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, Sept. 27, 2023: Of Shorts & Hard Charging Jeep Carriers

Above we see, resplendent in their tropical shorts and whites, a three-man Fleet Air Arm Avenger Mk. I (TBF-1) crew of 851 Squadron— LT (A) S S Laurie, RNVR, observer; squadron leader LCDR (A) Anthony Montague “Steady” Tuke, DSC, RN, pilot; and CPO F R Brown, Telegraphist air gunner– by the aft flight deck elevator of the Ruler-class escort carrier HMS Shah (D 21) in August 1944, with four of the big torpedo bombers arrayed behind them. The place is likely Kilindini Harbor, in Mombasa, Kenya, where Shah was preparing to escort a convoy to Aden.

Commissioned 80 years ago today, she accounted for at least one U-boat, took the fight to the Pacific where she helped track down and kill the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro, and served as a great snapshot for the end of the war—then went on to get really busy.

The Bouge/AmeerAttacker/Ruler/Smiter class

With both Great Britain and the U.S. running desperately short of flattops in the first half of World War II, and large, fast fleet carriers taking a while to crank out, a subspecies of light and “escort” carriers, the first created from the hulls of cruisers, the second from the hulls of merchant freighters, were produced in large numbers to put a few aircraft over every convoy and beach in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Of the more than 122 escort carriers produced in the U.S. for use by her and her Allies, some 45 were of the Bogue class. Based on the Maritime Commission’s Type C3-S-A1 cargo ship hull, these were built in short order at Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation, Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, and by the Western Pipe and Steel Company of San Francisco.

Some 496 feet overall with a 439-foot flight deck, these 16,200-ton ships could only steam at a pokey 16 ish knots sustained speed, which negated their use in fleet operations but allowed them to more than keep up with convoys of troop ships and war supplies. Capable of limited self-defense with four twin Bofors and up to 35 20mm Oerlikons for AAA as well as a pair of 5-inch guns for defense against small boats, they could carry as many as 28 operational aircraft in composite air wings. They were equipped with two elevators, Mk 4 arresting gear, and a hydraulic catapult.

The U.S. Navy kept 11 of the class for themselves (USS Block Island, Bogue, Card, Copahee, Core, Nassau, Altamaha, Barnes, Breton, Croatan, and Prince William), all entering service between September 1942 and June 1943.

This left most of the Bogues (34 of 45) to go immediately to the Royal Navy via Lend-Lease, where they were known as the Ameer, Attacker, Ruler, or Smiter class in turn, depending on their arrangement. 

Meet Shah

Laid down on 13 November 1942 as the planned USS Jamaica (ACV-43/CVE-43) — after the bay on Long Island– under Maritime Commission contract by Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corp., she was launched 21 April 1943 and then handed over to the Royal Navy on 27 September 1943.

Our subject, once delivered to the British, was christened as the second ship in the RN to carry the name HMS Shah, with the first being a 19th-century 26-gun iron-hulled frigate that was significant for being the first naval vessel to fire a locomotive torpedo in action, the latter during an 1877 scrap with the Peruvian ironclad Huáscar, and lives on today in HMS Victory, who has carried her iron masts as her own since 1895.

The “Shah” name also dovetailed well into the naming convention for the Ruler class (HMS Emperor, HMS Empress, HMS Queen, HMS Khedive, et al) which made sense.

After entering RN service, the King’s newest carrier shipped gently north to HM Canadian Dockyard at Esquimalt B.C. to receive her British equipment and sensors, which kept her pier side for the rest of the year.

She would also embark 851 Squadron, 14 Avengers that had been formed at Squantum NAS the previous October.

When 1944 arrived, ordered to head across the Pacific to join the RN’s Eastern Fleet’s 1st Aircraft Squadron, Shah first diverted to San Francisco to pick up a load of aircraft bound for points East.

This cross-Pacific voyage included crossing the equator, and the required ceremony involved which was conducted after the aircraft were unloaded.

Getting into the war, for real

Wrapping up her assorted aircraft ferry missions by May 1944, Shah traveled to Colombo to reembark 851 Squadron (which had been at RNAS Colombo Racecourse since February) as part of Force 66. To her Avengers were added a half-dozen Martlets (Wildcats) for some extra muscle.

She would spend the next six months in serious trade protection duties across the Indian Ocean, tasked with searching for Axis blockade runners, raiders, and subs. This would include chasing the long-range Type IXD2 U-boat U-198 (Oblt. Burkhard Heusinger von Waldegg) to ground near the Seychelles over three days in August 1943 with her aircraft attacking the boat and her escorting frigates HMS Findhorn, Hedgehog, and the sloop HMIS Godavari sinking the sub with all hands (66 men).

“Steady” Tuke, 851’s shorts-clad commander in the first image of this post and the man who dropped a torpedo into the side of the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto during the Battle of Matapan in 1941 while flying an Albacore off HMS Formidable, would add a bar to his DSC for U-198.

By early 1945, Shah was clustered with the fellow escort carriers HMS Begum, Empress, Emperor, Stalker, and Attacker, to form Commodore Geoffrey Oliver’s 21st Aircraft Carrier Squadron of the East Indies Fleet at Colombo then, along with Empress, Shah was switched to Force 63 in April for Operation Bishop— a carrier raid and surface bombardment of Car Nicobar and Port Blair to provide cover for Operation Dracula (the amphibious landings off Rangoon).

For Operation Bishop, the two “jeep carriers” would provide air cover for the Free French battlewagon Richelieu, the old dreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth (flying the flag of VADM H.C.T. Walker), four cruisers (including the Free Dutch HrMs Tromp) and five destroyers.

This raid, from 27 April to 7 May, soon morphed into Operation Dukedom, to interdict Japanese surface ships trying to evac troops from the Andaman Islands in mid-May.

That led to Shah’s aircraft spotting the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro and the destroyer Kamikaze north-east of Sabang and three of her Avengers from 851 NAS, operating from sister HMS Emperor due to catapult issues with Shah, making the longest Fleet Air Arm round-trip carrier-borne attack (530 miles) of the war on 15 May.

Early the next morning, a force of five greyhounds from Captain (later Admiral Sir) Manley L. Power’s 26th Destroyer Flotilla caught up to Haguro and sent her to the bottom in a brilliant night torpedo attack that rivaled anything the Japanese pulled off in the bad old days of 1942 off Guadalcanal.

July brought the planned landings in Malaya (Operation Zipper) which was postponed.

Shah was at sea with Force 61 for Operation Carson, a planned attack on enemy shipping and airfields in Penang and Medan on Japanese-occupied Dutch Sumatra, when news of the Japanese surrender hit on 14 August.

She was reportedly the first RN ship to enter Trincomalee after the news broke and was there for the celebrations that came. Fleet photographer Sub. Lt G. Hale captured a great series of images that covered the event.

A particularly poignant image captures the men who were on duty when the war started in 1939. Of her total of over 700 embarked souls, this counted just 66 men. 

Her war over, Shah embarked the men of the soon-to-be-disbanded 851 NAS and 845 NAS– sans their well-worn aircraft which were left in Ceylon– and set sail for “home” for the first time, arriving at Gourock on the Clyde on 7 October 1945.

De-stored, stripped of her British gear, and manned by a skeleton crew, she crossed the Atlantic for the first time and was turned back over to the U.S. Navy at Norfolk on 6 December.

Laid up at Hampton Roads, ex-Jamaica/ex-Shah was disarmed and sold on 20 June 1947 for use as a merchant provided her flight deck and hangar deck were stripped at the nearby Newport News shipyard.

She earned two RN Battle Honours: East Indies (1945) and Burma (1945).

By 1946, with the Royal Navy able to count a massive 23 purpose-designed flattops either under construction or afloat, it had no need to petition the Americans to keep any of the loaned jeep carriers. Jane’s that year only listed the RN with just two– British built– CVEs. 

Civil heroics

Purchased for $8 million along with two other war surplus C-3-S-A1 Class hulls by the Compañía Argentina de Navegación Fluvial— the Dodero Line– ex-Jamaica/ex-Shah along with her former jeep carrier sister ex-SS Mormacmail/ex-HMS Tracker (D 24) were converted to economical passenger steamers, capable of hauling 1,328 passengers (all Third Class) and 175 crew members each on immigration runs from war-torn Europe to Latin America.

Shah became Salta while Tracker became Corrientes, operating on the Buenos Aires to Amsterdam and Hamburg runs and back.

This continued until 1955 when the Dodero Line became part of the government-owned FANU (Flota Argentina de Navegación de Ultramar) line, which became ELMA in 1962.

It was during this service that Salta (with 1,014 of her own passengers aboard) came to the rescue of the old Dutch liner MS Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (then sailing as the Greek-flagged TSMS Lakonia) in December 1963 when the latter caught fire 180 miles off Madeira.

Receiving the SOS call through the then-new AMVER system while some 50 miles away, Salta’s skipper pushed her engines to the maximum and arrived alongside the smoking Lakonia three hours later. The American-built freighter/carrier/liner was the first vessel on the scene and rescued no less than 490 of the 1,022 souls aboard, most of whom were British. Five other ships, coming later, managed to save 404 between them.

The rescue was the highlight of the aging ship’s career and, suffering from mechanical issues, she was sold to the breakers at Río Santiago in 1966 for $640,000.

Epilogue

USS Jamacia/HMS Shah’s builder’s plans are in the National Archives.

The Royal Navy has not commissioned a third HMS Shah, and, likely never will for obvious reasons.

As for 851 Squadron, Shah’s hammer, its lineage passed on to the Royal Australian Navy. Recommissioned at Naval Air Station (NAS) Nowra on 3 August 1954, it flew a variety of types including sub-busting S-2 Trackers from the carrier HMAS Melbourne— appropriate for its past history– and remained in service for another 30 years until decommissioned in 1984.

Anthony Montague “Steady” Tuke, 851 Sqn’s WWII commander, retired from the FAA in 1947 and went on to live a long life.

His 2010 obituary noted, “In retirement Tuke, who regularly supported squadron reunions and Fleet Air Arm dinners, was group secretary for West Essex of the National Farmers Union; a lay tax commissioner; and a governor of his old school. At an old boys’ dinner in 2003, to a standing ovation, Tuke accepted a bill (in euros) for the damage he had done to Vittorio Veneto in 1941.”

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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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