship Wednesday, May 20, 2020: The Long Pennant
National Archives photo 80-G-700448
Here we see the deck of the Independence-class light aircraft carrier USS Langley (CVL-27)on this day, 75 years ago, flying her homeward-bound pennant after spending one hell of a tour forward-deployed in the Pacific. As a rule, such pennants are only authorized for cruises lasting more than nine months, and Langley had managed almost twice that.
As noted by the Navy:
By tradition, the Homeward Bound Pennant is flown by ships that are on continuous overseas duty for nine months and returning to a U.S. port. The length of the pennant is one foot for each Sailor on the ship who has served on board while overseas in excess of nine months. It is divided vertically into two sections. Closest to the hoist is a blue field with one white star indicating nine months of service away from the U.S. An additional star is for each additional six months away. The remaining pennant is divided horizontally into halves, the upper being white and the lower being red. Upon the ship’s return to homeport, the blue portion of the pennant with the white star will be presented to the skipper while the remaining white and red half of the pennant will be divided equally among the officers and crew who served on the vessel for the prerequisite 270 days.
Built at New York Shipbuilding Corporation on a converted cruiser hull, our ship was originally to be the Cleaveland-class light cruiser USS Fargo (CL-85) but was converted to a light carrier named in tandem after the aviation pioneer Samuel Pierpont Langley, and the Navy’s first flattop, the converted collier “covered wagon” USS Langley (CV-1).
Commissioned 31 August 1943, the 11,000-ton carrier sailed for points west, and by 19 January 1944, she sailed from Pearl Harbor for her first overseas combat operation as part of then-RADM Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58, bound for the attack on the Marshall Islands.
For the next 16 months, she would be forward deployed across the Pacific, earning nine battle stars and a Navy Unit Commendation in the process.
Langley’s aircraft hit Japanese positions on Palau, Yap, Woleai, Caroline Islands, Saipan, Tinian, and Peleliu. She would mix it up in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, run amok off Formosa and the Pescadores, then support the liberation of the Philippines.
Task Group 38.3 enters Ulithi anchorage in a column, 12 December 1944, while returning from strikes on targets in the Philippines. Ships are (from front): Langley (CVL-27); Ticonderoga (CV-14); Washington (BB-56); North Carolina (BB-55); South Dakota (BB-57); Santa Fe (CL-60); Biloxi (CL-80); Mobile (CL-63); and Oakland (CL-95). Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives (photo # 80-G-301351).
Again, she would clash with the remnants of the Japanese surface fleet at the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea and the ensuing Battle off Cape Engaño, where her planes would help write the final chapter of the carriers Zuihō and Zuikaku, the latter being the only remaining flattop of the six that had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack.
She endured Typhoon Cobra, a week before Christmas 1944.
THE LANGLEY IN THE MIDST OF THE GREAT TYPHOON OF DECEMBER, 1944. Why are these sailors smiling? Perhaps they are happy not to be in the gun tub under the stacks – or wherever the crazy photographer is standing! M.D. “Pat” Donavan, who was a VT44 pilot, wrote, “We called it the Christmas Typhoon, and a lot of Christmas mail and packages were lost when the Hull, Spence, and Monahan, three DDs, capsized and were lost with all hands. As I recall, only the ship’s officers knew that the Langley was designed to take a 35-degree roll and actually went to 38. Fortunately, the word didn’t get around to the air group.” Photo courtesy and copyright of The USS Langley CVL-27 Association
Still chugging along, Langley went along for the raid on Indochina and occupied China in early 1945, where she caught a Japanese dive bomber’s deadly egg in the process, then turned towards Japan for strikes against the Home Islands to prep for taking Okinawa. Following operations for that scarred island, which included narrowly escaping crippling kamikaze strikes, she was allowed to retire homeward for repairs and modernization at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco– and broke out her homeward bound pennant shown at the top.
Due to the shipyard break, her shooting war ended on May 20 and she only returned to the Western Pacific under a U.S. flag for Magic Carpet voyages to bring the boys back. She would make two trips to the Pacific on such happy sorties and two further ones to Europe before Langley was decommissioned on 11 February 1947 in Philadelphia.
Refurbished and transferred on loan to France in 1951, she would serve De Gaulle for another decade as the French aircraft carrier LaFayette (R96), notably seeing combat off Indochina– a coastline she had already worked over in 1945– as well as in the struggle for Paris to retain her North African colonies.
The French aircraft carrier LAFAYETTE (R 96) former USS LANGLEY (CVL-27) at Mers el Kebir, Algeria, North Africa, 1962. Note the airwing of F4U Corsairs, TBM Avengers, and Piasecki H-21 Shawnee.
French Navy Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat launched from French carrier Lafayette off Indochina, 1956
Returned to the U.S. in 1963, she was scrapped, although relics of her remain.
Still, she had an epic 1944-45 deployment that is hard to beat.
CAPT. WALLACE (GOTCH) DILLON, COMMANDING OFFICER. The symbols painted on the side of the island represent 48 enemy aircraft shot down, 22 bombing missions, 3 warships, 8 merchant ships sunk, and 63 aircraft destroyed on the ground. Photo courtesy and copyright of The USS Langley CVL-27 Association
Specs:
Displacement: 11,000 long tons (11,000 t)
Length: 622 ft 6 in (189.74 m)
Beam: 109 ft 2 in (33.27 m)
Draft: 26 ft (7.9 m)
Speed: 31.6 kn (58.5 km/h; 36.4 mph)
Complement: 1,569 officers and men
Armament: 26 × Bofors 40 mm guns
Aircraft carried: 30-40
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International
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.
As a tie-in with the 50-year long West Papuan rebellion post today, the below image is of rag-tag Bougainville Revolutionary Army insurgents using some heavy hardware against local Papua New Guinea Defence Force units in 1995 during that country’s decade-long civil war.
Those with a sharp eye will notice the ordnance is a Japanese Type 96 AAA/AT 25mm cannon, a variant of the Hotchkiss 25mm GP gun that hasn’t had any spare parts or ammunition manufactured since 1945.
This thing, with a latter example shown still in use by the KMT in 1950s Taiwan
Leftover from WWII, the gun was reportedly scrounged from the remains of an old Japanese position and returned to working condition, fed with ammo that was in some cases dug from the jungles and beaches of yesteryear. While antiquated and no doubt cranky, it was still heavier than what the PNGDF had in terms of armored vehicles to oppose it, which amounted to some French AMX-10P APCs and French VABs.
Here we see a .32 ACP Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless self-loading pistol carried by General (later Field Marshal) Sir Gerald Templer, KG, GCB, CB, GCMG, KBE, DSO. The S/N (377681) dates to 1921 production.
UK National Army Museum NAM. 1998-01-118-2
Dubbed “The Smiling Tiger,” Sir Gerald commanded infantry and armored divisions, as well as the German Directorate of the Special Operations Executive, during the WWII and later went on to lead British forces during the Malayan Emergency, one of the few successful counter-insurgency operations undertaken by the Western powers during the Cold War.
He was also something of a gun buff.
General Sir Gerald Templer (left) testing a .45 inch De Lisle bolt action silenced carbine during a visit to 1st Battalion The Gordon Highlanders, Perak, 1952. He may very well have a Colt in his pocket.
The signed 1954 card in the pistol’s case reads:
“The .32 Colt revolver and ammunition, in this case, was one of about 20 purchased by me when I was GSO I (1(b)) at GHQ, BEF. It was necessary for some of my officers to/ have a small automatic in their pockets on a good many occasions. I carried this one throughout the War, and when I was High Commissioner and Director of Operations in Malaya it never left my side. It was under my pillow every night whilst I was in country, ready and cocked.”
Here we see the submarine Vesikko of the Finnish Navy surfacing in the Baltic, 1 August 1941, note her 20mm Madsen cannon, twin periscopes, and net cutter. Built as what could best be described as a demo model with help from a shady low-key U-boat concern, she went on to become Helsinki’s last submarine, an honor proudly held for the past seven decades.
Early Finn submarine efforts
Incorporated into the Tsarist Empire in 1809 as the Grand Duchy of Finland after a relatively one-sided war between Russia and Sweden, the region’s ports and inlets proved vital bases for the Imperial Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet for over a century with the Gulf of Finland essentially a Russian bathtub. As such, many of the Tsar’s small core of professional mariners hailed from the land.
The Tsarist Navy, between 1901 and 1917, fielded around 50 submarines, most in the Baltic, across 10 different classes which included not only domestic production centered in St. Petersburg/Petrograd but also American, German, and Italian-made boats as well. Many of these operated from Finnish ports during the Great War with mixed results and six of the seven Russian subs lost during the conflict went down in Baltic waters. Added to this were a bag of nine small British submarines of the C- and E-class which likewise operated from Finnish waters from 1915 onward.
These two facts made it clear that the Finns had a measure of early respect for the submarine, a weapon that had great utility in the cramped Baltic if used properly.
In late 1917, as Imperial Russia was falling apart and the Bolshevik government was actively courting the Germans for a separate peace treaty to exit the Great War, Finland broke away and declared independence. Meanwhile, the Germans made a move to ally themselves with newly-free Helsinki, a flip that led the British to scuttle all nine of their Baltic-deployed boats at the outer roads of the fortress island of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg) off Helsinki on 3 April 1918 and evac their crews overland. Three days later, the Russians still in relative possession of four late-model American/Canadian-built Holland 602-type boats (AG-11, AG-12, AG-15, and AG-16) sent their vessels to the bottom of the harbor in Hango, another Finnish port.
This left newly-independent Finland with no less than 13 wrecked submarines in their coastal regions, two of which, AG-12 and AG-16, were deemed to be the least damaged and were raised in 1919 for possible use by the new country. The two boats lingered onshore for a decade while a variety of submarine experts from Britain, Germany, and the U.S. cycled through to evaluate returning them back into service. In the end, the two boats were too far gone and were sent to the breakers by 1929 in favor of new construction.
Guten morgen, Unterseeboot shoppers!
This led to the curious operation from Finland’s Turku-based A/B Crichton-Vulcan Oy shipyard to produce a series of small coastal submarines–the first warships to be built in independent Finland. The boats were designed by the Dutch front company Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw (IvS), which was, in fact, a dummy funded by the German Weimar-era Reichsmarine using design assets from German shipyards AG Vulcan, Krupp-Germaniawerft, and AG Weser to keep Berlin in the sub-making biz while skirting the ban on such activity by the Versailles treaty.
IvS had previously built boats and shared technology with Turkey, Spain, and the Soviet Union before they moved to start making boats in Finland in 1926. Dubbed a “Tarnorganisation” or camouflage organization by German historians, IvS had one of its principal administrators former German Korvettenkapitän Karl Bartenbach, who had been the Kaiser’s submarine training boss during the Great War.
The first three Finnish-built boats, the 500-ton/208-foot Vetehinen (Merman) class subs, were based on the German WWI Type UB III and Type UC III submarines and served as an early prototype for Kreigsmarine’s later Type VII submarines, the most numerous U-boat type of WWII. All three were constructed side-by-side and were operational by 1931, with IvS training their crews. Their names: Vetehinen (builder’s hull CV 702), Vesihiisi (hull CV 703), and Iku-Turso (hull CV 704).
Then came the tiny 115-ton/106-foot submarine minelayer Saukko (Otter), designed to operate on Lake Lagoda– which was shared by the Soviet Union and Finland– built by Hietalahti in Helsinki.
In this period, Bartenbach, still officially furloughed from the German Navy, was serving in the Finnish Navy directly as an advisor.
These early boats had extensive lessons-learned knowledge gleaned by IvS experts who were reserve Reichsmarine officers during trails and shakedown periods.
This brings us to our little Vesikko.
Enter CV 707, err Vesikko.
Originally constructed as IvS hull CV 707, our feature submarine was built slowly between August 1931 and October 1933 in what Jane’s at the time called “private speculation” and “Is actually a German design.” The Finns had the first right of refusal on the boat when it came up for sale, open until 1937.
Submarine CV-707 at Crichton-Vulcan shipyard, shortly after sea trial performed by German submarine specialists from IvS, summer 1933. Her unofficial skipper at the time was Werner “Fips” Fürbringer, the Kaiserliche Marine ace who sank 101 ships during the Great War. He was later promoted to the rank of Konteradmiral during World War II.
Some 134-feet long and displacing just 250-tons when surfaced, she only needed a small 16-man crew but carried a trio of 21-inch torpedo tubes with two spare fish stored inside the hull for reloads.
Her trio of torpedo tubes. Finnish caption “Vesikon torpedoa kunnostetaan. Kirkkomaa 1941.07.27” SA-Kuva 29498
While the Germans used her to test their first generation of G-series torpedoes, the Finns would equip their submarines with British T/30 and T/33 type fish.
The attack periscope
Capable of floating in 13.5-feet of clear Baltic water, she could submerge in as little as 40 feet. As it wasn’t intended that she would operate outside of the narrow shallow sea, her dive limit of 300 feet wasn’t an issue. Able to make 13 knots on the surface and 7 submerged, her 1,500nm range would enable a war patrol of up to two weeks. Simple, she had an all-welded single hull with no watertight compartments.
A small, somewhat cramped ship, Germans submariners would dub her type as einbaum (dugout canoe).
Submarine Vesikko in Suomenlinna in her Finnish warpaint after 1937, via Submarine Vesikko Museum collections. She started off simply as CV707.
While deadly, her design could also be used in another capacity– training.
CV 707, as a private boat, was at the disposal of IvS submarine crews operating in Finnish waters and, within a year, the updated design was under construction in Germany as the Type IIA coastal submarine, with KMS U-1 officially ordered 2 February 1935 and commissioned four months later.
German submarine U 1 on trials, 1935, the country’s first “official” unterseeboot since 1919. Note the resemblance to CV707, down to the small tower with twin periscopes and serrated net cutter design.
The resemblance to the Finnish boat is striking.
In all, the Germans would construct 50 Type IIs by 1940 and the type would serve a vital training mission for the Kreigsmarine with a half-dozen later broken down and shipped overland to operate against the Soviets in the Black Sea during WWII.
German U-1 type submarines, passing in review in line-ahead (formation) before Grand Admiral Raeder. Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann, 1939. NYPL collection
Type II submarines of Kriegsmarine 21. Unterseebootsflottille Flotilla, Pillau
At the same time, sub expert Bartenbach had been recalled to serve in the newly formed Kriegsmarine in March 1934–after an official 14-year break– and promptly put on the uniform of a Kapitän zur See. Serving in vital submarine development roles, he would retire as a rear admiral in 1938.
With Parliamentary approval, the Finnish Navy purchased the one-off CV707 in January 1936 and dubbed her Vesikko in May, putting her to work as their fifth, and as it would turn out final submarine.
Submarine Vesikko’s entire crew. In Finnish service, she would go to sea with between 16 and 20 men. In German service, the type, filed with trainees, would usually carry 24 to 30
Soon she was involved in a war, the November 1939-March 1940 Winter War with the invading Soviets, during which she patrolled the Gulf of Finland on the lookout for Red warships until iced in by mid-December.
Sukellusvene Vesikko vauhdissa. Sa-kuva 81184
Allowed to be retained after the tense cease-fire with Moscow, Vesikko again became active in what the Finns have called the Continuation War, their limited involvement against the Soviet Union from June 1941 onward. Vesikko sank the 4,100-ton Soviet transport Vyborg on 3 July 1941 with a single torpedo and survived a resulting depth charge attack to boot. It would be her only significant victory.
Finnish submarine Vesikko with Madsen 20mm cannon 19 July 1941 Sa-Kuva 80467
Restricted from operations during the Baltic winter, she would spend the summers of 1942 and 1943 on patrol and reconnaissance duties but, as the Soviet Navy typically did not venture out of Krondstadt or besieged Leningrad, where they were protected by rings of nets and minefields, Vesikko did not chalk up any more kills. In fact, Vyborg was the only surface ship ever sunk by a Finnish submarine (although in 1942 Vesihiisi sank the Soviet submarine S 7, Iku-Turso sank the Soviet sub Shtsh 320, and Vetehinen accounted for Shtsh 305 though a mixture of torpedos and ramming).
By the summer of 1944, with the war turning against the Finns and their German allies on the Eastern Front, Vesikko was used to shepherd evacuation transports in Karelia as the Red Army surged forward.
In September, as Helsinki worked out a second cease-fire with Stalin in four years, the so-called Moscow Armistice, the Finnish Navy was sidelined and restricted to port, but spared destruction– for awhile at least. In January 1945, the Allied Control Commission ordered Finnish submarines to disarm and Vesikko’s ammunition and torpedoes were landed for what turned out to be the final time.
The 1946-47 Jane’s still listed Finland with five submarines, including our Vesikko.
As part of the multilateral Paris Peace Treaties that were signed in February 1947, Finland had to temporarily hand over control of their port at Porkkala and cede the Barents Sea port of Petsamo (now Pechenga) which had been occupied since 1944 anyway. There were also naval limits, which included eliminating her submarine arm as well as her largest surface ship, the 4,000-ton “lighthouse battleship” Väinämöinen.
While Väinämöinen would be towed to Leningrad and remained in Soviet hands, renamed Vyborg, until her scrapping in 1966, the Finns were allowed to dispose of their submarines themselves, a process, true to their nature of Sisu, they quietly slow-walked.
By 1953, the disarmed Vetehinen, Vesihiiden, Iku-Turso, and Sauko were sold abroad for breaking while Vesikko had been hauled out and stored at Valmet Oy’s shipyard in Helsinki, where she would remain until 1963 as the Finns made overtures to put her back into service.
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.
USS Nevada (BB-36) survived the hell of Pearl Harbor and was famously the only battleship able to get underway that day. Repaired and returned to service, she earned seven battlestars from France to Okinawa and, in the end, was subjected to far more damage post-war.
Nevada arrived at Bikini atoll on 31 May 1946 and was one of 84 targets used in Crossroads. The tests consisted of two detonations, the first Test Able, an airburst, on 1 July, and the second, Test Baker, an underwater explosion, on 25 July. Despite extensive damage and contamination, the ship survived the blasts and returned to Pearl Harbor to be decommissioned on 29 August. She was sunk by the cumulative damage of surface gunfire, aerial bombs and torpedoes, and rocket fire off Hawaii on 31 July 1948. Nevada was stricken from the Navy Register on 12 August 1948.
Nevada being sunk in ordnance tests off Pearl Harbor on 31 July 1948. (U.S. Navy Photograph 80-G-498257 National Archives and Records Administration, Still Pictures Division, College Park, Md.)
Now, over 71 years since she took her plunge to the ocean floor over 15,000 feet down, she has been discovered and documented.
“SEARCH, Inc. and Ocean Infinity are pleased to announce the discovery of USS Nevada, one of the U.S. Navy‘s longest-serving battleships. The wreck was located 3 miles deep in the Pacific during a joint expedition that combined SEARCH, Inc.‘s maritime archaeologists and Ocean Infinity‘s robotic technology and deep-water search capability. The veteran battleship, which survived Pearl Harbor, German artillery, a kamikaze attack, and two atomic blasts, is a reminder of American perseverance and resilience.”
The stern of the wreck has the remains of “36” and “140.” Nevada’s designation was BB-36 and the 140 was painted on the structural “rib” at the ship’s stern for the atomic tests to facilitate post-blast damage reporting. Photo courtesy of Ocean Infinity / SEARCH, Inc.
By the end of World War II, Nevada carried thirty-two 40mm Bofors antiaircraft guns. The airplane had changed naval warfare and guns like this helped the crew fight off enemy attacks from the air. This 40mm gun, still in its gun “tub,” is mounted next to a partly fallen, standard-issue Mark 51 “gun director” used by the crew to direct the fire of these guns. Photo courtesy of Ocean Infinity / SEARCH, Inc.
USS Nevada, like other ships at Bikini, was a floating platform for military equipment and instruments designed to see what the atomic bomb would do to them. One of four tanks placed on Nevada, this is either a Chaffee or Pershing tank that survived a 23-kiloton surface blast and a 20-kiloton underwater blast and remained on Nevada until the ship was sunk off Hawai’i on July 31, 1948. Photo courtesy of Ocean Infinity / SEARCH, Inc.
I’ve always been a fan of sweetheart grips on handguns. You know, the WWII trench art that was taking bits of broken plexiglass from viewports and aircraft canopies and forming them into grip panels for M1911s or similar period handguns.
Thus:
Likewise, I’ve been a fan of bayonets since, well, forever, so this German Gottlieb Hammesfahr/Solingen K98 bayonet listing I just stumbled across on eBay caught my eye, for obvious reasons.
