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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025: Walking the Beat

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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

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Warship Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025: Walking the Beat

National Museum of Denmark photo THM-6216

Above we see the Danish inspektionsskibet— classed as a “fishery cruiser” at the time in Jane’s— Fylla in rough seas on her patrol route, likely off Iceland, in the late 1920s.

Armed with a pair of 4.7-inch guns and another set of 6-pounders, she replaced Denmark’s only proper cruiser just after the Great War but started her life under service to a different king.

The “Cabbage” Class

When the British slammed into the largest naval war in history up to that time, the Royal Navy found themselves in urgent need of small purpose-built fleet escorts and minesweepers and a class of ultimately 112 vessels in five distinct groups ordered under the Emergency War Programme would prove suitable to both needs.

British Flower (Arabis) class minesweeping sloop HMS Wisteria IWM SP 827

The so-called Flower or Cabbage-class minesweeping sloops were triple hulled forward to allow them survivability when working minefields or dodging torpedoes but still constructed to merchant rather than naval standards, allowing them to be produced quickly (typically in just five months from keel laying to delivery) by commercial yards while Royal Dockyards and the like could be left to the business of building “proper” warships for the Grand Fleet.

All were 250 feet long at the waterline (267 oal), with a simple two-boiler/one engine-screw-funnel power plant good for at least 15 knots. Designed to carry two medium-sized (3, 4, or 4.7-inch) and two light (3-pounder/47mm or 6-pounder/57mm) guns, there was much variation through the builds. Allowance was made for mechanical minesweeping gear, although not all were fitted with it.

The Flowers were built in five sub-classes spanning three in the original “slooper” format: 36 Arabis (sloop-sweepers with 2×4.7″/40 QF, 2×3-pdr/47mm), 12 Azalea (sloop-sweepers with 2×4″/40 QF, 2×3-pdr/47mm), 12 Acacia (sloop-sweepers with 2×12-pdr/3″ QF, 2×3-pdr/47mm) and two as “Warship Q” vessels: 12 Aubrietia (Q-ships with 2x 4″ guns, 1×3-pdr/47mm, depth charge throwers), and 28 Anchusa (Q-ships with 2x 4″ guns, 2x 12-pdr/3″ guns, depth charge throwers).

Arabis-class sloops of the Flower typeNo less than 15 yards built the Cabbages including Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Wallsend;  Earle’s Shipbuilding & Engineering Co, Kingston upon Hull; Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock;  Barclay Curle & Company, Whiteinch;  Lobnitz & Company, Renfrew; Charles Connell and Company, Scotstoun; Napier & Miller, Old Kilpatrick; Archibald McMillan & Son, Dumbarton; Greenock & Grangemouth Dockyard Company, Greenock; Bow, McLachlan and Company, Paisley; William Simons & Company, Renfrew; D. & W. Henderson & Company, Glasgow; Workman, Clark and Company, Belfast; Richardson, Duck and Company, Thornaby-on-Tees; and Dunlop Bremner & Company, Port Glasgow.

Meet Asphodel

Named for the lily connected via Greek legend to the dead and the underworld, our sloop, HMS Asphodel, was one of six Cabbages (five Arabis type) built by D. & W. Henderson in Glasgow alongside the yard’s bread and butter– War Standard “A” tramp ships.

Asphodel was D&W Hull No. 498, completed with a T3Cy 22½”36½”60″x27″ 180psi 2,000ihp engine, launched 21 December 1915 and commissioned 28 January 1916, with CDR Reginald Gay Copleston, R.N., Retired List, as her first skipper. Copleston, who had voluntarily moved to the Retired List in 1911 after 15 years of service, was the Librarian at the Royal Naval War College when the War started. Asphodel was his first seagoing command since the old Apollo-class second-class protected cruiser HMS Sirius in 1909.

Ordered to the Mediterranean, Asphodel sailed into Alexandria on 19 March to join the East Indies and Egypt force under VADM John Michael de Robeck, First Baronet. There, she joined several other sloops including several sisters (HMS Amaryllis, Cornflower, Nigella, Verbena, and Valerian) supporting the old Majestic-class pre-dreadnoughts HMS Hannibal and Jupiter along with five monitors and seven cruisers.

A grey-painted HMS Jupiter in Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta, March 1915. Jupiter, which joined the fleet in 1897, left the Med in November 1916 and paid off at Devonport to provide crews for antisubmarine vessels. Hannibal, who had given up her main battery of four BL 12-inch Mark VIII guns to arm the monitors HMS Prince Eugene and HMS Sir John Moore, would endure until 1919. Photo by Surgeon Oscar Parkes. IWM SP 77.

Asphodel had a quiet life, as she was typically used as a fleet messenger on the 1,000-mile run between Alexandria and Malta, leaving once a week for a round-trip back and forth, with Hannibal listing her arriving and departing in her logs over 200 times across the next 42 months.

Fleet Messengers at Malta: HMS Asphodel and HMS Ivy. By Frank Mason. IWM ART 3109

Copleston commanded Asphodel until being appointed Commander of Patrols, Malta on 18 August 1917, replaced by the younger CDR James Charles Wauhope, formerly of the unsuccessful Q-ship HMS Carrigan Head (Q4) out of Queenstown. Wauhope would command her for the remainder of her RN career.

Asphodel was assigned to the newly-formed Twelfth Sloop Flotilla in June 1918, a force that grew to as large as 19 such vessels.

She outlasted her consort Hannibal, which was paid off for disposal in Malta on 25 October 1919, and left Malta with her own paying off pennant in December 1919, bound for decommissioning on 27 April 1920 and storage in the Home Isles pending disposal.

Asphodel, as far as I can, tell never saw combat during WWI but she did lose three men at once– all outbound to the Devonport Naval Dockyard– drowned in Malta on 2 April 1918. They are among the 351 Commonwealth Great War burials in Malta’s Capuccini/Kalkara Naval Cemetery.

  • ADAMS, Charles W, Able Seaman, J 17911
  • CARROLL, John, Petty Officer 1c, 190285
  • GREEN, Cyril G, Armourer’s Mate, M 5081

A fourth Asphodel man, Able Seaman John Browning Smale, 21, died in an accident on 5 October 1918 and is buried with his shipmates at Capuccini.

The war was not otherwise kind to the Cabbages, with eight lost while on Q-ship duty and four on more traditional naval work, with Asphodel’s direct sisters HMS Arabis sunk by German torpedo boats off the Dogger Bank in 1916, HMS Primula sent to the bottom in the Med by SM U-35, and HMS Genista sunk by SM U-57 in the Atlantic the same year.

Post-war, most were paid off, sold either to the breakers or for mercantile use in the early 1920s and the few kept around were hulked as drill ships for the RNVR or tasked with ancillary uses such as fisheries patrol.

A few went on to be sold or donated to other governments, as military aid. This included HMS Zinnia heading to the Belgian Navy as a fishery protection vessel, HMS Pentstemon becoming the Chinese gunboat Hai Chow, HMS Gladiolus and HMS Jonquil becoming the Portuguese “cruisers” NRP República and NRP Carvalho Araújo, and HMS Geranium heading down south to become HMAS Geranium.

HMAS Geranium, 1930s. SLV 9916498703607636

This brings us to Asphodel’s second career.

Danish Service

For some 30 years, the Danes made steady use of the British-built 3,000-ton krydserkorvetten (cruiser corvette)  Valkyrien, a close cousin of the Armstrong-built Chilean protected cruiser Esmeralda. She cruised the world and waved the Dannebrog as far away as Siam and Hong Kong and is most notable for overseeing the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) to the U.S. in 1917.

The white-hulled Valkyrien in the harbor at St. Thomas as the Danish flag comes down in the Virgin Islands, 31 March 1917. Behind her is the Danish-flag-flying grey-hulled transport USS Hancock (AP-5), which carried American Marines to the islands for the transfer. DH009717

Denmark’s only true cruiser, by the early 1920s, the ram-bowed Valkyrien was hopelessly obsolete and needed replacement.

However, after a wartime mobilization that saw the Danish military swell to over 75,000 and construct the 23 km-long Tunestillingen line of defenses near Copenhagen, the Danish fishing and merchant marine fleets had to absorb the losses of more than 324 ships to both sides during the conflict, and the economic burden of the reunification of economically depressed Southern Jutland (Northern Schleswig) from Weimar Germany in 1920, the Danes were flat broke and had little appetite for more military spending.

This led the government to the bargain basement deal that was HMS Asphodel.

A good deal lighter than the Valkyrien (1,250 tons vs 3,000) as our sloop had zero armor plating other than the shields of her main guns, she was nonetheless the same length (267 feet oal) while a lighter draft (11 feet vs 18 feet) allowed her to enter more colonial ports and harbors. While Asphodel only carried two 4.7-inch guns and another pair of 6-pounders, Valkyrien by 1915 only carried two aging 5.86″/32s and six 3″/55s. But the substantial savings was in crew, with Valkyrien requiring a minimum of 200 men even in light peacetime service (albeit allowing space for another 100 cadets), while Asphodel could be placed in full service with only 75 men in her complement.

As a no-brainer, the surplus ex-Asphodel was acquired for her value in scrap metal from the Admiralty in June 1920 and then sent for an overhaul at Orlogsværftets in Copenhagen.

Following her last summer cruise to Greenland and Iceland in 1921, Valkyrien was laid up in 1923 and sold for scrap the next year. Her spot was taken by the newly dubbed Fylla— the fourth Danish warship to carry the name, with the first two being sail-powered frigates (fregaten) completed in 1802 and 1812, respectively.

The name had previously been carried by an Orlogsværftets-built 8-gunned steam-powered armored schooner that joined the Danish fleet in 1863– just in time to fight the Germans– but spent her career cruising as a station ship in the Danish West Indies and around the Faroes, Greenland, and Iceland.

The third Danish warship Fylla, a 157-foot armored schooner launched in 1862 and decommissioned in 1894, accomplished several polar mapping and exploration cruises, leaving at least one geographic feature named after her in Greenland. She was kept as a pier side trainer and barracks ship for another decade, scrapped in 1903. The name comes from an old Norse verb which means roughly to fill or complete. THM-18183

She was rearmed at least thrice in her career, shifting from 60- and 30-pounder muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons to 3-inch rifled breechloaders in her final form. THM-18182

Our Fylla’s first Danish skipper was CDR Prince Axel, a swashbuckling 32-year-old grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark and at the time the fourth in line to the throne. Axel, who nursed a love of sports, flying, and fast cars his whole life, was a career naval officer, having joined the service in 1909 and cut his teeth on numerous Danish coastal battleships including tense Great War neutrality patrols threading the needle between the British and the Germans, later becoming one of the Danish Navy’s first aviators. In 1918, he led the Danish Naval Mission to America and returned to Europe in company with the dynamic Assistant SECNAV, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Axel had married a popular Swedish princess in 1919 and had only narrowly avoided an effort to draft him to fill a nascent throne in newly independent Finland.

Her inaugural cruise in late 1920 was captured in photos.

Fylla riding light with signal flags, THM-3927

Fylla off Godthab, Greenland, 27 September 1920 ES-167772

Fylla at anchor off Iceland THM-13968

Inspection ship Fylla returning around 1920 from her first patrol THM-41465

Fylla typically was employed as the station ship in Iceland and would patrol the Faeroes to the southeast and Greenland to the northwest as well, with the occasional visits to Holland, England, and Norway.

At the time, the Danes only had two smaller inspection ships on the same beat and they were significantly older and less well-armed: Island Falk (entered fleet 1906, 730 tons, 183 feet oal, 13 knots, 2×3″ guns) and Besytteren (entered fleet 1900, 450 tons, 142 feet oal, 11 knots, 2x57mm guns), so Fylla was the queen of the overseas fleet.

Postcard Reykjavik, harbor area with, among others, the inspection ship Fylla, circa 1926

English trawler Lord Ernle who had lost its propeller, was taken in tow by Fylla in the Denmark Strait and towed to Reykjavik, in the summer of 1931. THM-6220

Fylla raising ensign circa 1933. Note her stern 4.7″ gun THM-18491

Fylla, THM-18471

Fylla, THM-18477

Fylla, with a 20mm Madsen AAA gun fitted late in her career THM-18849

Fylla Greenland THM-18891

Danish Flower-class sloop Fylla ex-Asphodel

Danish Flower-class sloop Fylla, Jane’s 1929, ex-Asphodel

Fylla in Icelandic waters 1920s via Sapur, Icelandic National Museum

Fylla in Icelandic waters 1920s via Sapur, Icelandic National Museum

She would carry King Christian X to the Faeroe Islands and Iceland in June 1930, one of the first visits by a sitting Danish monarch to the far-flung Atlantic colonies. On the return leg, escorting the coastal battleship ship Niels Juel, the ships visited Oslo and saluted King Haakon VII.

Niels Juel and Fylla in Oslo, Norway July 7, 1930. The paintings show the Danish coastal defense ship Niels Juel (left) and the gunboat Fylla saluting the Norwegian King in Olso. The two vessels carried the Danish king Christian X to the Faeroe Islands and Iceland from June 1930, so this visit must have been on their way home to Copenhagen. Benjamin Olsen seems to have been part of the entourage. By Benjamin Olsen 1930 via the Forsvarsgalleriet.

She was graceful enough in Danish service that she caught the eye of maritime artist Christian Benjamin Olsen who captured her in at least three of his period works, several of which are in the Royal Danish Naval Museum in Copenhagen. Of note, Olsen visited the Faroe Islands and Iceland in 1921, 1926, and 1930, having frequent chances to see Fylla in action.

Inspektionsskibet Fylla at sea by Christian Benjamin Olsen

Inspektionsskibet Fylla off Iceland by Christian Benjamin Olsen

However, all good things come to an end. When the two large new aircraft-equipped inspection ships, Hvidbjornen (1,050 t, 196 feet oal, 2x87mm, 1 floatplane, 14 knots, circa 1928) and Ingolf (1,180 t, 213 feet oal, 2×4.7″/45, 1 floatplane, 16.5 knots, circa 1932), were ordered in the late 1920s/early 1930s, the need to retain the aging Fylla was removed.

At that, Fylla was withdrawn from service in 1933, disarmed, and sold for scrap.

Epilogue

Little remains of our subject.

Of her RN skippers, Copleston returned to England after the war and reverted to the Retired List in December 1918. A cricketer from a family of cricketers, he died in Devon in 1960, aged 85.

Meanwhile, the younger CDR James Charles Wauhope would post-Armistice volunteer for transfer to the Royal Australian Navy from which he would retire in 1929. Returning to England pre-war after working a claim in the Wewak goldfield in New Guinea for years, he rejoined the RN in WWII, ultimately serving as Naval Officer in Charge, Stornoway. Capt. Wauhope died a pauper in General Hospital Paddington, London in 1960, aged 76.

The Royal Navy commissioned a second HMS Asphodel, appropriately a Flower-class corvette (K56) in September 1940. She was sunk on 10 March 1944 off Cape Finisterre by U-575, with only five survivors.

Flower class Corvette HMS Asphodel K56 under tow on the Tyne, circa 1943, IWM FL 1109

Fylla’s first Danish skipper, Prince Axel, continued his military service albeit from a desk and was appointed a rear admiral on the naval staff in 1939. He was also simultaneously the director of the Danish East Asiatic Company shipping concern from 1934 to 1953 and had previously commanded the 8,100-ton SS Alsia under the EAC flag. During the war, although under surveillance by the Gestapo, he reportedly endorsed the scuttling of the Danish fleet in 1943 to keep it out of German hands, and quietly blessed the work of EAC’s fleet-at-large in Allied service– with the company losing at least six ships during the conflict. He also cultivated contacts with several of the Danish resistance groups. Promoted to a perfunctory full admiral in 1958, his youngest son, Prince Fleming, a naval cadet in 1945, served on active duty with the Danish Navy for several years as a submariner. Axel passed in 1964, aged 75, and was buried in his naval uniform.

Prince Flemming Valdemar (L), son of Prince Axel, cousin of King Christian X of Denmark, with members of the Danish Resistance in Copenhagen Denmark – 7-9 May 1945. Note Flemming is armed with a Swedish M37/39 Suomi SMG, the resistance member behind him has a Sten Mk II SMG. IWM – Pelman, L (Lt) Photographer. IWM A 28475

The Danes commissioned a fourth Fylla, a 1,700-ton Aalborg-built inspection ship (F351) that entered the fleet in 1963. She served until 1991.

Inspection ship F351 Fylla, 1986, in Greenland’s Prins Christians Sund med Ministerflag

Of Asphodel/Fylla‘s 111 sister Cabbages, a dozen had been lost in the Great War, one (HMS Valerian) was lost at sea in a hurricane off Cuba in 1926, one sunk by the Japanese in 1937 (ex-HMS Pentstemon/Hai Chow), at least three (ex-HMS Buttercup/Teseo, HMS Laburnum, and HMS Cornflower) were sunk in WWII. The last in RN service– and the last active coal-burner on the Admiralty List– HMS Rosemary, had been a fishery protection ship interbellum then was pressed into service as an escort during WWII, was only sent to the breakers in 1947.

Just one Cabbage is believed to remain, the Anchusa group Q-ship HMS Saxifrage, which continued to serve as RNVR President from 1922 through 1982 as a moored drillship sans guns or engines. Sold to private interests, she has changed hands several times in the past few decades and, carrying a wild dazzle paint scheme, is currently owned by a charitable trust that is seeking to preserve her. Laid up at Chatham Dock with much of her topside razed, she may not be around much longer.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

 

***

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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Warship Wednesday, June 12, 2024: Good ol’ Walrus Skull

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to 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, June 12, 2024: Good ol’ Walrus Skull

This image, as are most in this post, via the Danish National­museet system, call no. THM-3787

Above we see the humble little inspektionsskibet (inspection ship) Ingolf of the Royal Danish Navy at anchor in Umanak (Uummannaq), Greenland in the summer of 1934, some 90 years ago.

She was a brawler for her type and task, and if you look closely at the front of her wheelhouse, you just may see her unofficial ship’s mascot, a walrus skull. 

Meet Ingolf

Ingolf was ordered in 1932 with inspiration drawn from the large inspection ship Hvidbjornen (1,050 t, 196 feet oal, 2x87mm, 1 aircraft, 14 knots, circa 1928).

Hvidbjørnen with Heinkel HM 8 seaplane abord. Ingolf would be about 20 feet longer, a little faster, and with a more powerful battery of 4.7-inch guns. THM-18978

You can see the resemblance in Ingolf. THM-18464

Our subject’s name comes from the Old Norse name Ingólfr, meaning the wolf of the king Yngvi. The Dane had previously used the name several times, most recently for an iron-hulled sail-rigged steam schooner cruiser (skonnert-krydseren) that, commissioned in the 1870s, had spent the last two decades of her life as a training ship and polar exploration/survey vessel before retiring in 1926.

The old Krydseren Ingolf

It was (and is) a popular boy’s name, including for use in the Danish royal family.

A young Prince Ingolf of Denmark, shown with Danish Guards. Currently titled as Count Ingolf of Rosenborg, he is a grandson of Danish King Christian X and twice great-grandson (through both his mother and father’s lines) of King Frederik VIII of Denmark.

Constructed in Copenhagen at Orlogsværftet, the Danish naval shipyard, Ingolf was officially a fishery protection vessel intended for service off Greenland, Iceland (a Danish dependency until WWII) and the Faeroes Islands. However, she was a decent little gunboat by any measure.

With some 1,180 tons standard displacement, she ran 213 feet overall with a tubby (roughly 6:1 ratio) 35-foot beam and the capability of floating in just 16 feet of water. Powered by two Thornycroft boilers driving a VTE engine, she could make 16.5 knots on a single screw.

Her main battery consisted of a pair of 4.7-inch P.K. L45 M.32 mounts in shielded turrets fore and aft, a single 57mm L40 M.1885 gun, two 20mm/56 Madsen Rek. K. AAA guns, and two 8mm Madsen light machine guns.

Ingolf in Greenland in the summer of 1936, one of her 4.7-inch mounts being cleaned. Note the light shield of the mount and the fatigue coveralls of her crew, along with the wooden deck. THM-21466

THM-19320

THM-19087

THM-19072

The 57mm gun was typically used for saluting and “shots across the bow,” saving the 4.7-inchers for “war use.” THM-19102

The same model 57mm gun, dating back to the 1880s, was used by the Icelandic Coast Guard on their cutters until the early 2000s. THM-18893

Note the Madsen LMG in an AAA mount. THM-19341

The crew was just 66 men, of which a light platoon-sized landing/survey party could be spared for work ashore in her remote patrol area. The ship carried several whaleboats and survey ships for the task.

Amazing for her size, she was designed from the outset to carry an armed floatplane, which would be craned off and on for operations. More on this later.

Going well beyond Hvidbjornen, when compared to the five other Danish G-I-F fisheries protection/survey flotilla vessels that routinely sailed from Denmark to patrol those waters– Hejmdal (705 t, 175 feet oal, 2x75mm, 13 knot, circa 1935), Beskytteren (389 t, 143 feet oal, 1x57mm, 2x37mm, 11.8 knots, circa 1900), Hejmdal (817 t, 174 feet oal, 2x75mm, 12 kts, circa 1935), Islands Falk (730 t, 183 feet oal, 2x75mm, 2x47mm, 13 knots, circa 1907) and Freja (322 t, 124 feet oal, 2x75mm, 10 knots, circa 1938)– Ingolf was by far the largest, fastest, and strongest of the lot.

It was also intended to use her as a kadetskib, or school ship for naval cadets, a role her old schooner cruiser namesake had often filled.

THM-19057

Commissioned on 23 April 1934, he had an almost idyllic life, at least until 1939. 

Ingolf seen aft across to port lying at the quay at the Royal Yacht Club, Brussels 1934. THM-3731

Ingolf in the North Atlantic, summer 1936. The little round bottom boat, with her low speed and 6:1 length-to-beam ratio, must have been a zesty ride in high seas. THM-21440

The inspection ship Ingolf fires salutes in this very artistic image. THM-3788

The inspection ship Ingolf is docked in Nykøbing.

Note the walrus skull mounted to the front of her wheelhouse. FHM-165451

FHM-165458

It remained a fixture of her career.

inspektionsskibet Ingolf

Inspektionskibet Ingolf and Maagen at Godthaab. Maagen (110 t, 71 feet oal, sail/diesel 8 knots, 1x37mm gun) was one of several small twin-masted light draft vessels classified invariably as an inspection cutter (inspektionskutter) or orlogskutter (naval cutter) that were permanently deployed to Greenland, Iceland, and the Faeroes used for inspection, coastal survey, and civil administration, typically with a single officer, a CPO, and 6-8 enlisted, often locals. They would steam with the larger Inspektionskibet whenever in the area and perform such yeoman tasks as towing targets during gunnery exercises.

Aircraft

Throughout her service, Ingolf and her smaller OPV companion, Hvidbjornen, would carry two types of light scout or torpedoflyet (torpedo-carrying) aircraft.

The first of these was the Heinkel H.E.8, of which the Danish Marinens Flyvevæsen bought (8) or built from kits (16) two dozen between 1928 and 1938. Classed by the Versailles-restricted Heinkel as two-seat “mail planes” they were easily modified to carry two Madsen light machine guns (one fixed forward-firing, one flexible) and eight hardpoints for small 28-pound bombs.

Heinkel seaplane HM 87 being taken on board in Ingolf, Godthåb summer of 1936. Capable of 130 knots, they had an 800nm range. THM-21432

Heinkel seaplane HM 87 aboard Ingolf in Gotthåb Harbor, 1936. THM-21439

Heinkel HM 87 being craned. Note the kayak in the background. THM-19052

Heinkel HM 87 is taken on board Ingolf in Godthaab ship harbor, August 1936, after photo flights for the Royal Danish Navy’s Chart Archive. To the stern of the gunboat is the 3,800-ton Danish gunnery training cruiser, Niels Juel, with twin 5.9-inch mounts forward. THM-32196

THM-19014

THM-19217

The second, and by far more formidable, floatplane used by the Danes from our subject was the Hawker Dantorp H.B. III, a type made specifically for the Danish Navy in 1933. Powered by an 850 hp Armstrong Siddeley Leopard IIIA air-cooled 14-cylinder twin-row radial engine– the most powerful radial engine in the world at the time– the three-place scout bomber carried a forward firing Vickers machine gun, a flexible Lewis gun for the gunner/radio operator, and up to 1,500 pounds of bombs or a single torpedo.

Dantorp torpedo plane No. 202 during practice on Isefjorden summer 1936. Note her steelfish centerline. They could reportedly stay aloft for an eight-hour patrol, albeit at 100~ knots. THM-21438

Torpedo plane No. 202 of the Dantorp type on board Ingolf. Talk about a tight squeeze! Note the Dannebrog national flash on the tail of the plane. THM-38091

The boom for launching and retrieving the torpedo plane ran off the mainmast. Just two Dantorps were ordered by the Danish Navy, No. 201 and No. 202. THM-3212

War!

Under the command of CDR Christian Vilhelm Evers (Søofficerskolen 1913) WWII began with Ingolf at the disposal of the Danish naval academy and would remain tasked with training cadets, along with her near sister, Hvidbjørnen.

Ingolf shown during WWII, note the Dannebrog painted on her side, a standard practice that Danish ships used in both world wars, used to try at armed neutrality. THM-9122

Same as above, THM-9123. Note she still has her walrus skull in this shot.

With the socialist government neutering the Danish forces even before the relatively bloodless German invasion in April 1940.

Ingolf, like much of the Danish fleet, was unable to get off a shot before the government capitulated.

Of course, that didn’t stop extensive Free Danish forces from being formed overseas, most of the Danish merchant marine to sail for the Allies– over 5,000 Danish merchant sailors manned over 800,000 tons of shipping for the Allies, many never to be seen again– and the training ship Danmark, in the U.S. in 1940, to train over 5,000 Americans for while operating for the USCG. Two small Danish Navy fisheries patrol boats, Maagen and Ternen, were in Greenland and would serve the Allies.

While sidelined and fundamentally interned in their own country by the occupying German forces, Ingolf and Hvidbjørnen were one of the few vessels allowed to cruise inside Denmark’s territorial waters as they were still allowed to train cadets. Of course, this was done with empty magazines and near-empty bunkers. 

Thus, they were afloat in the Storebælt (Great Belt)– strait between the islands of Zealand and Funen on 29 August 1943 when the Danish Admiralty flashed orders at 0408 to scuttle or make for Sweden. The Germans had begun their Operation Safari to disarm and disband the remnants of the Danish military. However, before they could reach Swedish waters, they were intercepted by the German minesweeper M 413 and torpedo boat T 18. 

CDR Evers and his crew tried to sink Ingolf by opening the sea valves and wreck her equipment but were stopped before the job was complete by the Germans who, according to reports, boarded and took hostages from among the cadets.

Meanwhile, Hvidbjørnen was more successful and was wrecked.

The last call on the inspection ship Hvidbjørnen before it was sunk in Storebælt off Korsør on 29 August 1943. The sinking took place in connection with the state of emergency on 29 August, after a German force had boarded the ship. FHM-167260

Limping to nearby Korsor, the Danish crews were interned and the proud Ingolf seized.

Operation Safari cost the Danish Navy six men were killed and 11 injured, while 258 officers and 2,961 ratings were taken into custody.

Ice distribution in Tårnborglejeren near Korsør, where the crews from the inspection ships Hvidbjørnen and Ingolf were interned after the Germans declared a state of emergency on 29 August 1943. FHM-174949

Danish sailors interned in KB Hallen. The dormitory is arranged on an indoor tennis court. Note the triple-decker bunks. FHM-170704

When the internment sites were closed in October 1943 the enlisted men were paroled although some officers remained in custody or were deported to Germany. Most of those let go subsequently took to a range of resistance activities.

The Germans renamed Ingolf as Sleipnir, then she was used as a flottentender from January 1943 and later bombed in the last months of the war during Allied air raids in Kiel. Leaking, she was towed out to Heikendorf on the east side of the Kieler Fjord, where she sank.

Ingolf as a wreck among wrecks in Kielshavn, May 1945. FHM-165480

She was later scrapped post-war.

Epilogue

CDR Evers, who commanded Ingolf from 1934-36 and 1939-43, retired from the Navy in August 1945, sat on the board of several Danish utility companies into the 1960s, and passed in 1967, aged 80. He was buried with full military honors at Holsteinborg cemetery

Post-war, the Royal Danish Navy would recycle the name for a second Inspektionsskibet Ingolfs (F350) which was in commission from 1962 to 1991. A 1,700-ton Hvidbjørnen class OPV armed with depth charges and a 76mm cannon, the little 239-foot vessel had both a hangar and flight deck for, first, a French Alouette III, and later a British Westland Lynx helicopter.

Inspektionsskibene af Hvidbjørn-Klassen OPV Ingolf (F350) with Sea Lynx S.181 aloft

Notably, members of the old crew from the circa 1934 Inspektionsskibet Ingolfs visited the new ship with the same moniker in April 1984, posing with the vessel’s embarked Lynx militærhelikopter, S.181.

THM-35660

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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