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Warship Wednesday June 10, 2015: The first Red Castle

Posted on June 10, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

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

Warship Wednesday June 10, 2015: The first Red Castle

Photo colorized by irootoko_jr http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/ Click image go big up

Photo colorized by irootoko_jr http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/ Click image goes big up

Here we see the Maya-class gunboat Akagi of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1902 at Kure. She was the first domestically built steel-hulled warship in Japan, but she would not be the last.

Opened to the West in the 1850s, the ships of the Shogunal and Domain naval forces rapidly evolved from wooden-hulled domestic sailing ships to screw-driven steamships (Kanrin Maru, 1857) to ironclads (French-built Kōtetsu ex-CSS Stonewall in 1869) to iron-hulled ships ordered overseas and built domestically. By 1875, the Japanese were sending iron steamships to intervene in the hidden kingdom of Korea and roam as far away as the French Atlantic ports.

In 1883, the Navy ordered a class of four iron-ribbed, iron-sheathed, two-master gunboats with a horizontal double expansion reciprocating steam engine with two cylindrical boilers driving two screws. The first of these, Maya, was laid down at the Onohama Shipyards (now Hitachi) at Kobe in 1885 while a sister, Chōkai, was laid down at the Ishikawajima-Hirano Shipyards in Tokyo the next year. Then followed an experiment, the bi-metal iron and steel composite hulled sistership Atago laid down at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal.

Sistership Atago gives a good port-side profile. Note the extensive awning use to keep the crew from dying of heatstroke

The class was rounded out with a fourth ship developed from lessons learned in the first three– the all-steel hulled Akagi— laid down at Onohama in 1886.

All four ships were named after well-known mountains in the Empire, with Akagi carrying the moniker of the famous Mount Akagi in Gunma Prefecture. The name translates to Red Castle and the 6,000-foot high summit has long been an object of worship in the area, with the cold north winds coming down the mountain termed Akagi-oroshi or Karakkaze.

While these were not impressive ships, just 600-650 tons and but 155-feet in length, you have to remember that Shogunal Japan was just opened to the West a scant quarter century before and here they are building their own steel warships to European standards locally.

Akagi, who always seems to be photographed from the starboard. Note the beefy ass Teutonic 8-incher on deck…now THATs a gunboat

Of course, they had some experts to help out though. These classy schooner-rigged gunboats were designed by the French, carried British locomotion suites, and mounted a good German Krupp-made 8-inch (210mm) gun, a 120mm Krupp rapid-fire and a pair of English Nordenfelt-made anti-torpedo boat batteries (the Russians had just sank a Turkish ship in 1877 using just such infernal small boats).

Commissioned 20 August 1890, Akagi soon saw service in Japan’s first modern war, sailing as the escort to flagship Saikyo Maru during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. Captain Hachiro Sakamoto commanded her, from a long dynasty of samurai.

Checking out Akagi’s 210mm Krupp hood ornament. Click to big up

During the pivotal Battle of the Yalu River, Sakamoto swung Akagi between the lightly protected transport carrying Admiral Kabeyama Sukenori, and the Chinese fleet (led ironically enough by American adventurers).

She soon became locked in mortal combat with the larger German-built Chinese cruiser (2,900-tons, 270 feet, 9.4-inches of armor) Laiyeun. Although more than four times the size of the Japanese gunboat, and despite the fact that the Chinese guns killed both Sakamoto and severely injured his executive officer Lt. (later Admiral and head of the Naval War College which crafted Japanese Naval theory in the 1920s) Satō Tetsutarō, the Akagi kept fighting despite being holed 8 times with 210mm German shells (small world, right?).

Great Japanese Naval Victory off Haiyang Island” by Nakamura Shûkô. Akagi in gleaming white, Chinese sailors tumbling into the dark sea

Akagi gave as good as she got, hammering the Laiyeun extensively, leaving her to limp off and be sunk later in the war unrepaired. Her sisters Atago and Chōkai likewise shellacked the Chinese Admiral Ding Ruchang’s flagship, the 8,000-ton German-built battleship Dingyuan (3x305mm guns, whose shells were filled with sawdust rather than powder due to corruption).

Lieutenant Commander Sakamoto of the Imperial Warship Akagi Fights Bravely by Mizuno

This defense of the flag by the Akagi helped carry the day and a woodblock print of the action became famous in Japan, receiving widespread duplication.

Further, a martial song was created, “Sakamoto Major, bravely of Akagi” which endured throughout the Imperial Navy through World War II and was the battle song of the Pearl Harbor carrier of the same name.

The naval review that emperor sees booty ship of the Sino-Japanese War 1895. Photo colorized by irootoko_jr http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Akagi came home from her first war covered with glory and was repaired.

She was soon again in Chinese waters in 1899 as part of the Boxer Rebellion expeditionary force. In 1904, she was back in combat against the Russians, helping to bottle up the Tsar’s Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur and later invade Sakhalin island (which is still at least half-Japanese today).

It was during the Port Arthur blockade that her sister Atago came too close to an uncharted bar and grounded and sank 6 November 1904. Soon after the war, Akagi and her two remaining sisters were disarmed and laid up, obsolete.

1908

In 1911, Akagi was sold to Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, repainted, and dubbed Akagi Maru, continued in service as a coastal steamer until 1921 when she was sold to Amagasaki, another steamship company that kept her in steady tramp work until World War II.

Able to float in just 9 feet of water, Akagi Maru was used extensively during that conflict to run close to the coast and away from American submarines, becoming one of the few ships still afloat in 1945– although she did settle on the bottom during the great Halsey Typhoon that year. Raised, she remained in commercial service until 1953 when she was laid up for a final time.

She was scrapped in 1963, her good steel being recycled.

Specs:

Displacement: 614 long tons (624 t)
Length: 47.0 m (154.2 ft.)
Beam: 8.2 m (26 ft. 11 in)
Draught: 2.95 m (9 ft. 8 in)
Installed power: 950 ihp (710 kW)
Propulsion: 2 × horizontally mounted reciprocating steam engine
2 boilers, 2 × screws
Sail plan: Schooner-rigged
Speed: 10.25 kn (18.98 km/h; 11.80 mph)
Capacity: 60 t (66 short tons) coal
Complement: 104
Armament: 1x 210 mm (8 in) Krupp L/22 breech-loading gun
1x Krupp 120 mm (4.7 in) L/22 breech-loading gun
2x quadruple 1-inch Nordenfelt guns

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

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

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

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

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Warship Wednesday June 3, 2015 Roll Tide, Roll

Posted on June 3, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 9 comments

Warship Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Roll Tide

Here we see “You Can Run” by naval artist Tom Freeman depicting the screw sloop-of-war Confederate States Ship Alabama chasing down the Yankee clipper Contest in November 1863. The Alabama, who captured an amazing 64 ships, of which she burned and sank 45 and paroled another ten, was the most successful surface raider in naval history.

In addition, perhaps no ship saw a greater number of ironies in her brief life (see how many you can spot).

Although the Confederate Navy picked up a few captured U.S. Naval ships (included the burned out frigate Merrimack) and Revenue Service Cutters, as well as a good number of naval officers of Southern heritage, they were short of legitimate combat ships. Further, most of the naval yards worth anything were in New England, which meant that they simply could not be built. With this, Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Russell Mallory sent agents abroad looking for warships. In the end, the best bet turned out to be in Great Britain where Commander James Dunwoody Bulloch, CSN, arranged for at least three commerce raiders and a pair of ironclads to be completed.

Arguably, the most famous and successful of this handful of ships was the CSS Alabama.

Bulloch, whose primary job was turning raw Southern cotton smuggled past the Union blockade into cash for guns, munitions and other supplies for the Confederate government, which in turn would be ran back through the U.S. fleet, managed to contract with John Laird Sons & Company (today’s Cammell Laird) to construct a steamship with a sloop auxiliary rig (and weight and space reserved for naval guns) on August 1, 1861, just months after Bull Run. Constructed in Liverpool as hull number 290, and christened in 1862 with the bogus name Enrica, she ran her trials at sea in June 1862.

She was handy, at 220-feet overall and light with a 17-foot depth of hold and 1,050-ton displacement. On her twin steam engines pushing a single iron screw, she could make 13-ish knots, or hoist her extensive barkentine-rig and make close that amount in the right conditions.

Bulloch was originally to be the commander of the ship and assisted in her fitting out, acquiring stores and arms for the new cruiser but not mounting them as he was under watch by Union agents. As U.S. Ambassador Charles Adams (son and grandson respectively of 2 presidents of the same name) pressured the Brits to seize her, Bulloch weighed anchor just ahead of customs officials, claiming to just be taking her out on a brief sunset turn around. Slipping the brand new 9-gun sloop USS Tuscarora, he put to sea.

Instead of sailing under Bulloch, 52-year-old CDR Raphael Semmes (soon to be promoted to Capt.), late of the abandoned and broken-down commerce raider CSS Sumter, was dispatched from Bermuda to Porto Praya, Azores with the former officers of the Sumter, where they met Bulloch on the Enrica, which was crewed by mildly amused British merchantmen. After arming the ship and relieving the Brits, which Bulloch returned to England with, Semmes and his crew commissioned the CSS Alabama on 24 Aug, 1862.

Deck plan of Alabama, note guns

Her armament, fitted above deck, was British. It consisted of a pair of “Royal Navy-style” smoothbore 6 inch 32-pounders, 4 6-inch 32-pound Blakely patent cannon cast specifically for the CSS Alabama by Fawcett, Preston & Company in Liverpool, one 7-inch 110-pounder Blakely rifle forward on a pivoting mount and a single 68-pounder (solid shot) 8-inch smoothbore pivot aft. In all, eight guns. Added to this was a stock of British and French musket rifles, revolvers, pistols, boarding hatchets, and cutlasses. However, as she only had a single gray-coated Marine, Lt Beckett K. Howell, one of only 58 appointed officers in the Confederate States Marine Corps, (and Brother in Law to President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis), these were to be used by the ship’s bluejackets.

Or should we say Jack Tars? You see, Semmes only arrived with a handful of officers and had to shop around among the Brits and other foreign sailors at hand to sign up, of which about 80 did. As her guns alone required that many men to crew them, she was shorthanded.

Although Alabama never saw a southern port, the British-built (and largely crewed) ship with her skipper from Maryland carved a name for herself in the hides of the U.S. Navy and merchant fleets for the next 22 months.

“The Pirate ‘Alabama,’ Alias ‘290,’ Certified to be correct by Captain Hagar of the ‘Brilliant'” Line engraving published in “Harper’s Weekly”, 1862, depicting CSS Alabama burning a prize in Harper’s Weekly.US Naval History and Heritage Command photo # NH 58738

Art from Harper’s Weekly image

First, she sailed around the North Atlantic, sinking 20 Yankee ships, mainly whalers, and captured and released three others. Then, proceeding to Fort Royal, Martinique, she refueled, recruited more crew members in that colonial port, and gave the 12-gun screw frigate USS San Jacinto the slip and broke into the Gulf of Mexico. It was of note that her crew was often fleshed out by volunteers from ships she captured and sank and included men from Germany, Russia, and France.

Alabama’s cruise from SCV Adm Semmes Camp

Off Texas, on 11 January 1863, she engaged the 1,126-ton paddlewheel steamer USS Hatteras off Galveston. As the Hatteras got close enough to Alabama to be sucker punched before Semmes struck her British ensign (masquerading as HMS Petrel) and raised the Confederate Stars and Bars, and the fact that the Union gunboat had less than half the armament, Alabama sent her to the bottom within 20 minutes. Ever the gentleman pirate, Semmes picked up her crew and transported them to Jamaica.

The Fatal Chase by Tom Freeman. The USS Hatteras engages the Confederate raider CSS Alabama. Hatteras was sunk in the ensuing battle

From Semmes’s postwar account:

As Captain Blake of the Hatteras (whom I had known in the old service) came on deck, he remarked upon the speed we were making, and gracefully saluted me with, “Fortune favors the brave, sir!” I wished him a pleasant voyage with us; and I am sure he, with his officers and men, received every attention while on board the Alabama.

With the Gulf too hot, she slipped into the South Atlantic and slaughtered 29 Yankee merchies in those waters, primarily off the coast of Brazil.

CSS Alabama enters Table Bay at 10:00 AM August 5, 1863. She is increasing speed in order to capture the Sea Bride before she can escape to within one league of S.African territorial waters. This painting commissioned by Ken Sheppard of South Africa. Via the CSS Alabama Assoc

Next, she put in at Cape Town, South Africa, where most of the images of her decks were taken. It was there that she added more members to her crew to include naval adventurer and soldier of fortune Baron Maximilian von Meulnier, late of the Imperial Prussian Navy.

Captain Raphael Semmes CSN, CSS Alabama's commanding officer, standing by his ship's 110-pounder rifled gun during her visit to Capetown in August 1863. His executive officer, First Lieutenant John M. Kell CSN, is in the background, standing by the ship's wheel.US Naval History and Heritage Command photo # NH 57256 from the collection of Rear Admiral Ammen C. Farenholt, USN(MC), 1931.

Captain Raphael Semmes CSN, CSS Alabama’s commanding officer, standing by his ship’s 68-pounder smoothbore during her visit to Capetown in August 1863. His executive officer, First Lieutenant John M. Kell CSN, is in the background, standing by the ship’s wheel. US Naval History and Heritage Command photo # NH 57256 from the collection of Rear Admiral Ammen C. Farenholt, USN(MC), 1931. Via Navsource

Two of the CSS Alabama’s officers on deck, during her visit to Capetown in August 1863. They are Lieutenant Arthur Sinclair IV, (left) and Lieutenant Richard F. Armstrong (USNA 1861). The gun beside them is a 32-pounder of Lt. Sinclair’s Division. Halftone image, copied from Sinclair’s book, “Two Years on the Alabama”. US Naval History and Heritage Command photo # NH 57255. via Navsource

Georga native Midshipman Edwin Moffat Anderson. He later went on to serve on the CSS Owl and was the next to last of Alabama’s officers to die when he passed away in 1923 in Savannah, only beaten by Sinclair who passed in 1925.

Georga native Midshipman Edwin Moffat Anderson next to an RN pattern 32 pounder which may be the one on display currently in Mobile. Note the naval cutlass and gray Army type uniform. He later went on to serve on the CSS Owl and was the next to last of Alabama’s officers to die when he passed away in 1923 in Savannah, only beaten by Sinclair who passed in 1925. The unimpressed British Jack behind him is classic.

Kell and a 32. US Naval History and Heritage Command photo # NH 57257

Kell and the 68-pounder. US Naval History and Heritage Command photo # NH 57257

Crewmen on the deck of the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, 1863.

Crossing into the Indian Ocean and into the Pacific, she found her hunting grounds much reduced in those far-flung waters. In Singapore, she had her picture taken (one of just two of her profile known to be in existence) and Englishman Hugh Rowland Beaver of Cumming, Beaver, and Co. who helped whistle up enough supplies to keep Alabama in the war. After coaling and dispatching a letter to Malloy back in Virginia, Semmes was off again.

Alabama in Singapore. Note instead of the Stars and Bars she is flying the Stainless Banner

Heading back to European waters where Semmes thought the pickings would be better (and Alabama could get a much-needed refit) she arrived in Cherbourg on 11 June 1864. There Semmes noted, “Our little ship was now showing signs of the active work she had been doing. Her boilers were burned out, and her machinery was sadly in want of repairs.”

She deserved a rest; after all, she had captured no less than 64 vessels in over 500 days at sea and won a naval engagement against a (weaker) adversary while slipping dozens of stronger ones. In a sign of how dignified warfare was on the high seas in this age, Alabama paroled over 2,000 merchant sailors she captured– landing them in nearby ports rather than leaving them adrift on the waves– and not a single civilian was ever killed by the raider.

But everything has to come to an end…

Just three days after she made France, the Mohican-class screw sloop of war USS Kearsarge, steamed into the harbor, alerted to the wiley raider’s presence there by telegraph while in a Spanish port. Although shorter (201-feet) the Kearsarge was built from the keel-up with combat in mind, weighing half again as much as Alabama and mounting nine guns– including a pair of very dangerous 11-inch Dahlgren smoothbore pivot cannons that fired 130-pounder shells.

Further, where Semmes had a scratch 140 man multinational crew and a ship that was falling apart, Kearsarge’s North Carolina-born Capt. John Ancrum Winslow had a pair of aces up his sleeve. These included the fact that his 160+ man crew was highly trained, and that he had secretly wrapped his ship’s critical engineering spaces in over 700-feet of anchor chain secured to the hull and bolted into place, in effect, giving him crude armor plating. His powder was fresh, his decks were clear, and he wanted to clean Semmes’s clock.

Capt. John A. Winslow (3d from left) and officers on board the U.S.S. Kearsarge after sinking the C.S.S. Alabama, 1864. Note the badass 11-inch Dahlgren

(Note: The two skippers had served together earlier in their career on the old three-master USS Raritan, Semmes as the ship’s flag lieutenant and Winslow as a division officer, even sharing a cabin).

Semmes slapped Winslow across the face with an open challenge, sending the message:

“My intention is to fight the Kearsarge as soon as I can make the necessary arrangements. I hope they will not detain me more than until tomorrow evening or after the morrow morning at furthest. I beg she will not depart before I am ready to go out.”

While the locals stirred about the coming scrap between the two ships, the French forced Kearsarge out to sea, where she waited for Alabama. One of the most powerful ships in the world, the 6,500-ton 30-gun French ironclad Couronne (“Crown”) stood by as her crew anxiously waited for the bloodletting. On the afternoon of June 19, the fight was on in front of a delighted host of European spectators who were thrilled to watch a pair of American vessels locked in a knife fight–and it was a barroom brawl of naval action.

Semmes fired first, trying to get the same type of fast kill as he had achieved on USS Hatteras the year before, but his shots were ineffective, likely due to poor quality powder and stale fuses as much to Kearsarge’s chainmail.

Winslow waited until the British-built cruiser was within 1,000 yards and clobbered her.

Engineers Department USS Kearsarge 1864: The crew that wrecked the CSS Alabama

The ships locked horns in a series of seven circles, slowing trying to out-maneuver each other without success. After all, their skippers had read the same naval textbooks so why not? In all, reports estimate that while Alabama got off more than 300 shots, Kearsarge was barely damaged; suffering four casualties after just three rounds hit his vessel. Alabama, on the other hand, was a wreck after less than an hour of combat and was shipping water from the big Yankee’s 11-inchers.

7-circle The Chart of the battle off Cherbourg as recorded by American landscape painter and Union Army map-maker Robert Knox Sneden in the Library of Congress. Sneden was in Andersonville at the time of the battle after being captured by Confederate troops under John S. Mosby in 1863, but produced it from logs and charts from Kearsarge after the war. This chart was lost to history for more than a century until it popped up in 1994 in a bank vault in Connecticut and donated to the Virginia Historical Society. Click to big up

7-circle chart of the battle off Cherbourg as recorded by American landscape painter and Union Army map-maker Robert Knox Sneden in the Library of Congress. Sneden was in Andersonville at the time of the battle after being captured by Confederate troops under John S. Mosby in 1863 but produced it from logs and charts from Kearsarge after the war. This chart was lost to history for more than a century until it popped up in 1994 in a bank vault in Connecticut and donated to the Virginia Historical Society. Click to big up

The battle has been a favorite of painters and perhaps the most famous work, “Kearsarge and the Alabama” was created by one of no less skill than Édouard Manet.

The Battle of the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama By Claude Monet hanging today at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Click to big up

painting by Xanthus Smith, 1922, depicts Alabama sinking, at left, after her fight with Kearsarge (seen at right). NHHC Photo K-29827.

Painting by Xanthus Smith, 1922, depicts Alabama sinking by the stern, at left, after her fight with Kearsarge (seen at right). NHHC Photo K-29827.

CSS Alabama Sunday Showdown Archival Print.

Antonio Jacobsen's " ALABAMA vs KERSARGE" Click to big up

Antonio Jacobsen’s ” ALABAMA vs KEARSARGE” Click to big up

Nine Alabama crewmembers were killed during the battle, 12 drowned when the ship sank and 70 picked up by Kearsarge from the sea, while Semmes and a handful of officers and men managed to make it to the British yacht Deerhound who sped them away to England. There, they were celebrated.

Semmes, who recovered the Stainless Banner of Alabama, ran back into Hugh Beaver (the Singapore connection) and presented the flag to the Englishman with the deep pockets in appreciation.

Her Cherbourg flag.

The 69×34 inch wool bunting ensign still exists and was sold at auction in 2011. As the rest of her flags were lost at sea, this one was unique. Semmes had been given a beautiful and much larger silk battle-flag by English society women after the battle which he took back to the C.S. with him.

Semmes made his way back to Virginia where he was made an admiral and given commanded first the James River Squadron then a unit of infantry (as a Brig. Gen) late in the war. He later moved to Mobile, Alabama where he died of eating bad shrimp in 1877. Nevertheless, he had outlived Winslow who retired in 1872 and died the next year in Boston, buried draped in the Kearsarge ‘s own Cherbourg battle flag.

The National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington D.C. has one of her wheels as well as other artifacts to include a very nice toilet bowl.

Ships wheel CSS Alabama Exhibited in the Civil War section of Bldg. 76

English toilet from CSS Alabama Exhibited in the Civil War section of Bldg. 76

The City of Mobile has many Semmes artifacts in their museum, including the admiral’s sword presented to him after the war (he threw his own into the sea rather than let Winslow have it), his wartime 36 cal. Houllier & Blanchard Navy revolver, the silk flag given to him in England after the loss of his ship and Alabama‘s commissioning pennant.

Semme's presentation Admiral's saber in the City of Mobile collection. Chris Eger photo

Semme’s presentation Admiral’s sword, a copy of his book and a scrimshawed whale’s tooth captured from a Yankee whaler in the City of Mobile collection. Chris Eger photo. Click to bigup the scrimshaw work on the tooth.

This U.S. Navy 27-star commissioning pennant was used above CSS Alabama to bring her into service. Her 4th Lt. John Low had it in his possession from his father's term in the old Republic's fleet and offered it up. Low would later leave Alabama with it when he took command of the CSS Tuscaloosa (formerly the bark Conrad captured by the raider in 21 June 1863). The pennant along with Low’s dolphin-handled British pattern naval officer’s sword is in the City of Mobile collection. Chris Eger photo

This U.S. Navy 27-star commissioning pennant was used above CSS Alabama to bring her into service next to a model of the ship. Her 4th Lt., John Low had it in his possession from his father’s term in the old Republic’s fleet and offered it up. Low would later leave Alabama with it when he took command of the CSS Tuscaloosa (formerly the bark Conrad captured by the raider on 21 June 1863). The pennant along with Low’s dolphin-handled British pattern naval officer’s sword is in the City of Mobile collection. Chris Eger photo

Semmes LeMat grapeshot revolver at the City of Mobile Museum. Chris Eger photo. Click to big up.

Semmes rare 1862-issued 36 cal. Houllier & Blanchard Navy revolver at the City of Mobile Museum. Chris Eger photo. Click to big up. And YES, I will be covering this amazing weapon in more detail in a later article

Alabama’s wreck was discovered by the 152-foot French Navy mine hunter (chasseur de mines) Circé in November 1984 in 190-feet of water some 6 miles off the coast of Cherbourg. Between 1988 and 2008, with agreements of the U.S. government (who own the wreck as a war grave) and the French Republic (as its inside territorial waters) she has been extensively salvaged.

One of her RN-style 32 pounders, scrimshaw from ship’s Engineer William Param Brooks and other artifacts recovered from her wreck are in Mobile at the City Museum. The U.S. Navy has over 500 Alabama artifacts in its collection and many are spread over the world on loan, including her 7-inch gun, which is in France. In all, her wheel, seven out of eight guns, her bell, china, shells, small arms, and other items have been brought to the surface.

One of her RN pattern 32s. click to big up. Eger image

A better view. Note the recovered mast collar.

A statue to the Admiral, erected in 1900, stands in downtown Mobile on Government Street, within a block or so of the Federal Building, gazing towards the Bay that holds the battleship USS Alabama (BB-60), who was a much luckier lady than Semmes’s own warship.

In the artifacts recovered from Alabama were at least one set of human remains to include a jawbone. An exam of the teeth at the Smithsonian Institution revealed the jaw’s owner was likely between 25-40 and in good health, other than an apparent habit of chomping on a pipe stem. A ceremonial burial was held for the crewmember’s remains in Mobile, where the lost sailor was interred at Magnolia Cemetery accompanied by members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans of the Admiral Semmes Camp, who maintain a reference to the lost ship and the Admiral.

Internment at Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile. Via AL.com

Interment at Magnolia Cemetery, Mobile. Via AL.com

There is also a CSS Alabama Association and both the University of Alabama and Marshall University maintain special collections referencing the ship.

As for her adversary, 17 of Kearsarge ‘s crew received the Medal of Honor and the ship remained in hard service until wrecked on a reef off Roncador Cay on 2 February 1894 while her officers and crew made it safely ashore. A damaged section of her stern post, still with an intact 110-pound Blakely shell in it from Alabama, is also on display at the Navy Museum in Washington.

CSS Alabama fired this shell from its 110-pound rifle early in the action against USS Kearsarge, landing a critical blow into Kearsarge’ s sternpost. However, it didn’t explode due to a faulty fuse, allowing Kearsarge to continue the battle, eventually defeating Alabama. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tim Comerford/Released

The only USN battleship not named for a state, USS Kearsarge (BB-5), was christened 24 March 1898 in her honor and went on to serve the Navy in one form or another for 57 years.

Currently, the Navy maintains both an Alabama (SSBN-731) and a Kearsarge (LHD-3) on the Naval List. In a twist of fate, the ‘Bama was built in the North (Electric Boat, Groton) and the Mighty Kay in the South (Ingalls, Pascagoula), but it’s not likely that they will ever get in a scrap moving forward.

We’re better than that these days.

Specs:

Displacement 1,050 t.
Length 220′
Beam 31′ 8″
Depth of Hold 17′ 8″
Draft 14′
Installed power: 2 × 300 HP horizontal steam engines, auxiliary sails, bark rig
Propulsion: Single screw propeller, retractable
Speed 13 knots
Complement 145
Armament:
6 32-pdrs
1 110-pdr rifle
1 68-pdr

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday May 27, 2015 The coldest boat in the Russian Navy

Posted on May 27, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 8 comments

Warship Wednesday, May 27, 2015, The coldest boat in the Russian Navy

Click to big up

Here we see the unique vessel of the Tsar’s Imperial Russian Navy, the icebreaker Yermak (also spelled Ермак, Ermak, and Yermack due to transliteration) doing what she did best—breaking sea ice. She was the first true modern sea-going icebreaker in any navy and lasted an impressive 80~ years and through five world wars in which she got bloodier than could be expected for a ship of her type.

In the late 1890s, polar exploration was all the rage and Holy Russia, pushing ever further to control the Western Pacific, sought to join Europe and Asia via the Northeast Passage across the top of the country. The thing is the ships that had tried this arduous journey had all failed. One renowned Russian polar explorer and naval officer, Stepan Makarov, fresh off his expeditions to the mouth of the north-flowing Siberian rivers Ob and Yenisei, proposed a radical new steel-hulled steamship with powerful engines and screws on both the stern and bow, ready to chop up polar ice as she went.

Note the close arrangement of her three stern screws

The ship, some 319 feet long and 70 abeam, was very tubby in design. Six boilers fed either three shafts aft or one forward, allowing her to back and ram if needed– now standard procedure for icebreakers but novel at the time. Speaking of the bow, she had a strengthened hull of 29 mm plate steel sandwiched with oak and cork to allow her to break sea ice at over 7 feet thick.

Under construction. Note the strengthened steel ‘nose’ over which in essence a second double hull would be constructed.

Her twin 55-foot high stacks and round sloping bow with a small stem and flare angles made her readily distinguishable and came to typify early icebreaker design. Even today, her hull form is imitated in even the most advanced polar icebreaker design.

The resulting design was authorized by Count Witte in 1897 at the cost of 3 million gold rubles and ordered abroad to ensure fast and reliable delivery. Laid down in December at Sir W.G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd, Newcastle upon Tyne, she was completed 29 January 1899– and delivered at half the price.

Launching

On trails. How many times have you seen an icebreaker with a bone in her mouth?

She carried the name of cossack ataman (head man) Vasiliy `Yermak` Timofeyevich Alenin, the Don Cossack who conquered Siberia under the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 1580s, her purpose was clear.

Surikov’s “The Conquest of Siberia by Yermak” The cossack swashbuckler took 800 men east and won an empire from the khans of the tartars and tribal people of the region that the Russians hold until today.

Arriving at the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet in March after a ten-day voyage from the UK, Yermak made her smashing debut ( I love a pun) by breaking her way into the ice-bound harbor Kronstadt and then up the Neva River to St. Petersburg– where thousands thronged to see her across the frozen river.

Yermak in St Petersburg on the Neva

By that November, she came in handy. The massive 12,500-ton armored cruiser Gromoboi had been forced by early ice from her moorings to the shore, and future ice movement threatened to sink the ship. Three days later, Yermak pulled her free.

Then, just weeks later, she had to help pull the 4,200-ton Admiral Ushakov-class coastal defense ship General-Admiral Graf Apraksin from the rocks and tow her back to Kronstadt.

Yermack was the first polar icebreaker in the world, colorized photo of it assisting the Graf Apraksin in 1899.

Yermack was the first polar icebreaker in the world, a colorized photo of it assisting the Graf Apraksin in 1899. Whoever colorized the photo neglected to add the correct cap bands to the breaker, which should be blue.

She was one of the first ships to use a wireless for rescue at sea when she rescued 27 lost Finnish fishermen from the rocks near Hango and transmitted the fact to a land station there with the help of Professor Alexander Stepanovich Popov (the Russian Marconi) who had set up a station near Apraksin and relayed messages back and forth.

“Icebreaker ” Yermak “, who worked for the removal of stones from the battleship “Adm. Apraksin “, saved the 10th February 1900 27 fishermen, the news of the death of the first of which was received on a radio installation”

In 1901 Yermak helped Makarov complete his Third (and last) Siberian exploration expedition, reaching as far as Nova Zemyla. It was the last time the admiral was aboard the ship that was his magnum opus.

Picture M. G. Platunova First swimming polar icebreaker Ermak, depicting her first encounter with sea ice in 1899

Painting by M. G. Platunova “First swimming polar icebreaker Ermak,” depicting her first encounter with polar sea ice. Note her buff superstructure and blue cap bands.

Makarov, sadly the best Russian naval mind of his era, was blown sky high on his flagship, the battleship Petropavlovsk, on a sortie out of Port Arthur in 1904.

During the Russo-Japanese War, Yermak helped rush reinforcements to the front, freeing first the cruisers of Capt. Yegoryev’s unit in February 1904 from Libau and then the 12 ships of Rear Admiral Nebogatov’s division the next January.

In port, click to big up

She was ordered to follow the fleet as a coal supply ship and, once in the Pacific, assist in helping to Vladivostok free of ice. Five days after leaving Russian waters, however, Yermak suffered a shaft failure, which Adm. Rozhdestvensky, enraged at the time, did not believe, and took as an act of mutiny until he personally came aboard and verified it himself.

In the end, she was allowed to limp back to Kronstadt after cross-decking a number of her officers and crew to other vessels that were short. This act saved Yermak from what would certainly have been death at the hands of the Japanese at Tsushima (though not the men she transferred).

In the summer of 1905, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway all-important to a Russian victory in the Far East and her shaft repaired, she escorted supplies and rails for the project to along the Russian Arctic coast to the mouth of the Yenisey River, about half the distance.

Yermak in heavy sea ice

A great stern shot in warm waters. Click to big up

She conducted some of the first through-ice dives in frozen waters

With the war over, she went back to merchant and research service, breaking the ice around the Baltic. In 1908, she rescued her third warship when she pulled the cruiser Oleg from the ice off Finland.

By the time of the next war in 1914, Yermak was armed with some small deck guns to help ward off German submarines but again stuck to breaking out Russian warships when needed. This included freeing the cruiser Rurik for a sortie in March 1915 and the battleships Slava and Tsarevitch. Stationed in Revel for most of the war and with little for an icebreaker to do in summer months, she served as a depot ship for submarines.

Note the mascot and Tsarist uniforms with British influence

When the rest of the Baltic Fleet raised the red flag in March 1917, she was one of the last ships to do so and even then her crew re-elected her longtime skipper, Estonian-born Capt. Rudolf Karlovich Felman, who had commanded the ship since 1903– one of the few fleet vessels to do so.

However, Felman, in the end, was kicked out in November with the coming of the Bolsheviks and promptly left Russia only to find easy work in Estonian service. He was the longest-serving of her more than 21 captains spanning seven decades.

Felman. This intrepid polar explorer and ship driver lived until 1928

With the Germans fast approaching and the war at its end (for the Russians anyway), Yermak sailed from Revel to Helsinki and broke out the fleet to include 7 battleships, 9 cruisers and 200~ misc vessels so that they could assemble in Kronstadt and not fall into the Kaiser’s hands. This event was later referred to as the Great Ice Cruise of the Baltic Fleet and is seen as saving the Soviet Navy. (It should be noted that the Whites sailed away in 1920 and 22 with the majority of serviceable vessels of the Black Sea and Pacific fleets respectively, leaving only those in the Baltic under the Red Flag)

At the end of March, Yermak tried to return to Helsinki with a contingent of Red Navy sailors to seize the town but after trading some naval artillery with the local Finnish ship Tarmo (2400-tons, 1 47mm gun), she turned back around when a German plane dropped a few small bombs danger close to the hapless Russian icebreaker.

Nonetheless, her service in the Revolution and later Civil War, where her crew was sent to fight on land, earned her the Revolutionary Red Banner of the Central Executive Committee for outstanding service in her third war.

By 1921, she was disarmed and back in service around the Baltic since she was one of the few operational vessels left. She was even loaned to the Germans in 1929 (at a price of 1 million DM, which was music to the ears of the cash-strapped Kremlin) to open the Kiel Canal early.

In 1935, she made an Arctic expedition equipped with a seaplane and helped pick up floating North Pole Station 1 under the famous explorer Ivan Papanin, cementing her place in polar history.

Note the Red Banner flag

Yermak’s fourth conflict, the Russo-Finnish Winter War; saw her again armed, this time much more heavily. In December of that year, the Finns came close to sinking the old girl when the submarine Vetehinen (Merman) stalked her without success over an 8-day period off Libau. By early 1940, Yermak helped escort Soviet Naval troops to occupy disputed islands in the Gulf of Finland—and again was scrapping with her old Civil War enemy, the Finnish Tarmo, without effect.

Click to big up

In 1941, her fifth war was upon her and she was soon going toe to toe with German and Finnish bombers and attack planes. According to Soviet historians, Yermak‘s gunners splashed 36 aircraft during the war while, again, she served as a depot and berthing ship for submarines as needed. In 1942, with the Axis powers closing in on Leningrad, most of her armament was shipped to the front, with all but 15 of her crew going with it to fight on shore as they had in the Civil War.

By 1944, disarmed, and her crew of dirt sailors advancing on Berlin, Yermak was transferred back to merchant service with the ship earning the Order of Lenin for her WWII service.

1950, at this point she had seen a solid half-century of service.

By 1950, after an inspection found her half-century-old hull still sound, she was sent to Antwerp for refit and then assigned to the White Sea based at Murmansk. Her floatplane long since gone, she was given a helicopter and pad in 1954 and spent the next decade assisting in breaking submarines in and out of Polyarni as well as escorting seal fishing expeditions out into the Arctic.

With new atomic icebreakers coming into Soviet service, the days of the old steam Yermak were numbered. On 23 May 1963, she was withdrawn from service and, when a bid to preserve her as a museum failed, she was ordered stripped. Her good British steel was stolen from her and everything of value slowly disappeared over a ten-year period.

What was left was burned 17 December 1975 in the bleak ship cemetery at nearby Gadzhiyevo. It is believed that part of her keel is still visible at the radioactive summer low tide in that rusty ship graveyard today.

Her monument in Murmansk

A monument stands to her in Murmansk that includes one of her anchors, while a number of stamps have been issued by the Soviets and Russians to honor her memory. She has also been commemorated in Soviet maritime art.

Icebreaker Yermak by noted Soviet maritime artist Eugene Voishvillo

Yermak at revel by Yuri Sorokin

A 20,000-ton icebreaker (made ironically in Finland) was commissioned in 1974 with her old name and continues service today.

In a twist of Baltic fate, Yermak’s longtime nemesis, the Finnish icebreaker Tarmo, retired in 1970, has been preserved in the Maritime Museum of Finland in Kotka since 1992. Her hull, also built by Armstrong, is still sound.

Tarmo via Wiki Via wiki

Specs:

Displacement 7875 tons as designed, 10,000 by 1941
Length 319 feet
Width 70.8 feet
Draft 24 feet
Engines steam engines, 10,000 hp as designed
Three shafts, VTE steam engines, 6 boilers. Bow shaft as designed (removed in 1935)
Speed: 15 knots when new. 10 by 1939
Cruising range 5000 miles on 2200 tons of coal (bunkerage for 3,000 if needed). Coal consumption was 100 tons per day while underway.
Crew 89 as designed with berths for 102, 166 in naval service, 250 in 1939
Armament: 1914-1921: 2-4 small mounts of unknown caliber
1939-42ish:
2x 102 mm/45 (4″) B-2 Pattern 1930 mounts
4x 76.2 mm/30 (3″) Pattern 1914/15 mounts
4×45 mm/46 (1.77″) 21-K anti-tank guns in navalized AAA mounts
4x quad Maxim machineguns on GAZ-4M-AA mounts

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Warship Wednesday May 20, 2015: The destroyer with the heart of a battleship

Posted on May 20, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday May 20, 2015 The destroyer with the heart of a battleship

The Destroyer That Took on a Battleship by Peter DeForest. Click to bigup.

Here we see the U.S. Navy Benson-class destroyer USS Laffey (DD-459) going mano-a-mano with IJN Hiei, a Kongo-class battleship that has a slight weight advantage over her.

With war on the horizon in the mid-1930s as tensions with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were on the rise, the U.S. Navy realized that the old WWI-era four-stack destroyers, while still serviceable, just weren’t modern enough for what was likely to come in the far-flung South Pacific and windswept North Atlantic. This resulted in a series of no less than 10 classes of modern fast destroyers designed and built from 1932-43, which would form the backbone of the fleet in the first half of WWII, amounting to an impressive 169 surface combatants.

Each successive class, like today’s multi-flight Burke-class Aegis destroyers, were really just improvements on the prior, with better engines, sensors, and armament suites experimented with, which resulted in increasingly larger but better tin cans.

These ships included:

8 1350-ton, 341-foot Farragut-class
8 180-ton, 381-foot Porter-class
18 1725-ton, 341-foot Mahan-class
4 2219-ton, 341-foot Gridley-class
8 2325-ton, 341-foot Bagley-class
5 2130-ton, 381-foot Somers-class
10 2350-ton, 340 foot Benham-class
12 2465-ton, 348-foot Sims-class,

And– the last fully prewar design– the 30 vessel 2515-ton 348 foot oal Benson-class (followed by the 66 near-sisters of the only slightly different but mechanically identical Gleaves-class).

Class leader USS Benson DD-421. Note the five 5-innch mounts and masterfully mounted fire control system above the bridge

The Benson/Gleaves class destroyers, capable of an impressive 37.5-knots on their quadruple superheated boilers driving twin turbines, were the top of the line in Allied destroyer design when the U.S. entered the war. Ten 21-inch torpedo tubes, in twin 5-tube deck mountings, were capable of sinking a capital ship if they got close enough. A pair of depth charge racks over the stern could drop it like its hot on enemy subs. But it was their guns that told the story.

Mark 30 single mounts on Gleaves-class USS Arron Ward DD-483 in May 1942 Note 5″ (12.7 cm) propellant canisters on the left and Mark 37 FCS with “FD” Radar U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # 19-N-30722

Their five (later reduced to four) Mark 12 5″/38 caliber deck guns, in enclosed Mk 30 mounts were the finest Dual Purpose gun of World War II. Coupled with the Mk 37 FCS, they could hit a high-flying enemy aircraft at altitudes of up to 37,000 feet while their 53-pound shell was effective on surface targets and in naval gunfire support to some 17,000 yards and capable of penetrating up to 5-inches of armor plate at close range (more on this later). Further, they could be fired fast– at up to 22-rounds per minute per tube, which means that a Benson-class destroyer carrying the standard 320 rounds per mount could empty her magazines in just over 15 minutes of maximum sustained fire.

The hero of our story USS Laffey, was named after one Irish-born (County Galway) Bartlett Laffey who, as a 23-year-old seaman attached to the sternwheel gunboat USS Marmoa in 1864 along the Yazoo River, went ashore with a 12-pound howitzer to support a group of trapped force of the 11th Illinois Infantry, and 8th Louisiana Colored Infantry (yes, that’s the real regimental name). At great personal risk, Laffey remained at his gun and helped save the day, earning the MOH for his service. DD-459 would be the first ship named for this naval hero, but not the last.

The man…

USS Laffey was laid down at Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, San Francisco 31 Jan 1941 and her hull never touched any water other than the Pacific. Commissioned 31 March 1942, just fifteen weeks after Pearl Harbor, she rushed through her shakedown and soon was off to war.

USS Laffey (DD-459) steams alongside another U.S. Navy ship, while at sea in the south Pacific on 4 September 1942. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval Historical Center. One of the few images of Laffey, as she was too busy killing Japanese admirals to have her picture taken.

Just days after the image above was taken, she was rescuing the stricken crew from the USS Wasp (CV-8), her first brutal introduction to the war.

Less than a month later, at the Battle of Cape Esperance, she came face to face with the heavy cruiser IJN Aoba (9,000 tons), flagship of Japanese Cruiser Division 6 (CruDiv6) and part of the high speed nocturnal “Tokyo Express” reinforcing Guadalcanal. In that harrying night action Laffey got close enough to rake that much-larger ship successfully with her 5-inch guns, hammering her numerous times, and killing Admiral Aritomo Gotō. While Aoba did not sink, she suffered enough battle damage that she was sent back to Japan for five months of repairs.

The heavily damaged Japanese cruiser Aoba off Buin, Bougainville on October 13, 1942 after the Battle of Cape Esperance. Photographed from the Japanese cruiser Chokai.

On Nov. 11 Laffey helped cover the U.S. Army’s 182nd Infantry regiment’s landings on Guadalcanal and her guns helped splash a force of 32 Japanese planes sent to plaster the soldiers on the beach.

No rest for the weary, Laffey, just seven-months old, next found herself as part of Rear Adm. Daniel “Uncle Dan” Judson Callaghan’s Task Group 67.4 for what became known as the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on Friday the 13th November 1942.

This force of five cruisers and eight destroyers moved to stop Vice Admiral Hiroaki Abe’s much stronger force of 2 battleships, 1 cruiser, and 11 destroyers from running in between Savo Island and Guadalcanal in “the Slot” through what is (now) known as Iron Bottom Sound. Abe was a skilled surface warfare expert, having spent 26 years afloat in cruisers and battleships, and he had size on his side. Further, the IJN was adept at night fighting, having severely licked the Navy in several sharp surface warfare engagements in the area during the graveyard shift.

With no moon and a dark sky, the U.S. fleet used radar to close to within point-blank range until the Japanese fired off starshells and lit up their spotlights and the 1 a.m. battle was on– with the two fleets intermingling their battle line like a barroom brawl.

Laffey and her fellow destroyers and cruisers hammered the Fubuki-class destroyer Akatsuki (who soon sank with a loss of 197 crew) and then found themselves face to face with the 37,000-ton Kongō-class battleship Hiei (Abe’s flagship) while fellow tin cans Sterett (DD-407) and O’Bannon (DD-450) joined the fray.

While it would seem an uneven match, the Laffey got so close to the battlewagon (10 feet according to some reports) that the Japanese behemoth could not depress her guns low enough to get a hit on the plucky destroyer less than a 10th her size. However, this did not stop Laffey from pounding the Jap leviathan with 5-inch shells while her .50 caliber gunners, in close enough to make a difference, peppered everything that moved.

Laffey‘s crew paid close attention to the bridge of the flagship and almost claimed another admiral– severely wounding Abe and killing his chief of staff, Captain Suzuki Masakane.

Friday Nov. 13th, 1942, “Hiei vs. Honey Badgers” Click to big up

However, the destroyer soon found herself surrounded by Hiei, the battleship Kirishima, and two Japanese destroyers. With over 80,000 tons of the Emperor’s warships pounding away with ordnance that included 14-inch shells and Long Lance torpedoes, it was over fast. Her magazines exploded as she was being abandoned and she suffered 59 officers and men killed and 116 wounded, over half her crew.

As reported in the video and book “The Lost Fleet of Guadalcanal,” Laffey is today upright at a depth of nearly a half-mile off Guadalcanal and largely intact from the bow to amidships, but her after third has disappeared. Both forward 5-inch guns are trained out to port, and her amidships superstructure is holed by a 14-inch projectile from a Japanese battleship.

In a battle that lasted just 40-minutes, both sides had taken a brutal beating and although the U.S. fleet was ravaged, only two American ships were still capable of fighting, and Adm. Callaghan had been killed on the bridge of his flagship, Abe broke contact and fled. Besides Laffey, her Benson/Gleaves sisters USS Barton (DD-599) and USS Monssen (DD-436) also rested on Iron Bottom Sound when dawn came while badly damaged sister USS Aaron Ward (DD-483), who had stood toe to toe with Kirishima, was limping but still firing at the Japanese as they withdrew.

As for the damaged Hiei, she sank while under tow on the evening on 14 November after taking her final hits from Army B-17s and Navy Avengers. Partly due to an attempt to help screen Hiei, Kirishima was caught the next day by the modern fast battleships USS South Dakota (BB-57) and USS Washington (BB-56) who beat the ever-loving shit out of her until by 15 November she was parked on Iron Bottom Sound as well.

Japanese battleship Kirishima takes hit after hit from Washington (BB-56). Click to big up

The events of 13-15 November sealed the turning point in the waters off Guadalcanal and ended the Tokoyo Express. Further, it bought time for the new Essex-class carriers and legions of follow-on surface warfare ships to join the fleet as the Japanese licked their wounds and regrouped.

Admiral Abe, returning to Japan injured from Laffey‘s shells and whipped in a humiliating defeat by what Yamamoto considered a smaller force, was cashiered and died a broken man after the War– so we can count that as a combat effective kill for the destroyer as well.

(Via USS Laffey Assoc)

Laffey in the end earned the Presidential Unit Citation

“For outstanding performance during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific area, 15 September to 13 November 1942. Braving hostile file to rescue survivors in submarine-infested waters, the LAFFEY, after fighting effectively in the Battle of Cape Esperance, successfully repelled an aerial torpedo attack, and although badly crippled and set afire, inflicted severe damage on Japanese naval units off Savo Island. Eventually succumbing to her wounds after the enemy had fled in defeat, she left behind her an illustrious example of heroic fighting spirit.” For the President, James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy.

She was soon to have her name recycled by an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer, DD-724, who went on to make something of a name for herself as well in Naval history and is preserved at Patriots Point, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

USS Laffey, DD-724 as a museum ship today

The Benson and Gleaves classes gave extensively in WWII, with 16 lost during the war– five in the Guadalcanal campaign alone. After the war, they were mothballed with some reactivated for Korea. In the 50s a number were given to overseas allies to serve for another decade or so, but by the late 1970s, all of these hardy veterans were razorblades.

U.S.Navy Benson class Destroyers U.S.S Laffey and U.S.S Woodworth. Dragon model box art. Click to big up

Still, Laffey has been remembered in maritime art and in at least two scale models from Dragon as well as through a veteran’s association that honors both ships of the same name as well as the Irish-American bluejacket who earned his MOH by blood and deed.
Specs:

(Note, this is a late WWII Benson class with 4, 5-inch guns, Lafffey was completed with 5) click to big up

(Note, this is a late WWII Benson class with 4, 5-inch guns, click to big up

Displacement: 1620 tons (2515 tons full load)
Length: 341 ft. (103.9 m) waterline, 348 ft. 2 in (106.12 m) overall
Beam: 36 ft. 1 in (11.00 m)
Draft: 11 ft. 9 in (3.58 m) (normal),17 ft. 9 in (5.41 m) (full load)
Propulsion: Four Babcock & Wilcox boilers, General Electric SR geared turbines; two shafts;
50000 shp (37 MW)
Speed: 37.5 knots (69.5 km/h)
33 knots (61.1 km/h) full load
Range: 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km) at 15 kt, (11,000 km at 28 km/h)
Complement: 208 (276 war)
Armament:

4× 5 in (127 mm) DP guns, Mk 30 single mounts
6 × 0.50 in. (12.7 mm) guns, single mounts
10 × 21 in (53 cm) torpedo tubes,
2 × depth charge tracks
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Warship Wednesday May 13, 2015: The 18,000-ton Boogieman of the Barents Sea

Posted on May 13, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 9 comments

Warship Wednesday, May 13, 2015: the 18,000-ton Boogieman of the Barents Sea

Not what you want to see chasing you if you are a British destroyer…click to big up

Here we see the pride of the German Kriegsmarine, class leader schwerer-kreuzer Admiral Hipper underway at sea. Between April 1940 and Feb. 1943, she would haunt the Atlantic Ocean and North and Barents Seas, sending a number of His Majesty’s warships and merchantmen to the cold embrace of the deep.

With the Kaiser’s High Seas fleet lining the bottom of Scapa Flow, the language of the Versailles Treaty allowed the remnant of post-Imperial Weimar Germany just six obsolete pre-dreadnought battleships and six old light cruisers of the Bremen and Gazelle class in their Reichsmarine— which could not be replaced until they were at least 20-years old. Once these elderly cruisers started to wear out, the Republic replaced them with the larger Emden, Leipzig, and Konigsberg-class vessels from the late 1920s onward.

Then in 1933, when Hitler kicked the Versailles agreements to the curb, the Reichsmarine started construction on the super-sized Deutschland-class cruisers (pocket battleships) which needed escorts who could travel the world on their own if needed– and thus were born the first modern German heavy cruisers.

Allowed 50,000 tons of this last type under a pact with their Brits in 1935, the Germans went about building five, (wink wink) 10,000-ton ships for their newly renamed Kriegsmarine. The first of these, ominously, was named for the head of the Kaiser’s Great War fleet, Admiral Franz Ritter von Hipper.

(The man), he died in 1932, before the cruiser bearing his name was even fully designed on paper

Known politely in Great Britain and the “baby killer,” Hipper commanded the battlecruisers of I Scouting Group on the raids on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby; the Battle of Dogger Bank; and, of course, Jutland– where his unit drew the most blood of any, before taking the helm of the overall fleet from Scheer in 1918.

Although on paper they were supposed to weigh in at 10,000-tons, these 665-foot long cruisers were no welterweights, stepping on the scales with a full load displacement of over 18,000 when in wartime service.

Drawing of G.J. Frans Naerebout, earlier published in Op de lange deining

U.S. Office of Naval intelligence sheet on Hipper

Sheathed in a belt that averaged about 3-inches, they weren’t made to fight battleships, but their battery of eight 20.3 cm/60 (8″) SK C/34 guns, capable of firing a 269-pound AP shell out to a very respectable 36,636 yards, they could penetrate more than 9.4-inches of face-hardened armor at up to 10,000. As such, they could slug it out with any warship but a battlewagon with high hopes of winning the day.

Special Pictures of Admiral Hipper contributed by Peter Lienau via Navweaps

In all some five ships were to be completed of the class: Hipper, Blücher, Prinz Eugen, Seydlitz, and Lutzow, but the war had other plans.

The anti-hero of our story, Hipper, was laid down 6 July 1935 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg and commissioned in the spring before the Second World War began on April 39, 1939.

Schwerer Kreuzer “Admiral Hipper” 1939, Budesarchiv click to big up

At commissioning

1940 in Norwegian waters, click to big up

Just finished with her shakedown cruises, she sortied with virtually the entire Kriegsmarine to Norway where she was a group flag for Operation Weserübung, the invasion of that country in April 1940. (It was during that operation that her sister, the brand-new Blücher, was sucker punched and sunk by a Norwegian torpedo battery)

It was there, off the frozen coast just before the operation began, that she encountered the 1,900-ton G-class destroyer HMS Glowworm. The epic tale of what happened is as follows:

On the 8th April 1940, H.M.S. Glowworm was proceeding alone in heavy weather towards a rendezvous in West Fjord, when she met and engaged two enemy destroyers, scoring at least one hit on them. The enemy broke off the action and headed North, to lead the Glowworm on to his supporting forces. The Commanding Officer, whilst correctly appreciating the intentions of the enemy, at once gave chase. The German heavy cruiser, Admiral Hipper, was sighted closing the Glowworm at high speed and an enemy report was sent which was received by H.M.S. Renown. Because of the heavy sea, the Glowworm could not shadow the enemy and the Commanding Officer therefore decided to attack with torpedoes and then to close in order to inflict as much damage as possible.

Five torpedoes were fired and later the remaining five, but without success. The Glowworm was badly hit; one gun was out of action and her speed was much reduced, but with the other three guns still firing she closed and rammed the Admiral Hipper. As the Glowworm drew away, she opened fire again and scored one hit at a range of 400 yards. The Glowworm, badly stove in forward and riddled with enemy fire, heeled over to starboard, and the Commanding Officer gave the order to abandon her. Shortly afterwards she capsized and sank. The Admiral Hipper hove to for at least an hour picking up survivors but the loss of life was heavy, only 31 out of the Glowworm’s complement of 149 being saved.

Full information concerning this action has only recently been received and the VICTORIA CROSS is bestowed in recognition of the great valor of the Commanding Officer who, after fighting off a superior force of destroyers, sought out and reported a powerful enemy unit, and then fought his ship to the end against overwhelming odds, finally ramming the enemy with supreme coolness and skill.
–London Gazette, 6th July 1945

HMS Glowworm is about to be rammed by the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper

HMS Glowworm off the bow of Admiral Hipper. The Swastika is almost over the top in this image…

Closer to the destroyer, note seamen

through the Hipper’s fire control directors, Glowworm capsized

artists Impression of Glowworm ramming the Hipper

Hipper picked up 40 Royal Navy survivors and continued on to Trondheim, the strategic key to Norway, where she bluffed her way past local coastal defense batteries by saying she was a British ship and landed her troops.

bundesarchiv_bild_101i-757-0038n Schwerer Kreuzer Hipper landing German Gebirgsjägers in Trondheim

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

Repaired, she broke out into the North Atlantic several times in 1940 and 41, stalking Allied convoys and sending several cargo ships to the bottom while staying just over the horizon from British battleships.

December 1940: Working alone, on Christmas Day about 700 miles to the west of Spain, Hipper encountered troop convoy WS5A, one of ‘Winston’s Specials.’ They were accompanied by carrier HMS Furious ferrying aircraft to Takoradi in West Africa. In the resulting long-range naval gunfire duel, she damaged the 13,000-ton County-class heavy cruiser HMS Berwick and two merchantmen but was forced to find easier prey.

February 1941: Again alone, Hipper sailed from occupied Brest in France seeking easy meat. Bumping into convoy SLS64, she found it. This convoy, bound for Britain from Sierra Leone, had the two worst things going for it: not only was it slow (14-knots) but it was also completely unescorted by Allied warships. Hipper had a field day, breaking the shillelagh out and– in what was termed the “slaughter of convoy SLS64“– in the course of just under two hours, she sank 7 merchantmen and severely damaged three others (more than half the convoy) with punishing naval gunfire. In all this two-week sortie chalked up some 32,000 tons of Allied shipping to the boogieman.

Admiral Hipper’s bow with battleship Tirpitz to the right, Norwegian waters 1942

In 1942, operating from Norway with the bulk of the remaining capital ships of Hitler’s navy, the very presence of the Hipper along with the other big guns of the Kriegsmarine, was often enough to scatter Allied convoys to the winds where U-boats and Luftwaffe bombers and could pick them up with leisure.

One of Admiral Hipper’s three Arado Ar 196 seaplanes readied for launch. 1942.

One such instance was the heavily escorted PQ-17, headed to Murmansk from Iceland in June 1942. Allied intel got wind of a sortie by Hipper and Tirpitz, (which was shit intel) and ordered the convoy to break apart in response. The resulting slaughter was epic as some 200 German aircraft and a dozen U-boats sank 24 out of 35 ships while the 43 escorting Allied warships largely were unmolested.

Mort Kunstler, "Execution of Convoy PQ17," For Men Only cover, May 1960.Note the USS Atlantis sinking center. Via Heritage Auctions

Mort Kunstler, “Execution of Convoy PQ17,” For Men Only cover, May 1960. Note the fictional USS Atlantis sinking center. Via Heritage Auctions

Later that year, Hipper and the pocket battleship Deutschland attacked the British ships escorting convoy JW 51B to Murmansk on New Year’s Eve. In that engagement, she reinforced her reputation as a destroyer killer by sinking the 1,300-ton A-class destroyer HMS Achates and the similarly sized Halcyon-class minesweeper HMS Bramble.

In this contest, while dealing Achates her death blow, the 11,000-ton Crown Colony-class light cruiser HMS Jamaica and the similarly sized Town-class light cruiser HMS Sheffield raced to the scene from over the horizon and just really plastered Hipper at close range. While these ships were smaller, together they carried more than two dozen rapid-fire 6-inch guns and closed in to use them to good effect, forcing the lumbering German to break contact and vamoose– which Hitler flew into a rage over later.

Heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper off the coast of Norway. July 1942. via Monochrome Spectre http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/archives/2601482.html

In fact, Hitler was so displeased with the overall cost vs return of the surface fleet that he in short order paid off the capital ships, sacked old High Seas Fleet sailor Adm. Erich Raeder in favor of U-boat vet Adm. Karl Dönitz, and ordered the damaged Hipper recalled to Germany where she was sidelined for the rest of the war.

Decommissioned in February 1943, she was a fleet in being of sorts as the Allies knew she had not been sunk and, indeed had even been used in early 1945 as an emergency sealift platform to evacuate trapped German troops in the Baltics. Although the Germans made a good attempt to hide her out, the Allies finally found the boogieman and she was crippled by RAF bombers on 3 May 1945– less than a week before the end of the war.

Remember the Glowworm, Bramble, and Achates, indeed!

German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in dry dock at Kiel, May 19th, 1945. Click to big up

Remains of a heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in the dock in Kiel, destroyed by the bombing of Lancasters. April 1945.

Her remaining crew scuttled the once-mighty warship and she was later raised and scrapped in 1952.

Of her sisters, as already noted Blucher was sunk in Norway; Seydlitz was never completed; Lutzow, in a twist of fate, was sold to the Soviets while Hitler and Stalin were still buddies as the Petropavlovsk in 1940 but never completed; and Prinz Eugen— the largest German naval ship to survive the war still afloat, was turned over to the U.S. Navy in 1945 then sunk the next year following nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll.

However, these last two sisters, Hipper and Prinz Eugen, are reunited in a unified Germany with the bell of the former and a screw of the latter preserved at the Laboe Naval Memorial near Kiel within walking distance of each other.

Besides this, Hipper has been the subject of much naval art:

Click to big up

Trumpeter model company cover art

John Asmussen has a great source of information on Hipper should you want to learn more about this interesting ship.

As for the Glowworm, she is remembered as well.

Specs:

Image via Shipbucket, click to big up http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/Germany/CA%20Admiral%20Hipper.png click to very much big up

Image via Shipbucket, click to big up click to very much big up

Displacement: 16,170 t (15,910 long tons; 17,820 short tons)
Full load: 18,200 long tons (18,500 t)
Length: 202.8 m (665 ft. 4 in) overall
Beam: 21.3 m (69 ft. 11 in)
Draft: Full load: 7.2 m (24 ft.)
Propulsion:
3 × Blohm & Voss steam turbines
3 × three-blade propellers
132,000 shp (98 MW)
Speed: 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph)
Complement:
42 officers
1,340 enlisted
Armament:
8 × 20.3 cm (8.0 in) guns with up to 1400 rounds in magazines
12 × 10.5 cm (4.1 in) guns
12 × 3.7 cm (1.5 in) guns
8 × 2 cm (0.79 in) guns (20 × 1)
12× 53.3 cm (21 in) torpedo tubes
96 naval mines
Armor:
Belt: 70 to 80 mm (2.8 to 3.1 in)
Armor deck: 20 to 50 mm (0.79 to 1.97 in)
Turret faces: 105 mm (4.1 in)
Aircraft carried: 3 Arado AR 196 floatplanes
Aviation facilities: 1 catapult
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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Warship Wednesday May 6, 2015: The unsinkable battleship of Manila Bay

Posted on May 6, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Warship Wednesday, May 6, 2015: The unsinkable battleship of Manila Bay

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Here we see the concrete battleship, Fort Drum, as she appeared before 1941. While yes, this is not a ship but a U.S. Army coastal defense fortification, it has all the aspects of a ship above the waterline!

When Dewey swept into Manila Bay in 1898, the battle that his Asiatic Squadron gave the outgunned Spanish fleet was brief and historic– leaving the U.S. with de facto control of the island chain (or at least the Bay) that was made official after the war ended. After the Japanese defeat of the Russian Pacific Fleets (both of them) in 1905– during which a number of the Tsar’s ships took refuge in Manila Bay under the watchful eye of the USN, it became a priority to beef up the defenses around the harbor to keep the Navy there from turning into another Port Arthur.

The island, before 1909. If you prefer, you can refer to this as the ‘keel’ of Fort Drum

In the mouth of the Bay was El Fraile Island, a small slip of rock that the Army, in charge of Coastal Defense, decided to place a mine-control battery atop. However, this plan soon changed and the Army, with the Navy’s blessing, went about building their own static battleship.

Under the plan of Lt. John Kingman of the Army Corps of Engineers, the military leveled off El Fraile starting in 1909 and encased the entire island in steel-reinforced concrete with an average depth of 36-feet thick along the walls.

Several stories deep, a fort was constructed that included water cisterns, fuel tanks to run electrical generators, barracks for artillerymen, dining facilities, and storage for enough food to last the defenders months if needed.

Topside Plan

Engine tank section. Click to big up

Powder magazines and “navy-type” electrical passing scuttles. Drum could stock 440 shells for its main batteries. Click to big up

Atop the roof of the structure, which itself was 20-feet thick, were mounted a pair of M1909 turrets that each houses a pair of 14-inch (360mm) guns. Although a Navy-style mount, it was all-Army and contained unique wire-wound guns modified from the standard M1907 big guns mounted in coastal defense forts stateside.

While the standard CONUS 14-inchers were “disappearing” mounts, these larger 40-caliber tubes, with their 46-foot length, allowed the 1,209-pound AP shells to fire out to some 22,705-yards. To protect these turrets (named Batteries Marshall and Wilson), they had 16-inches of steel armor on their face, 14 on the sides and rear, and 6 on the roof. Of course, these giant turrets, with their outsized guns, tipped the scales at 1,160-tons or about the weight of a standard destroyer of the era, but hey, it’s not like they were going to sink the island or anything.

For comparison, the huge 16-inch/50 cal Mk.7 mounts on the Iowa-class battleships– commissioned decades after the Army’s concrete fort was built, weighed 1,701-tons but had three larger guns rather than the two the boys in green staffed.

The M1909 mount being tested at Sandy Hook Proving Ground, New Jersey before shipment to the PI. Only two of these mounts were ever constructed and, to the credit of the Army, are both still in existence despite an epic trial by combat.

The M1909 mount was tested at Sandy Hook Proving Ground, New Jersey before shipment to the PI. Only two of these mounts were ever constructed and, to the credit of the Army, are both still in existence despite an epic trial by combat. Click to big up

As befitting a battleship, the fort had a secondary armament of four casemated 6-inch coastal defense guns (dubbed Batteries Roberts and McCrea) as well as an anti-aircraft/small boat defense scheme (Batteries Hoyle and Exeter) of smaller 3-inch guns.

To direct all this a 60-foot high lattice mount (just like those on the latest U.S. battleships) was fitted to the ‘stern’ of the fort that contained fire control spotters (that fed to plotting rooms protected deep inside the facility), as well as 60-inch searchlights, radio and signal facilities to keep in contact with the rest of the harbor defenses.

Finally commissioned in 1913– just in time for World War One, the concrete battleship was named Fort Drum after former Adjutant General of the Army Richard Coulter Drum, who had died in 1909– the year construction began.

The man…

The fort was a happy post until December 8, 1941, when, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese struck at the Philippines. Largely relegated to providing some far-off gunfire support and exchanging pot shots with Japanese planes until Manila fell, this soon changed.

In December two water-cooled .50 caliber machine guns manned by a 13-man platoon of 3/4 Marines (withdrawn only days before from China), was sent to the concrete battleship to beef up her dated AAA defenses. They joined the 200~ soldiers, officers, Philippine Scouts, and civilian ordnance-men of the 59th and 60th U.S. Army Coastal Artillery Regiments, commanded by Lt. Col. Lewis S. Kirkpatrick. Later, when Bataan fell, about 20 tank-less soldiers from an armored unit– Company D, 192nd Tank Battalion (formerly Harrodsburg’s 38th Tank Company of the Kentucky National Guard)- managed to escape to Drum and lent their shoulders to the wheel for the last month of the campaign.

As the Japanese had done at Port Arthur in 1904 where they brought in 10-ton Krupp L/10 280mm howitzers from the Home Islands to churn the Russian fortifications to gruel, the Imperial Army shipped new 40-ton Type 45 240 mm howitzers just to batter Fort Drum in March.

Although they peppered the fort’s concrete and knocked out some small guns, Drum kept firing and after April, along with Corregidor and the other harbor forts, became the last piece of real estate owned by the U.S. When the Empire tried to take Corregidor in the end, Drum’s 14-inchers made Swiss cheese of a number of their thin-skinned landing barges, sending many of the Emperor’s best troops to the bottom of the Bay.

On May 6, 1942, some 73 years ago today, when General Wainwright surrendered Corregidor, he included the harbor forts in his order. Although still capable of fighting, the defenders of the fort obeyed orders, smashed their generators, burned their codebooks, spiked their weapons, turned the fire-hoses loose in the interior– paying special attention to the powder rooms, and raised a white flag at noon.

Although the 240~ soldiers and Marines of the garrison did not suffer any deaths in direct combat, their time in Japanese prison camps was by no means easy. A number of their unit, including Kirkpatrick, did not live to see the end of the war. Only one officer, battery commander Capt. Ben E. King, survived. Casualties among the enlisted were likewise horrific.

In the end, they were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation and that of the Philippine Presidential Unit Citation, which the 59th carries to this day (as the 59th Air Defense Artillery Regiment)

While the Japanese occupied the concrete battleship and used it as a coastal defense position for the rest of the war, they never did get the M1909s operable again.

US Army landing on Drum

Following bombardment by the USS Phoenix (CL-46), on April 13, 1945, the U.S. Army landed on the roof of the once-great fort. They found the Japanese defenders, shut inside its concrete warren under their feet, unwilling to surrender. Therefore, with McArthur’s blessing, a detachment of B Company/13th Engineers, poured 3,000 gallons of diesel/oil slurry down the ventilation shafts and set it off with timed charges as they withdrew.

US engineers and soldiers guarding them, pumping diesel fuel and oil into the innards of Ft. Drum Philippines. Note the 14-inch turret in the background

The fort burned for two weeks and no living Japanese prisoners were taken, only 68 “body remnants” were recovered. These men were sailors and survivors from the ill-fated super battleship Musashi, sent to the bottom just six months prior. So in the end, her final crew were battleship men.

According to an Augus1945 Yank magazine article:

First there was a cloud of smoke rising and seconds later the main explosion came. Blast after blast ripped the concrete battleship. Debris was showered into the water throwing up hundred of small geysers. A large flat object, later identified as the 6-inch concrete slab protecting the powder magazine was blown several hundred feet into the air to fall back on top of the fort, miraculously still unbroken. Now the GIs and sailors could cheer. And they did. As the LSM moved toward Corregidor there were continued explosions. More smoke and debris.

Two days later, on Sunday, a party went back to try to get into the fort through the lower levels. Wisps of smoke were still curling through the ventilators and it was obvious that oil was still burning inside. The visit was called off for that day. On Monday the troops returned again. this time they were able to make their way down as far as the second level, but again smoke forced them to withdraw. Eight Japs-dead of suffocation- were found on the first two levels.

Another two days later another landing party returned and explored the whole island. The bodies of 60 Japs-burned to death-were found in the boiler room on the third level. The inside of the fort was in shambles. The walls were blackened with smoke and what installations there were had been blown to pieces or burned.

In actual time of pumping oil and setting fuses, it had taken just over 15 minutes to settle the fate of the “impregnable” concrete fortress. It had been a successful operation in every way but one: The souvenir hunting wasn’t very good.

Starboard beam view of the battleship USS NEW JERSEY (BB-62) passing between CORREGIDOR (background) and FORT DRUM as she enters Manila Bay. Date: 3 Jul 1983 Camera Operator: PH2 PAUL SOUTAR ID: DN-SN-83-09891 Click to big up

Now, abandoned, the unsinkable battleship with its charred interior spaces lies moldering away in Manila Bay.

Over the years, it has become a tourist attraction and target for scrap hunters who have carried off every piece of metal smaller than they are.

For more information on Fort Drum, please visit Concrete Battleship.org

As for Gen. Drum himself, he is buried at Arlington Section 3, Site 1776.

Specs:

Image by Ship Bucket http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/United%20States%20of%20America/USS%20Fort%20Drum%201.png Click to big up

Image by Ship Bucket. Click to big up

Image by Ship Bucket http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/United%20States%20of%20America/USS%20Fort%20Drum%202.png Click to big up

Image by Ship Bucket. Click to big up

Displacement: It is an island
Length: 350 feet
Beam: 144 feet
Draught: nil, but the fort stood 40-feet high and the lattice tower over 100
Propulsion: None, although the fort had numerous generators
Speed: In time with the rotation of the earth
Complement: 200 men of Company E, 59th Coastal Artillery Regiment, commanded by Lt. Col. Lewis S. Kirkpatrick (1941-42)
Armament: (as completed)
4xM1909 14-inch guns
4xM1908 6-inch guns
Armor: Up to 36 feet of concrete, with up to 16-inches of plate on turrets

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

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Warship Wednesday April 29, 2015: The Red Taxi of the Black Sea

Posted on April 29, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

Warship Wednesday, April 29, 2015: The Red Taxi of the Black Sea

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Here we see the Svetlana-class light cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz (Red Caucasus), the pride of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet steaming on a summer day in 1940 on the eve of the Soviet Union entering World War II.

In 1906, the Imperial Russian Navy had the luxury that many fleets never do: the chance to start from scratch building their naval list with the benefit of real-world modern combat lessons under their belt. This of course was because they had lost more than 2/3 of their Navy in combat with the Imperial Japanese Navy during the late war with that country.

The Tsar’s naval planners envisioned a fleet of nine top-notch all-big-gun dreadnoughts of the Gangut, Imperatritsa Maria, and Imperator Nikolai I-class. These 25,000-ton+ bruisers needed a screen of fast destroyers to prevent torpedo boats from getting close (as the Japanese had pulled off at Port Arthur) as well as speedy light cruisers to scout over the horizon.

That is where the Svetlana’s came in. These modern cruisers went 7,400 tons when fully loaded and were 519 feet overall. They were built in Russia with extensive British help. Powered by 16 Yarrow oil boilers pushing a quartet of Parsons turbines, these ladies were fast– capable of 30 knots when needed. A battery of 15 rapid-fire 130 mm/55 B7 Obukhov (Vickers) Pattern 1913 naval guns could fire an 81.26 lbs. shell out to ranges that topped 24,000 yards. With these cruisers carrying an impressive 2200 of these shells in their magazines, they could fire all of these (theoretically) in just under 19 minutes. For protection against threats smaller than they were, the Svetlana’s were sheathed in up to 120 mm of good British armor plate.

The subject of our study, Krasnyi Kavkaz, was laid down at the Russud Dockyard, Nikolayev (currently Mykolaiv, Ukraine) on 31 October 1913, just ten months before the beginning of World War I. Her name at the time of the Tsarist Navy was to be Admiral Lazarev after Russian 19th Century explorer and fleet commander Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev. With wartime shortages in the Empire, she was only launched in the summer of 1916 and, when the Revolution came, was still fitting out.

She was captured in turn by the Germans, the Reds, the Ukrainians, the French, the Whites, and then the Reds again during the tail end of WWI and the madness of the Russian Civil War. Of course, since she was only 2/3rds complete and incapable of either sailing or fighting, all of the flag exchanges meant nothing.

Finally, the Soviets completed her on 25 January 1932 (just 19 years after she was laid down), with the brand new name of Krasnyi Kavkaz, to celebrate the geographic region added gloriously back to the worker’s paradise in 1921 after post-Tsarist secession and brief independence.

However, since her original British-designed 130mm guns were not available, Krasnyi Kavkaz was completed instead with a set of unique 180 mm/60 (7.1″) B-1-K Pattern 1931 that was relined from old 1905-era 8-inchers with the help of Italian gunnery experts (the Russians never throw anything away).

Note her forward 7.1-inch guns

Equipped with just four of these larger guns in single mounts, our oddball cruiser could only get off about 16 rounds per minute, but these rounds were 215 lbs. each in weight and could reach out to 40,000 yards, making her a light cruiser with nearly heavy cruiser armament.

As completed. She traded 15 casemated 130mm guns for 4 180mm singles.

She was also given a quartet of twin 100 mm DP guns, a dozen 21-inch torpedo tubes (the original design was for fewer 17.7-inch tubes), Brown-Boveri turbines as no fine British Parsons were available, a catapult for two KOR-1 seaplanes, and the capability to lay up to 120 M-08 naval mines.

A happy vessel during the 1930s in a Navy that was short on capital ships (out of the legion of Svetlana-class cruisers planned, the Soviets only had one other, class leader Krasnyi Krym –Red Crimea– afloat), the Krasnyi Kavkaz was extensively photographed and showboated to show off the modern Red Banner Fleet of the happy People’s Republic. She made a well-publicized 6-month Mediterranean cruise in 1933 in which she traveled over 2600 miles and made extensive stops in ports throughout the region– a rarity for a Soviet naval vessel of the era.

Sailors of the Soviet cruiser “Red Caucasus” with the ship’s pet bear

On her Med Tour, 1933

Sailor on a cruiser of the Black Sea the “Red Caucasus” in front of his 100mm flak piece

In 1933 on her Med cruise, with selected sailors going ashore at Istanbul under the close watch of comrade commisars.

A junior Red Caucasus cadet sailor

From 1936-37 she came face to face with German and Italian naval vessels in the Bay of Biscay patrolling the Spanish coastline during the Civil War in that country.

Click to big up

By the time World War II came to the Black Sea in June 1941, the Krasnyi Kavkaz spent a hard 28 months shuttling around the coasts of Rumania, the Crimea, Kerch, and Novorossiysk. In that time she sewed minefields under darkness, covered the evacuation of Odessa just ahead of the Germans, landed battalions of Naval Infantry and Red Army troops in amphibious operations under heavy Luftwaffe air attack, and provided naval gunfire support during the epic 9-month Siege of Sevastopol.

Loading troops. She shuttled thousands to and from some of the most contentious fighting on the Eastern Front

The light cruiser often carried as many as 1,800 troops on her runs across the Black Sea

In the latter, she and her sister were a vital lifeline to the port, bringing in ammunition and reinforcements and taking away the wounded and the city’s valuables.

The Red Caucasus was used extensively on shoe-string amphib landings

Notably, on January 4, 1942, she survived a close-in bombing run by Ju-87 Stukas that left her holed, nearly dead in the water, and full of over 1700 tons of seawater, pushing her to a 12,000-ton displacement. However, after a quick patch-up, she was back in action. This translated into more evacuations, amphibious landings, mine laying, and duels with Stukas and gunfire support. Continuing limited operations from Batumi and Poti in the Caucus in 1943, she was one of the last remaining operational Black Sea Fleet vessels to survive the war.

She saw lots of unsung action during the war

Post-war surveys found the ship, which had been repaired during the war in many cases with concrete, was in poor condition.

It was planned at one point to turn her and her sister into aircraft carriers in 1946, but they were too badly damaged from hard wartime service

It was planned at one point to turn her and her sister into hybrid aircraft carriers in 1946 with 370-foot flight decks, but they were too badly damaged from hard wartime service

Decommissioned from fleet duty on May 12, 1947, she was retained as a dockside training ship and berthing barge.

Red Caucasus on payoff 1947

She was disarmed in 1952, her 180mm guns being transformed into railway mounts. Finally, on November 21, 1952, Krasnyi Kavkaz was sunk near Feodosia by a regiment of Tu-4 bombers testing their new SS-N-1 missiles. Her name was stricken from the Soviet Naval list in 1953.

Her only completed sister, Svetlana/Krasnyi Krym, was scrapped in 1959.

She was remembered by a series of Soviet stamps

Specs

Image by Ship Bucket http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/Russia/KRT%20Krasnyy%20Kavkaz.png Click to big up

Image by Ship Bucket Click to big up

Displacement: 7,560 metric tons (7,440 long tons; 8,330 short tons) (standard)
9,030 metric tons (8,890 long tons; 9,950 short tons) (full load)
Length: 159.5 m (523 ft. 4 in)
Beam: 15.7 m (51 ft. 6 in)
Draught: 6.6 m (21 ft. 8 in)
Propulsion: Four shafts, Brown-Boveri geared turbines
16 Yarrow oil-fired boilers
55,000 shp (41,000 kW)
Speed: 29 knots (33 mph; 54 km/h)
Complement: 878
Armament: (as completed)
4 × 1 – 180 mm cal 57 guns
4 × 2 – 100 mm cal 56 AA guns
2 × 1 – 76 mm AA guns
4 × 1 – 45 mm AA guns
4 × 1 – 12.7 mm (0.50 in) AA machine guns
4 × 3 – 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes
60–120 mines
Armor: Upper and lower armored decks: 20 mm (0.79 in) each
Turrets: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Lower armor belt: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Upper armor belt: 25 mm (0.98 in)
Conning tower: 76 mm (3.0 in)
Aircraft carried 2 × KOR-1 seaplanes
Aviation facilities: 1 catapult

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

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

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Warship Wednesday April 22, 2015: The Music City wingman

Posted on April 22, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday April 22, 2015: The Music City wingman

Here we see a famous still taken from a 16mm film of a group U.S. Army Air Force B-25 Mitchell bombers loaded on the deck of the carrier USS Hornet (CV-8), April 18, 1942– roughly about 73 years ago this week. The ship in the background? The unsung but always there wingman that is the Brooklyn-class light cruiser USS Nashville (CL-43), the hero of our story.

An answer to the Japanese Mogami-class cruisers of the 1930s that carried an impressive 15 6-inch guns, the seven cruisers of the Brooklyn-class were an excellent design that proved more than capable in service. Although a “light” cruiser, these 606-foot long 12,200-ton vessels were among the largest ever built to be called such and took everything the Germans and Japanese could throw at them in WWII.

Overhead of USS Brooklyn CL-40 in June 1943. Note the turret configuration

Overhead of class-leader USS Brooklyn CL-40 in June 1943. Note the turret configuration

Carrying an armored belt that ran from 2-inches over the deck to 6.5 on their turrets, they were reasonably well sheathed to take on anything but a heavy cruiser or battleship in a surface action. Eight boilers feeding a quartet of Parsons steam turbines gave these ships an impressive 100,000 shp, which allowed them to touch 33-knots– fast enough to keep up with even the speedy destroyers. Capable of covering 10,000 miles on a single load of fuel oil, they could range the Pacific or escort Atlantic convoys without having to top off every five minutes. Four floatplanes allowed these ships to scout ahead and tell the fleet just what was over the horizon.

Finally, an impressive main battery of 15 6″/47DP (15.2 cm) Mark 16 guns in a distinctive five triple turret scheme introduced with the class, gave them teeth. These guns with their 130-pound super heavy shell had almost double the penetration performance when compared against the older 6″/53 (15.2 cm) AP projectiles used for the Omaha class (CL-4) light cruisers. Further, they could fire them fast. One Brooklyn, USS Savannah (CL-42) during gunnery trials in March 1939 fired 138 6-inch rounds in just 60-seconds.

USS Nashville (CL–43) was laid down 24 January 1935 by New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, NJ, and commissioned 6 June 1938. A quick shakedown in Europe on the brink of WWII saw her bring some $25 million in gold bars back from the UK, which was deposited in US banks.

When the war broke out, she found herself on neutrality patrols in the Northern Atlantic, often popping up in German U-boat periscopes. She escorted Marines to occupy Iceland in 1941 and after Pearl Harbor received orders to link up with the nation’s newest carrier, Hornet, and escort her to the Pacific.

A view of her just 18 days before the Doolittle Raid. Click to big up

Arriving at Naval Air Station Alameda on 20 March 1942, Nashville stood by while Hornet had part of her Naval airwing offloaded and 16 Army B-25s, 64 modified 500-pound bombs, and 201 USAAF aviators and ground crew transferred aboard.

Putting to sea on April 2, the task force commanded by Vice Adm. Halsey consisted of the Hornet with her escort Nashville, the carrier Enterprise with her three companion heavy cruisers Salt Lake City, Northampton, and Vincennes, as well as a group of destroyers and tankers headed West for points unknown and under great secrecy.

View looking aft from the island of USS Hornet (CV 8), while en route to the mission’s launching point. USS Gwin (DD-433) is coming alongside, as USS Nashville (CL-43) steams in the distance. Eight of the mission’s sixteen B-25B bombers are parked within view, as are two of the ship’s SBD scout bombers. Note midships elevator, torpedo elevator, arresting gear and flight deck barriers in the lower portion of the photo, and 1.1″ quad anti-aircraft machine gun mount at left. Naval History & Heritage Command photo (# NH 53289).

After refueling from the tankers on April 17, the four cruisers and two carriers raced towards Japan. The plan was to launch the first raid on the Home Islands to score a propaganda victory following a string of defeats across the Pacific in the first four months of the war.

However, the group was sighted while still far out to sea. The quick-shooting Nashville rapidly engaged the Japanese ship, Gunboat No. 23 Nittō Maru, and sank her with 6-inch shells, but the little 70-ton boat got off a warning via radio on her way down.

Nito Maru Sunk by Nashville

The 16 bombers lead by Jimmy Doolittle quickly launched into history and the six ships of the task force turned back for safer waters.

Nashville however, still had a long war ahead of her.

As the flagship of the pitifully outgunned Task Force 8, she defended Alaska during the Japanese feint there during the Battle of Midway, and soaked the frozen invaders on Attu and Kiska with 6-inch shells before sailing back and joining the main fleet.

Nashville firing on Kiska, August 8th 1942; the bombardment was run in a racetrack pattern, and Nashville is just turning. Click to big up

She visited the same naval gunfire across the South Pacific and socked Japanese bases at Munda, Kolombangara and New Georgia, covered the landings at Bougainville and the Bismarck Archipelago and just generally popped up everywhere the action was thickest. She covered the raids on the Marcus Islands and Wake; served as McArthur’s flagship for the Hollandia Operations, covered Toem, Wakde, Sarmi Ares, Biak, Mortai, Leyte, Mindoro, et; al.

Broadside view of the USS Nashville (CL 43) off Mare Island on 4 August 1943. She was in overhaul at the shipyard from 4 June until 7 August 1943. U.S. Navy Photo #5624-43.

Leyte Invasion, October 1944 – General Douglas MacArthur (right, seen in profile) on the bridge of USS Nashville (CL 43), off Leyte during the landings there in late October 1944. Standing in the center (also seen in profile) is Lieutenant General George C. Kenney. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives – USA C-259

Her Marine detachment had a very active service history which is chronicled here.

On 13 December 1944, she took a kamikaze hit on her portside while in the PI that caused over 300 casualties- a third of her crew– but she remained afloat and operational, a testament to both the ship and her sailors.

The ships of her class were known to take a licking and keep on ticking.

Sister USS Honolulu (CL-48) was torpedoed at the Battle of Kolombangara on July 12–13, 1943, and again at Leyte in October 1944 but in each case remained afloat and operational. Classmate USS Boise (CL-47) took a number of hard hits at close range during the Battle of Cape Esperance in 1943. Two 7.9-inch shells from the heavy cruiser Kinugasa exploded in Boise‍ ’s main ammunition magazine between turrets one and two. The resulting explosion killed almost 100 men and threatened to blow the ship apart– but she finished the battle under her own steam and survived the war.

Another sister, USS Savannah (CL-42), was clobbered by a massive 3,000-pound German Fritz-X bomb while operating in the Med in 1943. Hitting Savannah amidships, it blew the bottom out of the cruiser but she remained afloat and later returned to operations after a rebuild.

USS Savannah (CL-42) is hit by a German radio-controlled glide bomb, while supporting Allied forces ashore during the Salerno operation, 11 September 1943. The bomb hit the top of the ship’s number three 6″/47 gun turret and penetrated deep into her hull before exploding. The photograph shows the explosion venting through the top of the turret and also through Savannah’s hull below the waterline. A motor torpedo boat (PT) is passing by in the foreground. When you think that a pair of Fritz-X’s completely destroyed the 45,000-ton Vittorio Veneto-class battleship Roma, its impressive that a 12,000-ton light cruiser survived such a hit.

One lucky young Radioman 3rd Class aboard Nashville that day who survived the kamikaze hit, Jason Robards, went on to an acting career and an Oscar. Robards had earlier in the war just missed Pearl Harbor by two days then had his cruiser, fellow Doolittle raid vet Northampton, sunk from under him at the Battle of Tassafaronga. It was while on Nashville that Robards emceed for a Navy band in Pearl Harbor, got a few laughs and decided he liked being in front of an audience.

Following repairs, Nashville was back in the front lines, covering the Balikpapan and Brunei Bay operations in June and July 1945. In the months after the war, she was flag of TF73, made an extensive visit to war torn China, conducted two Magic Carpet rides home (one of which saw her take a foundering troopship with 1200 soldiers aboard under tow in heavy seas) and was decommissioned 24 June 1946, after a very hectic 8-year active duty career.

Nashville in Sydney 1944. Note measure 32/21d camo scheme. Click to big up

In all she won 10 battlestars for her active 41-month long Pacific War.

The Navy, flush with more modern cruisers, soon divested themselves of the seven lucky Brooklyn’s.

Two, Honolulu and Savannah, were scrapped, while the other five were part of a large post-war cruiser acquisition by the “ABC Navies” of South America.

USS Boise (CL-47) and Phoenix (CL-46) went to Argentina.

USS Philadelphia (CL-41) went to Brazil.

Class leader Brooklyn along with her wingman Nashville went to Chile in 1951.

While in South America, Nashville served as the Capitán Prat (CL-03) and later as the Chacabuco with the same pennant number. She remained on active duty until 1984 and was scrapped the next year at age 46, one of the last unmodified WWII-era big gun ships afloat at the time.

The cruisers Almirante Latorre http://laststandonzombieisland.com/2014/12/03/warship-wednesday-december-3-2014-the-scandinavian-leviathan/ (ex-Swedish Gota Lejon), Prat (formerly USS Nashville), and O'Higgins (formerly USS Brooklyn) underway

The cruisers Almirante Latorre (ex-Swedish Gota Lejon), Prat (formerly USS Nashville), and O’Higgins (formerly USS Brooklyn) underway in Chilean service. Click to big up

1970s Chilean battle fleet at play. Possibly the best collection of WWII ships then afloat. Prat/Nashville is to the left. The cruisers Almirante Latorre http://laststandonzombieisland.com/2014/12/03/warship-wednesday-december-3-2014-the-scandinavian-leviathan/ (ex-Swedish Gota Lejon), is center with her distinctive superstructure, and and O'Higgins (formerly USS Brooklyn) to the image's right. Click to big up

The 1970s Chilean battle fleet at play. Possibly the best collection of WWII ships then afloat. Prat/Nashville is to the left. The cruisers Almirante Latorre (ex-Swedish Gota Lejon), is center with her distinctive superstructure, and and O’Higgins (formerly USS Brooklyn) to the image’s right. Click to big up

In all she was one of the most decorated of her class and outlived most of her classmates. She survived her Argentine sisters Boise/ Nueve de Julio (scrapped 1978) and Phoenix/ General Belgrano (sunk in the Falklands May 1982). She also survived her Brazilian partner Philadelphia/Barroso (scrapped in 1973).

Only Brooklyn/O’Higgins, who was finally retired in 1994, outlasted her, although many of Nashville‘s parts were cannibalized to keep that ship afloat for its final decade.

In Chile, her ship’s bell is on display as are two of her main guns.

Ship’s Bell, Museum in Chile

In the states, Nashville is remembered by a veterans group who maintain an excellent website in her honor and relics from her are on display at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville about a mile from Music City Center.

A book, Humble Heroes has been written about her that is an excellent read.

Specs

Nashville, 1944 in her measure 32/21d camo scheme by http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/United%20States%20of%20America/CL-43%20Nashville%201944.png Ship Bucket

Nashville, 1944 in her measure 32/21d camo scheme by Ship Bucket. Click to big up

Displacement: 9,475 tons (8,596 tons)
Length:    608 ft. 4 in (185.42 m)
Beam:    61 ft. 8 in (18.80 m)
Draft:    19 ft. 2 in (5,840 mm)
Propulsion:
Geared Turbines
Four screws
100,000 hp (75,000 kW)
Speed:    32.5 kn (37.4 mph; 60.2 km/h)
Complement:    868 officers and enlisted
Armament:    15 × 6 in (150 mm)/47 cal guns,
8 × 5 in (130 mm)/25 cal guns,
20 × Bofors 40 mm guns,
10 × Oerlikon 20 mm cannons
Armor:
Belt:5 in (130 mm)
Turrets:6.5 in (170 mm)
Deck:2 in (51 mm)
Conning Tower:5 in (130 mm)
Aircraft carried: 4 × floatplanes
Aviation facilities: 2 × catapults

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

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Warship Wednesday, April 15, 2015: Big Jean and the Boston Brawler

Posted on April 15, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 4 comments

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

Warship Wednesday, April 15, 2015: Big Jean

Here we see the Richelieu-class battleship of the French Republic’s Marine Nationale Jean Bart racing forward on speed trials in 1949. Her distinctive all-forward main battery of eight 15-inch guns in twin quad turrets is very apparent.

France rather tried to distance themselves from the modern dreadnought game after the end of World War I, figuring that with the destruction of the Austrian battleships in the Med, and the Kaiser’s battleships at Scapa Flow in 1920; all was well in the world. Then came Hitler and his rebuilding of the German Navy to include the Deutschland class pocket battleships while Mussolini came to power in Italy and the new fascist government there building their very modern 40,000-ton Littorio-class battleships. As an answer to the first, the Republic ordered two 25,000-ton Dunkerque-class battleships in the early 1930s and as an answer to the latter (as well as the pair of German 38,000-ton Scharnhorst-class battleships laid down in 1935), the French ordered a quartet of massive new warships– the Richelieu‘s.

Class leader Richelieu in a beautiful color portrait. Click to big up

With a standard displacement of 35,000-tons to comply with the Washington and London Naval treaties (although this would balloon to nearly 50,000 when fully loaded), these 813-foot long beasts were among the largest battleships ever built and remain the largest French warships ever to put to sea. Even today, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (R91), the flagship of the French Navy and largest European warship afloat, only maxes out at 42,000-tons.

Unlike many battlewagons before them, these were fast battleships, capable of breaking 30-knots if needed due to a quartet of Parsons geared turbines that generated more than 150,000 shp. With long legs, these ships were capable of a 10,000-mile cruise at 16-knots, enabling them to travel to far off Pacific territories such as Indochina if needed (more on this later).

Designed to be able to take German 28 cm/54.5 (11 inch) SK C/34 fire as well as that from Italian 381 mm (15.0 in) L/50 guns, these leviathans were girded in as much as 17-inches of armor plate and mounted eight 15-inch 380mm/45 Modèle 1935 guns, the largest caliber naval gun ever fielded in French service. They could fire a 1950-pound diving shell to a range of 45,600 yds. The secondary armament of 9x152mm guns in three triple turrets over the stern could handle light work.

Those are pretty impressive turrets

Laid down at Chantiers de Penhoët, Saint-Nazaire on 12 December 1936, the second ship of the Richelieu-class was named Jean Bart after a notorious ~~pirate~~ privateer and naval commander.

This Flemish swashbuckler from Dunkirk, who spelled his name “Jan Baert,” was much man, at over 6 ft. 8” and topping some 400-pounds. This size didn’t stop big Jan/Jean, who cut his teeth in the Dutch Navy, from capturing an amazing 386 ships as a privateer during the late 17th Century and rising to the rank of full Admiral in the French Navy. A rather incorrect svelte statue stands to him in Dunkirk today and no less than 27 ships of the French Navy have carried his moniker, including their last completed battleship.

The French corsair

December 20, 1928: The remains of Jean Bart, famed sea dog of Louis XIV, were discovered in the Church of Saint-Éloi in Dunkirk by the historian Louis Lemaire. They are laid in an open casket for eight days, surrounded by a guard of honor supplied by volunteers from the Navy, before being reinterred with full pomp and ceremony.

When World War II came, class leader, Richelieu was nearing completion at Brest while Jean Bart was still a bit further away. Only 75 percent complete and mounting just half of her big guns, she took to the sea on June 19, 1940, as Metropolitan France was surrendering to the Germans, and made a break for the French North African port of Casablanca.

The third and fourth members of the class, Clemenceau, and Gascogne were not far enough along in their construction to even be considered ships (and were never completed).

How she looked in 1940 via http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/France/BB%20Jean%20Bart%201940-2.png click to very much big up

How she looked in 1940 via shipbucket click to very much big up

Jean sat at Casablanca during the awkward Vichy French years, spending the next 29 months of the war languishing as there were no construction facilities to complete her and most of her smaller caliber guns were landed ashore to set up coast defense and AAA batteries in the city and harbor.

A view of Jean Bart’s forecastle in Casablanca Harbor, before the Allied invasion. Note the incomplete Turret II; despite its armored top not being installed, the structure is sealed. The French concreted over the otherwise-hollow structure to protect the ship against aerial bombs while she lay in harbor awaiting completion. Submarines are moored off to the left along the jetty, and what looks like a light cruiser is to the right with about half the ship out of the frame.

The French battleship Jean Bart, photographed by USN Photographers Mate Third Class Bill Wade from an airplane of the USS Ranger, Nov 8, 1942

Then, on Nov 8, 1942, the Allied Torch landings occurred and Jean Bart defended her colonial harbor from dockside from the 16-inch guns of the new SoDak-class battleship USS Massachusetts (BB-59) and the Dauntless dive bombers and Avenger torpedo planes of the carrier USS Ranger (CV-4) over the next three days she fired 25 shells from her one operational 15-inch turret which narrowly missed the Mass and the cruiser Augusta.

Nevertheless, with the Bart stationary, incomplete and by far outnumbered, the battle was a foregone conclusion. At least seven 16-inch shells (fired from Massachusetts from a range of over 24,000 yards) and several bombs hit her, sinking in with her decks awash.

A cartoon from the BB-59's cruise book recounting how close the Jean Bart's shells came to wrecking her day. USN photo courtesy of James E. Hesson, plank-owner of the Massachusetts (BB-59). Photo submitted in his memory by his son, Joe Hesson. Via Navsource

A cartoon from the BB-59’s cruise book recounting how close the Jean Bart’s shells came to wreck her day. USN photo courtesy of James E. Hesson, plank-owner of Massachusetts (BB-59). Photo submitted in his memory by his son, Joe Hesson. Via Navsource

It was the only time that U.S. and French battleships fought in the steel era and she gave a good account of herself for all of her handicaps.

Jean Bart French battleship at Casablanca 1942 via All Hands 1943

bomba de 454Kg en el Jean Bart, en Casablanca

The effect of a 1,000lb bomb from Ranger’s SBDs

She spent the rest of the war as a hulk in Casablanca and her four 380 mm guns were salvaged and sent to New York where they were emplaced on Richelieu who had gone over to the Free French Navy and was being refitted there.

refloated at Casablanca

That sistership put Bart’s guns to good use in both the European and Pacific Theaters of operation as well as in French Indochina.

Battleship Richelieu arriving in New York for refit. The fire control director on the fore tower had to be dismantled for her to pass under the Brooklyn Bridge. Note damaged turret

French battleship Richelieu at sea, September 1943 after her refit in New York. Half her main guns in this image came from Jean Bart and had fired at Casablanca. Click to big up

Bow view, the French battleship Richelieu in New York Harbor on August 14, 1943. USN photo 19-LCM-51074

Finally, four months after Hitler ate a bullet, big Jean was sent back to France and work began to complete her at Cherbourg.

Incomplete French battleship Jean Bart sailing from Casablanca to Cherbourg for repairs in 1945

How she looked in 1945 with wartime repairs and no armament fitted via Ship Bucket http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/France/BB%20Jean%20Bart%201945.png click to very much big up

How she looked in 1945 with wartime repairs and no armament fitted via Ship Bucket click to very much big up

Commissioned on 16 January 1949, she made 32-knots on her speed trials and was finally ready for sea duty– and for the first time was fully armed.

Getting her new 380mm Model 35s installed, 1948. As far as I can tell, these were the last battleship guns ever installed in a new battleship (barring the 1950s re-barreling of the Iowa class in the U.S.)

1948 off St. Nazaire, France

In the early 1950s, she sailed on many goodwill trips around Europe and to New York but was never fully manned; only carrying half-crews due to postwar funding shortfalls. She was more of a heavily armed and armored cruise ship and flag-waver than an active ship of the line.

Jean Bart alongside cruisers Suffren and Montcalm, 1950s

Jean Bart alongside cruisers Suffren and Montcalm, the 1950s

Click to big up

In the Suez Crisis of 1956, she sailed with the joint Anglo-French fleet with an augmented near-full sized crew and provided some brief naval gunfire support, firing her big 15-inchers in anger once more, losing just four shells at the Egyptian defenses.

JEAN BART at Algiers on 1 November 1956, having embarked the élite Commando Hubert and soldiers of the 1st Parachute Regiment, Foreign Legion for Anglo-French Suez intervention

Jean Bart in true color, anchored at Toulon during the late 1950s after her brief participation in the Suez Crisis and the termination of her short service life

As a sad note, on the afternoon of 30 January 1956, she was briefly reunited with her old classmate Richelieu while at sea, the one and only time the two French ships maneuvered together underway.

Battleship Jean Bart in Harbour of Toulon 1968

Battleship Jean Bart in Harbor of Toulon 1968

Placed in reserve in 1957 after just an eight-year career, she was decommissioned soon afterward. Cantieri Navali Santa Maria of Genoa scrapped Richelieu in September 1968 while Jean Bart, the last European battleship afloat, was scrapped 24 June 1970 at Brégaillon near Toulon.

Today, at least six of Richelieu/Jean Bart‘s guns are maintained as museum pieces around France. However, you can visit the USS Massachusetts, the winner of the Great Casablanca Battlewagon Duel, at Falls River where she has been on display since 1965.

Battleship_Massachusetts,_2012 (Photo via Wiki)

Specs

Jean Bart in her final form 1955 via Shipbucket http://www.shipbucket.com/images.php?dir=Real%20Designs/France/BB%20Jean%20Bart%201955.png click to very much big up

Jean Bart in her final form 1955 via Shipbucket click to very much big up

Displacement: 35,000 tons standard as designed, 48,950 t at full load, in 1949
Length: 813 feet
Beam: 114 feet
Draught: 33 feet
Propulsion: four Parsons geared turbines, six Indret boilers. 150,000 hp (112 MW)
Speed: 32 knots at trials, 20 design
Range: 9800 nautical miles at 16 knots, 7671 nautical miles at 20 knots; 3181 nautical miles at 30 knots
Complement: 1620 designed, 911 men in 1950 (incomplete), 1,280 men during the Suez affair
Armament:
As Designed:
8 × 380mm (15 inch)/45 Modèle 1935 guns in quadruple mounts at bow
9 × 152 mm (6 inch) secondary (3 × 3 mounted aft)
12 × 100 mm (3.9 inch) Anti-Aircraft guns (6 × 2)
As completed 1949
8 × 380mm/45 Modèle 1935 guns in quadruple mounts at bow
9 × 152 mm AA in 3 triple turrets at the aft till 1952–53
8 × 40 mm AA
20 × 20 mm AA
From 1953–54
Two 15-inch turrets fitted, only one operational
24 × 100 mm in 12 twin mountings CAD Model 1945
28 × 57 mm in 14 twin mountings ACAD Model 1950
Armor: Belt: 330 mm
Upper armored deck: 150–170 mm
Lower armored deck: 40 mm
Aircraft: Designed for four seaplanes, never fitted.

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

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

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

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Warship Wednesday April 8, 2015: The Mud Lump Picket Gang

Posted on April 8, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Warship Wednesday, April 8, 2015– The Mud Lump Picket Gang

Click to very much big up. USCG Photo

Here we see an excellent bow-on shot of a 38 Foot Cabin Picket Boat CG-4371 of the United States Coast Guard as she would have appeared during World War II when all dolled up in her war paint. From 1920-1960, these boats were the local “Coasties” and fought bootleggers in the Rum Wars, the Germans, and Japanese during the real live shooting war that followed, and set the benchmark for peacetime service afterward.

Moreover, altogether there were over 600 of them.

Why were they needed?

With the passage of the Volstead Act, perhaps the biggest effort at pissing in the wind in the history of the Federal Government, liquor was made the scapegoat for poor societal growth by the Temperance Movement and made thereby illegal- that should have fixed everything. Well, it only made matters far worse as the demand never went away and enterprising suppliers, many fresh from military service in the Great War and with few qualms about taking risks, began bootlegging booze by land, sea, and air. The first was risky as it was too predictable, and the final couldn’t handle the volume, which led to the serious rum-runners selecting offshore delivery as the preferred means.

It was simple, buy a surplus freighter or deep draft sailing ship (there were literally thousands of them cheap after the war) load it with legal rum in Cuba or the Bahamas if down south or good Canadian Whiskey if up north, then haul the hooch to a few hundred yards offshore of the (then) 3-mile federal limit and sell it to any enterprising small boat owner that came your way– by the case and at several times the cost. And it worked, for example, the number of quarts of rum sold in Nassau, the Bahamas in 1917 was just 50,000. By 1922, it skyrocketed to 10-million. It was a boon with coastal port towns in the nearby Caribbean turning into gold rush cities and some 500,000 Americans believed involved at one stage or another in the new instant economy of bootlegging.

A schooner loaded high with whiskey on rum row.USCG Photo

The government’s answer to shut down this “Rum Row” was the USCG.

The thing is, the Coasties had few capable large craft as their offshore cutters were slow and couldn’t pursue the smaller fast boats of the rum runners headed back to shore, and the local harbor launches and rescue boats of the Coast Guard stations were likewise too slow and light (often rowboats or 36-footers Hunnewell Type lifeboats that could make 8-knots) to chase the speedy little powerboats over the local mud lumps.

Therefore, while the Coast Guard quickly acquired a fleet of Navy 4-piper destroyers and sub chasers from mothballs and ordered a ton of new 165-foot, 125-foot, and 75-foot gunboats, but they still needed smaller boys for when the speeds got north of 20 knots and the shoals got shallower than two fathoms. That is where the picket boats came in.

Design

Based on the classic sea bright dory fishing boats that were popular along the Jersey Coast in the late 19th Century, the Coast Guard came up with two general plans (one for a 36-foot boat, the other for a 38-footer) of fast “Cabin Picket Boats.”

A 38-foot cabin picket in their peacetime livery.USCG Photo

38-foot picket USCG Photo

Each had a wood carvel design hull with single planking and ice sheathing, either a single or double cabin, and a single gasoline engine, prop or rudder. Speeds were in the 25-knot range. They were self-bailing, had electrical lights and refrigerator, and could accommodate as many as ten coasties but only needed two to operate.

With their small cabins and galley, they carried enough fuel to go out overnight and come back, venturing out to Rum Row and back several times. Too small for names, they were all given numbers.

Given a law enforcement role as primary, a first for a USCG small boat, they were tasked with patrolling and policing of harbors, shallow inlets and protected waters along the coasts. Initially, the 36 footers were built to two very, um, flexible designs one with a double cabin and one with a single, and 103 were ordered from small boat builders around the country, all delivered by 1926.

From the USCG Historian’s office on the design of the 36s:

Procurement procedures for these smaller craft varied by type. In the case of the single-cabin model, a brief outline plan was distributed to boat building contractors with instructions that they retain their own naval architect to complete the boat’s final plans and specifications. With the double-cabin model, however, complete plans were drawn up and provided by the Coast Guard to prospective builders. Seven different yards were contracted for single-cabin boat construction, and six yards for double-cabin boat construction.

The 38s were all built to a single plan with 68 examples created before Dec. 7, 1941, and another 470 built between then and 1944— but we’ll get to that.

Rum War

By 1924 the Coast Guard, armed with their new boats small and large and a huge influx of cash from the Hoover administration, was set loose on Rum Row. Boat crews, often called Hammerheads due to their distinctive booze smashing (and head knocking) sledges destroyed rum and whiskey alike. Off New London alone in one year, no less than 65 ships were captured with $1.5 milly in booze as well as 290 bootleggers along with them. The crews were heavily armed with BARs, M1903s and pistols because shootouts, as well as encounters with pirate ships out to rob the bootleggers themselves were increasingly common. One source cites that over 200 civilians were killed off the U.S. East Coast during the 1920s while involved in the booze campaign.

The Coast Guard was hard-handed when needed and they suffered their own losses, even exacting retribution in the hanging (at the Ft. Lauderdale Coast Guard Station) of a bootlegger, James “The Gulf Stream Pirate” Alderman that killed a Coast Guardsman.

One of the spicer incidents was the capture of the SS Economy. Ensign Charles L. Duke was aboard a picket boat on the night of 3 July 1927– right before the holiday. He and two sailors were patrolling New York Harbor onboard the 36-footer CG-2327 when they saw a beat-up old steamer pass in the night. With the ship in poor shape and only the name “Economy” painted across her stern in a fresh script, Duke decided to board her. After the ship refused to stop following two rounds from Duke’s revolver, he ordered his two sailors that, “If I’m not out of that pilot house in two minutes you turn the machine gun on them,” and jumped on the freighter with his half-empty revolver and a flashlight.

Duke boarding the Economy. USCG Painting

He seized control of the bridge, took the ship’s wheel and grounded the vessel, then waited for reinforcements the rest of the night. Finally relieved just before dawn by additional cuttermen from all over New York, they found 22 bootleggers and 3,000 barrels of hooch in what was called “perhaps the most heroic” exploit in the rum war.

For more on the Rum War at sea, the USCG in 1964 produced a very informative 229-page report here in pdf format free.

Crazy marine life

Off Brielle, New Jersey in the summer of 1933, one local angler by the name of Captain A.L. Kahn, master of the F/V Miss Pensacola II, came face to face with a Jules Verne-sized monster of the depths. You see his anchor line became tangled in a Giant Manta Devil Fish (Manta Birostris) almost capsizing the boat. The local Coast Guard station sent its picket boat, CG-2390, and unable to free the boat or beast, dispatched it with “22 shots from a high-powered rifle.”

Giant Manta Devil Fish 1933. Click to big up

More on the Manta!

The ray was towed to Feuerbach and Hansen’s Marina in Brielle, New Jersey where it was hoisted ashore on August 26, 1933, with a travel lift. In the end, the beast weighed some 5,000-pounds and measured more than 20 feet across the wing. Kahn, with likely the biggest and weirdest catch of his life, exhibited the stuffed specimen for years.

Peacetime roles.

With the bootleggers killed by the repeal of the Volstead Act, and barring the occasional sea monster fight, the pickets were some of the few Rum War-era craft that were kept in full service during the Depression due to their ease of operation, versatility, and low-cost. They continued to serve as coastal patrol and search and rescue craft, assist in maritime accidents, police fishing grounds for poachers, and even go far upriver for flood relief due to their very shallow draft.

A dozen Coast Guard picket boats muster beside the former CGC Yocona on the Mississippi River during The Great Ohio, Mississippi River Valley Flood of 1937 http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/2011/06/the-great-ohio-mississippi-river-valley-flood-of-1937/ . U.S. Coast Guard photo. Yocona was a 182-foot Kankakee- class stern paddle wheelers built for the Coast Guard in 1919 and stationed at Vicksburg. Click to big up

A dozen Coast Guard picket boats (double cabin 36 footers) muster beside the former CGC Yocona on the Mississippi River during The Great Ohio, Mississippi River Valley Flood of 1937. U.S. Coast Guard photo. Yocona was a 182-foot Kankakee-class stern paddle wheeler built for the Coast Guard in 1919 and stationed at Vicksburg. Click to big up

Back at war

When Pearl Harbor jump-started the U.S. into the middle of WWII, the Coast Guard and their picket boats soon found themselves unexpectedly on the front lines. Never meant for combat, they mounted no crew-served weapons. Their gasoline engines would prove fireballs if any of these ships took a hit from a major caliber shell (even if the projectile itself did not break the cabin cruiser in two). Nevertheless, by 1942, the picket boats were in the thick of it and another 470 were soon built to join the 170~ already in service.

1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing a 38 under construction near Seattle in 1942

1943 photo from the archives of the Kirkland Heritage Society showing 38s under construction near Seattle in 1942

Issued submachine guns, hammers (to break periscope lenses if they got close enough) and grenades (to throw in the open hatches of surfaced U-boats, the pickets mounted regular patrols in the coastal waterways and harbor mouths across the nation.

The 38-foot cabin picket boat. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo

The 38-foot cabin picket boat, CG-4371. Click to very much big up. USCG Photo

Painted in dull war schemes and loaded up with food, these tiny boats would ply the 50-fathom curve on “five days out and two days in port” patrol rotations and later a few even received some 25-pound paint can-sized depth charges and WWI-era Marlin machine guns found in storage. They tended anti-submarine nets watching for frogmen, raced to the rescue of downed patrol fliers, and all too often responded to the site of successful U-boat attacks, picking up those still alive and those that were not.

In February 1942, 432,000 tons of shipping went down in the Atlantic, 80 percent off the American coast. The pickets were everywhere picking up survivors. For example:

27 January 1942, tanker Francis Powell, 7,096-tons, sank after gunfire from U-130 eight miles northeast of the Winter Quarter Lightship. The 38-foot picket boat from CG Station Assateague picked up 11 survivors.
27 February 1942, Navy steamer Marore, 8,215-tons, was sunk by a torpedo from U-432 off the North Carolina Coast. Picket boat CG-3843 picked up the master and 13 survivors.
27 February 1942, Navy tanker R.P. Resor, 7,415-tons, was hit by a torpedo from U-578 off Sea Girt, Delaware and exploded taking 41 crewmembers and Navy gunners with her. CG-4344 picked up two survivors.
31 March 1942, the unarmed tug Menominee towing three barges at 5 knots, was attacked by U-754 with gunfire about 9.5 miles east-southeast of Metopkin Inlet, Virginia near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. After being in the water all day, 38-foot picket CG-4345 picked up six men clinging to wreckage.

And so it went during the war until the U-boat menace abated after 1943. Still, the picket boats provided yeoman service day after day, ready to fight or save lives.

During the War, as reported by one who sailed these craft on the West Coast, the crew typically consisted of six men spread across BM, MM and unrated seamen. As they were often away from the regular full-sized bases, these men were on their own, “The crews of the patrol boats received a dollar and 20 cents per day subsistence money extra with their pay. We had to buy our own food supplies from the commissary and pay our bill at the end of each month. Each boat also had an old-fashioned icebox and a two-burner alcohol stove. We carried government vouchers in case we had to buy gasoline at a harbor away from the Alameda base.”

German U-Boat U-858 after surrendering to American forces in May 1945. The photo also shows a US Navy “K” class patrol blimp and a rare view of a Sikorsky R-4B helicopter. In the background, a 38 foot USCG picket boat

After the conclusion of the war, many of the most used vessels, those dating from the Rum Row era, were withdrawn.

By 1950, the Coast Guard planned to replace these old 36 and 38 footers that remained with a new class of 40-foot utility boats of which 236 were complete by 1966. With that, the days of the Cabin Pickets were over, although some were passed on to the U.S. Geological Survey and other government agencies for further use.

A few are still around as private yachts and are easily recognizable by their lines.

A retired picket used as a personal yacht in Virginia 1960s

An old 38 up for sale in 2012. Not too bad a shape for a 70+-year-old wooden boat built by the lowest bidder.

Today, the 40-foot utilities that replaced the picket boats were themselves phased out by the 41-footers of the 1970s which were in turn retired recently in favor of the new 45 ft. Response Boats are a common sight along the waterways of the country. This new 174-member class still largely conducts the same mission pioneered by the venerable cabin cruisers.

A new 45-foot response boat medium (RB-M) passes by the Washington Monument on the Potomac River during a capabilities demonstration. This boat was the first model put into testing and is currently assigned to Station Little Creek, Va. The RB-M will re-capitalize the capabilities of the existing multi-mission 41-foot utility boats (UTB) and multiple nonstandard boats to meet the needs of the Coast Guard. U.S. Coast Guard photo by PA1 Adam Eggers – (Click to big up)

Clocking in every day.

Specs

38- foot
Hull numbers: CG2385-4372, later changed to 38300-38836 during WWII
Displacement: 15,700-pounds (8~ tons)
Length overall: 38 feet, 3-inches
Beam: 10.33 feet
Draft: 3 feet
Crew-2-8
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: One single. These included either Hall Scott Model 168 270hp V6s, 300hp Sterling Dolphins, Murray and Tregurtha 325s, although most of these after 1942 were completed with 225hp Kermath models.
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted. One, CG2385, hit 26.5kts on trails.
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $10,000

36.USCG Photo

36-foot
Hull numbers: CG2200-2229 (open cabin), 2300-2372 (double cabin)
Displacement: 10,000 lbs. (5~ tons)
Length overall: 35.8 feet
Beam: 8.9 feet
Draft: 30 inches
Crew-3+
Fuel: 240 gallons
Engine: 180 HP Consolidated Speedway MR-6 six-cylinder gasoline engine
Speed: 20-25 knots depending on load and engines fitted
Range; 175 miles
Cost: $8,800

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laststandonzombieisland

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

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