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Warship Wednesday 16 September 2026: The Submarine Altered Across My Bows and I Rammed Her
Department of National Defense / National Archives of Canada, PA-105829.
Above we see the mighty Flower (Trillium) class corvette HMCS Moose Jaw (K 164)steaming with a bone in her teeth off Halifax, Nova Scotia, in June 1942. The 205-foot brawler, along with her sister HMCS Chambly, sank the German Type IXC U-501 via ramming and depth charges off Greenland some 85 years ago this week.
The U-boat was the first of 30 German subs busted by the RCN during WWII.
The Flowers
A handy little sub-buster that could be cranked out in record time but was still very capable of escorting slow-moving merchantmen from the Americas to Europe during the Battle of the Atlantic, the Admiralty would order more than 300 Gladiolus/Flower-class corvettes from 1939 onward.
Essentially a stretched version of the Smith’s Dock’s 582 GRT, 160-foot steam-powered whaler design built in 1936 for the Southern Whaling & Sealing Co. Ltd (SWSC), they were single-screw vessels powered by a pair of cylindrical Scotch marine boilers feeding a single VTE engine that could, when turning at maximum RPMs, generate a theoretical 2,750 h.p., enough to push the little tub 16 ish knots while an economical load of 230 tons of fuel oil would get them 3,500nm at 12 knots, enough to make it across the Atlantic on the 2,700-mile Halifax to Liverpool route with some fuel left for maneuvering.
The Flowers were based on the SWSC’s Southern Pride, shown here in her pre-war whaler service. The vessel would be requisitioned by the RN (K 249) in 1940 and lost in 1944 off Freetown.
Using the simpler boiler pattern and including enough space for a crew of 80 officers and men (later to swell to as much as 110), the dimensions shifted from a 160-foot whaler to a 205-foot corvette. With a correspondingly wide 33-foot beam, they had a stubby 1:6 length-beam ratio.
Armament was slight: a single 4″/45 BL Mk IX forward, a 40mm/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII pom-pom on a “bandstand” platform aft, a couple of depth charge throwers and two depth charge racks over the stern, with provision for up to 40 ash cans. They also had a perfectly adequate Type 123 or Type 128 sonar and (eventually) a Type 271 or Type 286 radar.
Of course, there were extensive modifications to this and tweaks across the massive production line, but you get the idea. Late-war fits included as many as 70 depth charges, a Hedgehog ASW device, and a half-dozen 20mm Oerlikons.
Drawing of a Flower Class Corvette showing the ship’s layout by John W. McKay – 1992. Source: “Corvettes of the Royal Canadian Navy 1939-1945” by Ken MacPherson and Marc Milner
Flower-class HMCS Timmins (K 223) plans
Built to merchant (Lloyds) standards rather than to those of the Admiralty, they could be churned out rapidly at about any small coastwise commercial shipyard, and several dozen shipyards participated in the program in the UK and Canada.
Some 13 Canadian yards alone (Burrard, Canadian Vickers, Collingwood, Davie & Sons, Davie SB, Kingston SB, Marine Industries, Midland SY, Morton Eng. & D.D. Co, Port Arthur SB, Victoria Machinery, and Yarrows Esquimalt) made a whopping 122 Flowers during the conflict.
The average construction time was 6-8 months, a process often sped up by the fact that the armament and sensors would be installed post-delivery at a nearby naval yard, sometimes in stages, a problem that meant some Flowers had to deploy for months before they received all their gear.
No less than 111 Flowers were assigned to the RCN at one point or another, of which seven were canceled while still under construction, 80 were built from the start for the Canadians, and 24 RN corvettes (many of which were built in Canadian yards) were transferred on loan.
RCN corvette in drydock. Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 4950910
Three Flower-class corvettes tied up at St. John’s.
This all brings us to…
Meet Moose Jaw
Our subject is the only Canadian warship named for the town of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, which has the nickname of “Canada’s Most Notorious City” due to its Prohibition-era rum-running history.
Moose Jaw, Sask. Circa 1909, by Sidney Turk. Library and Archives Canada, 3315697
The future HMCS Moose Jaw (K 164) was one of 28 corvettes (19 Flowers/modified Flowers and nine Castles) ordered from the Great Lakes firm of Collingwood Shipyards Ltd, in Collingwood, Ontario.
Laid down 12 August 1940 as Yard No. 94, she was constructed directly alongside her sisters HMCS Galt (K 163) and Battleford (K 165).
Moose Jaw side-launched into Lake Ontario on 9 April 1941, the first anniversary of the invasion of Norway and Denmark. She was christened by Miss Jane Cory, daughter of Lt.Col. Robert Young Cory, V.D., 48th Highlanders of Canada.
Shipyard workers drive in wedges preparatory to the launch of HMCS Moose Jaw at Collingwood Shipyards, Ltd., Collingwood, Ontario. (NAC, PA 204282)
The launch of HMCS Moose Jaw at Collingwood Shipyards Ltd., Collingwood, Ontario – 9 April 1941.
Moose Jaw in the water, 9 April 1941. (NAC, PA 204283)
She was commissioned on 19 June 1941 at Montreal.
Moose Jaw’s first skipper was LT Frederick Ernest Grubb, RCN, a regular who shipped out on the monitor HMS Erebus as a cadet in 1927, followed by tours on the battleships HMS Revenge and Warspite. His first RCN ship was the destroyer HMCS Vancouver in 1934 as a sub-lou, before serving as a full lou on HMCS Skeena and St Laurent, the latter of which had badly damaged the German submarine U-52 on a three-hour pursuit and depth charging while defending the Halifax-to-UK Convoy HX 60 in August 1940– almost the first Canadian sub kill of the war.
Her namesake city passed the hat and sent a box of radios to be installed for the morale of the crew, as noted by the May 1941 Moose Jaw Times Herald: “The radios, one each for the forward and after crews and the officers, have been shipped to Halifax with the compliments and good wishes of the city of Moose Jaw.”
Part of the RCN’s 72 1939-40 Programme Flowers, Moose Jaw had the earlier fit of armament for the class: a single shielded 4″/45 BL Mk IX forward, two twin Vickers .50 cals, two twin .303-caliber Vickers machine guns, two depth charge throwers, and two depth charge racks with total capacity of 40 “ash cans.”
The only image I can find of her during the war that shows her foremast has the RCN’s REL-made, manually rotated 1.5m SW1C (Surface Warning, 1st Canadian) radar array installed, which was likely added at Saint John, NB, in June 1942.
War!
Arriving at Halifax in late June 1941, Moose Jaw spent six weeks working up in the waters off Nova Scotia, then tagged along with Flower-class sisters HMCS Prescott and Kenogami on Convoy HX 146 for three days out of Halifax to transfer to the Newfoundland Escort Force at St. John’s.
Once there, under CDR “Chummy” Prentice’s local control as Senior Officer, Canadian Corvettes, Moose Jaw and sisters had a hill to climb in training and meeting Chummy’s exercise program.
As noted by No Higher Purpose: The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War:
Although Moose Jaw was one of the very few corvettes commanded by a regular force officer, Lieutenant F.E. Grubb, RCN, most of his inexperienced crew, missing several key specialist personnel, “was seasick for the first four days at sea, some of them being quite incapable of carrying out their duties.”
Then came an emergency call to go to the rescue of the struggling Convoy SC 42, which had left Sydney, Nova Scotia on 30 August with 64 slow (7-knot convoy speed) merchant ships bound for Liverpool under the protection of four escorts. The lumbering flotilla was discovered by the 14 U-boats of Wolfpack Gruppe Markgraf off Southeast Greenland on 9 September, with U-81 sinking the straggling Empire Springbuck (5,591 GRT) that morning. While depth-charge-carrying PBY Catalina flying boats from Iceland kept the wolves away during the day, night proved a horror story. By the end of the 10th, the Markgraf wolves claimed another eight steamers.
The slaughter led C-in-C Western Approaches to sortie reinforcements from Iceland (36 hours away) and even strip escorts from the safely steaming HX 147 and ON 13 Convoys to sail to SC 42’s aid.
From off St. John, Chummy was ordered to rush his proven HMCS Chambly (K 116) and his new Moose Jaw, which were at sea on exercises, at best possible speed to the battle. Arriving just 24 hours after they left Newfoundland, the two Flowers saw the signal rockets shooting up from the struggling merchant vessels under attack around 2100 on the 10th in the Denmark Strait south of Angmagsalik, Greenland.
Soon, Chambly had an ASDIC contact 700 yards off and was turning to drop charges, which had an immediate effect.
As detailed in the RN interrogation report of U-501’s crew:
“U 501” was at a depth of 40 meters (131 ft), and the explosion of the depth charges caused considerable damage inside the U-Boat, a number of instruments being smashed and the after hydroplane being put out of action; both the ordinary and the emergency lighting systems ceased to function.
Prisoners claim to have heard two more crashes in the control room, followed by a smell of gas given off by the action of water on potassium cartridges. The valves of the U-Boat were said to have been damaged, and the depth gauge was put out of action.
While Chambly turned to make another depth-charge attack, the damaged U-boat, U-501 (KrvKpt. Hugo Forster), surfaced near Moose Jaw. The banged-up submarine attempted a hasty withdrawal, and Moose Jaw opened fire, but an overexcited sailor in the 4-inch gun’s crew jammed its mechanism.
Then came something really special.
As described by Grubb in his report from Moose Jaw:
The next few minutes was spent in chase … At one time four of the submarine’s crew made a determined move to the after gun. As our own gun was still jammed, no action could be taken except to increase speed and try to ram before they could fire. This I did, although the chance was small; fortunately, someone on the conning tower ordered them back. The .5-inch machine guns were bearing at the time, but when the trigger was pressed, they failed to fire. A subsequent check showed no defects, so I assume that in the excitement the crew failed to cock them.
I managed to go alongside the submarine, starboard side to, and called on her to surrender. To my surprise, I saw a man make a magnificent leap from the submarine’s deck into our waist [the mid-part of the corvette], and the remainder of her crew move to do likewise. Not being prepared to repel boarders at that moment, I sheered off. The submarine altered across my bows and I rammed her [a glancing blow that, fortunately, did not seriously damage the corvette] …
After the impact she moved across my bows at reduced speed. The gun being cleared by that time, I opened fire again. The crew jumped into the sea as soon as the first round went, and I ordered fire to be stopped. I subsequently learned that the shell had passed low enough over the conning tower to knock down the men who were standing thereon.
The man who I had seen jump on board turned out to be the submarine’s commanding officer. He was badly shaken, and when he was brought to me on the bridge appeared to be worried at the amount of light we were showing in order to pick up survivors.
While Chambly put a nine-man boarding team aboard U-501 under Lt. Ted Simmons looking for code books, it was reported by the boarding party that a large hole was seen, about four feet in diameter, where the U-Boat’s casing joined the hull on the port quarter. It appeared that the U-Boat’s port after hydroplane had been shorn off.
The boat sank before they could get very far, losing a man in the process, Stoker William Irvin Brown, RCNVR, while Simmons, sucked out of the conning tower, almost perished.
In all, U-501 lost 10 men.
On both the skipper’s and the boat’s first patrol, U-501’s commander had only one vessel to their credit, a 2,000-ton Norwegian steamer which required six torpedoes and 40 shells from the boat’s deck gun, before being sent to the bottom by Moose Jaw and Chambly 35 days after leaving Trondheim. A regular who had joined the Reichsmarine in 1923 and served aboard surface ships– he was on the cruiser Blücher when she was sunk in a cold Norwegian fjord in 1941– Förster was nonetheless a very green 37-year-old submarine commander.
From the RN crew interrogation:
He was transferred fairly recently to U-Boats and took a shortened U-Boat course. He refused to go into any details of his recent career, but it was established that the first and last cruise of “U 501” was also his first and last cruise as Captain of a U-Boat, although he may have been on a war cruise in another U-Boat under instruction as a prospective Captain. His lack of experience, his cowardice, and other defects were bitterly criticized by his officers and men, some of whom went so far as to threaten to take vengeance into their own hands should Förster not be adequately punished by Court Martial after the war. According to his crew, Förster not only surrendered without a fight, but subsequently thought solely of his own skin, and not of the fate of his ship, nor of the lives of his men, eleven of whom were drowned. He was the first to desert his U-Boat and the only man to jump from her to the British corvette [Moose Jaw] without even getting wet, let alone having to swim for some time before being rescued. Later, when visiting his men, he offered his hand to his Chief Quartermaster, a man of fourteen years’ service in the German Navy, who refused to shake hands with him.
The captain of “U 501” explained his precipitate leap from his U-Boat by stating that he felt impelled to get aboard “Moosejaw” at once in order to insist on the British rescuing his men; otherwise, he added, the German crew might have been left to drown. His explanation, while failing to convince the British, succeeded in infuriating his own men into a state of high blood pressure.
Moose Jaw and Chambly, having completed the rescue of U-501’s survivors, joined the convoy at 2315, with the former soon stopping to pick up survivors from the lost British steamer Berury. Moose Jaw and sister HMCS Kenogami (K 125) rescued Berury’s master, 36 crew members and four gunners, only losing one to the sea. Berury’s captain informed Grubb that he had been unable to remove the confidential books from the bridge of his ship and, with seas too high to board the vessel, Moose Jaw riddled the hull with 66 shells from her 4-inch gun (33 HE, 33 SAP) to help speed the sinking along.
The two Flowers would spend the next week riding shotgun towards the British Isles. SC 42 made it to Liverpool on 20 September, after losing 16 ships totaling 68,259 GRT.
Besides U-501, U-207 was sent to the bottom with all hands by the destroyers HMS Leamington and Veteran of the 2nd Escort Group out of Iceland, while HMCS Skeena and Kenogami had severely damaged U-85.
Moose Jaw had 29 prisoners (three commissioned officers, two midshipmen, and 24 ratings) along with 35 merchant seamen from torpedoed ships on board when she made port.
In the aftermath of the SC 42 convoy fight, the Admiralty’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Division classed the defense of SC 42 as “valiant” and praised the destruction of U-501 by Chambly and Moose Jaw. Chummy Prentice and Ted Simmons earned a DSO and DSC, respectively, while our LT Grubb was Mentioned in Dispatches.
With her ASDIC and bow busted because of ramming U-501, she was put in for 10 days of patchwork at Greenock for repairs.
The corvette operated on ASW patrols between St. John’s and Iceland for the rest of 1941 and into 1942, operating with sisters HMCS Chicoutimi, Sherbrooke, Berne, Brandon, Rosthern, and Morden. During this time, she clocked in briefly on other eastbound SC convoys, including SC 58 and SC 64, as well as westbound Liverpool-to-Halifax Convoys ON 29, ON 36, ON 48, and ON 60.
On 9 February 1942, while escorting convoy ON-60, the Free French Flower-class sister FS Alysse (K 100) was torpedoed by the German submarine U-654 and eventually sank. The Moose Jaw and HMCS Hepatica took 34 men as survivors, including the wounded skipper, LdV Jacques Pépin Lehalleur, while 36 men were lost to the sea.
Free French Corvette Alysse (K-100), torpedoed in the North Atlantic by U-654, 9 February 1942. HMCS Hepatica visible in the distance. Photo taken from HMCS Moose Jaw by L/S Ian Butters, RCNVR.
Moose Jaw then ran aground on the south entrance to St. John’s harbor on 19 February while en route to join convoy HX.176, and required repairs to fix busted seams at Saint John, New Brunswick until 25 June. This resulted in the reassignment of her skipper at the time, T/Lt. Henry Drummond Campsie, RCNR, who had taken over from Grubb the previous December.
Her third skipper, arriving on Valentine’s Day 1942, was T/Lt. Lewis Dennis Quick, RCNR, who would remain in command into early 1944.
The ship’s company of Moose Jaw in Saint John, New Brunswick, 19 March 1942, likely with skipper T/Lt. Lewis Dennis Quick, RCNR, forward. (NAC, PA 204274)
Dispatched to join the Western Local Escort Force, Moose Jaw was once again on North Atlantic Convoy duty, clocking in on westbound ON 109, ON 116, ON 123, ON 129, and ON 133, as well as eastbound SC 93, SC 97, SC 100, SC 103, and SC 107.
On 3 November 1942, while escorting Convoy SC 107, sisters Moose Jaw and Algoma (K 127) engaged the marauding U-704 and U-89 of Wolfpack Gruppe Veilchen with star shells and depth charges, forcing both sharks to break contact. Still, SC 107 was a rough convoy fight, losing 15 of 42 merchant ships to Donitz’s raiders, some 82,817 tons of shipping, while the Germans only lost two subs, both to RCAF patrol bombers.
Then came the Torch landings in North Africa, with Moose Jaw joining sisters Algoma and Regina, actively escorting convoys to and from England to Gibraltar and Tunisia between November 1942 and March 1943. These included Med-bound KMS 5G, KMS 6G, KMS 8G, and UGS 5 as well as Liverpool-bound MKS 4 and MKS 9. Regina bagged the Italian coastal submarine Avorio north-west of Philippeville, Algeria during this period.
After this, Moose Jaw was sent back home to join Quebec Force/Gaspe Force for escort duties in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
During a December 1943 to March 1944 refit at Liverpool, NS, she was modernized, and her forecastle was extended along with a sheet of over 30 modifications and additions, including increased accommodations, watertight lockers for the fighting equipment, and additional voice pipes and electric buzzers for communication within the ship.
By this stage of the war, Moose Jaw carried her 4-incher, a 40mm 2-pounder QF Mk VIII, four 20mm Oerlikons, a 24-rocket Hedgehog ASW spigot mortar system, and room for as many as 72 depth charges. She also sported a more advanced Type 271 radar and a Type 123 sonar.
A Hedgehog ASWRL on board HMCS Moose Jaw, Halifax, May 1st, 1944. While 294 Flowers were completed, the Hedgehog was far from standard kit across the class. Department of National Defense / National Archives of Canada, PA-112918.
Two ratings in front of Moose Jaw’s 4inch gun. FPS MJW0004
Moose Jaw had legendary gun shield art
By May 1944, Moose Jaw was sent to the British Isles as part of the buildup for the Normandy invasion, one of 62 documented RCN warships involved in D-Day.
Assigned to the escort force as one of the 70-odd corvettes under Western Forces Command out of Milford Haven and Portsmouth, Moose Jaw was soon running small convoys from Barry on the Bristol Channel across the English Channel to the Seine Bay in France, a sector still very hot with German S-boots, U-boats, human torpedoes, and aircraft.
These EBC/FBC convoys were small and lightly escorted, for instance, with EBC 43 seeing Moose Jaw depart Barry with 19 merchants on 17 July 1944 with only the old (circa 1916) destroyer HMS Walker to help shepherd the group. They were short, 200-mile/three-day runs, but they were always a pucker factor. By September, Moose Jaw had run 10 convoys across the Channel in such fashion and lived to tell the tale.
Shifting to Escort Group 41 out of Plymouth in December 1944, Moose Jaw escorted coastal BTC (Milford Haven – Southend/Thames Estuary) and TBC (Southend/Thames Estuary – Milford Haven) convoys until the end of the war, logging 15 of each. These coastwise four-day/450nm milk runs were very small indeed, typically just a few merchant vessels hugging the 10-fathom line with Moose Jaw seaward as the sole escort.
Don’t think this work was low risk, as even in this late stage of the war, “Jerry” was still about. On 28 February 1945, Moose Jaw rescued six survivors from the British merchant ship Norfolk Coast, which had been torpedoed and sunk by U-1302 south-west of Strumble Head.
By the end of the war, the little corvette had logged no less than 66 convoys of all sorts. She earned battle honors for Atlantic 1941-1943, Normandy 1944, and English Channel 1944-1945.
Not all her sisters were that fortunate. No less than seven were lost during the war, including Levis, Charlottetown, and Shawinigan to U-boats; Albernie, Weyburn, and Regina to mines; and Louisburg to air attack.
Moose Jaw was paid off from the RCN on 8 July 1945 at Sorel, Quebec, then sold for scrapping in September 1949 and broken up at Hamilton, Ontario.
Moose Jaw’s plank owner skipper, who commanded her during the U-501 attack, went on to command the HMCS Charny (Z 26) through November 1942 and ended the war at the Toronto shore establishment HMCS York, a site that trained 14,000 RCN members during the conflict. Post-war, he shifted to the HMCS Naden shore establishment at Esquimalt, BC, and went on to pen several scholarly works, including Naval Customs and Social Practices. He retired as a captain in 1954 and passed in 1985 at Victoria, aged 74.
Grubb, looking very much like Brendan Fraser’s uncle
Captain James Douglas “Chummy” Prentice, RCN, DSO, DSC, was on the scene for the sinking of at least three more U-boats and retired in 1946 as ADC to the Governor General of Canada. He passed in Saanichton, BC, in 1979.
As for the man who jumped from his U-boat to Moose Jaw’s deck during the fight for Convoy SC-42, KvtKpn. Hugo Förster of U-501 spent the following three years in Canadian POW camps, then was repatriated in January 1945 in poor health as part of a prisoner exchange. He committed suicide just weeks after returning to war-ravaged Germany.
Of Moose Jaw’s classmates, the last of her Collingwood-built sisters, HMCS Barrie (K 138), survived until 1972, serving with the Argentine Navy as the survey ship Capitan Canepa.
The final Canadian Flower afloat, HMCS Sackville, remained in service first as a controlled minelayer, then as a survey ship with the RCN into the 1980s, and is a fixture on the Halifax waterfront, complete in WWII livery.
Sackville via Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, please, if you are ever in Halifax, pay her a visit.
Thanks for reading!
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
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Here we see, some 85 years ago this month, a Finnish dragoon (Rakuuna) on horseback, 12th of September 1941, near Tsalkki-Suojärvi on the Russo-Finnish border during the Continuation War between the two countries, which saw Finland allied with Germany.
Photo by Heikki Aho, SA Kuva Image number 47915
Photo by Heikki Aho, SA Kuva Image number 47916
The above dragoon was likely from Finland’s oldest cavalry regiment, the Nyland Regiment of Dragoons, or the Uudenmaan rakuunarykmentti (URR).
While you wouldn’t think of Finland, with its dense forests, rugged coastline, and frozen north, as good cavalry country, the country has a horse soldier tradition going back over 400 years.
Finns under the Swedish Crown
The Swedes formed the Uusimaa Riders (Nylands ryttare), along with the Viborg (Viborgs läns kavalleriregemente), and Karelian Cavalry Regiments (Karelska kavalleriregementet) as far back as 1618, when Karelia (the region north of what is now St. Petersburg around the White Sea and Lakes Ladoga and Onega) and Finland were firmly under the Swedish crown.
Hakkapeliitta, Finnish light cavalryman of the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)
These rugged light horsemen in blue and yellow uniforms fought throughout the Ingrian War and Thirty Years War then later morphed into the Uusimaa and Hämeenlinna Dragoon Regiment (Nylands och Tavastehus läns dragonregemente) and the Karelian Dragoon Corps (Karelska dragonkåren) in 1721-1724 for another 80 years of tough service against the Russians, Sweden’s traditional enemy from 1475 onwards (the two countries fought each other something like 15 times between 1475 and 1809, periods always bracketed by uneasy peaces and a frontier filled with breaches, smugglers, and bandits).
Swedish Karelian Dragoon Corps (Karelska dragonkåren)
Assorted Finnish dragoons in Swedish service in the early 1700s-1800s, all from the NYPL’s Vinkhuizen Collection.
These storied units were all disbanded in 1809 after the territories were lost to Tsar Alexander I.
Russia’s ‘Finnish’ Dragoon lineage
Going back to 1806, even before the country was a Grand Duchy of Russia, ceded to the latter as a prize of war in 1809 by the Swedes, the “Finnish Dragoon Regiment” was established in Vitebsk– some 400 miles south of anything that can be considered Finland, likely without a single officer or dragoon who spoke Finnish.
Made from a squadron drawn from five other Russian line cavalry regiments, it was soon fighting the French (1807), then the Swedes (1808), then the French again (1812-14), then the Poles (1830s) and the French one more time (in the Crimea at the Black River) before renamed as the 13th Dragoon Regiment (Field Marshal Count Minich’s) in 1860.
The next Finnish Dragoon Regiment was actually raised in Finland in 1889 in the Karelian town of Villmanstrand (now Lappeenranta), with its first colonel the Helsinki-born Oskar Theodor Schauman (the latter a figure in the Finnish military after the country gained independence in 1918).
Officers and dragoons of the Finnish Dragoon Regiment 1890s-1900
Short-lived, it was disbanded in 1901 due to pro-Russian reforms that included getting rid of such “nationalist” units, and Colonel Schauman was cashiered and took an appointment in a local fire brigade.
The third Finnish dragoon regiment, established in 1901, was dubbed the 20th (20-i Dragunskii Finlyandskii polk) and based in the same barracks as the old, but make no mistake, it was an all-Russian unit, formed from platoons drawn from 25 line cavalry regiments.
Its commander was also Russian, Col. Alexander Antonovich Grigorkov.
Among its future commanders over the next two decades were the future German puppet leader of Ukraine in 1918 (Pavel Skoropadsky), the general who compiled the most detailed records of the Russian Army in the Great War while in exile in Paris (Nikolai Golovin), the Georgian Prince Melikov, Reznikov Dmitry Pavlovich, who was killed as a major general with the Whites during the Civil War in 1919, and Swedish-born Petr Viktorovich Engelhardt, who was dismissed from the Army after the revolution and settled in Finland as a horse trainer.
Part of the Russian XX Army Corps in 1914, the 20th Finnish Dragoons, known as “The Black Dragoons,” rode off to fight the Germans and Austrians and never came back.
Their final colonel, 40-year-old Prince Vladimir Nikolaevich Gagarin, disbanded his regiment on 21 April 1918 and led his 140 remaining counter-revolutionary officers and men south, where they joined the Whites. Gagarin died in Paris in exile in 1948.
By that time, the Finns had already founded and sent to war two full-fledged native dragoon regiments of their own.
The URR and the KRjR/HRR
The flower of free Finland’s cavalry organizations in 1917 was being cultivated at the Saksanniemi police school, where a mounted gendarme unit, under former Finnish Dragoon riding master (master kavalerii) Gaston Ahrenberg, was being trained.
Once the brief Finnish Civil War kicked off in February 1918, Ahrenberg became major and eventually colonel of a new force built around his 70 mounted police cadets, augmented by Finns of the Tsar’s old army who had riding experience. It became the Uusimaa Dragoon Regiment (Uudenmaan Rakuunarykmentti).
A second regiment, the Karelian Cavalry Regiment (Karjalan ratsujääkärirykmentti, KRjR), was founded in Joensuu in March 1918 by the Jaeger Rittmeister Sven Weckström and 23 fellow Jaeger dispatch rider (Melderreiter), trained officers and NCOs who had served in German service during the Great War.
Finnish cavalry section of the German 27th Jaeger battalion in Libau in late 1917 (Jaakaripataljoonan ratsuosasto). They would form the core of the Finnish Karelian Cavalry Regiment (Karjalan ratsujääkärirykmentti, KRjR) in 1918.
Interwar
Both units covered themselves with glory during the Finnish Civil War, with the KRjR who established its depot in Hämeenlinna and being renamed the Hämeen ratsurykmentti (HRR) in March 1919.
A squadron of URR dragoons in Jyväskylä during training, 1923
Forming the Ratsuväkiprikaati (Cavalry Brigade), the URR and HRR were an elite branch of the cash-strapped Finnish military over the interwar years. They turned out well at parades and as honor guards for important events and regularly sent officers to represent the country at the Olympics.
One officer, Oskar Wilkman (Vilkama), had ridden with the Russian pentathlon team (which included Rasputin assassin Grand Duke Dmitri) in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics against American Lt. George S. Patton, then rode for the Finns in the 1920 Antwerp games at which point he was the regimental colonel of the URR.
The two Finnish dragoon regiments maintained their own brigade-based riding school and were serious equestrians, having an Olympic-level program. Here, a charger of the URR is put through its paces at Sungu in August 1942, well into WWII, when the regiment was actively deployed against the Soviets. SA-Kuva 105518
Formed as battalion-sized three-squadron regiments with an anti-tank troop in support and the bicycle-mounted 1st Jaeger Battalion as mobile reserve, the entire brigade in 1939 on paper numbered just 4,238 officers and men at war strength- including the regimental bands as well as the staff and cadets of the Finnish Army Cavalry School!
Even at that, the stables across the entire Finnish military only had 4,700 horses on hand, including breeding stock, against a need to mobilize 50,000 for the war for transport, support, and dispatch rider purposes.
Nonetheless, from the Winter War (Nov. 1939-March 1940) through the Continuation War (June 1941-Sept. 1944) against the Soviets and then the tail-end of WWII against the Germans, the Finnish cavalrymen carried on the fight and acquitted themselves well.
The brigade was commanded during the war by BG Harry Uno Alfthan, a graduate of the old Nicholas Cavalry School and late of the Tsar’s 6th (Grand Duke Ernst-Ludwig of Hesse’s) Klyastitsy Hussar Regiment during the Great War.
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Horse-mounted Finnish cavalry during the Winter War, January 1940, LIFE magazine by Carl Mydans
Finnish Dragoons of the URR pulling ski troops, Tuntematon, 19 December 1939. SA-Kuva a_154
Finnish Dragoons of the URR’s 3rd Squadron in cross-country riding exercises.. SA-Kuva 79071
Finnish Dragoons of the URR in snow near Arsenavolok, 2 April 1942. SA-Kuva 79990
Finnish Dragoons of the URR in the field near Ilomantsi on the road to Lake Ilona by Othmar Nyblin, after the beginning of the Continuation War, 8 July 1941. Note the stalhelms (the Finns used no less than 19 different helmets during the war) and campaign order. The rifles over their backs, carried Russian style, are Italian Fucile Mod. 38 Terni short rifles in 7.35x51mm with their 11-inch folding knife bayonets stowed. Italy sent 94,500 such rifles to Finland in the summer of 1940 (against German guidance), and they were used by cavalry, coastal /field artillery, engineers, counter-partisan troops, and AAA units. Of interest to gun nuts, Interarms bought at least 74,000 remaining rifles of this type from the Finns in the 1950s and imported them to the U.S. directly. SA-Kuva 26239
Finnish cavalry, East Karelia, 1941 Museovirasto HK19710326
“Cavalry to the border, Uimaharja, 27 June 1941.” SA Kuva 22029
Dragoons of the Häme Cavalry Regiment (HRR) on their way to the front lines during the Continuation War on 24 July 1941. Riding fourth from the right is Knight of the Mannerheim Cross Teppo Hirvi-Kunnas. SA-Kuva 81614.
Finnish ratsuväen cavalryman and horse, Sunkku village in Karhumäki, 14.8.1942. SA-Kuva 104053
The URR filing past for Mannerheim’s birthday, June 4, 1942, Sunku. SA-Kuva 90628
URR’s annual celebration and parade in Sungu. Squadrons in position and a march past, received by the commander, Lieutenant Colonel v. Essen, Lieutenant Colonel Wahren and Major Åkerman. 9 July 1942. SA-Kuva 107152
“A squadron of a cavalry regiment has received a report that an enemy patrol has been encountered about 5 km away and that they are now going to destroy it. The horses are quickly saddled, and soon we are there: We mount our horses.” (Erään ratsurykmentin eskadroonaan on tullut ilmoitus, että vihollispartio on tavattu noin 5 km päässä ja sitä lähdetään nyt tuhoamaan.) Hevoset satuloidaan nopeasti ja pian ollaan paikalla: Noustaan ratsaille.) SA Kuva 80002
After 1942, the cavalrymen were typically dismounted due to the static trench warfare nature of the Finnish Vyborg front facing besieged Leningrad.
The HRR was disbanded in November 1944 but was rebooted in 1986, its lineage used by the Lahti-based Hämeen rykmentti (HämR) training regiment until 2014.
Meanwhile, the URR kept its horses until 1 March 1947 when, laying a bouquet of tulips on the cavalry brigade’s war memorial, the final mounted detachment was disbanded. The URR endured as an infantry unit with a dragoon name through 1989.
The URR says goodbye to its horses in 1947 before its war memorial. Via the South Karelian Museum (EKM).
Even after it gave up its horses, a former URR colonel, Adolf Ehrnrooth, represented Finland in the equestrian events at the 1948 Olympics in London at age 43.
The Danes are currently hosting 400 soldiers from 11 NATO countries in a large ground force exercise in Greenland, and just wrapped up a rare joint exercise with SNMG1 and SNMCMG1 off Iceland for Operation Reassurance, along with Op Nanook Tuugaalik with the Canadian and U.S. naval forces, with the latter including the Freedom-variant littoral combat ship USS Wichita (LCS 13),surged to the far north from sunny 102-degree Mayport.
Dutch Korps Mariniers in Greenland, finding out just how cold RIB ops can be!
Some more Dutch Korps Mariniers, with a sinking feeling their camo might not be working
Finnish special forces are in Greenland having a blast…
Meanwhile, the current batch of Greenlandic territorials, the Arktisk Basisuddannelses, are probably not loving their training. Note the new Colt Canada C8s, though…
HMCS Robert Hampton Gray performs maneuvers with HDMS Thetis and CCGS George R. Pearkes during Operation Nanook-Tuugaalik on August 21, 2026. Photo: Corporal Paquette, Canadian Armed Forces Photo
ORP Mewa and HMCS Moncton conduct a mine-screening exercise alongside FS Auvergne while sailing astern of HMCS Ville De Québec during Operation Reassurance in the North Atlantic Ocean on 16 August 2026. Corporal Gregory Cole, Canadian Armed Forces Photo
With all of this naval and coast guard ship movement, it is of interest that a shore party of tourists from a passing cruise ship (!) came upon an old Soviet naval mine in Carlsberg Fjord (Kangerterajitta Itterterilaq), north of Ittoqqortoormiit in East Greenland.
Nope. Don’t like that on your beach walk…
For reference, the closest town to where the mine was found is Scoresbysund (Ittoqqortoormiit), a 300-person hamlet just 20 miles away as the crow flies, but is about 500 miles NW by air of Reykjavík and 900 miles from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland on the opposite side of the frozen subcontinent.
A det from the Royal Danish Navy UDT group (Søværnets Dykkertjeneste) helicoptered in and zapped said mine.
As to the mine’s origin, it likely floated at least 1,200 miles across the Barents and Greenland Sea from the Northern Norwegian coast (e.g., Kirkenes) or the Kola Peninsula and could very well have been laid during WWII.
This week is the 105th anniversary of the establishment of the 1st U.S. Cavalry Division.
To celebrate, how about this great photo essay of American horse cavalry in the field, Fort Bliss, Texas, summer of 1939? The twilight of such an organization. Note the M1903s and M1917A1 “Kelly” helmets. All caught in time.
(Photographer in all cases: J.J. Gregor, Ft. Bliss, Texas. From prints furnished by Mr. Sullivan, Remount Branch, Quartermaster Corps. 7/18/39. Signal Corps Collection via NARA)
Machine gun detachment. Note the M1917 Bolo knives on their gun belts, used for clearing brush from fields of fire. 111-SC-113986
Hell for leather, baby! Could you imagine what that Kelly tin helmet with almost no padding felt like rattling on your head while galloping across that ground? 111-SC-113995
Another shot of the MG detachment. You can see the tripod mounts for their M1917 Brownings. 111-SC-113989
Another of the MG detachments with Bolos. 111-SC-113992
111-SC-113991
Machine gun detachment. Note their M1917 Bolos. 111-SC-113985
Of gas masks and 1911s. My favorite, and also perhaps the scariest. 111-SC-113987
Field artillery on parade. At the time, the division had the 82nd Field Artillery Battalion and the 99th Field Artillery Battalion, both with 75mm pack howitzers, later towed by jeeps. 111-SC-113998
On parade with dress uniforms, including pennants
At the time, Fort Bliss was one of the final holdouts for horse cavalry in the U.S. Army. It was home to the active duty 1st Cavalry Division (activated there on 13 September 1921) with four regiments (5th, 7th, 8th, and 12th U.S. Cavalry). The base would also soon be home to the Army National Guard’s 56th Cavalry Brigade’s 112th (Texas) Cavalry Regiment, which had been called to federal service on 10 November 1940 by President Roosevelt and mustered at Bliss.
Tasked with guarding the Mexican border, that mission largely evaporated after Mexico formally entered WWII on the side of the Allies in June 1942.
It was in the Philippines when the unit inherited about 25 captured Japanese Army horses, found still harnessed to 75mm guns, then duly recycled into U.S. service by men of the 8th Cavalry Regiment.
On 3 February 1945, the 1st Cav became the first U.S. unit to re-enter Manila, racing 100 miles as part of the legendary “Flying Column” of jeeps and trucks to liberate more than 3,500 internees at Santo Tomas University and secure key objectives across the city, coining the name “First Team.”
Entering Tokyo with the occupation forces, they put on a rodeo for Armistice Day, 1945, at the Meiji Shrine Stadium, complete with horses liberated from a racetrack and purportedly late of the Imperial Guard.
Some 85 years ago this week. Somewhere in the U-boat-filled North Atlantic.
Convoy to Iceland, September 1941: the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa (CA 37)hoists in a Curtiss SOC scout-observation plane after a patrol. View looks aft on the cruiser’s starboard side, with midships’ 5″/25 guns in the foreground. Another SOC is resting on the starboard catapult.
U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph – NH 47007
Tuscaloosa at the time was part of RADM William R. Munroe’s TF 15 during Operation Indigo III, the passage of 5,000 men of the U.S. Army 10th Infantry Regiment, 5th Engineers, 46th Field Artillery Battalion, and various service units to Iceland. There, the Joes would replace the men of the First Marine Brigade (Provisional), which had started arriving the previous July.
While the U.S. was not “officially” in the war, by relieving the British in Iceland, which had been there since May 1940 after Denmark and Norway had been occupied by the Germans.
The 9,950-ton Tuscaloosa, a “peace” cruiser that had been constructed during the period that the U.S. was handcuffed by the London and Washington Naval Treaties, had entered service in 1934.
The Indigo force included the battleship USS Idaho, heavy cruisers Tuscaloosa and Vincennes, and destroyers Winslow, Anderson, Mustin, O’Brien, Sampson, Benson, Hilary P. Jones, and Niblack, escorting the transports Heywood, William P. Biddle, Harry L. Lee, and Republic, leaving the New York Port of Embarkation on the morning of 5 September– the same day the new broke of U-652 trading torpedoes for depth charges with the destroyer USS Greeroff Newfoundland.
Purposely avoiding Halifax-to-Scotland convoy routes, they nonetheless had a scare, with sonarmen monitoring numerous underwater contacts.
On the evening of 11 September, they were ploughing through the North Atlantic somewhere south of Greenland when the voice of President Roosevelt came over the radio announcing an attack on the USS Greer--he called it piracy–and declaring that German or Italian vessels of war would henceforth “at their own peril” enter waters essential to the defense of the United States.
With TF 15 arriving at Hvalfjörður near Reykjavík on 16 September 1941, Tuscaloosa would soon be made ready for war as much as possible.
Her earliest “dapple” slotch camo scheme was soon applied and, while she later carried the more purposeful Measures 33/ Design 13d, 31a/13d, and 12 later during the war, that first freestyle paint job was perhaps the most fetching.
USS Tuscaloosa (CA 37) at Hvalfjord, Iceland in April 1942. IWM A 7486.
Port quarter view of the USS Tuscaloosa (CA 37) at Hvalfjord, Iceland in April 1942. IWM A 8960
Midship close-up of the USS Tuscaloosa (CA 37) passing the HMS Wheatland (L 122) in May 1942 at Hvalfjord, Iceland. A good detail shot of plane handling facilities, SOC floatplanes, and searchlights. IWM A 8957.
USS Tuscaloosa (CA 37) moored at Scapa Flow, April 1942, while operating with the British Home Fleet. The British heavy cruiser London is in the background. 80-G-12018
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Warship Wednesday 9 September 2026: We were in action a Tremendous Amount of Times
Note the Admiralty disruptive camouflage scheme. U.S. National Archives Identifier 148727974, Local Identifier 19-SB-7M-1
Above we see HM’s Arethusa-class light cruiser Aurora (12)at sea, circa July 1942, likely while working up after repair at Liverpool with ships of the Home Fleet.
While she received national fame for her work in the Mediterranean during WWII and some 85 years ago this week would pummel a German training cruiser to the bottom off Norway, Aurora went on to a strange second, and later third, career.
The Arethusas
In the early 1930s, the Royal Navy had a perfect class of light cruisers, for the period: the eight-ship Leanders. Some 7,200 tons (standard) and armed with eight 6″/50 BL Mark XXIIIs in four twin turrets, balanced two forward and two rear, they also had two quad torpedo tubes, carried two seaplanes, could make 32.5 knots on 72,000shp, and roam some 5,700nm at 13. They proved capable, with two, HMS Achilles and Ajax, being famous for helping run down Graf Spee in 1939.
HMS Leander (British Cruiser, 1931). Note her distinctive single fat stack and balanced four-turret/eight gun layout. NH 59841
As Worth noted on the Arethusas, “having built a successful light cruiser [in the Leanders] the British decided to try something weaker.”
The Arethusas were designed to provide a light-Leander alternative to use up “spare” light cruiser tonnage allowed under the London and Washington Naval Treaties. Hence, weight was everything, with extensive use of welding rather than riveting and the employment of aluminum-covered plywood for internal partitions such as cabin bulkheads.
HMNB Portsmouth Dockyard blueprint Arethusa Class Light Cruiser HMS Aurora December 4 1937
Using a hull some 50 feet shorter (506 feet oal, compared to the Leander’s 555), the 4th (X) turret and its guns disappeared from the design, and there were two fewer torpedo tubes due to a beam six feet narrower.
Using four Admiralty 3-drum oil-fired boilers instead of six, the plant could make 64,000hp instead of 72,000, but, when steaming at an economical 12 knots, could make 12,000nm on full bunkers, making her an ideal “trade route cruiser.”
The main armament was six (just 6) 6″/50 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XXIIIs in three twin-gun turrets forward, with 60-degree elevation, two (A and B) forward and one (Y) aft.
A good view of HMS Aurora’s rear 6″/50 Mk13 “Y” turret. Sunday 8 October 1944. Sunday service on the quarterdeck of the Aurora conducted by the Rev J Palmer. It was held within sight of enemy-occupied Greek islands. Lt. DC Oulds, IWM (A 26017)
The 6″/50 Mk13 was a good gun, used by the Brits and their Commonwealth fleets on the Leander, Perth, Arethusa, Southampton (“Town”), Edinburgh (“Modified Town”), Fiji (“Colony”), Ceylon (“Improved Colony”) and Swiftsure cruiser classes throughout the 1930s and 40s. Able to fire 6-8 rounds per minute per gun, they had a range to 25,480 yards, and their CPBC shell was able to penetrate three inches of armor out to 12,500. Magazine stowage was 100 rounds per gun.
As expected for a 1930s cruiser, they carried a torpedo battery (six 21-inch tubes in two triple mounts, one on each side of the bow). A single catapult was available to carry a Hawker Osprey floatplane (later a Walrus). Compare this to similar American and Japanese cruisers that could carry as many as five aircraft, and even the Leanders could carry two.
Hawker Osprey being catted from the Leander-class HMS Neptune, in 1934
Overall, these ships were very lightly armed, even for a 1930s design. The 6-gun Arethusas can be compared to the very non-treaty Japanese 15-gun Mogamis, which were completed at the same time, while the 12-gun British Town and 15-gun U.S. Brooklyn classes were designed only slightly later.
Still, it was thought this was more than adequate to serve as a counter-commerce raiding picket against German auxiliary cruisers to (economically) protect far-flung trade routes.
The same can be said for armor. Some of the thinnest “peace” cruisers were the American Omaha-class, which carried just 570 tons of plate (largely in a 3-inch machinery belt), updated significantly to the Brooklyns, which had 1,798 tons over a 5-inch main belt and 6-inch turret faces.
The Arethusas had just 2.25 inches of belt over their vital machinery spaces (frames 71-154 of 168), an inch on the precious three turrets, a one-inch armored deck over the fire rooms, and 1-3 inches of box protection over the magazines (three inches on the longitudinal and transverse bulkheads with two-inch crowns). The only armored part of the superstructure was the fire control box atop the wheelhouse, not the conning tower or weather bridge. This gave the Arethusas a scant 520 tons of armor. Compare this to the 837 tons of armor on the slightly larger Leander class with a 3-inch machinery belt and 3.5 over the magazines, 1,100 tons of the Town class which had a 4.5-inch belt, and the commanding 2,061 tons of armor on the Mogamis. Some 1930s light cruisers are much lighter than others.
However, unlike the preceding single-funnel/single room Leanders, the Arethusas were designed to use two funnels and extra spacing of the boiler and engine rooms in two units en echelon for redundancy in the event of damage and flooding.
Jane’s 1938 on the class. Note the meager armor plan.
Four ships of the class were ordered from four different yards to speed up construction: HMS Arethusa (Chatham Royal Dockyard), Galatea (Scotts, Greenock), Penelope (Harland & Wolff, Belfast) and Aurora (Portsmouth Royal Dockyard), the first accepted into service in May 1935 and the last in November 1937, with costs per vessel running about £1.25 million (compared to £1.48m for the larger Leanders). Two others planned, the future HMS Minotaur and Polyphemus, were instead ordered as the improved 11,500-ton/12-gun Town-class light cruisers HMS Newcastle and Southampton.
This all brings us to…
Meet Aurora
Our subject is the ninth to carry the name for the RN for the ancient Roman goddess of the dawn, first used in 1758 for the prize 36-gun fifth rate, formerly the French Abenakise.
The immediately preceding eighth HMS Aurora was a 3,500-ton Devonport-built light cruiser (C1) commissioned in September 1914 that famously took part in the sinking of the German raider SMS Meteor before she was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1920 and was broken up in 1927.
These past vessels left our subject with five battle honors (St. Lucia 1778, Minorca 1798, Guadeloupe 1810, China 1900, and Dogger Bank 1915) even before she was commissioned.
This new cruiser was ordered from HM Dockyard Portsmouth under the 1934 Programme on 1 March 1935, two days after Hitler ordered the reinstatement of the air force, the Luftwaffe, in violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
Our subject was laid down on 23 July 1935, just weeks after Hitler announced conscription to the Wehrmacht, another Versailles violation.
The future HMS Aurora (12) was launched on 20 August 1936 by no less a figure than Lady Fisher (nee Cecilia Warre-Cornish), the wife of ADM Sir William Wordsworth Fisher, GCB, GCVO, who commanded the battleship HMS St Vincent at Jutland and, at the time of Aurora’s construction, was the CiC of HMNB Portsmouth.
She was commissioned on 12 November 1937, Capt. Henry D. Pridham-Wippell, RN, in command, with her construction costs cited as £1,252,915. Passing out of Britannia in September 1901 as a cadet, Pridham-Wippell survived the mining loss of HMS Audacious in 1914 and went on to command the destroyer HMS Tribune during the Great War. He had come to Aurora after command of the light cruiser HMS Cairo and as Commodore of the Home Fleet Destroyer Flotillas.
Aurora photo by Stephen Cribb, Southsea
Our ship was completed to a slightly different design than her three sisters. While they all had aviation facilities, Aurora did not, as that area was used for a headquarters space and commodore’s cabin to allow her use as a flagship for destroyers of the Home Fleet. It was probably for the best, as the class proved cramped for aircraft use, especially when space was needed for more AAA guns, and her three sisters all hung up their catapults by July 1941.
Speaking of AAA, while the original design of the class called for four QF 4″/45 single Mk V AA guns in open mounts as a secondary battery, only Arethusa and Galatea were completed with those guns. Penelope and Aurora were completed with four twin 4″/45 QF Mk XVI mounts, a very decent new gun that entered service only in 1936 and became a staple across RN battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Arethusa and Galatea were later retrofitted with them during WWII.
Aurora was later adopted during a Warship Week National Savings campaign by the civil community of the city of Bradford in West Yorkshire.
The Mayor of Bradford Visits HMS Aurora. Liverpool, 10 June 1942. The Mayor being shown around the ship by Capt W C Agnew, Commanding Officer. Photo by LT Harold W. Tomlin, IWM A 12070
Her motto was Post Tenebras Lux (After darkness, light).
Entering a tense pre-war period, Aurora deployed with the Home Fleet on exercises to the Mediterranean in January-March 1938, followed by a cruise to the Baltic that summer, followed by another Med exercise period in January-March 1939.
Arethusa-class light cruiser Aurora at pre-war fleet review with Blackburn Shark overhead
War!
In June 1939, with Czechoslovakia erased from the map of Europe and Italy occupying Albania, the Admiralty saw the writing on the war and Aurora was sent to her war station at Scapa Flow while her three sisters were at Gibraltar with the 3rd Cruiser Squadron, Mediterranean Fleet.
All but Penelope had landed their obsolete 47mm Hotchkiss guns, with plans to mount something better left hanging.
Enter this Luftwaffe identification chart with the Arethusa class at the top right, showing the class with 8 4″45 Mk16 (102mm) and two quad .50 cal Vickers, an AAA suite that Aurora, Penelope, and Galatea began the war with.
When the war kicked off in September 1939, Aurora was in Scapa as part of the 18th Cruiser Squadron, Home Fleet, as Flagship for Rear Admiral (Destroyers), RADM R.H.C. Halifax, RN. Her skipper at the time was Capt. Gervase Boswell Middleton, RN, an old charger who would finish the war in command of the battleship HMS Ramillies.
HMS Aurora, British Cruiser, Arethusa Class, off Liverpool early in her wartime career. IWM (A 8158)
Taking to sea immediately following the announcement of the state of war between his majesty’s government and Germany, Aurora’s first action was Operation SK, an anti-shipping patrol towards Norway, followed by a rescue mission to help guide the struggling submarine HMS Spearfish from the approaches of the Skagerrak back to Rosyth on the surface despite German air attacks.
At the end of October, she sailed with a cruiser-battleship force including HMS Hood, Nelson, and Rodney to bring home 12 stranded British merchant ships from Norwegian waters via Convoy Narvik 1. Aurora was transferred to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron by the end of the month.
She also rode shotgun on Outbound North Convoys ON 002/1, ON 015/1, and ON 022/1 from Scotland to Norway.
On 23 November 1939, Aurora, with a group of seven hastily assembled destroyers, set out looking to intercept the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau after they sank the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindiin the North Atlantic. Luckily for Aurora, both German battlecruisers returned to Wilhelmshaven safely on the 27th.
Just after New Year’s 1940, Aurora went on the hunt for the 6,400-ton German blockade runner Trautenfels, reported off Norway, but again was foiled. It was about this time that a new skipper moved in, Capt. Louis Henry Keppel Hamilton DSO, RN, who had earned his DSO in 1915 while on the Niger River flotilla fighting the Germans in West Africa.
While in Rosyth for boiler cleaning and a hull scraping in February, some of Aurora’s ratings were loaned to the destroyers HMS Cossack and Maorifor use in boarding parties while searching for the German tanker Altmark, Graf Spee’s tender and floating prison ship.
The Norway Campaign
By March, her three Arethusa-class sisters were transferred from the Med to join Aurora in the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, the first time all four were in squadron service together.
Their first large mission together was Operation DU, a shipping sweep off Norway and into the German Bight, March 21-23, 1940, which only bagged two small vessels, not a great result for four cruisers and eight destroyers.
She was then a staple of the Norway campaign from the beginning, standing by to rescue 199 survivors from the He 111-sunk Tribal-class destroyer HMS Gurkha (F20) on 9 April, with the latter only losing 16 to the sea.
Just two days later, she escorted Convoy NP 1 from the Clyde to Vaagsfjord, Norway, then began patrol to intercept enemy convoys.
On 18 April and 22 April, she bombarded the Germans at Rombaksfjord with her 6-inch guns. By the 24th, she joined the gunline near HMS Warspite off German-occupied Narvik to help liberate the town, later bombarding Axis positions again on 1 May and 3 May, the latter alongside the battleship HMS Resolution. In between, Aurora and Galeta covered the Allied evacuation from Molde.
During the Norway operation, Aurora served as flagship of Admiral Sir Edward “Teddy” Evans (later Lord Mountevans), a noted polar explorer who had been recalled from the retired list for the campaign.
German Luftwaffe bombers damaged Aurora off Narvik around 1640 on 7 May, a hit which temporarily jammed her two forward turrets (A and B) and killed seven Royal Marines who were serving as gun crews.
BECK, Robert, Marine, P/X 3610
HUGHES, George H, Corporal, PO/X 1033
SAYER, Frank, Marine, PO/K 3778
TARGETT, William H, Marine, PO/22132
TINKLER, Walter, Marine, PO/21560
TOLFREE, Edward G, Marine, PO/20882
WALKER, Leslie, Marine, PO/X 2628
After repairs while still on station, on 13 May, she helped cover French Foreign Legion troops in a bright (0100 but with the midnight sun shining) overnight landing in Bjervik, north of Narvik, then turned her guns to the Germans once again. The city fell later that day.
Battle of the Barges
Aurora was then sent to Portsmouth for repairs, which lasted until early July. During this yard period, she added to quad 40mm 2pdr QF Mk VIII AAA mounts as well as a 20mm Unrotated Projectile (UP) Mark I AA rocket projector on her quarterdeck.
HMS Aurora, British Cruiser, Arethusa Class, circa November 1940. Note she is “clean” with no radar fits. The UP mounting on the quarterdeck and the quadruple 2pdr mountings (visible here) were fitted during her repairs in May/June 1940, but there’s no sign of the Type 290 (radar) and Type 284 RDF fitted in April/May 1941. NHHC 80-G-70075
Leaving Portsmouth in July 1940, after the Fall of France, the repaired Aurora was assigned to Humber Force for anti-invasion duties, ready for Mr. Hitler and his gang to attempt Operation Sea Lion, which never came. Throughout July and August she conducted regular patrols out of Immingham, typically escorted by two destroyers.
At the end of August, she covered minelaying operations (Operation CBX 5) by the 20th Destroyer Flotilla off occupied France.
In early September, accompanied by the destroyers HMS Venetia, Hambledon, and Holderness, she sortied across the Channel from Sheerness to bombard German invasion craft from Le Touquet north to Boulogne harbor, which they plastered on the night of the 8th without reciprocal damage. Meanwhile, the destroyers HMS Beagle, Bulldog, Atherstone, Berkeley, and Fernie swept south from Boulogne to Cape Antifer.
Striking alongside some 130 roving RAF Blenheims and Wellingtons, this “battle of the barges” resulted in the damage or sinking of some 214 of the 1,918 German invasion barges and 21 of 170 troop transports in the French Channel ports, resulting in a 19 September order to disperse the assembled craft, ending the immediate threat of Sea Lion.
The Northern part of the North Atlantic
On 1 October 1940, Aurora picked up a new skipper, Capt. William Gladstone Agnew, RN. A regular who shipped out to fight the Kaiser as a 15-year-old mid on the battleship HMS Glory and was on Royal Oak at Jutland, he came to Aurora’s captain’s cabin after commanding the armed merchant cruiser HMS Cofu for the first year of the war. Her previous skipper, who had commanded her during the Norwegian campaign and the battle of the barges, Louis Keppel Hamilton, was kicked upstairs as a rear admiral commanding the 1st Cruiser Squadron, earning his second DSO and the Norwegian War Cross before finishing the war as Flag Officer, Malta.
With the invasion threat abated, Aurora deployed to the Northern Patrol for the next six months to attempt to intercept German commerce raiders and supply ships, as well as to cover 1st Minelaying Squadron operations off Iceland (Operation SN1), Norway (Operation DZ), and in the Northern Barrage (Operations SN68A, SN69, SN4, SN7B and SN8).
It was during this time that she clocked in on the Rubble Convoy, a sortie over 22-25 January 1941 that saw the light cruiser HMS Naiad join Aurora to meet five blacked-out Norwegian merchant vessels sailing covertly from Sweden to Kirkwall, Orkney, and pass them on to a larger escort group following behind. The fastest of the five Norwegians (Elizabeth Bakke) made it to Scotland independently while Aurora and Naiad made contact with the other four (John Bakke, Tai Shan, Taurus, and Ranja) and handed them over to the escort group, narrowly missing Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were prowling in the Kattegat. Between the five merchant ships, they carried 25,000 tons of specialized steel products and ball bearings essential for the Allied war effort.
In late February, Aurora was attached to the important Canadian troop transport Convoy TC 9, inbound from Halifax with 6,000 troops and tons of supplies.
Over two weeks in May 1941, Aurora and the 2nd Cruiser Squadron were given a reprieve from their convoy and mine warfare duties to join the rest of the RN in the North Atlantic to help get the Bismarck, joining the task force alongside the carrier HMS Victorious. Aurora was of special use to the pursuit as she was trialing the new Type 290 air-surface warning radar, one of the very few such sets in British service at the time.
May 1941. HMS Aurora, escorting the carrier HMS Victorious in a dash to get within striking distance of Bismarck. Looks fun! IWM (A 9797)
On the 24th/25th of May, the Victorious got within 100 miles of Bismarck and was able to launch nine Swordfish to attack the big German, which soon broke contact. Over the next day, the 2nd Cruiser Squadron spread out, looking for Bismarck the old-fashioned way. While they missed the final surface action, HMS Kenya and Aurora caught up to the German tanker Belchen (6367 GRT, former Norwegian Sysla) off Greenland and sank the vessel via gunfire on the morning of 3 June.
Her excitement ended; Aurora resumed covering the 1st Minelaying Squadron for SN66 and SN70B in June, sowing fields as large as 900 mines at a time.
July and August saw Aurora involved first in a raid on (Operation FB) and then the evacuation of (Operation Gauntlet) of the Norwegian territory of Spitsbergen. They were both shoestring ops, with Aurora sailing with the Fiji-class light cruiser Nigeria, three destroyers (one Polish), two armed whalers, and a tanker.
On FB, they landed a Free Norwegian Navy lieutenant, Ragnvald Andreassen Tamber, to take over the weather station in Spitsbergen, destroyed the weather station on Bear Island and took aboard its operators, and took away the Norwegian merchant vessel Dagny I.
On Gauntlet, joined by the carrier HMS Argus and troopship Empress of Canada, the latter carrying 645 Canadian and Free Norwegian troops of Force 111, they destroyed the mining facilities and coal, embarked the Soviet miners on the archipelago, and sailed off with three Norwegian colliers (Ingerto, Munin, and Nandi) formerly in German service, bringing the latter to Iceland. Also evacuated were LT Tamber, 800 Norwegian civilians, and 196 French POWs who had been working on the islands.
August 1941: Sappers of the 3rd Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers, Force 111, burning 450,000 tons of coal piles during Operation Gauntlet while the wireless stations on the islands at Barentsburg, Longyearbyen, Kap Linné and Grønfjord, which had been beaming meteorological reports to Germany since June 1940, were destroyed, an important victory in the “weather war.” Photograph by war correspondent Ross Munro.
On board HMS Aurora during Spitsbergen Raid, by Walter Louis Frederick Tennyson d’Eyncourt, IWM (H 13637)
HMS Aurora in Advent Bay during Spitsbergen Raid, by Walter Louis Frederick Tennyson d’Eyncourt, IWM (H 13675)
On the way back from Operation Gauntlet, Nigeria and Aurora took a close patrol of Norwegian waters on 6 September and found a German convoy off Porsanger, near the Cape Nordkinn, consisting of the 1,900-ton artillerieschulschiff (artillery school ship) Bremseand two troopships. The outgunned Bremse went down fighting, taking 160 men with her, enabling the troopships to run into the fjords.
Artillerieschulboot Bremse (Artillery training sloop) via M. Dieterle & Sohn, Kiel 1935
In a quick refit, Aurora landed her two quad 50s for six 20mm Oerlikon singles.
Force K runs amok
Then, in October, Aurora was nominated for service in the Mediterranean and, with her sister Penelope (which had just picked up Types 281, 284, and 285 radars at refit), sailed to join the 15th Cruiser Squadron based at Alexandria. Before leaving Home waters, she broke out the flag of A/Admiral Jack Tovey, KCB, DSO, RN, C-in-C Home Fleet, to take the admiral and his staff from Seidisfiord, Iceland, to Scapa Flow.
October 1941, HMS Aurora leaving harbor as seen from the battleship HMS Malaya. Note the UP launcher on the fantail IWM (A 5699)
HMS Arethusa light cruiser, 1941 image. Note the UP launcher on the fantail
Operating out of Malta with Agnew as flag captain, the radar-equipped Aurora and Penelope, joined by the destroyers HMS Lance and Lively, were dubbed Force “K” and sent out on several interdiction patrols, aimed at intercepting Italian convoys heading back and forth to Libya. After a few fruitless overnight sorties, Force K ran right into Italian Convoy Beta (Duisburg) out of Naples/Messina headed for Tripoli.
Escorted by six Italian destroyers (Maestrale, Euro, Fulmine, Grecale, Libeccio and Oriani), the convoy had seven Axis merchants filled with troops and supplies: the Italian tankers Conte di Misurata (5014 GRT) and Minatitlan (7599 GRT), the German freighters Duisburg (7389 GRT) and San Marco (3113 GRT), and the Italian steamers Maria (6339 GRT), Rina Corrado (5180 GRT), and Sagitta (5153 GRT).
Alerted to the convoy by decoded Enigma intelligence on 7 November and a sighting from a 69 Squadron RAF Maryland bomber on the morning of the 8th, Force K picked it up on the night of the 8th.
Using the down moon and keeping speeds to just 20 knots to minimize bow waves, the cruisers opened fire 135nm east of Calabria at 5,200 yards just after midnight on the morning of 9 November, and it was over in just 45 minutes.
When the smoke cleared, and the two British destroyers and cruisers broke away to head back to Malta, eluding a stronger Italian distant cover force of two 8-inch gunned heavy cruisers (Trento and Trieste) and four destroyers, they left all seven Axis merchant ships as well as the destroyer Fulmine sunk or sinking. Three other destroyers were damaged. Aurora fired fully half her main battery magazine, 279 6-inch shells (246 from A and B and 33 from Y) in 62 broadsides, with 30 of them registering hits, along with 73 rounds of 4-inch. Penelope managed 260 6-inch and another 200 4-inch.
The convoy had been carrying 17,000 tons of fuel, 389 vehicles, and 34,000 tons of munitions, all vital to the Axis forces in Cyrenaica. Besides the 141 crewmembers lost, 145 Italian and 78 German soldiers also went down with the ships.
Talk about a brutal, yet textbook, one-sided surface action, with the target annihilated. A perfect surface action group night attack of the sort historians only characterize the Japanese as being able to pull off at this stage of the war.
Reportedly, the Italians dubbed Aurora the Argento Fantasma (Silver Phantom) after this encounter.
November 1941. Captain W G Agnew, CB, RN (in center) with his officers and ship’s company on board HMS Aurora. IWM (A 6291)
Just three weeks later, Force K shifted to the Ionian Sea and ambushed a second, smaller convoy 100nm west of Crete on the early morning of 24 November, sinking the German transports Maritza (2910 GRT) and Procida (1842 GRT) in a surface action and damaging the two Italian torpedo boats escorting them. The hunter-killer group then sank the Italian auxiliary cruiser Adriatico (1976 GRT) on the 30th, followed by the big Italian tanker Iridio Mantovani (10540 GRT) and her escorting destroyer, Alvise da Mosto, the next day some 75nm NE of Tripoli.
On 17 December, Force K was part of the larger fleet action now known as the First Battle of Sirte in the Gulf of Sidra, where six British light cruisers and 16 destroyers fought a swirling long-range artillery duel with four Italian battleships accompanied by five cruisers and 19 destroyers protecting Convoy M42. The next day, a deep-water (600-foot bottom) Italian minefield caught the destroyer HMS Kandahar, our Aurora, Penelope, and the cruiser HMS Neptune, with Neptune and Kandahar sinking while Aurora and Penelope managed to limp back to Malta.
So endeth the short story of the legendary Force K.
Back to the Med with a new scheme
Aurora was patched up at Malta before returning home for repairs at Liverpool from 5 April to 7 July 1942, dodging Italian air attacks when south of Sardinia, while Penelope was repaired at Malta by January 1942.
Her repairs and refit included a camouflage scheme, new tripod masts, a new Type 281 air warning radar (landing her Type 290 experimental set that dated back to the Bismarck chase), as well as new Types 284 and 285 fire-control radars for main 6-inch and 4-inch AA armament, the latter augmented by three more Oerlikons to give her a total of nine. Her Oerlikon singles would be replaced by doubles before the end of the war.
While in Liverpool, the Brazilian Ambassador to London called on our cruiser shortly before that Latin American country came into the war on the Allied side. The country had suffered attacks on over 30 merchant ships by U-boats and was tired of it, eventually sending a 25,000-man expeditionary force to Europe, which served with distinction on the Italian front. Its Navy also clocked in, and three of its warships were lost during the conflict.
The Brazilian Ambassador to Great Britain, Dr. Mignel Carcano, visits a newly camouflaged HMS Aurora at Liverpool. 10 June 1942. Note her RM detachment on bow, complete with fixed bayonet Enfields, and the turret top AAA tub. By Harold William John Tomlin, IWM (A 10020)
After workups with the Home Fleet in August 1942, she once again protected her old friends of the 1st Minelaying Squadron to lay SN73, then rode shotgun on the slow Winston Special convoy WS22, sailing to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in September, where she remained for six weeks on station.
Sailing to Gibraltar on 22 October, Aurora joined the cruiser HMS Charybdis to escort the carrier HMS Furious to Malta on an aircraft delivery run, Operation Train.
Once back in the Med, she joined the Torch Landings, deployed to the Central Task Force to cover X Beach at El Mrairia close to Cape Figalo, and the attack on Oran harbor.
November 1942. The cruiser HMS Aurora, escorting some of the Torch Landings transports to North Africa, almost surely Convoy KMF O1, of which she escorted the transports HMS Princess Beatrix, Queen Emma, Benalbenach, Mark Twain, Mary Slessor and Walt Whitman to X Beach where they landed elements of the U.S. 1st Armored and 6th Infantry divisions. Photo by Lt JE Russell, IWM (A 12640)
Aurora, backed up by the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Calpe, notably engaged two Vichy French destroyers off Oran on 8 November– the Bourrasque-class Tornade and Tramontane— leaving them beached, then took out the Aigle-class destroyer Épervier and another Bourrasque, Typhon, with the light cruiser HMS Jamaica the next day.
By the end of November, Aurora was made part of another cruiser-destroyer hunter group, Force Q, under RADM Cecil Halliday Jepson Harcourt, RN, late of the 10th Cruiser Squadron. Working out of Bone (Annaba), Tunisia, with the Dido-class light cruisers HMS Sirius and Argonaut along with the greyhounds HMS Quiberon and Quentin, they were soon on the stalk for Axis convoys. While Sirius and Argonaut were larger and more heavily armed, Aurora was chosen as Harcourt’s flagship, the admiral moving into the latter’s cramped commodore’s cabin, a space that had been unoccupied since taking Jack Tovey home from Iceland the year prior.
On the night of 1/2 December, Force Q slammed into Tunisia-bound Italian Convoy H near the Skerki Bank in the Strait of Sicily. Comprised of German transport KT-1 (850 GRT), and the Italian Aventino (3,794 GRT), Puccini (2,422 GRT) and Aspromonte (976 GRT), the ships were carrying 1,766 troops, 698 tons of munitions, four tanks, 32 other vehicles and 12 artillery pieces to Libya and were escorted by the destroyers Nicoloso da Recco, Camicia Nera, and Folgore, along with the torpedo boats Clio and Procione.
Much like the death of Convoy Beta in August, Convoy H didn’t stand a chance.
In a two-hour, very one-sided artillery duel, with the RN having the benefit of radar and the Italians not, the Brits sank 7,800 tons of Axis shipping loaded with vital supplies during the one-sided engagement, sending 1,527 Italian and German troops to the bottom and receiving nothing other than minor splinter damage in return. Further, of the five Italian escorts, the destroyer Folgore was sunk, the Nicoloso da Recco was left so damaged she needed to be towed home, and the TB Procione was seriously damaged. The action soured the Italians on convoy ops, preventing Kesselring from evacuating any of his trapped forces from Tunisia.
A remarkable night action photograph: The sinking of the Tunisia-bound Axis convoy, December 1 and 2, 1942, by His Majesty’s Ships Aurora, Sirius, Argonaut, Quiberon, and Quentin. A ship of the convoy, already on fire, being engaged by a British cruiser. By Lt. C. H. Parnall, IWM (A 13233)
HMS Aurora flying the flag of Rear Admiral C H J Harcourt, CBE, shortly after her successful night action with an enemy convoy bound for Tunisia, December 1942. By Lt. CH Parnall, IWM (A 13443)
HMS Aurora enters Bone Harbor, 13 December 1942. LT CH Parnall, IWM (A 13813)
HMAS Quiberon, HMS Aurora and HMS Bermuda in Algiers, December 1942
RADM Harcourt remained aboard Aurora, as head of Force Q, along with the Leander-class light cruiser HMS Scylla, the destroyer HMS Quality and the DEs Lamerton and Wheatland.
They escorted the troopship Convoy KMF 5 through the Western Med to Algiers in December and remained a force in being at Bone for the first half of 1943. Agnew received a DSO in April 1943 for his escapades with Force K, followed by a CVO in July.
The humble little cruiser even hosted General Eisenhower and Admiral Cunningham 7-9 June 1943 to observe the bombardment of Pantellaria. Aurora later circled back to Pantellaria for the capture of the island two days later (Operation Corkscrew), this time without her brass aboard.
Just after Corkscrew was wrapped up, Aurora called at Tripoli to pick up one “General Lyon” and staff for a quick one-day inspection tour of Malta. Escorted by the destroyers HMS Eskimo, Jervis, Nubian and Lookout, the little convoy sped 200 miles overnight to sail majestically into Valletta’s Grand Harbour on the morning of 20 June 1943, flying the Royal Standard and General Lyon, in actuality King George VI, dressed in spotless naval whites, hand at the salute, at attention on a specially-constructed wooden platform atop Aurora’s B turret. A daring port call indeed, considering Axis airfields were only 60 miles to the North of the island fortress. After spending the day on the island, the first visit by a Sovereign to Malta since 1911, George left on Aurora at 2200 that night for the return trip to North Africa.
King George VI saluting the George Cross Island of Malta, 20 June 1943, via the Royal Trust.
By July, with Agnew serving as Commodore of a cruiser-destroyer group (the new Force Q) made up of Aurora and her old Force K sister Penelope along with the tin cans HMS Inglefield and Offa, escorted Convoy KMF 18B, which was en route to Sicily for Operation Husky.
At 0115 on 10 July, kicking off Husky, Force Q was sent on a diversionary mission to bombard Catania, on the east coast of Sicily, with Aurora plastering the central railway station, Penelope the power station, and the destroyers the Bacino di Ponente water basin. The group then spent the rest of the month supporting the landings and patrolling the Straits of Messina.
August saw an expanded Force Q, with Agnew still in command from Aurora with Penelope, Dido, Sirius, and the destroyers HMS Jervis, Paladin, and Pathfinder. Sailing from Bizerta on 9 August, they embarked on Operation Annoyance, a weeklong plan to bombard Castellammare di Stabia outside Naples and push towards Paola, then sweep the Tyrrhenian Sea. In Aurora’s fashion, the group sank at least two German Siebel ferries (Siebelgefäß) landing craft used for traffic between Sicily and the Italian mainland during the return leg to Palermo.
Then, as Italy dropped out of the war, the group took part in Operation Slapstick, supporting the landing of Allied forces at Taranto on 9 September, and taking the surrendering Italian battle fleet into custody at Malta. Aurora carried elements of the British 1st Airborne Division to Taranto.
The cruiser HMS Aurora, 9 and 10 September 1943, from on board HMS Howe as Force “Z” arrived at Taranto. IWM (A 21018)
Then came the Avalanche Landings in Italy proper, with Aurora covering the beachhead area at Salerno 11-14 September alongside the monitor HMS Erebus, the cruisers HMS Mauritius, Orion, USS Boise, Philadelphia, and Savannah, as well as eight destroyers. Aurora delivered 51 rounds of 6-inch against German positions and narrowly evaded German Fritz KG 100-launched glide bombs which hit Savannah and just missed Philadelphia.
October 1943 saw Aurora, Dido, Penelope, and Sirius dispatched to the Aegean with Agnew as Commodore and three destroyers as escort to join the Levant Station. This was short-lived as Aurora and Dido collided on the night of the 5th, sending the latter to the yard for seven weeks while Aurora remained on station, damaged but still capable enough to resume station after a couple of days of patchwork at Alexandria.
She covered the landings on Leros, and carried out joint bombardment of Cos harbor with Sirius on October 17th while under German air attacks, then bombarded Rhodes with the Free Greek destroyer Miaoulis the next day, surviving further German attacks while transiting the Scarpanto Straits.
Then, while escorting a convoy to Leros near Kastelorizo (Castelorizo) in the Aegean on the 30th, was hit at 1623 by a 1,000-pound bomb dropped from a German Ju88 that landed between the after funnel and the 4-inch gun deck. Casualties were 47 killed and 30 wounded. Among those killed were CDR Charles Janson Smith, a regular who had been torpedo officer on HMS Exeter, where he earned a DSC fighting Graf Spee.
ADAMS, Ernest, Marine, PO/X 113231, killed
ALLBROOK, Herbert, Marine, PO/X 103084, killed
ALLEN, Alfred E, Leading Seaman, P/J 72172, killed
AUSTIN, George, Marine, PO/X 2678, killed
BATEMAN, John T, Able Seaman, D/JX 255264, killed
BEARDSMORE, Joseph, Able Seaman, P/JX 325504, killed
BLANN, Phillip G, Able Seaman, P/J 101167, killed
BOTTOMLEY, Ronald A, Act/Leading Seaman, P/JX 162559, killed
BUCHANAN, Henry, Able Seaman, RNVR, P/CD/X 2911, killed
BULMER, Arthur C R, Able Seaman, P/J 62980, killed
CHARTER, Sydney, Able Seaman, P/SSX 22510, killed
DENFORD, Frank V, Able Seaman, P/KX 99832, killed
DERRICK, John V, Marine, PO/X 3264, killed
ELDRIDGE, Raymond H, Able Seaman, P/JX 381355, DOW 31 October
FALSAY, Thomas, Able Seaman, RNVR, P/CD/X 2328, killed
GALE, George E, Ordinary Seaman, P/JX 565625, killed
GAVIN, Leslie, Able Seaman, P/JX 329939, killed
GEDDES, James, Able Seaman, P/JX 362597, killed
GILLIES, Neil M, Ordinary Seaman, D/SSX 35845, killed
WHITE, Richard C, Petty Officer, P/J 106427, killed
WHYTE, James D, Able Seaman, RNVR, P/CD/X 2832, killed
WILLIAMS, Norman, Marine, PO/X 108919, killed
WILSON, Bernard, Able Seaman, P/JX 171004, killed
YEEND, Samuel E, Able Seaman, P/JX 324511, killed
YOUNG, Albert J, Able Seaman, P/JX 182537, killed
Her second bombing of the war, coupled with damage received from the Dido collision earlier that month, sent Aurora to the yard for an extended period, this time to the newly available Italian facilities at Taranto, where she would spend five months.
Improvements included doubling her 20mm guns and, with a full fifth of her crew killed or injured, her roster saw a huge turnover. Among those who left the ship was Capt. Agnew, who was ironically sent to command the recently repaired HMS Dido in November, where he would earn a Bar to his DSO. Taking Agnew’s place once Aurora was out of the yard was Capt. Geoffrey Barnard, who had earned a DSO himself at the Battle of Cape Matapan in 1941.
Aurora, with Barnard, was headed to one more Mediterranean maelstrom.
Dragoon and the endgame
At Taranto from November 1943 well into April 1944, Aurora was deployed with the 15th Cruiser Squadron, Mediterranean Fleet, operating out of Malta by 30 May. She was soon part of the last great amphibious operation of the theatre– the Dragoon Landings to liberate southern France.
Aurora, a renowned NGFS ship, was assigned to what was initially TF 84.7, a joint Allied fire support group (Support Force Alpha) built around the battleship HMS Ramillies, six cruisers including one French and one American, and six destroyers including four American.
Sailing from Malta on 11 August, by the 15th she was in action in the Alpha and later Sitka Areas against German batteries defending the occupied French naval bastion of Toulon, with FAA Seafire fighters flying from nearby RN escort carriers (HMS Attacker, Emperor, Khedive, Searcher, and Pursuer) acting as aerial spotters.
One of the toughest nuts to crack during the Dragoon landings was K-21, an emplaced twin 13.4″/45 M1912 gun turret from the stricken French battleship Provence on the fortified crest of the headland on Cap Cépet, not far from the village and naval arsenal at Saint-Mandrier-Sur-Mer, overlooking the approaches to Toulon.
Operating in CTF86 under U.S. tactical command,Aurora joined the cruisers USS Quincy, Philadelphia, and FS Montcalm while the old Free French battlewagon Lorraine lent her own 13.4-inch guns to the battle line, deliberately placing herself between the German guns and the smaller ships to shield them, a service also performed by Pearl Harbor veteran USS Nevada. The destroyers USS Eberle, Kendrick, Ericsson, and HMS Lookout stood by to generate smoke screens, engage batteries “whenever opportunity offered,” and help call in shot corrections. Aurora also got shot corrections via the floatplanes of the American cruisers.
All in all, Aurora fired 1,118 6-inch shells and 186 of 4-inch shells across 31 fire missions across just her five days (20-25 August) on station with TF86 during Dragoon. Keep in mind that her magazines were designed to hold 600 rounds of 6-inch, and when she was released on the 25th, she only had 20 percent of her magazines remaining, giving you an idea of the amount of munitions that had to be cross-decked during this week.
CTF86 was sad to see her go.
By early September, with the coastal batteries neutralized and the Allies rushing inland, Aurora was shifted east to RADM Troubridge’s British Aegean Force, or “A” Force, to sweep the Germans from Crete and the Dodecanese Islands. Built around the same five RN escort carriers recycled from Dragoon, Aurora joined the cruisers HMS Royalist and Black Prince along with 11 destroyers, the latter including a Pole and a Greek.
For her part in this effort, Aurora, with the destroyer HMS Terpsichore as escort, on 18 September carried out a harassing bombardment of radio and radar stations on Milos with the assistance of air spotting. The next night, Aurora pounded Candia harbor and Heraklion airfield. After a trip to Alexandria to replenish her magazines, Aurora was back on 1 October to bombard Calato airfield, followed by Maleme airfield on the night of 2/3 October.
October 1944. Making fast the pipeline from HMS Hunter to the cruiser Aurora during Force “A” operations in the Aegean. Lt. DC Oulds IWM (A 26007)
HMS Aurora approaching HMS Hunter (ex-USS Block Island) for refueling. The ships were part of Force “A” during October 1944 in the Aegean Sea; Notice the sailor signaling semaphore in the foreground. Lt. DC Oulds
October 1944. Force “A” operations in the Aegean. From near to far: The escort carrier Hunter, the cruiser Royalist, the carrier Searcher, and the cruiser Colombo are seen from the Aurora, with her guns overhead in the foreground. Lt. DC Oulds, IWM (A 25998)
October 1944, the cruiser Aurora bombarding the airfield of Maleme in Crete at night. During Force “A” operations in the Aegean. Lt. DC Oulds, IWM (A 26001)
Same as above, IWM (A 26002)
Mid-October saw her as part of Force 120 for Operation Manna, which attacked enemy railway setups on Kos and helped troops land on islands like Mytilene and Piscopi.
By December, she was bombarding shipping at Rhodes to prevent it from being used by the Germans to escape the islands.
Moving into 1945, the war in the Med was slowing, and the fleet was used more for occupation and mopping up than large-scale operations.
HMS Aurora, Malta, late in her career. Note the difference in camo scheme
By 6 May 1945, Aurora was present at the surrender of Genoa, one of the last Axis-held ports in the Med. VE Day would hit two days later.
After a stint at Trieste, which at the time was the center of an east-west crisis, one of the first subtle engagements in the Cold War, Aurora was sent to HM Dockyard, Malta, for refit with an eye to continued service in the Pacific against the Japanese. She was still when VJ Day hit.
During World War II, HMS Aurora steamed a total of 201,688 miles and fired 9,163 rounds of 6-inch shells in anger.
Aurora well-earned eight battle honors for her service in WWII (Bismarck 1941, Mediterranean 1941–43, Malta Convoys 1941, North Africa 1942–43, Sicily 1943, Salerno 1943, Aegean 1943–44, and South France 1944) which, when added to the five she carried over from previous ships, gave her 13, a proud record.
To Chaing
Her refit at Malta finished in October 1945; Aurora was suddenly surplus to the Admiralty’s needs in a post-war Royal Navy.
She was virtually alone in her class, with her dependable sister Penelope sunk by U-boat in February 1944 off Anzio, joining sister Galatea, which had been sent to the bottom by the same cause off Alexandria in December 1941. Class leader Arethusa had been very banged up during the war indeed, and, while she was repaired, was placed in reserve in 1945 shortly after VJ Day, with a plan to sell her to the Norwegians (which fell through).
Arethusa in particular survived a hit that should have sent her to the bottom. In 1942, an Italian torpedo below B turret blew a 53 by 35 feet hole in her side. The ship caught fire from A turret back to the bridge and flooded to the waterline for 100 feet back from the bow, but survived. In the end, the Norwegians never picked her up, and she was instead scrapped in 1950.
At the end of WWII, the Brits had no shortage of top-notch and very good light cruisers, all of them newer, larger, much better armed and armored, not to mention more modern, than Aurora. These included five Tigers/Swiftsure (8,000t, 9×6″), two Ugandas (8,000t, 9×6″), six Fijis (8,000t, 9 or 12×6″), 11 Didos (7,400t, 8 or 10 x5.25″), Belfast (10,000t, 12×6″), and five Southhamptons (9,400t, 9×6″)– some 30 very decent CLs, not even counting older hulls like the four surviving Leanders (7,200t, 6 or 8×6″).
Even this, from a U.S. Navy ONI publication on the RN in 1946:
With the plan, at the time, to sell three of four remaining Leanders to India (they in fact only received one, Achilles), it was decided in November 1945 that Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Nationalist Chinese, locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Chicoms, could benefit from a loan (not sale) of the old “Silver Phantom.”
The Chinese at the time considered Aurora compensation for six Chinese Maritime Customs Service launches that had been impressed by the Royal Navy at Hong Kong in December 1941 and promptly lost with the colony.
The Chinese Navy of late 1945 had inherited several former IJN vessels in its ports or nearby as reparations– the largest ROCS Dan Yang (DD-12), formerly the legendary Yukikaze, a Kagerō-class fleet destroyer. To flesh out these ships and the few pre-1931 vessels still around under the KMT cog, the country received a number of surplus ships from Allied fleets. These included a dozen landing ships, useful along the long coastline, a few Cannon-class destroyer escorts, some corvettes, and, the crown jewel, our HMS Aurora.
The Chinese had a long history operating cruisers, going back to the Zhiyuan of the old Beiyang Fleet in the 1880s. Just before WWII in 1937, the fleet had 10 in commission: the heavy cruiser Hai Yung (4,300-ton, 8-inch guns, British-built, 1898), the German-built 3,000-tonners Hai Yung, Hai Shen and Hai Chou; the fast 2,500-ton Ning Ha and Ping Hai, the old Ta Tong and Tze Chiang, the small Yat Sen, and the 1,900-ton training cruiser Tung Chi. However, all were either sunk or captured (or both) by the Japanese.
On 17 April 1946, Aurora was paid off at Portsmouth, and the dockyard removed any sensitive materials while giving the cruiser a “light” overhaul.
Her Nationalist Chinese crew left Shanghai under Capt. Deng Zhaoxiang, late of the Guizhou Tongzi Naval Academy, on 9 November 1946, headed to England. Zhaoxiang, 43, had been to the country in the 1930s, having graduated from Greenwich and the British Naval Torpedo School.
Arriving at Portsmouth on 13 December 1946, Zhaoxiang and his 300-strong crew slowly moved into their country’s new warship and worked up alongside the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Mendip (which became the Chinese ROCS Lin Fu on 21 January 1948), with the cruiser only transferring officially on 19 May 1948.
Aurora as the Chinese cruiser Chongqing, complete with red, white and blue KMT “cog” flag
Named ROCS Chongqing (Chungking) after the wartime capital city of Nationalist China, the cruiser and Mendip/Lin Fu left Portsmouth with an RN seven-man liaison team aboard on 26 May 1948, headed for “home.”
Completing the 10,000-mile shakedown at Hong Kong on 28 July, the ship was given the final once-over by the RN dockyard there, and the British liaison team said their goodbyes when Chongqing and Lin Fu left for Tianjin (Tientsin), arriving on 20 August, where their skeleton crew was rounded out and brought to wartime strength.
Chiang Kai-shek himself personally called on the cruiser, the flagship of the ROCN, on 5-6 October 1948.
Things soon got squirrelly, with Mao’s Soviet-backed Reds rapidly gaining the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War.
This pushed Chongqing into the fight, with her guns being used against Communist Northeast Field Army positions at Xihaikou, Dahongyingzi, and Gaoqiao starting on 9 October with three ROCN gunboats in support. This continued the rest of the month as the task force covered the evacuation of the Nationalist 52nd Army from the Liao River.
She is probably the only ship in history to have fired at upwards of 50 ships at sea, ranging from Greenland to the Levant, and have bombarded shore targets in Norway, Greece, Italy, France and China.
Under a Red Banner
With the Nationalists slowly losing control of the mainland and withdrawing towards the coast and Formosa (Taiwan), by 17 February 1949, Chongqing was at Wusongkou, the strategic key at the confluence of the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers, and had received orders to sortie up the Yangtze to stop the Reds from crossing the river.
With one thing leading to another and the crew radicalized, with even the skipper Zhaoxiang and most of his officers going over to the mutineers, instead of sailing upriver to stop Mao’s boys, the cruiser raised the red flag, stopped answering the radio, and sailed out of the Yangtze River estuary heading 500 miles north to Communist-held Yantai at 0545 on 25 February. She had 574 committed members of the revolution aboard.
Arriving at Yantai on the morning of 26th February, the Nationalists gave the ship and its mutinous crew a few days to change their mind before sending a squadron of B-24M bombers (138 had been transferred under Lend-Lease) hunting for the ship starting on 3 March.
Shifting the cruiser at night to Huludao in an attempt to hide the 6,600-ton cruiser, Aurora’s luck ran out by 18-19 March, and she had been hit numerous times and capsized, although the PLAN stresses she was actually scuttled.
Aurora/Chongqing remained on the bottom of Huludao harbor until May 1951, when she was raised with Soviet Navy help and towed to the Sino-Soviet Shipyard in Dalian for repairs, which would continue through the autumn of 1955, when the Russians left.
It was during this time that many of the ship’s waterlogged instruments and sensors were removed and sent back to Russia for study,
She was toured by at least seven current and future Chinese leaders– including He Long, Zhou Enlai (July 1, 1951), Zhu De (September 1953), Peng Dehuai, Ye Jianying, and Liu Shaoqi (accompanied by Deng Xiaoping, autumn 1955)– adding them to the various fleet admirals, kings and Generalissimos who had walked her decks.
While it was deemed she was too badly damaged after spending 26 months submerged to ever sail and fight again, she was publicly added to the PLAN naval rolls under a series of shifting names and remained a cruiser, at least on paper, until at least October 1959.
The PLAN, which at the time had only 25,000 men, used the third-hand salvaged cruiser as its pier-side flagship throughout the late 1950s, leading about a dozen ex-Japanese escorts and gunboats. Interestingly, they also had the ex-Canadian corvette HMCS Bowmanville (K493), a dozen U.S. LSTs, another dozen LSMs, and several circa 1920s-30s “Sand Pebbles” style river gunboats such as the old USS Tutuila and USS Wake; the French Balny, the Italian Ermanno Carlotto, Portuguese Macau, and the HMS Falcon, Sandpiper, and Gannet; most of which had passed through Japanese and KMT hands over the decades.
The 1961 Jane’s noted, “The old light cruiser Pei Ching (ex-Huang Ha, ex-Victory, ex-Chungking, ex-H.M.S. Aurora) is now a mere hulk.”
Her place was planned to be filled in the Chinese battle line by the Russian Project 26bis2 (Kirov-class) medium cruiser Kaganovich/Petropavlovsk (9 x 7.1″/60-inch guns, 8,800 tons).
This transfer, of course, fell through due to the Sino-Soviet split, and Kaganovich, in poor condition in Vladivostok, was converted into a floating barracks, then later sold for scrap.
That left Aurora as *Communist China’s final cruiser until the 13,000-ton Type 055 CGs started coming online in 2020.
*(The very small 1,300-ton scout cruiser Yat Sen had been captured by the Japanese after scuttling at Jiangyin Fortress in 1937, raised and used as the training cruiser Atada, then repatriated to the KMT in 1945. She managed to skip out to Taiwan in 1949 and remained a ROCN asset until 1959, still listed as a cruiser despite her corvette size.)
Her saga as a hulk
By 1959, the floating remnants of what used to be Aurora were being slowly disassembled by the Shanghai Salvage Bureau.
Her weapons and anything of interest not already looted by the Russians while she was at Dalian were removed and sent to Tsinghua University and the Harbin Military Engineering Academy for use in teaching and study.
Her main engine assembly was sold for 320,000 yuan to the Shanghai Office of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Electric Power.
Her four boilers were sold for a total of 72,000 yuan and went to four different end-users: the Tianjin Supply and Marketing Cooperative, the Production Materials Management Division of the Hubei Provincial Department of Commerce, and the Industrial Department of Jiyuan County, Henan Province, respectively.
The Navy eventually transferred the Chongqing’s hull to the Shanghai Marine Transport Bureau under the aegis of the Ministry of Communications for use as a floating barracks. She then served as the on-sea dormitory ship for the Tianjin Maritime Rescue and Salvage Bureau in the 1980s, and finally for the Bohai Oil Company, when what was left of the old girl afloat was recycled by the early 1990s.
While it seems most of her armament faded into history, at least one set of 4″/45 Mk XVIs was sent to the campus of the Navy Mechanical School in Dalian (now the Department of Naval Politics at the PLA Dalian Naval Academy). Another set was installed on Dongshan Hill at the Dalian Hutan Amusement Park, now Laohutan Ocean Park, where it remains in poor material condition.
Her Chinese nameplates and bell are on display in the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution in Beijing, classified as National First-Class Cultural Relics.
Epilogue
Besides her extensive relics all over China, Aurora survives in maritime art.
Arethusa-class light cruiser HMS Aurora by Charles E Turner IWM ART 15083
Chongqing art, with KMT flag
Aurora had seven skippers in her brief (12 November 1937 to May 1946) commissioned time in the Royal Navy, spanning less than a decade. Of these, six became admirals. These included her first skipper (the future ADM Sir Henry Daniel Pridham-Wippell, C.B., C.V.O., K.C.B, who led a formation of four light cruisers and three destroyers at the Battle of Cape Matapan); VADM William Gladstone Agnew, KCVO, DSO with Bar, who commanded Aurora during her most trying service from October 1940 through November 1943 and ended the war as head of the gunnery school at HMS Excellent; and VADM Geoffrey Barnard, C.B.E., DSO, who was skipper for the last two years of the war including the Dragoon Landings. Barnard was the last to pass, in 1974 at age 72, and had finished his career in 1958 as President of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.
Pridham-Wippell, Agnew, and Barnard were all Aurora skippers minted during the Great War who went on to a well-earned vice-admiral rank or higher. Of note, Agnew and Barnard both picked up DSOs on Aurora during the war.
Another, more recognizable, name related to Aurora was that of thespian Kenneth Moore, who took a break from his acting career to serve in the RNR during the war, seeing action on our cruiser as well as the carrier Victorious. Ironically, Moore later went on to play Capt. Shepherd, the fictional central protagonist, in 1960’s Sink the Bismarck!
The IWM has several oral history interviews online with members of her crew, including her junior gunnery officer, Sub-Lt. Nigel Matthews, who remembered “we were in action a tremendous amount of time,” seeing service on the Spitsbergen operation, including the sinking of the Bismarck and Bremse, as well as three seamen who served on her in 1944-45, including Dragoon and Force A.
The Admiralty recycled the cruiser’s name for a 10th Aurora, a £4.65 million Leander-class frigate (F10) built at John Brown & Company in the early 1960s that held the line in the Cold War, traded rammings with the Icelanders in the Cod Wars, and served in the Far East with the old 7th Squadron as well as on the Armilla Patrol. Decommissioned in 1987, she was scrapped in 1990, leaving the RN without an Aurora for the past four decades, a shame.
Aerial view of Leander-class frigate HMS Aurora (F10), with Wasp helicopters overhead during the Cold War, IWM (HU 129741).
The Chinese also recycled the name, honoring the courageous mutineers who hoisted the Red Banner and left Chiang with a case of heartburn. The Type 051 destroyer Chongqing (133) was on active duty from 1982 until 2014 and is preserved as a floating museum at the Tianjin Binhai Theme Park, opposite the former Soviet aircraft carrier Kiev. Tickets cost 220 yuan.
The Type 051 destroyer Chongqing (133) at Tianjin Binhai Theme Park on 23 September 2018, via Wiki Commons.
Thanks for reading!
Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive
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On 23 May 1942, the 110-foot SC-497-class wooden-hulled submarine chaser PC-772 was laid down at the Peyton Co., Newport Beach, California, and commissioned on 15 April 1943 as USS SC-772, likely spending her wartime career in coastal patrol not far from the yard that built her.
At the end of WWII, SC-772 was transferred to the USCG briefly along with 69 sisters to serve as an unarmed Air-class air-sea rescue cutter, commissioned as the USCGC Air Mallard (WAVR 437) in December 1945 and stationed at Newport Beach with her sister, USCGC Air Martin (WAVR 438/ex-SC-775).
USCGC Air Mallard (WAVR-437). c. 1946. Off San Diego
A short-lived program for the cash-strapped agency, the Airs were soon disposed of and sold on the commercial market for use as fishing trawlers, offshore supply boats, and yachts.
So, the former subchaser meandered, headed to the Vancouver area as M/V Lady Goodiver in 1948, then serving as a barge, a salvage boat, a dive tender, and any number of houseboats and yachts, carrying assorted names over the years, including Joan Lindsay and Maplewood.
By 2010, she was undergoing conversion to become a floating bed and breakfast near Scappoose, Oregon, carrying her original Subchaser SC-772 name.
Then, in 2020, she was sunk at her moorage by a floating log that holed her under the waterline. Resting on the bottom under 16 feet of water, she was recently salvaged, an end to an era.
Dig those M1903s with long M1905 bayonets, M1917 Brodie helmets, Great War style leggings, and M2 gas masks, seen some 85 years ago this month on the eve of the U.S. entrance to WWII.
NARA Local Identifier 126-PG-5G-7
Official period caption:
Members of the Puerto Rican National Guard During Maneuvers. September 1941. San Juan, Puerto Rico. San Juan, Puerto Rico. Gas masks and bayonets are the order of the day in Puerto Rico as Europe is plunged into a new war, and plans for the completion of this U.S. Territory as a “Gibraltar” are rushed. Above, members of the Puerto Rican National Guard are pictured during recent maneuvers in the island. More than $30,000,000 is being spent here for the establishment of air bases and other defenses. Because of its strategic position with respect to Europe and the Panama Canal, Puerto Rico today is considered the No. 1 defensive outpost for the U.S. on the Atlantic side. The island is the nearest to Europe of any spot under the American flag. Steve Hannagan. Puerto Rican News Bureau. San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Well before the U.S. entered the war, in October 1940, the PRNG was mobilized, called into federal service, and prepared for conflict, eventually activating its 295th and 296th Infantry Regiments, totaling over 2,700 personnel. While those units did not go any further overseas than the Canal Zone, the Commonwealth did stand up the 65th U.S. Infantry Regiment (“The Borinqueneers”), which saw extensive action in North Africa and the European theater (Naples-Foggia, Rome-Arno), and the PRNG certainly fed into the 65th.
By the end of the war, some 65,034 Puerto Ricans served in the U.S. military, with over 2,500 becoming casualties.
Some 75 years ago this month, aboard Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco, September 1951.
How about a sharp original period Kodachrome of a beautiful Grumman (G-38) Goose amphibian JRF-5G, USCG Hull No. 4792 (MSN B-87, Navy BuNo 84792).
Photo by William T. Larkins, via WikiCommons
Powered by Pratt & Whitney R-985-AN-6 radials, the USCG contracted for 24 JRF-5Gs beginning in early 1941, following up on 10 JRF-2/3s purchased in the late 1930s.
The Navy also purchased 160 of the type and transferred at least three JRF-5Gs in 1950 that were surplus to its needs, including the above hull.
Circa 1943 Kodachrome of a camouflaged blue/white Vought OS2U Kingfisher with landing gear instead of floats, a Howard NH-1 (militarized DGA-15) trainer in “yellow peril” scheme, a blue Grumman JRF-5 Goose (militarized G-38), and three PBM Mariner flying boats at NAS, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 80-GK-14313
Prior to World War II these aircraft carried out search and rescue as well as aerial mapping flights and participated in the Coast Guard’s contribution to the enforcement of the Neutrality Patrol. During the war, the JRFs conducted search and rescue operations, transported supplies and personnel, and were utilized for ASW operations. Depth Charges or Bombs were carried externally under the wing.
Survivors of a torpedoed ship hailing a U.S. Coast Guard JRF amphibian. Artwork by Hunter Wood NARA 026-g-021-061-001
Most of the remaining Coast Guard’s JRF-2/3s were disposed of shortly after the end of World War II, while many of the JRF-5Gs remained in service with the Coast Guard until 1954, when they were replaced by another Grumman amphibian, the HU-16 Albatross.
BuNo 84792 was Withdrawn From Use on 21 September 1955. A former Navy plane; others in her batch went to France to fly with Escadrille 8S in Indochina.
Some 110 years ago this month, a great view of the conning tower and forward turrets, complete with newly-installed 15″/42 Mark I guns, of the future Renown-class battlecruiser HMS Repulse, seen whilst fitting out at John Brown & Co’s Clydebank yard, Scotland.
August 1916 National Records of Scotland, UCS1-118-443-295
The 10th RN ship to carry the name, Repulse commissioned 18 August 1916, just over two months too late for Jutland. The month prior, she hit 31.73 knots on her speed trials, making her the world’s second fastest capital ship upon completion, only bested by her sister Renown, which hit 32.58.
However, the two sisters, Renown and Repulse, spent so much time in modification and maintenance over their careers that the wags in the fleet collectively knew them as HMS Refit and HMS Repair.
This included, for Repulse, 27 months (December 1918 – March 1921) at Portsmouth Dockyard to install torpedo bulges and improved armor to fix the shortcomings exposed in British battlecruisers at Jutland, and a 37-month (April 1933 – May 1936) modernization on the eve of WWII. Add to that numerous minor maintenance and refit periods, and she spent nearly a fourth of her 25-year career in the yard.
Portsmouth Dockyard blueprint for Renown-class battlecruiser HMS Repulse dated 1936.
Repulse nonetheless earned three battle honors (Norway 1940, Atlantic 1940, and Bismarck Action 1941) before she gave her last full measure, escorting the HMS Prince of Wales on 10 December 1941
