laststandonzombieisland

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

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023: An Everlasting Pansarbat

Above we see the Aran-class pansarskepp HSvMS Manligheten of the Royal Swedish Navy as she pokes around Europe in the summer of 1937 while on a midshipman’s cruise. Note her distinctive funnel flash and forward superstructure arrangement which differentiated the “coastal battleship” from her three sisters.

She is 34 years young in the above image– launched some 120 years ago this month in fact– but still looks clean and neat. It should come as no surprise that Manligheten would continue to be afloat and in use in one form or another until just a few years ago.

The Aran class

Just after Swedish-born engineer John Ericsson had introduced the ironclad turret warship in 1862 when he lent his genius to the USS Monitor, his homeland soon ordered two classes of iron-hulled coastal monitors to counter Baltic Sea rival, Imperial Russia, as the Tsar was upgrading his own fleet with American-designed monitors. However, by the 1880s, those aforementioned vessels were almost considered quaint by rapidly evolving naval technology.

To reboot their fleet from the first-generation ironclads to steel warships, the Swedes in 1883 placed an order for the 3,050-ton, 248-foot HSvMS Svea for 1.24 million kron, followed by her two half-sisters, HSvMS Göta and HSvMS Thule. Carrying large (10-inch) main guns and swathed in as much as 10 inches of armor plate, they were rightly considered something of a coastal battleship or slow protected cruiser for their period.

This pansarbarten/pansarskepp concept was well-liked by the Swedes, who ordered another three-ship class, the Oden-class pansarskepp-type coastal defense ships (3445 tons, 2-10 inch guns, 9.5 inches armor, 16.5 knots) which were completed in 1899 and the one-off HSvMS Dristigheten (Audacity) which was basically an improved Oden with better armament.

Then, with lessons learned around the world that came from the Spanish-American War, the four-ship Äran class was ordered.

Made of all riveted steel in a 287-foot hull with 11 watertight sections, they were the heaviest Swedish warships at the time of their construction, hitting the water at 3,700 tons due to a belt that ran as thick as 7 inches of Krupp armor (as opposed to Harvey nickel-steel in the previous ships). Able to float in just 16 feet of water at a maximum load, they could hug the shoreline where larger battlewagons could not tread and still make 17 knots on an engineering suite that included 8 coal-fired Yarrow boilers and two Motala 3-cylinder triple-expanding steam engines.

The four members of the class were Äran/Eran/Aeran (Honor), Wasa/Vasa (in honor of several former Swedish ships of the line), Tapperheten (Bravery), and Manligheten (Manhood). To speed up construction as tensions were high with Norway at the time, they were completed at three different domestic yards– Lindholmen shipyard in Gothenburg (Äran), Finnboda shipyard in Stockholm (Wasa), and Kockum’s Mekaniska Verkstad in Malmö (Tapperheten and Manligheten). Approved in the Riksdag in 1899 (first three) and 1901 (Manligheten), all had entered service by 1904.

While the earlier Sveas carried two Armstrong 1880s BL 10-inch guns, and the Odens two French-made 8.3″/42cal Canet m/94A guns, these new Äran-class pansarbarten would be equipped with a longer locally made 8.2″/45 m/98 gun produced by Bofors Gallspanz and trialed on Dristigheten. As noted by the 1914 Janes, these Swedish 8.2s could fire a 275-pound AP shell on a blend of special Bofors-made nitro-compound that was capable of penetrating 9.5 inches of armor at 3,000 yards. The maximum range was 11,000 yards due to the limited 12-degree elevation limits on the turret. The rate of fire was about one round per minute.

The secondary battery was another Swedish naval favorite, the 15,2 cm kanon (6″/45) m/98. Introduced in 1898 on Dristigheten, they would be used on the Ärans as well as the large minesweeper/training ship HSwMS Älvsnabben (M01). The Ärans would carry six of these guns in armored single-mount turrets, divided three on each broadside– a departure from casemated secondaries in previous Swedish pansarbarten. They were capable of firing a 101-pound shell to 10,000 yards at a rate of up to 7 shots per minute.

The tertiary battery was 10 57mm/48 cal kanon m/89 guns. Made domestically by Finspongs bruk under license by Maxim-Nordenfeldt, these were QF guns that could fire 6-pounder shells out to 6,000 yards as fast as 35 rounds per minute as long as the passers and hoists could keep up. These were typically described as anti-torpedo boat guns in their era.

Besides the mounted gun armament, the class carried a pair of m/1899 18-inch Armstrong torpedo tubes below the waterline for a dozen Whitehead m/93 and m/03 torpedoes while each of their two embarked 28-foot steam sloops could carry spar torpedoes and a one-pounder 37mm m/98B gun.

Meet Manligheten

Laid down at Kockum’s behind her sister Tapperheten, Manligheten was launched on 1 December 1903. Her honorable name had been used by the Swedish Navy by a circa 1785 64-gun ship-of-the-line that had fought in Gustav III’s Russian war in 1788-80– blockading Viborg– as well as in the naval battles during the Finnish War of 1808–1809 and was only disposed of in 1864.

Manligheten was commissioned on 3 December 1904, the last of her class to join the fleet. A happy ship, she, along with her three sisters, formed the 1st Pansarbåtsdivisionen in 1905.

She sailed in the summer of 1912, along with the cruiser Fylgia and the larger pansarbat Oscar II to bring King Gustav V and his family to Pitkepaasi outside Viborg for a meeting with the Tsar of Russia and his family to Russia.

War!

The Great War, with Sweden’s strictly enforced armed neutrality (Neutralitesvakten), saw the Arans were slightly modified in 1916, trading out a couple of their low-angle 57mm 6-pounders for some newer Lvk m/1924 models with increased elevation, meant for AAA and balloon busting.

As easy interbellum

In 1920, Manligheten took a cruise to Amsterdam, the first trip outside of Scandinavia by a Swedish coastal battleship since the summer of 1913.

In the mid-1920s, a refit saw new boilers installed including two oil-fired and six coal-fired. By this time, two further low-angle 6-pounders had been landed, replaced by two 25mm AAA guns– one on the top of each 8.3-inch turret.

Sisters Tapperheten and Manligheten, once completing their mid-life refit, would undertake two back-to-back European goodwill tours during the summers of 1926 (Amsterdam-Portsmouth-Guernsey-Vlaardinggen) and 1927 (Plymouth-San Sebastian-Bilbao-Rotterdam).

Besides her typical spate of peacetime drills and exercises, followed by iced-in winters, Manligheten survived a grounding in 1930 and was tapped for another European deployment in the summer of 1937. This latter trip, with port calls at Amsterdam, Newcastle, Rouen, Cardiff, Oban, Trondheim, and Memel, was her only solo tour and she embarked 90 officer cadets. It was largely followed by a repeat trip in the summer of 1938. By then, she carried both a pair of 25mm/58 cal Bofors m/32 AAA guns and 37mm Bofors as well. 

War, again

Then came World War II and, with Sweden seriously isolated and pressured by the Germans, stepped up her Neutralitesvakten as much as possible.

However, by this time the 40-year-old Arans were in rough shape. Tapperheten had been laid up in a sort of reserve capacity since 1928 while Aran was likewise mothballed in 1933. Wasa, which had not been refitted since 1924, was found to be in such poor condition that she was decommissioned in 1940 and rebuilt for use as a decoy target ship.

Manligheten, in the best material condition, retained her original 8.3-inch and 6″/45 guns as well as her pair of 25mm/58 cal Bofors m/32 AAA guns, but landed all of her old 57s in favor of a battery of four 57mm Bofors Lvk m/1924s, two 40mm/56 cal Bofors m/36s, and a pair of 8x63mm Browning Kulspruta Lvksp m/36 water-cooled heavy machine guns. Her torpedo tubes were retired. This armament package, along with topside changes, a single and more streamlined mast, camouflage, and recognition stripe, greatly changed her appearance.

Tapperheten and Aran likewise received the same modernization.

Manligheten was, notably, a flagship for the task force searching for the lost Swedish Draken class submarine HSvMS Ulven (Wolf) in April 1943, which had been sunk by a mine.

Following the end of the war, Aran and Tapperheten were withdrawn from service on 13 June 1947 and scrapped, while the hulked target ship/decoy Wasa experienced a similar fate.

Manligheten was the last of her class in commission, withdrawn from service on 24 February 1950. She was partially scrapped in 1952-53 at Karlskrona.

While her guns (more on this below), superstructure, and machinery were removed, Manligheten’s welded-up armored hull, under the shortened name “MA” proved sturdy enough to continue service as a floating pontoon dock at the new Gullmarsbasen naval base in remote Skredsvik on the country’s west coast, where she served as a base for the minesweepers stationed there in the 1950s and the mothballed destroyers HSvMS Göteborg (J5) and HSvMS Stockholm (J6) in the 1960s.

It was planned to tow the old girl around the country for use as a Krigsbro (ersatz war bridge) if needed during WWIII.

In 1984, ex-Manligheten/MA was disposed of by the Swedish military after 80 years of service and sold commercially for continued use as a floating dock, a role she would continue until 2015, hosting tugs for the Switzer group at Lahälla in Brofjorden. It was only afterward that she was sold to the breakers. 

Arming coastal outposts

The main and secondary armament from Oscar II, the three Svea class, and the four Aran class pansarskepp were extensively redeployed around the country in the 1940s ashore as kustartilleripjäs (coastal artillery piece) for use by the five coastal artillery regiments (kustartilleriregemente)– KA 1, Vaxholms; KA 2, Karlskrona; KA 3 Gotlands, KA 4, Älvsborg; KA 5, Härnösands. These included eight 210mm guns in three batteries and 22 152mm guns in nine batteries. In all, they would remain in operation (typically held in readiness for use by reserves upon mobilization) until the late 1960s in the case of the 210s and 2001(!) when it came to the 152s.

21 cm kanon m/98A

• Hamnskär (3 pj) HS KA1 Discontinued 1962, (last firing 1962).
• Hultungs (3 pj) HG KA3 Discontinued 1964 (last firing 64), Decommissioned 1968.
• Öppenskär (2 pj) ÖS KA2 Discontinued 1959, Decommissioned 1965.

15,2 cm kanon m/98E i 15,2 cm vallav m/38 (15,2 cm pjäs m/98E-38)

• Korsö (2 pj) KO/KO1 KA1 Decommissioned 1992.
• Korsö (2 pj) KO/KO1 KA1 Decommissioned 1992.
• Söderarm (2 pj) SA/SA1 KA1 Replaced by 12/70, last KFÖ 1968.
• Mellsten (3 pj) M1 KA1 Replaced by 12/70.
• Bungenäs (3 pj) BN KA3 Replaced by 15/51, Decommissioned 2001.
• Trelge (3 pj) TG KA3 Discontinued 1978/79, Decommissioned 1999.
• Lungskär (3 pj) LR KA2 Discontinued 1978/79, Decommissioned 1999.
• Trelleborg (Dalköpinge) (1 pj) TE/TE1 KA2 Replaced by 12/70.
• Holmögadd (3 pj) HD/HO1 KA5 Replaced by 12/70, Decommissioned 1980.

The coast artillery augmented these static gun batteries with S.11 rockets (RBS- 52) and locally made RBS-15s as well as 24 Bofors 120mm R Kapj 12/80 KARIN mobile guns and 30 12/70 single ERSTA emplacements— the latter two based on the excellent domestically produced Haubits FH-77 field howitzer– in the 1980s.

The last Bofors guns were fired on 26 September 2000 and the units disbanded by October 31 of that year, rebranded as amphibious troops (amfibiebataljonen).

Today they use portable Hellfire launchers, designated the RBS-17.

A few 210s and 152 from the old battlewagons remain as museums, for instance, these at the Gotlands Försvarsmuseum

Epilogue

When it comes to enduring relics, Manligheten’s 54×82 inch stern ornament is preserved at the Marinmuseum as well as some other items.

There is also some maritime art, such as the painting by Arvid above, and period postcards that remember the ship in better times. 

The Swedish Navy has not christened a third Manligheten.

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

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