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Warship Wednesday 17 December 2025: They Give a Good Account of Themselves

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling 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 17 December 2025: They Give a Good Account of Themselves

Courtesy of Mr. Donald M. McPherson, Naval History and Heritage Command NH 68493

Above we see the awning-covered and white painted Insect-class gunboat HMS Ladybird (P.0A) lounging on the Yangtze River during China’s warlord period, circa the late 1920s. A globetrotter, she witnessed history around the world in two official wars and several undeclared ones.

Don’t let her innocuous profile and name fool you, Ladybird was a killer, as three Italian freighters found out some 85 years ago today.

The Insects

The dozen shallow draught river gunboats of the Insect class, some 237 feet long and 635 tons displacement, were flat-bottomed ships designed by Yarrow to operate in shallow, fast-flowing rivers, and able to float in just four feet of brown water.

They had enough muscle (2,000 ihp plant on Yarrow boilers and twin VTE engines and three rudders) to make 14 knots (designed, yet “easily made” 18 knots on trials), thus capable of going upstream against the flow as needed and could turn “almost on a six-pence.”

Get a feel for the class from this excellent model of the Insect class gunboat HMS Tarantula in the RMG collections.

F7752 001

F7752 004

F7752 003

F7752 002

While ordered as a class in February 1915 for emergency war service in Europe (e.g. to fight on the Danube against Austrian river monitors but instead against the “Johnny Turk” in the Tigris flotilla), the consensus is that they would, after the Great War had wrapped up, see China service on the Yangtze and similar large waterways to protect the Crown’s interests in the often lawless region. Thus, they were classed and described as “Large China Gunboats” during construction, which also allowed cover for their planned use in Europe and the Middle East.

They were well-armed for such endeavors, with a BL 6-inch Mk VII naval gun forward and another one in the rear to poke holes in said Austrian river monitors. An elevated central battery clustered around the single stack and mast held a group of six Maxim/Vickers water-cooled .303 machine guns and a couple of smaller QF Mk I 12-pounders. All of these guns, even the MGs, had front splinter shields. However, as the muzzles of the 12 pdrs were immediately over head of the crews working the 6-inchers, being one of these gunners was certainly hard on the hearing.

Aerial photograph of British Aphis (Insect) class gunboat. Note the two 6-inchers, fore and aft.

According to the excellent site on these ships, maintained by Taylor Family Collection: 

Their steel plating was thin by warship standards – only five-sixteenths of an inch amidships, tapering to about one-eighth of an inch at the ends. The decks were strengthened in the vicinity of the main armament mountings with steel doublers three-eighths of an inch thick, and a three-quarter-inch steel doubler was also fitted on the sheer strake over the mid-ship section as extra stiffening. Beyond this, they carried no armour and had no double bottoms, unlike most ships.

That their armour was so minimal is not surprising given that these were essentially “kitset” ships specially designed to be broken down and reassembled. Heavy armour plating or additional construction “stiffening” was counterproductive. Active service with the Tigris Flotilla, however, resulted in rearming – a 2-pounder pom-pom added, four of the .303–inch Maxim guns removed, and a 3–inch anti-aircraft gun installed in their place. All were fitted for towing kite balloons (to carry artillery observers). Initially, sandbags were built up around the battery deck for the protection of personnel, but later a 5–foot shield made of ¼ inch chrome steel plate was built all around this deck as can be seen in the photos.

All 12 were named for insects and acrahnids (Aphis, Bee, Cicala, Cockchafer, Cricket, Glowworm, Gnat, Mantis, Moth, Scarab, Tarantula, and our Ladybird) as befitting their role and, to speed up delivery, were ordered simultaneously from five small yards (four from Barclay, two each from Ailsa, Lobnitz, Sutherland S.B, and Wood/Skinner). No, although they were to a Yarrow design, that esteemed firm was too busy making “real” warships to deal with such bugs.

Meet Ladybird

Our subject was laid down in 1915 at Lobnitz, Renfrew, as Builder’s Hull No. 804. Her slightly older sister, HMS Gnat, No. 803, was built nearly side-by-side at the same yard. Gnat hit the water in December 1915 while Ladybird slid down the way the following April. The two would commission by May 1916.

Ladybird’s original pennant number, issued in January 1916, was P.5A. This later shifted to P.0A in January 1918.

HMS Ladybird, at Port Said, Egypt, November 1917. Note the cruiser and destroyers in the background. Photo by Surgeon Oscar Parkes, IWM SP 560

Her first skipper was Acting Commander Vaughan Alexander Edward Hanning-Lee, an Englishman from a long-service naval family. He had 16 years of service behind him, including command of several destroyers and the gunnery training ship HMS St. George (an old Edgar-class cruiser), as well as detached service at Salonika. Hanning-Lee would remain in command of Ladybird through the end of 1918.

War!

The Insects, with Serbia all but knocked out of the war and access to the Danube closed, were repurposed to fight in the Eastern Med and Mesopotamia, while Cricket, Cicala, Cockchafer, and Glowworm were kept in British home waters to defend against German zeppelin raids.

Gnat, Mantis, Moth and Tarantula were towed to the Persian Gulf to join the Tigris Flotilla while Bee and Scarab guarded the Suez Canal.

Ladybird and sister Aphis would be detailed to Egypt, and had a very busy 1917, giving good, if somewhat undetailed service against the Ottomans in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, notably providing fire support for Bulfin’s XXI Corps during the victorious Third Battle of Gaza in November.

“Egypt scenes. Monitor HMS Ladybird in the Suez Canal, 1917.” This photo is part of an album compiled by Sub. Lieutenant Bertie Henry Buck, during his service in WWI and is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s collection. Object number: 00007425_9

CDR Hanning-Lee earned a DSO aboard Ladybird and a later OBE for his gallant conduct and services in the Mediterranean, retiring soon after.

The Armistice brought an end to the hostilities, of a sort.

Wait, another war?

While peace had officially broken out across the world, the Insects would spend the next several years, often deck-deep in combat, although not officially in war.

Cicala, Cockchafer, Cricket, and Glowworm sailed through the Barents Sea to Archangel for service as part of the Dvina River Force, supporting the White Russians, where they would remain through most of 1919, fighting the Reds.

Six went to the Far East with Mantis and Tarantula dispatched to the West River near Hong Kong, while Bee, Gnat, Moth, and Scarab were sent to the Yangtze River.

Aphis and our Ladybird, however, were shipped in February 1919 to join Capt. Vernon Haggard’s newly formed Naval Brigade on the Danube, aka the British Danube Flotilla, to enforce the naval terms of the Armistice with Austria-Hungary in conjunction with the Entente military mission in Budapest, the latter led by the unpopular French Lt.Col. Ferdinand Vix.

A group of British, Serbian, and Yugoslav officers at Baja on the River Danube in the summer of 1919. Front row from left to right: Commander Jellacic, commander of Yugoslav war vessels on the Danube; Lieutenant Colonel Milossovic, commander of the 9th Serbian Infantry Regiment; Captain Vernon Haggard RN, commander of the Royal Navy Danube Flotilla; Lieutenant Colonel Draskio, town commandant at Baja; Surgeon Lieutant Commander P F Cope RN, medical officer to the Danube Flotilla and Father Gregorevitch, Yugoslav Army Chaplain. Rear row from left to right: Lieutenant Pric, commanding officer of the patrol boat NERETVA; Commander R Stone RN, commanding officer of HMS LADYBIRD; Lieutenant Andric, first lieutenant of the Yugoslav monitor SAVA; Lieutenant Bacic, adjutant to Commander Jellacic; Lieutenant Commander H Hewitt, Senior British Naval Officer, Baja; Lieutenant Commander E Edmonds RN, commander of British MLs on the Danube; Lieutenant E Pigou RN, British liaison officer in SAVA; Lieutenant Kovacek, first lieutenant of the Yugoslav monitor DRAVA; Paymaster Lieutenant Commander Fritz Reger, secretary to Captain Haggard, Lieutenant H S Beresford RN, British liaison officer in DRAVA; unknown Segrbian Army officer. IWM Q 115088

This small shallow water river force also included at least four new Vickers-designed Elco-built 86-foot ML.51 motor launches, ML 196, ML.210, ML.228, and ML.434. The MLs, armed with a 3pdr plus depth charges and carrying an eight-man crew, were dangerous boats as they had gasoline engines and were poorly ventilated, with the 196 and 434 boats later catching fire and sinking in the river.

The flotilla also held control, at least temporarily in conjunction with the French, of the former Austrian KuK Donau Flotilla monitors Bodrog, Czuka, Wels, Stör, Vizu, Lachs, Fogas, Barsch, and Compó, which had lost many of their officers but still had their mostly Croat crews aboard.

While based in Baja, Hungary, the Flotilla got into a hairy situation when Bela Kun’s Soviet Republic of Hungary came to power between March and August 1919, which coincided closely with the eight-month-long and almost totally forgotten in the West, Hungarian–Romanian War and Hungarian–Czechoslovak War (both of which Hungary lost). Then came reactionary Hungarian Admiral Miklós Horthy’s “White Terror” after the fall of the communist government, which lasted through 1921.

All of this was tense to say the least, with one of the Flotilla’s vessels (ML.210) being captured by Hungarian Reds at one point and the old Austrian monitors always one step away from casting their lot with one faction or another, thus requiring constant minding– with the Yugolsavs taking custody of most of them in November 1919, although the Trianon Peace Treaty of 1920 divided the old KuK Donau Flotilla between Austria and Hungary.

Jane’s 1921 listing on the class, note Glowworm, Aphis, Ladybird, and ML 196 listed as being in the British Danube Flotilla. Glowworm had only joined the force in 1920.

The British quit the Danube in January 1926, but Ladybird had left the force before then, being laid up in reserve at Malta on 17 April 1922, after all the interventions, wars, and revolutions in Hungary had passed.

While Ladybird was lucky, others of her class serving abroad in similar undeclared conflicts were not. Cicala, serving on the broad Dvina River in Northern Russia in 1919, was the host to a mutinous crew and was later mined by the Bolshevik Reds and bottomed out, but was raised and returned to service. Likewise, both Glowworm and Cockchafer were badly damaged in a munitions barge explosion at Beresnik/Bereznik in August 1919 but were similarly repaired.

HMS Cicala in North Russia (Yeoman of Signals George Smith)

Once the Danube Flotilla was disbanded, Aphis and Ladybird— the latter recommissioned at Malta on 29 January 1927– were sent to join their sisters in the Far East while Glowworm, her wounds her Russia service never truly healed, was sent to Malta where in 1928 it was decided by the Admiralty that, due to her poor condition, she should be sold for scrap in September of that year.

Jane’s 1929 listing on the class note with Glowworm absent. By this time, the class was all based in China/Hong Kong, where they would run into a whole different set of problems.

Interbellum

The Insect-class river gunboat HMS Ladybird on route from Hong Kong to Shanghai in July 1927. IWM Q 80179

As noted by the December 1984 edition of the (Australian) Naval Historical Review: 

Typically, these gunboats…carried two officers and sometimes a doctor; six or seven petty officers and leading seamen, plus 17 able seamen. The remainder of the 50-odd souls aboard were Chinese servants, cooks, seamen, and black gang. Obviously, British ability to mount a landing force fell well below the capabilities of the ‘new six’ US gunboats, with their 4 line officers, doctor, and about 50 US enlisted. However, the British POs enjoyed more responsibility and authority than the American, as all RN officers could be off the ship at the same time.

It was during this period that, from 21 April 1932 to 30 September 1933, Ladybird was commanded by LCDR Eric Wheeler Bush, the youngest recipient of the D.S.C. in history, at not quite 17 while on HMS  Revenge at the Battle of Jutland.

The U.S. Navy’s flotilla of China Station patrol boats (ala Sand Pebbles) worked so closely with the RN’s boats that a number of excellent images of Ladybird exist in the NHHC archives from this era, many from the collections of Donald M. McPherson and Philip Yarnell.

HMS Ladybird at Shanghai, China circa the 1920s. NH 68496

Looking down on the Yangtze River, Ichang, China 1920s. USS Elcano (PG – 38) is above the “X” (bottom, left of center). HMS Ladybird (A British gunboat) is forward and to the right of ship with large single stack at bottom right center. USS Monocracy (PG-20) is forward and above Ladybird. NH 67243

HMS Ladybird British river gunboat, view taken at Ichang, China, May 1937. NH 81636

Yangtze River Patrol. A British gunboat on the Yangtze river, probably the HMS Ladybird, possibly near Ichang, China circa the 1920s. NH 67311

Yangtze River Patrol. A British gunboat on the Yangtze river, probably the HMS Ladybird, possibly near Ichang, China circa the 1920s. NH 67312

She also frequently found herself a consort to the ill-fated American gunboat USS Panay (PR-5). She and sister HMS Bee, the river flotilla flagship at the time, were on hand for Panay’s final day during the evacuation of Nanking in December 1937.

USS Panay (PR-5) in background right, beyond HMS Ladybird, British river gunboat. Weldon James of UPI News Service waves a handkerchief at Panay prior to his and others’ evacuation on the U.S. ship at Nanking, China, 12 December 1937. NH 50838

Panay, escorting three small Standard Oil tankers, Mei Ping, Mei An, and Mei Hsia, which in turn were packed with some 800 Chinese employees of the company and their families, was attacked on 12 December by Japanese naval aircraft while some 28 miles upstream from Nanking. The force, comprised of Yokosuka B4Y Type-96 “Jean” bombers and Nakajima A4N Type-95 biplane fighters, sank all four ships.

The same Japanese bombers later struck SS Wanhsien, owned by the China Navigation Company, part of a British company, later that day with negligible damage.

Ladybird and Bee, along with the American gunboat USS Oahu (PR-6), rushed to the scene in the aftermath and took aboard survivors of the vessels. Three Americans and an Italian correspondent were killed and at least 48 were seriously wounded.

A Japanese field artillery unit near Wuhu on the Yangtze, under orders from Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, opened fire on the scene with Bee dodging a near-miss and Ladybird taking six hits, suffering several casualties. One of Ladybird’s crew, Sick Berth Attendant Terrance N Lonergan, C/MX 50739, became the first member of the Royal Navy to perish in conflict with the Japanese since 1862.

HMS Ladybird, view of the damage on the port side sustained in an artillery attack by a Japanese Army battery on 12 December 1937, the same day as the USS Panay (PR-5) sinking. Courtesy of Vice Admiral Morton L. Deyo, USN (retired) NH 77816

USS Oahu (PR-6). The coffin of SK1 C.L. Ensminger, USN, lies beneath a U.S. flag on the fantail of the Oahu, as she heads to Shanghai, China, with the survivors of sister ship USS Panay (PR-5) which was sunk on 12 December 1937 by Japanese planes. British gunboat HMS Ladybird is astern of Oahu, 15 December 1937. Ensminger was killed in the attack on Panay. NH 50808

The class also thinned once again, with Bee, in poor material shape, being paid off in 1938 when the new Dragonfly-class gunboat HMS Scorpion arrived from Britain. Ex-Bee was sold in Shanghai for scrap on 22 March 1939 for just £5,225.

And another war

When Hitler sent his legions into Poland in September 1939, kicking off WWII, Ladybird was still in China, where she would remain for the rest of the year until she and sister Aphis were nominated for service in the Mediterranean. Their local Chinese crew would remain behind, transferred throughout the station.

In the meantime, both gunboats were upgraded during a refit in Singapore, landing their original 6”/45 Mk VII guns for more capable 6”/50 Mk XIII guns which had been removed from the Jutland veteran battleship HMS Agincourt in 1922 and sent East. They also picked up two Vickers 40mm/39 2pdr QF Mk VIII pom-poms in place of their old 12 pounders. The latter would become a common addition on the Insects in this period.

Other members of the class would also later be transferred to fight the Germans and Italians in the Med and Middle East, leaving just Cicala and Moth in Hong Kong while Mantis was paid off in January 1940. It was at about this time that the 10 remaining Insects shelved their P-series pennants for T-series, with Ladybird becoming T58, Aphis T57, et. al.

In January 1940, Ladybird’s new skipper was 39-year-old recalled LCDR (retired) John Fulford Blackburn, who had been on the retired list since 1934. Everyone has to do their part and all that. Her captain since March 1938, LCDR Robert Sydney Stafford, would take command Aphis.

On 3 March 1940, Ladybird and Aphis left Penang in Malaysia under escort of the cruiser HMS Durban (D 99), which later handed them over to the cruiser HMAS Hobart (D 63), to proceed to the Mediterranean via Colombo, Aden, and the Suez.

Once in the Med, she became something of a regular off the coast of the Italian Libyan port of Bardia, home to a full army corps.

In Operation MB 1, on 23 August 1940, the Australian destroyer HMAS Waterhen covered Ladybird when she boldly entered Bardia, and fired point-blank on buildings and harbor defenses. Both vessels withdrew safely after the attack. The slow-going Ladybird returned to Alexandria on the 25th, trailing Waterhen by a day.

Ladybird would repeat her punishment of the harbor on 17 December 1940. Sailing with the destroyers HMAS Voyager and HMAS Vendetta providing cover, Ladybird, sister Aphis, and the monitor HMS Terror splashed the Italian coasters Galata, Giuseppina D, and Vincenzino, shelled and sunk in the mud at Bardia.

She then spent a week off the town over the New Years, with Aphis, Terror, Gnat, and Ladybird supported by the destroyers Voyager and HMS Dainty while the carrier HMS Illustrious, two cruisers, and four destroyers poked around further offshore– wishing the Italians to sortie out– and the bruising battleships HMS Barham, Warspite and Valiant even coming in close enough to lend their big guns in two bombardment runs on 3 January 1941, landing 244 15-inch shells.

This was during Operation Compass, the strike by the British 7th Armored Division and 6th Australian Division, with Free French Colonial troops brought in by ship from Syria, to seize the Italian stronghold, wrapping up Lt. Gen Annibale Bergonzoli’s XXII Army Corps in the process and capturing 36,000 Italian troops along with 400 guns and 900 vehicles by 5 January 1941. Ladybird inherited a second-hand 20mm/65 M1939 Breda AAA gun and several crates of shells in the process.

31 December 1940. “A visit to a company of Free French in the Bardia area, troops landing on the coast from a warship.” HMS Ladybird. stationary with a small boat in the foreground. Photo by Capt. Geoffrey John Keating, No. 1 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit IWM (E 1538)

Australian combat cameraman Damien Peter Parer was on board Ladybird when she bombarded Bardia and took dozens of snaps of the gunboat during this New Years trip, with most of them in low-rez format online at the Australian War Memorial.

31 December 1940. “Off Bardia. At the safest end of the 6-inch guns on HMS Ladybrd during the bombardment of Bardia.” Parker AWM 004991

31 December 1940. “Off Bardia. Rapid fire from the 6-inch guns on HMS Ladybrd during the bombardment of Bardia.” Parker AWM 004990

31 December 1940. “Off Bardia. The crew aboard HMS Ladybrd gives the Pom Pom a drink during the bombardment of Bardia.” Parker AWM 004993

He also caught numerous images of her crew snatching a bit of rest when they could between gun runs and batting away successive low-quality Italian air raids.

And a meal in the Petty Officers’ Mess, complete with the ship’s cat, Cinders. AWM 005005 and 005013.

Over 21/22 January 1941, Ladybird, Aphis, and Terror gave the same treatment to the Italian port of Tobruk on the Libyan/Egyptian border, where another 20,000 Italians were captured.

In February 1941, Ladybird landed 24 Royal Marines as part of Operation Abstention, a failed attempt to seize the Italian island of Kastelorizo (Castellorizo) in the Aegean, about 80nm from Rhodes. Sailing from Suda Bay, Crete with the destroyers HMS Decoy and Hereward packed with 200 men of No. 50 Army Commando, Ladybird was struck by bomb dropped by an Italian SM.79, wounding three sailors just after she put her Marines ashore. Damaged and low on fuel, she was forced to reembark her Marines and head to Haifa, one of several spoilers to the mission.

Once Rommel arrived in North Africa, the British fortunes in the theatre reversed and, not only was Bardia recaptured, but the German Afrika Korps surged into Egypt.

In early April, Ladybird and a few other ships were trapped in Tobruk with 27,000 other Allied troops, mostly of the 9th Australian Division but also with smatterings of Free Czech and Polish units. Together, these “Rats of Tobruk” held out for the next seven months against all odds as Rommel tried to reduce and either capture or wreck the port.

Soon, the cargo ships SS Draco, Bankura, and Urania, along with the 3,000-ton armed boarding vessel HMS Chakla were sunk by Axis aircraft of the Luftwaffe’s 3./StG 1 and 2./StG 2, along with the Regia Aeronautica’s 96, 236, and 239 Squadriglias.

“Armed boarding vessel Chakla, under bombing attack in Tobruk harbour, 1941-04-29. Note her camouflage scheme, the colours of which are probably 507a (the darker grey) and 507c. The Chakla was sunk as a result of the attack. (still from a cine film).” AWM 127950.

On 7 May, the Hunt-class minesweeper HMS Stoke (J 33) was bombed and sunk at Tobruk by Stukas of 2./StG 2, with the loss of 21 of her crew. Ladybird rushed to pick up her survivors.

Five days later, Ladybird had her turn in the barrel and was sent to the bottom after a bomb strike from II./StG 2,  settling on an even keel in ten feet of water with three men killed, all listed as “missing presumed killed”:

  • George R Morley, Able Seaman, P/J 59384, MPK
  • Wiliam Olley, Able Seaman, P/JX 171410, MPK
  • Edward Paton, Able Seaman, P/JX 152815, MPK

Tobruk, Cyrenaica, Libya. c. May 1941. A general view of bomb damaged buildings. The smoke from the harbour is from HMS Ladybird set on fire by an enemy bomb. (Donor Sergeant Maxwell) AWM 022116

By July, Ladybird’s sister HMS Cricket was similarly crippled by an Italian bomber off Mersa Matruh, Egypt while another sister, Gnat had the first 20 feet of her bow knocked off by German submarine U79 at Bardia in October and was knocked out of the war.

Even with the gunboat on the bottom and her crew dispersed through the fleet, the hulk of the old Ladybird hosted men of No. 40 Battery, 14th (“West Lothian Royal Scots” as they had converted from a Royal Scots infantry company) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery (T.A.), who lived aboard her remaining topside, roughing it on a ghost ship with a few tricks still up her sleeve.

14 August 1941. Original wartime caption, emphasis mine: “Tobruk. HM Submarine Ladybird seen submerged in the harbour. The pride of Tobruk is Ladybird which was sunk in the harbour with only her gun turret above the water line. She still takes part in the defense of the Town. A Gun crew live aboard with their A.A. Gun with which they give a good account of themselves.” Taken by LT Smith, No. 1 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, IWM E.4846

5 September 1941. Gunners of No 40 Battery, 14th Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, cleaning a gun on board the half-submerged HMS Ladybird, which was sunk by enemy bombs in Tobruk Harbour. Photo by Thomas Fisher. AWM 020575

Same as the above, AWM 020574

These marooned Army gunners hung up their tin hats and spent their downtime fishing, playing cards, swimming, and reading between air raids. An almost idyllic life whenever bombs weren’t falling.

These images captured by Thomas Fisher, in the AWM:

After the 231-day siege of Tobruk was relieved by the British Eighth Army in late November and the front soon surged West, Ladybird was abandoned for good.

Ladybird’s motto was Ne sperne Fortuna (Do not throw away your luck). She well-earned two battle honors for her WWII service: Mediterranean 1940-41 and Libya 1940-41. She was hit by Japanese, Italian, and German munitions– the Axis trifecta.

Of the rest of her sisters, Cicala and Moth, still in the Far East in December 1941, were lost at Hong Kong. Just four Insects survived the war, Aphis, Cockchafer, Scarab, and Tarantula, all disposed of by 1949.

Epilogue

Ladybird’s watch bell is in the collection of the RMG, complete with the name of a infant baptized aboard her in 1936 while on China station.

A large builder’s model of her recently sold at auction.

Model of Ladybird, via Bonhams

Of Ladybird’s 12 skippers, only one, Capt. John Fenwick Warton, who commanded her in 1920 while on the Danube, went on to become an admiral. Her 12th, CDR Blackburn, survived her sinking in 1941 and would go on to command the sloop HMS Woodcock (U 90) later in the war. Blackburn earned both a DSO and Bar during the war and rejoined the retired list afterward, passing in 1978.

The West Lothian Royal Scots, who lived aboard Ladybird in her time with the Army, remained in North Africa through the rest of the campaign then landed at Salerno under the 12th AA Brigade and fought in Italy until January 1945, when they returned to Britain and disbandment.

As for the intrepid Australian war photographer who rode Ladybird into battle off Bardia and captured the moment in celluloid, Damien Parer journeyed west to the Pacific in 1942 and filmed “Kokoda Front Line,” one of the most iconic Australian war documentaries. While covering the faces of advancing Marines on Peleliu in September 1944, Parer, walking backwards behind the cover of a tank, was killed by a burst of Japanese machine gun fire, aged 32.

Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, the Japanese officer who ordered his guns to fire on the Panay rescue party, hitting Ladybird in the process, post-war was sentenced to life imprisonment in Sugamo Prison by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. He died in 1957. The attack on Ladybird was cited both against him and Gen. Iwane Matsui, the overall Japanese commander during the Nanking campaign in 1937, during their war crimes trials. Matsui was hung for his crimes at Sugamo in 1948.

Ladybird is remembered in maritime art.

“Greyhound and Ladybird in search of enemy battery off Tobruk, like ill assorted terriers” between November 1942 and December 1942. Pictures of Paintings by LCDR R Langmaid, RN, Official Fleet Artist. These Pictures Are For Illustrating a Naval War Book by Paymaster Captain L a Da C Ritchie, RN. IWM A 13635

The Royal Navy recycled her name in 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War, by purchasing the 295-foot British-owned CNCo freighter MV Wusueh, which had been requisitioned for WWII service by the MoWT and only returned to her owners a couple years prior. Renamed HMS Ladybird, she was moored at Sasebo, Japan, as the Naval Headquarters and Communications vessel for the Commonwealth Blockading forces through 1953.

“HMS Ladybird, a British converted Yangtze River steamer. January 1951, Sasebo, Japan. HMS Ladybird was the nerve center of the British Commonwealth fleet in the Korean zone. It was the forward headquarters ship of Vice Admiral W. G. Andrewes, who commanded the fleet. It had communications equipment equal to that of a cruiser, and from her, the fueling, feeding, ammunitioning, and welfare of the fleet was administered.” IWM A 31830

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, Jan.20, 2021: Bruised Georgie

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time 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, Jan.20, 2021: Bruised Georgie

Australian War Memorial Photo 100014

Here we see the ancient and battered Regio incrociatore corazzato (armored cruiser) San Giorgio, some 80 years ago this week, scuttled and burning after air attacks at Tobruk, Libya, 22 January 1941. The anti-torpedo nets around the wreck reportedly held 39 British fish of various types in their mesh.

Named after Saint George, the patron saint of Genoa, San Giorgio was ordered for the Regia Marina in 1904, during the height of the Russo-Japanese War, and at the time was the largest and strongest armored cruiser in the Italian fleet.

Designed by naval engineer Edoardo Masdea, San Giorgio and her near-sister San Marco were beefy 10,000-ton beasts swathed in as much as 10 inches of armor. They carried four 10″/45 Elswick-pattern Modello 1908 in a pair of turrets as the main battery, eight 7.5″/45 Modello 1908s in four twin turrets as a secondary battery that itself was powerful enough for a heavy cruiser, and a tertiary armament of 20 rapid-fire 76mm and 47mm guns meant to defend against torpedo boats– then seen as the most dangerous non-battleship threat. Speaking of torps, they had three small tubes of her own, below the waterline in period fashion, and at least two steam cutters that could carry torpedos as well.

Powered by 14 Blechynden boilers trunked through two sets of paired funnels, San Giorgio could make 23 knots and steam for over 6,000 nm on a full coal load at about half that.

Janes of the era listed the class under the battleships section. Click to big up

Laid down in 1907 at Regio Cantieri di Castellammare di Stabia in Naples, she was completed 1 July 1910.

Cover of the magazine La Tribuna Illustrata 9 August 1908, showing the launch of San Giorgio

She was a good looking ship and appeared numerous times in postcards of the era. 

Embarrassingly, the brand-new ship on 12 August 1911, following exercises in the Gulf of Naples, ran aground on the shoal of Gaiola, a rocky outcrop some 18 feet deep. As she did so while making 16 knots, she had five forward compartments flooded and took on 4,300 tons of water. Recovering the vessel required much effort and it took a full month to refloat.

Lightened and patched up, she was pulled free on 15 September by the battleship Sicily.

The resulting investigation hit the skipper– the well-placed Marquis Gaspare Alberga– and XO with a slap on the wrist while the navigator got three months in the brig.

Quickly patched up, she took part in the latter stages of the Italian-Turkish War, operating along the Libyan coast.

San Giorgio firing her guns during the Italo-Turkish War 1912

In March 1913, she was part of the international squadron that escorted the remains of former Danish prince William, who served as Greek King George I from 1863 onwards, back home to Athens. George had been assassinated while walking in Thessaloniki, shot in the back of the head by a socialist who later fell to his death from a police station window.

Transfer of the body of King George I on the Greek Royal yacht Amphitrite escorted by three Greek destroyers, Russian gunship Uralets, German battlecruiser SMS Goeben, British cruiser HMS Yarmouth, French cruiser Bruix and Italian cruiser San Giorgio. Painting by Vassilios Chatzis.

Remarkably, San Giorgio soon grounded once again off Sant’Agata di Militello in the strait of Messina in November 1913 but, while another black eye, was more easily freed than the 1911 crack up.

Der italienische Panzerkreuzer San Giorgio im November 1913 in der Straße von Messina gestrandet.

The card translates to “O ship, twice locked in the tenacious branch of the treacherous cliff and returned twice to the loving mother who embraces you,” which makes you think it was issued sometime after her second grounding.

Another war

When Italy joined the Great War in 1915 on the side of Britain, France, and Russia, San Giorgio was soon very active against the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the southern Adriatic. This involved defending the Otranto line and Venice but got hot with a surface raid on the Italian port of Durazzo in October 1918 along with her sistership San Marco and the cruiser Pisa.

At the end of the conflict, she sailed triumphantly into Pola to take the surrendered Austrian fleet under her guns.

San Giorgio class (Italian Armored cruiser), center. RADETZKY Class (Austrian Battleship), built in 1908 (right). The photograph was taken about 1919, Pola Yugoslavia Description: Courtesy of Mr. Donald M. McPherson 169 Birch Avenue, Corte Madera, California, 1969. Catalog #: NH 68218

Peace

An aging ship, San Giorgio by the 1920s was increasingly used for training purposes and extended overseas cruises for midshipmen from Livorno.

On such a run in 1924-25, she carried crown prince Umberto of Savoy abroad on a round-the-world voyage to take a company of the San Marco Battalion to Shanghai to protect the international delegation there.

Crown Prince Umberto boarding the San Giorgio for the voyage to South America, 1924. Illustration by A. Beltrame

After 1931, her sister, San Marco, was disarmed per the various London and Washington Naval Treaties– back when Italy was still in the ill-fated League of Nations. Like the U.S. Navy battleship Utah (BB-31/AG-16), she was repurposed as a floating target ship, an easy conversion for a vessel that had armor coating almost every surface, even the deck.

Italian Target Ship ex-Armored Cruiser SAN MARCO, capable of being radio-controlled. She would go on to be captured by the Germans in 1943 when Italy pulled out of the war, then later scuttled at Spezia. Interestingly, she used a different engineering suite from San Giorgio, being powered by Parsons steam turbines, and Babcock & Wilcox boilers. NH 111446

By 1936, she was assigned to the Italian task force off Spain during the Spanish Civil War and, with the Supermarina seeing the writing on the wall, withdrawn from the line the next year for modernization.

Spending nearly two full years at Ansaldo in Genoa, the cruiser was extensively rebuilt and modernized. Her boilers, replaced by more modern oil-fired examples, were reduced from 14 to eight, which allowed two funnels to be removed. She also picked up new electronic gear, landed most of her 1910-era small guns in favor of new 100/47mm OTO Mod 1928 DP twin mounts, and sealed up her torpedo tubes.

San Giorgio, Taranto, 1939. Note her vastly changed appearance from the original Great War era vessel.

Italian Ship: SAN GIORGIO. Italy – OCA. (San Giorgio Class). 1939. Note her vastly changed appearance from the original Great War era vessel. NH 111445

And it was just in time.

George’s final war

Deployed from Italy to the Eastern Libyan fortress port of Tobruk, arriving on 13 May 1940 while the country was still at peace. Remember, Italy didn’t join WWII until 10 June 1940 when Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg has already fallen and France was on the verge of collapse, leaving Britain alone against Hitler and Mussolini.

Two days after the Italians clocked in, the British light cruisers Gloucester (62) and Liverpool (C11) swung by Tobruk and engaged the port and San Giorgio in an ineffective long-range artillery duel, with neither side connecting. Before the end of the month, HMS Parthian (N75), arriving in the Med from China station in May 1940, made it close enough to fire two torpedoes at the big Italian that did not connect, leaving the British sub to settle with sinking the Italian submarine Diamante near Tobruk on 20 June.

San Giorgio‘s skipper at the time, Capitano di Fregata Rosario Viola, reinforced her exposed decks with sandbags and ordered a triple layer of torpedo nets around the hull, then mounted as many extra guns and lookouts as he could.

This had mixed results as, on late in the afternoon of 28 June, her gunners were involved in a friendly-fire incident in which a pair of SIAI-Marchetti SM79 Sparvieros had the bad luck of coming in low and out of the sun over the port in the wake of a British bomber strike. One Sparviero was blown from the sky– flown by no other than fascist darling and big aviation advocate Italo Balbo, then serving as Libya’s governor-general.

Oof.

Balbo/Sparvieros.

Still, the attacks came. 

5 July, Swordfish torpedo bombers of 813 Squadron from HMS Eagle attacked Tobruk in a combined attack with the RAF at dusk, sinking the destroyer Zeffiro and the freighter SS Manzoni but missing San Giorgio.

Swordfish from Eagle’s 824 Squadron conducted a night raid on 27 October, seeding the harbor with mines.

San Giorgio was still Tobruk in early 1941, which was probably the worst time and place to be an Italian cruiser. After a terribly run invasion of Egypt, the Italian 10th Army had just been thoroughly defeated by the British Western Desert Force at Bardia and the stragglers, largely formed around the 61st (Sirte) Infantry Division by 7 January were encircled in Tobruk and subject to heavy bombardment.

San Giorgio, after the Balbo shootdown, was placed under the command of Capitano di Fregata Stefano Pugliese, a 40-year-old who had spent 25 of those in the Navy, including as skipper of the “pirate” submarine Balilla during the Spanish-American war and as XO of the light cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Battle of Calabria. The port commander, RADM Massimiliano Vietina, ordered Pugliese to remain in the besieged port as a floating artillery battery and lend his cruiser’s heavy guns to the wobbly perimeter.

Over the next two weeks, as the Italian lines crumbled and air attacks by Blenheims escorted by Gladiators and Hurricanes owned the skies, San Giorgio did her best. Sealed into the harbor by the destroyer-screened Great War Erebus-class monitor HMS Terror, who occasionally lobbed 15-inch shells into Tobruk, the Italian cruiser was heavily damaged but continued to both contribute to the flak clouds and ground defense.

When it came to AAA, her biggest contribution was from five twin 100/47 high-angle guns, augmented by three 20mm Bredas and four 13.2mm mounts. Over the course of 291 air raid warnings during her time at Tobruk and 115 engagements, she fired a whopping 13,000 100 mm rounds and 120,000 from the smaller pieces. Her crew claimed 47 aircraft hit or shot down (not sure if Balbo’s plane is included in that tally).

Note the sandbagged AAA positions and covering on deck as well as the torpedo net boom

Twin OTO 100mm DP mount

Her big guns fired over 100 shells from the big 10-inch guns and 360 from her 7.45s.

Finally, when the end was near on the night of 21/22 January, Pugliese signaled the ship abandoned, after ordering the crew to wreck everything they could find for two hours, then led a small party, primarily of volunteer junior officers and NCOs, back to blow the vessel’s magazines. Two men, Torpedoman 1st Class Alessandro Montagna and 2nd Lt. Giuseppe Buciuni, were lost in the explosion due to a delayed fuse.

Epilogue

The ship, through a combination of magazine explosions and bunker fires, burned for days.

Members of C Company (mostly from 14 Platoon), Australian 2/11th Infantry Battalion, part of the 6th Division having penetrated the outer defenses of Tobruk, assemble again on the escarpment on the south side of the harbor after attacking anti-aircraft gun positions, 22 January 1941. San Giorgio is one of the plumes in the background. Burning fuel oil tanks at the port are the second. AWM

These photos were taken on 25 January, four days after the ship was scuttled. AWM

One of the better shots soon circled the globe, tagged in four languages. Big news for the struggling Brits in 1941. 

Once the wreck cooled, there were extensive surveys and relic hunting done by Allied troops.

The wreck of the Italian Armored Cruiser San Giorgio in Tobruk Harbor, sunk by RAF and RN aircraft. Photographed by Robert Milne taken from HMAS Vendetta. AWM

AWM photos.

To honor the crew and the vessel, San Giorgio was awarded the Medaglia d’oro al Valor Militare, Italy’s highest recognition for military valor, by the Royal Decree of King Umberto on 10 June 1943. Only seven other units– the five daring torpedo boats of the Dardanelles Squadron: Spica, Centaur, Perseo, Astore, Climene; MAS Flotilla Alto Adriatico, and the submarine Scirè— received the MOVM in gold during the war.

The two men lost in San Giorgio’s scuttling were similarly decorated, posthumously.

Her surviving ~700 crew, meanwhile, spent the rest of the war in a British POW camp in India. Many would receive decorations for their actions for Tobruk. The crew was decorated with five Silver MVMs as well as 16 Bronze and 237 War Crosses.

“Four Italian ratings captured from San Giorgio, 31 January 1941.” AWM

Pugliese, who returned home to a hero’s welcome in 1945 and a MOVM of his own, later went on to rise to the rank of vice admiral in the postwar Italian fleet and in the 1960s would become commander of the NATO naval forces in the central Mediterranean– which ironically included British vessels.

In 1951, the then-independent Libyan government of King Idris came to an agreement with Rome to salvage the cruiser’s hulk. During the recovery, it was reported that 39 torpedoes and a huge amount of other UXO were found in the nets and on the seabed around the ship.

Refloated by a scrapper who intended to haul it back to Italy, while under tow by the tug Ursus the wreck started taking on water and broke her lines, taking a deep plunge some 140 miles north of Tobruk in some of the deepest water in the Med.

Relics of the cruiser are few.

San Giorgio‘s ceremonial ensign, presented to the ship in 1911 by Duchess of Genoa, Isabella Maria Elisabetta di Baviera, was spirited past the blockade out of Tobruk by a volunteer crew of six officers, three sailors and the ship’s dog, “Stoppaccio,” and made it back to Italy aboard a requisitioned trawler, Risveglio II. If anyone can find an image of the banner, please let me know.

When the Axis retook Tobruk in 1942 once Rommel was on the scene, the Italians inspected the wreck of the cruiser and, finding three 100/47mm guns still sound, recovered them and put them back in circulation.  

A 12-minute wartime film, Vita e fine della San Giorgio, The Life and end of the San Giorgio, can be seen online at the Italian national archives and includes much footage of the vessel.

The Australian War Memorial has a brass pistol grip and trigger from one of San Giorgio‘s direction finders that were salvaged by the crew of the destroyer HMAS Vendetta (I96), as well as an Italian naval officer’s dress sword engraved to the ship.

AWM

The U.S. National Archives has numerous naval attaché reports on San Giorgio in their collection.

As for the Italian Navy, the Regia Marina faded away in 1945 and was replaced by the Marina Militare Italiana, which still honors the famous armored cruiser’s memory. Since then, the Italians have very much kept the name alive on their naval list, commissioning a 5,000-ton light cruiser/destroyer leader/training ship (D 563) in 1955.

SAN GIORGIO (D 562), Italian DL, in New York Harbor for the International Naval Review, 4 July 1976. Originally laid down as a Roman Captain-class light cruiser in WWII, by 1965 she was a training ship that took summer midshipmen cruises around the globe– replicating her namesake’s 1920s and 1930s mission. She was retired in 1979 and sold to the breakers in 1987. K-114252

In 1987, the Italian Navy christened the class leader of a new series of 8,000-ton amphibious transport docks (L9892) which are all still in service and going strong.

Specs:

(1910)
Displacement: 10,167 tons (standard), 11,300 (full)
Length: 462 ft 3 in (o/a)
Beam: 69 ft 0 in
Draught: 24 ft 1 in
Machinery: 14 Blechynden boilers, 2 shafts, 2 vertical triple-expansion steam engines, 19,500 ihp
Speed: 23 knots
Range: 6,270 nmi at 10 knots on 1500 tons of coal, (Carried 50 tons naphtha for boats)
Complement: 32 officers, 673 enlisted men
Armor:
Belt: 7.9 in
Gun turrets: 6.3–7.9 in
Deck: 2.0 in
Conning tower: 10.0 in
Armament:
4 Elswick 10.0 in/45 Mod. 1908 guns (2×2)
8 Armstrong 7.5 in/45 Mod. 1908 guns (4×2)
18 single Armstrong 76 mm guns
2 single Vickers 47 mm guns
2 Colt 6.5mm machine guns
3 x 17.7 in torpedo tubes
Embarked torpedo boats

(1940)

Displacement: 9,232 tons
Length: 459 ft.
Beam: 69 ft 0 in
Draught: 22.5 ft.
Machinery: 8 boilers, 2 shafts, 2 VTE, 18,000 ihp
Speed: 18 knots
Complement: 700
Armor: (Augmented by sandbags and extensive anti-torpedo nets)
Belt: 7.9 in
Gun turrets: 6.3–7.9 in
Deck: 2.0 in
Conning tower: 10.0 in
Armament:
4 Elswick 10.0 in/45 Mod. 1908 guns (2×2)
8 Armstrong 7.5 in/45 Mod. 1908 guns (4×2)
10 100mm/47 OTO Mod. 1928 DP (5×2)
12 Breda 20mm/65 Mod. 1935 AAA guns (6×2)
10 Breda Mod. 31 13.2mm machine guns (5×2)

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