Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger
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Warship Wednesday, June 26, 2024: A Tin Can with Teeth
Photograph by LT. L. Pelman, Admiralty Collection, Imperial War Museum catalog number A 20319.
Above we see a group of ratings aboard the Beagle class destroyer HMS Bulldog (H 91) with their mechanical mascot “which does everything but eat,” on 11 November 1943, at Portsmouth. Don’t let the clever lads and their tin pup fool you, Bulldog’s crew had already accomplished more in the war for the Atlantic than any other destroyer men would and, just six months after this image was snapped, add to their war record by bagging their second U-boat of the conflict.
The A/Bs
Moving on from their Great War-era tin cans, the Admiralty ordered a pair of modern destroyer prototypes in 1927– HMS Amazon (1,352 tons) and Ambuscade (1,173 tons), each capable of making 37 knots on oil-fired steam turbine plants and armed with four old-style BL 4.7″/45 Mk I dual purpose guns and six 21-inch torpedo tubes.
HMS Amazon (D39) underway at sea in 1942. She and near sister HMS Ambuscade (D38) formed the basis for British destroyer designs from 1927 until the Tribal class was ordered in 1936. IWM FL 515.
The lessons learned from these two test vessels led to two runs of very similar ships, the 8-hull A class (Acasta, Achates, Active, Antelope, Anthony, Ardent, Arrow, and Acheron) along with a destroyer leader with room for a commodore (HMS Codrington), a second flight 8-hull B class (Basilisk, Beagle, Blanche, Boadicea, Boreas, Brazen, Brilliant and Bulldog) with corresponding destroyer leader (HMS Keith), and two further A’s for the RCN (HMCS Saguenay and Skeena). In all, some 20 ships.
The A/B class destroyers, from the 1931 Janes.
Powered by two Parsons geared steam turbines, each with their own shaft, using steam provided by three Admiralty water-tube boilers equipped with superheaters, these 1,350-ton (standard) 323-foot greyhounds were extremely fast, able to hit 35 knots. Armed with four more modern QF 4.7″/45cal Mk IX singles and a pair of quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes, they could hold their own. Able to (kind of) sweep mines, they initially carried little ASW gear as, after all, when they were designed, the Versailles Treaty had barred Germany from making or owning U-boats. Of course, that would change.
Meet Bulldog
Our subject was the sixth HMS Bulldog (or HMS Bull Dog) in RN service in a tradition going back to 1794 that included two ships that fought the French, a steam-powered paddle sloop that saw hot service from Palermo to Haiti, an Ant-class gunboat in the last half of the 19th Century, and a Great War-era Beagle-class destroyer that struck Turkish mine off Gallipoli. This earned our destroyer five battle honors (Toulon 1793, St Lucia 1796, Baltic 1854-55, Dardanelles 1915-16, English Channel 1915-16) before she was even commissioned.
Ordered on 22 March 1929 under the 1928 Programme as Yard No. 1411 from Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd, Wallsend, the future HMS Bulldog (H91) was laid down on 10 August 1929, launched the following December, and completed on 8 April 1931 at £221,408.
Dispatched to join the 4th Destroyer Flotilla with the Mediterranean Fleet, Bulldog showed the flag, participated in fleet exercises, and came to the rescue of those affected by the 1932 Ierissos earthquake in Greece.
Bulldog in Venice, pre-war
Reassignment to the Home Fleet in September 1936 brought an almost non-stop series of tense patrols off the Spanish coast during the Civil War in that country, alternating with yard periods, for the next three years.
War!
When the declaration of war between Germany and Great Britain hit in September 1939, Bulldog was in Alexandria as escort and plane guard for the carrier HMS Glorious.
HMS Glorious November 1939 at Socotra in Yemen destroyer HMS Bulldog alongside
With German raiders and blockade runners at large in the Indian Ocean, a hunting group (Force J) consisting of Glorious, Bulldog, the destroyer HMS Daring, and the old battleship HMS Malaya was sent to those waters for the rest of the year.
April 1940 saw Bulldog join in the screen escorting the carriers Glorious and Ark Royal back to UK Home Waters for the Norwegian campaign, during which our destroyer was tasked with supporting other operations. It was shortly after she broke with the carriers that Bulldog came to the rescue of the torpedoed K-class destroyer leader HMS Kelly (F01)-– commanded by Lord Louis Mountbatten– and towed the ship back to Tyne.
Assigned to the 1st Destroyer Flotilla for the evacuation of the BEF from France in June 1940 (Operation Cycle), Bulldog received three bomb hits off Le Harve on 10 June and had to spend the next three months in repair, returning to service in September with a raid with three other destroyers on the port of Cherbourg.
Convoy duties, Enigma, and Sub-busting
Bulldog then spent the rest of 1940 on escort and sheepdog duty. In February 1941, she was nominated for escort service in the Western Approaches and, between 17 March 1941 when she joined HG 055, and 14 March 1945 when she left MKS 087G, would ride shotgun on no less than 50 convoys.
While part of the 3rd Escort Group accompanying convoy OB 318, Bulldog, HMS Broadway, and the corvette HMS Aubretia engaged the German Type IXB submarine U-110 (Kptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp) east of Cape Farewell, Greenland on 9 May 1940.
After depth charging her to the surface a boarding party from Bulldog under SLt David Balme including stoker Cyril Lee, telegraphist Allen Long, and Able Seamen Sidney Pearce, Cyril Dolley, Richard Roe, Claude Wileman, Arnold Hargreaves and John Trotter, spent six hours aboard the sinking German submarine and managed to bag its intact Enigma machine, in its entirety, to include the prized current Kurzsignale preset codes book.
B Class Destroyer HMS Bulldog with U-110 in the background on May 9th, 1941
As detailed by the Independent in 2016:
They arrived soon after midday to windward of her. Balme clambered up her curved, slippery surface, and, revolver at the ready, mounted the fixed ladder of the 12ft conning tower. Going down inside, he had two hatches and more ladders to negotiate. It meant replacing the weapon in its holster to grip with both hands and descend bottom-first. If any Nazi crewman had stayed on board, he thought, I’m an easy target.
An eerie blue light bathed the U-boat’s nerve center in the chamber below, an array of unfamiliar wheels and dials. A hissing came from somewhere, and he could hear the ocean slosh against the hull. There might be booby traps; there might be scuttling charges set to explode. He went up to the bow: nothing; the stern, too, was empty.
He formed his men into a chain to pass out books and documents. They included a stoker, Cyril Lee, and a telegraphist, Allen Long. The stoker’s job, to restart the engines, proved too risky, but the telegraphist at once told Balme: “This looks like an interesting bit of equipment, Sir.” It resembled a typewriter but lit up strangely when Long pressed the keys. It was a German naval “Enigma” cipher machine. The party found daily settings and procedures for its use. Written in soluble ink, they risked being lost if dropped in the sea, but, Balme recalled: “Nothing even got wet.”
As noted by the National Museum of the Royal Navy, “This discovery was one of the greatest ever intelligence coups and undoubtedly saved thousands, if not millions, of lives.” No less a person than King George VI called the find “perhaps the most important single event in the whole war at sea.”
Balme received the Distinguished Service Cross while the other members of the away team were Mentioned in Despatches, and skipper CDR Addison Joe Baker-Cresswell, RN, received the Distinguished Service Order.
A party from HMS Bulldog prepares to board U-110. IWM HU63114
Bulldog kept U-110 afloat for 17 hours then let the towline slip, ordered to let the submarine go to the bottom to preserve the Enigma capture secret.
HMS Bulldog (H-91) moored to a buoy on the east coast, on 17 April 1945
Bulldog would also chalk up a solo kill against the Type VIIC U-boat U-719 (Oblt. Klaus-Dietrich Steffens) on 26 Jun 1944– 80 years ago today– north-west of Ireland. All hands were lost on the German boat.
Operation Nest Egg
It was aboard the cramped decks of our little destroyer that the nearly five-year German occupation of the Channel Islands ended. She was the headquarters ship for Force 135, Operation Nest Egg, commanded by Brigadier Alfred Ernest Snow, OBE, which was sent to liberate the islands.
A week after Hitler’s suicide, HMS Bulldog, escorted by her sister Beagle, arrived off St Peter Port in Guernsey and a declaration of unconditional surrender was signed t 0714 on 9 May 1945 by Generalmajor Siegfried Heine, deputy commander of the German garrison, after some back and forth between Brigadier Snow, chief of the British “Omelet” delegation, and one young Kapitänleutänant Armin Zimmerman, the aide to the garrison’s overall commander, Vizeadmiral Friedrich Hüffmeier, late of the KMS Scharnhorst.
The surrender party was transported by the German minesweeper M4613 to Bulldog.
A scene on board HMS Bulldog during the first conference with Captain Lieutenant Zimmerman before the signing of the surrender document which liberated the Channel Islands. Left to right around the table are: Admiral Stuart (Royal Navy), Brigadier General A E Snow (Chief British Emissary), Captain H Herzmark (Intelligence Corps), Wing Commander Archie Steward (Royal Air Force), Lieutenant Colonel E A Stoneman, Major John Margeson, Colonel H R Power (all of the British Army) and Kapitänleutänant Armin Zimmerman,(Kriegsmarine). IWM D24595
Generalmajor Siegfried Heine, German deputy commander of the Channel Islands (right), has his identification papers checked as arrives at HMS Bulldog to sign the document of surrender. IWM D 24601
Immediately after the surrender document was signed, the initial Allied force, led by Colonel H.R. Power and Lt.Col Stoneman and consisting of four officers and 21 men, including several from Guernsey, landed at the White Rock at 07:50, the first British forces on the island since June 1940.
Colonel H.R. Power, Chief Civil Affairs Officer, walking across the gangplank from German Harbor Protection Vessel FK04, about to shake the hand of Attorney-General J.E.L. Martel on the White Rock. The St. Peter Port seafront can be seen in the background. Approx. 7:50am, 9th May 1945 Guernsey Museum Object No. GMAG 2006.193.36
In all, the German garrisons in the Channel Islands numbered 26,909 men on 9 May (Jersey: 11,671, Guernsey: 11,755, Alderney: 3,202, and Sark: 281), which had kept a populace of some 40,000 locals under the thumb for a half-decade. Not a bad haul for a couple of worn-out tin cans.
Paid off shortly after, Bulldog earned two somewhat understated battle honors for her WWII service (Atlantic 1941-45 and Arctic 1942-44)
The war was hard on these ships. Of the 20 A/B-class destroyers, 13 were lost or crippled during WWII including Acasta and Ardent, sunk in a surface action with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off Narvik while trying to defend HMS Glorious; Achates lost in the Barents in a one-sided fight with the German cruiser Admiral Hipper; Acheron and Blanche lost to mines, Arrow wrecked in an explosion in Algiers, Codrington and Brazen sunk by German bombers off Dover during the Battle of Britain, Skeena wrecked off Iceland, Keith and Basilisk claimed by the Luftwaffe during Dunkirk, and Boadicea sent sky high by Fritz X missiles fired by KG 100 Dornier Do 217s off Portsmouth a week after D-Day. Saguenay, who lost both her bow and stern in two different incidents, finished the war as an unpowered training hulk.
Of the seven remaining class members– Active, Antelope, Anthony, Beagle, Boreas, Brilliant, and our Bulldog— obsolete for postwar work and thoroughly worn out, they were soon paid off and scrapped by 1948.
Epilogue
Few relics remain of Bulldog.
A set of her 1940 bomb damage repair plans are in the National Archives.
The IWM has two works of art in their collection with Bulldog as the subject.
This evacuation from France was remembered in a period watercolor by maritime artist Richard Harding Seddon.
Signaling HMS Bulldog from the Shore, near Veulette: 10th June 1940. a view of some British soldiers signaling from a beach to HMS Bulldog. The soldiers stand on an unusual white rock formation, the sunset casting long shadows across the beach. Art.IWM ART LD 5986
Bulldog and her sisters Beagle and Boadicea were also portrayed off Bear Island while on Arctic duty in 1943 in a painting by Colin McMillan.
Three Royal Navy destroyers sail in choppy Arctic waters near Bear Island (Bjørnøja), with HMS Boadicea in the immediate foreground. All the ships sail from left to right and beams of sunlight emerge from breaks in the cloud in the background. Art.IWM ART 16598
As for Enigma machine burglar David Edward Balme, naval officer, and wool broker, DSC 1941, he finished the war as an LCDR and later served in the cruiser HMS Berwick and the battle-cruiser HMS Renown before leaving the service in 1947. He died in Lymington, Hampshire 3 January 2016.
Bulldog’s skipper during the Enigma/U-110 capture, CDR Addison Joe Baker-Cresswell DSO, RN, left the service in 1951 having gone on to command the cruiser HMS Caradoc (D 60). A gentleman farmer, he passed in 1997, aged 96.
Post-war, the Royal Navy would recycle the name for the seventh HMS Bulldog (A317), the lead ship of her class of four 189-foot steel-hulled armed survey ships. Commissioned in 1968, she was the last of the four still in service– and the last active RN ship with a wooden deck– when she was paid off in 2002.
Built by Brooke Marine, Lowestoft, the Bulldogs sported a bulbous bow and a high flared forecastle, giving them rather yacht-like lines, in addition to their suite of echo sounders and a Marconi Hydrosearch sector scanning sonar.
The Admiralty in 2021 announced the names for the “Inspirational” Type 31 (Babcock Arrowhead 140) frigate class would include the eighth HMS Bulldog, which had her keel laid in 2023.
Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.
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