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Warship Wednesday, June 28, 2023: The Tsar’s Jutland Veteran

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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, June 28, 2023: The Tsar’s Jutland Veteran

Archivio Centrale dello Stato

Above we see the Italian light cruiser Bari moored at Patras in Axis-occupied Greece in May 1941. Note her laundry out to dry, her 5.9-inch guns trained to starboard, and her crew assembled on the bow with the band playing. A ship with a strange history, a wandering tale, she was lost some 80 years ago today.

The Muravyov-Amurskiy class

No fleet in military history was in desperate need of a refresh as the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1910s. Having lost 17 battleships (depending on how you classify them), 13 cruisers, 30 Destroyers, and a host of auxiliaries to the Japanese in 1904-1905, the Russians were left with virtually no modern combat ships except those bottled up in the Black Sea by the Ottomans. Also, with lessons learned from the naval clashes, it was clear the way of the future was dreadnoughts, bigger destroyers, and fast cruisers.

To fix this, the Russian Admiralty soon embarked on a plan to build eight very modern 25,000-ton Gangut, Imperatritsa Mariya, and Imperator Nikolai I-class battleships augmented by a quartet of massive 32,000-ton Borodino-class battlecruisers. With the age of the lumbering armored cruiser over, the Russians went with a planned eight-pack of fast new protected cruisers of the Svetlana and Admiral Nakhimov classes (7,000 tons, 30 knots, 15 5.1-inch guns, 2 x torpedo tubes, up to 3 inches of armor) as companions for the new battle wagons.

And, with Russia all but writing off its larger Pacific endeavors, eschewing rebuilding its former battle fleet there in favor of a much more modest “Siberian Military Flotilla” based out of often ice-bound Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk, the Tsar’s admirals deemed that just two light scouting cruisers were needed for overseas use in the Far East, typically to wave the flag, so to speak.

That’s where the Muravyov-Amurskiy class came in.

The two cruisers, at 4,500 tons displacement and 426 feet overall length, were generally just reduced versions of the Svetlana/Admiral Nakhimov classes being built in Russian yards already.

Planned to be armed with eight 5.1-inch guns and four torpedo tubes, they were turbine powered and expected to be fast– able to touch 35 knots at standard weight for short periods although published speeds were listed as 27.5 knots.

Mine rails over the stern allowed for up to 120 such devices to be quickly sown– a Russian specialty.

Their armor was thin, never topping three inches, and spotty with just a protective deck above machinery spaces, a protected conning tower, and 50mm gun shields.

Muravyov-Amursky class in 1914 Janes.

It should be noted the Russian cruisers feel very much like a follow-on to the experimental “cruiser corvette” SMS Gefion (4,275 t, 362 ft oal, 10 x 4-inch guns, 1-inch armor) that Schichau built at Danzig in the mid-1890s for overseas service. 
 

SMS Gefion, commissioned in 1895, would serve briefly in East Asia before she was laid up in 1901. After service as an accommodation hulk through the Great War, she was converted to use as a freighter, Adolf Sommerfeld, in 1920, only to be broken up a few years later.

The two new vessels were to be named after historic 19th Century Russian figures who had expanded the country’s reach towards the Pacific: General Count Nikolay Nikolayevich Muravyov-Amursky, a statesman who proposed abolishing serfdom; and Admiral Gennady Ivanovich Nevelskoy, a noted polar explorer.

General Muravyov-Amursky and Adm. Nevelskoy.

They were ordered in the summer of 1913 from F. Schichau’s Schiffswerft in Danzig, as yard numbers 893 and 894.

The choice to have a German firm build the new cruiser class wasn’t too unusual for the Tsarist fleet as the Russian cruiser Novik and four Kit-class destroyers was built at Schichau in the 1900s while Krupp delivered the early midget submarine Forel at about the same time. The Russian protected cruiser Askold, one of the most successful of her type, was built at Kiel by Germaniawerft while the cruiser Bogatyr was ordered from AG Vulcan’s Stettin shipyards, also in Germany.

Besides German orders and construction at domestic yards along both the Baltic and the Black Sea, the Russians also ordered warships and submarines from France, Britain, Denmark, and the U.S.– they needed the tonnage.

The planned future Muravyov-Amursky at Schichau-Werke, Danzig, on the occasion of her launch, 29 March 1914 (Old Style), 11 April (N.S.).

Ironically, this was at the same period that Russia’s primary military ally was France, whose principal threat was from Germany. However, most Russian Stavka strategists and statesmen of the era assumed that they would be far more likely to fight the Ottomans or Austrians– perhaps even the Swedes– long before the Germans.

Then came August 1914 and relations between Germany and Russia kind of took a turn.

Kreuzer Pillau

When Germany declared war on Imperial Russia, Muravyov-Amursky had been launched just four months prior and was fitting out with an expected delivery in the summer of 1915. Sistership Admiral Nevelskoy was still on the ways with her hull nearly complete. With the Kaiserliche Marine hungry for tonnage, they seized the two unfinished Russian cruisers and rushed them to completion.

Muravyov-Amursky was renamed after the East Prussian town of Pillau, and Nevelskoy after the West Prussian port city of Elbing. Muravyov-Amursky/Pillau was completed in December 1914 and Nevelskoy/Elbing was delivered the following September.

To keep them more in line with the rest of the German battleline, they were fitted with slightly larger (and better) 15 cm/45 (5.9″) SK L/45 guns, the same type used as secondary armament on German battleships and battlecruisers as well as later on most of their cruisers built during the Great War.

Pillau as seen during her German career. Courtesy of Master Sergeant Donald L.R. Shake, USAF, 1981. NHHC Catalog #: NH 92715

SMS Elbing of the Pillau class, circa 1915-16

SMS Pillau shortly after entering service, 1915

Pillau had her baptism of fire in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915– ironically against the Russians– while Elbing took part in the bombardment of Yarmouth in April 1916. Both were assigned to the High Seas Fleet’s 2nd Scouting Group (II. Aufklärungsgruppe), commanded by Contre-Admiral Bödicker, and took a key role in the Battle of Jutland.

While Jutland is such a huge undertaking that I won’t even attempt to showcase it all in this post as I would never have the scope to do it properly, Elbing scored the first hit in the battle, landing a 5.9-inch shell against HMS Galatea from an impressive distance of about 13.000 m at 14.35 on 31 May. In the subsequent night action, she was accidentally rammed by the German dreadnought SMS Posen and had to be abandoned, with some of her crew saved by the destroyer S 53 and others landed on the Danish coast by a passing Dutch trawler.

As for Pillau, she was hit by a single large-caliber shell– a 12-incher from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible— that left her damaged but still in the fight while she is credited with landing hits of her own on the cruiser HMS Chester. In all, Pillau had fired no less than 113 5.9-inch shells and launched a torpedo in the epic sea clash while suffering just four men killed and 23 wounded from her hit from Inflexible.

Her chart house blown to memories and half of her boilers out of action but still afloat, Pillau then served as the seeing eye dog for the severely damaged battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz— hit 21 times by heavy-caliber shells, twice by secondary battery shells, and once by a torpedo– on a slow limp back to Wilhelmshaven with the dreadnought’s bow nearly completely submerged.

German battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz, low in the water after Jutland. The image was likely taken from Pillau, who led her back to Wilhelmshaven from the battle

SMS Seydlitz after the Battle of Jutland, 1916. Amazingly, she only suffered 150 casualties during all that damage and would return to service by November– just six months later. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Then, her work done, Pillau had to lick her wounds.

SMS Pillau in Wilhelmshaven showing heavy damage to her bridge, caused by a 12-in shell hit from the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible.

She only suffered 27 casualties at Jutland while her sister, Elbing, was lost.

The entry wound, so to speak

Repaired, Pillau took part in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917 as well as other more minor operations before the end game in October 1918 in which her crewed mutinied and raised the red flag rather than head out in a last “ride of the Valkyries” suicide attack on the British Home Seas Fleet.

SMS Pillau passing astern of a ship of the line, winter 1917

SMS Pillau on patrol in Helgoland Bay, 1918 note AAA gun forward

Incrociatore Bari

Retained at Wilhelmshaven as part of the rump Provisional Realm Navy (Vorläufige Reichsmarine) under the aged VADM Adolf von Trotha while 74 ships of the High Seas Fleet surrendered to the British in November 1918 to comply with the Armistice, Pillau was saved from the later grand scuttling of that interned force seven months later at Scapa Flow.

The victorious allies, robbed of the choicest cuts of the German fleet, in turn, demanded Pillau be turned over for reparations along with a further nine surviving battleships, 15 cruisers, 59 destroyers, and 50 torpedo boats. Pillau was therefore steamed to Cherbourg and decommissioned by the Germans in June 1920.

It was decided that Pillau was to go to the Italians as a war prize, with the Regia Marina renaming her after the Adriatic port city of Bari in Italy’s Puglia region. The Italians also were to receive the surrendered German light cruisers SMS Graudenz and SMS Stassburg, the destroyer flotilla leader V.116, and the destroyers B.97 and S.63. Italy would further inherit a host of former Austrian vessels including the battleships Tegtthof, Zrinyi, and Radetzky; the cruisers Helgoland and Saida; and 15 destroyers.

The future light cruiser Bari seen in rough shape, with the provisional denomination “U” painted on her bow, right after being ceded to Italy, Taranto, 5 May 1921.

Embarrassingly, just after she entered service with the Italians, Bari ran aground at Terrasini and was stuck there for a week before being refloated.

Aerial photos of Bari stranded at Terrasini, 28 August 1925.

Still, she went on to have a useful and somewhat happy peacetime service with the Italian fleet.

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s a

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s

L’incrociatore leggero Bari late 1920s, seen from the port side.

Bari, fotografiado en Venecia en el año 1931

Italian cruiser Bari, in Venice in the early 1930s. Colorized by Postales Navales

Cruiser Bari (ex SMS Pillau ) in floating dock, 1930s

Italian light cruiser Bari (formerly the German SMS Pillau) moored at the pier in 1933

Italian Light Cruiser RM Bari pictured at Taranto c1929 

Bari would be extensively rebuilt in the early 1930s, including a new all-oil-fired engineering suite that almost doubled her range but dropped her top speed to 24 knots. This reconstruction included several topside changes to appearance as well as the addition of a few 13.2mm machine guns for AAA work.

Bari crosses the navigable canal of Taranto after the second round of modification works, circa 1933-40. Compare this to the postcard image shown above taken at the same angle and place that shows her mid-1920s appearance

Bari in the 1931 Janes Fighting Ships

She took part in the Ethiopian war in 1935 and would remain in the Red Sea as part of the Italian East African Naval Command well into May 1938. She then returned home for further modernization at Taranto in which her torpedo tubes were removed and a trio of Breda 20mm/65cal Mod. 1935 twin machine guns were installed and two twin 13.2/76 mm Breda Mod. 31s.

Bari, as covered by the U.S. Navy’s ONI 202, June 1943.

When Italy joined WWII, Bari was soon sent to join the invasion of Greece where she conducted minelaying and coastal bombing missions in the Adriatic and the Aegean. She served as the flagship of ADM Vittorio Tur’s Special Naval Force (Forza Navale Speciale, FNS), an amphibious group that was used to occupy the Ionian Islands including Corfu, Kefalonia, Santa Maura, Ithaca, and Zakynthos. She would also participate in naval gunfire bombardment operations on the coast of Montenegro and Greece against partisans and guerrillas.

Bari in Patras in occupied Greece, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale, May 1941

Another shot from the same above.

Bari moored in Patras, around 18 June 1941, with the ensign of Ammiraglio Comandante Alberto Marenco di Moriondo aboard.

ADM Tur and the FNS, with Bari still as his flag, would go on to occupy the French island of Corsica in November 1942 during the implementation of Case Anton, the German-Italian occupation of Vichy France after the Allied Torch landings in North Africa.

Bari anchored at the breakwater of the harbor of Bastia, Corsica, on 11 November 1942, as the flagship of the Forza Navale Speciale that was then occupying the island after Operation Torch.

The cruiser in Bastia on November 11, 1942, during the Italian landings. Note the steel-helmeted blackshirt troops in the foreground

In January 1943, with the FNS disbanded and ADM Tur assigned to desk jobs, Bari retired to Livorno where she was to be fitted as a sort of floating anti-aircraft battery, her armament updated to include a mix of two dozen assorted 90mm, 37mm, and 20mm AAA guns.

This conversion was never completed.

On 28 June 1943, she was pummeled by B-17s of the 12th Air Force and sank in the industrial canal at Livorno, deemed a total loss.

From 10 June 1940 to the sinking, the Bari had conducted 47 war missions and steamed 6,800 nautical miles.

After the Italian armistice, the Germans attempted to salvage the cruiser for further use but in the end wound up scuttling it once more in 1944. Post-war, she was stricken from the Italian naval list in 1947 and raised for scrapping the following year.

Epilogue

Very few remnants of these cruisers endure.

A painting by German maritime artist Otto Poetzsch was turned into a series of widely circulated Deutsches Reich postcards, used to depict both Pillau and Elbing.

Elbing‘s wreck has been extensively surveyed and studied over the years and is generally considered to be in good shape after spending a century on the bottom of the Baltic. Besides her guns, she has china and glassware scattered around the hull.

The Russian scale model firm Combrig makes a 1/700 scale kit of Pillau.

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, July 21, 2021: Luckiest of the Italian Heavies

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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, July 21, 2021: Luckiest of the Italian Heavies

Here we see the Zara-class incrociatore (heavy cruiser) Gorizia of the Regia Marina, with her sister Fiume, anchored in Venice circa September 1937. The Palazzo Ducale is in the distance to the left, where the visiting British County-class cruiser HMS London (69) rests in a place of honor pierside. Note the whaleboat in the foreground with the duster of the Royal Navy, which called on the City of Canals that summer under the flag of VADM Sir Charles Kennedy-Purvis. Of course, the British would revisit Italian harbors several times just a few years later, but under much less cordial terms, and often at night.

The four Zaras were impressive in scale, at some 599-feet in length overall, and had an “official” Naval Treaty standard weight of 10,000-tons, although their actual full load weight was closer to 14,500 tons. Using eight British pattern Thornycroft boilers and a pair of Parsons steam turbines, they could make 32 knots even with a very strong armor scheme (up to 5.9-inches) for interbellum cruisers.

The primary armament for these Italian heavies was eight 8″/53 Model 1927 Ansaldos, mounted in four twin turrets. These guns had a range of about 34,500 yards firing 270-pound AP shells and, due to the electrically-powered training and elevation and hydraulically powered rammers used in their mountings could fire as fast as 3.8 rounds per minute per gun– very respectable for the era.

Heavy cruiser Gorizia, 1941, with members of her crew clustered in front of her forward 8 inch mounts. Although excellent guns, the very tight mountings limited the spread of shell fire. 

Secondary armament consisted of 16 3.9″/47 O.T.O. Model 1928 DP guns in eight twin shielded mounts. Basically, an unlicensed version of the old Austro-Hungarian Navy’s Skoda K10/K11 that the Italians fell in love with when they saw it on war prizes in 1918, O.T.O. had revamped the design into a decent AAA piece with a ceiling of 33,000 feet. 

Incrociatore Zara pezzi da 100 47 mm O.T.O. mod.1928

Unlike most cruisers built in the first half of the 20th Century, the Zara class did not carry any torpedoes, but they did, awkwardly, have a bow-mounted catapult for two single-engine floatplanes.

Italian heavy cruiser Zara incrociatori pesanti classe Zara in navigazione. Photographer Miniati, Bruno 1939, Alinari archives. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Richard Worth, in his Fleets of World War II, notes that the Zaras had a lot of attributes that set them up for success.

They were handsome ships, dry and stable, with the most endurance among Italian cruisers (5,000+ miles at 16 knots). With 13 percent of their tonnage devoted to protection, they showed an excellent concentration of metal; only American cruisers had thicker belt armor. The guns were paired too closely but they otherwise performed well. If the Italians had persisted in designs like this one, they could have deployed a powerful fleet indeed.

Laid down at O.T.O. Livorno on 17 March 1930, Gorizia was completed just 21 months later on 23 December 1931.

The class, among the most advanced and formidable in the world during the “Treaty” era, was a favorite of the U.S. ONI, and several period photos are in the collection of the Navy Heritage Command, likely gleaned from open sources by Naval attaches in Europe before the war.

Italian ship: GORIZIA. Italy – CA (Zara class). Italian fleet in the harbor of Naples. Catalog #: NH 111423

The four Zara class heavy cruisers, seen during the late 1930s, possibly at the now-infamous May 1938 “H Review” along the Gulf of Naples in which Il Duce tried very hard to impress his little Austrian buddy with the funny mustache. The four ships are (unidentified as to order in the photograph): ZARA (1930-1941); FIUME (1930-1941); GORIZIA (1930-1944); and POLA (1931-1941). NH 86333

The Four Italian ZARA Class Heavy Cruisers at Naples. The late 1930s, all four sister cruisers at anchor from front to back: FIUME (1930-41), ZARA (1930-41), POLA (1931-41), and GORIZIA (1930-44.) NH 86432

The “four sisters” of Italian heavy cruisers. From left to right: GORIZIA (1930-1944), POLA (1931-1941), ZARA (1930-1941), and FIUME (1930-1941) at Naples, circa 1938. One of the Italian Navy’s training ships, AMERIGO VESPUCCI (1930) or CRISTOFORO COLOMBO (1928), appears in the distance to the right. NH 86577

Italian ship: Heavy cruiser GORIZIA. Italy – CA (Zara class). Photographed during 1935 in the Suez Canal. NH 111424

GORIZIA (Italian Heavy Cruiser, 1930-44) Photographed at a fleet review before World War II, possibly at Naples in 1938. Three other heavy cruisers and three destroyers appear in the background. NH 86107

GORIZIA (Italian heavy cruiser, 1930-1944) Detail view of the ship forward superstructure, seen from the starboard side in a pre-World War II photograph. Note sailors waving. NH 86304

In the decade prior to WWII, the Zaras in general and Gorizia, in particular, was very busy, spending much time lending Franco a quiet hand in the Spanish Civil War, to include intercepting the fleeing Republican fleet out of Cartegena–consisting of the cruisers Miguel de Cervantes, Libertad, and Mendez Nuñez, along with eight destroyers and two submarines– in March 1939, which was desperately trying to make a friendly exile in Soviet Russia via the Black Sea. Instead, the Spanish had to settle for internment in French Tunisia where its commander, ADM Miguel Buiza, later volunteered for the French Foreign Legion, a force swelled at the time with former Republicans.

It was during the Spanish Civil War that Gorizia let the cat out of the bag on the fact of how outside of the naval treaty limits they were. While holding station off Spain in August 1936, she suffered an avgas explosion that blew out parts of her bow, forcing her to put into British Gibraltar for emergency repairs.

There, dockyard workers and RN personnel were easily able to ascertain that she was grossly overweight and up-armored from her “public” specs and quietly reported it up the chain, although the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, never took up the matter with Rome.

In another prelude to the Big Show, Gorizia accompanied the rest of her class to help support the quickly accomplished Italian invasion of Albania in April 1939 while the British fleet, a force that saw itself as the Lion of the Med, was infamously “lolling about in Italian harbors.”

The Main Event

When Italy entered WWII against France and Britain as one of the Axis Powers in June 1940, the Zara class was in for a wild ride.

Italian battlefleet off Gaeta in 1940 showing four Zara class cruisers, two Trento class cruisers, and Bolzano

The very next month, the four sisters managed to come out of the Battle of Calabria against the British fleet without damage and, that November, were all clustered in Taranto when British Swordfish torpedo bombers famously penetrated the harbor and smacked around the Italian battleships, again surviving without a scratch. In the follow-on Battle of Capo Teulada, Gorizia fired a dozen salvos and bird-dogged the British squadron with her seaplanes, with no real effect on either side.

Gorizia’s luck continued to hold when, missing the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 as she was escorting convoys to Libya, all three of her sisters, Pola, Zara, and Fiume, were sacrificed needlessly to the guns of British battleships, with horrendous loss of life. All that 5.9-inch plate was of no use against point-blank hits from 15-inch guns, it turned out, a lesson the Brits had previously handed out to Von Spee’s squadron in the Falklands in 1914.

Fiume, a Zara-class heavy cruiser sunk during Battle of Cape Matapan, 29 March 1941, painting by Adam Werka

The only survivor of her class, Gorizia fought at both inconclusive surface actions known as the battles of Sirte, again without taking hits in either.

Gorizia opens fire with her 8in guns on British forces at the Second Battle of Sirte, 22 March 1942

Gorizia cruiser class Zara, in Messina, March 23, 1942, after 2nd Sirte

The U.S. Navy’s ONI 202 listing for Italian ships, released in early 1942, carried Gorizia.

Endgame

Her luck ran out on 10 April 1943.

The last two operational Italian heavy cruisers, Gorizia, and the Trento-class Trieste, were subjected to an attack by 84 Algerian-based B-17Fs of the 15th Air Force’s 301st Bombardment Group (Heavy) and 97th Bombardment Group (Heavy), while anchored near Sardinia’s Caprera Island.

As noted at the time by the War Department:

The Italian heavy cruiser Trieste was sunk & the heavy cruiser Gorizia was severely damaged when Flying Fortresses of the U.S. Northwest African Air Forces attacked them as they lay at anchor at the Naval base of La Maddalena on the Northern coast of 4/10. The attack was made by one of the largest formations of Fortresses ever to be put into the air. Both vessels received direct hits. Reconnaissance photographs taken since the attack show Gorizia still afloat but in badly damaged condition with several tugs alongside and a large amount of oil spreading over the water around her. It is apparent that she will be out of action for a long time. The Fortresses, which were unescorted, all returned safely to base.

“The Italian heavy cruiser Gorizia was severely damaged when planes of the 342nd Bomb Squadron, 97th Bomb Group, 15th Air Force attacked as it lay at anchor at the Naval Base of La Maddalena on the northern coast of Sardinia on 10 April 1943.” (U.S. Air Force Number 3A26988, via NARA)

“The 11,000-ton Italian cruiser Gorizia lying off La Maddalena harbor of Northern Sardinia. One of the largest Flying Fortress formations badly damaged the Gorizia with direct hits on April 10. Its sister ship, the 10,000-ton Trieste was sunk on the same raid. Lines around Gorizia are anti-torpedo nets.” (U.S. Air Force Number 24037AC, via NARA)

“Here, the stern and bow of the cruiser Gorizia are dimly seen through the smoke and flames of many bombs burst on her deck and in the water around her.” (U.S. Air Force Number A23879AC, via NARA)

“Here, the bow of the Trieste is seen high out of the water as she receives a direct hit on the stern and many other bombs burst around her.” (U.S. Air Force Number 23879AC, via NARA)

In the attack, the Fortresses landed at least three 500-pound bombs on Gorizia, with one penetrating the rear super firing turret and the other two the armored deck next to the port side superstructure. Meanwhile, near-misses wracked the hull and caused limited flooding. She suffered 63 deaths and 97 wounded.

Two days later, on 12 April, emergency repairs were effected, and Gorizia steamed for La Spezia where she entered dry dock on 4 May.

It was while high and dry in La Spezia that word came in September of the Italian surrender to the Allies. As the Germans moved in to seize the harbor, the ship’s skipper mulled an order to flood the dock and further scuttle the already heavily damaged ship but was not able to carry it out. Either way, the Germans found her in poor condition and simply moved Gorizia, sans crew, from the dry dock to the harbor, where they left her to swing at her anchors near the similarly abandoned Bolzano.

With aerial photography showing the (believed) still mighty cruisers afloat in La Spezia despite several raids from B-25s and could nonetheless be used as block ships by the Germans, a team of volunteer co-belligerent Italian X MAS Flotilla frogmen, working in conjunction with the British, infiltrated the harbor’s “defenses” on the night of 21/22 June 1944 by means of Chariot human torpedoes and SLC speedboats with the aim of sinking same. Codenamed Operation QWZ, just two British/Italian Chariots made it into the harbor and only one found her target. Hint, it was not Gorizia.

While Bolzano went to the harbor bottom, the abandoned Gorizia escaped mining and still had enough compartments intact to remain afloat until the Allies liberated the harbor in April 1945.

“Italian light cruiser Gorizia First Caught It Off Sardinia from 15th Air Force, Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses, later from North American B-25 Mitchells At La Spezia.” (U.S. Air Force Number 57668AC, via NARA)

Epilogue

Surveyed and considered wrecked, Gorizia, although the last Italian heavy cruiser not underwater in 1945, was passed over both by the Allies’ prize committee and the newly-formed post-war Marina Militare.

Gorizia is not listed in the 1946-47 Jane’s Fighting Ships entry for Italy.

Stricken from the naval register on 27 February 1947, she was subsequently raised and slowly broken up for scrap.

The modern Italian Navy has not recycled the name, that of an often controversial former Austrian border town and Great War battleground which now sits astride the Slovenian line. The Marine Militare does have a short memorial page to the old cruiser, though.

Several period postcards are in circulation with particularly good views of the vessel. 

You have to admit, the Zaras had beautiful lines

Gorizia continues to sail in plastic as she has been the subject of several scale model kits including those by Tauro and Trumpeter, which have resulted in some interesting maritime art.

Specs:
Displacement: 13,660 t (standard), 14,460 t (full)
Length: 599 ft. (overall)
Beam: 67 ft.
Draft: 23 ft.
Propulsion: 8 Thornycroft boilers, 2 Parsons turbines, 2 propellers, 95,000 hp
Speed 33 knots
Range: 5,434 nm at 16 knots
Crew: 31 officers and 810 sailors
Armor:
vertical belt, turrets: 150 mm; horizontal: 70 mm
Aircraft: 2 Piaggio P6bis seaplanes, later replaced by Macchi M.41, CANT 25AR, CMASA MF6, and finally (1938) IMAM Ro.43. Bow catapult
Armament:
4 x 2 203/53 Mod. 1927
6 x 2 100/47 OTO Mod. 1928 (Skoda M1910)
4 x 1 40/39 mm QF Vickers-Terni pattern AAA pom-pom guns
14 x 20/65 mm Breda Mod. 35 AAA guns
8 x 13.2 mm Breda Mod. 31 machine guns

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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Warship Wednesday, March 11, 2020: Flory’s Battle-scarred Bugle

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 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, March 11, 2020: Flory’s Battle-scarred Bugle

National Records of Scotland, UCS1/118/Gen 372/2

Here we see a vessel identified as the brand-new light cruiser HMS Castor, at the time the flagship of Royal Navy’s 11th Destroyer Flotilla, passing Clydebank, February 1916. A handsome ship, she would very soon sail into harm’s way.

Laid down at Cammell Laird and Co. Birkenhead three months after the war started, Castor was a member of the Cambrian subclass of the 28-strong “C”-class of oil-fired light cruisers. Sturdy 446-foot ships of 4,000~ tons, their eight-pack of Yarrow boilers trunked through two funnels and pushing a pair of Parsons turbines coughed up 40,000 shp– enough to sprint them at 29-knots.

Comparable in size to a smallish frigate today, they packed four single BL 6-inch Mk XII guns along with a more distributed battery of six or eight QF 4-inch Mk IV guns in addition to a pair of bow-mounted 21-inch torpedo tubes. With up to 6-inches of steel armor (conning tower), they could hold their own against similar cruisers, slaughter destroyers, and gunboats, and run away from larger warships.

After just 11 months on the builder’s ways, Castor was commissioned in November 1915, the fourth of HMs vessels to carry the name one of the Gemini twins since 1781.

A port quarter view of the Cambrian class light cruiser HMS Castor (1915) underway off Scapa Flow. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (N16682)

Castor at commissioning became the flagship of the Grand Fleet’s 11th Destroyer Flotilla, which consisted of 14 Admiralty M (Moon)-class destroyers (HMS Kempenfelt, Magic, Mandate, Manners, Marne, Martial, Michael, Milbrook, Minion, Mons Moon, Morning Star, Mounsey, Mystic, and Ossory) under the overall flag of Castor’s skipper since November 1915, Commodore (F) James Rose Price Hawksley. Hawksley had previously spent much of his 19-year RN career up to then as a destroyerman, so it made sense.

With her paint still fresh and her plankowners just off her shakedown, Castor, along with the rest of the mighty Grand Fleet, crashed into the German High Seas Fleet off Denmark’s North Sea Jutland coast, the largest battleship-cruiser-destroyer surface action in history.

While covering the whole Battle of Jutland goes far beyond the scope of this post, we shall focus on Castor’s role and that of her flotilla on the night of the 31st of May. With the day’s fleet action broken up and the two fleets searching for each other in the darkness, the leading German light cruisers brushed into the British rear-guard starboard wing, that being HMS Castor and her destroyers. The official history states:

“At 20:11 hrs., the 11th Flotilla led by Commodore Hawksley, onboard Castor spotted German Destroyers to his NWN and turned to attack, supported by the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron. They had found not destroyers but the main German battle line.”

Castor’s force was soon spotted by the German ships, who approached in the darkness and mimicked the response to a British challenge signal that they had been confronted with, in turn getting one correct out of three challenges. This meant that they were able to approach much closer than usual.

Then, at a range of just 2,000 yards, the German ships threw on their searchlights and opened fire. Castor returned fire, and she and at least two of her destroyers (Marne and Magic), each snap-shotted one torpedo each at the German ships, with the cruiser aiming at the first German in line and the two lead destroyers on the following. “This was followed by an explosion. It may be taken for certain that it was Magic’s torpedo that struck the second ship in the enemy’s line.”

This confused surface action lasted for about five minutes before both sides heeled away into the safety of the black night. Some of the other destroyers reported that they were unable to see the enemy because of glare from Castor’s guns, while others believed there had been some mistake and the contact was friendly fire. No news of the engagement reached Jellicoe in time for him to react with the main battle line.

While her 14 destroyers came away unscathed, Castor received 10 large caliber shell hits, which set her ablaze, and lost 12 of her Sailors and Marines killed or missing.

A photograph was taken from inside the hull of the light cruiser HMS Castor after the Battle of Jutland showing a large shell hole. IWM photograph Q 61137

The dozen killed included bugler Albert Flory, RMLI, who gave his last full measure at the ripe old age of 16.

Marine Albert Flory, RMLI, Castor’s bugler via Royal Marines Museum

Two others among Castor’s dead carried the rank of “Boy,” one generally reserved for apprentice sailors under the age of 18. At the time, about one in 10 of her complement were such modern powder monkeys.

Her death toll overall:

BAKER, William, Boy 1c, J 39706
BARTRAM, Leslie, Able Seaman, J 14191 (Po)
BROOMHEAD, Alfred, Stoker 1c (RFR B 4446), SS 103448 (Po)
CANDY, William A V, Ordinary Signalman, J 28149 (Po)
CHILD, Frederick T, Stoker Petty Officer, 308828 (Po)
EVANS, Alfred O, Ordinary Signalman, J 27451 (Dev)
FLORY, Albert E, Bugler, RMLI, 18169 (Po)
FOX, John E, Stoker 1c, SS 114531 (Po)
GASSON, Harry, Able Seaman (RFR B 6769), 212007 (Po)
HALLAM, Fred, Boy 1c, J 39695
KILHAMS, Alfred J, Ordinary Telegraphist, J 30359 (Po)
MACGREGOR, Donald N, Chief Yeoman of Signals, 173674 (Po)

Added to the butcher’s bill was 26 seriously and 13 lightly wounded.

“H.M.S. Castor, an operation”

HMS Castor. Wounded Received After the Battle of Jutland, 31st May 1916 painting by Jan (Godfrey Jervis) Gordon. IWM ART 2781 Note from IWM: This scene of British wounded sailors being tended to during the Battle of Jutland is by the artist Jan Gordon. It was one of four paintings completed by Gordon on behalf of the Imperial War Museum’s Royal Navy Medical Section between 1918 and 1919. Gordon’s painting shows the wounded crew members being brought below deck, each bearing a variety of injuries and corresponding treatments.

Castor would spend most of the rest of 1916 and the first part of 1917 undergoing repairs and, as the High Seas Fleet didn’t sortie again until the surrender at Scapa Flow, the remainder of Castor’s war was relatively uneventfully spent on duty in the Home Islands. The most interesting action of this period was when she responded to the sinking armed trawler USS Rehoboth (SP-384) in October 1917, during which the cruiser took on the stricken vessel’s crew and sent the derelict hull to the bottom with shellfire.

On 23 November 1918, she was tasked with counting and watching surrendering German destroyers.

Royal Navy C-class light cruiser HMS Castor, 1918 IWM SP 2750

Hawkesley, Castor’s first skipper, and 11th Flotilla commodore at Jutland would move on to finish the war in command of the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible. He would go on to retire as a Rear Admiral in 1922 in conjunction with the Washington Naval Treaty drawdown, a rank advanced to Vice-Admiral while on the Retired List four years later. He would be replaced on Castor’s bridge by Commodore (F) Hugh Justin Tweedie, a man who would go on to retire as a full admiral in 1935. Sir Hugh would return to service in the early days of WWII, working with the Convoy Pools in his 60s.

Castor, whose 4-inch secondary battery was replaced by a smaller number of AAA guns, is listed as serving in the Black Sea with the British force deployed there for intervention into the broiling Russian Civil War from 1919-20. Such duty could prove deadly. For example, while none of the 28 C-class light cruisers were lost during the Great War– despite several showing up in U-boat periscopes and being present at Jutland and the Heligoland Bight– Castor’s sister Cassandra was sunk by a mine in the Baltic on 5 December 1918 while acting against the Reds.

Castor followed up her Russian stint service on the Irish Patrol in 1922. Then came a spell as the floating Gunnery School at Portsmouth until 1924 when she passed into a period of refit and reserve.

She was recommissioned at Devonport for China Station June 1928, to relieve her sistership Curlew and saw the globe a bit.

HMS Castor at Devonport, where she was commissioned to relieve the Curlew on China Station. NH 61309

HMS Castor, Malta, note her extensive awnings and reduced armament

HMS Castor off New York

HMS Castor, Stockholm

With the times passing and newer cruisers coming on line eating up valuable treaty-limited tonnage, Castor was paid off in May 1935 and sold two months later to Metal Ind, Rosyth, for her value in scrap metal. There has not been a “Castor” on the British naval list since. Most of her early sisters were likewise disposed of in the same manner during this period.

Just half of the class, 14 vessels, made it out of the Depression still in the fleet and most went on to serve in one form or another in the Second World War, despite their advanced age and outdated nature. Of those, six were lost: Curlew, Calcutta, and Coventry to enemy aircraft; Calypso and Cairo to submarines, as well as Curacoa to a collision with the Queen Mary.

Just one C-class cruiser survived past 1948, Jutland veteran Caroline, a past Warship Wednesday alum. Having served as an RNVR drillship in Alexandra Dock, Belfast until 2011, since 2016 she has been a museum ship. She is the last remaining warship that was at Jutland.

Castor’s sister Caroline in Belfast recently, disarmed, decommed, but still proud

When it comes to Castor, a number of relics remain.

Her White Ensign (Length 183 cm, Width 92 cm) is in the IWM collection, although not on display while her (525x 425x30mm) ship’s badge is at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

One of Castor’s unidentified lost souls was finally discovered in 2016, a full century after Jutland.

Able Seaman Harry Gasson‘s body was blown to sea in the engagement and was recovered about two nautical miles off Grey Deep on 25 September 1916– an amazing four months after the battle. With no identification, he was and buried simply as a “British Seaman of the Great War Known unto God” five days later in the Danish town of Esbjerg.

As noted by the MoD:

The local people of Esbjerg maintained the grave for almost 100 years, but it wasn’t until local historians looked into the church records to find it was recorded that the sailor had the name H. Gossom written in his trousers. After work by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and checking naval records, the MOD was able to agree that the identity of this sailor was H. Gasson, and there had been an error in the transcription.

His anonymous headstone was replaced with his correct name in a ceremony attended by two of his descendants along with the ship’s company of the HMS Tyne.

Relatives and representatives from the Royal Navy attend the service on 31 May 2016, for AB Gasson in Denmark (MoD photo)

As for Marine Albert Flory’s shrapnel-riddled bugle, to mark this year’s Bands of HM Royal Marines Mountbatten Festival of Music 2020, the Royal Marine Museum is giving the public the chance to “adopt” it to support the new Royal Marines Museum Campaign.

Flory’s instrument, no doubt close to him when he was struck at Jutland. Via the Royal Marine Museum

Specs:


Displacement: 3,750 tons (designed); 4,320 fl; 4,799 deep load
Length: 446 ft (o/a)
Beam: 41 ft 6 in
Draught: 14 ft 10 in (with Bunkers full, and complete with Provisions, Stores and Water: 16 feet 3 inches mean)
Propulsion: 8 Yarrow Small tube boilers, 2 Parsons steam turbines, 2 shafts, 30,000 shp natural/40,000 Forced Draught
Speed: 28.5 knots max (some hit 29 on trials)
Number of Tons of Oil Fuel Carried: 841
Quantity of Water carried: For Boilers, 70 tons, For Drinking 49.25 tons
Ship’s Company (typical)
Officers: 31
Seamen: 149
Boys: 31
Marines: 36
Engine-room establishment: 88
Other non-executive ratings: 44
Total: 379
Boats:
One motorboat 30 feet
One sailing cutter 30 feet
Two whalers 27 feet, Montague
One gig 30 feet
Two skiff dinghies 16 feet
One motorboat 30 feet for Commodore’s use
Armor:
Waterline belt: 1.5–3 in
Deck: 1 in
Conning tower: 6 in
Armament:
(1915)
4 x single BL 6″/45 Mk XII guns on Forecastle, Forward superstructure, Aft Forward superstructure and Quarterdeck
6 x single QF 4″/40 Mk IV guns
1 x single QF 4 in 13 pounder Mk V anti-aircraft gun
2 x 21-inch (533 mm) submerged torpedo tubes, typically with eight Mark IV Torpedoes
(1919)
4 x single BL 6″/45 Mk XII guns
2 x QF 3-inch 20 cwt IV on Mark IV AAA mounting on foc’sle
2 x QF 2 pole Pom-pom AAA on the aft superstructure
2 x 21-inch (533 mm) submerged torpedo tubes, typically with eight Mark IV Torpedoes

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Warship Wednesday, July 5, 2017: HMs Cruiser Bruiser

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 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, July 5, 2017: HMs Cruiser Bruiser

Here we see the Queen Elizabeth-class battleship HMS Valiant as she fires a 15″ broadside, July 1944, against Japanese port and oil facilities on Sabang Island off the northern tip of Sumatra during Operation Crimson. At this stage of her life, the battlewagon was 30~years young and had survived massive fleet actions against the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet in the Great War and Mussolini’s Regina Marine in WWII. An enforcer at the surrender of both of those fleets, she would be cruelly cheated of attending a third.

A member of the very successful Queen Elizabeth-class of “super-dreadnought,” they were fast for their day (24-knots), well-armored with as much as 13-inches of KC in their belt, tower, and turrets; and packed a punch from eight massive BL 15 inch (381mm) Mk I naval guns in four twin turrets.

HMS Valiant firing her BL 15-inch Mk I guns, c.1939.

The Mk I, described by Navweaps as “quite possibly the best large-caliber naval gun ever developed by Britain and it was certainly one of the longest-lived of any nation, with the first shipboard firing taking place in 1915 and the last in 1954,” was a bruiser capable of firing a 1-ton shell out to 33,550 yards and could well-outrange most German naval guns. Some 184 of these guns were made by Armstrong Whitworth, W Beardmore, Vickers, Royal Gun Factory, and Coventry Ordnance Works, serving on just about every subsequent British battleship design. The guns were rotated between ships, having a life of about 200 rounds before requiring relining, and one that served on Valiant during Jutland later wound up being captured by the Japanese at Singapore where it was serving as shore-mounted coastal artillery.

But we are getting far ahead of ourselves.

The hero of our story was the fifth RN vessel named HMS Valiant in a line that included three different 18th/19th Century third-rate 74-gun ships of the line, and a Hector-class ironclad battleship that remained afloat for 90 years.

The American Ship PORCUPINE and the HMS VALIANT, 17 June 1813. On 17 June 1813, the American letter-of-marque, PORCUPINE, of 20 guns and 72 men at daylight found herself under the lee of the British 74-gun ship HMS VALIANT, Captain Robert Dudley Oliver. After a long chase and using every endeavor to escape, PORCUPINE was overtaken and compelled to surrender to the overwhelming force of her opponent. Description: Catalog #: USN 903313

HMS VALIANT (BRITISH BATTLESHIP, 1863) Description: Catalog #: NH 71209

THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR (Q 74057) HMS Valiant Queen Elizabeth-class battleship and R-class destroyers: HMS Ulysses (F80), HMS Undine (G77), and HMS Sable (G91). Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205318845

Ordered from Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. (Govan, Scotland), in 1912 for £2,357,037, HMS Valiant (pennant 02) was commissioned 13 January 1916 and joined the Grand Fleet’s 5th Battle Squadron—under the command of Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas– along with three of her sisters, HMS Barham, HMS Malaya, and HMS Warspite. The quartet, with 32 15-inch and 56 6-inch guns between them, was a force to be reckoned with.

5th Battle Squadron, Grand Fleet, HMS Warspite, Valiant & Malaya about to open fire. The photo was taken from HMS Barham. Colorized Photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

At the lowest part of the Battle of Jutland for the British, moments after the battlecruisers HMS Indefatigable and Queen Mary had exploded, the 5th Battle Squadron intervened against the German I Scouting Group under Adm. Franz von Hipper and let the 15-inchers do their talking. In very short order, they damaged the battlecruisers SMS Lützow and Seydlitz, and several other German warships.

In very short order on 31 May, at 18:13, a 15-inch shell from one of the Queen Elizabeths struck Lützow; two more hits came at 18:25 and 18:30. Between 18:09 and 18:19, Seydlitz was hit by a 15-inch from either Barham or Valiant, striking the face of the port wing turret and disabling the guns. A second 15-inch shell penetrated the already disabled aft super firing turret and detonated the cordite charges that had not already burned. The ship also had two of her 150 mm guns disabled from British gunfire, and the rear turret lost its right-hand gun. Not bad for 20~ minutes of work.

Hipper leaving the crippled Lutzow for SMS Moltke at Jutland, by Carl Becker

SMS Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like at Jutland, by Carl Becker

Lutzow eventually sank while Seydlitz limped back to port, her decks nearly awash. While each of the big German battlecruisers took immense damage from other British sluggers besides Valiant and her sisters, Hipper felt their sting.

SMS Seydlitz after the Battle of Jutland, 1916 Colorized Photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

While a number of her sisters took hits at Jutland, Valiant came through unscathed, having fired 288 15-inch shells over more than eight hours of the engagement. Her very enlightening Captain’s dispatch from the battle is here and is worth reading, as he reports several instances of German salvos coming within 10 yards and a torpedo only missing by 100. Not bad for a ship on her shakedown cruise just a few months before with a “green” crew.

THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR (Q 74187) Battleship HMS Valiant firing in Scapa Flow. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205318975

THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR (Q 75203) Battleship HMS Valiant. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205319990

Suffering a collision with Warspite in August 1916, she spent the rest of the year in drydock under repair

THE ROYAL NAVY ON THE HOME FRONT, 1914-1918 (Q 18779) HMS Valiant in a dry dock. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205253225

THE ROYAL NAVY ON THE HOME FRONT, 1914-1918 (Q 18780) HMS Valiant in a dry dock. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205253226

The Great War spun down when it came to surface naval actions after Jutland, and Valiant only met the Germans again when the High Seas Fleet sortied at the end of the war to be interred at Scapa.

Queen Elizabeth-class super-dreadnought HMS Valiant at Scapa Flow, Scotland, in 1918 – with her German counter SMS Baden in the background.

Assigned to the 1st Battle Squadron, Valiant and her sisters remained in the Atlantic Fleet, then transferred to the Med in 1924.

Valiant June 16, 1924, Scapa From Dan McDonald Collection

Modernized in two extended periods, one from 1929-30 and another from 1937-39, she bulked up due to anti-torpedo bulges, changed her catapults and several minor topside features, lost her torpedo tubes and a couple of her casemated 6-inch mounts in exchange for 20x 4.5-inch high angles and AAA guns, and had her machinery upgraded to help mitigate the extra tonnage, now over 36,500-tons in full load.

Amidships view of the Royal Navy battleship HMS Valiant in 1941, note her huge twin-door seaplane hangar and twin 4.5-inch guns. 

Still, even with her new engines, she could only make 23.5 knots when wide open. She also picked up a Type 79Z search radar, one of the first fitted in the fleet.

HMS Valiant Photographed following her 1929-30 refit. She is carrying a Fairey III-F floatplane on her fantail catapult. This catapult was only carried during 1930-33. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command NH 52518

HMS Valiant photographed in late 1939, following modernization. Note her turreted 4.5-inch guns in place of the old casemated 6-inch low angles. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 97486

World War II found her still under refit at Devonport, and she was only commissioned 30 November 1939, Captain Henry Bernard Rawlings, OBE, RN, in command.

She was immediately used to help escort the vital convoy TC 3, carrying some 8,000 Canadian soldiers, she sailed from Halifax in January 1940, ensuring the Canucks made it past the threat of German surface raiders.

Through March and into April, Valiant, along with HMS Hood, Rodney, and Warspite, escorted the Norwegian convoys ON 17, ON 17A, HN 17, HN 20, and ON 21. On 7 April, Valiant only just missed tangling with SMS Hipper, fresh off ramming the plucky destroyer Glowworm.

Valiant was to spend the next two months in and out of Norwegian waters, providing AAA cover for the fleet, tasking for naval gunfire support at Narvik (suspended at the last minute), and escorting the withdrawing convoys after the defeat there in June.

Then Valiant was attached to Force H and sent to the Med, where Churchill worried the Vichy French fleet, just pulled out of the war, would be a threat to the RN.

On 3 July, Valiant, along with Hood, Resolution, the carrier Ark Royal, and the light cruisers HMS Arethusa and Enterprise, stood just offshore of Mers-el-Kebir harbor and the battleships fired 36 salvos of 15-inch shells at the French fleet from extreme range, destroying the battleship Bretagne and severely damaging several other French ships including the battleship Dunkerque, the flag of Admiral Gensoul. Dubbed Operation Catapult, the controversial one-sided “battle” was to leave 1,300 dead French sailors behind.

Over the next several months, Valiant, as part of Force H and later Force F, helped keep the supply lines open from Portsmouth to Gibraltar to Malta and Alexandria, shuttling convoys and dodging Italian and German planes and warships.

In September 1940, she escorted the carrier HMS Illustrious in her famous raid on the Italian port of Benghazi. The next month, she provided cover for convoy MB-6 to Malta. The saga of the RN’s Mediterranean Fleet in 1940-41.

This came to a head at the three-day Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 near Crete, then a plump target for the Axis. Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham’s force, comprising Valiant and her sisters Barham and Warspite, along with the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable and a gaggle of light cruisers and destroyers, faced the Italian force under Adm. Iachino consisting of the sexy new battleship Vittorio Veneto, three very large heavy cruisers, and a force of light cruisers and destroyers.

How big were those Italian stallions? The Zara, Fiume, and Pola were sister ships, built for the Italian Regina Marina in the 1930s to a design that surpassed Naval Treaty limits (14,500-tons, 8x203mm guns, 5.9-inches of armor, 32 knots) and was impressive.

Fast die gesamte italienische Flotte im Golf von Neapel zusammengezogen.
Im Golf von Neapel werden jetzt die Einheiten der italienischen Kriegsflotte zu der grossen Parade zusammengezogen, die der Führer während seines Besuches in Italien abnehmen wird. Auf unserem Bild sieht man die drei schweren Kreuzer (10.000 Tonnen) “Fiume”, “Zara” und “Pola”. Scherl Bilderdienst, 19.4.38 Zara, Fiume, and Pola in Naples in 1938. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2008-0214-500

So, were a spaghetti battleship and a three-pack of heavy cruisers enough for a trio of Queen Elizabeth-class dreadnoughts of Jutland vintage?

Pshaw.

Pola picked up a mobility kill from a torpedo from a Swordfish torpedo bomber launched by Formidable while Zara and Fiume were detached from the rest of the fleet to protect Pola, and all three and a pair of destroyers were sunk in a close-range night engagement with the battleships Barham, Valiant, and Warspite at a range of just 3,000-yards. Italian casualties were very heavy, with 783 killed aboard Zara, 328 killed aboard Pola, 812 aboard Fiume. The destroyers Vittorio Alfieri and Giosué Carducci also vanished that night. The Brits removed the entire 1a Divisione Incrociatori from the Italian Naval List before breakfast.

Prince Phillip, then a junior officer on Valiant, commanded a searchlight from our subject during the night action. After he had located one target, he said: “At this point, all hell broke loose, as all our eight 15-inch guns, plus those of the flagship and Barham‘s started firing at the stationary cruiser, which disappeared in an explosion and a cloud of smoke.” He was later awarded the Greek War Cross of Valour.

Artist Frank Norton painted this nighttime scene of the Battle of Matapan. HMAS Stuart is in the foreground, HMS Havock at left, and two Italian Zara-class destroyers in the background while Valiant illuminates with a spotlight. Radar gave the British the advantage during the night action.

Valiant made it through the battle but picked up two German 500-pound bombs the next month for her trouble off Crete.

Air attack was a constant threat in the Med during the period.

HMS Valiant (nearest to the camera) and HMS Resolution and is most likely taken during an Italian air attack (by SM 79 bombers) against Force H on 9 July 1940. The photograph is taken from HMS Enterprise.

Classmate HMS Barham, who Valiant fought alongside at Jutland and Cape Matapan, was sunk off the Egyptian coast by the German submarine U-331 with the loss of 862 crewmen, approximately two-thirds of her crew, on 25 November 1941.

The tragic sequence of her turning turtle and exploding is well-known.

The Italians would soon get revenge of their own on Valiant and her sister, Queen Elizabeth.

On the night of 18/19 December 1941, six Italian Navy divers of the Decima Flottiglia MAS, working from three chariot-type human torpedoes (termed maiali–pigs– by their users), worked their way past the British defenses at Alexandria and found the two battleships at anchor. Lt. Luigi Durand de la Penne pressed his SLC (maiale nº 221) to Valiant while his swim buddy, Emilio Bianchi, was otherwise out of action with a bad regulator on his rebreather, and placed the Siluro a Lenta Corsa (slow-running torpedo) just under the old battleship’s hull.

A bit dramatic, but you get the idea

Surfaced, he and Bianchi were captured as they waited by a buoy and taken aboard the targeted ship, placed coincidentally over the ticking mine they had just deposited. Warning the Valiant‘s skipper moments before the human torpedo went off, the frogmen were brought back on deck just in time to see the other mines explode under Queen Elizabeth, Norwegian tanker Sagona and destroyer HMS Jervis.

A fairly decent dramatization, showing the correct use of an SLC with its 600-pound detachable limpet mine warhead, planted under Valiant‘s A turret.

Valiant and her sister took on water and came very near to rest on the bottom of Alexandria, but did not technically sink and were repaired. Even Jervis eventually went back into action. However, putting the two battlewagons off-line for several months did throw British Naval supremacy in the Med at a crucial time before the U.S. made it to the theater.

When Churchill received news of the attack, he said, “Six Italians, dressed in rather unusual diving suits and equipped with materials of laughably little cost, have swung the military balance of power in the Mediterranean in favor of the Axis.”

Valiant was towed to Admiralty Floating Dock 5 two days later for dewatering and was under repair at Alexandria until April 1942 when she sailed to Durban, South Africa, where she operated with Force B off Africa in exercises for the defense of East Africa and operations against Vichy-held Madagascar.

June 1943 found her back in the Med with Force H, supporting the invasion of Sicily where she bombarded Italian 155mm coastal batteries south of Reggio and covered the landings at Salerno Bay. Fending off Italian and German air attacks, on 9 September Valiant, along with sister Warspite and a force of destroyers and light cruisers were detailed to Operation Gibbon, the surrender of the Italian Navy.

Off Cape de Garde, Algeria they met two battleships, three cruisers, and eight destroyers who sailed from La Spezia to be interred and escorted them to Malta. Missing from the Italian battleline was the new battleship Roma, which the Germans had sunk via Fritz-X guided bomb.

Italian Fleet arrives at Malta, 10 September 1943. HMS Valiant leads the line as the Italian fleet steams into Malta, under the terms of the Italian Armistice. The scene is framed by the after 15-inch guns of HMS Warspite. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: SC 188574

Valiant‘s last engagement in Europe was an NGFS mission against the town of Nocera, and a nearby road junction, firing 19 rounds of 15-inch from a range of approximately 28,000 yards on 16 September.

She was then recalled to Scapa to begin working up for the RN’s “pivot to Asia” and she soon shipped for the Indian Ocean where she joined the British Eastern Fleet, built around the carriers HMS Illustrious, USS Saratoga (who along with three U.S. destroyers formed Task Group 58.5), HMS Formidable, the battlecruiser HMS Renown, the French battleship Richelieu and Valiant‘s sister Queen Elizabeth.

THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR (A 19832) HMS VALIANT photographed from HMS FORMIDABLE at sea. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205119743

THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR (A 15152) As seen from the flight deck of HMS ILLUSTRIOUS, the battleship HMS VALIANT has a practice shoot for its 15-inch guns during exercises. The planes in the foreground are Fairey Fulmars of 806 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205186303

THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR (A 23483) HMS VALIANT, a battleship of the British Eastern Fleet, with FFS RICHELIEU astern. The photograph was taken from the battleship QUEEN ELIZABETH, the flagship of Admiral Sir James Somerville, KCB, KBE, DSO in the Bay of Bengal during the action against the Japanese at Sabang. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205119839

Richelieu, HMS Valiant, and HMS Renown Cruising About the Indian Ocean On 12 May 1944

Getting ready for the continued push East, in August 1944, the venerable battleship was damaged in a drydock accident at Trincomalee, Ceylon, requiring her to return to England for extensive repairs that lasted into 1946, sadly missing out in the last chapter of the conflict.

QE-class battleship HMS Valiant at Trincomalee, Ceylon 1944. The photo details the camouflage she received in 1943. Her type 273 (lantern) RDF is visible right at the top of the photo.

In August 1946, she was relegated to a harbor training ship for stoker ratings at Devonport. In this inactive pier-side role, she was stripped of her name and took the traditional training establishment title of HMS Imperieuse. However, she would only fulfill this role for about 20 months, for she was sold to BISCO on 19 March 1948 for her value in scrap by the ton. The hard-fighting ship arrived at the Breaker’s yard at Caimryan on 12 August and was slowly dismantled over the next year.

Her three remaining sisters, Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, and Malaya, suffered similar fates.

Valiant‘s name was continued in British service by the class-leading nuclear-powered attack submarine HMS Valiant (S102), commissioned in 1966 and paid off in 1994 (though still in storage); as well as the 140-foot Border Agency (Customs) cutter HMC Valiant, commissioned in 2004.

Valiant is also remembered in maritime art.

Prince Philip, current Duke of Edinburgh, and long-time consort of Queen Elizabeth II remains as one of Valiant‘s last remaining crew members at age 96, and is currently Lord High Admiral of the Royal Navy, though he is set to retire from his official duties sometime this fall. As such, he is likely the last WWII battleship sailor anywhere still on the active list.

First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope and his Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, formerly of HMS Valiant. 

Specs:

THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR (A 12126) The British battleship HMS VALIANT underway at sea. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205119583

Displacement:
32,590 long tons (33,110 t)
33,260 long tons (33,790 t) (Deep load)
Length: 643 ft. 9 in (196.2 m)
Beam: 90 ft. 7 in (27.6 m)
Draught: 33 ft. (10.1 m)
Installed power:
75,000 shp (56,000 kW)
24 Yarrow boilers
Propulsion:
4 Shafts
2 Steam turbine sets
Speed: 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph)
Range: 5,000 nmi (9,260 km; 5,750 mi) at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph)
Complement:
919 (1915)
1,218 (1919)
Radar: Type 273 SR(Surface Radar) on the foremast, a Type SR (Surface Radar) 284 radar on the LA DCT (Low Angle Director Control Tower), and a Type HA (High Angle) 285 on each of the HA DCT’s, a Type 291 AW (Air Warning) on the mastheads and an IFF interrogator.
Aircraft: 2-3 floatplanes
Armament: (as-built)
4 × twin 15-inch (381 mm) guns
14 × single 6-inch (152 mm) guns
2 × single 3-inch (76 mm) 20 cwt AA guns
4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armament (1945)
4 × twin 15-inch (381 mm) guns
10 × twin 4.5 in (114 mm) Dual-purpose guns
4 × octuplet QF 2-pdr (40 mm) AA guns
26 × twin Oerlikon 20 mm (0.8 in) AA guns
4 × quadruple Vickers 0.5 in (12.7 mm) AA machineguns
Armor: Krupp cemented armor (KC)
Waterline belt: 13 in (330 mm)
Deck: 1–3 in (25–76 mm)
Barbettes: 7–10 in (178–254 mm)
Gun turrets: 11–13 in (279–330 mm)
Conning tower: 13 in (330 mm)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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Warship Wednesday Nov. 2: From Jutland to Boston and everywhere in between

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday Nov. 2: From Jutland to Boston and everywhere in between

Click to big up

Click to big up

Here we see the Calliope or Cambrian-class light cruiser HMS Constance (76) as she appeared in August 1920 sailing into Boston harbor as captured by the legendary Boston Herald photographer Leslie Jones. Note her then-distinctive tripod mast and clock.

Ordered under the 1913 Naval Programme, the 28 ships of the C-class of light cruisers were to be the backbone scouting ship of the Royal Navy. The first of HMs cruisers to be fitted with geared turbines, underwater torpedo tubes to reduce topside weight and a mixed armament of 6- and 4-inch guns, they could make 28.5-knots and cross the Atlantic or sail to the Suez on one bunker of coal while giving a good account of themselves against anything smaller than their own 4,950-ton weight.

Class leader Caroline was laid down on 28 January 1914 at Cammell Laird and Company, Birkenhead and quickly followed by her sisters.

The hero of our tale, HMS Constance, was the sixth such vessel in the RN to carry that name, going back to a 22-gun ship of the line captured from Napoleon in 1797 off Egypt and most recently carried by the Comus-class third-rate cruiser of the 1880s which was the first of Her Majesty’s ships to carry torpedo carriages that used compressed air to launch the torpedoes.

The legacy HMS Constance, a copper-sheathed steel-hulled corvette of the Comus-class seen here in Esquimalt Harbor, Canada.

The legacy HMS Constance, a copper-sheathed steel-hulled corvette of the Comus-class seen here in Esquimalt Harbor, B.C. (Canada)

The new cruiser HMS Constance, the most powerful ship to carry that name, was laid down five months into the Great War on 25 January 1915 at Cammell Laird. Rushed to completion, she was commissioned just a year later, Capt. Cyril Samuel Townsend in command.

HMS Constance in Scapa Flow. IWM Q 74169

HMS Constance in Scapa Flow. IWM Q 74169. Note her pole mast.

Just barely off her shakedown cruise, she joined three of her sisters in the Grand Fleet just in time for the big one.

Two heavy cruiser squadrons led the battle fleet during the great naval clash at Jutland: Rear-Admiral Arbuthnot’s 1st Cruiser Squadron (HMS Defense, Warrior, Duke of Edinburgh and Black Prince) and Rear-Admiral Heath’s 2nd Cruiser Squadron (HMS Minotaur, Cochrane, Shannon and Hampshire). And leading these squadrons was Cdre Charles Edward Le Mesurier’s 4th Light Cruiser Squadron (HMS Calliope, Constance, Comus, Royalist and Caroline).

During the battle, the 4th LCS screened HMS King George V, observed Queen Mary and Invincible blow up back to back, engaged the German battle cruiser and destroyer divisions, and fought into the night. For her actions, Constance was mentioned in dispatches and given the battle honor JUTLAND.

photograph (Q 23290) British Cambrian C-class light cruiser possibly HMS CONSTANCE. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205263753

Photograph (Q 23290) British Cambrian C-class light cruiser HMS CONSTANCE, pre May 1918. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205263753

Constance finished the war in relative inaction, the Germans rarely taking to sea again, though she did witness the surrender of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow. In May 1918, she was fitted with a new enclosed fire control director that required her pole mast to be replaced with a tripod mast for greater rigidity– a modification that for a time set her apart from the rest of her class.

In March 1919, she was assigned to the 8th Light Cruiser Squadron and dispatched to the North America and West Indies Station, arriving at Bermuda 22 March, carrying the flag of Vice Admiral Morgan Swinger.

HMS CONSTANCE leaving Devonport for the East Indies, March 1919. IWM SP 579

HMS CONSTANCE leaving Devonport for the East Indies, March 1919. IWM SP 579

She soon was needed in British Honduras to help put down a riot of Belizean ex-servicemen, formerly of the British West Indies Regiment, upset about conditions back home upon their discharge from hard service in Palestine and Europe. There, her sailors went ashore, Enfield-clad, and met the rioters.

sailors-from-hms-constance-sent-to-deal-with-the-riots-in-1918-belize

Other than the occasional saber rattling, over the next seven years she led a quiet life, cruising around the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, U.S. East Coast, hailing in Canadian ports, and popping in on occasion along the South American coastline.

On 19 November 1919, she sailed into New York harbor accompanied by the old protected cruiser USS Columbia (C-12), destroyer Robinson (DD-88) and battleship USS Delaware, to meet the battlecruiser HMS Renown with Edward, the Prince of Wales on board. For the next two weeks Constance escorted Renown and her dignitaries, sailing with them as far as Halifax, then resumed her more pedestrian beat.

In late August 1920, Constance arrived at Boston where she moored at No2 Wharf, Navy P Yard Charlestown, along the battleships USS Florida and Delaware. There, the intrepid Leslie Jones called upon her and caught a series of great images, which are now in the collection of the Boston Public Library.

Note the lattice masts of either USS Delaware or Florida to her port

Note the lattice masts of either USS Delaware or Florida to her port

Men on deck in Boston

Men on deck in Boston, note harbor tug and skyline.

A really great pier-side view

A really great pier-side view, note the four-piper USN destroyers to her starboard side.

HMS Constance off Pensacola 1922

HMS Constance off Pensacola 1922

Sailing home in 1926, Constance underwent a 16-month refit at the Chatham Dockyard after which she was the flagship of the Portsmouth Reserve. Her last overseas deployment came in 1928 when she chopped to the 5th LCS for service on China Station until November 1930.

Constance returned home, age 15, only to be placed in ordinary until 28 July 1934 when her crew was landed. She was stricken the next year and sold on 8 June 1936.

At the time of her sale, about half of her class had already been scrapped with some 14 ships retained for further use in training roles. One, Cassandra, had struck a mine during the Great War and was lost.

Of her remaining sisters, some were pressed into service in WWII and six were lost: Cairo was sunk in 1942 by the Italian submarine Axum during Operation Pedestal; Calcutta was attacked and sunk by German aircraft during the evacuation of Crete; Calypso was sunk by the Italian submarine Bagnolini in 1940; Coventry was badly damaged by German aircraft while covering a raid on Tobruk in 1942 and subsequently scuttled by HMS Zulu to scuttle her; Curacoa was sunk after colliding with the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary in 1942; and Curlew was sunk by German aircraft off Narvik during the Norwegian campaign in 1940.

Just one C-class cruiser, HMS Caroline, the only ship left from Jutland, with whom Constance sailed close by during that fierce battle in 1916, remains as a museum ship. 

As for Constance‘s memory, the old cruiser’s badge and bell are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum. Since 1936 only one other Constance has appeared on the RN’s list, HMS Constance (R71), a C-class destroyer who fought in WWII and Korea and was scrapped in 1956.

Specs:

photograph (Q 23323) British light cruiser HMS CONSTANCE. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205263786

Photograph (Q 23323) British light cruiser HMS CONSTANCE. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205263786

Draft: 3,750 tons, 4950-full load
Length:     446 ft. (136 m)
Beam:     41.5 ft. (12.6 m)
Draught:     15 ft. (4.6 m)
Propulsion:
Two Parsons turbines
Eight Yarrow boilers
Four propellers
40,000 shp
Speed: 28.5 knots (53 km/h)
Range: carried 420 tons (841 tons maximum) of fuel oil, 4000 nmi at 18 knots.
Complement: 323
Armament:
4 × 6 inch guns
1 × 4 inch gun
2 × 3 inch guns
2 × 2 pounder guns
4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armour:
3 inch side (amidships)
2¼-1½ inch side (bows)
2½ – 2 inch side (stern)
1 inch upper decks (amidships)
1 inch deck over rudder

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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100 years ago today: The hell of Jutland (Skagerrakschlacht)

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On this day in 1916, the German High Seas Fleet under Admiral Reinhard Scheer attempted an ambush on the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea by defeating Admiral Sir David Beatty’s Battlecruiser Force first without Sir John Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet getting involved, but things didn’t quite work out like that.

jutland

Jutland was a harsh running nightmare of fire and steel that involved 250 ships and nearly 100,000 men. While Scheer was able to initially plaster Beatty’s battlecruisers, once Jellicoe showed up and the battle shifted dramatically, it was all over.

Jutland - SMS Kaiser fires a salvo against HMS Warspite

Jutland – SMS Kaiser fires a salvo against HMS Warspite

The night battle

The night battle

The HMS Bellerophon at Jutland, 1916 by Paul Wright

HMS Bellerophon at Jutland, 1916 by Paul Wright

HMS Lion at the Battle of Jutland” by Mal Wright

HMS Lion at the Battle of Jutland” by Mal Wright

Losses were horrific on both sides but not unsustainable in the grand scheme of things to effect a strategic shift.

The Germans damaged Beatty’s flagship, HMS Lion, and sank HMS Indefatigable, Invincible, and Queen Mary, all of which blew up when German shells hit their magazines. The British lost 14 ships and over 6,000 men.

HMS Marlborough limping home from the Battle Of Jutland. Painting by Miller. Royal Marines Museum; (c) Royal Marines Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

HMS Marlborough limping home from the Battle Of Jutland. Painting by Miller. Royal Marines Museum; (c) Royal Marines Museum; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Looking through a shell-hole in HMS Tiger after Jutland

Looking through a shell-hole in HMS Tiger after Jutland

The bow and stern of HMS Invincible stick out of the water during the Battle of Jutland. HMS Invincible's ammunition magazine exploded after the battlecruiser was hit by German shells. HMS Badger can be seen in the distance as it moves in to rescue survivors, but only six men survived. IWM SP 2470.

The bow and stern of HMS Invincible stick out of the water during the Battle of Jutland. HMS Invincible’s ammunition magazine exploded after the battlecruiser was hit by German shells. HMS Badger can be seen in the distance as it moves in to rescue survivors, but only six men survived. IWM SP 2470.

HMS INVINCIBLE explodes during the battle of Jutland after she was hit five times by shells from the German battlecruisers DERRFLINGER and LUTZOW, the last hit blowing the roof off "Q" turret and setting fire to the cordite propellant, the flash soon spread to the magazine and INVINCIBLE was ripped in two by the explosion. There were only three survivors with those killed including Rear-Admiral The Hon Horace Hood IWM SP 2468

HMS INVINCIBLE explodes during the battle of Jutland after she was hit five times by shells from the German battlecruisers DERRFLINGER and LUTZOW, the last hit blowing the roof off “Q” turret and setting fire to the cordite propellant, the flash soon spread to the magazine and INVINCIBLE was ripped in two by the explosion. There were only three survivors with those killed including Rear-Admiral The Hon Horace Hood IWM SP 2468

The Germans, who had lost 11 ships including battlecruiser Lützow, pre-dreadnought Pommern and light cruisers Frauenlob, Elbing, Rostock, Wiesbadenand, as well as over 2,500 men. The battlecruiser Seydlitz suffered almost unimaginable damage.

German battle cruiser Seydlitz burns in the Battle of Jutland, May 31, 1916

German battle cruiser Seydlitz burns in the Battle of Jutland, May 31, 1916

German battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz,low in the water after jtland

German battlecruiser SMS Seydlitz,low in the water after Jutland

german and brtish losses at jutland
Beatty withdrew until Jellicoe arrived, sending the Germans running for their bases, not to emerge again until surrender in 1918.

More on the official commemorations here and here.

The BBC has live coverage of today’s events here.

German naval artist Claus Bergen did some of the best and most nightmarish depictions of Skagerrak, and they are in a past Combat Gallery Sunday post, here.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Claus Bergen

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Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday : The Martial Art of Claus Bergen

Born 18 April 1885 in Stuttgart, Claus Friedrich Bergen was a product of Kaiserian Imperial Germany. Studying at the at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, under the American-born master Carl von Marr, young Claus shined.

By his 22nd birthday had been selected to illustrate Karl May’s classic Teutonic fiction novels about Winnetou, the wise chief of the Apaches and Old Shatterhand, Winnetou’s white blood brother in the American Old West and Kara Ben Nemsi and his manservant Hadschi Halef Omar in the Sahara and Far East.

As May’s works were sold in upwards of 200 million copies, the more than 400 illustrations that Bergen did between 1907-14 for these books have been seen world wide.

winnetou Claus Bergen CordillerenS475 Claus Bergen CordillerenS114 0_d49d0_4e95601_XXXL

When the war came, Bergen was appointed as a naval artist to the Kaiserliche Marine and, in the weeks and months following the pivotal Battle of Jutland, created some of his best work.

High Seas Fleet setting sail 31 May 1916

High Seas Fleet setting sail 31 May 1916

German battleships passing Heligoland

German battleships passing Heligoland

SMS-Grosse-Kurfurst-

SMS-Grosse-Kurfurst-

German battleships in action

German battleships in action

Bridge of SMS Markgraf

Bridge of SMS Markgraf

Hipper leaving Lutzow for SMS Moltke

Hipper leaving Lutzow for SMS Moltke

Inside a battleship main turret

Inside a battleship main turret

German destroyers attack the British battleship line at Jutland 31 May

German destroyers attack the British battleship line at Jutland 31 May

SMS-Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like

SMS-Seydlitz seeing what hell looks like

Night action

Night action

SMS- Thuringen and HMS Black Prince

SMS Thuringen lighting up HMS Black Prince

The Kaiser addressing the High Seas fleet after Jutland

The Kaiser addressing the High Seas fleet after Jutland

In 1917, Bergen embarked on tiny SM U-53, a 213-foot Type 51 unterseeboot conned by legendary Fregattenkapitän Hans Rose, who won both the Pour le Mérite and the Ritterkreuz for sending a staggering 79 Allied ships to the bottom of the Atlantic (including six while bobbing off the Nantucket Lightship in 1916) and went to sea on a two month war cruise. The images he saw in the heavy seas were burned into his memory and he committed them to canvas for posterity.

In den Wellenbergen

In den Wellenbergen

Claus Bergen 4-1b35337784183493e6c573246631dde7 Claus Bergen 3

U-53 in the summer of 1917

U-53 in the summer of 1917

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During WWII, Bergen, then in his 50s, was a party member and one of the Reich’s favored painters. He continued working, composing military subjects on the list of those approved by Berlin.

Battleship Schlesig-Holstein on 1st-September 1939 fires the first naval shots of the War at Danzig

Battleship Schlesig-Holstein on 1st-September 1939 fires the first naval shots of the War at Danzig

1942 U-boot Type IX

1942 U-boot Type IX

Prinz Eugen at Denmark Strait Painting by Claus Bergen

Prinz Eugen at Denmark Strait Painting by Claus Bergen

Dornier Flugboot X

Dornier Flugboot X

After the war, he escaped his Nazi party associations and, living in West Germany at 8172 Lenggries/OBB, painted simple sea scenes and landscapes…

Mit Wind und Wellen

Mit Wind und Wellen

Though he did paint the cover of the 1950s board-game Bismarck, one of the most popular in the U.S. at the time.

pic21496

He donated several large pieces to U.S. and British public museums and the Admiralty after the Second World War, many of which are on display around the UK. He is also celebrated, of course, by the Karl May Society and others. The Hellmann Art Gallery in Munich contains a large body of his more famous works.

Dr. Bergen was impressed with the President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Germany (Ich bin ein Berliner) and wanted to present him with one of his paintings because of the President’s love of the sea and maritime art. His gift, The Atlantic, shows the windswept Atlantic at twilight and hung in the Atlantic Room of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum for years, making Bergen possibly the only artist to have presented canvas to Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler and JFK.

Bergen died 4 October 1964 in Lenggries, Bavaria at age 79.

For more Bergen pieces on Jutland, see British Battle’s excellent series of articles on the clash.

Thank you for your work, sir.

RN prepping for Jutland Redux

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Scorched by fire, blackened by soot and cordite, this is the battle ensign of the Royal Navy’s greatest ‘castle of steel’, last seen flying from HMS Warspite as she clashed with the Germans at Jutland.

Scorched by fire, blackened by soot and cordite, this is the silk battle ensign of the Royal Navy’s greatest ‘castle of steel’, last seen flying from HMS Warspite as she clashed with the Germans at Jutland.

With the 100th anniversary of the greatest naval battle fought in World War I approaching in few months, the Royal Navy is pulling out all the stops to revisit its greatness at its pinnacle of strength and celebration of their strategic (tactical is up to debate) victory at the Battle of Jutland.

Ensigns unveiled

Currently the IWM is taking their remaining Jutland battle flags out of storage and prepping them for display. The Jutland ensigns found  range in size between 148 square feet down to just 15½ square feet and belonged to battleships Warspite (she suffered heavy damage and 30 casualties) and Bellerophon (came through unscathed), battle-cruiser Indomitable (where she severely damaged the German battle-cruisers Seydlitz and Derfflinger), destroyers Marksman and Obedient, and cruiser Warrior (lost on June 1 1916).

Services of thanksgiving in the Orkneys, a combined Anglo-German sail past and ceremony over one of the vessels lost in the titanic clash of dreadnoughts, the unveiling of cruiser HMS Caroline in Belfast as a museum ship and living memorial to the Grand Fleet, plus commemorations at the naval memorials in Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth – where the names of most of the 6,094 sailors and Royal Marines killed are listed.

More here

Warship Wednesday, January 9, 2013

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

– Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  January 9, 2013

Last_Jutland_warship_to_be_preserved_for_the_nation_2
Here we see the old “C-class” light cruiser HMS Caroline steaming with a bone in her mouth.

The Caroline, at 4700-tons when fully loaded and some 446-feet overall length is about the size of today’s Oliver Hazard Perry Class frigates, but when she was designed in the 1900s, she was a pretty fierce fast cruiser. Capable of over 28-knots, her pair of 6-inch guns and 8 smaller 4-inchers could make mincemeat of attacking destroyers and torpedo boats of the day. Her job was to keep these wolverines at bay from the battleships of the line while being available for scouting and shadowing the bad guy’s battle line. Detached from fleet service she was also capable of showing the flag round the world anywhere the water was more than 16-feet deep.

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Commissioned just four months after the start of WWI, Caroline served with the  4th Light Cruiser Squadron and famously led a torpedo attack during the Battle of Jutland. After the war she was sent to the East Indies Station based at Colombo where she patrolled the Indian coastline. In 1924 she became a drill ship for the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in April 1924 at  Alexandra Dock, Belfast. There she remained as a dockside trainer and depot ship. Still officially in commission but never leaving port, she still had a reserve ‘crew’ as late as 2009. Not bad when you consider she was built in less than nine months.

In India post WWI

In India post WWI

Of her class of 28 cruisers, one was sunk in 1918 by a mine, six were lost during WWII, and the remainder were all broken up by 1948, leaving Caroline in Irish waters as the sole survivor of her group.

Finally, with her hull right at 98-years old, HMS Caroline was decommissioned on 31 March 2011. Her ensign was laid up in St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast. It is envisioned that she, the last survivor of Jutland and the last WWI-era Royal Navy cruiser afloat, will become a museum.

Today, disarmed, decommed, but still proud

Today, disarmed, decommed, but still proud

The Brits sure got a lot of use out of her.

Specs:

Displacement:     Nominal: 3,750 tons
Loaded: 4,219 tons
Deep: 4,733 tons
Length:     420 ft (128.0 m) (446 ft (135.9 m) overall)
Beam:     41.5 ft (12.6 m)
Draught:     16 ft (5 m) maximum
Propulsion:     4 shaft Parsons turbines
Power: 40,000 shp
Speed:     28.5 knots (53 km/h) (largely immobile after 1924)
Range:     carried 405 tons (772 tons maximum) of fuel oil
Complement:     325
Armament:     As built:

2 × BL 6 in (152 mm) /45 Mk XII guns (2 × 1),
8 × QF 4 in (102 mm) /45 Mk V guns[1]
1 × 6 pounder,
4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes

Later:

4 × 6 in (152 mm) /45 Mk XII
2 × 3 in (76 mm) anti-aircraft
4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes.

Today: None

Armour:     Belt: 3 to 1 in
Decks: 1 inch

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO)

They have one of the largest collections of ships photos from avid martial art enthusiasts around the world, many never before seen. Some of the collection online is at http://www.warship.org/ship.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Weds May 30

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1866-1938 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

 

– Christopher Eger

 

Warship Wednesday,  May 30

Here we have the Chiliean battleship Almirante Latorre (Formerly the HMS Canada)

Chile, part of a three-way South American Naval Race just before world war one ordered a pair of Battleships from Britain that went on to lead a life on their own.

The Chilean Battleship Order

Entering late into the South American battleship race was Chile. She ordered two Almirante Latorre-class battleships in 1910 from England. They were the best armed and equipped of any of the “ABC” country’s warships. Weighing in at 32,000 tons with ten 14inch (355mm) guns they could make 22.5 knots. They were more than a match for the Brazilian and Argentine vessels that they were build to compete with. Global events however prevented the pair of ships from being delivered. When World War One broke out in 1914 British shipbuilders halted work on the Chilean ships in order to fill dire domestic needs. The ships were later purchased by British authorities while still in construction to complete for the Royal Navy as the war went on.

This was not the first time this had happened to Chile. In 1903 a pair of 12,000 ton ‘pre-dreadnought’ battleships -the Constitucion and Libertad– ordered by Chile from English shipbuilders were confiscated by Britian while still on the builders slips to keep them from being bought by Russia.

The Almirante Latorre aka HMS Canada

The Almirante Latorre was completed to a slightly modified design in 1915 as the HMS Canada. She served in the Grand Fleet with a British crew and fought in the epic Battle of Jutland (along with the former Brazilian battleship Rio de Janeiro). She Fired 42 14in rounds and received no damage. In 1920 after refit she was resold to Chile for a nominal fee (half her original purchase cost) and finally took her original name to the seas. She was involved in a mutiny in 1931. When World War Two arrived the Chilean government offered her to purchase to the US but was declined. Chile did not declare war on Germany in World War Two until the final months of the conflict and the Almirante Latorre did not see combat against her old foe. Kept in perfect condition until she suffered an engine room fire in 1951 she was placed in reserve. She finished her service in 1959 as the last battleship afloat that had fought at Jutland. Her name is still carried by a frigate in the Chilean navy today