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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Jan 2, 2020: One Tough Russian

Posted on January 2, 2020 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Jan 2, 2020: One Tough Russian

Here we see, under what looks like an albatross circling, the gently listing Petropavlovsk-class battleship Sevastopol of the Imperial Russian Navy in early December 1904. The olive drab warship is terrain masking as best she could in besieged Port Arthur to avoid the Japanese Army’s 11-inch howitzer shells which had sent all the rest of the Tsar’s Pacific battlewagons to the bottom. She would enter 1905 as the sole combat-ready Russian battleship still afloat on that side of the globe– only to fight her last on 2 January, some 115 years ago today.

At 11,500 tons (standard), the trio of Petropavlovsk were essentially improved versions of the previous one-off Sissoi Veliky and Tri Sviatitelia-class battleships.

Russian Petropavlovsk-class battleship Poltava fitting out in Kronstadt, 1900

Packing four 12″/40 (30.5 cm) Pattern 1895 Obukhov guns in a pair of twin hydraulic turrets forward and aft, which had a two-minute firing cycle between rounds, they also carried a secondary armament of eight 6″/45cal guns in four twin mounts (rather than casemates as commonly seen around the world).

Imperial Russian battleships Poltava and Sevastopol in Kronshtadt, 1899 under construction–note the turrets being constructed

Imperial Russian battleship Sevastopol in Kronshtadt, September 1900

Topping the cake were 40 37mm and 47mm anti-torpedo boat guns and a half-dozen torpedo tubes. Armor was an impressive mix that ran up to 16 inches thick. Speed, just 15.3 knots on 16 coal-fired boilers and a pair of VTE engines, was typical of the era.

Russian battleships Poltava and Sevastopol in Kronshtadt, September 1900. Note the myriad of 37mm and 47mm light guns slathered throughout the ship from fighting tops to decks

Petropavlovsk and her sister, Sevastopol, were laid down at the Galerny Island Shipyard in St. Petersburg while the third ship of the class, Poltava, was laid down at the city’s Admiralty Yard at the tail-end of the 19th Century. All were named after famous Russian battles, with our featured ship honoring the epic 11-month Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War.

Baltic Fleet Полтава Petropavlask class Pre-dreadnought Battleships Полтава ‘Poltava’, Севастополь ‘Sevastopol’ and an unidentified warship at Kronstadt upon the completion of their revisions on the main gun-craddles, a revision which was prompted by accident suffered by Сисой Великий ‘Sissoi Velikiy’ in Mediterranean. Date: September, October 1900.

Commissioned 15 July 1900 after a second set of builder’s trials– during which she made 16.41 knots– Sevastopol was dispatched to join the rest of her class in the Pacific where the Russians were hedging in on Korea and Manchuria, much to the heartburn of the Japanese Empire.

From 1900 to the beginning of 1904 the Petropavlovsk-class vessels carried a Far East scheme that included white sides, turrets, deckhouses, masts, and fans with black-capped yellow stacks and gilded bow and stern decorations. This would later switch during the Russo-Japanese War to an all-over dark olive-green and black.

Petropavlovsk class Pre-dreadnought Battleship (Севасто́поль) Sevastopol passing Port Arthur’s Electric Hill, which mounted five 254mm Model 1895 guns on Durlyakher carriages (top left) and a pair of 57mm QF mounts, the strategic key to the port’s seaside defenses. The hill got its name from the electrical works located to its rear which were very modern.

Sevastopol was photographed at Algiers in 1901 while en route to the Russian base at Port Arthur where she was scuttled in 1905. Courtesy of J. Meister, Zurich Switzerland, 1975 NH 81876

Battleships Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk (in the background) in Vladivostok, August 1901

Russian battleships Sevastopol, Poltava, and Petropavlovsk in Port Arthur, 1903

The three Петропавловск ‘Petropavlovsk’ class sisters just outside Port-Arthur before the outbreak of war with Japan. Photo taken by Maximilian Shultz, captain of cruiser Novik. Note the battleships are in their “war colors”

Same as above

The Balloon Goes Up

When Port Arthur was attacked by the Japanese in the opening act of the war on the night of 8/9 February 1904, the Russians had their fleet in three lines anchored in the outer harbor.

The innermost line included Sevastopol and her sisters Petropavlovsk (fleet flagship) and Poltava along with the two similar 15,000-ton Peresvet-class battleships Peresvet and Pobieda. The middle line included the new battleships Tsarevich and Retvizan as well as several cruisers. In all, seven Russian battlewagons swayed at anchor in a “peacetime” Pacific port. (Similarly, at Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. had seven along Battleship Row as well as the dreadnought Pennsylvania in dry dock.)

Within 20 minutes, three flotillas of Japanese destroyers swept in, delivered their fish, and slipped out to sea, suffering no casualties. The middle line took the worst of it with both Retvizan and Tsarevich taking torpedoes and having to run aground to prevent a total loss.

Japanese Ukiyo-E woodblock art depiction, “Illustration of Our Torpedo Hitting Russian Ship at Great Naval Battle of Port Arthur” by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1904

Japanese Ukiyo-E woodblock art depiction by Toshihide Migita of the torpedo ship attack, Port Arthur

Nonetheless, the undamaged Russian ships stood to the next morning and engaged Japanese Adm. Togo’s squadron in a 40-minute battle that was a tactical draw in the respect that it left the status quo with the Russians in Port Arthur and the Japanese in control of the water outside the range of the base’s coastal guns.

Print shows Japanese battleships bombarding Russian battleships in the surprise initial naval assault on the Russian fleet at Lüshun (Port Arthur) 1904

During the said engagement, Sevastopol fired 10 12-inch and 65 6-inch shells at the Japanese with no reported hits, taking three small hits in return which caused little damage.

Sevastopol. This photograph might possibly have been taken at Port Arthur on the Yellow Sea during the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, after the opening engagement but before she got her olive drab paint. Courtesy of J. Meister, Zurich Switzerland, 1975 NH 81875

Togo next decided to try and bottle up the Russian fleet in Port Arthur by sinking old merchant ships, manned by volunteer IJN crews, in the approach channel. Said one-way volunteers would be plucked from their doomed ships by accompanying torpedo boats.

The first attempt, with four blockships– Bushu Maru, Buyo Maru, Hokoku Maru, and Jinsen Maru-– took place on the night of 24/25 February but was unsuccessful after the grounded battleship Retvizan caught the lead ship in her searchlights and plastered it.

Second attempt to block Port Arthur, 27 March 1904 William Lionel Wylie RMG PV0976

The second attempt was in the early morning of 27 March and, like the first, involved four blockships: the Chiyo Maru, Fukui Maru, Yahiko Maru, and Yoneyama Maru. The whole thing fell apart when Fukui Maru was spotted and promptly sunk by the patrolling Russian destroyer Silnyii well short of the outer harbor and the other three condemned steamers scuttled too far out to fill their intended role.

Blockade of Port Arthur by Hannosuke Kuroki 1904

A third attempt was made a few weeks later using a doubled force of eight blockships– but this was also unsuccessful and cost the lives of more than 70 of the volunteers who rode them to the bottom.

It was roughly at this point that Sevastopol’s skipper, Capt. Nikolai Chernyshev was relieved by the newly-installed squadron commander, Russian Vice Adm. Stephan Makarov after the battleship had a collision with Peresvet that was ruled Chernyshev’s fault during a rushed inquiry. The career officer was sent back to St. Petersburg on one of the last trains out of the fortress and would be found dead in his apartment the same week the Treaty of Portsmouth formally ended the Russo-Japanese War, aged 48.

Relieving Chernyshev was the commander of the fast cruiser Novik, Capt. Nicholas von Essen is from an esteemed Baltic German family with a long history of service to the Tsar. Although the crack up between the two battleships left one of Sevastopol’s rudders and screws damaged, an ersatz repair was able to semi-fix the warship enough to consider her still fit for service.

Makarov, who was seen by the Russians as essentially their equivalent of Chester Nimitz, led the patched-up Russian squadron on a patrol out of Port Arthur on 13 April, with his flag on Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol just to her stern.

However, Petropavlovsk stumbled across as many as three unmarked Russian mines (!) and sank in about a minute with the loss of 646 lives, including the good admiral and Russian combat artist Vasily Vereshchagin.

A Japanese Ukiyo-E depiction by artist Yasuda Hampō of the sinking of Petropavlovsk. The original caption reads: “Picture of the Eighth Attack on Port Arthur. The Flagship of Russia Was Destroyed by the Torpedo of Our Navy and Admiral Makaroff [sic] Drowned.” Photo via Museum of Fine Art, Boston

“The Russian battleship Petropvavlask sinks as Adm. Makarov stands bravely on deck”

“Faith, Tsar, and Fatherland 1905 Forgotten War” by Pavel Viktorovich Ryzhenko shows Russian military artist Vasili Verestchagin aboard the battleship Petropavlovsk with Admiral Makarov just before it sank. I love the sailors in the background.

Among the 89 survivors from Petropavlask plucked from the water was Lt. Grand Duke Kirill (Cyril) Vladimirovich, the Tsar’s first cousin and the man who would go on to be the pretender to the Romanov throne in exile from 1924 until he died in 1938, a position his granddaughter continues to style today. Kirill would suffer from burns, back injuries, and PTSD for the rest of his life.

Sevastopol, along with the rest of the squadron, was able to return to port after the loss of her sister.

Under newly promoted and deeply fatalistic Rear Adm. Wilgelm Vitgeft (aka Withief), the fleet at Port Arthur was ordered to sortie from the doomed base to the relative safety of Vladivostok to the North, fighting their way through Togo if they had to.

Sailing out on 10 June with six battleships, seven cruisers, and six destroyers, they made it some 20 miles outside of the port before they clashed– briefly– with Togo’s slightly smaller force (four battleships and 12 cruisers) and turned tail.

On re-entering the port, Sevastopol was hit by another unmarked mine and suffered 11 wounded.

Russian naval mines of the 1904 era were not that much more advanced than the black powder Jacobi mines of the Crimean War, a design that predated Farragut’s damnation in the Civil War. Nonetheless, they worked. The Russo-Japanese war experience led the Russkis to develop the M08 mine shortly after, one that is still used extensively today.

Russian naval mines on the beach on the east coast of Heishakow, Port Arthur 1905. In addition to Japanese mines, the loss of the Russian minelayer Yenisei, struck one of her own devices two days after the war began while laying an unmarked minefield, which would haunt the Russian fleet. NH 94783

Japanese sailors inspect captured Russian sea mines during the Russo-Japanese War. The IJN lost the battleships Hatsuse and Yashima, the cruisers Miyako, Saien, and Takasago; auxiliary cruiser Otagawa Maru, the destroyers Akatsuki and Hayatori, blockship Aikoku Maru, the torpedo boat No. 48, gunboat Heien, transport Maiko Maru, and corvette Kaimon to mines during the conflict. Photo via USNI photo archive

Left with a 12×14-foot hole in her hull and a 5-degree list, Sevastopol went to the port’s naval yard once again for repairs.

May 1904, Port Arthur Russian Battleships under repair at the Eastern Basin: Ретвизан (Retvizan) Цесаревич (Tsesarevich) and Poltava class Севастополь (Sevastopol)

It was during this period that a few of her 6-inch and most of her light guns (37mm Maxims and 47mm Hotchkiss) were removed to be installed ashore, manned by her gunners. One of her 12-inch guns was cannibalized to repair a similar one that had been damaged on Poltava.

Japanese sentry with a captured Russian naval gun overlooking Port Arthur after the siege. At least 10 of these were removed from Russian battleships, with many coming from Petropavlask.

Six-inch naval gun in a Russian hillside battery commander seated at left Port Arthur, LC-DIG-ppmsca-07978

The Beginning of the End

The hourglass was upended on Port Arthur on 1 August when the fortress city was cut off from the rest of Asia on land by the Japanese Army. With no more trains or supply columns, fresh troops or stock coming, and the port blockaded by the Japanese fleet applied against a single point, Port Arthur was withering on the vine for the next 154 days as the world watched.

Sevastopol was ready for action again by the end of July and fell in with the squadron once more for Vitgeft’s second attempt to break out on 10 August. The flag officer, in a meeting with his commanders before the sortie, reportedly told the assembled as they departed, “Gentlemen, we will meet again in the next world.”

Proving himself correct, the mission saw the unlucky admiral killed on the bridge of his battleship Tsarevich and most of the force– except for the battered Tsarevich herself which made for neutral Chinese shelter along with a trio of German-made destroyers— returned to Port Arthur a final time. In that lengthy (10-hour) running fight, known today as the Battle in the Yellow Sea, Sevastopol fired 78 12-inch and 323 6-inch shells and was hit twice by Japanese shells in return, causing 61 casualties.

With the likelihood of breakout evaporating, the fleet then turned to provide extra hands for the shrinking siege lines in the hills to fight off Gen. Baron Nogi Maresuke’s entire Third Japanese Army. Mobilizing nearly half of her crew to serve ashore in an ersatz infantry company, Sevastopol’s bluejackets were given rifles and cartridge belts and sent packing.

Imperial Russian battleship Sevastopol in Port-Arthur, 1904, with her crew sending off a scratch naval battalion armed with Mosin M91 rifles. Note, that she now has an olive drab scheme.

Still, Sevastopol, by then a battered and half-manned floating war engine, shuttled around the harbor and provided direct gunfire support in late August, during which she exchanged fire with the Japanese armored cruisers Nissin and Kasuga. Once again, she struck a mine, which put her in repair until October.

It was while she was at the Navy Yard that the Japanese had begun to bombard the base and its defenses with over a dozen Armstrong-designed 11-inch (280mm) L/10 howitzers which had been pulled from the coastal defenses of Tokyo Bay and manhandled to the fortress. Each of the behemoths fired 478-pound AP shells to a range of nearly 5 miles.

Japan coast defense 280mm L/10 howitzers in their original Home Island emplacements. Nicknamed “Osaka Babies” by the Japanese and “Roaring Trains” by the Russians when they were dismounted and used as siege artillery at Port Arthur in 1904.

Enormous 11-inch shell from a Japanese siege gun, beginning its deadly flight into Port Arthur LC-USZ62-67825

Drydock in Port Arthur Navy Yard showing cruiser Bayan, left, and Sevastopol, right, under fire from Japanese 11-inch howitzers, likely in October. Courtesy of Mrs. John B. McDonald, September 15, 1966. NH 111897

Hit by five such shells while in repair, Sevastopol’s deck was reinforced with a layer of sandbags and slag under a cover of an inch of plate steel. Such up-armored, the battered Russian was able to clock back in and provide counter-battery fire throughout November.

However, once the Japanese on 3 December seized control of the strategic key to Port Arthur, 203 Meter Hill, which commanded the harbor itself, and with a gunfire support team atop the crest directing fire, it was game over for the Russian fleet.

Destroying Russian ships and town terrific rain of great Japanese shells in Port Arthur, LC-DIG-ppmsca-07969

On 5 December, Sevastopol’s remaining sistership Poltava was hit by plunging howitzer shells and suffered a magazine explosion, sinking her into the mud of Port Arthur.

The Russian pre-dreadnought battleship Poltava was sunk at Port Arthur as a result of bombardment by Japanese land-based artillery during the siege of Port Arthur (December 1904). She would later be salvaged and put into service with the Japanese then repatriated to Russia in 1915 and finally scrapped in the Baltic in the 1920s.

The next day, Retvizan was pounded to the bottom.

Port Arthur, 1905 Russian battleship Retvizan sunk by Japanese 11-inch howitzers in shallow water

On 7 December, Peresvet and Pobeda went.

Russian Peresvet Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship IRN Pobeda under intense Japanese artillery fire at Port Arthur on December 6th, 1904.

On 8 December, the cruiser Pallada was destroyed.

Destroying a fleet — battleship Pallada struck by a 500 lb. Japanese shell — Port Arthur harbor via LOC LC-USZ62-68822

On the 9th, the cruiser Bayan joined the butcher’s list. The minelayer Amur and gunboat Bobr followed.

Port Arthur from the top of Gold Hill in 1905. From the left wrecks of battleships Peresvet, Poltava, Retvizan, Pobeda, and the cruiser Pallada

The Final Act

After the first week or so of December, Sevastopol and a retinue of small ships were all that was left of the once-mighty Russian Pacific force in Port Arthur. Though missing some of her armament and still suffering damage from two mines, a collision, five 11-inch hits, and a dozen from smaller 8- and 6-inch naval guns, she was still the only combat-effective Russian capital ship available.

Therefore, Essen, with his ground-fighting sailors repatriated back from the frozen trenches to their floating steel home, fought the last naval battle for Port Arthur from 10 December onward, with the big howitzers firing another 300 rounds indirectly at the theorized location of the Russian ship in a real-life game of Battleship without success, forcing the Japanese navy to tap back into the fight.

A fleet in being, although trapped, the Sevastopol and her escorts pinned down the bulk of the Japanese fleet for the rest of the year.

As described in Richard Connaughton’s Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia’s War with Japan:

Von Essen, formerly captain of the Novik, placed Sevastopol in the roadstead at the southern end of Tiger’s Tail behind a hill that shielded her from 203 Meter Hill. She was protected by an anti-torpedo boom and a small, hurrying, anxious destroyer flotilla. Wave after wave of Japanese destroyers sped in to release no fewer than 124 torpedoes in six successive attacks against the luckless target. For three weeks, Essen survived…

Sevastopol repulsing a night attack. Painting by A.V. Ganzena

Port Arthur, December 1904. The photo shows two Russian officers inspecting beached or recovered Japanese torpedoes which were scavenged for Pyroxylin and melinite needed in the defense. In the background are Сокол ‘Sokol’ class Destroyer Смелый ‘Smelyi’, the Battleship Севастополь ‘Sevastopol’ and the British merchant SS King Arthur, the last ship to break through the Japanese blockade.

In the series of attacks, the Russian force sank at least two Japanese torpedo boats, No. 53 and No. 42, and damaged as many as 13 other vessels. Meanwhile, the protected cruiser Takasago was sent to the bottom on 13 December when she struck a mine while shepherding the small attack craft, with a loss of 273 of her crew.

Japanese Torpedo boats returning to base after night attack

Gunboat Отважный ‘Otvazhnyy’ and the listing Pre-dreadnought Battleship Севастополь ‘Sevastopol’ not long after surviving the various waves of Japanese Torpedo boats in early to mid-December 1904

It was downright embarrassing to Togo that, even after the Army had dismantled the Russian squadron piecemeal, his force still could not shut the lid on its coffin.

Finally, it was all for naught as Gen. Baron Anatoly Stessel (Stoessel), the Russian commander at Port Arthur, moved to surrender his force on New Year’s Day 1905, without consulting his shocked staff. Apparently, while in a tactically bad position, the besieged base could have held out much longer in theory.

From W. Bruce Lincoln’s, In War’s Dark Shadow:

When they entered Port Arthur, the Japanese expected to find a handful of desperate defenders short of weapons, ammunition, and food. Not counting doctors, nurses and noncombatants, they found 13,485 able-bodied men, another 5,809 suffering from scurvy or minor wounds, and 13,856 who were in the hospital or on light duty because of wounds or serious illness. There were over 600 pieces of artillery still in good order, over 200,000 shells still unfired, and about 2.5 million rounds of machine gun and rifle ammunition. There were tons of food and fodder: flour for 27 days, groats for another 23 days, beans and lentils for 34 days, and dried vegetables for 88 days. There were nearly 200 days’ worth of salt and tea. Most amazing of all, perhaps, there was 2,944 horses in the fortress, enough to supply the garrison with fresh meat for many days to come in view of the large quantities of fodder remaining. With their sense of honor that drove them to fight to the death for their Emperor, the Japanese were dumbfounded.

Of note, Stessel was later court marshaled and sentenced to death by a Russian military tribunal, although his sentence was eventually commuted.

Just before the Nogi’s forces moved into Port Arthur on 2 January, the last of the Russian fleet in the harbor pulled a Toulon 1942 and scuttled. These included the Puilki-class destroyers Storozhevoi, Silni, and Razyashchi; the Delfin-class destroyers Bditelni and Boevoi; the gunboats Djigit, Guidamak, Guidamak, and Razboinik; and the battered but not broken Sevastopol.

Von Essen, with a crew of 50, moved the ship to the deepest water available to him, 30 fathoms, and opened her seacocks after passing the word to the dog closed only the portside watertight doors. This caused the ship to keel over starboard and sink by the stern in about 15 minutes. Notably, while the Japanese were able to raise and ultimately repair all the Russian battleships sunk at Port Arthur (apart from the shattered Petropavlovsk) Sevastopol was declared a loss and not salvaged.

In all, some 507 of Sevastopol’s crew and 31 of her officers, including Von Essen, were captured by the Japanese, bringing their ship’s battle flag with them.

Russian sailors from the wrecked battleships – surrendered prisoners of war in Port Arthur. LC-USZ62-11832

Stossel and Makarov over Nogi and Togo on the cover of The Sphere, 115 years ago this month. Makarov was, of course, already long dead when this was published while Stossel would live under a commuted death sentence until 1915. As for Nogi, grieving for the loss of more than 14,000 of his men on the costly Port Arthur campaign– including his eldest son– he would commit ritual suicide in 1912 upon the death of the Emperor. Notably, Nogi after the war spent most of his personal wealth on the construction of memorials to both the Russian and Japanese soldiers of the 1904 campaign. Togo, Japan’s most decorated naval officer of all time, died of throat cancer in 1934, aged 86, and is still seen as “The Nelson of the Pacific.”

Essen would go on to be appointed commander of the Baltic Sea fleet during the first part of WWI before he died of pneumonia and today a frigate in the modern Russian Navy carries his name.

The Sevastopol’s Port Arthur St. Andrew’s flag remains in the Russian Navy’s collection to this day, housed in the building of the Naval Cadet Corps.

Via Ocean-Magazine.ru

The name Sevastopol went on to be used both on a Gangut-class battleship that served in both WWI and WWII before going on to be scrapped in 1956 as well as for a Kresta-class cruiser during the Cold War.

Our circa-1904 battlewagon is remembered in maritime art as well.

Battleship Sevastopol by Nikolay Konstantinovich Artseulov

Finally, Combrig released an excellent 1:700 scale model of Sevastopol, #70102.

Specs:

Line drawing via Combrig

Displacement: 11,842 long tons
Length: 376 ft
Beam: 70 ft
Draught: 28 ft 3 in
Machinery: 16 cylindrical boilers, 9368 ihp, 2 shafts, 2 triple-expansion steam engines
Speed: 16 knots
Range: 3,750 nm
Complement: 27 officers and 625 sailors as designed
Armor, nickel-steel Harvey type:
Waterline belt: 10–16 in
Gun turrets: 10 in
Secondary turrets: 5 in
Conning tower: 9 in
Deck: 2–3 in
Armament:
2 × twin 12″/40 (305 mm) guns
12 (4 × twins, 4 × single) 6″/45cal (152 mm) guns
12 × single 47mm Hotchkiss guns
28 × single 37mm Maxim guns
4 × 15-inch torpedo tubes, broadside
2 × 18-inch torpedo tubes, below the waterline
50 mines

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

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

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

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Who Wants a Deal on a Historic Coast Guard Cutter?

Posted on December 30, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

Robert Morris was an Englishman, born in Liverpool in 1734. Coming to the Pennsylvania colony in his teens, by 1775 he was a wealthy merchant and turned his business acumen into buying arms for the colonial militia. This role grew until Alexander Hamilton described him as the “Financier of the Revolution.” One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and for a time considered the “de facto commander” of the Continental Navy (he even sold the first armed man-of-war to Congress), Morris later turned down the role of the country’s first treasury secretary, suggesting Hamilton for the position instead.

Rather than be remembered on the $10 bill, Morris was honored by four early U.S. Navy vessels that were named after him between 1776 and 1846, and well as a few Coast Guard cutters (which until 1967 was under the Treasury Department).

The first cutter named after Morris was a Baltimore Clipper-style schooner built in 1831 at the New York Navy Yard. Some 73-feet in length and armed with a half-dozen 9-pounders, she was not a commanding vessel but was good enough to bust smugglers and fight pirates. Nonetheless, USRC Morris participated in the Mexican War as part of Capt. John Webster’s nine-cutter squadron and, on her way back to the East Coast, was driven ashore at Key West by a hurricane in 1846.

U.S. Revenue Cutter Morris (1831) by H. A. Roath, painting circa 1855, via Philadelphia Museum 1967-268-3-ov

The second USRC Morris, commissioned in 1848, was a 102-foot topsail schooner constructed of yellow pine, white and live oak, locust, cedar, and mahogany. Armed in 1861 with “1 x 32-pounder pivot-mounted cannon; 1 x brass 12-pound howitzer; 12 Maynard rifles; 12 smoothbore muskets; 12 pistols; 19 cutlasses; 11 boarding pikes and 18 battle axes,” Morris was notably detached to scour the North Atlantic that year in search of the Confederate privateer brig Jefferson Davis.

Revenue Cutter Morris prepares to board the British passenger vessel Benjamin Adams on 16 July 1861 about 200 miles east of New York, by Gil Cohen (Photo: USCG)

She was sold in 1868.

The third– and final U.S. vessel named for Morris– was a 125-foot Active-class Coast Guard cutter built in 1927 at American Brown Boveri Electric Corp., Camden, NJ.

We have profiled the 125s, best known as the “buck-and-a-quarter” class, in several Warship Wednesdays (See: Warship Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019: The Other Tora of Pearl Harbor).

USCGC Morris (WPC-147/WSC-147/WMEC-147) operated first out of New London until 22 November 1928. She then assumed her permanent station at Oakland, California, on 13 January 1929, conducting patrol operations and operating intermittently against rumrunners through 1934. She was then transferred to Seward, Alaska until 1937, before ultimately returning to the West Coast.

Transferring to Navy control 1 November 1941, Morris was designated a subchaser and assigned to patrol and rescue operations out of San Diego during WWII until 1 January 1946. She assumed postwar USCG patrol duties out of San Pedro, which was her permanent station through 1969.

USCGC Morris (WPC-147/WSC-147/WMEC-147) late in her career. Note her 40mm Bofors forward, which was fitted in 1942. (USCG photo)

Decommissioned on 7 August 1970 after 43 years of hard service, she was then transferred to Boy Scouts where she was active with the Sea Scout program in Stockton as SSS Morris until recent years. In the early 2000s, she received $2 million in repairs and restoration paid for by Bob French and was donated in 2015 to the Liberty-Maritime Museum, who has had her for sale since 2016, priced at around $250K.

That asking price was reduced to $195K last year and is now at a comparative fire sale on Craigslist for $90,000.

The ad for posterity:

1927 125′ Coast Guard Cutter Morris asking $90,000 obo – an amazing vessel for this price! Major overhaul ($2 million approx.) completed in 2010. Cummins KTAs, Northern Lights gen sets, ARPA radars, bow thruster. All wiring and piping replaced. Hull plating, railings, tanks and decks replaced as needed. Operational but due for a haul-out and one prop repair. Anchored near Rio Vista, recently cruised but surplus to our needs. Suitable as an ocean cruising vessel or live-aboard. State of California registration, current insurance.

What more could you ask for?

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2019: A Tough Christmas in the Lingayen Gulf

Posted on December 25, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2019: A Tough Christmas in the Lingayen Gulf

Courtesy of the Submarine Force Library and Museum, Groton, Connecticut, 1972. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 78922

Here we see a prewar photograph showing the S-class diesel submarine USS S-38 (SS-143) underway, sometime in the 1930s.

The S-class, or “Sugar” boats, were actually three different variants designed by Simon Lake Co, Electric Boat, and the Bureau of Construction and Repair (BuC&R) in the last days of the Great War in which U.S.-made submarines had a poor record. Looking for a better showing in these new boats, of which 65 were planned, and 51 completed in several subgroups, these small 1,000~ ton diesel-electric “pig boats” took to the sea in the 1920s and they made up the backbone of the U.S. submarine fleet before the larger “fleet” type boats of the 1930s came online.

The hero of our tale, USS S-38, was a first flight EB/Holland design that ran some 219-feet oal, could dive to 200 feet and travel at a blistering 14.5-knots on the surface on her two 600hp NELSECO diesel engines and two GE electric motors for 11-knots submerged. Armament was a quartet of 21-inch bow tubes with a dozen deep-running but reliable Mark 10 torpedos (which carried a then-huge 500-pound warhead) and a 4″/50 cal popgun on deck for those special moments. Crew? Just 38 officers and men.

Laid down 15 January 1919 Bethlehem Steel Company’s Union Plant, Potrero Works, San Francisco, she commissioned 11 May 1923.

Fitting out at the Bethlehem Steel Company shipyard, San Francisco, California, 29 March 1923. NH 97960

Fitted out at Mare Island, S-38 joined Submarine Division 17 (SubDiv 17) at San Pedro on 24 May and immediately began preparations for a cruise to the Aleutians, a deployment that would validate the class working out of Dutch Harbor– which many would see during the coming conflict with Japan.

By August 1924, S-38 was detailed to join many of her sisters in the Asiatic Fleet, which she would call home for the next two decades.

On regular operations there, she cruised off the Philippines, along the Indo-China coast, and into the Dutch East Indies. In the 1930s, except for trading in their Great War-era torpedos for the new-fangled Mark 14, the boats were otherwise unmodified from their original 1918 design.

Description: Crewmen posing with a 4″/50cal deck gun onboard an S-Type submarine, March 1929, with another 4″/50cal in the foreground. Photographed from USS Beaver (AS-5). In the background is USS Pittsburgh (ACR/CA-4), in the Dewey drydock. Catalog #: NH 51830

USS S-38 (SS-143) nested between sister submarines S-40 (SS-145), at left, and S-41 (SS-146), at right, alongside USS Canopus (AS-9) off Tsingtao, China, in 1930. Note these submarines’ 4/50 deck guns. NH 51833

On 8 December 1941 (7 December east of the International Date Line), the U.S. was hauled in from the sidelines of WWII and “the indomitable old” S-38 departed Manila Bay on her first war patrol on the first day of the U.S. involvement in the war.

Poking around the PI archipelago, S-38, under command of Lt. Wreford G. ″Moon″ Chapple, the aging sub fired a torpedo on an enemy vessel off the coast of Mindoro on 9 December without a hit. Looking for better hunting, she headed into the Lingayen Gulf in the predawn hours of 22 December and promptly saw an enemy convoy at first light. Firing a spread of four unreliable Mark 14s, she garnered nothing but a counter-attack from Japanese destroyers.

Two hours later, she fired two more fish at an anchored cargo ship, Hayo Maru (5446 GRT) which blew up less than a minute later. It was only the *second Japanese vessel sunk in the war by a U.S. submarine up to that point.

*[ The first Japanese vessel claimed by an Allied submarine was the troopship Awajisan Maru which had been bombed by RAAF Hudsons and set on fire, then sank by a torpedo from the Dutch submarine HNLMS K XII on 12 December. The same day, HNLMS K XII also sank the tanker Toro Maru. On 13 December, the Dutch sub O 16 splashed the transports Asosan Maru and Kinka Maru in the Gulf of Siam while K XII increased her own tally with the tanker Taizan Maru off Indochina the same day. Meanwhile, the first U.S. submarine to get on the board was USS Swordfish (SS-193) with the freighter Atsutasan Maru sent to the bottom in the East China Sea on 16 December. ]

However, the next three days– across both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day– was an epic fight for survival.

According to DANFS:

The enemy destroyers again closed the submarine. Depth charges went off close aboard. From 0804 to 0930, the S-boat ran silent, using evasive tactics. At 0930, she grounded at 80 feet; then coasted up the bank to 57 feet. The destroyers, joined by small boats, continued the search through the day. At 2130, the hunted submarine began efforts to clear by backing. During the maneuvering, her port propeller was damaged; but, by 2201, she was free and underway for the Hundred Islands area on the western side of the gulf.

S-38 remained there through the 23d and, on the 24th, moved to the southern section of the gulf where she closed a formation of six large auxiliaries just prior to 1130. Her presence, however, was discovered. At 1152, a depth charge exploded on her port side. She went deeper. Between 1206 and 1208, eight more exploded around her. At 1209, she stopped all motors and sank to the bottom in 180 feet of water. The depth charging continued, but the explosions were more distant. At 1230, the submarine began to move again. At 1245, the enemy hunters again located her and resumed depth charging. S-38 again settled to the bottom. The depth charging continued until after 1300. The search continued until after 1800.

At 1842, the submarine got underway, heading back to the Hundred Islands area. At 2235, she surfaced to recharge her batteries. Five minutes later, her after battery exploded. At 2304, she went ahead on her starboard engine, making her way out of Lingayen Gulf.

Soon after 0200 on the 25th, she sighted two enemy destroyers, but remained undetected. At 0346, however, she sighted a third, which sighted her. S-38 submerged. The destroyer closed the submarine’s last surface position and, at 0350, commenced depth charging. From then until after 0900, the submarine evaded the destroyer, using her one quiet propeller. She then grounded on a steep bank at 85 feet. For the next two hours, the destroyer circled. S-38 slid down to 200 feet, used her motor to bring herself up; then repeated the maneuver. The destroyer moved off; and, at 1235, the S-boat got underway for Manila. An hour later, she grounded, but only briefly; and, at 2145 on the 26th, she entered the outer minefield at the entrance to Manila Bay.

Ordered to Soerabaja in the Dutch East Indies, S-38 arrived there on 14 January and spent her 2nd War Patrol in the Makassar Strait off Balikpapan. Moon Chapple left the boat then, headed to the larger and newer USS Permit (SS- 178) and later the USS Bream (SS-243). S-38 would continue on her 3rd Patrol under the command of Lt. Henry Glass Munson.

The old boat’s 3rd Patrol was unproductive but on her 4th Patrol Munson would surface and shell the Japanese facilities at Sangkapura on 26 February and two days later go on to rescue 54 haunted survivors of the heroic British E-class destroyer HMS Electra (H27) which had been pummeled by the Japanese at the Battle of the Java Sea.

On 2 March, S-38 spotted the Japanese Nagara-class light cruiser Kinu and a destroyer off Cape Awarawar and, although she fired six torpedoes, did not achieve a hit, and was in turn depth charged for 24-hours straight for her effort. Kinu would later be sunk in the Philipines in October 1944 by carrier aircraft.

Transferred to Brisbane in Australia to join the other Sugar boats of SubRon5, S-38 completed a 4th, 5th, and 6th Patrol without much to show for it.

On her 7th Patrol splashed the Japanese freighter Meiyo Maru (5628 GRT) in the St. George Channel on 8 August 1942.

A Chief Torpedoman paints another hashmark on the Torpedo Shop scoreboard of Japanese ships claimed sunk by SubRon 5’s S-Boats, operating out of Brisbane, Australia, during April-November 1942. Photographed on board USS Griffin (AS-13), tender to the squadron. Submarines listed on the scoreboard include S-37 (SS-142), S-38 (SS-143), S-39 (SS-144), S-40 (SS-145), S-41 (SS-146), S-42 (SS-153), S-43 (SS-154), S-44 (SS-155), S-45 (SS-156), S-46 (SS-157), and S-47 (SS-158). NARA 80-G-77065

At the end of her 8th Patrol, S-38 headed to California for a much-needed overhaul– attempting to sink a fat Japanese tanker off Tarawa on the way without success– then completed one final patrol, from Pearl Harbor, on 27 July 1943.

USS Harris (APA-2) moored in the background of this photo of USS S-38 (SS-143) following overhaul at San Diego, April 1943. US Navy photo # 1198-43 from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard collection now held at Seattle NARA

From there, S-38 spent a year in ASW training duties in the relatively safe New Hebrides, an OPFOR for air and surface units passing to the real war in the West.

Ordered to San Diego, she was decommissioned on 14 December 1944, struck from the Navy list a month later, and sunk as a target by aerial bombing on 20 February 1945, her last full measure.

In all, S-38 earned three battle stars during the war.

Following the conflict, the tale of her harrowed Christmastime raid in the Lingayen Gulf during the darkest days of the war was retold in the first season of The Silent Service in 1957. A guest on the show was Moon Chapple, who at the time was a double Navy Cross recipient and a full Captain. After he left S-38 in 1942 he would go on to bag another half-dozen Marus and heavily damage two Japanese cruisers before going on to skipper the reactivated heavy cruiser USS Pittsburgh (CA-72) in the Korean War

When asked if anything else could have happened to one submarine on one patrol, Moon answered, “I don’t see how. By the time you’ve been through depth charge attacks, groundings, broken instruments, mechanical damage and a battery explosion you sorta run out of ideas of how to get into trouble.”

Moon would go on to retire as a rear admiral in 1959. He died in 1991, aged 83.

As for S-38’s sisters, though obsolete, several S-boats remained on the Navy List and served the Navy well in both the Atlantic and Pacific (including several lost to accidents) during WWII. A half-dozen were even transferred to the Royal Navy as Lend-Lease including class leader and the former submersible aircraft carrier, USS S-1.

None of these hardy, if somewhat unlucky, craft endure though Pigboats.com keeps their memory alive.

Specs:

Displacement: 854 tons surfaced; 1,062 tons submerged
Length: 219 feet 3 inches
Beam: 20 feet 9 inches
Draft: 16 feet
Propulsion: 2 × New London Ship and Engine Company (NELSECO) diesels, 600 hp each;
2 × General Electric electric motors, 560 kW each; 120 cell Exide battery; two shafts.
Speed: 14.5 knots surfaced; 11 knots submerged
Range: 5,000 miles at 10 knots surfaced on 168 tons (41,192 gals) oil fuel
Test depth: 200 ft
Crew: 4 Officers, 34 Enlisted as designed. Up to 42 during WWII.
Armament (as built):
4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (bow, 12 torpedoes first Mk 10 then later Mk 14)
1 × 4-inch (102 mm)/50 cal Mark 9 “wet mount” deck gun

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Warship Wednesday (on a Tuesday), Dec. 17, 2019: The Count’s Bones

Posted on December 17, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Warship Wednesday (on a Tuesday), Dec. 17, 2019: The Count’s Bones

Photo by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 51977

Here we see the aftermath of this very day in history some 80 years ago– the scuttled German “pocket battleship” SMS Graf Spee, resting on the bottom in 25 feet of water off the harbor of Montevideo, Uruguay, following the 1939 Battle of the River Plate.

While internet warships commentators and naval museum fans will fight to the death that Graf Spee and her fellow 1930s-era Deutschland-class “Panzerschiff” (armored ships) were an abomination when compared to regular battleships– vessels the Germans were unable to build due to Versallies limits– they did pack a half-dozen bruising 11-inch SK C/28 guns and another eight 5.9-inch SK C/28 guns in a 16,000-ton hull with a minimum of 3.9-inches of belt armor.

While incapable of holding off even a serious pre-dreadnought battlewagon, by nature of their 28-knot speed and amazing 16,000nm range (at 18 knots!) they were ideal for commerce raiding and able to chew up anything that could catch them that was smaller than a battlecruiser.

Admiral Graf Spee Preliminary artist’s impression of the ship by Dr. Oscar Parkes, Editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, circa 1932. When completed in 1936, Admiral Graf Spee’s superstructure differed from that shown here. NH 91874

Named after Vizeadmiral Maximilian Johannes Maria Hubert Reichsgraf (Count) von Spee, who was lost at the December 1914 Battle of the Falkland Islands along with his two sons, our pocket battleship was laid down 1 October 1932 at Reichsmarinewerft, Wilhelmshaven when Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was still Germany’s president, she was commissioned 6 January 1936 after the Machtergreifung brought Hitler to power. In a nod to the latter, she picked up a giant bronze Nazi eagle on her stern to complement her Von Spee coat of arms on her bow, a blend of Kaiser and Fuhrer, if you will.

Admiral Graf Spee moored in the harbor, circa 1936-1937. Note the coat of arms mounted on her bow. NH 81110

Her brief peacetime career was filled with intrigues as the ship participated in the Spanish Civil War and the lead up to the Big One in 1939.

Kriegsmarine Panzerschiff Admiral Graf Spee in Spithead U.K. 1937. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

With that, she was soon at her job of reaping British merchantmen in the Atlantic and had sunk nine such vessels (taking care to preserve the lives of their mariners) before a force of three much smaller British cruisers– HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax, and HMNZS Achilles-– fought a running battle with the big German at sea off the coast of Uruguay near the mouth of the River Plate on 13 December.

While all four ships involved were damaged, they were all still afloat at the end of the engagement with 36 of the Graf Spee‘s complement killed and the Royal Navy consigning 72 of their own to the sea at the end of the day.

Watercolor by Edward Tufnell, RN (Retired), depicting the cruisers HMS Exeter (foreground) and HMNZS Achilles (right center background) in action with the German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee (right background). Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Washington, DC. Donation of Melvin Conant, 1969. NH 86397-KN

HMS ACHILLES against the ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE off River Plate. by John S. Smith, via Royal New Zealand Navy

Admiral Graf Spee vs Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter, painting by Adam Werka

For a more detailed account of the battle, which would be wasted here, see the Royal Navy’s “The Battle of the River Plate: An Account of Events Before, During and After the Action Up to the Self Destruction of the Admiral Graf Spee, 1940” at the National Archives. It is 16-pages including three great maps.

Suffering from over 30 hits from the British guns, the German vessel needed time to lick her wounds and bury her dead ashore.

Admiral Graf Spee anchored off Montevideo, Uruguay in mid-December 1939, following the Battle of the River Plate. NH 59657

Denied a lengthy stay in neutral Montevideo, German CPT Hans Langsdorff believed a British bluff that a much stronger force was waiting for him offshore and scuttled his vessel on 17 December to comply with the local demand that he leave the port in 72 hours. This included misinformation that the battlecruiser Renown was offshore when, in fact, she was not.

With most of his crew looking on from shore, Graf Spee began to sink, ablaze. She would burn for three full days.

As Graf Spee only had enough fuel for about one more day of steaming anyway, and the Uruguayans would not transfer any more, it was an academically sound choice to scuttle the German ship. Even if it managed to break out, she would have been dead in the water the next day in a very unfriendly South Atlantic more than 6,000 miles from home. Instead of a watery grave, the surviving crew of the pocket battleship lived to see another day.

Of course, the Battle of the River Plate was the first chance since the loss of the auxiliary cruiser HMS Rawalpindi the month before for the Royal Navy to exact some measure of revenge for that ship’s heroic stand against the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst.

And on the 18th of December in a broadcast to the Nation, Churchill would compare the tragic but heroic end of Rawalpindi to the inglorious scuttling of the German pocket-battleship Admiral Graf Spee in Montevideo Roads (the day before) with the comment, “Once in harbour she had the choice of submitting in the ordinary manner to internment, which would have been unfortunate for her, or, of coming out to fight and going down in battle, like the Rawalpindi, which would have been honourable to her”.

On 19 December, two days after Graf Spee settled in the muck of the river, Langsdorff led 1,038 men across the border with Argentina into exile, where they would be held together under local custody. Despite telling the local press that he was “satisfied,” Langsdorff, a Great War veteran who earned his Iron Cross at Jutland, fatally shot himself in his Buenos Aires hotel room with his Mauser pocket pistol. He was lying on Graf Spee‘s battle ensign.

Some 300,000 Argentines attended the 45‐year‐old captain’s funeral.

Funeral procession of Captain Hans Langsdorff NH 85636

On 2 February 1940, just six weeks after the German ship was scuttled, the brand new light cruiser USS Helena (CL-50), with the U.S. Navy still officially neutral in the conflict, called on Montevideo while on her shakedown cruise. Soon, a boarding party that included ENS Richard D. Sampson motored over to the wreck and boarded her to collect what intel they could. After all, the Germans still had two other sisterships to Graf Spee in active service at the time.

Ship’s Number Two 10.5cm/65 twin anti-aircraft gun mount (port side, amidships), photographed on board her wreck on 2 February 1940 by Ensign Richard D. Sampson, USN, of USS Helena (CL-50). The shield of her Number Four 15cm/55 gun is partially visible in the lower right. Her port side crane is in the upper left. NH 50959

Photograph of the mounting for a 20mm machine gun, on the upper platform of the ship’s forward superstructure, with a sketch showing the location of that platform’s two machine gun mounts. NH 51979

Photograph of the ship’s forward broadside (15cm gun) director, with a USS Helena crew member sitting on it. The view looks aft, with the forward superstructure in the background. The director has partially collapsed to starboard. The sketch below shows the director’s arrangement, extending down to the main deck. NH 51982

Photograph of a shell hole in the ship’s forward superstructure tower, made by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter. The hole was described as large enough to crawl through. NH 51986-A

Photograph of the interior of the ship’s forward superstructure tower, showing damage caused by an eight-inch shell fired by the British heavy cruiser Exeter during the Battle of the River Plate. Cut wires and the absence of a fire control tube were noted on the original report in which this image appeared. NH 51987-A

Photograph of the ship’s partially collapsed smokestack, with its searchlight platform, seen from the after port end of the forward superstructure. The aircraft recovery crane’s boom is in the lower right. NH 51991-A

Graf Spee would be partially broken up above the waterline in situ, with its good German steel ironically– according to legend– going on to be used to make Ballester Molina M1911-ish pistols in Argentina for a British SOE contract.

Ian McCollum over at Forgotten Weapons opines on that in the below:

As Graf Spee‘s 1942-43 salvage was done by a British contractor, much of her salvageable secrets were uncovered.

Today, numerous parts of the ship are on public display around Latin America including a large salvaged optical rangefinder, telegraphs and several small deck guns. One of her anchors stands at a memorial in Montevideo. Further, hundreds of small relics of the vessel are in personal collections around the world.

Her 880-pound stern eagle was recovered by divers in 2006 as part of a government effort to further scrap the ship but has been the subject of much bickering over its final ownership, and it has been in storage onshore ever since.

It is set to be auctioned off in the coming weeks to comply with a court order with possible winners paying upwards of $30 million for the item, which includes a large swastika in the dirty bird’s talons.

Of Graf Spee’s foes at the River Plate, HMNZS Achilles‘ Y-turret was preserved when (as the Indian cruiser INS Delhi) she was scrapped at the end of the 1970s, and since the mid-1990s has been sitting outside HMNZS Philomel (a Royal New Zealand Navy shore station) at Devonport, Auckland. HMS Exeter (68) was sunk during the Second Battle of the Java Sea, 1 March 1942 and her wreck has been destroyed by illegal salvagers. However, Exeter’s bell, removed in a 1940 refit, is on display at the White Ensign Club in Portsmouth. HMS Ajax (22), scrapped in 1949, has her bell on a monument in Montevideo, donated by ADM Sir Henry Harwood and Sir Eugen Millington-Drake, the latter responsible for circulating the rumors that a large British force was off the port in 1939, waiting for Graf Spee.

Of the more than 1,000 Graf Spee sailors shipwrecked in South America in 1939, nearly 200 managed to escape their loose Argentine custody and, either make for Chile and other points North, or return to Germany by other means. One of these, KKpt Jürgen Wattenberg, reached Germany in May 1940 and would join the U-boat arm only to be captured again in 1942 when his submarine was sunk by the British, spending the rest of the war in the clink in Arizona. Another, Oblt.z.S Friedrich Wilhelm Rasenack, managed to make it back home by June 1941 and would later write a book about his former ship.

In all, between the sailors who never left and those who returned to Latin America after seeing how bad life was in post-war Allied-occupied Germany, some 500 survivors settled in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. They established large colonies in Bariloche, Villa Belgrano, and Cumbrecita, among others. The Waldschanke club in Buenos Aires still held raucous Graf Spee crew reunions well into the 1970s.

The last survivor of pocket battleship’s 1939 crew died at age 89 in Montevideo in 2007.

As for Langsdorff, to this day, his crew’s descendants regularly visit his grave in Argentina’s La Chacarita National Cemetery in Buenos Aires to commemorate him, with many holding that his decision saved their father’s or grandfather’s respective lives.

“The affection, gratitude and unwavering trust of many former Spee soldiers in many encounters over the years have made me proud and defined my joy at the rescue of the many men by my father,” the Captian’s 82-year-old daughter, Nedden, recently told German media. “So I hope one will find a way for him to be honored publicly as well.”

His actions are still celebrated in the German navy today.

“In this respect, it is a historical example of timeless soldierly virtues,” the spokesman for the German Defense Ministry said. “These are recognized in the Bundeswehr and his example is used at the naval school in Mürwik, in teaching and training, to support the young officer candidates in their personal confrontation with the political, legal and ethical dimensions of the military and naval service.”

Meanwhile, in Germany, the Internationales Maritimes Museum in Hamburg has an extremely detailed 1:100 scale model of Graf Spee, built by master Helmut Schmidt, on display on deck 5 of the museum. It is the closest thing to a memorial to the ship in her home country.

Photo: Internationales Maritimes Museum Hamburg

Specs

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Warship Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019: Last Hurrah of the Pope’s Navy

Posted on December 11, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019: Last Hurrah of the Pope’s Navy

National Library of Rome.

Here we see the pontifical steam corvette Immacolata Concezione (Immaculate Conception) at the Papal port of Civitavecchia in 1860. She was the final ship of the Papal Navy (Marina Pontificia).

On 17 November 1860 King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia (who would be crowned King of unified Italy as a whole four months later) decreed that the Sardinian, Partenopea, Sicilian, Tuscany and Pontifical fleets would be merged into a new Royal Italian Navy, the Regia Marina. However, the body would not be made official until Victor sat on the unified throne in March 1861 following the proclamation of the formation of the Kingdom of Italy.

While the Papal Navy dates to the 9th Century and fought an epic series of engagements (see= the Battle of Lepanto) against the Ottomans and various pirate forces over its existence, most of that is far out of our scope. Operating steamers since the 1830s and proving themselves off Egypt, as far as I can tell the largest, most modern and best-equipped vessel the Pope ever fielded was the Immacolata Concezione.

Constructed by Thames Iron Works & Shipbuilding Co., Orchard Yard, Blackwall in 1859, she was intended as an armed yacht capable of carrying Pope Pius IX on visits from Rome abroad, for instance to the Holy Land. Some 178-feet long, she was powered by a single steam engine with an auxiliary brigantine schooner rig and armed with eight 18-pounders.

From the August 20, 1859 edition of The Illustrated London News.

Cardinal Wiseman and a “distinguished gathering of Catholics saw her off from the Thames ironworks at Blackwell,” notes a 1939 archival article.

The new corvette (pirocorvetta) was the flagship of the 300-man Papal Navy, and, as taken below from the 1869 Statesman’s Yearbook, remained its most important vessel.

In her term of service, Immacolata Concezione was used to suppress smuggling on the Lazio coast and clocked in against the Piedmontese in 1860.

The 1860s era uniforms of the Pontifical fleet, very similar to those of England of the same period.

However, all good things must come to an end and the Papal States, landlocked and confined to a portion of Rome by 1870, had no need of a Navy any longer.

With that, Pius largely disbanded the force but ordered Immacolata Concezione to sail in secret from Civitavecchia for friendly Toulon under the command of CAPT. Alessandro Cialdi, where she would remain a fleet-in-exile. The French allowed the move until Pius died in 1878. At the same time, the Regina Marina carried the vessel on their naval list to save face.

The newly installed Pope Leo XIII, with the Holy See lacking a “sea” port for eight years, ordered Immacolata Concezione disarmed and sold in November 1878 to the Dominican St. Elme school in Arcachon, France– an ecclesiastical naval college– for 50,000 francs, so that the school could utilize it for their cadets. Her naval flag (Bandiera Pontificia) was carried back to the Lateran Palace, where it remains today.

Said Dominican maritime college, though no doubt noble, could not afford the upkeep on such a fine vessel and sold the Immacolata Concezione to commercial interests in 1882, reportedly for double what they paid for it. The school went defunct shortly after.

The ship’s ultimate fate is not known, although she is reported by some sources to have been around until as late as 1905 in one form or another. One of her boats is in the collection of the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci” in Milan.

Nonetheless, Immacolata Concezione is well-remembered for a few different reasons.

While still in Papal service, she conducted some of the first serious research into aquatic pollution. This was done by Angelo Secchi in 1865 during a summer cruise around the med, with the literal blessing of the Pope. The Secchi disk, invented by the scientist that year, remains in use today.

Further, the Papal Navy is seen by the modern Italian Navy of today, the Marina Militare, as a forerunner and is counted as part of its historical lineage.

The more you know…

Specs
Displacement: 652 tons
Length: 178.8 ft.
Beam: 26.57 ft.
Propulsion: 150hp steam engine, one screw, 12 knots. Auxillary sail rig.
Crew: 46 to 52
Armament: 8 brass 18-pounder cannons

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Bad Day for Old Museum Ships

Posted on December 5, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

USCGC Bramble WLB 392, back in her pre-2019 Port Huron days

The retired U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bramble (WLB-392), a WWII-era veteran of the Bikini tests and the historic 1957 voyage through the Northwest Passage left federal service in 2003. She then spent a quiet life as a museum ship in Port Huron, Michigan for years.

Then, in 2018 she was sold to a man who wanted to repeat the famous five-month trek of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutters Storis, SPAR and Bramble, along with the crew of the Canadian icebreaker HMCS Labrador from May to September of 1957.

He even hired a documentary film crew to cover the whole thing with the name “Bramble Reborn”

The bad part is, Bramble’s new owner ran out of funds, and the ship was seized for debts run up with the Epic Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama and other creditors. She was sold at public auction for $80,000 on Wednesday, her future unknown.

Tragically, the U.S. Coast Guard Historian’soffice had put the ship’s 1944-dated bell in safekeeping when she was decommissioned in 2003 and only returned it to the museum in 2014. Now, it may be gone, along with the vessel, for good.

B-427

The LA Times reports that the former Soviet SSK B-427, which has been part of three different maritime museums since she was decommissioned in 1994 and is currently docked adjacent to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, “is expected to be sold soon to an anonymous buyer, with plans to remove the rusting sub by mid-May. The 48-year-old Russian Foxtrot-class submarine, known as the Scorpion, had hosted paying visitors for 17 years before it fell into such disrepair that it became infested with raccoons and was closed to the public in 2015.”

Oregon relics

Battleship Oregon in the Willamette River in Oregon, 20 April 1941, after she was, ironically, preserved whole as a museum ship since 1925.

In a (possibly) bright spot, the 20-foot-high smokestacks of the old USS Oregon (Battleship No. 3) have been stored on private property for nearly a decade at the Zidell Yards in South Waterfront. An effort is being made to install them in Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park, where the Spanish-American War/Great War vessel’s mast has stood since 1956. However, the plan seems to be faltering.

A proposed design for adding the USS Oregon’s smokestacks to its memorial (which currently features just the mast) at Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park. (Courtesy of Oregon Maritime Museum)

Hopefully, they will find a home there. If not, they too could go to the scrapper.

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019: The Other Tora of Pearl Harbor

Posted on December 4, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland 4 comments

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2019: The Other Tora of Pearl Harbor

U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office

Here we see the 125-foot Active-class patrol craft USCGC Tiger (WPC-152) in 1928 during Prohibition. One of a class of 35 so-called “Buck and a Quarter” cutters rushed into completion to deal with rumrunners, these choppy little gunboats were designed to serve as subchasers in time of war and Tiger would be there the moment the balloon went up over Pearl Harbor.

These cutters were intended for trailing the slow, booze-hauling mother ship steamers 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 4,000nm, theoretically Atlantic-crossing range– an outstanding benefit for such a small craft.

For armament, they carried a single 3″/23 cal deck gun for warning shots– dated even for the 1920s– as well as 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, they 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).

Named like the rest of the class in honor of former historic cutters, our craft recycled the moniker only used previously by the Civil War-era 100-foot steam tug Tiger which had been bought in 1861 for $9,000 from the Patapsco Steam Co. by the Revenue Marine Service– the forerunner of the Coast Guard– and used to patrol Chesapeake Bay and the approaches to New York City alternatively during the conflict, boarding “with revolvers” as many as 20 craft a day in search of contraband and rebel blockade runners.

The brand-new USCGC Tiger was NYSB Hull No. 346 and was completed on 29 April 1927. Placed in commission on 3 May, she operated out of Coast Guard Base Two at Stapleton, New York, hitting Rum Row with a vengeance in the closing days of the war on illegal liquor. As the Volstead Act was repealed, she transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, for more traditional coastal SAR and fisheries patrol work, arriving there on 6 June 1933.

Durable for their size, Tiger and her sisters were well-liked by their crews and would go on to soldier on for several more decades. Constructed with 3×3 Douglas fir frames on a steel hull, they gained a reputation for being solid ships but were considered too slow (go figure) and were subsequently re-engined in the late 1930s with their original 6-cylinder diesels replaced by more powerful 8-cylinder units on the same beds that gave the vessels three additional knots or so. This left them with a changed profile, as they picked up a large (for their size) stack just behind the wheelhouse.

The 125-foot cutter Dexter, post-conversion. Note the stack.

By 1940, Tiger was assigned to the Hawaii Territory along with her sister Reliance (WPC-150), where they soon picked up depth charges, Lewis guns, and grey paint from the Navy. Such equipped, the class was redesignated as Coast Guard submarine chasers (WSC). The Coast Guard was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Navy Department on 1 November 1941, making the lead-up to WWII official.

Speaking of lead up, both Tiger and Reliance, along with the 327-foot cutter Taney (WPG-37) were assigned to the Navy’s Inshore Patrol Command under CDR John Wooley along with four old destroyers and four minesweepers. This group was tasked by Pacific Fleet boss ADM Husband E. Kimmel to patrol the shoreline around Pearl Harbor and keep an eye peeled for both spies and saboteurs as well as strange periscopes.

That brings us to the morning of 7 December 1941.

On patrol off Oahu that morning, Tiger, under the command of CWO William J. Mazzoni, received a flash from the destroyer USS Ward, a fellow member of the Inshore Patrol Command, around 0645 claiming destruction of an unidentified submarine trying to come through the nets into Pearl– one it had been searching for since 0357 after it had been reportedly spotted by the minesweeper Condor. Said periscope turned out to be one of the series of Japanese midget subs sent to attack Battleship Row at the beginning of the air assault.

USS Ward, The First Shot, by Tom Freeman

The Japanese Striking Force had five Type A midget submarines for the attack, which was transported on larger Type I submarines. These submarines were launched the night before the attack. USS Ward (DD-139) spotted one of the submarines trying to enter the harbor before dawn and was sunk.

This put Tiger on alert and she soon made ready for a real-live shooting war.

At 0720, just after passing the Barber’s Point buoy, Tiger’s WWI-era listening gear picked up a contact now believed by some to be Japanese midget submarine HA-19, a two-man Type A boat that was bumping around off reefs with a broken compass.

At 0753, as the first wave of 183 armed Japanese carrier planes swung around Barber’s Point, allowing a view into Pearl Harbor and the seven slumbering dreadnoughts below, CDR Mitsuo Fuchida ordered the radioman in his Kate torpedo bomber to tap out the later-infamous “Tora, Tora, Tora” (tiger, tiger, tiger) signal, the code words back to the Japanese fleet that the inbound airstrike had caught the Americans unaware.

While still looking unsuccessfully for subs, right around 0800, Tiger started receiving fire that fell within 100 yards of her, with Mazzoni radioing Pearl that he saw Japanese warplanes inbound overhead.

Author James C. Bunch, in his 1994 work Coast Guard Combat Veterans: Semper Paratus, says that “USCGC Tiger (WSC-152) was, by a few seconds, the first U.S. vessel to be fired upon in Pearl Harbor.”

Suffering no casualties from their early interactions with the Emperor’s submariners or aircrew, Tiger also inflicted no damage on the Japanese that day, being out of range of the carnage going on the harbor. Nonetheless, she did come under ineffective fire later that day from U.S. Army shore batteries that were amped up and loaded for bear.

The next day, HA-19 was recovered, aground on Waimanalo Beach in eastern Oahu. Manned by ENS Kazuo Sakamaki and CWO Kiyoshi Inagaki, the midget submarine had depleted its batteries on the evening of 7 December and was abandoned. Its scuttling charge failed, Sakamaki became the only Japanese serviceman captured in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Inagaki’s body was recovered later.

(Japanese Type A midget submarine) Beached in eastern Oahu, after it unsuccessfully attempted to enter Pearl Harbor during the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack. The photograph was taken on or shortly after 8 December 1941. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. : 80-G-32680

Surviving her baptism of fire, Tiger would still be very busy throughout December on the search for Japanese submarines off Hawaii, which at the time were running wild in the area. Sadly, this meant picking up the pieces left in their wake.

On 21 December, Tiger arrived at Kahului, Maui, with the 30 survivors of the sunken Matson Navigation Co. steamer SS Lahaina (5645grt). The waterlogged mariners had nine days earlier fallen prey to the Japanese submarine I-9 under CDR Akiyoshi Fujii, who had sunk her in a prolonged surface action 700 miles NE of Oahu. During their wait for rescue two of the crew had committed suicide by jumping from their overcrowded lifeboat while another two died of exposure.

It would not be the only time Tiger performed such a vital mission.

On 28 December, Tiger rescued one of the two lifeboats of the Matson steamer SS Manini (3545grt) which had been torpedoed and sunk 11 days prior by I-75/I-175 (CDR Inoue) while en route from Hawaii to San Francisco. The previous day, the cutter had picked up 13 men and the first officer of the Lykes steamer SS Prusa (5113grt) which had been torpedoed and sent to the bottom by I-172 (CDR Togami) on 16 December.

Tiger remained based out of Honolulu for the duration of the war on local patrol and antisubmarine duties in the Hawaiian Sea Frontier.

Tiger received one battle star for her wartime service.

By the end of the war, Tiger, like her sisters, had been fitted with both radar and sonar as well as upgrading their 3″/23 hood ornament for a more functional 40mm/60 Bofors single, their Lewis guns for 20mm/80s, and augmenting their depth charges with Mouse Trap ASW rocket devices.

The somewhat incorrect Jane’s listing for the class in 1946, showing a prewar image and listing their 1939 armament.

Decommissioned 12 November 1947, Tiger was sold 14 June 1948.

As for the rest of the Active-class cutters, they served during the war, and two, Jackson (WSC-142) and Bedloe (WSC-128), were heroically lost in the 14 September 1944 hurricane off Cape Hatteras while aiding a torpedoed tanker.

These pint-sized warships were regular players on the frozen Greenland Patrol fighting the Germans in the “Weather War,” served as guard ships in places as diverse as Curacao and the Aleutians, were credited with at least one submarine kill, and performed air-sea rescue duties. Ten were refitted as buoy/net tenders during the war and reverted to patrol work afterward while two served as training ships.

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.

While some, like Tiger, were disposed of in the late 1940s, others remained in USCG service into the 1960s and 1970s.

Boston: “125 ft CGC cutter LEGARE (WSC-144) which fought 20-40 foot waves to take a 79-foot fishing vessel MARMAX in tow, is now proceeding to her home port, New Bedford”

The last example in commission, USCGC Cuyahoga (WPC/WSC/WIX-157), was tragically lost in 1978 in a collision while working as the OCS training ship at Yorktown.

Photo of Cuyahoga in the 1970s in its role as an Officer Candidate School training vessel, in white livery with the now-traditional racing stripe. U.S. Coast Guard photo

Epilogue

With her service to the country over with, Tiger later made the Pacific Northwest in her civilian life and by the 1960s was a coastal tug with Northland Marine Lines of Seattle, under the name Cherokee and later Polar Merchant. Her sister USCGC Bonham (WPC/WSC-129) worked alongside her as Polar Star.

Previously USCGC Bonham (WSC-129) as tug Polar Star

Remaining active until at least 2012, Tiger/Polar Merchant was sold in poor condition to the Tyee Marina in Tacoma Washington where she was stripped, stuffed with styrofoam, and installed as a breakwater.

Still located at Tyree with everything above the deck removed, Tiger remains afloat and is one of the few surviving warships that was present at Pearl Harbor on that Infamous Day. Her hulk is moored next to the museum ship USS Wampanoag/USCGC Comanche (ATA/WMEC-202).

There has not been another USCGC Tiger.

Specs

(1927)
Displacement: 232 tons
Length: 125 ft (o.a) 120 ft. (w.l.)
Beam: 23.5 ft.
Draft: 7.5 ft.
Propulsion: Two 6-cylinder, 150 hp Winton diesels (300hp total), twin screws
Speed: 10 knots, max
Range: 4,000 nm at 7 knots, cruise, with 6,800 gal of 95% fuel oil.
Complement: 2 officers, 20 men
Armament:
1 × 3″/23 caliber gun forward, small arms

(1945)
Displacement: 320 tons (full load)
Length: 125 ft (o.a) 120 ft. (w.l.)
Beam: 23.5 ft.
Draft: 9 ft
Propulsion: Two 8-cylinder, 300 hp Cooper-Bessemer EN-9 diesels (600hp total), twin screws
Speed: 12 knots, max
Range: 3,500 nm at 7 knots, cruise with 6,800 gal of 95% fuel oil.
Complement: 5 officers, 41 men
Sensors: QCN-2 sonar, SO-9 radar
Armament:
1 × 40 mm/60 (single), forward
2 × 20 mm/70 (single), wings
2 × depth charge tracks, stern
2 × Mousetrap ASW, forward

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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019: The Russians Aren’t Good at Borrowing Ships

Posted on November 27, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019: The Russians Aren’t Good at Borrowing Ships

IWM Photo. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Here we see the Royal Navy R-class battleship HMS Royal Sovereign (05), resplendent in her peacetime livery, entering the Grand Harbor of Malta, sometime in the 1920s. Born in the Great War, she would give hard service to the Empire across four decades only to end up as one of the most unpleasant early tales of WWII alliances chilling in the new Cold War.

The R-class of superdreadnoughts was designed in the days leading up to World War I during the great battleship race with the Kaiser. Following on the heels of the mighty Queen Elizabeth class, there were to be eight R-class ships: Revenge, Resolution, Royal Oak, Royal Sovereign, Ramillies, Resistance, Renown, and Repulse. However Resistance was canceled on the builder’s ways and the last two ships, Renown and Repulse, were redesigned as lighter, and faster, battlecruisers.

Carrying eight BL 15-inch Mk I naval guns in four twin turrets, they had a simple layout with two turrets forward and two aft. Perhaps the best big gun the Brits ever sent to war, the 15″/46 could fire a 1,900-pound shell out to 33,550 yards. This was at a time when most of the world’s battleships carried 12-inch guns.

British battleship HMS Royal Sovereign firing her after turret guns Great War IWM Q18138

Royal Sovereign British battleship fires her guns during gunnery practice late in World War I

Royal Sovereign, a British battleship fires her guns during gunnery practice late in World War I

Protected by up to 13 inches of armor, the R-class battlewagons tipped the scales at nearly 33,000 tons but could still make 21 knots.

Constructed at four different yards, our vessel was laid down at HM Dockyard, Portsmouth, on 15 January 1914, less than seven months before the lamps went out across Europe.

The 8th Royal Navy vessel to carry the Royal Sovereign name since 1519, our battleship was known in the fleet as the “Tiddley Quid” as both the terms “quid” and “sovereign” were synonymous with the pound sterling.

The five completed R-class battleships hit the waves between February 1916 and September 1917, with Royal Sovereign commissioning on 18 April 1916. As such, she was still on shakedown during Jutland, which was a pity. She and her brawling sisters formed the 1st Battle Squadron but saw little to no real action during the rest of the war as the German High Seas Fleet elected not to try for the 2nd Battle of Jutland.

Battleships of the 1st Battle Squadron – HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN (nearest), HMS REVENGE, and HMS RESOLUTION (leading) – in line IWM Q17926

British battleships HMS Revenge, HMS Resolution, and HMS Royal Sovereign of the 1st Battle Squadron at sea. Great War. IWM Q18123

British battleships of 1st Battle Squadron; HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Resolution and HMS REVENGE Great War Q18136

The “Rs” were part of the Allied line when the Germans sailed into Scapa Flow in November 1918.

British battleships of the 1st Battle Squadron at sea on the morning of the German surrender, 21 November 1918. Inscribed by the artist, lower right, ‘Morning of German surrender’. This study of R-class battleships of the 1st Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet is apparently taken from its flagship, HMS ‘Revenge’, on which Wyllie was a guest of Admiral Sir Charles Madden for a month at the time of the surrender and internment of the German High Seas Fleet. That being so, the ships shown are ‘Resolution’ immediately following, ‘Royal Sovereign’ and ‘Royal Oak’. http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/125878 RMG PW1743

In April 1920, Royal Sovereign and her sister ship Resolution steamed to the Eastern Med, where they became involved in the Russian Civil War and the Greco-Turkish War interchangeably. This included bombarding Turkish positions at Mudanya during the Greek summer offensive in July and shepherding the exile diaspora of 140,000 White Russians who lost their Russian privileges from Crimea in November. During the latter, Royal Sovereign herself carried several members of the petit Russian nobility in style, making good on her name.

HMS Royal Sovereign (05) 6” Guns in Action (6th July 1920, Mudanya)

The return of HMS Royal Sovereign’s seaman after forced landing under heavy machine gun & rifle fire. (Mudanya, July 1920)

Royal Sovereign would spend the rest of the 1920s and 1930s in refit and peacetime exercises as part of an ever-shrinking Treaty-era Royal Navy.

Although not as thoroughly modernized as American dreadnoughts of the age or even the slightly older HMS Queen Elizabeth-class ships, the “Rs” would be given torpedo blisters and landed some of their 6-inch casemate guns– which were of limited use anyway due to being seriously wet in most sea states– in exchange for some AAA guns.

British ‘R’ class WW1 battleships at sea, 1930 HMS Revenge, Ramillies, Royal Sovereign, and Resolution, taken from sister HMS Royal Oak

HMS Royal Sovereign in 1938

As global tensions ramped up in the late 1930s, the five “Rs” only narrowly avoided scrapping or being deployed to the Far East to form a fleet thought capable of warning the Japanese against going to war, but that was not to be, and in September 1939, when the balloon went up in Europe, Royal Sovereign was already on patrol off Iceland with four destroyers.

She was to spend the early part of WWII in Atlantic convoy and escort duties, and notably in January 1940 sailed for Portsmouth’s Pitch House Jetty where she embarked £5M of gold bullion which she then took to Canada for safekeeping. On the way back, she escorted convoy HX 18 from Halifax and continued such operations with HX 22, HX 28, and HX 34, just in case the German battleships decided to come out and play.

By April 1940, Royal Sovereign was in the Med as part of Force C and later Force B, shuttling back and forth from Gibraltar to Alexandria via Malta throughout the summer, dodging Axis air attacks and submarines the whole time.

In July, she was present at the Battle of Calabria with the Italian fleet, arrayed against the Regina Marina’s battleships Giulio Cesare and Conte di Cavour although her low speed (sub-18 knots at the time) kept her from engaging, leaving the heavy lifting to HMS Warspite.

Sailing via the Suez for Durban, where her ever-troublesome boilers were repaired (at times she could only make steam on one boiler), Royal Sovereign was back in the North Atlantic escorting slow convoys out of Halifax by the end of the year.

In 1941, she covered SC 16, HX 103, TC 09, HX 113, HX 114, HX 116, HX 120, and HX 124 before putting in to (officially neutral) Norfolk Navy Yard at the end of May for maintenance and additional AAA guns.

HMS Royal Sovereign appears at the iconic Hammerhead crane, Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

Setting back across the pond, she put into Greenock in August where she had her first radar fit: Type 284 fire control for her 15-inch guns, Type 285 for secondary armament, Type 286 aircraft warning, and Type 273 surface warning.

HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN ENTERING A FLOATING DOCK. 28 OCTOBER 1941, GREENOCK. IWM (A 6149)

HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN ENTERING A FLOATING DOCK. 28 OCTOBER 1941, GREENOCK. (A 6149) HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN entering a floating dock. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205140320

In late November 1941, with the Japanese thought ready for war in the Far East, Royal Sovereign and other ships joined the large WS 12Z convoy to reinforce Singapore. While on the way, Pearl Harbor was struck, and the RN was in a truly global war.

With that, Royal Sovereign stopped short of the Pacific and became part of the 3rd Battle Squadron of the Eastern Fleet in February 1942 along with sisters Ramillies, Revenge, and Resolution (the fifth sister, Royal Oak, had been sunk in Scapa Flow by a U-boat in October 1939). Still, the class was seen as being of limited value against the Japanese and were seen by many as being “coffin ships,” as Churchill once described them.

While operating in the Indian Ocean over the next year, the force largely managed to avoid being sunk by Japanese submarines and air power and remained a fleet in being, which counted for something, anyway.

HMS RESOLUTION and HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN of the eastern fleet in the Indian Ocean IWM A11791

HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN, part of the Eastern Fleet, was underway in the Indian Ocean, in late WWII. IWM A11795

In October 1942, Royal Sovereign sailed for the U.S. and received additional up-armoring against aerial-dropped bombs as well as no less than 46 x 20mm Oerlikons in 14 single and 16 twin mounts. She would spend almost a full year in the City of Brotherly Love, recycling most of her crew in exchange for new recruits. In effect, when she left Philly in 1943, she was a very rebooted ship.

Underway in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, Sept 14, 1943. IWM FL18403

HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN lying at the Admiralty Anchorage at Scapa Flow after being refitted (photograph was taken from the cruiser HMS LONDON) IWM A5896

Then, a funny thing happened.

You see, the Italians dropped out of the war in September 1943 as a result of the Allied invasion of that country. With that, the capital units of the Regina Marina sailed to Malta where they were interned under British guns for the rest of the war. This included the 25,000-ton Conte di Cavour-class dreadnought, Giulio Cesare.

Battleship Giulio Cesare going on the Ponte Girevole in Taranto, 1937-193

With 11 inches of armor and nine 12-inch guns, Stalin told Churchill and FDR at the Tehran Conference in November 1943 that he expected the pre-owned spaghetti battleship, which had been commissioned in 1914, to be transferred to the Soviet Union as spoils of war.

The thing is, due to the political situation in Italy, which had descended into civil war with German-allied fascists still fighting in the North against the Allies, splitting up the sidelined Italian ships would have played badly in Rome.

To sate Uncle Joe, Churchill offered the recently extensively refitted Royal Sovereign, which was larger, stronger, and newer than the Italian battleship anyway (and ironically faced off with at the Battle of Calabria in 1940). Once the war was over for real and Giulio Cesare cleared to sail for Sevastopol, the Soviets would return the Lend-Leased Royal Sovereign back to her titleholders.

The deal was accepted and at the end of May, Royal Sovereign, along with four submarines, and eight destroyers were handed over to the Red Banner Fleet at Rosyth in a three-day ceremony that reportedly saw much merriment. After all, not only would the ships be used by the Soviets until Hitler was vanquished, but they would also likely be used in the Far East against Japan, a war that Stalin had promised to start fighting 90 days after VE-Day.

THE BRITISH NAVY’S GIFT TO RUSSIA. 29 TO 31 MAY 1944, ROSYTH. THE BRITISH BATTLESHIP HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN, TOGETHER WITH 4 BRITISH SUBMARINES; URSULA, UNISON, UNBROKEN, AND SUNFISH, AND 8 EX-AMERICAN DESTROYERS, WERE HANDED OVER TO THE RUSSIAN NAVY IWM (A 23809)

A Russian rating sounding the bell of HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN (after being passed to the Soviet Navy and renamed ARCHANGELSK). IWM A23811

Aft guns of battleship Arkhangelsk HMS Royal Sovereign note RN tampions

British cadets parading in honor of Soviet sailors aboard the newly transferred battleship Arkhangelsk, formerly HMS Royal Sovereign. on 30 May 1944.

The Soviet crew spent all of June and July working up in British coastal waters– and thus missing the Overlord landings on D-Day– then, on 17 August 1944, sailed from Scapa to join convoy JW 59 under the Hammer & Sickle ensign, bound for Murmansk.

Joining the Soviet Northern Fleet, she was a target for the Germans who tried repeatedly to sink her via submarines both large and small without success.

She did, in typical Russian fashion, pick up some new mascots.

She was the most impressive battleship the Motherland ever put to sea– larger and more powerful than the Tsar’s Gangut-class (25,000 t, 12 12″ guns) or Imperatritsa Mariya-class battleships (23,000 t, 12 12″ guns). While four giant 65,000-ton Sovetsky Soyuz-class super-dreadnoughts were laid down, they never came close to being completed.

ARCHANGELSK (Soviet battleship, formerly HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN) Photographed in 1944 NH 71448

ARCHANGELSK (Soviet battleship, formerly HMS ROYAL SOVEREIGN) Photographed in 1944 NH 71449

When the war ended, she remained in Soviet hands as the status of the Italian fleet was worked out via the Four Power Committee.

Her entry from Jane’s 1947 edition shows her as the preeminent Soviet capital ship and gives a full page to her listing.

In December 1948, the Soviets were cleared to begin the process of taking over Giulio Cesare as war reparations, and the ship was moved first to Sicily and then Albania where she was fully added to the Red Navy’s list on 6 February 1949 and would ultimately be named Novorossiysk.

With that transfer underway, Royal Sovereign/Archangelsk was readied for repatriation back to HMs Royal Navy. Entering Rosyth on 4 February 1949, she once again became HMS Royal Sovereign five days later with the hoisting of the White Ensign.

HMS Royal Sovereign under the Forth Bridge

Royal Sovereign/Archangelsk passes under the Forth Bridge with a Red Navy crew on her way to Rosyth for the official handover to the Royal Navy on 9 February 1949.

While the 1944 handover was a party, the give-back party was absent in 1949, with the Soviets reportedly declining most invites to social events and parties– a matter that made it to the floor of Parliament.

Sadly, the Soviets were kind of bitter about the whole thing. Keep in mind that this was at the height of the Berlin Airlift and more than three years after Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech. The NATO treaty, which would be signed in April, was being negotiated in Washington.

Upon inspection, the material condition of the Royal Sovereign was considered…poor.

Specifically, much equipment was broken or missing, her turret rings were corroded to such a point that none of her four turrets could traverse, and the ship was crawling with vermin and pests of all kinds. Some reports even had it that the battleship’s heads had been clogged for months or possibly years, leaving Red sailors to turn semi-used compartments into open lavatories. The situation was not unique, the American cruiser USS Milwaukee (CL 5), which had likewise been loaned to the Soviets as the Murmansk in 1944, was returned in a similar state in March 1949.

The decision on what to do with the Royal Sovereign was easy. As the remaining three sisters of were all slated for scrapping, her name was added to the list and they were all sent to the breakers by the end of the year.

Components of the drive gear sets and associated pinions from both Royal Sovereign and sister HMS Revenge‘s main guns were recycled into the Jodrell Bank Observatory’s Mark I (Lovell) radio telescope in the late 1940s and are still there today. It is one of the largest steerable radio telescopes in the world.

Royal Sovereign‘s name has not been used since by the RN, but she is remembered in the maritime art of her period.

William Lionel Wyllie, blue pencil. Two studies of HMS ‘Royal Sovereign’
Inscribed by the artist, lower right. ‘R Sov’. Two loose studies of the battleship ‘Royal Sovereign’, built at Portsmouth Dockyard, launched on 29 April 1915 and completed in May 1916. These sketches of her at anchor show her rig as completed and were probably made in 1916-17. The main wash drawing is a view from off the port bow: the slighter pencil sketch takes practically the same angle from off the starboard bow. The paper has a blue-grey tint and has been given a wash of blue-green watercolor over which the rest is worked. http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/116841 RMG PV2691

William Lionel Wyllie, watercolor. Inscribed ‘Royal Sov’ by the artist, lower right. The battleship is shown in her 1918-19 condition, from astern at anchor, with other ships beyond, off a hilly coast probably in Scotland. She has a flying-off platform with a Sopwith 2F1 Camel fighter on it fitted on an X turret and a range clock fitted to the rear face of her mainmast searchlight tower. These were fitted in the spring of 1918 and the last aircraft recorded for her in this period was serial number N7108 in January 1919. http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/125944 RMG PW1809

The Russians still apparently have some parts of Royal Sovereign, including her chipped bell, which is in a maritime museum.

This week, the Russian Navy made news for returning a series of seized Ukrainian vessels–the fast gunboats Nikopol and Berdyansk and the tugboat Tany Kapu— back to their former owners in kind of rough condition.

“The Russians ruined them,” said Admiral Ihor Voronchenko, the head of the Ukrainian Navy, as reported by The Telegraph. “They even took the ceiling lights, plug sockets, and lavatories,” he said. “Some of the equipment is missing, as well as some weapons.”

The more things change…

Specs

Scan from Burgess, Malcolm William (1936) Warships To-day, London: Oxford University Press, pp. fig. 23, via Wiki Commons

Displacement:
29,970 long tons (30,450 t) (normal)
31,130 long tons (31,630 t) (deep load)
33, 500 tons (full load, 1944)
Length: 620 ft 7 in (o.a.); 580 ft (pp.) 614.5 ft (w.l.)
Beam: 88 ft 6 in as designed; 102.5 after blisters added in 1928
Draught: 33 ft 7 in (deep load), 28.5 ft. (mean)
Installed power: 40,000 shp (30,000 kW) 18 Babcock & Wilcox boilers
Propulsion: 4 shafts; 4 Parsons steam turbines, direct drive
Speed: 23 knots as designed, 20 by 1939
Range: 7,000 nmi at 10 knots on 900 tons of oil fuel
Crew: 1,240 (1921) 1146 (1944)
Armor:
Waterline belt: 13 in
Deck: 1–4 in
Barbettes: 6–10 in
Gun turrets: 11–13 in
Conning tower: 3–11 in
Bulkheads: 6 inches (24 watertight sections)
Armament:
(1916)
4 × twin 15″/46cal (38.1 cm) Mark I
14 × single BL 6-inch Mk XII naval guns described as “wet in head seas but dwarf walls retain water which rapidly drains away”
2 × single QF 3-inch 20 cwt AAA
4 × single Ordnance QF 3-pounder 47mm Vickers guns
4 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes
(1944)
4 × twin 15″/46cal (38.1 cm) Mark I
12 × single BL 6-inch Mk XII naval gun
8 x 4-inch AA
46 x 20mm Oerlikons in 14 single and 16 twin mounts
Aircraft:
1 Sopwith 2F1 Camel fighter on it fitted on X turret 1918
1 Fairey Flycatcher carried on B turret 1920s
1 Supermarine Walrus floatplane carried on X turret from the 1930s onward
Aviation facilities were removed in 1942.

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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019: We’ll fight them both

Posted on November 20, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland 6 comments

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019: The Under-armed Hero of the Iceland-Faroe Passage

Here we see the P&O R-class steamer SS Rawalpindi, a passenger liner who spent most of her life in the Far East and colonial India but earned everlasting fame with a scratch crew of reservists and naval pensioners during her last 13 minutes in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, 80 years ago this week.

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co Ltd, London which is usually just referred to as P&O, in the 1920s built a series of 16,697-grt R-class liners for the UK to Bombay mail and passenger run. The four sisterships– SS Ranpura, SS Ranchi, SS Rawalpindi and SS Rajputana— were designed by the same people who made the Titanic a decade prior, Harland & Wolff Ltd., Belfast, with the first two built by R & W Hawthorne Leslie on the Tyne, and the last pair by H&W’s Greenock yard in Scotland.

Using a twin set of reciprocating engines with their aft 2nd funnel a dummy used for ventilation, they had a design speed of 17.8 knots although made 19 on trials. With interiors designed by Lord Inchcape’s daughter Elsie Mackay, they were set up with accommodation for 307 first-class and 280 second-class passengers with public lounges, music rooms, dining saloons and smoke rooms separated by class. Capable of carrying large amounts of refrigerated stores, they were popular ships on the run to the Orient.

Laid down at Greenock as Yard No. 660, Rawalpindi was named for the historic Indian (now Pakistani) city and launched 26 March 1925 with Lady Birkenhead as her sponsor. She was delivered to P&O that September and began a quiet 15-year run in regular service uniting the Home Isles with Britain’s colonial Indian Empire.

Via http://www.pandosnco.co.uk/rawalpindi.html

Rawalpindi notably showed up in Pathe newsreels of the era when she brought the survivors of the lost Parthian-class submarine HMS Poseidon (P99) home from China in 1931.

Once the balloon went up in 1939, the Admiralty called in their markers with London shipping lines and requisitioned more than 50 fast passenger liners for conversion to armed merchant cruisers for patrol and convoy use. Typically outfitted with surplus six-inch guns that had been removed from the casemates of old battlewagons and cruisers, the liners landed much of their finery and art, received a coat of grey paint, and were rushed into service with a crew largely composed of their former civilian mariners who volunteered for active duty in the RNR.

For Rawalpindi, her transformation amounted to removing her fake funnel then picking up eight 6″/45 BL Mark VII guns, a pair of QF 3-inch AAA guns, and a half dozen Vickers machine guns– the newest of which dated to 1916. The armament was intended to plug away at enemy armed surface raiders of the type the Kaiser put to sea during the Great War, fight it out on the surface with U-boats, or warning off the occasional Condor long-range patrol bomber.

6″/45 (15.2 cm) BL Mark VII bow gun on monitor HMS Severn during the Great War. Rawalpindi had eight of these mounts. IWM Q 46247.

Rawalpindi’s conversion was completed on 19 September 1939– just over two weeks after the Germans marched into Poland. Her wartime skipper was CPT Edward Coverley Kennedy, RN, a 60-year-old Great War vet of the battlecruiser HMS New Zealand who had been on the retired list since 1921, a collateral victim of the Washington Naval Treaty. Kennedy, who had first joined the Royal Navy as a 13-year-old cadet in 1892, could have easily sat out WWII but volunteered to return to the colors.

Requisitioned at Tilbury the day the war started, SS Rawalpindi became haze grey His Majesty’s Armed Merchant Cruiser Rawalpindi just 19 days later after conversion by R&H Green & Silley Weir at the Royal Albert Dock, London.

Note her aft funnel, which was vestigial, has been amputated.

Sailing Northwest for patrol duties in the Iceland Gap, our converted liner had a chance to get muscular with the 4,500-ton German tanker Gonzenheim at 63.25N, 12.00W, in the Denmark Strait on 19 October while the latter was trying to run the blockade home from Argentina. With the gig up, the German tanker scuttled as Rawalpindi recovered her crew. A second vessel, a Swedish freighter with a German destination, was stopped and rerouted the next week towards Scotland.

At the time, there were no less than eight British AMCs, backed up by several actual RN cruisers, prowling between Scotland and Iceland and were effective in stopping German blockade runners, typically catching 8 to 10 a week during this early stage of the war. This led to a sortie by the brand-new Kriegsmarine battleship SMS Scharnhorst, in her first operation, accompanied by her sister Gneisenau, to clear out the area.

Gneisenau (foreground), Admiral Hipper (center) and Scharnhorst (background) at Trondheim, Norway June 11, 1940

Sailing from Wilhelmshaven late on 21 November, the lead ship of the strong German task force was observed through the snow at 15,000 yards by lookouts on the Rawalpindi at 1531 on 23 November in the Iceland-Faeroes channel, about 100 miles to the East of Iceland itself.

Steaming alone but with other units nearby (the light cruisers HMS Newcastle, Delhi, Ceres, and Calypso; heavy cruisers HMS Suffolk and Norfolk) Kennedy twice signaled (incorrectly) that Rawalpindi had found the German pocket battleship SMS Deutschland at 63.40N, 12.31W, an alert that drew emergency orders from the Admiralty to Clyde to send the gorilla squad– consisting of the battleships HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney, along with the heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire and seven destroyers– north.

However, stuck with a ship that at the time could only make 14 knots, and outgunned even if confronting a pocket battleship much less a full-grown brawler, Kennedy decided to stand and fight rather than surrender.

The fast-approaching Scharnhorst fired a warning shot across Rawalpindi’s bow at 1603 from a range of 10,000 yards and signaled the Brit to stop transmitting and halt. Soon after, Gneisenau emerged from the fog and made her presence known. The converted liner faced 18 11-inch, 24 5.9-inch, and 28 4.1-inch guns as well as a dozen torpedo tubes between the two German battleships. As they had 13-inch belts, the best the merchant cruiser’s own 6-inch guns could do was scratch their paint.

“We’ll fight them both, they’ll sink us, and that will be that. Good-bye,” Kennedy reportedly told his crew and ordered his guns to fire.

The action was over within 13 minutes or so, with the unarmored Rawalpindi pummeled by 11-inch shells from the two German capital ships, causing the death of over 260 of her crew, Kennedy included. The British ship was a burning hulk but had landed shells on Scharnhorst’s foc’sle causing Hitler’s newest battlewagon slight damage.

Norman Wilkinson’s “Rawalpindi’s final action,” a painting that hung in P&O’s main London office for decades.

A final signal came from a morse lamp on the British ship “please send boats,” to which the Germans launched whaleboats. Between the two German battleships, they picked up at least 20 survivors (some reports list numbers as high as 38) from the flaming wreck who went on to become POWs for the duration, largely at Stalag X-B, a merchant lager near Bremervorde.

They Sailed the Seven Seas: The P & O Story — “We’ll Fight Them Both”

German ADM Wilhelm Marschall, aboard Gneisenau, ordered his task force to withdraw into an approaching gale, doubled back towards the Arctic to lose their pursuers, and returned to Wilhelmshaven on 27 November after successfully evading the alerted, and very revenge-minded, British fleet.

The responding 6-inch gun-armed light cruisers Newcastle and Delhi spotted the Germans at a range of 6 miles as they left Rawalpindi’s last location around 1900 on 23 November but chose, wisely, not to engage.

Another P&O passenger ship converted to an armed merchant cruiser, HMS Chitral (F57), moved in to search Rawalpindi’s floating wreckage field for survivors the next morning, in the end rescuing 10 and landing them at Clyde on 24 November where the Second Sea Lord, ADM Sir Charles Little, was on hand to greet them in a special parade in London.

Around the world, the incorrect headline, “Rawalpindi sunk by the Deutschland” flashed.

While there had been a number of warships sunk by aircraft (see= Polish Navy) and significant individual submarine vs. ship actions– for instance between the carrier HMS Courageous and U-29 on 17 September that left British carrier and 518 of her crew in the cold embrace of Poseidon– the often forgotten scrap between Rawalpindi and the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst was the first large surface clash of World War II and the first the British had seen since 1919 when RADM Tich Cowan tossed around the Red Navy in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War.

Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told Parliament of the Rawalpindi: “These men might have known, as soon as they sighted the enemy, that there was no chance, but they had no thought of surrender. They fired their guns until they could be fired no more, and many went to their deaths in the great tradition of the Royal Navy. Their example will be an inspiration to those that come after them.”

On the 6 December 1939, then-First Sea Lord Winston Churchill honored the sacrifice of the Rawalpindi in Parliament, “Whose glorious fight against overwhelming odds deserves the respect and honor of the House (of Commons) and of the nation.”

Of Rawalpindi’s sisters, Ranchi served on East Indies Station and in the Pacific during the war as an armed merchant cruiser and was returned successfully to P&O in 1947. She was then used on 15 lengthy emigrant voyages from Portsmouth to Australia carrying thousands of “Ten Pound Poms” to Oz on one-way trips before she was broken up in 1953.

Rajputana was likewise transformed into an armed merchant cruiser during WWII and was torpedoed and sunk off Iceland on 13 April 1941 by U-108, after escorting convoy HX 117 across the North Atlantic. In all, the British lost 15 out of 57 of their armed merchant cruisers in WWII: 10 to U-boats, three to German surface raiders, one (the converted A. Holt & Co liner HMS Hector) to Japanese carrier aircraft and one (the converted P&O liner HMS Comorin) to fire.

HMS Ranpura (F93) was used as an armed cruiser in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean during WWII and notably moved Britain’s gold reserves to Canada in 1940 for safekeeping. She finished the war as a repair and depot ship in Malta and was retained by the RN through the 1950s in such a role, participating in the Suez Crisis, before she was finally scrapped in 1961, the last of her class.

Rawalpindi is remembered extensively in maritime art by the likes of Jack Spurling, William McDowell, and Norman Wilkinson.

HMS Rawalpindi by William McDowell incorrectly shows her with two stacks

The original 1:48 scale (2155 x 4045 x 900 mm) P&O builder’s model of SS Rawalpindi, complete with its ornately carved mahogany display case, is on display at the Maritime Museum Greenwich, London.

As for P&O, they went defunct in 2006 with their assets spun off to Maersk and Carnival.

“Bulldog” Kennedy is remembered in a memorial at High Wycombe, Bucks, on a panel in Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace, at the Plymouth memorial, and on an altar rail at All Saints Church, Farringdon, as well as wherever old sea dogs gather to tell stories.

The Admiralty mentioned him in dispatches, but he was not posthumously decorated. Perhaps a VC would have been appropriate or, alternatively, the entire crew of Rawalpindi collectively could have been recognized with the George Cross, much like the population of Malta was in 1942.

Kennedy’s son, Ludovic, went on to be a noted journalist and BBC broadcaster. In 1971 he hosted an hour-long documentary entitled “The Life and Death of the Scharnhorst.”

Notably, he spoke with eloquence of the stand of the Rawalpindi saying, “In Britain, this action caught the imagination in a way that it might not have done later. For it was the first naval action of the war and it showed people that they could still rely on the Navy and that, even in a ship manned by pensioners and reservists, the Navy was going to fight this war’s battles as it had in the past, whatever the outcome, whatever the cost.”

Specs

Model of the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi MOD 381 IWM

Displacement: 16,697 grt / 9,459 nrt
Length: 547.7 ft
Beam: 71.3 ft
Draft: 25.9 ft
Engines: 2- Screw 2 shaft 2xQ4cyl (33, 47, 67.5, 97 x 60in) Harland & Wolff engines, 2478nhp, 15000ihp, 17.8 knots
Crew: (1939) 276
Armament: (1939)
8 x 6″/45 (15.2 cm) BL Mark VII guns
2 x QF 3 in (76 mm) 20 cwt anti-aircraft guns

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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019: A Dazzling Flivver

Posted on November 13, 2019 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019: A Dazzling Flivver

Catalog #: NH 67991

Here we see the narrow stern of the Paulding/Drayton/Monaghan-class “flivver” type destroyer USS Fanning (DD-37) filled with “ashcans” as she rests in an Irish port, likely Queenstown in 1917-1918, alongside the larger four-piper Wickes-class destroyer USS Sigourney (DD–81). Note her double ship’s wheel and a trainable twin 18-inch torpedo tube set shoe-horned into the narrow space as well. Don’t let her size fool you, though, Fanning would go on to prove herself well.

The 21-vessel Pauling class, built across four years from 1908 to 1912 were smallish for destroyers, tipping the scales at just 742-tons. Overall, they ran 293-feet long, with a razor-thin 26-foot beam. Using a quartet of then-novel oil-fired Normand boilers (later boats like Fanning used Thornycroft boilers) pushing a trio of Parsons direct-drive steam turbines, they could gin nearly 30-knots when wide open, although they rattled and rolled while doing so. This earned them the “flivver” nickname after the small and shaky Ford Model Ts of the era. Armament was five quick-firing 3″/50 cal guns and a trio of twin 450mm torpedo tubes, to which depth charges would later be added.

Fanning was the first ship named for famous 18th Century American spy, privateer, and naval officer Nathaniel Fanning. A native of Stonington, Connecticut, and son of a sea merchant, Fanning suffered at the hands of the British in 1775, with his home and those of his neighbors bombarded by the Royal Navy and his brothers Gilbert and Thomas, held prisoner on the infamous prison hulk HMS Jersey, where one died. Fanning got his licks in and during the war served on several privateers, including commanding the privateers Ranger and Eclipse, and signed on with John Paul Jones as a midshipman aboard Bonhomme Richard in 1779, distinguishing himself in the famous battle with HMS Serapis, charging aboard the British vessel with cutlass and pistol at the head of a boarding party.

Captain John Paul Jones hailing HMS SERAPIS during the action from the deck of USS BON HOMME RICHARD, 23 September 1779. During the action, all firing ceased for several moments and Captain Pearson of SERAPIS called out “have you struck your colors?” “I have not yet begun to fight” replied Captain Jones, whereupon the firing resumed. SERAPIS later struck her colors. NH 56757-KN

Mr. Fanning went on to serve on the frigate Alliance and later the captured sloop HMS Ariel. Finishing the war intact despite being captured several times by the RN, he later died of yellow fever in 1805 while an officer in the early U.S. Navy.

USS Fanning was laid down at Newport News, 29 April 1911. Her cost, in 1912 dollars, was $639,526.91, which adjusts to $16.5 million in today’s script, on par with an 85-foot Mark VI patrol boat today, a deal by any means. She was commissioned at the Norfolk Navy Yard on 21 June 1912 and spent the next five years in a series of drills, exercises, experiments, high profile port calls, gunboat diplomacy, and tense neutrality patrol– where she came face to face with but did not engage German U-boats prowling just off the U.S. coastline as well as the auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich.

USS FANNING (DD-37) Running trials before installation of armament, 28 May 1912. While many Paulding-class destroyers had three funnels, Fanning, along with sisters DD 32, 34,36, 39, and 40, which were all constructed at Newport News, had four. NH 54055

Fanning, recently commissioned, at the Naval Review held at New York City in October 1912

USS FANNING (DD-37) Photographed by Waterman before World War I. Note her forward 3-inch gun does not have a shield. Courtesy of Jack L. Howland, 1983. NH 95196

Once the balloon went up in April 1917, Fanning stood to and readied herself for war. By June, she served as part of the escort for the first American Expeditionary Force (AEF) convoy to sail for France, although she did so without depth charges.

USS FANNING (DD-37) Photographed during World War I. Note the dazzle camo and a now-shielded 3-inch forward gun. NH 54057

By Independence Day 1917 Fanning was in Queenstown, Ireland, where the ship “landed all unnecessary stores,” while workmen fitted her with depth charges “and chutes for releasing the same,” in addition to splinter mattresses, preparing her for operations in European Waters. She began her first anti-submarine patrol on 10 July and proceeded to play cat-and-mouse games with the Kaiser’s U-boats. Just three days in, she rescued survivors of the Greek steamship Charilaos Tricoupis, that had been torpedoed by SM U-58 (Kptlt. Karl Scherb) that morning while en route from Dakar to Sligo, Ireland, with a cargo of corn. They would meet with U-58 again soon enough.

A new U57-type boat, U-58 had commissioned 9 Aug 1916 and would claim some 21 ships in just an 11-month active career across 8 combat patrols, mostly Scandinavian sailing vessels that her crew would send to the bottom with charges or surface gunfire. U-58‘s new skipper on her 8th sortie was Kptlt. Gustav Amberger, formerly of U-80. Amberger and U-58 would leave Germany for the British Isles on Halloween 1917 and take the small schooner, Dolly Varden, on 14 November.

Then, Fanning and U-58 would meet again.

As noted by the NHHC

At 1145 on 17 November 1917, the six American destroyers and two British corvettes that comprised the escort of convoy O.Q. 20, steamed out of Queenstown harbor under the command of the senior officer, Commander Frank D. Barrien, Nicholson’s captain. Throughout the afternoon, the convoy’s eight merchant vessels fell in with the escort and set about forming into four columns arranged abreast. Fanning, under acting commander Lieutenant Arthur “Chips” Carpender, guarded the rear port flank of the convoy as O.Q. 20’s formation slowly took shape. At 1610, seven miles south of Queenstown, the convoy encountered SM U-58.

The battle almost ended before it began. When the sound of propellers announced O.Q 20’s presence, the German commander ordered a torpedo prepared to fire and brought his boat to periscope depth. Soon after surfacing, poor visibility nearly led the submarine to ram Nicholson accidentally, and Amberger had the engines put full back to avert disaster. Nicholson continued, oblivious to the close encounter, and the submarine escaped unnoticed. After avoiding detection, U-58 again raised its periscope to reestablish contact with the target.

Victory in “The Action of 17 November 1917” rested less on a sophisticated new technology or a brilliant tactical maneuver, and more on the eyes of Fanning’s Coxswain David D. Loomis, who was standing watch on the bridge. He was already renowned for his remarkable eyesight, with a Fanning officer later recalling Loomis’s possession of “a most extraordinary set of eyes.” In foggy conditions, Loomis spotted the 1.5-inch-diameter periscope protruding 10 inches out of the water at 400 yards away on the port bow. Although lookouts usually spotted submarine periscopes by the telltale wake, they caused, U-58 was proceeding so slowly at the time of the sighting that it was not producing any noticeable disturbance in the water. After the eagle-eyed Loomis called out the periscope, officer-of-the-deck Lieutenant Walter O. Henry sounded General Quarters as he ordered the rudder hard left and rung up full speed. Through his periscope, Amberger suddenly saw a destroyer emerging from the mist, close aboard, and threatening to ram his boat. The U-boat skipper had no time to react before Fanning was upon him. On the destroyer’s bridge, Lieutenant Carpender, now on deck, ordered Fanning’s rudder right, swinging the ship into the submerged U-boat’s path before dropping a single depth charge off the fantail.

U-58’s crew felt the shock of the exploding depth charge, which damaged the U-boat’s stern and disabled its electrical gear. Fanning’s depth charge exploded prematurely in the water, slightly damaging the destroyer as well. Amberger, underestimating the damage to his vessel, attempted to dive and elude his assailant. To his dismay, Fanning’s attack left U-58 unmanageable and leaking badly, with the diving gear, motors, and oil leads all wrecked. The U-boat dangerously sank to between approximately 150 and 250 feet, below its maximum diving depth, before Amberger blew the tanks and surfaced.

On the surface, approximately 500 yards away, sailors aboard Nicholson witnessed Fanning’s attack and Commander Barrien turned his ship toward the spot of the explosion. As the destroyer completed its turn, U-58’s conning tower breached the surface. Nicholson rapidly closed and dropped a depth charge close aboard, scoring another hit on the submarine. The second explosion brought the U-58’s bow up rapidly before it righted itself. Fanning, having turned in Nicholson’s wake, again closed on the submarine. Gun crews on Fanning’s bow and Nicholson’s stern opened fire on the doomed U-boat. After three shots from both destroyers’ guns, the German sailors flung open U-58’s hatches and poured on deck, arms raised in surrender. The battle had lasted approximately 15 minutes.

This diagram, taken from the War Diary of USS Fanning, details the battle between the ship and the German submarine U-58. Fanning became the first American ship to capture an enemy U-boat. NHHC

German Submarine U-58 on the surface to surrender after engaging USS FANNING (DD-37) and USS NICHOLSON (DD-52) on 17 November 1917. The photo was taken from NICHOLSON. Courtesy of Reverend W.R. Siegert NH 54060

German submarine U-58, alongside USS Fanning (DD-37) to have her crew removed after being forced to surface, 17 November 1917. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 54063.

USS FANNING (DD-37) Taking prisoners aboard from the submarine U-58 which is alongside, 17 November 1917. NH 54059

USS FANNING (DD-37) With German submarine U-58 sinking alongside, 17 November 1917. Courtesy of Lieutenant Robert B. Carney, USN NH 54058

Fanning made history as she was the first U.S. Navy ship to capture a German submarine and she was photographed extensively after the event, leaving a great record of a dazzle-flauged Great War Paulding.

As noted by DANFS:

On 19 November 1917, Adm. Sir Lewis Bayly, RN, Commander-in-Chief, Coast of Ireland, came on board and read a congratulatory cablegram from the Admiralty addressed to the ship. Capt. Joel R. P. Pringle, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Destroyer Flotilla operating in European Waters, also visited, reading similar laudatory cables from Adm. William S. Benson, the Chief of Naval Operations, and Vice Adm. William S. Sims, the Force Commander. Adm. Bayly authorized the Fanning’s crew to paint a coveted star on her forward funnel to proclaim her victory over U-58. For their part in the victory Lt. Carpender received the Distinguished Service Medal, Lt. Henry and Cox. Loomis the Navy Cross.

Crew group photo of USS Fanning posing with inflatable life jackets and German enlisted men’s caps salvaged from U-58. S-549

The star carried on Fanning’s funnel after her encounter with U-58. August 1918, Underwood & Underwood Press photo. NARA 165-WW-136A-26

USS Fanning (Destroyer # 37) In port, probably at Queenstown, Ireland, after her 17 November 1917 fight with the German submarine U-58. She is painted in pattern camouflage. Catalog #: NH 2060

As for the 36 survivors of U-58, they became celebrities on their own accord, being among the first of the Kaiser’s guests sent back to the States that were captured in combat and not taken into custody from interned vessels. One of their crew, engineering Petty Officer Franz Glinder drowned in the engagement and his body was recovered by Fanning’s crew and later buried at sea with full honors. A second man, first machinist Franz Baden, went down with his ship.

USS Fanning (DD 37), German Prisoner of War from U-58 under guard on board Fanning in November 1917. The submarine had been sunk on 17 November. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 54064.

ObLt. Otto von Ritgen, Imperial German Navy at left, prisoner of war, onboard USS DIXIE (AD-1), circa November 1917. He had been captured when USS FANNING sank U-58, of which he was Executive Officer. Courtesy of Lieutenant Commander Robert B. Carney, USN. NH 2615

The remaining survivors eventually shipped across the Atlantic on USS Leviathan (formerly the giant Hamburg-American liner Vaterland, which during WWI was helmed by none other than a young Humphrey Bogart) and were put up as guests of President Wilson at the EPW Barracks in Fort McPherson, Georgia.

A group of images from U-58‘s crew’s imprisonment at Fort McPherson, Georgia are in the Library of Congress.

Officers and crew of the German submarine U.58, captured by the U.S.S. Fanning, entering the War Prison Camp at Fort McPherson, Georgia under Marine Guard. 165-WW-161AA-1

Officers and crew of the German submarine U.58, captured by the U.S.S. Fanning, entering the War Prison Camp at Fort McPherson, Georgia. Amberger and Ritgen are in front along with Lt. Frederick Mueller, Lt. Paul Schroeder. Mathewson & Winn., 04/1918 U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier:165-WW-A161(4)

Following the war, the men of U-58 returned home in 1919 with Amberger and Ritgen at least later serving in the Kriegsmarine in WWII, albeit in training capacities.

Back to our destroyer

Just three days after her tangle with U-58, Fanning sailed again on 20 November to escort convoy O.Q. 21 and would spend another year taking part in fighting U-boats and the cold, stopping to rescue survivors and batten the hatches against the heavy seas. She would drop depth charges on numerous further occasions, often resulting in oil slicks.

USS FANNING (DD-37) at “Base Six”, circa 1918. That base was Queenstown, Ireland, but the photo may show the river up towards Cork. Note her battery of depth charges, and hull number painted on the stern. Courtesy of Jack Howland, 1987. NH 101630

When the Great War ended, Fanning stood by for the arrival at Brest of President Wilson on 13 December in the troop transport George Washington and passed in review with other U.S. warships.

USS Fanning (Destroyer # 37) Moored with other destroyers in a French port, late 1918. Probably photographed from USS Mercury (ID # 3012). All these destroyers are dressed in flags in honor of a special occasion, likely the review by President Wilson. Note Fanning’s pattern camouflage. Courtesy of James Russell, 1980. NH 103744

Post-war, she would return to the States while, with other destroyers, shepherding dozens of small submarine chasers from the Azores to Charleston, arriving 3 May 1919. On 24 November her remaining men were transferred to Henley (Destroyer No. 39) and she was decommissioned.

Placed on red lead row, just five years later Fanning was reactivated, although in poor shape, and transferred to the Treasury Department for service with the Coast Guard on 7 June 1924.

As deftly retold in a paper by the USCG Historians Office, the service, then part of the Treasury Department, was hard-pressed to chase down fast bootlegging boats shagging out to “Rum Row” where British and Canadian merchants rested in safe water on the 3-mile limit loaded with cases of good whiskey and rum for sale.

Rum Runners in Canada and in the Bahamas had the cry, “For some, there’s a fortune but others will die, come on load up the ship boys, the Yankees are dry.”

This led the agency to borrow 31 relatively new destroyers from the Navy, an act that would have been akin to the USN transferring most of the FFG7 frigates to the Coast Guard during the “cocaine cowboy” days of the 1980s.

From the USCG Historian:

In the end, the rehabilitation of the vessels became a saga in itself because of the exceedingly poor condition of many of these war-weary ships. In many instances, it took nearly a year to bring the vessels up to seaworthiness. Additionally, these were by far the largest and most sophisticated vessels ever operated by the service and trained personnel were nearly nonexistent. As a result, Congress authorized hundreds of new enlistees. It was these inexperienced men that made up the destroyer crews and contributed to the service’s greatest growth prior to World War II.

A total of 31 destroyers served with the Coast Guard’s Destroyer Force. These included three different classes, the 742-ton “flivver-class,” “1,000-ton class”, and the 1,190-ton “Clemson-class” flush-deckers. Capable of over 25 knots, the destroyers had an advantage in chasing large rumrunners. They were, however, easily outmaneuvered by smaller vessels. The destroyers’ mission, therefore, was to picket the larger supply ships (“mother ships”) and prevent them from off-loading their cargo onto smaller, speedier contact boats that ran the liquor into shore.

USS Fanning (DD-37) as Coast Guard destroyer USCGC CG-11, taking a break from working Rum Row.

Still able to make 25-knots on her worn plant, Fanning would patrol extensively from New England to the Caribbean under the Coast Guard ensign on anti-smuggling interdiction duties. However, with little funds to keep her running, by 1929 she was in an exceptionally rundown condition. The Coast Guard decommissioned Fanning at New London on 1 April 1930 and returned her to the Navy Department on 24 November.

1931 Jane’s showing a few “Coast Guard destroyers”

Stricken from the Navy list on 28 June 1934 at the age of 22, she was scrapped under the terms of the London Treaty, and her materials sold.

Fanning was celebrated in U.S. military history with a 1921 painting by Edwin Simmons depicting U-58 surrendering. As the first of Uncle Sam’s destroyers to catch one of the Kaiser’s sneaky boots, she was popular in period art.

NH 54061

A Fast Convoy painting by B. Poole, showing USS FANNING (DD-37) escorting another ship during World War I. NH 54066

Once she left the fleet for good in 1934, her name was recycled for a Dunlap (Mahan)-class destroyer, DD-385, sponsored by Miss Cora A. Marsh, the great-great-granddaughter of Nathaniel Fanning; and commissioned at the New York Navy Yard, Brooklyn, N.Y., on 8 October 1937. This very active tin can receive four battle stars for her World War II service, taking part in the Doolittle Raid. This, however, did not save her from being scrapped in 1948, surplus to the Navy’s needs.

USS FANNING (DD-385) escorting USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6) during a raid on Wake Island, late February 1942. 80-G-63344 D

A third Fanning, FF-1076, a Knox-class frigate, commissioned in 1971 and had deployments in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, participating in Desert Storm. She decommissioned in 1993 and spent another seven years with the Turkish Navy as Adatepe (F-251).

An aerial direct overhead view of the Knox Class Frigate USS Fanning (FF 1076) underway, 7/22/1991 PH2 Mark Correa, USN. NARA 330-CFD-DN-SC-04-10038

Perhaps the SECNAV will name a new DDG-51 after Nathaniel Fanning to perpetuate the long and distinguished line. I do believe that I have some letters to write!

Specs:
Displacement:
742 long tons (754 t) normal
887 long tons (901 t) full load
Length: 293 ft 10 in
Beam: 27 ft
Draft: 8 ft 4 in (mean)
Installed power:12,000 ihp
Propulsion:
4 × Thornycroft boilers
3 × Parsons Direct Drive Turbines
3 × screws
Speed:
29.5 kn
29.99 kn on Trials
Range: 2175(15) on 225 tons oil
Complement:4 officers 87 enlisted U.S. service. 75 in Coast Guard
Armament:
5 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 caliber Mark 3 low-angle guns
6 × 18-inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes (3 × 2)
Depth charges, in two stern racks and one Y-gun projector, added in 1917, removed in 1924

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Weapons, Wars, Preparation and Security from a recovering gun nut turned bad writer

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