Tag Archives: Dunkirk

Warship Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2022: Mines, Yes, but also U-Boats!

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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 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, Mar. 23, 2022: Mines, Yes, but also U-Boats!

Photograph FL 18955 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums

Here we see the Royal Navy Halcyon-class “sloop minesweeper” HMS Sharpshooter (N68/J68) in September 1938, at around the time Hitler sent troops into the Sudetenland and a year before he was to send them into Poland, sparking WWII. Not a very imposing ship, some 80 years ago this week she would single-handedly send a Jerry U-boat to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Based on the Grimsby-class sloops-of-war– a baker’s dozen 1,500-ton, 266-foot slow-moving (16 knots) sub chasers built in the early 1930s and capable of hauling almost 100 depth charges along with some light guns– the 21-unit Halcyon-class were slightly smaller, running 245-feet overall, and logically lighter at 1,400-tons. Outfitted with two QF MK V 4″/45 singles and a smattering of machine guns (both .50 cal Vickers and .303 Lewis guns), they shipped with manual sweep gear rather than ASW equipment.

The first five Halcyons (ordered 1933-35) were fitted with forced lubricating compound engines, and the next two with reciprocating steam (VTE) engines, while the latter 14 (ordered 1936-37 as Europe was ramping up for war) used Parsons steam turbines, with all versions being able to hit at least 16.5 knot-ish while the latter upgrades able to touch 17. All were named for Great War-era destroyers or minesweepers. 

Our little sweeper, Sharpshooter, was of the latter “turbine” type and was laid down at HM Dockyard Devonport on 8 June 1936, the fifth (and as of 2022, the last) RN warship to carry the name dating back to a 12-gun Archer-class gunbrig of the Napoleonic era. Commissioned 17 December 1937 with pennant N68, this later shifted to J68.

Assigned to the 1st Minesweeping Flotilla based at Portland (soon shifting to Scapa) her pre-war service included searching for the lost T-class submarine HMS Thetis (N25), which sank during sea trials in Liverpool Bay in the summer of 1939.

War!

Once the war began (see U-boat.net and Halcyon-class.co.uk for an extensive chronicle of her WWII service) Sharpshooter worked mine sweeping assignments in the North Sea and off Scotland, then in November transferred to Stornoway for Atlantic convoy escort duties with her Flotilla, then transferred to the 6th MS Flotilla in April 1940.

The seven sweepers of the 6th MSF, Sharpshooter included, moved to the Dover area in May, where, in response to the Blitzkrieg of the Lowlands, conducted sweeps of the coastal shipping routes off Holland. Often under German air attack on this detail, two units of the Flotilla (sisterships Hussar and Harrier) were damaged by Luftwaffe bombs before the month was up.

Called close to the beaches of Dunkirk on 28 May to help pull off members of the BEF desperate to escape the Fall of France, Sharpshooter arrived off the beaches at 0115 on 29 May and began putting boats in the water to fight the inshore surf and remove men directly from the sand—after all, she and her sisters could float in just 9-feet of water.

Dunkirk 26-29 May 1940 British troops line up on the beach at Dunkirk to await evacuation IWM

By noon on the 29th, she landed 100 soggy but safe soldiers at Dover.

On the 30th, she disembarked 273 troops at Dover, then, headed back to the beaches late that night, had a collision with the French steamer St. Helier which was pulling off French troops. This forced her to be towed back to Dover sans any more Tommys, facing a repair that would put her out of the war until mid-September.

Sharpshooter finished 1940 based at Scapa conducting fleet minesweeping/route clearance duties.

In January 1941, she was part of the sweeping screen to the north of Rockall for the battleship HMS King George V, which was taking Lord Halifax across the Atlantic to his post as the new British Ambassador at Washington.

LORD HALIFAX LEAVES FOR THE USA IN HMS KING GEORGE V TO TAKE UP HIS POST AS AMBASSADOR. JANUARY 1941. (A 2702) Two Minesweepers at a northern base. HMS SHARPSHOOTER is on the left. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205137059

Following that, Sharpshooter became a facet on North Atlantic convoy work, clocking on with HX 125, OB 334, PQ 8, PQ 9/10, PQ 12, PQ 13, QP 8, QP 9, PQ 18, QP 14, and QP 15 across 1941 and 1942, alternating with minesweeping operations in North Russian waters and off Allied-occupied Iceland. This duty usually consisted of riding shotgun on slow-moving Russia-bound convoys from Reykjavik to Murmansk/Archangel and back, being targets in the massive Barents Sea shooting gallery off German-occupied Norway which meant deadly threats from shore-based bombers, U-boats, and the bulk of the Kriegsmarine’s surface assets.

This brings us to Sharpshooter’s encounter with the Type VIIC submarine U-655 (KrvKpt. Adolf Dumrese) of Wolfpack Ziethen. Our minesweeper, part of Convoy QP 9 on a return run from Murmansk to Reykjavik, spotted Dumrese’s surfaced U-boat at very close range on the morning of 24 March 1942 south-east of Bear Island– and promptly rammed it.

U-655 turned over and sank without survivors while the minesweeper suffered no losses.

This required Sharpshooter to return to the dockyard for 10 weeks of repairs to her bow and post refit trials. Meanwhile, her skipper, LCDR David Lampen received the DSO on 25 August “awarded for skill and coolness in successful actions against enemy submarines while serving in HMS Sharpshooter.”

By April 1943, Sharpshooter was dispatched to the Mediterranean for minesweeping off the North African coast then, as summer went on, for the Operation Husky Sicily landings. She remained in the Med through most of 1944, where she reportedly suffered a partial (?) torpedo hit in April.

Arriving back in the UK in September 1944, she conducted sweeping off the coast of France and Belgium before switching to North Sea operations into early 1945.

A second career

With no shortage of minesweepers and proper sloops, and the war in Europe over, the Admiralty in April 1945 made the call to disarm Sharpshooter (along with her sister ships HMS Seagull, Franklin, and Scott) then convert them to survey ships. 

The 1946 Jane’s listing for the Halcyon class survey ship conversions, including HMS Sharpshooter

Sharpshooter emerged with a white scheme in May 1946 and was soon dispatched for hydrographic duties in the shipwreck-plagued South Pacific, based in Singapore, later picking up the auxiliary pennant A310.

Returning to the UK in December 1948, she spent the next several years on surveys of the Home Islands’ West coast and, just in time for the 1953 Coronation Review, was renamed HMS Shackleton after the famed British explorer. She and her two sisters located and logged many war-time wrecks while re-surveying coastal Great Britain.

A familiar sight from Portsmouth to the Irish Sea, Sharpshooter/Shackleton was reduced to reserve status in 1961 and laid up at Devonport.

On the disposal list in 1965, she was sold to BISCO on 3 November for breaking up at Troon by the West of Scotland Shipbreaking Co. Ltd.

Epilogue

The Halcyons suffered terribly during WWII. Sphinx, Skipjack, Gossamer, Niger, Leda, Bramble, Hebe, Hussar, and Britomart were all sunk in enemy (or blue-on-blue) action off Iceland, Dunkirk, Normandy, the Barents Sea, and in Russia’s Kola Bay– all the same waters where Sharpshooter narrowly avoided destruction herself.

As peace settled into a frigid Cold War, these slow and well-worn sweeper sloops were not needed, and most were immediately laid up.

Just four Halcyons were listed as active in the 1946 edition of Jane’s, the rest lost during the war or converted to survey ships.

The Royal Navy sold almost all of Sharpshooter/Shackleton’s remaining sisters by the mid-1950s. The only outlier to this was HMS Scott, which had likewise been tasked with survey work, and was sold for scrap in 1965 along with Sharpshooter.

Sharpshooter, her name not since reused by the Admiralty, is at least remembered by a Displate.

While Shackleton, his name recently very much in the news, gets much more attention and maritime art exists of Sharpshooter in this post-war survey guise.

Specs: 

Displacement: 815 long tons std; 1,394 tons, full load
Length 245 ft 3 in
Beam 33 ft 6 in
Draught 9 ft
Propulsion: Two Admiralty 3-drum water-tube boilers, two Parsons steam turbines, 1770 shp, two shafts
Speed 17 knots
Range 7,200 nmi at 10 knots on 264 tons oil
Sensors (1944): Type 123 ASDIC, Type 271 RDF
Complement: 80
Armament:


(1938)
2 x QF 4 in Mk. V guns, single mounts HA Mk.III
One quad QF 0.5 in Mk.III Vickers machine gun, HA Mk. I
Assorted .303 Lewis guns


(1944)
1 x QF 4 in Mk.V guns, single mounts HA Mk.III
2 x 2 and 2 x 1 20mm/80 Oerlikon AAA cannons
Depth charges– two double depth charge chutes with two depth charges each, two single chutes with one depth charge each, and two throwers with 40 depth charges.

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Not English Make: The Saga of the Lend-Lease M1911s

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The British, along with their Australian and Canadian cousins, had at least a passing affinity with the M1911 platform going back to the days of the Great War. Canadian troops carried the hardy John Browning-designed pistols on the Western Front as early as 1914 and the “daring young men and their flying machines” of the RAF often had .455-caliber M1911s along for their fight against the Red Baron and his Flying Circus, ordered on a special contract.

Fast forward to WWII and the M1911 was commonly issued to elite Commando and Parachute units– the product both of early commercial contracts with Colt and wartime Lend-Lease production passed through U.S. Army channels to London.

However, the Brits made sure to double-check these guns through the Birmingham and London proof houses (it’s not like there was a war on or anything), and in the process, these guns often received upwards of a half-dozen post-production proofs and stamps, one of the most glaring was “Not English Make,” just so there wouldn’t be any confusion that it wasn’t a fine Webley or Enfield product.

From left to right, the U.S. Property stamp, Birmingham proof house stamps,” NOT ENGLISH MAKE” under the manufacturer’s (Ithaca) serial, “Released British Govt. 1952” and US ARMY model number– and the gun has numerous other marks on the barrel and left side

I recently had a chance to look at a couple of beautiful circa 1943 Lend-Lease .45s that were passed on to Mr. Churchill and the gang and profiled them over at my column for Guns.com.

A flag unstained, 80 years ago today

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L’armée française – 1.er volume by Édouard Detaille vol 1 title page showing the old Napoleanic Army meeting the 1880s modern French infantry Credit line: (c) Royal Academy of Arts

The French Army’s 106e Régiment d’Infanterie (106e RI) has a long history, with a lineage dating back unofficially to 1622 before its number appeared as the 106th Line Infantry Rgt in 1792.

In 1939, at the dawn on WWII, the 106th’s flag was decorated with fourragères, the Médaille militaire, and the Croix de guerre with no less than four palms. On its body, it carried four Coalition/Napoleonic battle honors (Biberach 1796, Gênes 1800, Wagram 1809, Malojaroslawetz 1812) and four from the Great War (Les Éparges 1915, L’Aisne 1917, Montddidier 1918, Mont D’Origny 1918).

A monument to the regiment’s bloody WWI service, crafted by renowned sculptor Maxime Real del Sarte– who himself had lost an arm in 1915– was erected on the crest of the Éparges battlefield in 1935. It had seen the elephant at Austerlitz in 1805, endured the Siege of Paris in 1870, and been bled white on the Western Front in 1918.

Modernized in 1939, the 106th was redesignated the 106e RIM (régiment d’infanterie motorisée) as part of the French 12th Motorised Infantry Division (12e DIM) at Reims.

When the “Phony War” went deadly serious on 10 May 1940, fighting as part of the French 1st Army, they ended up holding the line at Dunkirk while the British Expeditionary Forces were largely withdrawn following the Allied collapse in Northern France.

Dunkirk 26-29 May 1940 British troops line up on the beach at Dunkirk to await evacuation, IWM

Trapped in the Lille Pocket along with some 40,000 other fighters, the French fought like lions for half a week and in a counterattack were even able to capture the headquarters of German Maj. Gen. Fritz Kühne, with Herr Kühne in tow.

However, a pocket can only ever be wiped out or relieved and no one was coming to get the 106e RIM out of their jam.

Under an agreement brokered by French Maj. Gen. Jean-Baptiste Molinié, the men of the Lille Pocket laid down their arms– for which they largely had no more ammunition– on 1 June 1940, some 80 years ago today.

Churchill himself later noted, “These Frenchmen, under the gallant leadership of General Molinié, had for four critical days contained no less than seven German divisions which otherwise could have joined in the assaults on the Dunkirk perimeter. This was a splendid contribution to the escape of their more fortunate comrades of the BEF.”

As for the 106th, the regiment’s commander, Col. Louis Félicien Marcel Tardu, ordered the regimental badges and medals be thrown in the bottom of the pond of Lille’s historic Château d’Avelin and the historic flag and its pole doused in gasoline and burned.

However, the Germans arrived before this could be done and, instead, the cased ensign was entrusted to the regiment’s priest who quickly buried it on the chateau’s grounds before being captured himself. The priest was later able to pass on the banner’s location to a local who, once the front lines shifted, was able to collect the relic and hide it for safekeeping.

When Liberation came on 26 August 1944, the banner saw sunlight and was paraded once again, at the head of a band of reformed French troops.

While the 106th is not one of the nine standing French army Metropolitain infantry regiments today, it is far from forgotten and its WWII flag is still retained by the force. The regiment’s motto was “Toujours debout,” which translates to, “Still standing.”

A marksman’s rifle donated for war, sent back in peace

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Maj. Hession’s rifle served him well in competition for over 30 years, then was loaned to the British to help Londoners from learning German in WWII. (Photo: National Firearms Museum)

Maj. Hession’s rifle served him well in competition for over 30 years, then was loaned to the British to help Londoners from learning German in WWII. (Photo: National Firearms Museum)

Canadian-born U.S. Army Major John W. “Jack” Hession was a rock star of the shooting world in the 1900s but when Britain needed rifles in World War II, he sent his very best, only asking it be returned after things quieted down.

Hession, born in 1877, was an Army ordnance officer assigned to inspect weapons for the military at Remington Arms and later at Winchester and his cartouche inspector’s mark is well-known on martial guns of that era.

Besides his day job, he was a master long-range and small bore sharpshooter who competed in the 1908 London Olympics, set a world record for an 800 yard shot at Camp Perry the next year by shooting 57 consecutive bulls-eyes (that’s fifty-seven), winning the Marine Corps Cup in 1913, picking up the Wimbledon Cup in 1919 and 1932, and so on and so forth.

MajHession2

In all, he participated in 500 major competitions in the course of his life and is remembered as an excellent marksman to this day.

Well in 1940, with the British Army losing most of its equipment in the evacuation from Dunkirk, an urgent call was sent out for arms to equip the new Home Guard being prepared to resist a German invasion. With that, in November 1940 the National Rifle Association’s American Rifleman magazine ran an ad placed by the American Committee for the Defense of British Homes asking for guns to be donated as often and as soon as possible.

send-a-gun nra dunkirk home guardAnd in response, Hession sent his match-grade M1903 Springfield. Built in 1905, the bolt-action .30-06 had a 30-inch barrel and Stevens scope installed. A trophy and veteran rifle that had served him well, it was adorned with brass plates denoting its use in dozens of competitions.

Before it shipped to the UK along with over 7,000 other weapons collected, Hession added one more plate, one that simply read, “For obvious reasons the return of this rifle after Germany is defeated would be deeply appreciated.”

Hession himself, then in his 60s and retired from active duty, remained at his civilian job at Winchester and helped the war effort from there.

Sometime after Hitler was crushed the Hession rifle did come back home.

HessionObit

While the great rifleman passed in 1961, novelist Robert A. Heinlein, famous for Starship Troopers, later picked up the gun and even mentioned a similar ‘1903 in his work, Number of the Beast and it eventually ended up in the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia where it rests today.

This post mirrored from my column at Guns.com