Tag Archives: naval history

Warship Wednesday Oct. 23, 2024: A Tough Little Wolf

Posted on by One comment

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024: A Tough Little Wolf

Nationalmuseet, Danmark, asset THM-3367

Above, we see the Danish Soridderen (Sea Knight) class torpedobåden patrol boat Søulven (Sea Wolf)—also cited in the West as Soloven, Soeulven, and Søulv —as she passed near the Trekroner Søfort at the entrance to the Copenhagen harbor before 1920.

A small boat with a fearsome name, her skipper and crew proved all-heart during the Great War, and a noteworthy British admiral doubtlessly owed his life to her pluck.

The Søridderen trio

Between 1879, when Hajen, Torpedobaad Nr.4, joined the fleet through Svaerdfisken, which entered service in May 1913, the Royal Danish Navy fielded 40 assorted torpedo boats across several different classes to include designs from British (Samuel White, Yarrow, Thornycroft), French (Forges & Chantiers), German (F. Schichau) and domestic (Burmeister & Wain, Orlogsvaerftet) yards. No less than 17 of these were still in service by the time Gaviro Princep caught up to Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, and set the world alight.

In 1911, a program of three new German Schichau-designed boats and a matching set of three British Yarrow-designed boats were ordered. The lead ship would be built overseas in each case, and the two follow-on units would be constructed domestically. This led to the Schichau-designed and built 250-ton Tumleren (and Orlogsvaerftet-constructed sisters Vindhunden and Spaekhuggeren) and the 230-ton Yarrow-designed and built Søridderen (accompanied by the Burmeister & Wain-constructed Flyvefisken and Soulven).

The ships were competing designs of similar size, armament, and capability with the Tumlerens running 250 tons, 186 feet long, 18 feet on the beam, and with a 6-foot draft while the Søridderen went 181x18x6 feet.

The German-built Danish torpedobåden Tumleren. Note her trainable torpedo tubes. THM-3340

Both classes were coal-fired steam turbine-driven and fast (27.5 knots), as well as armed with five 18-inch torpedo tubes (one fixed in bow and four trainable on deck) and two 12-pounder 3″/52 M.07 QF guns.

Danish Torpedobåden Tumleren i Svanemøllebugten, 1915, by Christian Benjamin Olsen. These boats were notoriously smokey especially when using the thrifty Danish navy’s (preferred) cheap coal to stretch training dollars.

The Søridderens went a bit faster than designed on trails, hitting 28.3 knots.

Søridderen class member Flyvefisken, seen in a color period postcard. THM-30779

Søridderen member Flyvefisken, the port view seen underway. THM-4490

Jane’s 1914 listing for the Søridderen class.

The British-designed ships were also seen as more seaworthy than the German-designed boats. However, the events of 1914 precluded further orders.

Meet Soulven

Our subject carried a traditional Danish navy moniker and repeated one used by one of the Scandinavian country’s first batch of torpedo boats, a little 95-footer built in France that remained in service until 1911.

Photo showing the first torpedo boat Søulven, Torpedobaad Nr.5, launched in 1880 at anchor in Copenhagen. The picture also shows the visiting German armored battery ship Heligoland and the French cruiser Chateau Renault. Photographed Sep 8, 1891. THM-9524

The second Danish torpedo boat Soulven joined the fleet in 1911, likely recycling most of the crew of her namesake which was decommissioned at the same time.

Note her forward bow tube and trainable singles.

She would spend her first three years as a training ship, and there are some great images of her pier side conducting training with Madsen light machine guns complete with massive 40-round detachable box magazines. A treat for any gun nerd!

Soluven crew at Flådens Leje with Madsen LMGs THM-6173

Soulven note bridge and Madsens THM-6175

THM-6175 inset

War!

When the Great War began in August 1914, Denmark armed-up to protect her neutrality, having just fought Germany in 1864 and the Brits in 1807. This meant mobilizing 52,000 reserves and new drafts to add to the professional 13,000-man Army and building the 23 km-long Tunestillingen line of defenses outside of Copenhagen. Likewise, the Danish Navy dusted off its guns and torpedo tubes and began to actively patrol its waters.

With that, Soulven left her training duties behind and became the flagship of 1. Torpedobådsflotille, assigned to patrol in the Oresund, the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden.

Torpedo inspection on board Soulven 1914 THM-4687

Her skipper at this time, and dual-hatted commander of the 1st TBF, was Kapt. Eduard Haack, 43, a career regular with 28 years of service on his seabag that included tours in the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) on the old steam frigate Jylland, Med cruises on the gunboat St. Thomas and cruiser Hejmdal, a stint as an officer instructor at the service’s NCO academy, service aboard the coastal battleships Iver Hvitfeldt and Herluf Trolle, command of a section of the naval mine corps (Søminekorpsets), and command of the icebreaker/OPV (inspektionsskibet) Absalon on the Greeland-Iceland-Faeroes beat.

Haack was a professional.

Haack, on Iver Hvitfeldt before he war. THM-4745

The E-13 Affair

It was during this time that the British started sending small E-class submarines through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat around Jutland then through the Oresund and across the Baltic to the Tsarist port of Revel in the Gulf of Finland. HMS E-1 and E-9 made it by October 1914, while E-11 turned back. They would soon be joined by HMS E-8, E-18, and E-19. One of their less fortunate sisters was HMS E-13.

Around 2300 on 17 August 1915, while E13 was attempting to make the passage through the Oresund to join the other British Submarines operating with the Tsar’s Navy, she experienced a gyro compass failure and ran aground in the mud on the Danish Island of Saltholm, her hull surrounded by nine feet of water.

English submarine E13 grounded on Saltholm THM-12243.

Spotted by the old (circa 1888) Danish Thornycroft-built torpedo boat Narvalen at 0500 on the morning of 18 August, the Dane dutifully notified E13 they had 24 hours to get unstuck or be interned for the duration. LCDR Geoffrey Layton, RN replied that he understood and would work to free his boat. His executive officer, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, was sent ashore to see if he could arrange a tug. 

Soon after, at 0620, two German S90-class large torpedo boats on patrol, SMS G132, and G134, likewise spotted the disabled British sub, with her crew resting atop E13’s casing. The 215-foot S90s were really more destroyer than TB, and ran large at 535 tons, carrying an 88mm gun, two 2″/40 guns, and three torpedo tubes.

S90-class Hochsee-Torpedoboot SMS S-125, a good representative of her class. Photographed by A. Renard of Kiel, probably before 1911. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command NH 45400

To guard the beached sub, flotilla leader Søulven arrived on the scene at 0845 with Narvalen’s sister Støren. The Danish bathtub battleship Peder Skram, armed with 9.4-inch guns and swathed in as much as 8 inches of armor, was just over the horizon and making steam for the area.

With the greenlight from RADM Robert Mischke, head of the Küstenschutzdivision der Ostsee, by radio, at 1028 the German torpedo boats went on the offensive.

Signaling “Abandon Ship Immediately,” G132 and G134 heeled over and made maximum revolutions for the grounded E13, sailing into Danish coastal waters with their guns blazing. Some 15 British submariners were killed outright.

English leave E13 after the shelling, 19 Aug. 1915 THM-4679

Despite being outgunned by the two larger German boats, Søulven’s skipper, Kapt. Haack gave the order to move his boat directly between E13 and the German guns to shield the British, with the Dane calling on the Germans to halt. The maneuver worked and at 1035, the German boats turned away and left Danish waters, having closed to within 300 yards of the submarine. Haack noted that the German commander of G132 raised an arm in the air as a sign that the protest was accepted.

The Danes soon went to work rescuing the survivors of E13, including Storen’s boatswain, one AFP Olsen, who reportedly dived into the frigid water and pulled a wounded Tar, Leading Seaman Herbert Lincoln, off the bottom. Olsen would be awarded an Albert Medal by the British government for his action, but not allowed by the Danish Foreign Ministry to accept it.

The wounded were passed on to Peder Skram, who would take them to Copenhagen. The recovered bodies of 14 of the 15 men lost were loaded aboard Søulven’s sister Søridderen and brought to Lynettehavnen. The 15th was later recovered and joined his shipmates. 

The reaction in the British and Scandinavian press to the German violation of neutrality was understandable.

What occurred over the next several days in Denmark was an outpouring of mourning for the British submariners who were killed in their waters. This included some 200 Danish sailors providing an honor guard for the recovered bodies during a funeral procession in Copenhagen where the survivors of E13, clad in Danish dress uniforms, were assisted in carrying their shipmate’s coffins to the refrains of Handel’s Dead March. The proceedings were well-attended by the international legations.

Photos from the event show Haack and his men prominently.

THM-3427

Note the Remington falling block 1867s with sword bayonets. THM-3426

THM-3421

While most foreign bodies recovered in Danish waters during the war– such as Jutland sailors buried at Frederikshavn cemetery– were simply interred in Danish soil with military honors, London approved a Danish ship to carry the E13 crew remains to return speedily to England.

This led the procession solemnly to the Det Forenetede Dampskibsselskab (DFDS) steamer SS Vidar (1,493 tons) while a crowd of thousands of Danes stood by to observe in procession, with Dannebrogs lowered at half-mast across the country.

Vidar carried the remains to Hull, accompanied by the Danish torpedo boats Springeren and Støren as escorts. Vidar carried a Danish Ministry of the Navy’s representative, CDR Rørd Regnar Johannes Hammer, a Knight Commander Dannebrogorden, with 39 years of service on his record, who was responsible for the steamer’s grim cargo. Most were later interred at the Haslar Royal Naval Cemetery. 
CWGC in Hampshire. 

The British consul in Denmark, Robert Erskine, commended the Danish authorities for the dignity and efficiency with which the handling of the dead was conducted.

As for the survivors, interned for the duration of the war under international law, they were put up at the Copenhagen Naval Yard under very loose custody– referred to by the Danes as engelske orlogsgaster (“English military guests”)– and allowed to travel around the city on their own recognizance.

The crew of the English submarine E13 before leaving for Russia in 1915. Half of these men would perish in Danish waters and the other half would cool their heels in Copenhagen for the duration. Had it not been for Soulven, their story would have been likely very different. THM-4680

The Danes likewise “entertained” assorted German naval personnel as well during the war, such as the crew of Zeppelin L.3. 

German Navy zeppelin LZ-24 (Luftschiff.3) participated in 24 reconnaissance missions over the North Sea, including the first raid on England on 20 January 1915. She was scuttled by her crew after a forced landing caused by an engine failure during a snowstorm on Fanø Island, Denmark on 17 February 1915. The crew were interned. Remnants of the zeppelin are displayed in a museum in Tonder, Denmark.

Rather than enjoy this comfortable prison, E13‘s skipper, LCDR Layton, accompanied by his No. 1, LT Paul Leathley Eddis, released himself from polite custody/parole, leaving a note behind to explain his actions, and made his way back to England via Sweden three months later.

The rest of E13’s crew remained in Denmark until after the Armistice. The sub’s third officer, Sub-LT William Garriock, RNR, was left behind to command these marooned submariners. 

Largely to prevent the Germans from attempting to do so, the Danes recovered E13 and towed it to Copenhagen.

E13 grounded at Saltholm, 1915 THM-6768

Shell-wrecked English submarine, E13, beached at Saltholm THM-12244

Salvage work on English submarine E13 at Saltholm THM-12245

English submarine E 13 under tow between pontoons and salvage steamers Odin and Thor. 1915. THM-4482

Her shell and shrapnel-ridden hull were on public display for the world to see.

English submarine E13 at Copenhagen harbour THM-12255

As were recovered relics including her pierced periscope and a shot-up prayer book.

The sub was put in drydock at Orlogsvaerftet, with her interned sailors allowed to come and claim personal property and mementos. Several even reportedly helped in the ultimately futile three-year effort to repair the vessel and place it in Danish service.

Ultimately, E13 was refloated and tied up alongside the Danish submarine tender Helka in 1918, used for training purposes.

Tender Hekla, British, submarine, E13 1918 THM-8938

THM-6767

U-bådsstationen, Cophenhangen. Petty officers aboard the Danish submarine tender Hekla in 1918. The group was photographed on deck in front of the ship’s stack. To the right is the tower of the salvaged HMS E13. THM-3494

In February 1919, after the Danish Navy washed their hands of the hulk, the British sold it to a local Danish company for its scrap value.

But back to our Søulven.

Continued Service

Søulven, returning to her role in protecting Denmark’s territorial sea, conducted several rescues and police actions in the Oresund before the end of the war, including capturing Swedish smugglers on two different occasions.

Photo showing the bridge of a torpedo boat with her bow 3″/52. To the left of the picture is the torpedo boat Soulven underway, seen from the front to port. Taken in the 1920s. THM-22312

Transferred to the reserves in 1929, along with her two sisters, Søridderen and Flyvefisken, and the three rival Tumlerens, they were collectively stricken in 1935-1937 and disposed of after they were replaced by the new and very strongly armed torpedo boats of the Dragen and Glenten classes.

Their hulls were stripped of anything usable and scrapped, with their 3″/52s recycled for use as coastal artillery around the Danish littoral for another decade. 

Danish Den næstnordligste 7,5 cm kanon i Hørhaven from old torpedo boats

Epilogue

Of our cast of characters, Soulven’s skipper and commander of the 1st TBF during the Great War, Eduard Haack, finished the war as head of coastal defense for Northern Denmark. He retired from the Navy in 1920, with his last post as inspector of lighthouses. He became chief ship inspector at Statens Skibstilsyn, the Danish Shipping Authority, the next year, and remained in that post until 1936. He then helped organize the Icelandic Shipping Authority and received, among other things, a knighthood in the Icelandic Falcon Order (Islandske Falkeorden) and was made a commander of the Dannebrogordenen order. Capt. Haack passed in 1956 and is buried at St. Olai cemetery in Kalundborg, aged 85.

The German admiral who gave the go-ahead for the attack on E13, Mischke, would end the war as a vizeadmiral and pass in 1932. His family is the owner of Lahneck Castle, which he purchased in 1907.

The two torpedo boats used in the attack on E13, G132, and G134, at the end of the war were disarmed and served as minesweepers out of Cuxhaven. Retained briefly by the Reichsmarine they were scrapped in 1921.

E13’s skipper went on to be known as ADM Sir Geoffrey Layton, GBE, KCB, KCMG, DSO. After returning to England via Sweden in time for Christmas in 1915, he was given command of the experimental steam submarine HMS S-1. Transitioning to capital ships in the 1930s, he started WWII as commander of the 1st Battle Squadron, consisting of the battleships HMS Barham, HMS Warspite, and HMS Malaya. Sent to command the ill-fated China Station in September 1940, he handed it over to Tom Phillips just before the Japanese went ham in the Pacific in December 1941. He went on to command British forces in Ceylon through 1945. Retiring in 1947 as head of Portsmouth, he passed in 1964.

ADM Layton

Layton’s XO, LT Paul Eddis, survived continued submarine service in the Great War only to be killed when his boat, HMS L24, was tragically lost with all hands in a collision with the battleship HMS Resolution off Portland on 10 January 1924. Subs are a dangerous game even in peacetime.

Speaking of which, the funeral transport for E13’s 15 recovered sailors, the Danish steamer Vidar, was herself sent to the bottom during WWII while traveling from Grimsby to Esbjerg via the Tyne with coal and general cargo, torpedoed by the German submarine U-21 (Kptlt. Wolf-Harro Stiebler) in the North Sea in January 1940– four months before Germany invaded neutral Denmark. In tragic irony, she carried 15 of her crew to the bottom.

The very well-marked Vidar. Photo courtesy of Danish Maritime Museum, Elsinore

The Danes would recycle the name of Soulven for use with a new class of fast torpedo boats ordered in the early 1960s from Britain (heard that before?). This Danish third torpedo boat Soulven (P 515) would serve from 1967 to 1990.

Danish Sea Lion Class Vosper PT boat MTB P 515 Søulven (The Sea Wolf)

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Oct. 16, 2024: Skill and Perseverance

Posted on by 7 comments

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024: Skill and Perseverance

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-272783

Above we see, some 80 years ago this week, the Cleveland-class light cruiser, USS Houston (CL-81), making like a submarine with her decks nearly awash. This is not an optical illusion. She is seen under tow on 17 October 1944, after she had been torpedoed twice by Japanese aircraft during operations off Formosa. The first torpedo hit Houston amidships on 14 October. The second struck the cruiser’s starboard quarter just 43 hours later while she was limping away.

A ship with a standard design displacement of 11,744 long tons, it was later estimated that, in the above image, she was so full of water that she was at some 20,900 tons.

The Clevelands

When the U.S. Navy took off the shackles of the London Naval Treaty and moved to make a series of new light cruisers, they based the design on the last “treaty” limited 10,000-ton Brooklyn-class light cruiser, USS Helena (CL-50), which was commissioned in 1939 (and was torpedoed and sunk in the Battle of Kula Gulf in 1943).

The resulting Cleveland class was stood up fast, with the first ship laid down in July 1940. Soon, four East Coast shipyards were filling their ways with their hulls.

The Cleveland class, via ONI 54R, 1943

The changes to the design were mostly in the armament, with the new light cruisers carrying a dozen 6″/47 Mark 16 guns in four triple turrets– rather than the 15 guns arranged in five turrets in Helena as the latter’s No. 3 gun turret was deleted.

The modification allowed for a stronger secondary armament (6 dual 5″/38 mounts and as many as 28 40mm Bofors and 20 20mm Oerlikon guns) as well as some strengthening in the hull. Notably, the latter may have worked as one of the class, USS Miami (CL-89), lost her bow to Typhoon Cobra but lived to tell the tale.

Much overloaded at more than 14,000 tons when fully loaded, these ships were cramped and top-heavy, which led to many further mods such as deleting catapults, aircraft, and rangefinders as the conflict went on to keep them from rolling dangerously.

Although 52 hulls were planned, only 27 made it to the fleet as cruisers while nine were completed while on the craving dock to Independence-class light carriers. A further baker’s dozen (of which only two were completed, and those too late for WWII service) were reordered as Fargo-class cruisers, which was basically a Cleveland with a single funnel and a redesigned, more compact, superstructure.

Remarkably, although the Clevelands saw much hard service in WWII, none were lost in action. No other cruiser design in history has seen so many units sail off to war and all return home.

The Cleveland class in the 1946 edition of Jane’s.

Meet Houston

Our subject is the third U.S. Navy warship to carry the name of the Lone Star State’s city which itself is named in honor of Sam Houston.

Originally slated to be named USS Vicksburg, CL-81 was renamed on the ways to honor the sacrifice of the Northampton-class heavy cruiser USS Houston (CL/CA-30) which was tragically lost in a storm of Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Sunda Strait on 1 March 1942, a vessel whose legacy is cherished in her home state. That ship’s 1,000-man crew all either perished or were “rescued” from the sea by the Japanese and sent to hellish POW camps.

That doomed cruiser had a special link to her “hometown” and would visit it three times between 1930 and 1939, collecting a special Silver Service donated from public subscription from city leaders.

USS Houston (CA-30) view taken at Houston, Texas, in late 1930, when the ship visited the city after which she had been named. Courtesy of Captain Henri H. Smith-Hutton USN ret., 1976 NH 85177

Two months after CA-30 was lost, 1,000 young men, the “Houston Volunteers,” mustered for service to replace those lost on the cruiser and, sworn in by RADM William A. Glassford before a local crowd of 150,000, unveiled a 60-foot model of the vessel before leaving directly for Naval Training Center San Diego aboard five special trains.

Likewise, the Harris County War Bond Drive raised over $85 million, enough to not only replace the USS Houston but also to build the light carrier USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). Don’t mess with Texas, indeed.

30 May 1942. Caption: “1000 men of Houston, Texas are sworn into U.S. Navy in a mass enlistment ceremony to replace 1,000 lost on cruiser ‘Houston’.” University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do8941zg26p

Building the new USS Houston (CL 81) at Norfolk Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for launching on June 19, 1943. Workmen lifting a steel deck plate weighing many hundreds of pounds into place. Photograph released May 31, 1943. 80-G-68627

Building the new USS Houston (CL 81) at Norfolk Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for launching on June 19, 1943. Looking through the huge anchor-eye are John W. Jackson and Wilson Majors, both steamfitters. 80-G-68632

When it came time to find a sponsor for this new cruiser, Mrs. Claud Hamill, who led the campaign to raise funds for the second cruiser Houston, was the logical choice. She led a group of 20 Houstonians to the event and christened the vessel “on behalf of the people of Houston who ensured the perpetuation of a beloved American name in a great fighting ship!”

“Norfolk, Va., 19 June 1943– Mrs. Claude Hammill, of Houston, Texas, smashes a bottle of champagne against the bow of the new cruiser, Houston, as the ship starts down the ways at her launching 19 June 1943 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., Newport News, Va. In the picture reading from the extreme left are Senator Tom Connally, of Texas, Governor Coke Stevenson, of Texas, Jesse Jones, Secretary of Commerce, Mayor Otis Massey, of Houston, Lieutenant Commander Wilson Starbuck, Public Relations Officer of the Fifth Naval District, and (front) Rear Admiral O.L. Cox, Supervisor of Shipbuilding at the Yard.” University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do9829b816n

Future USS Houston (CL-81) Being christened by Mrs. Claude Hamill at Newport News, Virginia, 19 June 1943. 19-N-47116

USS Houston (CL-81) launched, at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company shipyard, Newport News, Virginia, 19 June 1943. 19-N-47114

Commissioned on 20 December 1943, she would spend the next four months conducting shakedown and training cruises ranging from Boston to the Caribbean.

Her first skipper was Capt. William Wohlsen Behrens, a 45-year-old Mustang who had served during the Great War as an enlisted man on submarine patrol off the Atlantic Coast later picked up his butter bar after attending Temple University.

And his cruiser was beautiful!

USS Houston (CL-81) off the Norfolk Navy Yard, Virginia, 11 January 1944. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 1d. Photograph from the Bureau of Ships Collection in the U.S. National Archives. 19-N-60240

Same as the above. Note her extensive radar fit including SG, SK-2, Mk 13, and twin Mk 25 radars. 19-N-60241

Same as the above. Just a great example of Measure 32, Design 1d for modelers. 19-N-60239

USS Houston (CL-81) vertical photograph of the ship underway off Norfolk, Virginia, 12 January 1944. This gives a fantastic view of her dozen 6″/47s, dozen 5″38s, 24 40mm Bofors, and 21 Oerlikons as well as her twin stern cats. 80-G-214194

USS Houston (CL-81) off Norfolk, Virginia, 12 January 1944. She is painted in Camouflage Measure 32, Design 1d. 80-G-214200

USS Houston (CL-81) underway off the U.S. East Coast, on 26 January 1944 on shakedown. NH 50219

War!

Catching orders to head to the Pacific, Houston arrived at Pearl Harbor on 6 May 1944 via the Panama Canal and San Diego and by the end of the month would join VADM Marc Mitscher’s fast carrier Task Force 58 at Majuro Atoll.

Her baptism of fire would occur in June as she screened those flattops on their raids of the Marianas and the Bonins— losing one of her Kingfishers to an accident on the 12th– before turning to Saipan for the Marianas campaign by mid-month.

After spending two weeks screening TF 58 as its carries haunted Saipan from 90 miles offshore during “The Marianas Turkey Shoot,” Houston was dispatched on 27 June, along with sister USS Miami (CL-89) and six escorting destroyers, as a surface action group with orders to shell Japanese-occupied Guam and Rota.

Houston let her big guns sing for the first time, delivering 542 6″/47 HC shells and 313 of 5″/38 AA Common. Her spotting planes reported her guns to have knocked out a dozen aircraft on the ground and set alight a factory building and three large fuel storage tanks.

Of this action, Behrens noted that “While the expenditure of ammunition was high for the results obtained on targets other than the airfield, I consider it well spent, in view of the experience gained by all hands. Firing at the radio or radar stations at Rota and Guam eliminated the nervousness apparent in firing at these first targets on both islands. The performance of all personnel was most satisfactory.”

Early September found her on another sortie with USS Miami, this time joined by sister USS Vincennes (CL-64), to plaster Japanese positions on Angaur, Peleliu, Ngesebus, and Palau. This time she spent 884 6-inch and 661 5-inch shells. Miami narrowly beat her, ripping off 900 of each. 

Houston then rejoined her carrier task force and screened it during airfield reduction strikes in the Philippines before returning to Peleliu to support the forces landing there in mid-September.

October saw her weather a 60-knot tropical storm at Ulithi Atoll on the 3rd before standing out against Nasei Shoto and Formosa as part of Task Group 38.2– the fleet carriers USS Bunker Hill, Intrepid, and Hancock; the light carriers USS Independence (loaded with night fighters) and Cabot; the battlewagons USS Iowa and New Jersey; and the anti-aircraft cruisers USS San Diego and Oakland. By the 10th, the TG was sending aircraft on raids against Okinawa.

On 11 October, Houston’s deck log noted “several enemy snoopers” probing the TG’s boundary and at least one unidentified submarine was spotted.

Behrens noted, “It does not appear that tomorrow’s strike on Formosa will be a complete surprise to the Japanese.”

Indeed, 12 October saw much excitement, with Houston splashing four Japanese land-based torpedo bombers while filling the air with 5,000 rounds of AAA and suffering two men with shrapnel wounds. The aircraft included new radar-equipped Mitsubishi Type 4 Ki-67 Hiryu (flying dragon)(“Peggy”) Army twin-engine heavy bombers of Imperial Army Air Force (IJAAF) Air Combat Group (Hiko Sentai) 98.

Houston helped repel another attack the next day, in which the brand-new Baltimore-class heavy cruiser  USS Canberra (CA-70) suffered damage. The leviathan, part of nearby Task Group 38.2, was holed by a Type 91, Mod. 3 torpedo that hit below her armor belt at the engineering spaces and blew a jagged hole in her side, killing 23 men outright. Due to the location of the wound, a whopping 4,500 tons of water flooded her after fireroom and both engine rooms, leaving the cruiser dead in the water and had to be taken under tow by the cruiser USS Wichita (CA-45).

With Houston ordered to take the limping Canberra’s spot on the screen the next day, just after sunset on the 14th, the flying dragons of Hiko Sentai 98 caught up to her as night fell. She struck down three of the attackers but caught a tough-to-fight torpedo directly under her hull.

USS Houston (CL-81) view looking aft, showing damage to the ship’s stern area resulting from a torpedo hit amidships received off Formosa on 14 October 1944. This photo was taken while Houston was under tow, but prior to the second torpedo hit on 16 October. Note the OS2U floatplane that had been jarred off the port catapult, breaking its wing on impact with the aircraft crane. 19-N-106304

From Behrens’ report:

The Excruciating Limp

As with the stricken Canberra, which was being slowly pulled away from Formosa by Wichita, a heavy cruiser, USS Boston (CA-69), came to the stricken Houston’s aid and took her under tow on the morning of the 15th. By midnight both Canberra and Houston were under tow to Ulithi for repairs at a stately 5 knots.

Houston transferred no less than 776 of her officers and men to escorting destroyers while a force of 450 remained behind to attempt to save their home. The radio room was ordered to destroy most of the ship’s codes and ciphers in case she had to be abandoned.

A destroyer alongside the damaged USS Houston (CL-81) (right) on 15 October 1944, removing excess crewmen after she was torpedoed by Japanese aircraft off Formosa. Photographed from USS Boston (CA-69). Note OS2U floatplane on Boston’s port catapult. 80-G-272781

Her men waged war against the sea and their home’s own warren of twisted steel and buried their found dead in the briny embrace of the warm and unforgiving blue Pacific. Among the dead was her engineering officer, CDR William H. Potts (USNA 1927), killed when Main Engine No. 1 was wrecked. Two other men trapped in the after fire room had been killed by fatal burns.

USS Houston (CL-81). Burial at sea for crewmen killed when the ship was torpedoed off Formosa on 14 October 1944. Photographed while Houston was under tow on 15 October. 19-N-110835.

With an 8-degree starboard list and a draft of 34 feet (against a normal mean maximum of 25 feet), Behrens ordered the cruiser’s port anchor jettisoned and her port chain payed out to 90 fathoms to keep the ship as even as possible.

Everything quickly got primitive as the ship was flooded to the third deck and the heat of the tropics set in:

The fleet tugs USS Munsee (ATF-107) and Pawnee (ATF-74) assumed the tows of Canberra and Houston on 16 October.

Then, that afternoon, the Japanese caught up to Houston once again and she soon caught another torpedo that wrecked her hangar and flooded her steering compartment.

Japanese aerial torpedo explodes against the ship’s starboard quarter, during the afternoon of 16 October 1944. Houston had been torpedoed amidships on 14 October, while off Formosa, and was under tow by USS Pawnee (ATF-74) when enemy torpedo planes hit her again. USS Canberra (CA-70), also torpedoed off Formosa, is under tow in the distance. The original photograph is in the USS Santa Fe (CL-60) Log, a very large photo album held by the Navy Department Library. NH 98825

Behrens noted that, “In the midst of the action, our towing vessel, Pawnee, sent us a very encouraging message saying, ‘We’ll hold on,’ and continued to make the usual 5 knots in the right direction.”

Later that afternoon, Behrens ordered more of his crew taken off by escorting destroyers. By dusk, there only remained 48 officers and 152 men left on board– with six of them too gravely wounded to risk moving. With sick bay in the dark and with no ventilation, the cruiser’s guest cabin was converted to a hospital, and the wounded were brought on deck whenever conditions permitted.

On the 17th, assisted by four gasoline-driven pumps sent over by Pawnee, Houston decreased her draft to 32.5 feet and her list to 6 degrees.

This slow parade continued for days, with the Diver-class rescue and salvage ship USS Current (ARS-22) arriving alongside and sending over experts and the fleet tug USS Zuni (AT-95) taking Houston in tandem tow with Pawnee.

With almost zero reserve buoyancy left, the days were spent lowering–by hand, block, and rope– 130-pound 6″/47 shells from the shell decks of the four main turrets to the lower handling rooms to help shift the cruiser’s center of gravity.

Armored doors were unbolted and, wrestled above deck, were cast overboard. Searchlight and gun director platforms were torched off and either used for patching material or thrown over the side as were many 20mm and 40mm guns. Abovedeck ammo stores were tossed. Anything too vital to Deep Six was transferred to LCVPs and whaleboats to give to escorting destroyers to store. Rank didn’t exist and officers worked on the repair parties alongside ratings.

Luckily, fresh water had been stored in forward voids as ballast and was siphoned off for cleaning and drinking. Behrens observed, “It had a strong paint and rust taste but did much to quench the thirst.”

On the morning of 27 October, with the help of several tugs, a still very wet and soggy Houston slipped through the Mugai Channel and moored alongside the repair ship and floating workshop USS Hector (AR-7) at Ulithi Atoll, wrapping a 1,250nm mile tow that took 13 days, at an average rate of 4 knots.

Behrens finished with this observation:

USS Houston (CL-81) alongside USS Hector (AR-7) at Ulithi Atoll, 1 November 1944. She was under repair after being hit by two Japanese aerial torpedoes on 14 and 16 October, during operations off Formosa. An LCM is passing by in the foreground. 80-G-373678

After temporary repairs, Houston proceeded to Manus on 14 December under tow by the tugs USS Lipan and Arapaho and escorted by a screen of three destroyer escorts and a coastal minesweeper. Making 6.5 knots, the little convoy (Task Unit 30.9.14) made Manus six days later.

The advantage of having a forward-deployed Advanced Base Sectional DryDock (ABSD) became readily apparent. After waiting in Seeadler Harbor over the Christmas holidays, Houston entered ABSD No. 2. after USS Reno (CL-96) floated out on 7 January 1945.

Overhauls of two light cruisers at a Pacific Base inside ABSD, circa 1944-45. USS Reno (CL-96) and USS Houston (CL-81) 80-G-K-2963

USS Houston (CL-81) damage to the ship’s hull, amidships, from a Japanese aerial torpedo hit received off Formosa on 14 October 1944. The torpedo struck the ship on her bottom, inboard of the starboard bilge keel, while she was in a turn, producing the inward displacement of bottom plating seen here. Photographed in an ABSD floating drydock at Ulithi Atoll while Houston was under repair, circa November 1944. 19-N-105803

After three weeks in dry dock, Houston floated out on Valentine’s Day 1945 and, with only No. 2 and 3 main engines and Nos. 1, 2, and 4 boilers available, she was able to operate under her own steam for the first time in four months and logged a remarkable speed of 23.4 knots.

By 16 February, along with the wounded but patched up Reno and the tin can USS Bowers (DE-637), Houston and company left Manus for Pearl Harbor, zig-zagging at 16 knots. Arriving in Hawaii on 24 February, after a three-day port call and much-needed libo, Reno and Houston set course for San Pedro, California on 27 February.

Crossing through “The Ditch” a much different cruiser than when she passed just 10 months prior, Houston eventually steamed to the New York Navy Yard, arriving on 24 March 1945. Reno followed her almost the whole way, only peeling off at Charleston three days prior.

Six months later, with an extensive rebuilding almost complete, the war ended with Houston still in New York.

Houston received three battle stars for World War II service.

Capt. Behrens was relieved and was assigned duty as Commander, Naval Training Center Bainbridge, Maryland, and served there in the rank of Commodore.

Peacetime Showboat

Her repairs complete, our subject visited her namesake city just after VJ Day to show the flag and line the decks for Navy Week in October 1945. Besides, she needed to show the taxpayers and Bond buyers what they paid for back in 1942.

Crowd on shoreline along the Houston Ship Channel to welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week, October 1945. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections. do66558f697

Civilians along the Houston Ship Channel welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week, October 1945. Sailors in uniform line the decks. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections do26967446b

Civilians along the Houston Ship Channel welcome the USS Houston (CL-81) light cruiser during Navy Week. Sailors in uniform line the decks. The cruiser carries two new Curtiss SC-1 Seahawk floatplanes– a type that only entered service in October 1944– with their wings folded. University of Houston Libraries Special Collections do5460qs96s

From April to December 1946, Houston was sent on a European and Mediterranean cruise, visiting cities in Scandinavia, Portugal, Italy, and Egypt.

Stockholm. Ships include the elderly (circa 1915) 6,700-ton Swedish coastal battleship (Pansarskeppet) HSwMS Sverige along with the light cruiser sisters USS Houston and USS Little Rock (CL-92), while the new Gearing class destroyers USS Perry (DD-844), Glennon (DD-840), Warrington (DD-843) and Cone (DD-866) are arrayed at pier side and in the distance, along with Swedish jageren (destroyers). Eskaderbild.eskader på Stockholms Ström 11. Juli 1946. Sjöhistoriska museet. Fo219541

Following a second Med cruise with Cruiser Division 12 in 1947, upon returning to Philadelphia, Houston decommissioned 15 December 1947.

Placed in reserve, she swayed on Philly’s redlead row until, stricken from the Navy List on 1 March 1959, she was sold for scrap to Boston Metals on 1 June 1961 and scrapped.

Epilogue

The Clevelands, always overloaded and top-heavy despite their hard service and dependability, were poor choices for post-war service and most were laid up directly after VJ Day with only one, USS Manchester (CL-83), still in service as an all-gun cruiser past 1950, lingering until 1956 and seeing much Korean War duty, successfully completing three combat tours with no major battle damage.

Six went on to see further service as Galveston and Providence-class missile slingers after an extensive topside rebuild and remained in service through the 1970s. One of these, USS Little Rock (CL-92/CLG-4/CG-4) has been preserved at the Buffalo Naval & Military Park, the only Cleveland currently above water.

The third USS Houston has a marker at the National Museum of the Pacific War. 

She is remembered in maritime art and scale models.

Her war diaries and reports are digitized in the National Archives. 

Her 79-page war damage report is epic, noting:

That Houston survived two torpedo hits which produced a precarious stability condition, extensive flooding, serious loss of structural strength amidships and a severe gasoline fire is due for the most part to the intelligent approach of her personnel to the damage control problems with which they were confronted and the skill and perseverance with which they carried out the control measures initiated.

USS Houston (CL-81) Plate I, Torpedo Damage. Formosa. 14-16 Oct. 1944. Profile of Vessel Heeled 30° to Port

As for her wartime skipper, RADM Behrens retired from the Navy in 1947, capping a 30-year career across two World Wars. Not bad for a Mustang.

He earned a Navy Cross for his time on Houston:

“For extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer of the USS Houston, during action against enemy Japanese forces off Formosa on October 14, 1944. With his ship dead in the water and listing violently in the heavy seas following an enemy aerial attack, Commodore (then Captain) Behrens remained steadfast and calm, efficiently directing damage control measures and the removal of personnel to other ships in the formation before his crippled ship was taken in tow by another cruiser. With his ship again under attack by hostile aircraft two days later, he inspired his officers and men to heroic effort, maintaining control and contributing in large measure to his ship’s successful return to a friendly port. By his valiant leadership, determination, and grave concern for the safety of his ship and her crew. Commodore Behrens upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

RADM Berhens passed in 1965 and is buried in Arlington, Sec: 2, Site 994-1

His son, VADM William Wholsen Behrens, Jr. (USNA 1943), survived WWII service in the Submarine Force with six war patrols and a Silver Star to prove it then was involved in 28 amphibious operations during Vietnam. He capped his service as the first head of the newly organized National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1972 and passed in 1986. He is also in Arlington. Good genes in that family.

The fourth USS Houston (SSN-713) was an early Flight I Los Angeles class hunter killer. Launched in 1981, this submarine was christened by Barbara Bush, wife of then Vice President George Bush which was appropriate as, while a Navy Avenger pilot (of a plane he named “Barbara”) in WWII, Bush crashed in the Pacific and was rescued by a submarine. The luckiest of her namesakes, she served a long career (33 years, 11 months, and 1 day) without loss and was decommissioned in 2016.

USS Houston (SSN-713) port quarter view of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Houston (SSN-713), foreground, and the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kenney (CV-67), background, departing Hampton Roads for a patrol. August 17, 1982. DN-ST-89-01391

The Navy desperately needs a fifth Houston, and maybe a first USS Behrens.

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Oct. 9, 2024: A Cat with Several Lives

Posted on by One comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024: A Cat with Several Lives

Photo by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD/Défense

Above we see, some 85 years ago this week in October 1939, a bachi-clad fisherman-turned-sailor and his hard-bitten cat mascot, aboard the merchant marine trawler Roche Noire (Black Rock), requisitioned and armed by the French Navy in the early days of WWII to serve as an auxiliary minesweeper (dragueur de mines auxiliaire). Sadly both the fisherman and his cat are lost to history.

As for Roche Noire, it wasn’t even her first war.

The RN’s Battle Trawlers

When the early days of the Great War showed that the British, while rich in battleships and cruisers, were lacking in small coastal escorts and mine warfare craft, the Admiralty soon turned to trawlers.

Dozens were taken up from trade in Hull and other fishing ports, others were requestioned on the builder’s ways, and still others were purchased from overseas. e.g. the large fishing fleets maintained in Spain and Portugal. 

Trawlers on patrol at Halifax, CWM

By 1916, with the Royal Navy hungry for an ever larger number of such hardy coastwise vessels, and many fishing boat yards near idle, the Admiralty soon placed orders for what would be an amazing 609 armed trawlers by the end of the war– many of which wound up being canceled.

As detailed by “British Warships 1914-1919” by F J Dittmar & J J Colledge, the RN ordered “military class” trawlers to three “standard” (and yes, that needs to be quoted) designs, this would include the 156-strong Mersey class (665 tons full load,148 feet oal), some 280 of the Castle/TR class (550 tons, 134 foot oal) and 173 members of the Strath class (429 tons full, 123 feet oal).

Lord Talbot was one of the new Admiralty Mersey class of trawlers. All were capable of using an auxiliary sail rig as shown.

Using a simple coal-powered boiler with a single vertical triple expansion reciprocating engine generating between 480 and 600 ihp depending on class, these vessels had a top speed of around 10 knots.

A stoker tending fires in an armed trawler. IWM (Q 18996)

Crewed by 15 to 20 men/boys, they had allowances in their plans for hydrophones and wireless sets, although precious few carried either– with the extra berths used for such specialists needed to operate the gear.

Most had the very basic armament of a single deck gun, typically a 3″/40 QF 12-pounder 12 cwt salvaged from retired destroyers and torpedo boats, placed well forward, along with whatever small arms could be scrounged.

The crew of a British armed trawler, including a boy sailor, receiving gun instruction. Great War. IWM (Q 18974)

Sailors on board British Steam trawler HMT Strathearn firing her 12-pounder gun, Great War. IWM (Q 18965)

A few carried larger 4-inchers, while some had to make do with smaller 6-pounders. Occasionally they would carry a bomb thrower (early depth charge projector), and some had basic mechanical sweeping gear installed.

Small arms were as motley as the trawlers themselves. 

Naval Reservists at Rifle Drill on a quayside; fixing bayonets. The crew of a British armed trawler drilling on shore. Great War. Note that the rifles appear to be a curious mix of Canadian Ross rifles, German Mausers, and old Lee-Metfords! IWM (Q 18972)

Same as above. You have to love the Martini-Henry cartridge cases. IWM (Q 18973)

The Straths were the smallest of the three designs. Compact little steam trawlers.

Ordered from a mix of 13 yards starting in February 1917, the most prolific of these builders would be the Scottish firm of Hall, Russell & Co Ltd, in Aberdeen, who had 66 under contract.

With so many different yards going all at once, the design inevitably changed from yard to yard and sometimes even from hull to hull, while the Admiralty itself contributed to the chaos by ordering minor “non-standard” changes of their own.

Delivery of the first standard Strath, HMT George Borthwick, occurred in August 1917.

With so many warships in need of names, these armed trawlers (His Majesty’s Trawler, or HMT) were bestowed the names drawn from the official crew rosters of ships at Trafalgar in 1805, with the Straths, in particular, coming from members of the crew of HMS Royal Sovereign and of Nelson’s HMS Victory.

Meet HMT William Barnett

Roche Noire entered the world in December 1917, constructed over four months at Hall, Russell (as Yard No. 622)  as a more or less standardized Strath-class armed trawler with a T3cyl (12, 20, 34 x 23in) engine constructed by the Dominion Bridge Co of Montreal.

Our subject as built was christened with the name of Petty Officer (Gunner’s Mate/Gunsmith) William Barnett, 31, of Scotland, who appeared on HMS Victory’s list of the 820 men who were awarded prize money and a Government Grant for enemy ships destroyed or captured during Trafalgar.

Digging deeper into Barnett’s service, he was born in Glasgow and volunteered for service in 1803 on the 64-gun HMS Utrecht as a Landsman before his transfer to Nelson’s flagship– where he would serve through Trafalgar. He would go on to serve on HMS Gelykheid, Zealand, Ocean, Salvador Del Mundo, Milford, and Prince Frederick, advancing to the rate of Armourer’s Mate, leaving the service in 1814.

Any gunner who sailed for more than a decade against Bonaparte deserves a ship named in his honor!

HMT William Barnett’s Admiralty Number was 3632.

Great War

Sadly, I could find no details of HMT William Barnett’s Great War service. Suffice it to say she almost assuredly spent 11 months across 1918 in a mix of dodging U-boats, escorting coastal traffic, searching for those lost at sea, guarding anti-torpedo/submarine nets at anchorages, and training young ratings.

Of her class, one member, HMT Thomas Collard (3686), was sunk in March 1918 by the German submarine SM U-19 while escorting the armed merchant cruiser HMS Calgarian North of Rathlin Island. Her crew survived.

Some deployed as far as the Adriatic and Aden.

Another classmate, HMT James Fennell (3753) would be wrecked at Blacknor Point, Portland.

Royal Navy armed trawlers in Dover harbor. IWM (Q 18226)

Eight early Straths (HMT Charles Blight, Peter Barrington, Joshua Budget, Richard Bowden, John Britton, Thomas Billincole, James Bashford, and Michael Brion) were loaned to the U.S. Navy during the war for patrol/mine work, specifically in laying and later taking up the Great North Sea Mine Barrage. The Americans would dispose of them in 1919.

British armed trawlers minesweeping in the North Sea. IWM (Q 18987)

Post-war, 23 Straths that were still under construction were canceled in 1919 while another 45 others that were sufficiently complete were finished to mercantile standards (unarmed) and sold as trawlers.

The 94 surviving members of the class in RN service were, following the dismantling of the North Sea Barrage, paid off slowly between 1919 and 1926– including Barnett— and, disarmed, were disposed of on the commercial market.

River Kelvin. Built 1919 for Scott & Sons Bowling Glasgow as Strath Class Trawler HMT George Lane. 05/1923 Acquired by Consolidated Steam Fishing & Ice Co Grimsby renamed River Kelvin. 09/1927 Registered to Consolidated Fisheries Ltd. 12/1938 Transferred to Lowestoft renamed Loddon registered LT 309. 1958 Sold to Craigwood Ltd Aberdeen. Photo via Deepseatrawlers.co.uk

Peacetime: Gone Fishing

Sold to Val Trawlers of London in 1919, Barnett became what she was designed to be from the outset– a commercial fishing boat. Named Valerie IV (sometimes seen as Valerie W), she would continue on this service out of Hull and Milford until October 1924.

Moving across the Channel, her registry soon changed to Soc. Nouvelle des Pecheries a Vapeur (New Steam Fisheries Co), in Arcachon along the Bay of Biscay just southwest of Bordeaux. With the name of Valerie IV no doubt needing a more Gallic upgrade, she became Roche Noire (ARC 3918).

In 1934, SNPV went belly up and its assets were liquidated by Credit de l’Quest. This left Roche Noire to be scooped up for a bargain price by Saint-Nazaire Penhoët Shipyards and Workshops, and operated by Nouvelle société de gestion maritime (New Maritime Management Company) out of Bordeaux (radio call sign TKED).

War! (Again)

With so many retired Straths floating around (pun intended) in 1939, it was a foregone conclusion several wound return to martial service.

Three ex-HMTs– William Hallett, James Lenham, and Isaac Harris— which had been sold on the commercial market in 1921, were taken back up by the RN in 1939– with Harris lost in December.

Three Straths in Australian waters, ex-HMTs William Fall, Samuel Benbow, and William Ivey; were taken up by the RAN as coastal minesweepers.

HMAS Samuel Benbow was in Sydney Harbour during the Japanese midget submarine attack in 1942. RAN image

Ex-HMTs William Bentley and Thomas Currell became Kiwi mine vessels in the RNZN.

Strath class HMT Thomas Currell as RNZN minesweeper during World War II

Meanwhile, in France, our William Barnett/Valarie IV/Roche Noire was requestioned by the French Navy in August 1939– even before the beginning of the war– and given hull number AD 355. Armed with a single elderly 75mm Schneider modèle 1897, she was to serve as an auxiliary minesweeper.

In October, during the doldrums of the “Phony War,” she was visited at Brest by photographer Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot who captured an amazing series of images of the (re)armed Admiralty trawler and her laid-back crew, now in the ECPAD archives.

Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Note her recently installed 75mm Schneider modèle 1897. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Note the mix of uniforms and civilian attire, augmented with bachi caps. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Dressing salted cod. Again, the only “uniform” item on many is the bachi. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Raidoman is at work. Among the “war installations” for the trawler was a radio set and searchlight. Other than that, she was all 1918. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Note her searchlight. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Commanded by a Petty Officer. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Who may have come from the retired list. Chalutier dragueur de mines auxiliaire Roche Noire, Oct. 1939, Brest, by Eugène Robert Philippe Petiot/ECPAD

Sadly, our humble Roche Noire was caught up in the fall of France in June 1940 and got the short end of the stick.

Two weeks after the “Miracle of Dunkirk” and just three days before the Armistice that brought about the Vichy regime, all ships fit to go to sea in Brest were ordered to either make for England or French colonies in Africa, ultimately carrying some 80,000 Commonwealth, Free Polish, and French troops with them.

The last ships to leave on the night of 18/19 June included the incomplete battleship Richelieu (bound for Dakar with just 250 shells and 48 powder charges for her main battery) and a flotilla under RADM Jean-Emmanuel Cadart composed of the five liners and cargo ships transporting 16,201 boxes and bags of gold– carried from Fort de Portzic by garbage trucks– escorted by the destroyers Milan and Épervier as well as the auxiliary cruiser Victor Schœlcher, bound for Casablanca.

Unable to sail, the torpedo boat Cyclone, patrol boat Étourdi the non-functional submarines Agosta, Achille, Ouessant, and Pasteur, the condemned tanker Dordogne, the auxiliary minelayer Alexis de Tocqueville, avisos Aisne, Oise, Laffaux, and Lunéville; the old armored cruisers Waldeck-Rousseau, Montcalm, and Gueydon; and a host of net-laying vessels, tugs, and assorted cargo ships were scuttled. They were joined by the armed trawlers Mouette, Trouville, Roche Noire, and Flamant.

Many of the crews of the scuttled ships made it out with RADM Cadart’s gold-carrying flotilla, so Roch Noire’s fishermen may likely have gone on to further adventures in North Africa and Senegal. 

The port facilities were likewise sabotaged, with 800 tons of gasoline and assorted ammunition stocks blown up.

Joachim Lemelsen’s 5th Panzer Division entered Brest on the 19th, and the Germans found little of immediate use, with the fires reportedly taking several days to die down.

Bundesarchiv Bild 101II-MW-5683-29A, Brest, June 1940

The strategic port would go on to endure 1,553 days of occupation and a 43-day siege before the Germans surrendered in September 1944.

And, Back to Fishing

Immediately after taking control of Brest in 1940, Kriegsmarine VADM Eberhard “Hans” Kinzel would inspect the facility to see what was salvageable.

In his report, he would note:

The auxiliary minelayer Alexis de Tocqueville, the auxiliary patrol boat Mouette, and the auxiliary sweepers Roche Noire, and Flamant are recoverable, but the three latter are of little interest to the Kriegsmarine and could be returned to the Government of Herr Laval to ensure supplies for the population.

Shortly after, Roche Noire was raised and, after a stint in Vichy use, was removed from the French naval rolls in November 1941. She was allowed to return to fishing.

Post-war, she continued to harvest her stocks from the deep for over a decade.

In 1957, she was sold across the Channel again, returning home to be added to the inventory of Wood & Davidson – J. Wood, Aberdeen. That year she was listed in Lloyds as FV Shandwick.

Eventually, all things come to an end, and our little trawler, which served in both wars, was finally broken up in 1964.

Epilogue

Little remains of the hardy Strath-class armed trawlers, save for a few wrecks and scattered relics. 

Some models are available.

The City of Aberdeen, where many Straths were completed, maintains several models, photos, and records of these otherwise forgotten trawlers.

German VADM Kinzel, who moved to resurrect our little trawler at Brest in 1940, survived the war only to take his own life in June 1945 near Flensburg.

And, while the Admiralty hasn’t elected to recycle the names of the old Strath class, Armourer’s Mate William Barnett included, HMS Victory, currently under a “Big Repair,” endures at Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Oct. 2, 2024: Slow Going

Posted on by 5 comments

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024: Slow Going

File-450-44 U.S. Navy Yard, SC 1 March 1944. Port Broadside, Down View

Above we see the Porter-class destroyer USS Moffett (DD-362) underway in Charleston, South Carolina passing under the Cooper Bridge on 1 March 1944. She was headed to the Big Apple, to undertake one of the screwiest– and most important– convoys of the war.

The Porters

Designed as “Gold-plater” destroyer leaders (of which 13 were allowed under the London Naval Treaty) to host a commodore of a four-piper DESRON and likewise make up for the American shortfall in light cruisers in the early 1930s, the eight twin-stack Porter-class destroyer leaders (381 feet oal, 1850 tons, 50,000shp, 37 knots, 8x 5-inch guns, 8x torpedo tubes) generated 50,000 shp to allow for 37 knots. The torpedo battery carried a reload, allowing the ships to pack 16 Mark 11 or 12 (later Mark 15) torpedoes.

A typical 1930s Porter:

The Porter class destroyer USS Balch (DD-363) underway, probably during trials in about September 1936. Note her superstructure including her large aft deck house, twin 4-tube torpedo turnstiles amidships, and twin funnels. NH 61694

They even had a class of follow-on half-sisters, the Somers, with a slightly different topside appearance to include three 4-tube torpedo turnstiles and a single funnel:

Somers class USS Jouett (DD 396), starboard view, at New York City 1939 NH 81177

Another thing that the Porters and Somers shared besides hulls was their peculiar Mark 22 mounts for their twin 5″/38 guns. These were limited elevation gun houses that relegated these rapid-fire guns to being capable of surface actions only.

As noted by Navweaps:

“Their low maximum elevation of +35 degrees of elevation was adopted mainly as a weight savings, as it was calculated that these ships would only be able to carry six DP guns rather than the eight SP guns that they actually did carry. The Mark 22 mounting used a 15 hp training motor and a 5 hp elevating motor.”

Check out those funky Mark 22 turrets! Somers-class sister USS Warrington (DD 383) arriving at New York City with Queen Mary and King George VI on board, 1939. Also, note a great view of her quad 1.1-inch AAA mount in front of the wheelhouse. LC-USZ62-120854

Most of the Porters and Somers would have their low-angle 4×2 Mark 22s replaced later in the war with 3×2 Mark 38 DP mounts, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Still, these destroyers got their SP 5 inchers into the fight during the upcoming war, as we shall see.

As for AAA, most as commissioned carried two “Chicago Piano” quad 1.1-inch mounts and a pair of flexible water-cooled .50 caliber MGs, guns that would soon be replaced during the war with 20mm Orelikons and 40mm Bofors.

Official U.S. Navy photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-21955

Meet Moffett

Our destroyer was the first (and so far only) in U.S. naval service to carry the name of RADM William Adger Moffett (USNA 1890) who earned a Medal of Honor while skipper of the cruiser USS Chester in a daring and dangerous night landing in 1914 at Veracruz, later became known as the architect of naval aviation and was killed in the loss of the airship/aircraft carrier USS Akron (ZRS-4) in 1933 at age 63– just six months shy of his mandatory retirement.

RADM Moffett, the Navy’s first Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, a position he held until he died in the crash of the rigid airship USS Akron (ZRS 4) in 1933. His MoH is on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola.

Moffett (DD‑362) was laid down on 2 January 1934 at Quincy, Massachusetts by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation.

Launched on 11 December 1935, she was sponsored by Miss Beverly Moffett, the daughter of the late admiral.

She was commissioned at Boston on 28 August 1936.

Quiet Interwar Service

Soon after delivery, Moffett, assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, slipped into a cycle of summer cruises to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, where she took part in exercises and gunnery drills in addition to regional port calls.

When FDR kicked off the Neutrality Patrol, Moffett once again roamed to points south, her old stomping grounds. In 1940, Moffett, operating out of Puerto Rico, was part of the task group keeping tabs on the Vichy French West Indies fleet based at Martinique and Guadeloupe that included the carrier Bearn and the light cruisers Jeanne d’Arc and Émile Bertin.

By August 1941, Moffett was detailed to escort the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) as the latter carried Roosevelt to the Atlantic Charter Conference with Churchill at Argentia, Newfoundland.

Soon after, things got hot.

War!

Post Pearl Harbor, Moffett once again ended up in South Atlantic waters, tasked with a series of patrol and convoy missions including several voyages to West African parts.

USS Moffett (DD-362) in South American waters with a bone in her teeth, 15 January 1943. 80-G-64929

USS Moffett (DD-362) in South American waters, 15 January 1943. Note her depth charge racks. 80-G-64931

U-128

On 17 May 1943, as Moffett and her Somers-class half-sister USS Jouett (DD-396) were on escort duty south of Recife, Brazil, and were directed to a nearby surface contact where PBMs of VP-74 had spotted and fired a German submarine, the Type IX-C U-128 (Oblt. Hermann Steinert), some 42 days out of Lorient.

Two PBMs commanded by LCDR H.S. Davis, USNR, and LT(jg) H.C. Carey, USN, cripple the German submarine, U-128, in South Atlantic. One plane dropped depth bombs bringing her to the surface, while the second machine-gunned her. USS Jouett (DD-396) and USS Moffett (DD-362) led to the scene by one of the planes and finished her with direct hits. The PBMs dropped life rafts and the destroyer picked up many survivors. Shown: Eruption of water after depth charges. The conning tower may be seen (center), incident #3219. Photograph released May 17, 1943. 80-G-42064

Moffett fired 150 shells of 5-inch Common at the sub, hitting the boat at least six times.

Once U-128 took her final dive, Moffett stood by to rescue the survivors, numbering 51–four of which later died of wounds, a combination of chlorine poisoning and shrapnel. As detailed in later ONI interrogations of U-128’s crew, Moffett’s officers and crew “received high praise from all prisoners for the good treatment received while aboard her.”

The impounded property taken from U-128’s crew, as noted by Moffett in her report:

U-604

Across three days in August, while escorting the Omaha-class light cruiser USS Memphis (CL-13) and a merchant ship to windswept Ascension Island, Moffett made contact with what is believed to be the Type VIIC U‑604 (Kptlt. Horst Höltring) and fought the German so hard that her new skipper, LCDR Gilbert Haven Richards (USNA 1933) thought it was two different engagements.

With Navy aircraft in support, the running fight ensued through the night until the submarine surfaced some 95 miles north of Trinidad the next morning, with Moffett smothering her in shells until she disappeared.

From her report: 

Three days later, while still escorting Memphis, and again with the aid of aircraft, a sonar contact was regained and a submarine believed badly damaged by Moffett’s depth charges.

As DANFs notes, “In the dark and confusion of action, a friendly aircraft mistaking Moffett for the enemy made two strafing runs which caused minor damage. The stricken submarine was finally scuttled by her crew on 11 August; Moffett was credited with the kill.”

Throughout the action, Moffett’s gunners expended 28 star shells and 104 rounds of 5-inch common. She also suffered 13 men injured by blue-on-blue strafing.

From her report:

Then came a refit at Charleston followed by her most taxing convoy experience, this time in the North Atlantic.

Convoy NY‑78

On 25 March, designated TF 67, Moffett got underway from Pier 80 in the North River to join Convoy NY-78 (sometimes incorrectly seen as YN-78) as its sole destroyer and convoy commander. The “NY” convoy code denoted a New York-to-Britain slow convoy of which 57 transited between August 1943 and November 1943.

However, NY-78 would be very special indeed, and the Overlord landings depended on it.

USS Moffett (DD-362) underway at sea on 26 March 1944, leaving New York as the convoy boss of NY-78/TF-67. Note that she still carries four twin 5/38 low-angle gun mounts. 80-G-233588

The primary goal was to move 34 large (250 feet on average) railway car barges (or car floats) a type of vessel common in the Big Apple but rare and desperately needed for the logistics end of the D-Day landings, to Europe.

Workers from Arthur Tickle Engineering preparing “pickaback” barges for D-Day invasion, 1944. Source: National Archives

Capable of carrying 1,000 tons of deck cargo but only drawing 6 feet while doing it, these would be needed to move ammo and fuel into the landing beaches starting D+1.

A pickaback convoy heads out to the Narrows. National Archives.

These big barges, unlikely able to make the tow across the Atlantic in any sort of heavy seas, were specially modified into “Pickabacks” which meant lashing smaller composite barges taken up from coastal trade– including oil barges and wooden scows– to their decks, installing stronger cleats for the haul, reinforcing the hulls and decks via timber and concrete, making it all watertight by adding new covers and hatches– often replacing repurposed manhole covers– and welding on large skegs to cut down their tendency to yaw.

These Pickabacks took months to prepare, under the guidance of Capt. Edmond J. Moran, the scion of the NYC area’s go-to tugboat operation, Moran Towing. Work was done across a half-dozen Hudson area shipyards and terminals to rush the project to completion. Interestingly, since the barges were too large to lift via crane, the solution to make the Pickabacks was to install seacocks in the bottom of the railway car floats while in the bottom of a dry dock, open the dock, and allow the barge to submerge, float in the scows atop it, then close and slowly drain the dock, stacking the whole affair upon itself where it could then be lashed together.

From an August 1945 Popular Science piece published “Now it can be told” style:

Moffett’s point man would be the newly commissioned Buckley-class destroyer escort USS Marsh (DE-699) which was sailing on just her third Atlantic convoy. Her left and right arms would be Marsh’s sisters, USS Runnels (DE-793) and USS Tatum (DE-789), who were fresh off their shakedown and on their first convoy run. The Auk-class minesweeper USS Staff (AM-114)— destined to be the leading ship of the minesweeping group that led the invasion on D-Day– would also tag along.

A force of a dozen small 173-foot subchasers-– PCs 564, 565, 567, 568, 617, 618, 619, 1232, 1233, 1252, 1261, and 1262-– would accompany the force as a way to get them to Europe, where they would be desperately needed just off the surf line during the landings.

To tow the 34 Pickabacks, the convoy had a motley mix of two dozen tugs that would remain in Europe for Overlord. This included the large 205-foot Cherokee/Abnaki-class fleet tugs USS Kiowa (AT-72), USS Bannock (AT-81), USS Pinto (AT-90), USS Abnaki (AT-96), USS Alsea (AT-97), and USS Arikara (AT-98); the Texas-built 143-foot Admiralty tug HMS Emphatic (W 154), the smaller 143-foot Sotoyomo-class rescue tugs ATR-97, ATR-98, and ATR-99; the 165-foot wooden hulled ATR-4, ATR-13, and ATR-15; and 10 large 186-foot ocean-going Maritime Commission contracted V4-M-A1 tugs (Black Rock, Bodie Island, Farallon, Gay Head, Great Isaac, Hillsboro Inlet, Moose Peak, Sabine Pass, Sankaty Head, and Trinidad Head) owned by the WSA and operated by civilian mariners of Moran Towing. As with the barges, these craft would all be needed on D-Day both to beach the ammo barges and to tow the hundreds of massive concrete caissons as part of Operation Mulberry. Later, they towed damaged ships to Britain for salvage or repair.

To provide fuel for the short-legged flotilla, the old oiler USS Maumee (AO-2), which had been in mothballs before the war, was sent along. Too slow for fleet work at just 13 knots top speed, but that wouldn’t be a problem on NY-78.

Highlights distilled from Moffett’s March and April 1944 War Diaries.

Sound contacts were reported on almost every day at some point, requiring general quarters and investigation. The convoy stretched out over more than 10 miles, sometimes twice that much, leaving Moffat to order individual PCs to form clusters and smaller sub-convoys inside the group. Every night brought an order to darken ships and every morning brought the need to inspect the spiderweb of towlines and count noses.

A pickaback convoy depiction, via Aug 1945 Popular Science

So many lines bridles and towlines were lost that Maumee’s machine shop set to nearly round-the-clock work turning fathoms of 1 5/8-inch beaching gear wire rope and thimbles into new bridles. Stragglers were a fact of life.

On 27 March, Convoy UC-16, composed of empty fast-moving tankers and freighters headed back from Britain to pick up waiting cargos in New York, was sighted in the distance, speeding away.

On 30 March, a mysterious keg was spotted, bumping along the convoy route. Moffett deep-sixed it via 544 rounds of 20mm and 81 of 40mm. The lagging Pinto group reported a barge down by the stern.

April Fools Day brought a breakdown, of ATR-4, which was ordered to be taken in tow by ATR-15, which in turn broke down the next day.

3 April brought an open-ocean chase down of separated barges lost from Bannock’s tow.

4 April saw Moffett’s HFDF picking up German radio transmissions and the convoy standing by while HMS Queen Mary raced by later in the morning.

5 April saw Moffett investigate an abandoned life raft found adrift. Ordered to clear the derelict, the destroyer hit it with an impressive array of ordnance– 643 rounds of 20mm, 111 of 40mm, and a Mark VI depth charge– to no avail. As noted by her log, “Raft punctured but still afloat.”

6 April saw an all-day effort to save a sinking barge in the Pinto group, with Moffett sending a 14-man DC party to dewater the vessel via portable pumps. With the barge saved, the boat returning the DC crew to the destroyer flipped in rough seas, leading to a SAR operation that stretched into the dark but recovered everyone. The next day would not be so lucky, with two of her complement in a rubber raft crushed between the destroyer and ATR-97 in heavy seas during efforts to chase down two adrift barges. The bodies were buried at sea.

And so it continued, with the deck log reading increasingly dicey, and refueling efforts repeatedly canceled due to heavy seas. Likewise, more and more barges were breaking loose. While early on in the convoy it was news if one was adrift, twos and threes became standard by the 11th.

On 12 April, ATR-98 reported a one-foot hole in her engine room following a collision in heavy seas with Abnaki. Within 40 minutes the crew, unable to counteract the flooding, were abandoning ship. Within an hour, Moffett had proceeded to the scene of the sinking tug and recovered all 44 survivors, with no casualties.

On the 16th, the lead barge being towed by ATR-4 broke in two, requiring her to heave to in heavy seas and restring her entire tow group, with the assistance of a PC and Emphatic.

The 17th brought a confusing day that began with a stack fire on USS Staff, and a 14-hour running battle with phantom sonar contacts and perceived torpedo sign that earned 19 depth charges from Staff, PC-619, and Moffett:

By the afternoon of 18 April, land-based British planes were sighted. It was over. 

The next morning, the convoy dispersed as Maumee, all the remaining tugs and barges, along with PCs 1233, 1252, 1262, and 1263 made for Falmouth under Admiralty orders while Moffett and the remaining units made for Plymouth, capping a 25-day epic run. A 3,400nm trek that averaged just under six knots!

After transferring the survivors of ATR-98 ashore, Moffett had 48 hours to replenish her bunkers and storerooms, then shoved off and headed home on the 22nd via Milford Haven and Belfast.

As for the Normandy landings, at least 16 of the large NYC rail barges delivered were loaded and towed to the landing areas where they were beached at high tide at D-Day and allowed to dry out. They were unloaded by trucks alongside when dry and LCVPs when wet. As the Navy notes on its Operation Neptune history: “During the D+12 storm [which disrupted the Mulberry harbors] this reserve supply of ammunition proved very necessary.”

Original Caption: CPU 11-15-11 Date: Rec’d 14 June 1944 Taken By: CPU 11 Subject: Beach on the coast of France, showing debris and wreckage in the foreground. Casualty evacuation boats in readiness. The barge grounded, Landing craft and ships in the background. 80-G-252564

The tugs gave yeoman service off Normandy, with some of the civilian-manned V4s making as many as 10 shuttle trips carrying Mulberry components, often while sidestepping German E-boats, midget subs, fire from shore batteries, mines, and aircraft.

The humble Pinto and Arikara earned Navy Unit Commendations– rare citations for tugs– off France as part of Combat Salvage and Fire Fighting Unit Force “O,” clearing wrecks from the beach area reserved for the erection of the artificial harbors and taking damaging fire in the process. Many of these tugs would pivot to the Med to take part in the Dragoon Landings in August.

The mighty USS Pinto (ATF-90) motors up the Elizabeth River on October 17, 1944, following an overhaul at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard

The dozen 173-foot subchasers brought over in the convoy formed PC Squadron One and served as control craft for the waves of LCIs headed to the beaches on D-Day, where PC-1261 was sunk off Utah Beach by a German coastal battery 58 minutes before H-Hour.

Coming in close– skirting the surf line– the PCs traded fire with German pillboxes in an attempt to support the landings. They also pulled wounded from the water and, later that day, did the same with bodies. Then came a full month of picket duty off the beaches, intermingled with repulsing German air and boat attacks– PC-619 downed a Heinkel He 177 on D+4 and picked up its sole survivor. They shuttled senior officers and dispatches from England to Normandy, blew up floating mines with their 20mm guns, escorted coal barges from Newcastle to France, and PC-1262 even patrolled down the river Seine, escorting a load of potatoes to the emaciated citizens of Rouen. The vessels of PCRON1 went on to blockade the Channel Islands, fight it out with E-boats, rescue freezing survivors from the SS Leopoldville, and were among the first American ships in a German port during the war, sailing into Bremerhaven to occupy the port in May 1945.

While the vessels of Convoy NY-78 went on to great things, Moffett’s war was on the last few innings.

End Game

Moffett, aerial view, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, 13 June 1944 80-G-236743

Moffett, late war in Measure 32/3d camouflage scheme.

Moffett went on to ride shotgun on several late war convoys from the East Coast to the Med and back including UGS 48 (July 1944: Hampton Roads – Port Said), GUS 48 (Aug 1944: Port Said – Hampton Roads), UGS 55 (Sept. 1944: Hampton Roads – Port Said), GUS 55 (Oct 1944: Port Said – Hampton Roads), UGS 62 (Dec 1944: Hampton Roads – Gibraltar), UGS 71 (Jan. 1945: Hampton Roads – Southern France), and UGS 83 (March 1945: Hampton Roads – Gibraltar).

Of note, Moffett was typically chosen to carry the TF/Convoy commander on these runs, which would include over a dozen, usually newer, escorts and as many as 70 merchies. She had a reputation for good luck and success– plus space for a commodore.

These convoys were largely anti-climatic milk runs except for UGS 48 which was twice attacked by enemy aircraft including an ineffective night attack by German He 111s and a follow-up by Italian S.79 torpedo bombers of Gruppo Buscaglia-Faggioni, leaving a Liberty ship (MV Samsylarna) damaged.

Moffett’s diagram of the He 111 attack, which saw the German bombers come in at mast top level at 2 a.m., defeating the destroyer’s SC-type radar:

Moffett at the Boston Navy Yard, 12 September 1944. 19-N-70743

After UGS 83, Moffett made for Boston NSY in April 1945 to begin extended repairs.

Following VE-Day, she was towed to Charleston for an extensive refit that planned to beef up her AAA suite and replace her 5-inchers with newer models.

Moffett aerial view, in Hampton Roads, Virginia, 13 June 1945. 80-G-236748

Moffett at Charleston, South Carolina, 1 July 1945. 80-G-365146

However, she was still in the yard at VJ Day and this reconstruction was halted.

She decommissioned on 2 November 1945, spent 14 months in mothballs, and then was stricken and sold for scrap on 16 May 1947 to the Boston Metals Co. of Baltimore.

Moffett only received 2 battle stars for World War II service.

Epilogue

Few relics other than postcards and canceled postal stamps remain of Moffett.

Her War Diaries are digitized in the National Archives. 

The Navy has not used the name “Moffett” for a second warship, perhaps because they renamed the old NAS Sunnyvale in California to Moffett Field, a moniker that endures even after the Navy pulled out in 1994, turning it over to NASA.

Of her our greyhound’s sisters, class leader Porter was torpedoed and lost at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in 1942; Selfridge survived a torpedo in the night action at Vella Lavella, and Phelps was damaged by shore battery fire off Saipan in 1944. Like Moffett, none survived long after the war, and all were soon scrapped, made obsolete by newer Fletcher, Sumner, and Gearing-class destroyers.

Speaking of which, Moffett’s sixth skipper, Capt. Gil Richards– who was in command during the grueling multi-day battle with U-604 and the crazy NY-78 convoy– ended the war as the commander of the new Gearing-class tin can USS Kenneth D. Bailey (DD-713).

Postwar, in the summer of 1946, Richards was hospitalized at Bethesda Naval Hospital suffering from “the rigors of continuous sea duty,” and soon retired to civilian life. Moving to New Jersey, he died in 1983, aged 72. His civilian life was as successful as his Navy life, but his son noted, “His heart never left the U.S. Navy.”

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Sept. 25, 2024: Fearless Outpost

Posted on by One comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024: Fearless Outpost

Above we see the business end of the Surprise class three-masted canonnière de station, Zélée in her gleaming white tropical service livery, before 1915.

Some 110 years ago this week, this humble colonial gunboat stood up to a pair of German armored cruisers that outclassed her in every way, and in the end, forced them to retire empty-handed.

The Surprise class

Built for colonial service, the three sisters of the 680-ton Surprise class– Suprise, Décidée (Decided), and Zelee (Zealous)– were compact steam-powered gunboats/station ships, running just 184 feet overall length and 26 of beam with a mean draught of just over 10 feet.

They were one of the last designs by noted French naval architect and engineer Jacques-Augustin Normand, who built the country’s first steamship.

Composite construction, they were wooden framed with a hull of hardened steel plates sheathed in copper below the waterline. The hull was segmented via nine waterproof bulkheads. A small generator provided electric lighting topside and belowdecks as well as a powering a large searchlight atop the wheelhouse. Radio sets would be retrofitted later.

Using a pair of Niclausse boilers (Surprise had cylindrical boilers) to supply steam to a horizontal triple expansion engine of 900 horses, they had a maximum speed of 13.4 knots and a steaming radius, on 75 tons of mid-grade coal, of 2,700nm at 10 knots. They carried three masts and were rigged as a barkentine, reportedly able to make six knots under canvas to stretch that endurance.

Armament was a pair of Mle 1891 3.9″/45 guns, fore and aft with limited firing arcs, four Mle 1891 2.6″/50 9-pounders on the beam, and six M1885 37mm 1-pounder Hotchkiss rapid fire guns including one in the fighting tops of each mast and two on the bridge wings.

No shell hoists meant chain gangs to reload from an amidships below deck magazine. While torpedo tubes would have been ideal for these slow gunboats, there seems to have been no thought to adding them.

Crew would be a mix of six officers and 80-ish ratings including space for a small det of marines (Fusiliers marins), to be able to land a platoon-sized light infantry force to rough it up with the locals if needed. Speaking of the locals, in line with American and British overseas gunboats of the era, when deployed to the Far East these craft typically ran hybrid crews with most service and many deck rates recruited from Indochina and Polynesia, which had the side bonus of having pidgin translators among the complement.

Meet Zelee

Our gunboat was the second in French naval service to carry the name. The first was a trim 103-foot Chevrette-class corvette built at Toulon for the Napoleonic fleet and commissioned in 1812. Armed with a pair of 4-pounder cannon and 12-pounder carronades, she saw extensive service in the Spanish Civil War in 1823, was on the Madagascar Expedition in 1830, and later, after conversion to steam power in 1853, was used as a station ship in assorted French African colonies for a decade then, recalled to Lorient, spent another 20 years as an accommodation ship and powder hulk before she was finally disposed of in 1887 after a long 71-year career.

She is probably best known for taking part in Jules Dumont d’Urville’s second polar expedition to Antarctica together with the corvette Astrolabe, a successful four-year voyage that filled reams of books with new observations and charts. The report on the expedition (Voyage au pole sud et dans l’Océanie sur les corvettes l’Astrolabe et la Zélée exécuté par ordre du roi pendant les années 1837-1838-1839-1840) spans 10 volumes alone.

The expedition discovered what is known as Adélie Land, which endures as France’s Antarctic territory and base for their Dumont d’Urville Station. Zelee’s skipper on the voyage was LT (later VADM) Charles Hector Jacquinot, a noted French polar explorer in his own right who went on to be a big wheel in the Crimean War.

The Corvettes Astrolabe and Zélée in the ice, likely near the coast of Antarctica, 9 February 1838. By Auguste-Etienne-François Mayer c. 1850, via the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Our second Zelee was the third of her class and laid down at Arsenal de Rochefort in April 1898, built in the same slip that sister Décidée had just departed. Of note, Surprise was constructed by Normand at Le Havre and completed in 1896.

As completed, she originally carried a black hull. Her first of eight skippers was LT Louis Rémy Antoine Exelmans.

French gunboat Zélée, fitting out near the aviso Mésange, in 1899 at Rochefort.

Canonnière Zélée sur la Charente, 1900, soon after delivery.

Same as the above.

Quiet Antebellum Service

Soon after delivery, class leader Surprise was later joined by sisters Décidée and Zelee caught orders for the Far East.

Painted white and given a lot of leeway in appearance, they roamed, typically separately, from Indochina to China where they served on the Yangtze and as station ships in Nanchang, to Japan, New Caledonia, and Polynesia.

Décidée Saigon

French Canonnière de station Surprise, Haiphong, with canvas covering her decks and her laundry aloft. Surprise would later be moved to Africa, where she would remain until 1916. 

The gunboat Zélée in Hanavave Bay, Baie des Vierges, Fatu Hiva Island, 1910. Collection: The Marquesas Islands

Zelee while visiting Australia. Australian National Maritime Museum. Samuel J. Hood Studio ~ Object № 00035067

French Zélée gunboat Papeete Tahiti 

In December 1913, Lieutenant de Vaisseau Maxime Francois Emile Destremau (Ecole Navale 1892) arrived to take command of Zelee, then stationed in the backwater Tahitian capital of Papeete.

While ostensibly a “French” colony since 1880, at the time the little harbor only had 280 French residents along with over 350 British and Commonwealth, 215 Chinese, 100 Americans, 50 Japanese, and some 30 or so Germans as well as a few Greeks, Swedes, and Spaniards. The truth was you were far more likely at the time to hear English on the narrow palm-lined streets of Papeete than French.

The colony had big plans. It was even slated to receive, sometime in 1915, a station de téléphonie sans (TFS) wireless station. Until then, it had to rely on semi-regular mail services from France, typically a six-week trip at its most rapid.

As for Destremau, the 37-year-old lieutenant had seen over 20 years of sea service including on the avisoes Scorff and Eure, the cruiser Eclaireur, and the early submarines Narval, Gustave-Zéde and Pluviose. His mission in French Oceania consisted mainly of showing the Tricolor from island to island and doing the old “hearts and minds” thing that goes back to the Romans.

Destremau, who had spent his career largely at Toulon and Brest, seemed to enjoy his Pacific deployment, creeping his shallow-draft gunboat into atolls that rarely saw the Navy.

In a February 1914 letter home, related via Combats et batailles sur mer (Septembre 1914-Décembre 1914) Avec cinq cartes dressées par Claude Farrère et Paul Chack, Destremau wrote:

Since yesterday we have been sailing in a truly strange way. We have crossed a large lagoon of about sixty kilometers, of which there is no map and which is full of submerged rocks. You can distinguish them by the change in color of the water and you avoid them as best you can. After four hours of this exercise under a blazing sun, we are very happy to arrive at the anchorage, where I find a charming little village hidden in the coconut trees. As the Zélée had never been there, we were given a real ovation. A meeting on the water’s edge of the entire population in full dress; gifts of coconuts and chickens, and organization of songs for the evening. Ravishing choirs, extremely accurate voices, and harmonies of a truly astonishing modernism. Just ten men and ten women are enough to compose an ensemble in at least six parts, with solo calls, an ensemble in at least six parts, with solo calls, admirable rhythm, and measure!

Postcards exist of her idyllic time in Polynesia.

gunboat Zélée (left) and the armored cruiser Montcalm in Tahiti in 1914

Tahiti Papeete Harbor– Arrival of Australian and American Couriers, Zelee is in the center background, with a giant Tricolor

Tahiti. – Pirogues ornées, 14 Juillet 1914, et Zelee

War!

In early August 1914, the entire armada under the command of RADM Albert Louis Marie Huguet’s Division navale d’Extreme-Orient— a force whose area of operation spanned from the Bay of Bengal to the Yangtze to Noumea to Tahiti– was not very impressive and, worse, was thinly spread.

His flag was on the cruiser Montcalm (9,177 tons, 21 knots, 2×7.6″, 8×6.4″, circa 1902), then steaming to New Caledonia after a rare visit to Polynesia. Another old cruiser, Dupleix (7,432 tons, 20 knots, 8×6.4″, circa 1903), was in Chinese waters. The dispatch vessel Kersaint (1,276 tons, 16 knots, 1×5.5″, 5×3.9″, circa 1897) was laid up at Noumea but was soon to be rearmed. Décidée was in Saigon. And in Polynesia was Zelee.

That’s it.

When the news hit that France and Germany were at war on 6 August– three days after the fact– Zelee was visiting the island of Raiatea, about 150 miles west of Tahiti. Immediately, the 36-year-old artist Joseph Ange Léon Octave Morillot, a naval officer who had resigned his commission in 1906 while on Polynesian station to go native, paint local topless women, and smoke opium, presented himself to Destremau and voluntarily returned to duty as a reserve ensign.

Setting out for Papeete with the news and an extra officer, Zelee arrived on the 7th.

By that time the colony was in full panic mode, with the belief that the German Bussard-class unprotected cruisers SMS Geier and Cormoran (1900t, 15 knots, 8×4.1″/35 guns, 2 tt) were typically in Samoa, just a five-day steam away from Tahiti. As Tahiti was a coaling station for the French fleet, some 5,000 tons of good Cardiff coal was on hand, which would make a valuable prize indeed.

As far as coastal defenses at Tahiti, as early as 1880, the French Navy had built a fort equipped with nine muzzle-loading black powder cannons to protect the entrance to Papeete but it had fallen into disrepair, its garrison removed in 1905 and its guns dismounted. As noted, by 1914, “the artillery pieces were lying limply on the ground among the flowers and moss. The gun carriages, covered with climbing plants, were firmly secured by a tangle of perennial vines of the most beautiful effect. In short, the tropical forest, exuberant, had reclaimed its rights and buried the battery.”

The island’s Army garrison consisted of a Corsican lieutenant by the name of Lorenzi and 25 Troupes Coloniales. When the Tahitian gendarmes were mobilized, they added another 20 locals and a French adjutant. Soon the word got around and reservists stumbled forward until Lorenzi commanded a mixed force of 60 rifles, who were soon drilling 12 hours a day.

French reservists also come running. each of whom is assigned a post. From the bush, we see emerging, with long beards and tanned skin, Frenchmen steeped in the land of Tahiti and who have become more Maori than the Maoris themselves, men who live, love, and think in Tahitian. At first, they hesitate a little to speak the beautiful language of France, but very quickly they find it again in their heads the marching songs that they sang every day during the field service hikes, so hard under the tropical sun.

With the possibility that two German cruisers, capable of landing a 150-man force, could be inbound, and with the likelihood that Zelee could survive a gun battle with either, the decision was made to write off the gunboat and move most of her men and guns ashore to make a dedicated land-based defense.

Destremau had a small wardroom– Ensign 1c PTJ Barnaud as XO, Ensign LSM Barbier, Ensign RJ Charron, Midshipman H. Dyevre, Midshipman 2c JA Morier, and Asst. Surgeon (Medecin de 2e classe, Medecin-major) C. Hederer. Meanwhile, his crew numbered 90.

Using sweat, yardarm hoists, and jacks, the crew dismounted the stern 3.9-incher (for which there were only 38 shells), all four 2.6-inchers, and all six 37mm 1-pounder Hotchkiss guns. They left the forward 3.9 mount and 10 shells.

Rigging a line from the harbor to the top of the 100-meter hill overlooking it, a roadcrew was formed to slowly muscle up the five large guns to the top. Meanwhile, the six Hotchkiss guns were mounted on as many requisitioned Ford trucks from a local copra concern– primitive mobile artillery– led by Ensign Dyevre. Ensign Barnaud formed a group of 42 riflemen who, with Dyevre’s gun trucks, formed a mobile reserve.

Destremau (center, with cap) and his staff in Tahiti: Ensigns Barbier and Barnaud, midshipmen Dyèvre and Le Breton, colonial infantry LT Lorenzi.

One of the ship’s engineers formed a section of dispatch riders mounted on proffered bicycles. The signalers formed a series of semaphore stations at the top of the hill battery visible to the old fort 18 km to the east, and the end of the lagoon five km to the west. Bonfires were built to signal at night. Within days, telephone lines connected the whole affair. Two old bronze cannons were mounted at the hilltop semaphore station and Pic Rouge in the distance, ready to fire as signal guns. Gunners mined the channel markers, ready to blow when needed. Likewise, plans were made to burn the coal depot.

The colony’s resident Germans as well as the Teutonic members of the captured Walküre’s crew, were interned and moved to the island of Motu-Uta in the harbor. In deference to their neighbors, they were not placed under guard, simply left in their own tiny penal colony in the middle of paradise.

The painter Morillot, taking it upon himself to become a one-man recruiting officer, made daily trips to the island’s interior in search of warm bodies. Soon there were more volunteers than there were rifles or positions on the gun crews.

With the whole island in a state of tense pre-invasion alarm, on 12 August the British-built German Rhederei line cargo steamer Walküre (3932 GRT) appeared offshore. Loaded with a cargo of phosphates from Chile and headed to Australia, she was unaware of the state of war.

Ensign Barbier, racing to Zelee with a skeleton crew, managed to raise steam and, with 10 shells quickly returned to the gunboat by Dyevre for its sole remaining 3.9-incher, soon set off to pursue the German steamer.

With Dyevre leading the boarding crew, pistols in hand, Walküre was captured without a shot. Impounding the vessel– with the support of her mixed British and Russian crew– our gunboat and her prize returned to Papeete to the reported wild cheers of her colonists.

By 20 August, the colony was as ready as it was going to get, with the five large guns of the ersatz battery commanding the harbor and pass, trenches dug, observation posts manned, 150 armed if somewhat motley irregular infantry, and six 37mm gun trucks, all there was to do was wait.

They had a month to stew.

Enter Von Spee

While Geier and Cormoran never made it to Tahiti, Admiral Maximillian Von Spee’s two mightiest ships in the Pacific, the 11,400-ton twin armored cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, did.

Scharnhorst and her sister were very distinctive with their four large funnels.

With a mission to seize the port and its desperately needed coal supply, and with no Allied warships within several days of the isolated colony other than our tiny (and largely toothless Zelee), it should have been a cakewalk.

With each of the big German cruisers packing eight 8.2-inch and another six 5.9-inch guns, and able to put a battalion size landing force ashore, the sight of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau appearing like a phantom from the sea smoke just 2,000 meters off the reef at Papeete at 0630 on 22 September 1914 was a shock to Destremau.

The signal cannon fired and the phones rang. Soon, Papeete became a desert as its inhabitants, long ready to bug out, took to the interior.

Orders came quick.

Barbier was ordered to rush to Zelee with 10 men and light her boilers, to ram the German cruiser closest to the pass once she had enough steam. The coal yard was set alight. The channel beacons went up in a flash of light and smoke. A crew on Walküre rushed to open her seacocks and she soon began settling on the bottom of the harbor.

Ensign Charron, in charge of the battery, was ordered to hold his fire until small boats began to gather for a landing which was logical as the popguns wouldn’t have done much to the German cruisers but could play god with a cluster of packed whaleboats.

By 0740, after a 70-minute wait, after steaming slowly in three circles just off the reef, first Scharnhorst and then Gneisenau opened up on the town and as retribution for the billowing smoke from the prized coal yard and the sinking Walküre.

By 0800, the fire shifted to Zelee, whose funnel was making smoke.

By 0820, the wrecked gunboat was filling with water, Barbier and his men moving to abandon their little warship– the crew in the end finished the job of the Germans by opening Zelee’s water intakes to the harbor.

Some accounts list 14 shots of 8.2-inch and another 35 of 5.9-inch fired by the German cruisers by 0900, others put the total count higher to 80 shells. Von Spee, afraid the harbor could be mined, retired, his plan to fuel his ships with French coal spoiled. He would miss those irreplaceable shells at the Falklands in December.

Two residents of the colony, a Polynesian child and a Japanese expat, were killed as well as several injured.

Estimates that as much as half of Papeete was destroyed in the bombardment.

The bombardment of Papeete, capital of Tahiti, a French possession in the Pacific. Showing a panoramic view of Papeete, capital of Tahiti, after being shelled by the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. The numbers indicate: 1. German prisoners under an armed guard, after having been compelled to assist in clearing away the debris resulting from the bombardment. 2. The market where all perishable food (…?) 3. Ruins of the back premises of Messrs A B Donald Ltd., with the Roman Catholic Cathedral in the background and the signal station on the hill to the right. Supplement to the Auckland Weekly News, 22 October 1914, p.43. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections AWNS-19141022-43-01

Divers went down to Zelee just hours after the Germans steamed away, and recovered the ship’s tricolor. It was presented to Destremau.

German propagandists remembered the raid in spectacular fashion, complete with incoming fire from shore batteries and the ships coming in far closer to the harbor.

Die Kreuzer Scharnhorst and Gneisenau beschießen Papeete, die Hautpstadt von Tahiti, by Willy Moralt, via the Illustrierte Geschichte des Weltkrieges 1914.

Epilogue

Zelee would be partially salvaged in 1925 but remains a well-known dive site in the Tahiti area.

Her on-shore 3.9-inch gun is preserved at Bougainville Park in Papeete.

Sister Surprise would also be lost during the war, torpedoed by U-38 in December 1916 in Funchal on the island of Madeira.

Décidée survived the conflict and went to the breakers in 1922.

The French navy recycled Zelee’s name once again in 1924 on the 285-ton remorqueur-patrouilleur Zelee (ex-Lakeside) which served into 1950.

As for the German freighter Walküre, she was salvaged and repaired, then sold to an American company and would remain in service until 1925.

The painter Morillot hung up his uniform after the bombardment and returned to his painting, opium, and women, passing in 1931.

Denigrated by the governor general of Tahiti– who hid in a church during the bombardment while Destremau handled the defense– our gunboat skipper was ordered back to France to face an inquiry board. Given interim command of the destroyer Boutefeu while the board hemmed and hawed about meeting, Destremau died in Toulon of illness on 7 March 1915, aged but 39.

His decorations came posthumously.

He was cited in the order of the army nine months after passing (JO 9 Dec. 1915, p. 8.998):

Lieutenant Destremau, commanding the gunboat La Zélée and the troops in Papeete, was able, during the day of 22 September 1914, to take the most judicious measures to ensure the defense of the port of Papeete against the attack of the German cruisers Sharnorst and Gneisenau. Demonstrated in the conduct of the defense operations the greatest personal bravery and first-rate military qualities which resulted in preserving the port of Papeete and causing the enemy cruisers to move away.

After the war, he was awarded the Legion of Honor in March 1919.

A street in Papeete carries his name.

The salvaged flag from Zelee was maintained by Destremau’s family until 2014 when, on the 100th anniversary of the gunboat’s loss, it was returned to the French Navy who maintain it as a relic at the Papeete naval base.

The colony’s newest station ship/gunboat, the 262-foot Teriieroo a Teriierooiterai (P780) arrived at Papeete in May after a two-month transit from France.

The more things change… 

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday Sept. 18, 2024: Passing the Cup Around

Posted on by 3 comments

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024: Passing the Cup Around

Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) photo 2000-364-26

Above we see the business end of the Polish submarine Orzel while on the builder’s ways at NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde in Holland in 1937, showing her four-pack of forward 21.7 inch torpedo tubes.

Some 85 years ago this month the boat and her crew would be homeless and looking for some revenge.

The Polish submarine program

Left with only about 90 miles of coastline along the Baltic by the Versailles framers, the Polish Navy (KMW) for the 1920s was made up very simply of a half-dozen small (300-400 ton) ex-German torpedo boats, two slow ex-Russian gunboats, four flat-bottom FM-class German coastal minesweepers, and some shallow-draft river monitors.

Following a military alliance with France, it was decided to build a proper navy base, operate an near condemned French protected cruiser (ex-D’Entrecasteaux, laid down in 1894) as a stationary training ship, and start exploring options for more modern warships to include battleships, cruisers, destroyers and submarines with varying degrees of success.

Speaking to the final type, Warsaw cobbled together enough cash (and French-backed loans) by 1928 to buy a trio of new Normand-Fenaux-type (enlarged French Saphir class) minelayer submarines.

Trim little 1,250-ton boats that ran just 257 feet overall, they carried four bow tubes and a trainable twin tube atop the pressure hull along with the ability to carry and deploy 40 mines.

These three boats– Wilk (Wolf), Rys (Linx), and Zbik (Wildcat)– were delivered by the early 1930s from three different French yards (A C de la Loire Nantes, A C Augustin-Normand, and CNF) after significant delays and were never really successful, reportedly being noisy and prone to leaks.

Polish submarine Wilk visiting Stockholm in 1932 Fo37710C

However, the Wilks were the cradle of the Polish submarine force, and soon after the Poles in 1933 moved to order four larger submarines in two flights as a believed counter to German pocket battleships. After consulting French, British, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, and American firms for designs, the KMW went with the conjoined submission from NV Koninklijke Maatschappij De Schelde, Vlissingen and Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij.

The design was based on the one-off experimental Dutch Hr.Ms. O 16— a 1,200-ton/251-foot advanced ocean-going welded double-hulled design using high tensile St52 steel yielding a 330-foot depth rating and hydraulic surface controls while being capable of hitting 18 knots while carrying 8 torpedo tubes.

The Dutch submarine Hr.Ms. O 16 fitting out in late 1936. Note the masked 88mm gun forward of her sail. At the time of her commissioning, she was the largest submarine in the Dutch Navy. Sent to the Dutch East Indies in 1939, when war came with Japan two years later, she sank three Japanese troopships and damaged two others before she was sunk by a mine in December 1941. NIMH

The Polish boats would be larger (1,473 tons, 276 feet oal), faster (19.44 knots– capable of chasing down Russia’s Gangut-class battlewagons), and even more heavily armed with a full dozen tubes (4 bow/4 stern 550mm, and 2×2 external 533mm trainable) along with room to carry 20 steel fish.

Her plant used a pair of Dutch-licensed 6QD42 Sulzer diesel engines for surface running, another pair of Brown Boveri electric motors for subsurface, and two 100-cell batteries.

Sulzer diesel’s 2000-364-53

Big for a Baltic boat, she had a range of 7,000nm at 10 knots and could remain underway for 90-day combat patrols. The reason behind this was to allow the class the capability to conduct long-term combat operations without depending on their (few and easily seized/blockaded) bases and, to state the obvious, would allow these subs to range out of the Baltic and interdict enemy shipping (be they Russian or German) on the Atlantic in time of war.

The Poles, who had a military alliance with France at the time, went with the Wzor 1924V, which was the big 21.65-inch French STST 24V (683 pound TNT warhead, 3,300 yards @45 knots) torpedo for her in-pressure-hull tubes and, for her topside trainable tubes, the Wzor AB, a new 21-inch Whitehead steam torpedo (660-pound warhead, 3,300 yards at 47 knots) designed for use from the deck-mounted launchers of the British-made Polish Grom-class destroyers.

When it came to deck guns, whereas the Dutch O 16 had an 88mm DP gun and a twin 40mm AAA, the Orzel would go just a bit larger with a single low-angle 4.1-inch L/40 wz.36 Bofors forward in a revolving bubble-shaped mask in front of the sail and a twin Bofors atop the rear of the sail that could be lowered into a watertight shaft, augmented with a twin 13.2mm Hotchkiss heavy machine gun mount. The big Bofors had four watertight ready lockers capable of holding 21 shells between them while a magazine capable of storing another 100 rounds was located amidships under the auxiliary control room, with a chain gang passing shells forward during a prolonged surface engagement. The same magazine held 1,200 40mm shells and six boxes of 13.2mm ammo as well as small arms.

The Poles wanted four submarines and eventually ordered two, Orzel (Eagle) and Sep (Vulture) from the Dutch, with a second pair– Kuna (Marten) and Lasica (Weasel)– ordered in France to a slightly modified design (lighter steel and no deck gun) in late 1938 from AC Augustin Normand and AC de la Loire Nantes. The French pair saw work suspended on them in April 1939 and both would be destroyed on the slipways by the Germans during the war.

The cost for the planned two new Dutch-built subs was 21 million zlotych, a figure that would be satisfied in part (10 percent) by Polish agricultural products and raw materials sent to Holland, 15.44 million zlotych from the Polish government generated by bonds sold on the Warsaw Stock Exchange largely to French and British investors, and the balance, about 3.5 million zlotych, raised via a combination of public subscription into the Fundusz Obrony Morskiej (Maritime Defense Fund) to include schoolchildren’s campaigns and a 0.5 percent garnish on the pay of Polish Army and Navy’s officer and NCO corps.

As a side note, there was enough money left over from the subscription that the Polish Navy planned to order a class of 17 motor torpedo boats– one named after each of the country’s provinces– but the war intervened.

The Dutch thought the finished product was so nice that they ordered a follow-on pair of subs based on the Orzel design but with minor tweaks. The two boats, Hr.Ms. O 19 and O 20, ditched the masked deck gun design for a simpler standalone 88mm DP and reduced the number of torpedo tubes to add 10 vertical mine tubes along each side of the casing outside the pressure hull, each capable of carrying two mines. They were notably the first submarines equipped with working snorkels.

One of Orzel and Sep’s near sisters, Hr.Ms. O 20 seen entering Curacao in the Dutch West Indies in November 1939. Both O 19 and O 20 managed to escape the Germans in 1940 and sailed for the Allies during the war, being lost in 1941 and 1945, respectively. NIMH 2158_015360.

Meet Orzel

On 29 January 1936, the Polish Navy signed a contract with the Dutch submarine concern for the construction of two submarines to the modified O 16 design.

Our subject was the first of her class laid down, as Yard No. 205, at De Schelde, Vlissingen, on 14 August 1936. Her sister, Sep, was laid down three months later as Yard No. 196 at nearby Rotterdamsche Droogdok, Mij.

zoetwaterinstallatie desalination plants 2000-364-52

Orzel was launched on 15 January 1938, with 35-year-old Kmdr.ppor. (CDR) Henryk Kloczkowski, a former cadet of the Tsar’s Imperial Navy– and nephew of RADM Wacław Kloczkowski– who had graduated from the French submarine school (École de Navigation Sous-Marine) in Toulon, appointed as her first skipper.

15 January 1938. The Polish submarine ORP Orzel is being towed here by a tugboat from the shipyard to another location, after the launching festivities. On the forecastle the Dutch Chief Supervisor of the shipyard, Mr. Meerman. Saluting on the bridge the Polish naval officer (supervision for the construction kltz. Niemirski. NIMH 2000-364-34

17 October 1938, construction of the Polish submarine Sep at the Rotterdamsche Droogdok Maatschappij (RDM), showing her just after launch being pulled by a yard tug. NIMH 2158_072978

By late January 1939, she had finished her builder’s trials including torpedo tests in Den Helder and speed trials in Norwegian waters in the Oslofjord, then was handed over to her Polish crew in a ceremony held on 2 February.

Matka chrzestna okrętu podwodnego ORP “Orzeł” generałowa Jadwiga Sosnkowska (z kwiatami), kontradmirał Józef Świrski, poseł RP w Holandii Wacław Babiński i gen. Stanisław Kwaśniewski w czasie wodowania okrętu.

Feb 2 1939 Orzel commissioning plankowners at the Vlissingen yard canteen 2000-364-62

2 February 1939. The consecration of the Polish submarine ORP Orzel by the chief chaplain of the Polish miners in Limburg, Father Hoffman. The boat was christened by Mrs. Jadwiga Sosnkowska, wife of General Kazimierz Sosnkowski, who was head of the Committee for Matters of Armaments and Equipment (in the photo she is arranging the flowers). During WWII, Sosnkowski would become the CiC of the Polish military in exile before he was demoted over his protests about the Warsaw Home Army being left to rot in 1944. NIMH 2000-364-33

On 5 February, the newest Polish submarine left Vlissingen and headed into the Baltic for Gdynia, arriving there on the 7th to a welcoming crowd.

Polish submarine Orzel arriving home via Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe

It was there that a plaque was ceremonially unveiled, mounted on the ship’s conning tower, informing that the boat was built in part with public contributions from the FOM.

Sep joined her sister Orzel in Poland in April.

The sisters then spent the next several months on a series of shakedown cruises in the Baltic– there were clouds on the horizon.

War!

On 24 August 1939, two days after a speech from Hitler to his commanders all but saying war was inevitable with Poland, the Polish military went on alarm and began quietly mobilizing as the world slow-walked into the opening conflict of WWII over the next week.

Orzel spent that week checking and rechecking her systems, taking on a full load of torpedoes and shells, and provisioning. Her skipper was handed several sealed orders in different envelopes aligned with various plans, and some $9,000 in gold and Polish banknotes should he have to put to sea and refuel elsewhere.

By 0700 on 1 September, three hours after the start of the German invasion, Orzel left her pier and submerged in the Bay of Gdansk where she survived her first depth charging of the war that evening. Her orders, as part of the Polish Navy’s Worek Plan, were to watch for the old battlewagon KMS Schleswig-Holstein, should the pre-dreadnought leave Danzig, and put her on the bottom.

German battleship Schleswig-Holstein bombarding a Polish military transit depot at Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig, Sept 1939. Orzel was ordered to take her out if the opportunity arose. 

With Schleswig-Holstein staying put and after dodging several Kriegsmarine destroyers and being bombed several times by German aircraft while on the surface, and with a malfunctioning compressor, LT Kloczkowski decided on his own to abandon his patrol zone on the morning of 4 September and head to Swedish waters near Gotland. Claiming illness and signaling back and forth with naval command, Kloczkowski ordered his boat to Tallinn in neutral Estonia on the night of the 14th.

Once in Tallinn, on a 24-hour stay under the rules of war, the crew went ashore for baths, Kloczkowski to the hospital, and the malfunctioning compressor was sent off for local repair.

Well short of 24 hours, the Estonian gunboat Laine/Laene (ex-Russian Sputnik, 400 tons, two 75 mm L/50 Canet guns) came alongside Orzel and put a detachment of armed sailors aboard, informing the remaining officers and crew aboard that the sub was being interned.

Breakout

Orzel was untied and towed deeper into the Tallinn military port facility, flanked by two armed minelayers. Meanwhile, the Estonians seized and removed the boat’s maps, navigation log, and small arms before sealing its radio compartment.

Polish submarine Orzel at Tallinn’s military harbor. The 400-ton Estonian sidewheeler minelayers Suurop (1x 47mm gun) and Ristna, formerly the Russian Apostol Piotr and Apostol Paviel, are visible to the left. Eesti Meremuuseum MM F 7318.

The disarmament continued for the next two days with the Estonians impounding and removing Orzel’s deck gun breech, 14 of 20 torpedoes, and the shells from her magazine.

Having seen enough and unwilling to sit out the war in an Estonian internment camp, Orzel’s XO, Kpt.mar. (Lt.Cdr.) Jan Grudzinski, rallied the sub’s crew on the night of 17/18 September– 85 years ago today– and made a move to release themselves from custody.

Overpowering the two Estonian sailors on her quarterdeck and casting off at 0300 on 18 September, Orzel motored out on her quiet electrical suite until sentries on shore spotted her leaving the darkened harbor and opened fire with a 130mm coastal defense battery firing 14 shells blindly into the night. Sending the crew below, the Polish submarine submerged as soon as she had depth under her keel and headed towards the Finnish Aland Islands, with the Estonian Navy giving short and apparently half-hearted pursuit.

As for Poland’s four other submarines, sister Sep managed to make it to Swedish waters on 17 September along with the damaged submarines Rys (on the 18th) and Zbik (on the 25th) after the latter two had laid their mines. They were disarmed and interned first in Nynäshamn (Vaxholm) and then in Mariefred for the duration.

Polska ubaten ORP Sep interned in Nynäshamn, guarded by Pollux, Vedett Boat No. 52 (ex 1st class torpedo boat, b. 1909) in September 1939. Fo37714A

Only Wilk, having sown her mines, managed to skirt German dragnets then thread the Danish straits (Oresund) on 14/15 September and, once in the North Sea made for British waters.

With Orzel’s crew champing at the bit to fight rather than be interned again, and Polish exile forces in London advising that the Germans claimed her crew had killed the two Estonian sailors aboard, Grudzinski headed to Gotland as best she could without charts and put the two “resurrected” men (electrician Roland Kirikmaa and conscript sailor Boris Mahlstein) ashore in the sub’s dinghy at Östergarnsholm in Sweden on 21 September. Grudzinski had left the Estonians with $50 each, a bottle of liquor from the sub’s medicine locker, and a letter of commendation. They arranged to return home via plane before the week was out.

Orzel then turned back to sea and patrolled unsuccessfully for German ships over the next two weeks just off Oland. Lacking charts, she grounded twice during this period, sustaining some minor damage to her keel and the bow outer torpedo caps. This, coupled with chipped propeller blades and oil leaks, would seem to point to the logical move to opt for the quiet life in Sweden.

However, electing to follow in Wilk’s footsteps, Orzel then began heading West on 7 October.

The boat’s navigator, 24-year-old LT Marian Mokrski, his charts impounded, was left with only a dated German edition of the Baltic List of Lights and Fog Signals (Verzeichniss der Leuchtfeuer und Signalnstellen) and navigational tables (Nautische Tafeln). Using those, along with his personal knowledge of the Baltic Sea and its straits from previous passages (and apparently an eidetic memory), created three hand-drawn navigational charts covering the span from Leningrad, through the Strait of Oresund, and around Denmark via the Skagerrak into the North Sea. A cadet of the 1937 tranche (graduated 2nd in his class), he had previously been a sonar officer on the Wicher-class destroyer ORP Burza and had sailed on a nine-month exchange with the French on the training cruiser Jeanne D’Arc.

When they cleared Jutland and made it into the relative safety of the North Sea on 12 October, Grudzinski presented navigator Mokrski with the most valuable items on the boat– the last two cans of pineapple– and a hand-written commendation in front of the assembled crew.

Two days later, nearing the Isle of May, Orzel transmitted her recognition signals to the Admiralty and soon rendezvoused with the destroyer HMS Valorous who guided her ultimately to Dundee where Wilk was tied up undergoing repairs.

Free Polish Navy service

By December 1939, Wilk and Orzel had been rearmed with a mixture of French torpedoes and British 21-inchers in sleeved tubes, then received hull numbers (85-A for Orzel, 64-A for Wilk), picked up a few Lewis guns, and were placed under British orders by the Free Polish forces in London. As such, each sub had its crew augmented by an RN submarine force officer and two communications ratings for liaison purposes.

Orzel and Wilik in Roysth, 1940, LIFE William Vandivert

Orzel and Wilik in Roysth, 1940, LIFE William Vandivert

Orzel and Wilik in Roysth, 1940, LIFE William Vandivert

As part of the 2nd Submarine Flotilla, they were assigned to the tender HMS Forth.

Kpt.mar. Jan Grudziński, the skipper of the Polish Navy submarine ORP Orzeł seated in the boat’s fin in Scotland, 1940. IWM (HU 110081)

“Close-up of the conning tower of the Polish Navy submarine ORP Orzeł (Eagle) as she returns to her depot ship at Rosyth, 11 January 1940. Lieutenant Commander Jan Grudziński, the ship’s commander, is at the front on the right. Her pennant number (85A) has been obscured by the censor.” IWM (HU 76134)

“Gunners of the Polish Navy mine-laying submarine ORP Wilk (Wolf) manning a 100 mm Schneider 1917 gun in Rosyth, January 1940. Another submarine, ORP Orzeł (Eagle), can be seen alongside a British submarine depot ship in the background.” IWM (HU 128170)

Orzel sailed as part of the escort for Convoy ON 6 in late December 1939, then Convoy HN 6 in January 1940.

Sent out on her 2nd (1st Atlantic) War Patrol in February, she lurked off the coast of neutral Denmark for three uneventful weeks looking for German blockade runners heading into the Baltic and raiders headed out.

She was made a darling of the press, an emblem of Free Poland. 

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

Orzel in Roysth, Scotland LIFE photo by William Vandivert

She repeated the Danish search in March for her 3rd War Patrol with the same result, narrowly missing seizing the German transport Helene Russ (993 GRT) in the fog on the 11th of that month.

Then came her 4th War Patrol, departing the Firth of Forth on 3 April 1940 for the waters off Lillesand, Norway.

At the same time, as part of Operation Wesserübung, the German occupation of neutral Denmark and Norway, some 1,900 German troops were allocated to capture Bergen and Stavanger under RADM Hubert Schmundt’s Kriegschiffgruppe 3. One of the transports of 1. Seetransportstaffel– loaded with 330 soldiers and Luftwaffe personnel, six 2 cm FlaK 30 and four 10.5 cm FlaK 38 anti-aircraft guns, 73 horses, 71 vehicles and 292 tons of provisions, animal feed, fuel, and ammunition– was the requisitioned Hamburg Süd freighter MS Rio de Janeiro (5177 grt).

Built by Bremer Vulkan as Santa Ines in 1914, Rio de Janeiro sailed originally out of Stettin on runs to South America and had survived the Great War because she was interned in Valparaiso for the duration, sold to Hamburg Süd by the British in 1921. Finding herself in Argentine waters in 1939 when WWII started, she only made it back to Hamburg in January 1940 by the skin of her teeth through the Royal Navy blockade– just to be impounded by the Kriegsmarine for what would turn out to be a one-way trip to Norway.

Off Lillesand on the morning of 8 April, Orzel and Rio de Janeiro bumped into each other.

From Admiralty logs, via Uboat.net: 

0945A/8, Sighted a suspicious merchant vessel to the south. Closed to investigate. The vessel was seen to fly no ensign and was proceeding on a course of 240°. She was high in the water indicating very little cargo.

1100A/8, Closed enough to read the ships name which was Rio de Janeiro with place of registration being Hamburg.

1110A/8, Surfaced and signaled the vessel to stop which she did.

1112A/8, Ordered the vessel to sent a boat. There appeared to be very little movement on board so fired warning shots with the Lewis guns which unfortunately was the only armament available as the deck gun is still inoperative.

1120A/8, Ordered the vessel to abandon ship in 15 minutes.

1130A/8, A boat was lowered but it made very little attempt to close Orzel. So ordered the vessel once more to abandon ship and that they had 5 minutes left to do so before a torpedo would be fired.

1135A/8, Sighted a Norwegian motor boat approaching. There was still no sign of movement on board the merchant vessel.

1145A/8, Fired a torpedo while the Norwegian motorboat was still clear. a slight explosion was seen and the vessel heeled. She was still 1.8 nautical miles outside territorial waters.

1150A/8, Dived. The vessel showed no signs of sinking. More boats were seen to be lowered.

1155A/8, Sighted a Norwegian aircraft approaching. Orzel circled underwater to give the enemy crew time to pull clear before finishing off the ship with a second torpedo which blew up to ship on hitting.

About 180 Germans who survived the Rio de Janeiro sinking, were rescued by local vessels and landed at Lillesand and Kristiansand. The waterlogged and very much uniformed Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe troops freely told the Norwegians that came to their aid that they were bound for Bergen on invitation from the King’s government. The intel made its way to the Norwegian government where it was met with skepticism.

Likewise, Orzel, who came back to inspect the wreckage and found expired German soldiers adrift on the waves, reported the incident back to London.

Ordered to a different patrol zone and with the German invasion of Norway on in full force, Orzel on the 10th tangled with the German auxiliary patrol vessel V 705/ex-Carsten (258 GRT) in the Skagerrak without either side coming away damaged. She then spent the 12th through the 15th dodging a series of German bombs dropped on her while on the surface and depth charges while submerged, logging 111 ash cans and 20 bombs.

She ended her 4th patrol at Rosyth on the 19th.

“Close-up of the conning tower of the Polish Navy submarine ORP Orzeł (Eagle) as she returns to her depot ship at Rosyth after taking part in operations off Norway during which she accounted for two enemy transport ships, 19 April 1940.” IWM (HU 76132)

Her 5th War Patrol began just a week later, sent back to Norwegian waters. Unsuccessful, she returned to Rosyth on 11 May.

Orzel’s 6th Patrol, starting 23 May, would be her last. She failed to confirm receipt of signals from England on 1 June, was listed as overdue from 8 June, and feared lost on 11 June.

Her 60-man crew, along with three RN submariners– LT Keith D’Ombrain Nott, Radio Operator Walter Fordyce Green, and Telegraph Operator Leslie William Jones– are still on patrol.

Epilogue

The Cold War-era Polish Navy recycled Orzel’s name for a pre-owned Soviet-built Project 613 (Whiskey class) submarine (292, ex-Soviet S-265) that served from 1962 through 1983, and for a Project 877E (Kilo class) submarine (291) that has been in service since 1986. The latter is one of the only Warsaw Pact era subs still operational, the oldest Kilo-class submarine in active service, and the only operational submarine in the Polish Navy, having spent most of the past decade in a series of overhauls and updates.

In 2016, prewar Dutch 1:50 scale builder’s sheets for the original Orzel were restored at the Polish Navy Museum in Gdynia.

The site also has several Orzel-related exhibits including models, the Bofors guns of her sister Sep, and one of Grudzinski’s sailor’s books.

Polish Navy Museum relics of Orzel and Sep

The Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London, home to thousands of relics from the old Free Polish days, has several Orzel items including LT Mokrski’s hand-drawn escape charts from the 1939 Baltic breakout and her builder’s model from De Schelde.

Model of ORP Orzel presented by her Dutch constructors De Schelde 1938 PISM

Mokrski chart via PISM

Mokrski’s feat, one that can be admired by any mariner, has become a navigational exercise at the Polish Naval Academy thanks to a cadet in 2021 who painstakingly recreated his chart. 

Since 1942 when the Polish government in exile issued its own stamps, there have been dozens of pieces of philately with Orzel appearing on them.

Similarly, she is remembered in maritime art.

1940 ORP Orzel vs Rio Janeiro – Gregorz Nawrocki

1940 Polish submarine Orzel – Grzegorz Nawrocki

Polish submarine ORP Orzeł 8 .04.1940

She is also remembered in a variety of scale models, one of which has sat on my desk for years.

DeAgostini Atlas 1:350 scale Orzel

At least two Polish-language films, one in 1958 and another in 2022, have been produced about our subject with the first having the benefit of Orzel’s sister, Sep, standing in as a submarine double, which was odd because the latter by that time had her original Bofors gun replaced by a Soviet model.

Monuments to Orzel exist at Lillesand (the site of the Rio de Janeiro sinking), Tallin at the site of the Estonian Maritime Museum, and Gdynia. The two overseas posts are often visited by Polish naval attaches to lay wreaths and pay respects.

The broken hull of Rio de Janeiro was discovered off Norway in 2016.

As for the wreck of Orzel, she has been repeatedly searched for with the SANTI Finding the Eagle (Santi Odnaleźć Orła) project mounting no less than 10 expeditions since 2014, chasing down leads. How she met her final end is unknown. 

Her plank owner commander, the controversial LCDR Henryk Kloczkowski, left marooned in Estonia after Orzel escaped into the Baltic, and was arrested by the NKVD when the Soviets illegally occupied Tallinn in the summer of 1940.

Escaping the sort of final march that most other Polish officers suffered in Soviet captivity, Kloczkowski managed to attach himself in 1941 to Gen. Władysław Anders’ Polish Army in the East. Once this force was transferred to the British via the Caspian Sea and Iran in 1942, Kloczkowski was summoned to London to be brought before the Polish Maritime Court on charges over his actions on Orzel in September 1939. Demoted to the rank of sailor and given a four-year prison sentence, the latter was suspended so he could sail out on a series of American Liberty ships on dangerous Atlantic convoys. Surviving the war, he settled in Portsmouth, where he passed in 1962.

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, 11 September 2024: You Have to Go Out…

Posted on by 3 comments

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, 11 September 2024: You Have to Go Out…

USCG Photo #: 16079-A Photographer: J. N. Heuisy

Above we see a member of the 35 so-called “Buck and a Quarter” Active-class Coast Guard cutters rushed into completion to deal with bootleggers during Prohibition, the USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) as she appeared in 1927 in her original “rum-buster” haze gray configuration. Don’t let the bone in her teeth fool you, she is probably just making revolutions for 10 knots– her designed top speed.

These choppy little 125-foot gunboats were designed to serve as subchasers in times of war and Jackson, along with her sister Bedloe, did their part during the conflict, atop an unforgiving sea, to the bitter end.

The 125s

These cutters were intended for trailing the slow, booze-hauling “Blacks” mother ships of “Rum Row” along the outer line of patrol during Prohibition.

Constructed for $63,173 each, they originally had a pair of 6-cylinder 150hp Superior or Winton diesel engines that allowed them a stately speed of 10 knots, max, but allowed a 4,000 nm, theoretically Atlantic-crossing range– an outstanding benefit for such a small craft.

While slow, this was deemed at first adequate as most of the Blacks were cheapy acquired and nearly condemned old coasters and fishing schooners salvaged from backwater ports around New England and the Maritimes for their shady last hurrah. 

For armament, they carried a single 3″/23 cal deck gun for warning shots– dated even for the 1920s– a Lewis gun or two for serious use, and a small arms locker that included everything from Tommy guns to .38s. In a time of conflict, they could tote listening gear and depth charge racks left over from the Great War, but we’ll get to that later.

Taking advantage of one big contract issued on 26 May 1926, the class were all built within 12 months by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden, New Jersey (although often listed as “American Brown Boveri” due to their owners at the time, the Swiss Brown Boveri corporation).

The class was named in honor of former historic cutters from the Coast Guard and its preceding Lighthouse Service, Revenue Marine, and Revenue Cutter Services.

Meet Bedloe

Commissioned 25 July 1927 as USCGC Antietam (WPC-128) after a circa 1864 Revenue Cutter Service centerboard schooner of the same name that was a nod to the pivotal Maryland Civil War battle, this hardy 125-footer was first stationed in Boston under the 1st CG District where she served for eight years, accomplishing her hallmark law enforcement and SAR duties but also breaking light ice when needed.

The USCG sent no less than 11 of the first 125s to Boston, where they were desperately needed to parol the New England coastline. Besides Antietam, they included USCGC Active (WPC-125), Agassiz (WPC-126), Alert (WPC-127), Bonham (WPC-129), Dix (WPC-136), Faunce (WPC-138), Fredrick Lee (WPC-139), Harriet Lane (WPC-141), General Greene (WPC-140), and Jackson (WPC-142).

These new cutters were based at the Charleston Navy Yard and arrived in a haze-gray livery, built to take the “Rum War” to the bootleggers.

Five 125-foot cutters– likley including Antietam– at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.

Once the Volstead Act was repealed, the 125s got a more regal peacetime USCG white and buff appearance.

Cutter Antietam in the Boston area, likely during a summer regatta around 1930. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection 08_06_004565.

USCGC Antietam, later Bedloe in 1930, likely in the Boston area. USCG Photo.

With cutters needed on the Great Lakes and the downturn in cutter tempo that accompanied the end of Prohibition, Antietam transferred to Milwaukee in May 1935, a station that typically meant a winter lay-up once the lakes froze over.

Of note, on 1 December 1937, Antietam was used as a dive platform for a famous deep dive in Lake Michigan by Max Gene Nohl that set the world’s then-deep dive record of 420 feet. Nohl, using a self-contained suit with a heliox (helium/oxygen) breathing mixture pioneered by what would become DESCO, had earlier made history from the cutter’s deck the previous April when she hosted the first live underwater broadcast to a national audience by WTMJ over the NBC-Blue network.

On 10 April 1937, Max Nohl (shown in the dive suit) along with John Craig made a dive on the shipwreck Norland to perform another early test of the newly designed diving suit in conjunction with testing the helium-oxygen mixture that Dr. End and Max had been working on. The dive took place off the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Antietam (note the “A” on her whaler) about five miles out from Milwaukee’s breakwater, via the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Between 1939 and 1940, most of the 125s in the Coast Guard’s inventory had their often cranky original diesels replaced by new General Motors 268-As. Rated for 600 hp, they were capable of breaking 14 knots (vs the designed 10) in still seas. However, the radius dropped down to 2,500nm @ 12 knots and 3,500 @ 8.

Then came WWII in Europe and the need for the Neutrality Patrol. This was long before FDR’s 1 November 1941 Executive Order 8929 that transferred the Coast Guard to the Navy Department.

With the Navy short on hulls, Antietam was pulled from her Wisconsin home and ordered to Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1940. There, her armament was beefed up at the Tietjen & Lang yard to include stern depth charge racks and the capacity to carry 10 cans. To acknowledge the upgrade, in February 1942, the 125s were redesignated from WPC (Coast Guard patrol craft) to WSC (Coast Guard sub chaser.)

Assigned to the EASTSEAFRON (Eastern Sea Frontier), Antietam was stationed out of Stapleton, Staten Island, where she saw service as a coastwise convoy escort along the eastern seaboard. It was in this duty that she proved a godsend to those souls on the sea and was involved in several rescues including that of the unescorted Gulf Oil tanker SS Gulftrade (6,776 tons) after she had been sunk by U-588 (Victor Vogel). Antietam pulled 16 Gulftrade survivors out of the ocean on 9 March 1942.

It was around this period that our cutter would be further up-armed with a pair of 20mm/70 Mk 4 Oerlikon AAA guns, a Mousetrap Mk 20 ASWRL, swap out their goofy little 3″/23 for a 40mm Bofors single Mk 1, and pick up a SO-model surface search radar set. So equipped, they had become subchasers in reality rather than just names.

The 125-foot Coast Guard Cutter Cuyahoga ready to depart from the Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Md., Feb. 11, 1945. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Note her 40mm Bofors crowding her bow. By mid-war Antietam and her sisters had a similar appearance.

As the Navy was looking to use the name “Antietam” for a new Essex-class fleet carrier (CV-36) that was under construction at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, our patrol boat was unceremoniously renamed USCGC Bedloe on 1 June 1943. Shortly after, she was dispatched to Navy Section Base (NSB) Morehead City, North Carolina, to join the Chesapeake Escort Group (T.G. 02.5).

The AOR of TG 02.5, as seen on the cover of its war diary

Morehead City served as the link in the coastal escort chain between Norfolk and Charleston and its vessels– a mix of auxiliary motor minesweepers (YMS), miscellaneous Yard Patrol craft (YPs), random patrol yachts such as USS Cymophane (PYc-26), a handful of 110-foot patrol boats (PC) and subchasers (SC), augmented by a dozen Coast Guard 83 footer “Jeeps of the Deep”— was a motley assortment to say the least. A couple of 97-foot converted trawler hulled coastal minesweepers, USS Kestrel (AMc-5) and USS Advance (AMc-63) puttered around on sweep duties just in case the Germans laid a few eggs.

Antietam/Bedloe, and her sister Jackson, were about the brawniest vessels the Morehead City group had at its disposal.

USCGC Bedloe, probably 1944. Note her stern depth charges and SO radar set. USCG Photo #: A-8125.

Meet Jackson

Repeating the name of one of the 13 circa 1830s Morris-Taney class 73-foot topsail schooners ordered for the service USCGC Jackson (WPC-142) commissioned 14 March 1927. Like her sister Antietam/Bedloe, she was immediately assigned to Boston.

Four 125-foot cutters at Charleston Navy Yard Boston late 1920s including, from the outside, USCGC Fredrick Lee, General Green, and Jackson. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection.

Like Antietam, Jackson painted over her haze grey for a more Coastie white and buff scheme post-Prohibition.

A black and white photograph of the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson passing through the Cape Cod Canal on the day of the Canal Bridge Opening, August 15, 1935. Nina Heald Webber Cape Cod Canal collection. MS028.04.022.005

Reassigned in the late 1930s to U.S. Coast Guard Stations Rochester and Greenport, New York in the Great Lakes, Neutrality Patrol work saw her armed and assigned to Norfolk on 1 July 1941 for anti-submarine patrol and coastal escort duty.

This typically boiled down to escorting one or two merchies at a time along cleared (for mines) routes at speeds hovering around 10 knots. Some faster vessels took their chances and ran the coastline on their own which didn’t always work.

One such instance was the unescorted and unarmed tanker SS Tiger (5,992 tons) which on April Fool’s Day 1942 caught a torpedo from U-754 (Hans Oestermann) just as she reduced speed and signaled with blinkers to pick up a pilot off Cape Henry, Virginia. Her complement taken off by the Yippee boat USS YP-52, Jackson and the tug Relief brought a salvage crew by the listing tanker to attempt to tow it to Norfolk but the hulk was uncooperative and sank in the Chesapeake.

On 20 July 1944, Jackson was made part of Task Group 02.5, joining sister Antietam/Bedloe.

Then came…

SS George Ade

An EC2-S-C1 break bulk cargo carrier, SS George Ade (7176 tons) was built by Florida-based J. A. Jones in 1944. Based out of Panama City, while carrying a mixed load of cotton, steel, and machinery from Mobile to New York, the brand new Liberty ship was unescorted (!) and steaming on a non-evasive course (!!) off Cape Hatteras when she came across by the Schnorchel-equipped Type IXC U-518 (Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann) on 12 September 1944.

Hit by a Gnat that destroyed her rudder and flooded the shaft alley, she was effectively dead in the water. Her Naval Armed Guard fired a few rounds in U-518’s direction, keeping the boat away but she was a sitting duck.

The Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944

Four days before George Ade was torpedoed, Commander Gulf Sea Frontier issued an advisory that a tropical hurricane centered east of the Leeward Islands was moving northwest at 10 knots. Aircraft recon on 11 September found a system with a radius of 150 miles and warnings “This is a large and severe storm” were flashed.

It would grow into what we today would deem a Category-4 monster.

Guantanamo to New York Convoy GN-156 on 12 September came across the storm’s periphery and logged 47-knot winds, later upping to over 65 which scattered the convoy although no casualties were reported.

On the night of 12 September, the refrigerated stores ship USS Hyades (AF-28), escorted by the Somers-class destroyer USS Warrington (DD-383) only two days out of Norfolk bound for Trinidad, encountered the hurricane between West Palm Beach and the Bahamas as the storm moved North.

USS Warrington (DD-383), photographed by Navy Blimp ZP-12, 9 August 1944. Just five weeks after this image was snapped, the destroyer would be at the bottom of the Atlantic. 80-G-282673

As noted by DANFS:

Later that evening, the storm forced the destroyer to heave to while Hyades continued on her way alone. Keeping wind and sea on her port bow, Warrington rode relatively well through most of the night. Wind and seas, however, continued to build during the early morning hours of the 13th. Warrington began to lose headway and, as a result, started to ship water through the vents to her engineering spaces.

The water rushing into her vents caused a loss of electrical power which set off a chain reaction. Her main engines lost power, and her steering engine and mechanism went out. She wallowed there in the trough of the swells-continuing to ship water. She regained headway briefly and turned upwind, while her radiomen desperately, but fruitlessly, tried to raise Hyades. Finally, she resorted to a plain-language distress call to any ship or shore station. By noon on the 13th, it was apparent that Warrington’s crewmen could not win the struggle to save their ship, and the order went out to prepare to abandon ship. By 1250, her crew had left Warrington; and she went down almost immediately.

From Warrington’s War History:

A prolonged search by Hyades, Frost (DE-144), Huse (DE-145), Inch (DE-146), Snowden (DE-246), Swasey (DE-248), Woodson (DE-359), Johnnie Hutchins (DE-360), ATR-9, and ATR-62 rescued only 73 men of the destroyer’s 321 member watch bill– and these were spread out for 98 miles from the destroyer’s last position!

Coordinated by the jeep carrier USS Croatan, whose escorting tin cans did a lot of the work in pulling men from the water, the group commander signaled on 14 September, “Sharks very active. Am making every effort to locate and recover living before dark as those so far rescued are very weak.”

Further north, New York to Guantanamo Convoy NG-458, with 15 tankers and 17 freighters escorted by two frigates and a few PCs and YMSs, encountered the unnamed hurricane for 18 hours across the 12th and 13th, and reported: “winds estimated 130-150 knots and seas 50-60 feet.” The COMEASTSEAFRON War Diary for the period notes, “It was impossible for a person to remain exposed to the wind because the tremendous force of driving spray was unbearably painful. Visibility was nil, and all ships and escorts were widely scattered.”

One man, LT North Oberlin of USS PC-1210, was swept overboard “and undoubtedly drowned.”

Another small escort, PC-1217, had her bulkhead plates buckled and several compartments flooded– including her radio shack. Her communications knocked out and long missing from the rest of the convoy, she limped into Mayport alone on the 16th– self-resurrecting from among the missing thought dead.

One ship that never arrived in port was the 136-foot baby minesweeper USS YMS-409, which foundered and sank, taking her entire crew of 33 to the bottom.

Photo from the collection of LT(jg) Bernard Alexander Kenner who served on board YMS-409. He departed a few days before the ship left port and sank off Cape Hatteras. He kept this photo for over 61 years along with a list of his former crew mates who perished, via Navsource.

Further up the coast, the USCG’s Vineyard Sound lightship (LS-73), anchored before the shallows off Cuttyhunk, Massachusetts, was also claimed by the storm, taking her entire crew.

The 123-foot United States Lightvessel 73 (LV 73 / WAL-503) on her Vineyard Sound station where she served from 1924 through 1944. On 14 September 1944, she was carried off station during a hurricane and sank with the loss of all hands. USCG photo

…Back at the George Ade

Late on the afternoon of 12 September, some 14 hours after the attack by U-518 that left her dead in the water, the salvage ship USS Escape (ARS 6), escorted by our previously mentioned Bedloe and Jackson, arrived and took her in tow.

Struggling against the ever-increasing seas with the hurricane inbound, Ade and Escape hove to on 14 September some 12 miles off Bodie Island, North Carolina in 13 fathoms of water, where they reported 100-knot winds and 50-foot seas. Ade suffered one of her anchors, two lifeboats, and four rafts carried away.

However, the tow’s escorts, Bedloe and Jackson, had vanished.

At around 1030 on 14 September, Jackson was struck hard by seas while laid her over her port side, a roll from which the 125-footer could not recover. Given the order to abandon ship, her complement too to four life rafts, which all swamped/flipped and sank within 30 minutes. This left her crew afloat and on their own…in a hurricane.

Bedloe, meanwhile, was entirely unaware of the disaster with her nearby sister due to the strong seas and nil visibility. At around 1300 local, she suffered three severe rolls to port, the last of which left her that way until she submerged three minutes later. Of her crew, 29 were able to abandon ship on three life rafts.

Rescue

With Bedloe and Jackson failing to report to shore following the storm, and George Ade and Escape confirming their separation from the escorts, the 5th Naval District launched an air search beginning with four Coast Guard-operated OS2U3 Kinfishers from CGAS Elizabeth City taking to the air at first light on the morning of the 16th. At this point, the survivors of Bedloe and Jackson had been on the sea for two days.

The first group of men, the three waterlogged rafts from Bedloe with but just 21 remaining men, were spotted 10 miles off Cape Hatteras. Three of the Kingfishers landed and taxied to the rafts to give aid to the injured.

Pilots and radio operators knocked off their shoes and then dove into the water to help pull semi-conscious men onto the wings of the bobbing planes.

Eight of the Bedloe’s crew had perished over the night of the 15th from a mixture of injuries and exposure. Two more would die shortly after rescue.

A Navy blimp dropped emergency rations.

Navy airship hovers over two OS2Us and a CG launch with picked-up survivors of the USCGC Bedloe, 16 September. USN ZP24-2906

With the Kingfishers on hand as a guide, a Coast Guard 30-foot motor lifeboat, CG-30340, from the Oregon Inlet Lifeboat Station, 15 miles away, raced to the scene and brought the survivors ashore.

BM1 William W. McCreedy from the Oregon inlet Lifeboat Station, who assisted in the rescue of the survivors from the Bedloe said the first thing he saw was a man doubled up in a small raft, his eyes resembling “a couple of blue dots in a beefsteak.”

“He flashed a beautiful smile that couldn’t be missed,” McCreedy continued. “I felt I had looked at something a man sees once in a lifetime — sort of thought I had come to the edge of heaven. Then, as though his last will to fight had been lost when he saw us, he jumped into the water. The radioman grabbed him and held him in the raft. I went overboard to help and the three of us dragged the raft down. The unconscious man’s foot was twisted in the lines, but I cut him free and we put him in the boat.” Just before reaching shore, the man reached, stroked McCreedy’s face and mumbled “We made it.” Then he died.

Once back at Oregon Inlet, a Coast Guard PBM with a doctor aboard flew the men to Norfolk for treatment.

Original caption: “Coast Guard survivors of hurricane disaster recover in Norfolk hospital: eight of the 12 survivors of the hurricane sinking of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bedloe are shown recovering in the naval hospital at Norfolk, Virginia. They were rescued by Coast Guard air and seacraft after clinging to life rafts for more than 50 hours in shark-invested [sic] Waters 15 miles off the Virginia coast. All suffered from shock and exposure, as well as lashing by the stingers of ‘Portuguese men-of-war.’ the cutter Bedloe was sunk at the height of the hurricane on Thursday, about the time that the Coast Guard Cutter Jackson went down in the same area. In all, 19 were rescued and 49 officers and enlisted men are missing in the twin disaster. In this group, left to right, are Coast Guardsmen Jerry VanDerPuy, seaman, first class, of. . . .Sheboygan, Wisconsin; John Kissinger, soundman, third class, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; Robert Greeno, seaman first class, of Monroe, Michigan; Robert Hearst, seaman first class, of Latonia, Kentucky; Joseph Martzen, soundman second class, of. . . .McAdoo, Pennsylvania.; Michael J. Cusono, radioman third class, of Schenectady, NY, Pearcy C. Poole, chief radioman of Lakewood, N.J. and Joseph Ondrovik, coxswain of Bellville, Michigan.” Date: 14 September 1944. USCG Photo 1248 Photographer: “Kendall”, U.S. Coast Guard photo.

The search for the floating Jackson survivors continued into the night of the 16th, with Navy Blimp K-20 following up on a report from a Navy SB2C Helldiver that two groups of men were sighted in the water 18 miles offshore. USS Inflict (AM-251), on her shakedown cruise between Charleston and Norfolk, joined the rescue.

Aided by dropped water lights from the aircraft, whaleboats from the minesweeper recovered 12 men who had been adrift for over 60 hours, hounded by sharks and Portuguese men-of-war. Of these, the ship’s pharmacist’s mate found one man had a gangrene infection, another appendicitis, a third a broken leg, and a fourth a dislocated shoulder and cracked ribs, while all suffered necrotic salt water ulcers, hypothermia, and general fatigue.

Pushing her twin ALCO diesels to their max to break 14 knots, Inflict made Norfolk on the morning of the 17th and her charges were rushed to the Naval Hospital.

Later that day, USS PC-1245 recovered the floating bodies of four from Bedloe.

The air and naval search for the cutters’ lost members continued until the evening of the 18th. No less than 116 planes and six blimps had been aloft in the search.

In all, 22 men from Bedloe are still marked “missing” while another four who were recovered died. Of Jackson’s crew, which spent more time in the sea– almost all of it treading water– 21 are still somewhere under the waves.

This bill from Poseidon was paid, along with the 251 souls from the destroyer Warrington, LT Oberlin of PC-1210, the 33 minemen aboard YMS-409, and a dozen lightkeepers on LV-73.

Epilogue

Separate courts of inquiry conducted by ComFive and COMEASTSEAFRON inquired into the loss of Bedloe and Jackson:

Coast Guard Historian William H. Thiesen suspected Jackson succumbed to waves pushed ahead of the storm’s eyewall, while Bedloe was sunk by rogue waves formed on the backside of the eyewall, writing in a 2019 Proceedings article that, “It is possible that both cutters were victims of a phenomenon called the ‘three sisters,’ a series of rogue waves that travel in threes and are large enough to be tracked by radar.”

Post-war, the Coast Guard would use both cutters’ names a third time, with USCGC Jackson (WPC-120), ex-USS PCE(R)-858, and USCGC Bedloe (WPC-121), ex-USS PCE(R)-860. In typical Coast Guard fashion, “Both of the new cutters remained berthed at Curtis Bay, Maryland due to a lack of personnel,” and were later decommissioned and sold in 1947.

Today, Jackson rests, broken in two, southeast of Nags Head in 77 feet of water in NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. Navy EOD visited the site in the 1990s to remove ordnance and depth charges.

Sister Bedloe is close by, intact but on her side in 140 feet of water, and, while her depth charges were removed by the Navy, NOAA notes she still has live shells aboard.

The USCGC Maple in 2022 hosted a Coast Guard chaplain, divers, and an underwater archaeologist for four days while the sites were visited, mapped, and honored.

The Coast Guard Art Program has also saluted the cutters.

“The Fate of Cutters Jackson and Bedloe,” Louis Barberis, watercolor, 16 x 23. US Coast Guard Art Program 2005 Collection, Ob ID # 200503

As for the SS George Ade, the Liberty ship made it back to Norfolk where she was drydocked and repaired, returning to service on 18 December 1944.

Ade’s shot away rudder and damaged screw/shaft following the hit from U-518 and surviving a hurricane at sea immediately after. Photos: MARAD.

Post-war, Ade was transferred to the National Defense Reserve Fleet, in Mobile, Alabama, and, after 20 years in mothballs, was sold for scrap in 1967.

As for U-518, she was sunk on 22 April 1945 in the North Atlantic north-west of the Azores by depth charges from the destroyer escorts USS Carter (DE 112) and USS Neal A. Scott (DE 769), with all hands lost including Oblt. Hans-Werner Offermann. Ade was the final ship the U-boat had torpedoed.

U-518 via Deutsches U-Boot-Museum, Cuxhaven-Altenbruch, Germany

The Atlantic holds its dead.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024: Inadvertent Records

Posted on by One comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024: Inadvertent Records

Above we see a great action shot of the late Victorian-era Hermes class protected cruiser HMS Highflyer living up to her name while fighting the Atlantic, circa 1905.

Although a dated design by the time of the Great War, Highflyer still made short work of a faster and larger German auxiliary cruiser some 110 years ago this week.

The Hermes Class

The Admiralty, starting in 1889, began to order several successive batches of “second-class” protected cruisers: rakish steel-hulled steamers capable of 20 or so knots (fast for their age) and, while girded with an internal curved steel armored deck protecting their vital machinery spaces, weren’t meant primarily for fleet-on-fleet action but instead tasked with the role of overseas patrol and protection.

With an armament of 6 and 4.7-inch QF guns and a few torpedo tubes, as well as the ability to land 100 or so Tars armed as light infantry for work ashore, these vessels were seen as capable of keeping the peace against either local rebellions or foreign interlopers short of a battleship during times of peace. In times of war– something not seen against a European power by the Royal Navy since the Crimea– such warships could both capture enemy shipping, using the very gentlemanly “cruiser prize rules” and protect the crown’s own merchantmen from the enemy’s own raiders.

In the short period between just 1889 and 1898, the Royal Navy ordered 38 of these cruisers: 21 Apollo-class (3,600t, 19.75kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 4x 14″ TT), 8 Astraea-class (4,360t, 19.5kts, 2×6″, 8×4.7″, 1x 18″ TT), and 9 Eclipse-class (5,600t, 18.5kts, 5×6″, 6×4.7″, 3x 18″ TT).

Following in the wake of this hectic building spree, the Admiralty ordered a further five vessels in the Estimates of 1896-1901, laid down in five different yards. Repeats of the Eclipse class with a few tweaks, the Hermes (or Highflyer) class were roughly the same size, a little faster, and carried a more homogenous armament of 11 6″/40 (15.2 cm) QF Mark I guns instead of the mixed 6-inch/4.7-inch batteries.

These were arranged in single open mounts, one forward, two aft, and eight arranged in broadside. Armored with a 3-inch thick steel front shield, these mounts were capable of lobbing a 100-pound HE shell to 10,000 yards at a rate of fire of 5-to-7 rounds per minute depending on crew training.

Two 6″/40 (15.2 cm) guns on the aft quarterdeck aft of HMS Hermes.

The 373-foot Hermes/Highflyer class, second-rate protected cruiser HMS Hyacinth pictured c1902. This three-color peacetime livery shows off her waist broadside 6-inchers well.

For countering torpedo boats, these new cruisers would carry nine 3″/40 12pdr 12cwt QF Mk Is and a half-dozen 47mm/40 3pdr Hotchkiss Mk I guns. Their torpedo battery consisted of two 18-inch tubes below the waterline on the beam. Two Maxim machine guns and an 800-pound QF 12-pounder 8 cwt landing gun on a carriage were also carried for the ship’s ashore force.

Carrying 500 tons of Harvey armor, this ranged from 6 inches on the CT to 5 inches over the engine hatches with a 3-inch deck.

Powered by 18 Bellville boilers which drove a pair of 4-cylinder VTEs on two screws, the designed speed was 20 knots with a planned endurance, on 1,100 tons (max load) of good coal, of 3,300nm at 18 knots. On builder’s trials, over an eight-hour course at full power, most beat the 20-knot guideline while, when driving at 30 hours on 3/4 power, still ranged from 17.34 to 19.4 knots. Not bad for the 1900s.

Published builder’s speed trials for 1899, with three of our class, Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, listed in the middle:

With a 21-foot draft (more when carrying a double load of coal), these cruisers carried a flotilla of small boats including two 36-foot sail pinnaces, a 32-foot steam cutter, a 30-foot gig, and several smaller gigs and whalers as ship-to-shore connectors.

Listed in journals as having a 450-man ship’s company, this size was often larger during peacetime overseas sailing– especially when an RM platoon was embarked– and drastically reduced while in ordinary.

The class consisted of five cruisers: the first flight Hermes, Highflyer, and Hyacinth, then the follow-on modified (with heavier boilers) Challenger and Encounter.

Jane’s 1914 listing for the class.

Meet Highflyer

Our subject is the fourth Royal Navy vessel named Highflyer, a tradition that began with the (brief) capture and reuse of the 5-gun American privateer of that name in 1813 by the HMS Poictiers. The second was a small 2-gun tender while the third was a well-traveled 21-gun wooden-hulled screw frigate that served in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War with time out to bombard the Arab fort at Al Zorah.

Ordered alongside class leader Hermes (Yard No. 401) at Fairfield, Govan, Highflyer was Yard No. 402 and was laid down on 7 June 1897. Launched on 4 June 1898, she was completed on 7 December 1899– the last RN cruiser commissioned in the 19th Century.

Peacetime career

Dispatched to serve as the flagship of RADM Day Bosanquet’s East Indies Station, Highflyer set out in February 1900 for Trincomalee, Ceylon. There she remained for over three years, cruising around the region as directed, and served the same mission for the next East Indies Station commander, RADM Charles Carter Drury.

HMS Highflyer NH 60585

Next came a stint as flag for the North America and West Indies Station, again under RADM Bosanquet until 1908 when she was rotated back to England for drydocking and refit.

HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 42674)

Again deploying overseas, she left for East Indies Station in early 1911 to relieve her sister Hyacinth, and carried the flag of RADM Edmond Slade until April 1913.

Relieved by HMS Swiftsure, Highflyer was sent back to England to join the 3rd Fleet, detailed as a training ship for the new Special Entry Cadet scheme which took lads 17½ to 18½ years of age and gave them up to 18 months of training before sending them to the fleet. Such training meant hours and hours of holystoning decks, chipping and painting bulkheads, polishing brightwork, and drills, drills, drills.

HMS Highflyer IWM (Q 75385)

Her “lucky 13th” skipper, Capt. Henry Tritton Buller, assumed command on 1 July 1913.

Her complement was nearly doubled during this period, as noted by this log entry while at Chatam in late 1913.

Officers: 32
Seamen: 164
Boys: 24
Marines: 50
Engine-room establishment: 134
Other non-executive ratings: 466

She undertook a three-month Med training cruise in the Spring of 1914, roaming to Malta from Devonport with stops at Villefranche, Tangier, Naples, Algiers, and Gibraltar.

War!

With Europe under tension of war, on 13 July 1914 at 0100, Highflyer logged a note to mobilize for fleet service and began receiving Marines and ratings from the Devonport depots and hospital. Three days later, she weighed anchor for Spithead via Bournemouth, leading the Astraea-class protected cruiser HMS Charybdis and class leader HMS Eclipse out to sea.

Putting in at Portsmouth, she soon took on ammunition and coal. With Sarajevo on fire from Austrian shells and the Kaiser sending his troops into Belgium, on 3 August, Highflyer’s complement– augmented by fresh reservists arriving every day– began fuzing lyddite shells and arranging torpedoes.

With the news of war declared against Germany flashed at 23:23 on 4 August, Highflyer made ready to prepare for battle and sortied out into the Channel with the Arrogant-class cruiser HMS Vindictive.

On the morning of the second day of Britain’s war, Highflyer spotted the 13,000-ton Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd liner SS Tubantia and promptly stopped her for inspection. Returning from Buenos Aires with £500,000 in gold destined for German banks, the liner’s steerage berths held 150 German military reservists returning home from South America and a cargo of Argentine grain likewise destined for the Vaterland.

With such a floating violation of neutrality, Highflyer’s prize crew directed the liner to Plymouth with the cruiser closely escorting. Once there on 6 August, Royal Marines escorted the German reservists off while the gold was confiscated– along with her German-bound mail which included bundles of rubber and wool– and taken ashore.

Tubantia, relieved of contraband, was later released and allowed to resume her voyage.

Putting back to sea to patrol the Bay of Biscay for German blockade runners, Highflyer sailed to Gibraltar and, with orders for Cape Verde, it was off the Spanish Northwest African enclave of Río de Oro
that she spotted a familiar ship on the morning of 26 August.

The Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, at 24,000 tons and 649 feet overall, was the largest ship in the world when she put to sea in 1897.

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69220

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse circa 1897 card by A. Loeffler, Tompkinsville, N.Y. LC-USZ62-69219

Capable of carrying as many as 1,500 passengers, the liner’s Baroque revival decor, overseen by Johann Poppe, can be seen in this view of her smoking cabin, North German Lloyd pamphlet c. 1905. LC-DIG-ppmsca-02202

Size comparison by the Gray Lithograph company for the lines North German Lines of the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse with the Trinity Church, the St. Paul Building in New York, the Washington Monument, and the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Library of Congress LC-DIG-ppmsca-50050

One of the fastest ships in the world as well, she twice captured the Blue Riband, sustaining a 22.3 knot Atlantic crossing in 1898.

By July 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse caught orders to chop over to the Kaiserliche Marine and, while at Bremerhaven, quickly converted to become an auxiliary cruiser (hilfskreuzer) under the command of Fregattenkapitän Max Reymann. While she had been designed to carry as many as eight 5.9-inch and four 4.7-inch guns as well as up to 14 Spandau machine guns, only four old 4.1-inchers were on hand for the conversion.

Ordered to sea on 4 August to take a route northeast of Iceland, Reymann took his barely converted cruiser to sea, with orders to make for the South Atlantic. He promptly sank three British ships, taking 126 of their crew aboard. Several other ships were stopped but the enemy passenger problem was getting out of hand so Reymann simply disabled their wireless and allowed them to proceed.

KWdG’s brief raiding record:

7 August: trawler Tubal Cain (227 GRT), sunk.
15 August: passenger ship Galician (6,757 GRT), allowed to proceed.
15 August: passenger ship Arlanza (15,044 GRT), allowed to proceed.
16 August: frozen meat freight Kaipara (7,392 GRT) and Nyanga (3,066 GRT), sunk.
16 August: coal steamer Arucas, captured for use as an escort ship with a prize crew.

Needing a breather from the Royal Navy dragnet looking for him, Reymann put into Río de Oro for a couple of days on 17 August to take coal from Arucas and two German ships (Magdeburg and Bethania) sheltering there.

Reymann never got to finish his cruise before Highflyer appeared on the horizon on the 26th in what was, technically, a breach of neutrality.

A series of signals were exchanged between the two ships:

Highflyer: “Surrender.”

Highflyer: “I demand your surrender.”

KWdG: “German warships will not surrender. I request you to respect Spanish neutrality.”

Highflyer: “This is the second time you have been coaling in this harbor, I demand that you surrender; if not, I will open fire on you immediately.”

KWdG: “This is the first time I’m coaling here, and besides, this is a Spanish matter.”

Highflyer: “Surrender immediately.”

KWdG: “I have nothing more to say to you.”

Putting ashore his prisoners and non-combatant complement, Reymann figured the end was near, and, sailing out, Highflyer soon opened up at 1515, with the German replying.

Although KWdG was faster, Highflyer had an excellent position and continued to exchange fire with her larger guns at ranges past 7,500 yards while the artillery duel between the two lasted until 1615 when the German ship ceased fire and, smoking, withdrew behind some sand hills.

Reymann, low on ammunition and with two men dead and zero chance of escaping, smashed his wireless, scuttled his ship (she had rolled on her side by 1710), and put his crew ashore via lifeboats.

The shipless Fregattenkapitän and his men landed on a Saharan beach five miles from the Spanish fort at Villa Cisneros (Al-Dakhla) where they were interred.

Buller, ever the gentleman, attempted to send his own medical teams to help the crew of the German cruiser but recalled them once he determined they were not needed. Highflyer suffered one killed– RJ Lobb, Leading Carpenter’s Crew, ON M.2882– and 10 wounded during the engagement. A prize court would later grant Highflyer’s crew £2,680 for the sinking.

The battle made Highflyer famous, and newspapers around the globe celebrated the fight. 

Assuming the flag of the Cape Verde station by October, Highflyer remained on a sharp lookout for German raiders and runners for the next two years without the same sort of brilliant luck she had in the first three weeks of the war. She spent much of this time combing the seas off West Africa, often haunting Sierra Leone and St. Vincent.

By 1917, she was engaged in cross-Atlantic convoy escorts from Halifax to Plymouth as part of the North American Squadron.

May 1917,”S.S. Durham Castle with [S.S.] Ayrshire and HMS Highflyer ahead.” Exterior view from the deck of the SS Durham Castle looking fore at two ships ahead. Lt. Irvine of the RAMC, having just graduated in medicine, was shipping out on the SS Durham Castle to the campaign in German East Africa. The image is from an album chronicling the wartime experiences of Archibald Clive Irvine (1893-1974) in East Africa. During this time he would meet Dr John W Arthur which in turn would lead to his missionary work at Chogoria in Kenya. Acc.12016/1 (reference number), International Mission Photography Archive, ca.1860-ca.1960 (collection), National Library of Scotland (subcollection), NLS DOD ID: 97047298 (file).

It was while at Halifax on 6 December that Highflyer had a ringside seat for the great Halifax explosion when a collision between the relief ship SS Imo and the munitions ship SS Mont Blanc sent the latter sky-high in the world’s largest pre-atomic explosion, killing over 1,900.

With the Mont Blanc ablaze and abandoned by its crew, six volunteers from Highflyer rowed almost a mile across the harbor to the ship to offer assistance. All perished but one when the Mont Blanc’s cargo exploded when the whaler was only 300 feet away.

The survivor, Second Class Able Seaman William Becker, J5841, was propelled 1,600 yards across the harbor by the explosion. Becker swam through the icy water to safety and lived until 1969. He earned an Albert Medal and was entered in the Guinness Book as the “Farthest-Flying Human Projectile (Involuntary).”

From Highflyer’s deck log:

8:40 am: Port watch of stokers landed for route march.
8:45 am: Collision between IMO (Belgian relief ship) and S.S. MONT BLANC (French) .
8:48 am: Fire broke out on MONT BLANC.
8:55 am: Commander Triggs and Lieutenant Ruffles proceeded in whaler to investigate.
9:08 am: Mont Blanc exploded (cargo, ammunition previously unknown) causing large wave and setting Richmond on fire. Damage was done to HIGHFLYER and to most of its boats. The skiff was sent to find the whaler’s crew and picked up Murphy AB who was unconscious and later died. Becker AB was found on the shore, having swum there. No trace of the remainder of the whaler’s crew was found. HIGHFLYER received wounded from other ships, made temporary repairs and cleared debris. The ship had to be unmoored at one point because of the danger from its proximity to the PICTON and the fires. The watch of stokers which had been landed administered first aid on shore.
Casualties
Killed
Jones, Robert DCS 270699 ERA 1st class
Kelly, Francis DK 21331 Sto. 1st class
Rogers, Edn. Benjamin DK 33240 Sto. 1st class
Murphy, Joseph DJ 2308 Able Seaman, [who was picked up in the water] (whaler’s crew)
Missing (Whaler’s crew)
Triggs, Tom Kenneth Commander
Ruffles, James Rayward Lieutenant RNR
Rushen, Claude Eggleton LS DCS 234241
Fowling, James Able Seaman DCS 22261
Prewer, Samuel David Able Seaman DCS 236276
Wounded: 2
Slightly Wounded 25
Minor Injuries 20
Several Officers with facial injuries and injured tympanic membranes who carried on with their duties.
From other ships:
2 Pte. of Composite Regiment
2 of crew of Tug HILFORD (one, Perrin, Charles died later)
5 from S.S. PICTON
6 from S.S. IMO
3 others injured
55 other survivors, several with minor injuries were accommodated on board

Halifax explosion, with HMS Highflyer shown in the channel, via the Halifax Naval Museum

Repaired at Devonport, Highflyer was sent to Bermuda to serve as a guard and station ship for the first half of 1918 then returned to convoy work, escorting Yanks to Europe. She was off Glasgow on one such run when the Armistice was announced on 11 November.

Late-war she apparently had a dazzle scheme drawn up by British Vorticist (the very English modernist movement that grew out of Cubism) artist Edward Wadsworth who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the Great War.

HMS Highflyer, 1917 dazzle camo, Edward Wadsworth Art.IWM DAZ 37

Following a post-war refit at Devonport, Highflyer was sent once more to assume the role of flagship for the East Indies Station. Hoisting the flag of RADM Hugh H. D. Tothill, she held down the station from July 1919 to January 1921.

Paid off, she was sold for scrap at Bombay on 10 June 1921, at the time, she was the last Victorian-era cruiser in RN service.

Epilogue

The RN has not reissued the name “Highflyer” to another vessel.

However, in a salute to her extensive service on the East Indies Station– which was both her first and last posting– the “stone frigate” of the Royal Navy shore establishment in Trincomalee was named HMS Highflyer from 1943 until 1958 when the dockyard, wireless station, hospital, and headquarters facility was taken over by the Royal Ceylon Navy. I believe the old cruiser’s bell was located there during WWII but I can’t discern if/where it still exists. 

Our cruiser is remembered in maritime art.

HMS Highflyer by Alma Claude Burlton Cull 1880-1931

As well as in Delandres vignettes from the period.  

Of her sisters and half-sisters, Hermes was converted to a seaplane carrier in 1913, and sunk on 31 October 1914 by SM U 27.

HMS Hermes, sank after being struck by a torpedo from U-27 on October 31, 1914

Hyacinth spent her Great War career off Africa and assisted in the blockade of the German cruiser SMS Konigsberg there. She was decommissioned in 1919.

HMS Hyacinth listed to increase the range of her 6-inch guns, firing on German positions north of Lukuledi River, Lindi, German East Africa, 11th June 1917.

Near-sisters Challenger and Encounter, the latter in Australian service, spent the Great War off Africa and in the Pacific. While Challenger was broken up in 1920, Encounter would endure as a disarmed depot ship for the Royal Australian Navy throughout the 1920s until she was scuttled in 1932.

Modified Hermes class Challenger class protected cruiser HMAS Encounter IWM (Q 75381)

As for Highflyer’s hard-charging early war skipper, who captured Tubantia and sank Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, Admiral Sir Henry Tritton Buller, G.C.V.O., C.B., went on to command three different battleships and HM yachts before moving to the retired list in 1931. He passed in 1960, aged 86.

Meanwhile, KWdG’s skipper, Max Reymann, released himself from Spanish custody and managed to make it as far as Switzerland before the war ended. The bulk of his crew, some 350 men, were not as lucky and, catching a ride to the U.S. aboard the Spanish steamer Bethania, were intercepted in the Caribbean by the British armored cruiser HMS Essex and spent the rest of their war in a POW camp in Jamacia. Reymann returned to service, was appointed president of the Marinefriedenskommission (Naval Peace Commission) with the post-war Reichsmarine, and retired as a vice admiral in 1923. He passed in 1948, aged 76. He is remembered on the Ehrenrangliste der Kaiserlich Deutschen Marine (list of honorable men of the Imperial German Navy.)

Kaiser Wilhelm der Große, partially salvaged, is still in Rio de Oro, now in Moroccan waters. What is left of her wreck was located in shallow waters in 2013 and can be dived, with the proper permission.

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 22, 2024: Ghosts of Gagil Tomil

Posted on by 2 comments

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 22, 2024: Ghosts of Gagil Tomil

Via the U.S. Navy SEAL Museum.

Above we see UDT-10 swimmers (left to right) S1c Leonard Barnhill, SP(A)1c John MacMahon, LT M.R. Massey, SP(X)1c Bill Moore, and QM3c Warren Christensen on the cramped mess deck of the Balao-class fleet boat USS Burrfish (SS-312) on the early morning of 17 August 1944. Note the hearty “welcome home” breakfast of eggs, bacon, and coffee fortified with medicinal 6-year-old Overholt straight rye whiskey along with the diver’s working uniform of grease, grenades, knives, and swim trunks.

These men would mount the first and only submarine-launched reconnaissance operation accomplished by the Pacific UDTs during WWII, some 80 years ago this month.

Some of them are still missing.

The Balao Class

A member of the 180+-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. Unlike those of many navies of the day, U.S. subs were “fleet” boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home. The Balao class was deeper diving (400 ft. test depth) than the Gato class (300 feet) due to the use of high-yield strength steel in the pressure hull.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5,000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their deck guns. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

Some 311 feet long overall, they were all-welded construction to facilitate rapid building. Best yet, they could be made for the bargain price of about $7 million in 1944 dollars (just $100 million when adjusted for today’s inflation) and completed from keel laying to commissioning in about nine months.

An amazing 121 Balaos were completed through five yards at the same time, with the following pennant numbers completed by each:

  • Cramp: SS-292, 293, 295-303, 425, 426 (12 boats)
  • Electric Boat: 308-313, 315, 317-331, 332-352 (42)
  • Manitowoc on the Great Lakes: 362-368, 370, 372-378 (15)
  • Mare Island on the West Coast: 304, 305, 307, 411-416 (9)
  • Portsmouth Navy Yard: 285-288, 291, 381-410, 417-424 (43)

We have covered a number of this class before, such as the sub-killing USS Greenfish, rocket mail slinger USS Barbero, the carrier-slaying USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, the U-boat scuttling USS Atule, Spain’s “30-one-and-only,” and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories

Meet Burrfish

Our subject is the only U.S. Navy warship to carry the name of the tiny Atlantic swellfish. Built by the Portsmouth Navy Yard, she was laid down on 24 February 1943, launched that June, and commissioned on 14 September– her construction spanning just 202 days.

Officers and crewmen salute the colors as the Burrfish (SS-312) slides into the Atlantic at Portsmouth Navy Yard, Portsmouth, N.H., 18 June 1943 via Subvets

Her first skipper was 32-year-old LT (T/Cdr) William Beckwith Perkins, Jr., USN (USNA 1932), late of the Panama Canal Zone’s guardian submarine “Sugar Boat” USS S-11 (SS 116). A Keystoner born in Upper Turkeyfoot Township, Pennsylvania, he was the grandson of a swashbuckling horse soldier, Isaac Otey Perkins, who rode with the 5th Virginia Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War. Meanwhile, his uncle, Col. Nathaniel James Perkins, was head of the Fork Union Military Academy, which LT Perkins attended before his appointment to Annapolis.

After a four-month 8,000-mile shakedown cruise from New London to Key West– where she took part in two weeks of ASW exercises– through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor where Burrfish arrived on 6 January 1944, she prepped for her first war patrol. This included 11 underway exercises (four at night), degaussing, and sound listening tests.

1943-1944 USS Burrfish commanding officer William Beckwith Perkins, Jr. on the right in the second row.

War!

Getting into it, Burrfish departed Pearl Harbor on 2 February 1944 for her 1st War Patrol. She was ordered to patrol in the Caroline Islands area. She was a new boat with a green crew. It was the first war patrol for not only her skipper but also for 53 of her 83-member crew– some of which were added just a day before sailing. Her XO, LT Talbot Edward Harper (USNA 1937), had made five patrols already on the USS Greyback.

Burrfish met the enemy for the first time on 10 February– a Betty bomber while she was on the surface– and both left unharmed.

Sailing through a Japanese convoy on Valentine’s Day 1944 and firing off four unsuccessful Mark 14 torpedoes, she was depth charged for two hours, counting 22 strings of cans while she went deep– 500 feet– to avoid death. Keep in mind test depth on Balaos was listed as 400 feet.

She was depth charged again by a Japanese destroyer (8 cans) on 17 February.

This pace continued for the rest of the month, concluding on Leap Day when she fired three unsuccessful Mark 14s at a large Japanese freighter accompanied by two escorts and received 33 depth charges in return.

March likewise brought a three-torpedo attack on an escorted transport on the 3rd, which was unsuccessful.

Recalled, Burrfish ended her 1st War Patrol at Midway on 22 March, with several leaks from depth charge attacks and her unusable No. 1 torpedo tube which was jammed in two feet. She had counted 30 Japanese air contacts and 13 ship contacts in her 9,561-mile, 53-day sortie but failed to claim any.

A Combat Insignia for the patrol was not authorized by ComSubPac.

Three weeks later, repaired, rearmed, restored, and refueled, she left on her 2nd War Patrol on 14 April, ordered to stalk the Japanese Home Islands, east of Kyushu and south of Honshu. Her crew at this point was mostly made up of men who had earned their “dolphins” and she carried fish with updated warheads.

Logging 16 shipping contacts, mostly trawlers, Burrfish hit paydirt on the early morning of 7 May when she came across a tanker and, after stalking it for three hours, pumping three Mk 14-3As into its hull.

Post-war review boards confirmed she sank the German oiler Rossbach (5984 GRT) formerly the Norwegian A/S Norsk Rutefart-operated D/T Madrono, south of Murotosaki, Japan. She had been seized by the Hilfskreuzer Thor in June 1942.

The Britsh-built Madrono was caught by Thor while traveling in ballast from Melbourne to Abadan. While her Norwegian crew spent the rest of the war in Yokohama, Burrfish sent the tanker to the bottom with her German prize crew aboard.

Burrfish ended her second patrol at Pearl Harbor on 4 June, having covered 9,370 miles in 52 days, and was allowed her first Combat Insignia for her successful patrol. Her original XO, Talbot Harper, left the boat to receive command of USS Kingfish (SS 234), which he would take out on four war patrols and bag seven Japanese ships, earning the Silver Star in the process.

Then came the Yap operation

Frogman mission

With the need to map Axis-held beaches and clear obstacles for follow-on landings, the Navy began standing up what would become Navy Combat Demolition Units and later Underwater Demolition Teams in the early summer of 1943. Basic training was conducted in a nine-week program at Fort Pierce, Florida, later followed by six weeks of advanced training at the NCDT&E depot in Maui for Pacific-bound UDTs. The first teams to see combat were UDT-1 and UDT-2, which hit the beach during Operation Flintlock at Kwajalein and Roy-Namur in January 1944.

These “Demolitioneers” were primarily recruited from the Seabee dynamiting and demolition school but also included bluejackets from the fleet and the occasional Coast Guardsman. In the end, some 34 UDT teams were formed, 21 of which saw combat. Organized in four dive platoons and one HQ section, the units consisted of 13 officers (plus an Army and Navy liaison officer) and 70 (later 85) enlisted men. One team, UDT-10, absorbed five officers and 24 enlisted who had been trained as OSS Special Maritime Unit combat swimmers whose group, Operational Swimmer Group (OSG) II had been pushed into more mainstream use by Nimitz.

It was in early June that it was decided, by request of 3rd Amphibious Force Commander, VADM Teddy Wilkinson to ComSubPac, that a submarine make a reconnaissance of the Japanese-occupied Palau Islands so that Wilkinson and his staff knew what they were up against.

Burrfish drew the duty and was specially modified to carry a pared-down UDT platoon and its equipment. Two 7-man LCRS rubber rafts and several sets of oars were stored deflated in a pair of free-flooding, ventilated, 8-foot-long cylindrical tanks fitted to the sub’s deck abaft the conning tower. The boats were inflated topside through the use of a special valve fitted to her whistle line. Four torpedoes were landed from her forward torpedo room and the empty skids were arranged with mattresses for the 11-man team.

Special equipment, a German-made Bentzin Primarflex camera on a custom bracket, was rigged to allow the sub to take panoramic photos via her periscope while submerged. The trick had been learned on the USS Nautilus off Tarawa by her XO, LT Richard “Ozzie” Lynch who had tried and failed with three Navy-issued cameras before experimenting with his own personal Primarflex to outstanding results.

The Navy soon acquired a dozen of the German cameras, primarily second-hand via discreet classified ads in photography magazines, for submarine surveillance use.

Burrfish was also detailed to collect hydrographic data on the ocean currents in and around the islands.

The UDT Special-Mission Group assigned to Burrfish comprised Lt. Charles Kirkpatrick as commander, an unnamed support member, and nine assorted swimmers. Five of these divers– QM1c Robert A. Black, Jr. (8114404); SP(A)1c John MacMahon (4027186); SP(X)1c William Moore (6339607); S1c Leonard Barnhill (8903302); and QM3c Warren Christensen (8697250)– were OSS OSG II men from the newly formed UDT-10 which had only arrived from Fort Pierce that June and was just wrapping up its advanced training in Maui. Two (LT M.R. Massey and CGM Howard “Red” Roeder) were instructors tapped from UDT-1’s battle-hardened Maui training cadre. While two senior men (CBM John E. Ball and CM3c Emmet L. Carpenter) were drawn from the staff of Sub Base, Pearl Harbor.

This 11-member UDT det was carried in addition to Burrfish’s 72-member crew, 53 of which had already earned their dolphins on prior patrols.

Burrfish departed from Pearl Harbor for her 3rd War Patrol with her frogmen on 11 July, topping off her tanks at Midway on the 15th before continuing West. Starting on the 22nd, she began experiencing severe Japanese air activity whenever she surfaced and observed the patrol planes to be DF-ing her radar so she secured her SD and SJ sets and relied on her primitive APR-1 radar warning receiver and SPA-1 pulse analyzer equipment for the rest of the mission.

Closing with Angaur and Yap Islands by 29 July, she spent the next three weeks inspecting the beaches each morning and conducting submerged pericope photography– filling 16 rolls of 35mm film– and closely verifying and updating the pre-war Admiralty charts she had on hand for the islands. Bathythermograph cards were scrutinized and carefully logged to note thermoclines.

Night drifting on the surface with the UDT recon team posted as topside lookouts while the radar gang listened to the APR/SPA gear allowing Burrfish to effectively discover and map out the four Japanese search radars in the area.

On 9 August, Burrfish rendezvoused with sister USS Balao some 20 miles offshore. After challenging and confirming each other from 30,000 yards via quick SJ radar blips, a rubber boat was sent over at 2300 to transfer the film and data collected thus far so that, should Burrfish be lost in her subsequent inshore beach recon via swimmer, at least the collected intel would get back to VADM Wilkinson’s staff.

Between 11 and 18 August, Burrfish closed in close enough (3,000 yards) to send recon swimmers ashore three times via their man-powered rubber rafts, swimming the final 500 yards to deploy two pairs of swimmers while a fifth man remained behind with the raft. The UDT men visited the southeast tip of Peleliu Island and Yap on the first two trips, saving the northeast coast or Gagil Tomil for the third mission.

It was at Gagil Tomil on the night of 18/19 August that three men– Black, Roeder, and MacMahon– failed to return to Burrfish before dawn forced the sub to withdraw and submerge.

As noted by the DPAA on the three missing men: 

After setting out, one team returned to the boat after one of the swimmers became exhausted in the surf. His partner then returned to the island. The two men now in the boat waited until past the appointed rendezvous time for the swimmers to return. With no sign of the others, the men in the boat rowed closer to shore to investigate. They risked discovery by using flashlights to attempt to make contact, but received no response. Finally, the two men were forced to abandon the search and return to the submarine.

Scouting the shoreline the next day from dangerously close in, Burrfish failed to catch sight of the trio.

They repeated the same forlorn wait on the 20th.

Ordered to leave, LCDR Perkins regretfully complied. All three of the missing swimmers eventually received the Silver Star, posthumously.

Crew members of UDT 10 on submarine Burrfish at Peliliu. L-R Chief Ball, John MacMahon (MIA), Bob Black (MIA), Emmet L. Carpenter, Chief Howard Roeder. Via the U.S. Navy SEAL Museum.

Perkins noted in his report, “In this officer’s experience, this group of men was outstanding – both professionally and as shipmates. They have had a long and difficult cruise in the submarine but have acquitted themselves admirably. It is a tragedy that Roeder, MacMahon, and Black are not on board.”

Burrfish concluded her 3rd Patrol at Majuro in the Marshall Islands after 47 days at sea on 27 August, logging 10,600 miles. It was deemed a successful patrol due to the quantity and quality of information obtained, with a Combat Insignia authorized by ComSubPac. However, all further UDT operations in the Pacific would be via littoral capable surface ships, typically APDs (converted destroyers, aka “Green Dragons”) and LCIs/LSTs.

On return to Hawaii, the three remaining OSS OSG II members of the UDT Special Mission Group (Christensen, Barnhill, and Moore) were put in for silver stars (all others recommended for bronze) and rolled into the Maui cadre to train incoming swimmers from the states.

With Station HYPO decoding subsequent enemy transmissions that the three missing UDT men were captured alive by the Japanese and interrogated by notoriously brutal Intelligence specialists who labeled them as members of a “Bakuha-tai” (demolition unit), the pending invasion of Yap was scrubbed, and the group was bypassed in line with the U.S. island-hopping strategy, her 6,000 man garrison surrendering post-war.

Meanwhile, the operation to capture Palau and Peleliu (Operation Stalemate II) would kick off in mid-September.

By that time, Burrfish was already on another war patrol.

Wolfpack Nights

Following a three-week turnaround alongside the sub tender USS Sperry, Burrfish departed from Majuro for her 4th War Patrol on 18 September 1944, bound for the Bonin Islands.

The patrol would be an extended operation in two parts, conducted as an element of a Yankee Wolfpack (Coordinated Attack Group 17.24) under the overall command of CDR Thomas “Burt” Klakring, commander of SubDiv 101, who would fly his flag on USS Silversides (SS 236) as afloat commodore.

The group, unofficially dubbed “Burt’s Brooms,” included not only Silversides and Burrfish but also USS Saury (SS 189), Tambor (SS 198), Trigger (SS 237), Sterlet (SS 392), and Ronquil (SS 396). While several of the boats were very seasoned– Saury, Silversides, and Trigger were on their 11th and 12th War Patrols (and would retire from combat service at the end of the patrol) — others were decidedly green, with Ronquil and Sterlet only on their second patrols.

The first phase, which lasted 48 days in the Nansei Shoto area, saw the Burrfish claim a pre-dawn 27 October kill (not confirmed by post-war boards) on an 8,500-ton cargo ship after she fired six torpedoes into a Japanese convoy and heard three explosions.

She also survived an encounter on 30 October in which an armed vessel fired a 6-round salvo at her before she submerged and another pack member sank her attacker. It is nice to have friends.

Then came a five-day diversion (5-10 November) to Saipan to tie up next to the tender USS Fulton (AS-11), during which Klakring and all of his pack’s skippers would plan their anti-patrol boat sweep between the Bonins and Japan proper. The reason for the sweep was to sterilize the zone ahead of Halsey’s Task Force 38 which was scheduled to raid the Home Islands so that the picket boats couldn’t alert Tokyo of the approaching carriers. However, as Halsey was forced to cancel the raid due to lingering fighting over Leyte at the last minute, the subs were left holding the bag and ran the sweep as more of a dress rehearsal.

Plagued by terrible surface conditions which made torpedo attacks all but useless and gun actions more dangerous to the crews than the enemy, the 15-day/7 submarine sweep only managed to bag just four Japanese pickets as a group (15 November: Silversides sank guard boat Nachiryu Maru No. 12 while Saury bagged the guard boat Kojo Maru. 16 November: Tambor sank Taikai Maru No. 3.).

The fourth came in a surface action on 17 November 1944 Burrfish and Ronquil got in a gunfight with what turned out to be the Japanese auxiliary patrol boat Fusa Maru (177 GRT) south of Hachiro Jima, Japan. In the fight, Burrfish was hit by Japanese gunfire. Two men, Cox. H.A. Foster and S1c R.D. Lopez, were wounded.

It was a close-up affair, with the trawler within 700 yards, and Burrfish received superficial small caliber hits to her after conning tower. Ammunition expended was 9 4-inch (2 Common, 7 HC), 720 rounds of 20mm, and 500 rounds of 30.06 from her M1919s.

Meanwhile, Ronquil also suffered damage from the premature detonation of one of her 40mm Bofors shells which blew two holes in her pressure hull and required a risky topside underway repair (by her XO no less) to be able to dive again.

With Burt’s Brooms disbanded, Burrfish wrapped up her 4th War Patrol at Pearl Harbor on 2 December by tying up alongside USS Pelais, having logged some 15,700 miles across 75 days.

It was at Pearl that LCDR Perkins would depart his submarine, handing command over to LCDR M.H. Lytle, formerly of USS Sturgeon (SS 187) and with eight war patrols to his credit, just before Christmas.

USS Burrfish (SS-312) at Pearl Harbor, circa 1945. Courtesy of H. Leavitt Horton, Sr. NH 92322

Lifeguard Days

Following the Christmas and New Year holidays, Lytle took Burrfish out to sea on 3 January 1945 to begin her 5th War Patrol. She was ordered to take up station south of Japan’s Nanpo Shoto area to serve as a floating lifeguard and weather station to support B-29 raids on the Home Islands. Arriving at the station on the 23rd, she spotted her first incoming “aluminum overcast” wave that afternoon– with her SJ radar set picking up contacts as far off as 34,000 yards.

When USS Pogy (SS 266) and Ronquil entered the area the next day, Lytle, as senior officer afloat, assumed command of the three-boat wolfpack (TG 17.29) and parked astride the Hachija Shima-Chichi Jima shipping lane with the hopes of bagging something between B-29 sorties.

Unfortunately, shipping was slim and the only action Burrfish saw during the patrol was a trio of long-range (15,000 yards) Mark 18 torpedoes sent after a 300-ton Japanese patrol craft on the horizon on 11 February– for which she had to suffer a severe depth charging that required her to put in to Midway for three days of emergency repairs.

Burrfish ended her 5th War Patrol alongside USS Apollo at Guam on 24 February, having covered 8,130 miles in 52 days. ComSubPac did not authorize a Combat Insignia for the patrol.

With repairs pushing back her normal three-week turnaround cycle, Burrfish didn’t begin her 6th War Patrol until 25 March, with orders to patrol the Luzon Strait and off Formosa. A sleeper cruise, her war history notes “Thirty successive days were spent on lifeguard station for the 5th Air Force but no opportunity for rescue presented itself.”

The only “action” seen was in deep-sixing some floating mines and a derelict abandoned 40-foot sampan with her deck guns and in a pre-dawn gunfire raid on the Japanese radio station on Batan Island.

Burrfish ended her 6th war patrol at Saipan on 4 May 1945 after 65 days and 13,600 miles. ComSubPac, in its message not authorizing a Combat Insignia for the patrol, wished “better luck next time” but there would be no next time.

Sent back to her birthplace at Portsmouth Navy Yard at Kittery, Maine for a major overhaul, where she arrived in late June, she was still there when VJ Day hit.

She was decommissioned on 10 October 1946 at Sub Base New London and laid up there as part of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.

Burrfish is listed as one of the Balaos in Jane’s 1946 entry.

Burrfish received five battle stars for her World War II service and claimed 13,600 tons across her six (three successful) patrols.

Cold War SSR Days

Recommissioned on 2 November 1948 after just two years in mothballs, she went back home to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for conversion to a Radar Picket Submarine and was redesignated SSR-312 on 27 January 1949.

A total of ten old fleet boats were converted to SSRs under the Migraine I, II & III (SCB-12A) programs.

Burrfish Thames River, circa 1948, on the way to her SSR conversion, via Navsource. Note she has a snorkel and no guns.

Her “Migraine I” conversion included landing her 4-inch gun as well as half of her torpedo tubes and gaining a bunch of radar gear. She retained her open fairwater, with the bridge being shifted to the forward cigarette deck, and a 40 mm Bofors taking the place of her old gun in an instance of one of the final new installations of cannon on an American submarine. Only one other SSR received the Migraine I conversion, the Tench-class boat USS Tigrone (SS-419).

As described by the Submarine Force Library and Museum Association: 

In this modification, the space formerly used as the crew’s mess and galley was turned into a CIC, and the after torpedo tubes were removed to allow the entire after torpedo compartment to be used for berthing. Two of the forward tubes were also eliminated to make additional room for storage and equipment. More importantly, however, the two radar antennas were raised on masts, with an AN/BPS-2 search radar sprouting from the after portion of the sail, and the height finder mounted on a free-standing tower just abaft it. This put the 15-foot search antenna some 40 feet above the water, with the height finder only a little below.

Burrfish returned to duty with the active fleet on 7 February 1950 and was assigned to Submarine Squadron 6 at Norfolk.

Burrfish broadside view during her trials as an SSR, conducted on 27 January 1950, via Navsource

Burrfish as radar picket in Med. Note that her 40mm gun has been removed by this time.

Burrfish as radar picket in Europe, French postcard, 23 May 1952. She still has her Bofors.

Between February 1950 and June 1956, she completed three lengthy deployments with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean and “participated in several major type and inter-type exercises and operated along the eastern seaboard as a radar picket ship.” During this time she also earned an Occupation Clasp for service in the Med (29 Sep 50 – 23 Jan 51).

As part of SubDiv 62, all of the Atlantic-based radar pickets were collected including Burrfish’ old “Burt’s Brooms” buddy, Requin, two Migraine II conversions: Burrfish (SSR-312) and Tigrone (SSR-419), and the Migrane IIIs Pompon (SSR-267), Ray (SS-271), and Redfin (SSR-272) along with Sailfish. 

USS Yellowstone (AD-27) in Augusta Bay, Sicily, during her Mediterranean cruise, May- October 1950. Alongside her are (l-r): USS Sea Robin (SS-407); USS Torsk ( SS-423); USS Sea Leopard (SS-483); USS Burrfish (SSR-312); USS John R. Pierce (DD-753); USS Barton (DD-722); USS Shea (DM-30). In the background is the USS Harry F. Bauer (DM-26). 80-G-428712

On 5 June 1956, with the SSR program winding down and new SSNs arriving in the fleet, Burrfish sailed from Norfolk to New London where she reported for inactivation.

She was placed out of commission, in reserve, on 17 December 1956.

Canadian Service

As we have covered prior, the Royal Canadian Navy had a series of fits and starts that included a pair of small (144-foot, 300-ton) American-built coastal boats, HMCS CC-1 and CC-2, which served in the Great War, another pair of American-made 435-ton H-class submarines (HMCS CH-14 and CH-15) which served briefly in the 1920s, and two ex-Kriegsmarine U-boats (HMCS U-190 and U-889) which served (or at least floated) for a couple years after WWII.

Looking to regrow their nascent submarine arm in 1960 after a 13-year break, the RCN inspected 10 American mothballed diesel boats and picked Burrfish with an initial five-year loan and the agreement that Ottawa would pay for the cost of reactivation and modification. It made sense as Burrfish had only been laid up at this point for three years and had already received both a snorkel and improved higher-capacity batteries in her 1949 SSR conversion.

The mission set for the new boat was to be one of an OPFOR for Canada’s very professional ASW force, with the RCN noting, “During and after the war it had been the custom of the RN to provide ‘tame’ submarines for anti-submarine training in Nova Scotia waters. By 1961, with a growing fleet of new anti-submarine ships based at Esquimalt, it had become desirable to have a submarine stationed there as well.”

She received the name HMCS Grilse (S 71) after a Great War era yacht turned fast torpedo boat and was commissioned into the RCN on 11 May 1961. Notably, while the Canadians had run six different subs prior, Grilse was the first to have an actual name rather than just a number. 

HMCS Grilse. Note her “clean” appearance with SSR radars removed and no mounted guns.

H.M.C.S. Grilse – Esquimalt,BC – Aug. 22, 1966

HMCS Grilse

HMCS Grilse

HMCS Grilse

USS Burrfish SS-312 (Balao class) was loaned to Canada and commissioned as HMCS Grilse (71) on May 11th, 1961, seen here at Esquimalt with RCN WWII submarine vets aboard for a tour. Note the details of her snorkel and radar arrangement.

Keeping her slightly longer than her five-year loan, Grilse was withdrawn in December 1968, returned to U.S. Navy custody at Bremerton, and was struck from the Naval Register on 19 July 1969.

Grilse proved such a good investment for the Canadians that they sought to purchase four new Barbel-class diesel boats from the U.S., giving them two boats each at Halifax and Esquimalt, but the ever-thrifty government instead opted for a trio of British Oberon-class boats ordered from HM Royal Dockyard Chatham. These three, HMCS Ojibwa (SS 72), Onondaga (SS 73), and Okanagan (SS 74), entered Canadian service between 1965 and 1968.

On 2 December 1968, the mothballed USS Argonaut (SS 475) was sold to the RCN for $150,000 and renamed HMCS Rainbow (SS 75), named after one of the first ships ever to enter service with the Canadians back in 1910, giving the Canadian a solid four boats until 1975 when the old Tench-class fleet boat was retired, opting for an all-Oberon force until 2000.

On 19 November 1969, ex-Burrfish/Grilse was expended in a SINKEX, destroyed on the surface while under remote control by the brand new Mk 46 ASW torpedo dropped by a SH-3 Sea King helicopter off San Clemente Island in an early test of that weapon system.

November 19, 1969: HMCS Grilse submarine was sunk by USN off California

Epilogue

Neither the Americans nor the Canadians have used the names Burrfish or Grilse since our SS/SSR-312/S-71 was disposed of.

Her bell, marked Burrfish on one side and Grisle on the other, is on display at CFB Esquimalt.

Burrfish’s war history, plans, deck logs, and patrol reports are in the National Archives.

Her Canadian vets have a For Postery’s Sake page for Grilse’s Cold War service.

Six Balao-class submarines are preserved (for now) as museum ships across the country.

Please visit one of these fine ships and keep the legacy alive:

-USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
–USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
–USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii.
–USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
– USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California, (which played the part of the fictional USS Stingray in the movie Down Periscope).
–USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

The three UDT swimmers left behind at Palau– Specialist First Class (Athletic Instructor) John Churchill MacMahon, Quartermaster First Class Robert A. Black Jr., and Chief Gunner’s Mate (Aviation) Howard Livingston Roeder, are among the 72,040 unaccounted for U.S. military personnel from WWII as tracked by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. They were memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines and at the UDT/SEAL Memorial Wall at Fort Pierce. The search for their remains continues, with their cases marked in the DPAA category of “Active Pursuit.”

Recent expeditions to Palau to help find more information about the trio were mounted by Project Recover in conjunction with the National Navy UDT -SEAL Museum. The case is personal for the Naval Special Warfare community, as it is the only combat mission ever accomplished by NSW operators where men were lost in action and their remains never recovered.

As for the rest of UDT-10, it went on to see much action in at Anguar Island, Palau, and in the Philippines before it was disestablished at Fort Pierce on 2 February 1946. It was not one of the four (UDT-11 and 12 at Coronado, 21 and 22 at Little Creek) downsized teams formed for post-war service. It was never stood back up.

Burrfish’s plank owner skipper, William Beckwith Perkins, who commanded her on her first four war patrols, and who was at her combat periscope when she sank the tanker Rossbach and fought off Fusa Maru, remained in the Navy after the war and retired as a rear admiral in 1959 after 26 years of service. Of the 465 American submarine skippers who pulled at least one war patrol, only about 60 ever managed to earn a star in the promotion-slim postwar sub force (a club he shared with Burrfish’s first XO, Talbot Harper).

Perkins passed in 1992, age 81, at Fork Union, Virginia, and is remembered as a distinguished alumni of the Fort Union Military Academy and Annapolis.

His son, who inherited his papers, has been influential in documenting the loss of the UDT men at Gagil Tomil.

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

Posted on by Leave a comment

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Aug. 15, 2024: One Tired Hound

Library and Archives Canada MIKAN 3374382

Above we see Able Seaman Carl Carlson of the F (River) Class destroyer HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) on 16 August 1944 mugging with one of the bulkheads of his ship that had been neatly peeled open by an enemy 88mm shell during an action against three German VP boats off Brest the month prior. The plucky tin can gave as good as she got and left her assailant at the bottom of the Bay of Biscay before she headed back across the channel.

The well-traveled Qu’Appelle had inflicted worse on the Kriegsmarine earlier in the war– but that was when she was known by a different name.

The E&F’s

Moving on from their Great War-era tin cans, the Admiralty ordered a pair of modern destroyer prototypes in 1927– HMS Amazon (1,352 tons, £319, 455) and Ambuscade (1,173 tons, £326,616), each capable of making 37 knots on superheated oil-fired steam turbine plants and armed with four old-style BL 4.7″/45 Mk I dual purpose guns and six 21-inch torpedo tubes.

The 1927 program destroyer type, of which the Royal Navy would keep in production into 1940. M0064

Further, these ships were super modern for their time and were among the first built with all-steel (rather than fabric) bridges, had a higher freeboard and improved cabin accommodations, and a larger radius of action than preceding classes. Moreover, induced ventilation could be supplied throughout the vessel, for service in the Tropics.

With a little tweak to include more torpedo tubes and newer 4.7″ guns, these became the circa 1928-29 Programme 20-ship A&B class (1,350 tons std, 328 feet oal, 35 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), so referenced as the ships generally used names that started with As and Bs. Every 10th ship was built as a slightly larger flotilla leader with space for a commodore and staff.

This quickly followed with the minimally improved 14-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1929–1931 Programme C&D class (1,375 tons std, 329 feet oal, 36 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges).

This naturally led to the 18-ship (including two flotilla leaders) circa 1931-32 Programme E&F class (1,405 tons std, 329 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which, as Worth describes, “closely resembles the D class with increased subdivision.” In short, they had an improved hull form over the preceding C&Ds and had three boiler rooms instead of two as well as other minor updates.

The RN similarly kept this incrementally improved line going with the 24-ship (including two leaders) circa 1934-35 Programme G&H class (1,370 tons std, 323 feet oal, 35.5 knots, 4×4.7″, 8xtt+ depth charges), which is beyond the scope of this post, but you can easily see the lineage of these 78 closely related interwar produced British destroyers

The E flight (Echo, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escapade, Escort, Esk, Express, and flotilla leader Exmouth) and F flight (Fame, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, Forester, Fortune, Foxhound, Fury, and flotilla leader Faulknor) were constructed in just 26 months between March 1933 and June 1935 because contracts were placed at 10 different yards simultaneously — HM Dockyard Portsmouth, Wm Denny, Hawthorn & Leslie, Scotts, Swan Hunter, Yarrow, Parsons, Cammell Laird, J. Samuel White, and John Brown.

With a full load that approached 2,000 tons in wartime, like the rest of the A&B, C&D, and follow-on G&Hs, the E&F’s main battery was four 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns, arranged curiously to where they could only elevate some 40 degrees, which gave them poor AAA performance.

HMS Foxhound off Freetown, Sierra Leone in August 1943. One of the many British destroyers built during the 1930s with 4.7″/45 (12 cm) Mark IX guns. These are CPXVII mountings which allow elevations of +40 degrees. IWM Photograph A 18772.

Anti-ship punch was in the form of two quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes on amidships turnstiles, with no reloads. The standard torpedo across all of these destroyer classes was the Mark IX, which was designed in 1928 and introduced in 1930. It carried a 750-pound warhead to 10,500 yards at 36 knots. By 1939, the updated Mark IX** which had a larger 805-pound Torpex warhead and a 15,000-yard range was the standard.

HMS Foxhound’s torpedo crew practice with fish in the tubes. In charge (in white shirt) is the Torpedo gunner. Note the Carley float and water jar lashed to the tubes to save space in the destroyer. IWM (A 18779)

Rounding out the armament for the class were two quad Vickers .50 cals (subsequently added to after 1940), two depth charge throwers, depth charge racks for 20 ash cans, and mechanical minesweeping gear. Importantly, they left the builder’s yards with a Type 121 sonar, a good set with a range of some 2,500 yards, installed.

Meet Foxhound

Our subject was the sixth in Royal Navy service to carry the “Foxhound” moniker going back to an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop during the Napoleonic Wars. As apt for the name of the small and fast English hunting dog, the Admiralty reissued the name several times in the 19th Century to swift little warships. This legacy gave her two existing battle honors (Basque Roads 1809, Dardanelles 1916) to carry forward.

The fourth and fifth HMS Foxhound, respectively, a 125-foot Forester-class 4-gun screw gunboat launched that served from 1877 through 1897 (but endured in the commercial trade on the Thames until 1975!); and a Beagle class destroyer (H16) that served in the Dardanelles with distinction during the Great War and was sold to the breakers in 1921. (IWM Q 40750 & RMG collection)

HMS Foxhound (H69) was constructed alongside sister HMS Fortune (H70) at John Brown, Clydebank, and, unlike the rest of their sisters, this pair received Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines rather than the more standard Parsons sets for no downgrade in speed (36 knots), performance (36,000shp), or range (6350nm at 15 on 471 tons of fuel oil).

Foxhound was commissioned on 6 June 1935 after a 22-month construction period, just five weeks off from her John Brown-made sister Fortune.

She was sleek and beautiful.

Foxhound H69, prewar Valentine Postcard

Foxhound, pre-war, with her glad rags flying.

Another nice prewar view of Foxhound

With the Es assigned to the Home Fleet’s 5th Destroyer Flotilla while the new Fs made up the 6th DF, Foxhound, and her sisters saw service in the tense period just before WWII, including flotilla-sized cruises to the Red Sea– where the Royal Navy was keeping tabs on the Italian invasion/occupation of Ethiopia–and off Spain where the Civil War was raging.

The Royal Navy at Gibraltar, 1938. Including elements of the Mediterranean Fleet (light grey) and the Home Fleet (dark grey). In addition to the 6 battleships (HMS Nelson, Rodney, Warspite, Malaya plus two R-class), 2 battlecruisers (Hood and Repulse), 2 carriers (Glorious and Furious), and 11 cruisers, whole flotillas of destroyers can be seen including our own Foxhound, to the right, and her shipyard twin sister Fortune, to the left. (click to big up) 5495×1295

War!

Just five months before the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Es in the 5th DF and the Fs in the 6th DF were changed on paper to the 7th and 8th Flotillas respectively.

Our destroyer was in the group that sank the first of 1,162 German U-boats sent to the bottom in the war, just a fortnight after Hitler sent his troops into Poland.

Operating as a screen for the carrier HMS Ark Royal (91), Foxhound along with sisters HMS Faulknor and Firedrake, sent the Type IX U-boat U-39 (Kptlt. Gerhard Glattes) to the bottom on 14 September 1939 west of the Hebrides. In a case rare for what was to come, Glattes and all 43 of U-39’s crew survived the encounter and were among the first German POWs in England.

A beam view of HMS Foxhound with her war paint on. IWM (A 18777)

Foxhound soon became very well-traveled.

Besides 14 convoy runs between the time she joined Halfax-to Clyde TC 01 in December 1939 and left MKF 022 in September 1943, including the vital Suez to Sydney Pamphlet convoy in February 1943 that carried 30,000 Australian troops back home from Egypt once the Japanese entered the war, our little destroyer seemed to be everywhere.

Foxhound H69

She was in Norway, harassing German shipping early in the war in Operation SK and looking for the seized American merchant vessel SS City of Flint (which a German prize crew from the pocket battleship Deutschland sailed to then-neutral Murmansk).

Masthead look-out of HMS Foxhound goes aloft in sou’wester and oilskin. IWM (A 18778)

She was with the force, centered around HMS Rodney, that chased the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst in February 1940. Later that year, in December, she would search for the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. She was also in the great Hunt for the Bismarck in May 1941, screening the carrier HMS Ark Royal.

She took part in Operation Du, a cruiser-destroyer anti-shipping raid into the Skagerrak in which Foxhound chased down several vessels– which all turned out to belong to neutrals.

Foxhound underway IWM FL 13264

Foxhound returned to Norway in early April 1940, where on the 13th she took part in the second Battle of Narvik where nine British destroyers, supported by Swordfish from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious and the offshore guns of the battleship Warspite, ended the Kriegsmarine’s plans for U-64 (the first sunk by aircraft), and eight desperately needed German destroyers, all of which were sunk or scuttled by the end of the day.

Foxhound rescued 11 survivors of the destroyer Erich Giese Z12 from the freezing water that day but two would succumb to their injuries.

Kriegsmarine Zerstörer Z19 Hermann Künne on fire in Trollvika, 13. April 1940

Burning wreck of the destroyer Erich Giese (Z12) 13. April 1940

In June 1940, with the fall of France imminent, Foxhound found herself in Gibraltar as an escort for Ark Royal and battlecruiser HMS Hood. On 26 June, the carrier, battlecruiser, and their hounds were sent towards the Canaries looking for the curiously missing French battlewagon Richelieu, which eventually made for Dakar in the French West African colony of Senegal.

With relations deteriorating with the now kind-of-out-of-the-war French, Foxhound soon found herself with VADM Somerville’s strong Force H off the French Force de Raid’s Algerian anchorage at Mers-el-Kebir in July 1940 (Operation Catapult).

In this, Foxhound, with Capt. C.S. Holland, of the Ark Royal (formerly Naval Attaché at Paris) along with two other officers recently employed as liaisons with the French fleet, was detailed to sail forward and parley with VADM Marcel-Bruno Gensoul. When negotiations fell through, Somerville ordered the shameful bombardment of the anchored French ships, a one-sided gunfight that left 1,300 French sailors dead. Sadly, Foxhound was close enough to see it all– observers in her motorboat recorded the fall of shell– although she suffered no damage.

French battleship Bretagne, on fire and visibly low by the stern, at Mers-el-Kébir, 3 July 1940

She continued to fight against the Vichy with Operation Ration in which Foxhound and four other destroyers intercepted the Casablanca-to-Oran French convoy K 5 in 30 December 1940. They seized the cargo liner Chantilly (9986 GRT), tanker Octane (2034 GRT), and freighters Suroit (554 GRT) and Sally Maersk (3252 GRT), sailing with them back to Gibraltar. K5’s sole escort, the armed trawler La Touilonnaise (425 GRT) offered no resistance and was allowed to continue to North Africa, sans convoy.

Foxhound sailed on several Malta relief missions (Operations Hurry and Operation White in 1940, Operations Splice, Tracer, Railway, and Rocket in 1941), escorting carriers bringing Hurricane fighters and Skua bombers to the embattled island as well as other runs in the Med.

For help fighting off Italian and German bombers, Foxhound and almost all of her remaining sisters had four Oerlikon and a 3-inch/45 QF Mk I AAA installed in place of their quad Vickers .50 mount and one set of torpedo tubes. They also picked up Type 271 Air Search and Type 286/M/P radars.

In February 1941, she helped screen the battlewagons HMS Renown and Malaya, along with the cruiser HMS Sheffield, during Operation Grog, the bombardment of Genoa that left four Italian cargo ships sunk in the harbor.

On 18 June 1941, Foxhound, along with sisters HMS Faulknor, Fearless, Forester, and Foresight, bagged her second U-boat of the war, Oblt. Franz Gramitzky’s Type IID U-138, which was sunk just west of Gibraltar off Cadiz, Spain. Like U-39 prior, Gramitzky and all his crew were saved by the British destroyers, then dutifully interrogated and placed in a POW camp for the duration.

By March 1942, Foxhound was assigned to the Eastern Fleet operating in the Indian Ocean to blunt the sortie of the 1st Japanese Carrier Fleet. She would remain in the region for over a year, operating from Colombo to Durban to Bombay to Aden on convoy support missions, adding such exotic ports as Kilindini, Diego Suarez, and Mombasa to that list.

Foxhound H69 IWM A 18776

Recalled to the Atlantic in May 1943, she sailed back home by working slow long-range convoys as part of West Africa Command to Freetown and Gibraltar, finally arriving at Rosyth three months later.

Foxhound, LAC 3199021

She then put into Humber for a refit as an anti-submarine escort destroyer that would see one of her 4.7-inch guns landed to make room for a 24-cell Hedgehog ASW RL device, two more K-gun depth charge throwers, and another 70 depth charges (for a total of 125!). She was also to receive a Type 291 air-warning radar and an American SG-1 surface-search radar, along with a Type 144 sonar.

By August 1943, Foxhound had tallied some 240,000nm since the beginning of the war, ranging from the Bay of Bengal to Iceland and back. This brought an Admiralty photographer to the ship at Sheerness to document the “fine fighting record” of this hardy little vessel and her U-boat-busting crew.

The Quartermaster sounding “eight bells” on the Foxhound’s bell while at Sheerness. Note the Fox’s brush hanging from the clapper. It was presented by one of her officers. August 1943 IWM A 18775

An officer of HMS Foxhound, a South African, watching a British port come into sight as the destroyer completed her 240,000 miles of record steaming. IWM (A 18774)

While in British service, our little hound earned five battle honors (Atlantic 1939-41, Narvik 1940, Norway 1940, Malta Convoys 1941, and Mediterranean 1941).

Canadian Service

To help make good on the loss of the Canadian destroyers HMCS Fraser (H48), Margaree (H49), and Ottawa (H60) earlier in the war, the Admiralty decided in the summer of 1943 to transfer three (very well-used) E&Fs.

These ships included HMS Express (H61) and the shipyard sisters Fortune and Foxhound. The trio, in line with Canadian naming conventions, took on North American river names and became, respectively,  HMCS Gatineau, HMCS Saskatchewan, and Qu’Appelle while retaining the same pennant/hull numbers.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), fresh from her refit, was commissioned in the RCN on 8 February 1944.

HMCS Qu’Appelle, 1944, with her new Western Approaches style camo scheme. LAC 3921890

Soon after she was assigned to Escort Group 12, which was forming up in the Channel ports for the planned Overlord/Neptune invasion of Normandy in June. Foxhound spent the next three months in a series of ASW exercises off Tobermoy and Lough Foyle.

EG 11 and EG 12 were “all Canadian” in makeup and would patrol off Falmouth and Lands End to the deep water curve off the Brittany Coast on D-Day and immediately after.

While supporting the landings on D+2, on 08 June 1944, Qu’Appelle was reportedly attacked Gnats from U-953 (Oblt Karl-Heinz Marbach) with the acoustic torpedoes exploding in the ship’s wake leaving with no damage to the destroyer.

U-953 and a second German boat stalked EG 12 ruthlessly but without joy due to defective torpedoes, as detailed in Normandy 1944: The Canadian Summer: 

Lieutenant Commander Alan Easton RCNR, the commanding officer of EG-12’s HMCS Saskatchewan [ex-HMS Fortune] recalled in his memoir, 50 North, that the evening of 7 June was like a “summer excursion” as the group patrolled northeast of Ushant: The four of us were gliding along in line abreast, listening for the sound of U-boats beneath the quiet sea. It was like drawing a net through the water, stretched tightly between the ships, so that it would snag the big fish while letting through the small unwanted ones. But the net did not always hang down as it should temperature gradients sometimes interfered with it.

In the late evening, however, “a low rumble was heard, the unmistakable sound of an underwater explosion.” Presuming it to be a torpedo hitting the bottom or exploding prematurely, EG-12 searched but saw or heard nothing else. An hour later a violent blast shook Saskatchewan, and 70 meters off the ship’s port quarter “a solid column of water shot a hundred feet in the air “when a torpedo exploded just before reaching the destroyer.

By the grace of “a miracle,” in Easton’s words, “this fast-moving, fish-like machine had self-triggered when only four seconds short of wreaking havoc in the bowels of its target.” As the destroyers continued to hunt through the night and the following morning, two other torpedoes exploded close by while another narrowly missed Skeena.

Easton described his frustration:

Where was the enemy who was so persistently endeavoring to sink us? Where were the other U-boats? We had not the slightest idea except that we knew the one who attacked us was probably within a mile or so. The ASDIC could pick up nothing except useless echoes. It was extremely aggravating.

On D+12, Foxhound, with sister Fortune/Saskatchewan and fellow Canuk tin cans HMCS Restigouche and HMCS Skeena, escorted the battleship HMS Anson from Scapa Flow to Plymouth, the latter on her first leg to head to the Pacific.

By July, the primary Kriegsmarine assets in the Bay of Biscay were 50~ Vorpostenboote (Outpost Boats) of 7. Vorpostenflotille, armed trawlers typically equipped with an 8.8cm Flak or two as well as some smaller guns and some primitive chain-based minesweeping gear. They screened the remaining U-boats in Brest whenever they came and went.

Your typical Vorpostenboot, of which the Germans fielded hundreds. Bild 27479778312

Foxhound and her three fellow Canuk DDs, as part of Operation Dredger in the Bay of Biscay off the Pierres Noires lighthouse on the night of 5/6 July, scrapped it out with three German VP-boats that were trying to escort U-741 out to sea. The running battle left V 715 (Alfred I) sunk and V 721 (Neubau 308) crippled and beached. U-741 would be chased down and sunk by British destroyers a month later. Both Saskatchewan and Qu’Appelle caught hits from the VP boats but suffered no casualties. Radar-equipped destroyers vs armed trawlers is almost a predetermined outcome.

By late July, Qu’Appelle was assigned to Operation Kinetic, a plan to ramp up the blockade of the Bay of Biscay by ending the semi-regular German coastal convoys off the west coast of Brittany between Brest and La Rochelle.

As part of Kinetic, on the night of 10/11 August 1944, Qu’appelle, along with Skeena, Restigouche, and HMCS Assiniboine, dismantled a German convoy in Audierne Bay near Brest. Those sunk included the Vorpostenboot V-720 (Neubau 720/307) while two trawlers were forced ashore by a burning farmhouse and the ersatz minesweeper Sperrbrecher 157 (1,425 tons) limped off only to be sunk three days later by the light cruiser HMS Mauritius. However, in the confusion of the running night surface action fought in shallow waters at close range, Skeena’s bow collided with Qu’Appelle’s stern as the Canadian destroyers retired.

This photograph shows the damage to the destroyer HMCS Qu’appelle after a collision with HMCS Skeena during a night-time battle off the French coast. Sailors, including one standing within the ship’s hull (lower right), examine the damage. George Metcalf Archival Collection. CWM 19830436-011

Personnel examining the damaged tiller flat of HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69), England, 16 August 1944 LAC 3596854

Following repair, Foxhound arrived “home” in Canada for the first time on 29 November 1944 when she arrived at Halifax. Sent to Pictou for refit in preparation for service in the Far East, she emerged again on 31 March 1945.

Rather than ship out for the Pacific, Qu’Appelle served as a troop transport on four trips between Greenock and Halifax, bringing Canadian forces back from Europe, and, post-VJ-Day, was paid off on 11 October 1945.

By the 1946 Jane’s, Saskatchewan/Fortune had already been disposed of and the E&Fs in RCN service were listed as the “Gatineau class.”

Qu’Appelle lingered around for another at the Torpedo School at Halifax, serving as a stationary training ship and sometimes tender to Canada’s two captured German Type IXC/40 U-boats, HCMS U-190 and U-889. 

Broadside view of the snow-dusted HMCS Qu’Appelle (H69) 28 February 1947, likely with HMCS U-190 alongside. In October 1947, the Canadian Navy sank U-190 as a target during Operation Scuttled, a live-fire naval exercise off Halifax. LAC 3209066

Added to the disposal list on 12 Jul 1947, Qu’Appelle was sold later that year for breaking up at Sydney, NS.

HMCS Qu’Appelle earned three battle honors (Atlantic 1944, Normandy 1944, and Biscay 1944) while in Canadian service, adding to her five battle honors earned with the RN earlier in the war.

Epilogue

Some relics of Qu’Appelle endure in Canada, including her 1944 marked bell that she carried off Normandy and in the Biscay blockade. It is preserved at the CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum.

While she has “Qu’Appelle” on the front, it is the destroyer’s original bell, and still says “Foxhound 1935” on the reverse side.

Her RCN service is commemorated in an excellent For Posterty’s Sake page.

Speaking of which, the Canadians recycled her name for a Cold War-era Mackenzie-class destroyer escort (DDE 264) who, in a salute to the old Foxhound, carried an insignia and logo was the head of a fox. She also utilized the old WWII H69’s bell.

HMCS Qu’Appelle (DDE 264) was in service with the RCN from 1963 until 1992, almost all of it in the Pacific.

After DDE-264 was gone, the name was used for the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets Summer Training Centre and is still retained by the Cadet’s Manitoba division as the Qu’Appelle River meets the Assiniboine River in Manitoba.

Of Foxhound/Qu’Appelle’s 17 E&F class sisters, ten were lost during the war: Exmouth, Eclipse, Electra, Encounter, Escort, Esk, Fearless, Firedrake, Foresight, and Fury, with the Germans, Italians, and Japanese all accounting for the job. Post-war, besides the three sent to Canada, Fame was sold to the Dominican Republic, and Echo was loaned to Greece. All in Commonwealth service were scrapped by 1947 while the Greek and Dominican sisters endured until 1956 and 1968 when their runs were terminated.

Korvettenkapitän Gerhard Glattes, the skipper of U-39 which Foxhound and company bagged in September 1939, spent more than seven and a half years as a POW, only being released in April 1947. His stint was the second longest imprisonment of any U-boat commander, beaten only (by one day) by Kptlt. Günther Lorentz of U-63 (Busch and Röll, 1999). The three torpedoes Glattes fired at Ark Royal— which had no hits– were his only shots of the war. Glattes returned to a very different Germany and passed in 1986, aged 77. He had been preceded in death by U-138’s Kptlt. Gramitzky, who only served five years as a POW passed in Germany in 1978.

Meanwhile, the destroyer Z12 Eric Giese is a popular dive spot in Narvik. 

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.

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.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

« Older Entries Recent Entries »