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Warship Wednesday Oct. 2, 2024: Slow Going

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

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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024: Slow Going

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

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

The Porters

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

A typical 1930s Porter:

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

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

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

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

As noted by Navweaps:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet Moffett

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

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

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

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

She was commissioned at Boston on 28 August 1936.

Quiet Interwar Service

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

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

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

Soon after, things got hot.

War!

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

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

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

U-128

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

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

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

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

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

U-604

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

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

From her report: 

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

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

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

From her report:

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

Convoy NY‑78

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A pickaback convoy depiction, via Aug 1945 Popular Science

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

End Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue

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

Her War Diaries are digitized in the National Archives. 

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

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

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

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

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Crerar’s Chariot

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80 years ago today. Original Kodachrome color Image of Lt-General Henry Duncan Graham Crerar, commander of the First Canadian Army, seen on the open bridge aboard the Canadian V-class destroyer HMCS Algonquin (R17), while part of the Normandy Operation Neptune fleet, 18 June 1944.

Via Library and Archives Canada

Built 1942-43 as HMS Valentine (R17) and transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy on completion, Algonquin opened up with her 4.7-inch QF guns on German targets off Juno Beach at 0645 on D-Day and spent the next 48 hours providing very active NGFS for the British and Canadian troops until their advance inland had outstripped her range.

A 4.7-inch (12 cm) gun crew of the destroyer HMCS Algonquin piling shell cases and sponging out the gun after bombarding German shore defenses in the Normandy beachhead. LAC 4950888

Bofors and gunner and white ensign on HMCS Algonquin. LAC 4950797

Putting back in at Portsmouth on 9 June, she carried VADM Percy W. Nelles, RCN, and his staff to Normandy the next day and would return to carry Gen. Crerar to France as shown above.

Graduating from the Royal Military College in 1909, Crear served with distinction in the artillery during the Great War, witnessing the hell of Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, and Vimy Ridge, and was ready to finish up a 30-year career as colonel commandant of the Royal Military College of Canada when Hitler marched into Poland. He had led the 2nd Canadian Division and I Canadian Corps in Italy before Normandy.

Going on to see much Arctic service in the rest of the war, including sinking a trio of German subchasers off Norway, Algonquin would be modernized to a Type 15 frigate (pennant DDE 224) in 1953 and continue to serve into the 1970s when she was scrapped, her name passed on to the lead ship of a new class of destroyers for the RCN.

Gen. HDG Crerar, CH, CB, DSO, CD, PC, would retire from the Army in 1946 and go on to the diplomatic service. He passed in 1965, age 79.

Warship Wednesday, June 5, 2024: Three Princes

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

Warship Wednesday, June 5, 2024: Three Princes

 

Library & Archives Canada Photo CT214, MIKAN No. 4950871

Above we see a great original Kodachrome showing a naval rating, bosun pipe and boat whistle in the belt, checking the wicked edge of a Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife held by a soldier from the Canadian 1e Régiment de la Chaudière aboard the landing ship infantry (medium) HMCS Prince David (F59), June 1944, with one of the ship’s landing craft from No. 529 Flotilla, LCA No. 1059, providing background. The CRs would go in on Juno Beach on D-Day as part of the 8th Canadian Brigade and continued to fight in North West Europe until the end of the war. Meanwhile, seven out of No. 529’s eight landing craft would be sunk that day.

As for Prince David, she had already seen lots of campaigning in WWII from the Aleutians to Martinique and had lots more to come.

The Three Princes

In 1930, Canadian National Steamships company, which had started a decade prior as an offshoot of the Canadian National Railway Co, ordered a trio of new three-funneled from Cammell Laird of Birkenhead, England, for use on Canada’s West Coast. These ships, augmenting the cramped older CNSS Prince George (3,372 GRT, circa 1910) and CNSS Prince Rupert (3,380 GRT, circa 1909), would be fine coastwise liners, at some 6,893 GRT and some 385 feet overall.

Powered by 6 Yarrow water-tube five-drum boilers powering twin Parsons geared turbines, these new liners could make an impressive 22.5 knots (23 on trials at 19,000 shp) and carry a mix of 400 passengers (334 first class in above deck cabins and 70 in belowdecks steerage) as well as light cargo and mail. They would be named Prince David, Prince Henry, and Prince Robert.

A watercolor retouched photo of CNSS Prince Robert in her original CN livery. CFB Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum accession No. VR1991.320.1.

North Star, ex-Prince Henry

The three new vessels, completed for $2 million each, were delivered in the “Dirty ’30s” while the Great Depression was at its peak and soon suffered from a doldrums of low bookings and hazardous operations, sending them into a series of longer cruises to the West Indies and Alaska, with Prince Henry suffering from a six-month grounding off Bermuda that saw her sold to the rival Clarke Steamship Company of Montreal in 1937 and renamed under that house line as SS North Star.

Meet Prince David

Our subject was named, not for royalty, but after Mr. David E. Galloway, a vice president of Canadian National Steamships.

With the downturn in cruise ship bookings in the late 1930s, Prince David was laid up in Halifax in 1937 in fairly bad shape– then allowed to get worse. The below notes after an inspection by RCN surveyors on the liner as well as her two sisters in 1939 as the beat of war came to the world.

War!

Finally purchased for a song (the repaired North Star/Prince Henry for $638,223; Prince Robert for $738,310; and Prince David for $739,663) in late 1939, they were sent to be overhauled and refitted for service as armed merchant cruisers. Additions included stiffened deck sections for six deck guns (four Vickers 6″/45 BL Mark VIIs and two 12-pdr 3″/50 18cwt QF Mark Is) as well as magazines, searchlights, and a battery of assorted light machine guns left over from the Great War.

The main guns allowed a 2,000-pound broadside per minute gauged at five salvos.

A quartet of 6-inch/45 cal Mk VII guns awaiting Installation on HMCS Prince David, 19 August 1940. The ship on the right is a Canadian Navy Basset-class Trawler and the ship in the center background is “M.V. M.F. Therese. Library and Archives Canada Photo, MIKAN No. 3394502

Chief Petty Officer placing a shell in the magazine rack on HMCS Prince David. Courtesy of Kyle Daun via For Posterity’s Sake

6-inch gun HMCS Prince David 1941 via Wikicommons

Prince David 50 cal Colt M1917 twins via Wikicommons

Petty Officer Williams instructing ratings in the operation of a Lewis machine gun aboard HMCS Prince David, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, January 1941. LAC 3567142

A few depth charges (but not listening gear) were installed for counter-submarine work.

Prince David and her two sisters were the largest ships in the RCN for most of World War II, a distinction only eclipsed when Canada acquired the brand-new light cruiser HMS Minotaur (53), transferred to Royal Canadian Navy in July 1944, which dutifully became HMCS Ontario (C53), soon joined by Uganda, who kept her name when she was recommissioned 21 October 1944– Trafalgar Day– but replaced HMS with HMCS.

The specs as AMCs: 

Prince David would be commissioned on 28 December 1940, three weeks after Prince Henry which broke out her duster on 4 December, while Prince Robert, who was in better material shape than her sisters, joined the RCN on 31 July 1940.

Prince David, assigned to the Royal Navy’s America and West Indies Station would conduct workups and escort a few Halifax-to-Bermuda convoys (BHX 109, BHX 113, and BHX 135) in 1941 between searching for Axis blockade runners as far away as Trinidad and Martinique. This included a brush with the Vichy-French tanker Scheherazade (13467 GRT, built 1935) and chasing a possible German warship– thought to be a Hipper-class cruiser but later believed to be either the auxiliary cruiser Thor (HSK 4) or a U-boat supply ship. Her sisters Prince Robert-– who bagged the zinc-laden 9,200-ton German steamer Weser off the coast of Mexico– and Prince Henry who haunted Callao for German ghost ships, were on similar missions at the time.

Prince David also helped convoy the fast troopship HMT Durban Castle, carrying among other passengers the exiled Greek royal family, including King George II, who was being spirited from Alexandria to England via Durban and the Cape of Good Hope– earning Prince David’s skipper a Greek War Cross in a gesture of Hellenic gratitude.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Prince David was transferred with her sisters to British Columbia in early 1942 where the “Esquimalt Force” was to provide some defense of the Canadian Pacific Coastline from the marauding Japanese that were making moves into the Aleutians and taking pot-shots via submarines of the California and Oregon coast. I-26 shelled the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island and I-25 torpedoed and shelled the 7,000-ton British-chartered freighter SS Fort Camosun off Cape Flattery, with 31 survivors rescued by the Flower-class corvette HMCS Edmundston. Hence, Japanese subs were definitely in the area.

The trio of Princes would spend the next 18 months patrolling a line covering Vancouver-Victoria-Prince Rupert and making a show of it for the local populace. To give them some more teeth, they picked up ASDIC sets and additional depth charges.

In August 1942, with the Americans, assisted by the Canadians, moving to kick the Japanese out of the Aleutians, badly needed convoy escorts to free tin cans for front-line service. To answer the call, Force D was formed at Esquimalt from the three Princes along with the two Flower-class corvettes HMCS Dawson and HMCS Vancouver.

Sailing for Kodiak on 19 August and beginning their first convoy escort to Dutch Harbor two days later, over the next two months the Princes, augmented by a couple old American four-piper destroyers as the smaller Flowers were relegated to ASW patrol off Adak, would shepherd over two dozen small (under 12 ships) unnamed convoys back and forth between the two ports as close to the coast as possible for the 350-mile run, hugging the fog-covered narrow passengers and channels of the Alaskan peninsula and the Fox and Iliasik islands. The convoys were typically made up of a Prince paired with a four-piper.

By the time the force was released on Halloween 1942, Prince Henry made 11 convoy runs, Prince Robert 13, and Prince David 10. A few submarine contacts resulted in depth charge runs, but no losses were incurred.

Sent back to Esquimalt, the Princes were soon back on patrol off Vancouver, continuing into March 1943.

LSI Days

With their role as blockade runner/surface raider hunters aged out by the first part of 1943, and more effective new destroyers coming on line for use as escorts, by this stage of the war, the Admiralty had decided to equip each Prince for more worthwhile service with five twin Mark XVI 4-inch high angle guns, two quad 2 pounder pom-poms, six 20mm Oerlikons, and extra pair of twin .50 cals, and four depth charge throwers. It was even put forth that the Mark XVI’s could instead be new 4.7-inch DP guns as a 4.7-inch suite would allow a broadside of 3,600 pounds per minute judged at five salvos per gun, plus her high-angle enough that they could be used in an AAA role.

However, as the retrofit would have cost some $7 million for the class, and funds were scarce, it was decided to rearm Prince Robert alone for $2 million for a fit that included the above guns (with twice the number of 20mm mounts as well as Type 291 radar and Type 242 IFF).

HMCS Prince Robert (F56), 4-inch Mk. XVI anti-aircraft guns and crew, during convoy escort in March 1944. She would spend the rest of the war on convoy duties, riding shotgun 19 times on runs to and from England and North Africa between October 1943 and September 1944. She was then sent to the Pacific. MIKAN No. 4950890

Prince Robert at Vancouver, B.C., 1943. CFB Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum accession No. VR1993.57a.2

Prince Robert, mid-WW2. CFB Esquimalt Naval & Military Museum accession No. VR1992.28.7.

Then, the Admiralty would simply convert Prince David and Prince Henry to landing ships for a more paltry $450,000 each.

The LSI conversion meant keeping the ASW weaponry, landing their 6 and 3-inch guns in favor of two twin 4-inch high-angle mounts, 10 single-barreled 20mm Oerlikons, and two 40mm Bofors. Radars, Types 272, 253, 285, and 291, were also added. Signals, cipher, and surgical suites were greatly expanded.

Prince David as LSI, not her davits and interesting false bow camo scheme. LAC 4821078

Prince David as LSI. Courtesy of Kyle Daun via For Posterity’s Sake

HMCS Prince David (F89) as LSI. Note maple leaf on the stack and “PD” identifier on her hull

Side davits for eight landing craft– manned by a dedicated 5 officer/50 rating detachment– were installed. The craft would be a mix of typically six Canadian-made unarmed 58-foot LCAs and two British-made machine-gun fitted 41-foot LCS(M)s. Each of these embarked forces as a semi-independent RN Flotilla, No. 528 (Lt R.G. Buckingham, RCNVR) in Prince Henry and No. 529 (Lt J.C. Davie, RCNVR) on Prince David, a mix of forces that would sometimes prove…rowdy.

Prince Henry and Prince David, after receiving their conversions in Vancouver, would go through the Panama Canal and, after a stop in New York, cross the Atlantic as convoy escorts for UT7 in January 1944– with David full of 437 American soldiers. They would then spend the next five months prepping for Overlord.

HMS Prince David, LSI(M). 6 February 1944, Greenock by LT SJ Beadell. Note her new camouflage, twin 4-inch mount, and davits. IWM A 21735

Invasion craft rehearsal. 24 to 28 April 1944, off The Isle Of Wight. Various crafts during an Invasion rehearsal. HMCS Prince David is shown (note her PD identifier on her hull) with davits loaded with LCAs. By LT EE Allen IWM A 23743

HMCS Prince David (F89). At anchor, 9 May 1944. Note the “PD” identifier on her amidships. LAC 3520344

Prince David’s LCA 1375 landing troops. Photo believed to be taken at Bracklesham Bay during Exercise Fabius (Normandy rehearsal) Landings in May 1944.

Prince David’s No. 529 Flotilla’s LCA 1375 and 1059 landing troops in May 1944 during Fabius. Royal Canadian Naval Photograph, negative No. A679

Royal Navy Beach Commandos aboard a Prince David embarked on a Landing Craft Assault boat of the 529th Flotilla, Royal Navy, during a training exercise off the coast of England, 9 May 1944. Note the “hawk, hook, and rifle” Combined Operations insignia on their sleeves. Prince David would send two boats of these men ashore on Juno Beach on D-Day. Photo by Lt Richard G. Arless. LAC PA-13628

Able Seaman Murray Kennedy splicing cable aboard HMCS Prince David, Cowes, England, 10 May 1944. Note the ship’s bell. LAC 3512521

On 2 June at Southampton, Prince Henry loaded 326 troops (including 227 of the Canadian Scottish Regiment) while Prince David embarked 418 (a mix of Régiment de la Chaudière and 5th Bn Royal Berkshire Regiment along with some RM/RN beach control party/clearance members) and set out for their staging areas that night, played out to sea by the Canadian Scott’s pipe band.

By 0500 on D-Day, as part of Group J-1, a bugle call stood the troops going ashore on deck and the first landing craft were lowered by 0620, with David’s boats making for their beach at Bernieres-sur-Mer (Nan White) and Henry’s headed for Courseulles sur Mer (Mike Red) for H-Hour which on the Juno area was 0755.

Lookout on the flagdeck of HMCS Prince David watching assault craft heading ashore to the Normandy beachhead, France, 6 June 1944. LAC 3202146

An unidentified infantryman of Le Régiment de la Chaudière, 8th Infantry Brigade, 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, preparing to disembark from HMCS Prince David off the Normandy beachhead, France, 6 June 1944. Note that his Enfield is in a protective plastic bag. Starting with D-Day, the would earn 19 battle honors for WWII, fighting its way across Northwest Europe for the next 10 months. PD-360. LAC 3202207

Private Jack Roy of Le Régiment de la Chaudière preparing to disembark from HMCS Prince David off Bernières-sur-Mer, France, 6 June 1944. Note the No. 38 field wireless set across his chest, E-tool slung over his shoulder, helmet skrim, and wrapped Enfield. PD-371 LAC 3396561

Royal Marines who will be removing mines and obstructions from the D-Day landing beaches, preparing to disembark from HMCS Prince David off the Normandy beachhead, France, 6 June 1944. PD-361 LAC 3202145

Men of the 5th Bn Royal Berkshire Regiment (British Army) including three sergeants, disembarking from HMCS Prince David on D-Day, France, 6 June 1944. Credited with a big part in liberating Bernieres-sur-Mer by the locals, the main drag in that French village today carries the name “Rue Royal Berkshire Regiment.” LAC 3525863

Landing craft depart from their LSI mother ship, HMCS Prince Henry (note the “PH” identifier on her amidships), headed for Juno Beach on June 6, 1944.

Landing craft with infantrymen preparing to go ashore from HMCS Prince David off Bernières-sur-Mer, France, 6 June 1944 aboard alongside LCIs after her LCAs took their loads to the beach and never returned. Library and Archives Canada Photo, PA-131501 MIKAN 3396559

Of No. 529 Flotilla’s eight landing craft, LCA 985, 1059, 1137, 1138, 1150, 1151, and 1375; and LCS (M) 101, all except 1375 would be sunk off Normandy.

With their troops landed by mid-morning, Prince Henry and David were dispatched back to England to embark on a second wave, each laden with casualties recovered from the fighting ashore. Prince David, the first LSI from Overlord to make Southampton on D-Day, carried 40 wounded and three dead, and arrived at the dock at 2230, received by waiting ambulances. The ships, however, had arrived back with their davits empty and at least three boat crews missing.

Prince David and Prince Henry would make another eight cross-channel sorties in support of Overlord, in all, landing 5,566 men between them.

Prince David carried 1,862 men to Normandy in four trips between D-Day and 10 July 1944, including members of the U.S., Canadian, and British forces.

Able Seaman Freddy Derkach (right) with personnel of the 65th Chemical Company, U.S. Army, including a mascot, aboard HMCS Prince David off Omaha Beach, France, 5 July 1944. LAC 3525871

Prince David with American officers on bridge LAC 3963986

Outfitted with the recovered LCA 1375, her only original landing craft, and her davits filled with other recovered LCAs and LCS(M)s, Prince David, along with her sister Prince Henry, would be transferred to the sunny climes of the Mediterranean where they would get ready to repeat Overlord along the French Rivera in the form of Operation Dragoon.

Gun crew sunbathing on “Y” gun of the infantry landing ship HMCS Prince David, Italy, July 1944. LAC 3202227

Loading Senegalese troops in Ajaccio Corsica for South France invasion late July 44

Prince Henry and Prince David in Adjacco prior to Dragoon. LAC PA211359

Prince David and Henry would become part of the Sitka Force, which would put ashore assorted special operations troops during Dragoon.

French 1e Groupe de Commandos aboard HMCS Prince David en route to take part in Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, 10 August 1944. Note the mix of American and British kit and the prevalence of M1928 Thompsons. LAC 3525866

Prince David would carry over 1,400 Free French troops home during Dragoon in three waves, similar numbers repeated by Prince Henry.

Then came operations in Greek waters. Between September 1944 and January 1945, she made no less than 11 runs back and forth to Aegean ports, landing no less than 1,400 British Army, and 1,000 Free Greek troops (along with the Greek prime minister) while repatriating 400 Italian POWs.

Able Seaman Joe Nantais manning an Oerlikon 20mm anti-aircraft gun aboard HMCS Prince David off Kithera, Greece, 16 September 1944. PD-656, LAC 3394410

Georgios Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece, speaking to the Ship’s Company of HMCS Prince David before disembarking from the ship which had returned him and his ministers to Greece. LAC 3191571

HMCS Prince David LCA-1375 liberation of Greece, Oct. 1944

British-kitted Free Greek troops disembarking from the landing craft of HMCS Prince David, Syros, Greece, 13 November 1944. Note the mix of BREN guns and M1 Carbines. LAC 3378808

Damaged by a mine on 10 December 1944, off Aegina Island, Greece, she continued her mission and landed her troops despite a 17-foot hole in her hull.

12 December 1944. Paratroopers of 2 Independent Para Bde Group receive last-minute orders before disembarking from Prince David in Greece. During the sea voyage, the ship struck a mine, which exploded below the forward magazine. The magazine was flooded and sealed off, and the ship sailed ahead on an even keel. Lieut. Powell-Davies, No. 2 Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit. IWM NA 20769

HMCS PRINCE DAVID in dry dock at Ferryville, North Africa for repairs after striking a mine – LAC PA142894

In all, between Overlord, Dragoon, and Greece, Prince David carried no less than 7,043 officers and men in 19 journeys.

Repaired at Bizerte, North Africa, she left in March 1945 to refit at Esquimalt, from where she would join the British Pacific Fleet for the final push on Tokyo. However, the war ended while she was still pier-side in British Columbia.

Taking off the warpaint

Prince David would be paid off on 11 June 1945 and laid up at Vancouver. Sold to Charlton, she would be refitted for the migrant-run trade as Charlton Monarch, she soon suffered an engineering casualty off Brazil in 1948 and was subsequently scrapped.

As for her sisters, both survived the war, with Prince Robert assisting in the liberation of Hong Kong in 1945 after service with the British Pacific Fleet, and was paid off in December 1945. Sold to Charlton two years later, she began cut-rate migrant voyages as SS Charlton Sovereign, packed with as many as 800 European refugees headed to Australia and South America, later being sold to an Italian shipper and operated as SS Lucania. She was broken up in Italy in 1962.

Prince Henry, loaned to the Royal Navy in April 1945, would continue to serve under Admiralty orders until July 1946. Henry was bought by HMs Ministry of War Transport for $500,000 and, renamed Empire Parkeston, would carry British troops between Harwich and the Continent for another decade, taking a break for use in the Suez in 1956, carrying elements of 16 Parachute Brigade. Withdrawn in September 1961 after an airbridge was put in place for replacements to the British Army of the Rhine, she was broken up at La Spezia the next year.

As for Canadian National Steamships, they got out of the boat business altogether in 1975.

For more detail into the “Three Princes” during RCN service, a circa 1986 236-page volume is online at a Canadian Forces website.

Epilogue

The best memorial to HMCS Prince David is her For Posterity’s Sake webpage.

While in Esquimalt in July 1942, Prince David was used to film several extensive scenes for the 1942 Paul Muni and Anna Lee war romance “Commandos Strike At Dawn” which appears in the third act. These included not only troops loading on deck and the vessel shoving off but also underway.

HMCS Prince David with a bone in her teeth from “Commandos Strike At Dawn.” Note the splinter mats around her bridge and troops on deck.

Two of Canada’s three official war artists embarked on Prince David during the war to observe ops, and their works survive.

“Embarking Casualties on D-Day, HMCS Prince David” was painted by Harold Beament in 1944. As part of the invasion fleet, Canadian ships carried troops and equipment to Normandy and brought casualties back to England. HMCS Prince David, seen here, carried more than 400 troops to Normandy, including members of the Quebec-based Le Régiment de la Chaudière. One of three Canadian National Steamships liners converted for wartime use, Prince David later supported several assault landings in the Mediterranean and carried Greece’s government-in-exile back to Athens in late 1944. Beaverbrook Collection of War Art CWM 19710261-1012

Famed Canadian painter and war artist, Alex Coleville, was aboard Prince David for Dragoon and produced at least two from this period which are now in the Canadian War Museum.

HMCS Prince David in Corsica as LSI Alex Coleville CWM Photo, 19710261-1685

“On the Bridge” Alex Colville painted this view of the bridge of HMCS Prince David, a Canadian infantry landing ship serving in the Mediterranean. An officer (right) keeps watch with binoculars, while another member of the crew, wearing a Prince David sweatshirt, sunglasses, and headphones, operates equipment, possibly a radar set (bottom left). Following their involvement in the successful landings in the south of France early on 15 August 1944, Prince David and HMCS Prince Henry, another Canadian infantry landing ship, continued to transport reinforcements to the invasion area until the 24th. CWM 19820303-252.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Warship Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022: Getting it Coming & Going

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

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022: Getting it Coming & Going

Imperial War Museum Photo A 13759

Above we see the Royal Navy’s Dido-class light cruiser HMS Argonaut (61), pictured 80 years ago this week at Algiers after losing both her bow and stern to two very well-placed Italian torpedoes with roughly a 400-foot spread between them. A new wartime-production ship only four months in the fleet, she would soon be patched up and back in the thick of it, lending her guns to fight the Axis on both sides of the globe.

The Didos

The Didos were very light cruisers indeed, designed in 1936 to weigh just 5,600 tons standard displacement, although this would later swell during wartime service to nearly 8,000. Some 512 feet long, they were smaller than a modern destroyer but, on a powerplant of four Admiralty 3-drum boilers and four Parsons steam turbines, each with their own dedicated shaft, they could break 32.5 knots on 62,000 shp.

They were intended to be armed with 10 5.25″/50 (13.4 cm) QF Mark II DP guns in five twin mounts, three forward and two over the stern, although most of the class failed to carry this layout due to a variety of reasons.

Gunnery booklet laying out the general plan of a Dido-class cruiser

The Dido class had provision for up to 360 rounds for “A”, “B” and “Q” turrets, 320 rounds for the “X” turret and 300 rounds for the “Y” turret and a properly trained crew could rattle them off at 7-8 shots per minute per gun out to a range of 23,400 yards or a ceiling of 46,500 feet when used in the AAA role.

Argonaut showing off her forward 5.25-inch mounts at maximum elevation

The fact that one of these cruisers could burp 70-80 shells within a 60-second mad minute gave them a lot of potential if used properly. However, this didn’t play out in reality, at least when it came to swatting incoming aircraft.

As noted by Richard Worth in his Fleets of World War II, “Often referred to as AA cruisers, the 16 Dido-type ships shot down a grand total of 15 enemy planes. The entirety of British cruiser-dom accounted for only 97 planes, while enemy planes accounted for 11 British cruisers.”

Meet Argonaut

While all the Didos followed the very British practice of using names borrowed from classical history and legend (Charybdis, Scylla, Naiad, et.al) our cruiser was the third HMS Argonaut, following in the footsteps of a Napoleonic War-era 64-gun third-rate and an Edwardian-era Diadem-class armored cruiser.

Diadem-class armored cruiser HMS Argonaut. Obsolete by the time of the Great War, she spent most of it in auxiliary roles

One of three Didos constructed at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead, the new Argonaut was ordered under the 1939 War Emergency Program for £1,480,000 and laid down on 21 November 1939, during the “Phony War” in which Britain and France stood on a cautious Western front against Germany. Launched in September 1941– by which time Italy had joined the war, the Lowlands, Balkans, and most of Scandinavia had fallen to the Axis, and the Soviets were hanging by a thread– Argonaut commissioned 8 August 1942, by which time the Americans and Japan had joined a greatly expanded global conflict.

Argonaut was later “paid for” via a subscription drive from the City of Coventry to replace the old C-class light cruiser HMS Coventry (D43) which had been so heavily damaged in the Med by German Junkers Ju 88s during Operation Agreement that she was scuttled.

“HMS Argonaut Fights Back for the City of Coventry. To Replace HMS Coventry, sunk in 1942, the City of Coventry Has Paid for the Dido Class 5450 Ton Cruiser HMS Argonaut, She Has a Speed of 33 Knots, Carries Ten 5.25 Inch Guns and Six Torpedo Tubes.” IWM A 14299.

Her first skipper, who arrived aboard on 21 April 1942, was Capt. Eric Longley-Cook, 41, who saw action in the Great War on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales, was a gunnery officer on HMS Hood in the 1930s and began the war as commanding officer of the cruiser HMS Caradoc.

The brand new HMS Argonaut, steaming at high speed during her shakedowns, 1 Aug 1942, her guns at or near maximum elevation

The brand new HMS Argonaut, steaming at high speed during her shakedowns, 1 Aug 1942, her guns at or near maximum elevation

Off to war with you, lad

Just off her shakedown, Argonaut sailed with the destroyers HMS Intrepid and Obdurate for points north on 13 October, dropping off Free Norwegian troops and several 3.7-inch in the frozen wastes of Spitzbergen then delivering an RAF medical unit in Murmansk.

On her return trip, she carried the men from the Operation Orator force of Hampden TB.1 torpedo bombers from No. 144 Squadron RAF and No. 455 Squadron RAAF back to the UK following the end of their mission to Russia.

Argonaut then joined Force H for Operation Torch, the Allied landings in Vichy French-controlled North Africa.

Operation Torch: British light cruiser HMS Argonaut approaching Gibraltar; “The Rock”, during the transport of men to the North African coast, November 1942. IWM A 12795.

Battleships HMS Duke of York, HMS Nelson, HMS Renown, aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, and cruiser HMS Argonaut in line ahead, ships of Force H during the occupation of French North Africa. Priest, L C (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer. IWM A 12958

Following the Torch landings, Argonaut was carved off to join four of her sisters at Bone– HMS Aurora, Charybdis, Scylla, and Sirius— and several destroyers as Force Q, which was tasked with ambushing Axis convoys in the Gulf of Tunis.

Argonaut at Bone, late November-early December 1942. Now Annaba Algeria

The first of Force Q’s efforts led to what is known in the West as the Battle of Skerki Bank when, during the pre-dawn hours of 2 December, the much stronger British cruiser-destroyer force duked it out with an Italian convoy of four troopships screened by three destroyers and two torpedo boats.

When the smoke cleared, all four of the troopships (totaling 7,800 tons and loaded with vital supplies and 1,700 troops for Rommel) were on the bottom of the Med. Also deep-sixed was the Italian destroyer Folgore, holed by nine shells from Argonaut.

The Italian cacciatorpediniere RCT Folgore (Eng= Thunderbolt). She was lost in a lop-sided battle off Skerki Bank, with 126 casualties.

The next time Force Q ventured out would end much differently.

Make up your mind

On 14 December 1942, the Italian Marcello-class ocean-going submarine Mocenigo (T.V. Alberto Longhi) encountered one of Force Q’s sweeps and got in a very successful attack.

As detailed by Uboat.net:

At 0556 hours, Mocenigo was on the surface when she sighted four enemy warships in two columns, proceeding on an SSW course at 18 knots at a distance of 2,000 meters. At 0558 hours, four torpedoes (G7e) were fired from the bow tubes at 2-second intervals from a distance of 800 meters, at what appeared to be a TRIBAL class destroyer. The submarine dived upon firing and heard two hits after 59 and 62 seconds. 

According to Surgeon Lieutenant Commander Francis Henely, the following exchange took place.

The forward lookout reported: “Ship torpedoed forward. Sir.”

At the same time, the aft lookout reported: “Ship torpedoed aft. Sir.”

To these reports Capt. Longley-Cook replied: “When you two chaps have made up your minds which end has been torpedoed, let me know.”

The torpedoes hit the cruiser’s bow and stern sections nearly simultaneously, killing an officer and two ratings, leaving the ship dead in the water and her after two turrets unusable. HMS Quality remained beside her throughout and HMS Eskimo— who had chased away Mocenigo— rejoined them just before daylight.

After shoring up the open compartments, Argonaut was amazingly able to get underway at 8 knots, heading slowly for Algiers which the force reached at 1700 hours on the 15th.

IWM captions for the below series: “British cruiser which lived to fight again. 14 to 19 December 1942, at sea and at Algiers, the British cruiser HMS Argonaut after she had been torpedoed in the Mediterranean. Despite heavy damage, she got home.”

IWM A 13756

A 13758

IWM A 13754

As for Mocenigo, seen here in the Azores in June 1941, she was lost to a USAAF air raid while tied up at Cagliari, Sardinia, on 13 May 1943.

Patch it up, and go again

After two weeks at Algiers conducting emergency repairs, Argonaut shipped out for HM Dockyard at Gibraltar for more extensive work than what could be offered by the French.

Ultimately, with nearly one-third of the ship needing replacement, it was decided to have the work done in the U.S. where more capacity existed and on 5 April 1943, the cruiser left for Philadelphia by way of Bermuda, escorted by the destroyer HMS Hero— which had to halt at the Azores with engine problems, leaving the shattered Argonaut to limp across the Atlantic for four days unescorted during the height of the U-boat offensive. Met off Bermuda by the destroyer USS Butler and the minesweepers USS Tumult and USS Pioneer, she ultimately reached the City of Brotherly Love on 27 April.

There, she would spend five months in the Naval Yard– the Australian War Memorial has several additional images of this-– and a further two months in post-refit trials.

HMS Argonaut, Philadelphia Navy Yard

HMS Argonaut, Philadelphia Navy Yard

One of the turrets with 5.25-inch guns of Dido-class light cruiser HMS ARGONAUT damaged by an Italian submarine 1942 Philadelphia Navy Yard – USA

Post rebuild HMS Argonaut, 5.25-inch guns pointing towards the camera, 11 February 1943

HMS Argonaut in her War Colors, circa 1943 just after repairs at Philadelphia.

HMS Argonaut at Philadelphia, 4 November 1943 BuShips photo 195343

Arriving back in the Tyne in December 1942, she would undergo a further three-month conversion and modification to fulfill an Escort Flagship role. This refit eliminated her “Q” 5.25-inch mount (her tallest) to cut down topside weight, added aircraft control equipment/IFF, and Types 293 (surface warning) and 277 (height finding) radar sets in addition to fire control radars for her increased AAA suite.

Fresh from her post-refit trails and essentially a new cruiser (again), Argonaut joined the 10th Cruiser Squadron of the Home Fleet in preparation for “the big show.”

Back in the Fight

Part of RADM Frederick Dalrymple-Hamilton’s Bombarding Force K for Operation Neptune, Argonaut would fall in with the fellow British cruisers HMS Orion, Ajax, and Emerald, who, along with the eight Allied destroyers and gunboats (to include the Dutch Hr.Ms. Flores and Polish ORP Krakowiak), was tasked with opening the beaches for the Normandy Assault Force “G” (Gold Beach) on D-Day, the latter consisting of three dozen assorted landing craft of all sorts carrying troops of the British XXX Corps.

Capt. Longley-Cook, rejoining his command after a stint as Captain of the Fleet for the Mediterranean Fleet, instructed his crew that he fully intended to drive Argonaut ashore if she was seriously hit, beach the then nearly 7,000-ton cruiser, and keep fighting her until she ran out of shells.

Light cruiser HMS Argonaut in late 1944. Note her “Q” turret is gone and she is sporting multiple new radars

In all, Argonaut fired 394 5.25-inch shells on D-Day itself, tasked with reducing the German gun batteries at Vaux-sur-Aure, and by the end of July, would run through 4,395 shells in total, earning praise from Gen. Miles Dempsey for her accurate naval gunfire in support of operations around Caen.

It was during this period that she received a hit from a German 150mm battery, which landed on her quarterdeck off Caen on 26 June but failed to explode.

She fired so many shells in June and July that she had to pause midway through and run to Devonport to get her gun barrels– which had just been refurbed in Philadelphia– relined again.

Then came the Dragoon Landings in the South of France, sending Argonaut back to the Med, this time to the French Rivera.

Dido class cruiser HMS Argonaut in Malta, 1944. She has had her ‘Q’ turret removed to reduce top weight

Across 22 fire missions conducted in the three days (8/15-17/44) Argonaut was under U.S. Navy control for Dragoon, she let fly 831 rounds of 80-pound HE and SAP shells at ranges between 3,200 and 21,500 yards. Targets included three emplaced German 155s, armored casemates on the Île Saint-Honorat off Canne, along with infantry and vehicles in the field, with spotting done by aircraft.

She also scattered a flotilla of enemy motor torpedo boats hiding near the coast. All this while dodging repeated potshots from German coastal batteries, which, Longley-Cook dryly noted, “At 1100 I proceeded to the entrance of the Golfe de la Napoule to discover if the enemy guns were still active. They were.”

Argonaut’s skipper, Longley-Cook, observed in his 15-page report to the U.S. Navy, signed off by noting, “The operation was brilliantly successful, but it was a great disappointment that HMS Argonaut was released so soon. My short period of service with the United States Navy was a pleasant, satisfactory, and inspiring experience.”

CruDiv7 commander, RADM Morton Lyndholm Deyo, USN, stated in an addendum to the report that “HMS Argonaut was smartly handled and her fire was effective. She is an excellent ship.”

September saw Argonaut transferred to the British Aegean Force to support Allied forces liberating Greece. There, on 16 October, she caught, engaged, and sank two German-manned caiques who were trying to evacuate Axis troops.

HMS Argonaut leaving Poros in October 1944, participating in the landing of British troops for the liberation of Greece.

Headed to the East

Swapping out the unsinkable Longley-Cook for Capt. William Patrick McCarthy, RN, Argonaut sailed from Alexandria for Trincomalee in late November 1944 to join the massive new British Pacific Fleet.

Assigned to Force 67, a fast-moving carrier strike group built around HMS Indomitable and HMS Illustrious, by mid-December she was providing screening and cover for air attacks against Sumatra in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies (Operation Roberson) followed by a sequel attack on oil refineries at Pangkalan after the New Year (Operation Lentil) and, with TF 63, hitting other oil facilities in the Palembang area of Southeast Sumatra at the end of January 1945 in Operation Meridian.

Argonaut in Sydney, 1945

Making way to Ulithi in March, Argonaut was part of the top-notch British Task Force 57, likely the strongest Royal Navy assemblage of the war, and, integrated with the U.S. 5th Fleet, would take part in the invasion of Okinawa (Operation Iceberg). There, she would serve as a picket ship and screen, enduring the Divine Wind of the kamikaze.

When news of the emperor’s capitulation came in August, Argonaut was in Japanese home waters, still covering her carriers. She then transitioned to British Task Unit 111.3, a force designated to collect Allied POWs from camps on Formosa and the Chinese mainland.

HMS Argonaut in Kiirun (now Keelung) harbor in northern Taiwan, preparing to take on former American prisoners of war, 6 Sep 1945

War artist James Morris— who began the conflict as a Royal Navy signaler and then by 1945 was a full-time member of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee attached to the British Pacific Fleet– sailed aboard Argonaut during this end-of-war mop-up period, entering Formosa and Shanghai on the vessel, the latter on the occasion of the first British warship to sail into the Chinese harbor since 1941.

“HMS Argonaut: Ratings cleaning torpedo tubes.” Ink and paper drawing by James Morris. IWM Art collection LD 5533 http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/19678

“Formosa, 6th September 1945, HMS Argonaut preceded by HMS Belfast entering the mined approach to Kiirung.” A view from the bridge of HMS Argonaut showing sailors on the deck below and HMS Belfast sailing up ahead near the coastline. A Japanese pilot launch is rocking in the swell at the side of the ship. In the distance, there are several American aircraft carriers at anchor. Watercolor by James Morris. IWM Art collection LD 5535 http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/19680

“HMS Argonaut, the first British ship to enter Shanghai after the Japanese surrender, September 1945.” A scene from the deck of HMS Argonaut as she sails into Shanghai harbor. A ship’s company stands to attention along the rail and behind them, the ship’s band plays. The towering buildings along the dockside of Shanghai stand to the right of the composition. Below the ship, Chinese civilians wave flags from a convoy of sampans. Ink and paper drawing by James Morris. IWM Art collection LD 5531 http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/19676

Based in Hong Kong for the rest of 1945, Argonaut returned to Portsmouth in 1946 and was promptly reduced to Reserve status.

HMS Argonaut homeward bound with her paying off pennant in 1946

She was laid up in reserve for nearly ten years, before being sent to the breakers in 1955.

She earned six battle honors: Arctic 1942, North Africa 1942, Mediterranean 1942, Normandy 1944, Aegean 1944, and Okinawa 1945.

Jane’s 1946 entry for the Dido class. Note, the publication separated the ships of the Bellona sub-class into a separate listing as they carried eight 4.5-inch guns rather than the 8-to-10 5.5s of the class standard.

Epilogue

Few relics of Argonaut remain, most notable of which is her 1943-44 builder’s model, preserved at Greenwich. 

As for Argonaut’s inaugural skipper and the man who brought her through sinking the Folgore, almost being sunk by an Italian submarine in return, D-Day, Dragoon, and the Aegean, VADM Eric William Longley-Cook, CB, CBE, DSO, would retire as Director of Naval Intelligence in 1951, capping a 37-year career.

Longley-Cook passed in 1983, just short of his 84th birthday.

Of note, Tenente di Vascello Alberto Longhi, skipper of the Italian boat that torpedoed Argonaut, survived the war– spending the last two years of it in a German stalag after refusing to join the Navy of the RSI, the fascist Italian puppet state set up after Italy dropped out of the Axis. He would outlive Longley-Cook and pass in 1988, aged 74.

Of Argonaut’s sisters, six of the 16 Didos never made it to see peacetime service: HMS Bonaventure (31) was sunk by the Italian submarine Ambra off Crete in 1941. HMS Naiad (93) was likewise sent to the bottom by the German submarine U-565 off the Egyptian coast while another U-boat, U-205, sank HMS Hermione (74) in the summer of 1942. HMS Charybdis (88), meanwhile, was sunk by German torpedo boats Т23 and Т27 during a confused night action in the English Channel in October 1943. HMS Spartan (95) was sunk by a German Hs 293 gliding bomb launched from a Do 217 bomber off Anzio in January 1944. HMS Scylla (98) was badly damaged by a mine in June 1944 and was never repaired.

Others, like Argonaut, were laid up almost immediately after VJ-Day and never sailed again. Just four Didos continued with the Royal Navy past 1948, going on to pick up “C” pennant numbers: HMS Phoebe (C43), HMS Cleopatra (C33), HMS Sirius (C82), and Euryalus (C42). By 1954, all had been stricken from the Admiralty’s list. 

Many went overseas. Smallish cruisers that could still give a lot of prestige to growing Commonwealth navies, several saw a second career well into the Cold War. Improved-Didos HMS Bellona (63) and HMS Black Prince (81) were put at the disposal of the Royal New Zealand Navy for a decade with simplified armament until they were returned and scrapped. HMS Royalist (89) likewise served with the Kiwis until 1966 then promptly sank on her way to the scrappers. HMS Diadem (84) went to Pakistan in 1956 as PNS Babur, after an extensive modernization, and remained in service there into the 1980s, somehow dodging Soviet Styx missiles from Indian Osa-class attack boats in the 1971 war between those two countries.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, to perpetuate her name, the fourth Argonaut was a hard-serving Leander-class ASW frigate, commissioned in 1967.

Frigate HMS Argonaut, of the Leander class, and her Lynx helicopter, in 1979.

That ship, almost 40 years after her WWII namesake was crippled, had her own brush with naval combat that left scars.

THE FALKLANDS CONFLICT, APRIL – JUNE 1982 (FKD 193) The Leander class frigate HMS ARGONAUT on fire in San Carlos Water after being attacked and badly damaged in Argentine air attacks on 21 May 1982. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205189253

The H.M.S. Argonaut Association keeps the memory of all the past vessels with that name alive.

Speaking of which, in Feb. 2019, four surviving Royal Navy veterans of the Normandy landings– all in the 90s– assembled aboard HMS Belfast in the Thames to receive the Legion d’Honneur from French Ambassador Jean-Pierre Jouyet in recognition of their efforts in liberating the country 75 years prior.

One saw the beaches from Argonaut.

Mr. John Nicholls (right), who received the Légion d’honneur medal

93-year-old John Nicholls from Greenwich served aboard HMS Argonaut which bombarded German positions; he also drove landing craft.

The tumult of battle severely damaged his hearing – he’s been 65 percent deaf ever since, but he remains haunted by the sight of men who lost so much more.

“I looked at some of those troops as they were going in and thought: I wonder how many of them are going to come back,’” he recalled. “I came out of it with just half of my hearing gone, but those poor devils – they lost their lives. I think of them all the time. Not just on Remembrance Day. They’re going through my mind all times of the year.”

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Cruising the Beach

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Allied warships of Bombarding Force ‘C’, which supported the landings in the Omaha Beach area on June 6, 1944, as part of Operation Neptune/Overlord.

The picture was taken from the frigate HMS Holmes (K581). IWM photo A 23923. McNeill, M H A (Lt) Photographer

The column is led by the battlewagon USS Texas (BB-35) (far left, with Flag, RADM Carleton F. Bryant, aboard), with the Town-class light cruiser HMS Glasgow (C21), the battleship USS Arkansas (BB-33), Free French La Galissonnière-class cruisers George Leygues and Montcalm (Flag French RADM Jacques Jaujard aboard) following. The destroyers/escorts Frankford, McCook, Carmick, Doyle, Endicott, Baldwin, Harding, Satterlee, Thomson, Tanaside, Talybont, and Melbreak, also part of Force C, are nearby and some would move dangerously close to the beach that day.

In all, Group C alone would hammer the Germans at Omaha Beach with over 13,000 shells of 3-inch bore or higher inside of 11-hours, even being criticized after the fact:

Fire Support by individual units was generally satisfactory. MONTCALM, GEORGES LEYGUES, and GLASGOW in particular rendered quick and accurate support. TEXAS contributed valuable 14-inch fire, though in some instances cruiser fire might have been used instead. In one case an inexperienced spotter called for but did not receive, battleship main battery fire on a machine gun nest. It is possible that the fire support ships, in general, delivered call fire in too great a volume and too quickly with regard to available ammunition. It is believed that equivalent results would usually have been attained by more deliberate fire. The problem is often a difficult one, as calls for fire are usually urgent and the natural procedure is to deliver the quickest support. The solution appears to lie in the indoctrination of Shore Fire Control Parties in the proper use of the “deliberate fire” and “fire slower” groups (AEF Assault Signal Code), and, possibly, the introduction of code groups, similar to the “duration of fire” code groups, indicating the rate of fire.

Warship Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2021: The Jeep of The Deep

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 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, Feb. 17, 2021: The Jeep of The Deep

U.S. Navy Museum 26-G-4078

Here we see USCG-6, one of the hardy members of the skull-and-crossbones emblazoned Coast Guard “Match Box Fleet” that rode shotgun in the shallows off Normandy during the Neptune/Overlord landings in June 1944. Unlikely– and quite frankly very dangerous– vessels, these 83-foot patrol boats provided unsung service not only during WWII but for generations after.

The Coast Guard’s first modern 20th Century mid-sized offshore vessels, the massive 203-vessel 75-foot “six-bitter” patrol boats, were a child of the Prohibition-era crackdown on rumrunners and bootleggers. However, these cabin cruiser-style all-wooden boats were some of the slowest boats in the sea. Equipped with two 6-cylinder gasoline engines, they could make 15.7 knots– on a calm sea and with a light load.

A 75-foot Coast Guard boat, CG-242, at Boston in 1928, looking like it is wide open. Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Collection

By the 1930s and with the rapid expansion in the number of powerboats in consumers’ hands, the Coast Guard ordered 19 so-called “400 series” patrol boats with speed as a requirement. These craft, built by five different yards in four different types, were an important evolutionary step, not only for the USCG but also for the Navy, who about the same time was looking to get into the PT boat game. Shallow-draft wooden-hulled boats with streamlined cabins, they were packed with multiple high-octane engines below deck with the goal of breaking 20+ knots with ease.

CG 441, is one of the two experimental “400 series” 72-footers built by the service in the 1930s. “New Coast Guard boat capable of 35 miles an hour. Washington, D.C., May 17, 1937. One of the fastest things afloat, the new U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat #441 was put thru its paces on the Potomac River today for the benefit of treasury officials. The cruiser, which is one of eight to be placed in law enforcement and life-saving service of the Coast Guard, is powered with four 1,600 horsepower motors and is capable of doing 35 miles an hour.” This craft, built by Chance Marine Construction in Annapolis, would serve on the sea frontier in WWII and be sold in 1947 for scrap. Photo. LOC LC-DIG-hec-22721

By 1941, the Coast Guard had settled on a new design following lessons learned by the “400 series.”

The original 83-footer plan

Designed to use a pair of large, supped-up gasoline engines, the agency ordered 40 of these new 83-foot crafts on 19 March 1941 from Wheeler Shipyard in Brooklyn. Powered by two 600hp Hall Scott Defenders, it was expected they could make 20.6 knots at delivery. Armament was slight, just a manually loaded 1-pounder (37mm) gun forward, and a pair of .30-06 Lewis guns on the wheelhouse wings.

With a plywood interior separated by three bulkheads sandwiched between a Cedar/Oak hull and a wood deck, the crew spaces on an 83 were described by one former crewman as “a dog kennel almost big enough for 14 men.”

The first boats of the series, as it turned out, were very different from what the class would soon evolve to become. Designed to use a smooth prefabricated Everdur bronze wheelhouse, as wartime material crunches came to play just 135 hulls would have these, the rest making do with a flat and angular plywood affair. In a below-deck change, after the first five hulls, the powerplant changed to a pair of the Sterling Engine Company’s TCG-8 “Viking II” engine, a beast referred to by Engine Labs today as the “World’s Largest Inline Gasoline Engine.”

Via Engine Labs:

The TCG-8 was an inline-eight-cylinder, four-stroke engine, which consumed gasoline… and lots of it. An undersquare design, the engine featured an 8.00-inch bore and 9.00-inch stroke, for a total displacement of 3,619.1 cubic inches, or 59.3 liters, making it one of, if not the largest inline gasoline engine in the world.

The engine itself was relatively compact, at 12 feet, 2-9/16 inches long and only 44-9/16 inches wide, which allowed the two engines to fit comfortably side-by-side in the 83-footer’s hull. Housed in a gray-iron block, the crankshaft was a forged chromoly steel piece, with separately attached counterweights, which were affixed to the crankshaft via a dovetail and bolts. There were nine traditional babbit-style bearings, 4.00 inches in diameter, which measured 2.75 inches in width on eight journals, with the thrust bearing measuring a beefy 3.437 inches wide

The Sterling TCG-8 Viking.

Sterling was known among cabin cruiser builders in the 1930s and the Viking II was sold to power 60- and 70-footers of the day. The USCG’s 83-footers used two such engines, the same setup used in the 95-foot MV Passing Jack in the above ad.

Working on a Viking below the deck of an 83 in 1942. William Vandivert/LIFE

In all, 230 of these boats would be constructed for the Coast Guard and another 12 for overseas allies (19 units originally delivered to the USCG were also transferred). The initial 1941 contract was for $42,450 per hull, a cost that would rise to $62,534 by 1944 due to the increasing sensor and armament load.

By the end of the war, these boats were carrying depth charges aft, Mousetrap ASW projectors forward, and a 20mm Oerlikon as well as an SO-2 radar and QBE sonar when fully equipped. That’s a lot for an officer and a 13-man crew to take care of.

The  general wartime plan, extracted from U.S. Coast Guard Cutters & Crafts of World War II by Robert Scheina

All were numbered 83300 through 83529, with corresponding (and confusing) hull numbers CG 450 through CG 634, although boats after 83384 apparently did not get said overly complicated hull numbers.

A great shot of CG 83301 with a lifeboat astern. Note the four twin can depth charge racks. The second 83 was completed in 1941, she spent four years as a harbor defense boat in NYC before shipping out for the 7th Fleet in June 1945. She was lost at Buckner Bay, Okinawa 9 October 1945 to a typhoon

A water-cooled M2 50 caliber machine gun on the bow of an 83-foot WPB coast guard patrol boat, November 25, 1942 NARA 26-G-11-25-42

Aboard an 83 in 1942 during a coastal convoy, photo by William Vandivert from the archives of Life Magazine. Note the riveted bronze wheelhouse and searchlights

This example has an M2 water-cooled Browning forward. William Vandivert/LIFE

And two Lewis guns on the bridge wings. Note the smooth lines of the bronze superstructure. William Vandivert/LIFE

Note the older ratings and the loaded Lewis magazine. William Vandivert/LIFE

William Vandivert/LIFE

Note the two can gravity depth charge racks port and starboard. Two more racks were over the stern. William Vandivert/LIFE

Stern racks. William Vandivert/LIFE

William Vandivert/LIFE

Arming Mark VI depth charges. William Vandivert/LIFE

Note the Chief and the Navy blimp. William Vandivert/LIFE

A trio of USCG 83-foot cutters at Toms River, New Jersey, in early 1942. Note the two closest to the dock are wearing camouflage livery.  CGC-487 (83337) was stationed at Cape May until early 1944 when she was shipped overseas to Poole, England to serve in USCG Rescue Flotilla One off Normandy (as USCG 7) and would be returned to the U.S. post-war, serving until 31 July 1961. William Vandivert/LIFE

William Vandivert/LIFE

William Vandivert/LIFE

CGC-488 (83338) was seen at Toms River, New Jersey, in early 1942. She would be transferred to Peru in March 1944 as CS2. William Vandivert/LIFE

William Vandivert/LIFE

Coast Guard 83 with her water-cooled 50 cal on full-wow. Note the lit cigar and assorted seagoing tattoos, NARA 26-G-508USCG Photo 26-G-508. National Archives Identifier: 205572937

CGC 624 in pristine early war condition. Note the 20mm/80 on her quarter deck and the depth charge racks off her stern. This craft would later become one of the Matchbox Fleet as USCG 14 and would go on to serve post-war as WPB-83373. Photo released on 29 October 1942, No. 105197F, by Morris Rosenfeld, New York (USCG photo)

Riding A “Jeep of The Deep”. These two SPAR cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut, take a lively interest in their trip aboard a “jeep of the deep”, an 83-foot Coast Guard patrol craft. The two future SPAR officers are Leila Leverett, left, and Helen D. Darland. U.S. Coast Guard Photograph. Of note, over 10,000 women volunteered for the SPARs during WWII, the Coast Guard’s version of the WAVES

USCGC 83352 (83′ patrol boat) running plane guard duty for USS Essex (CV-9) in the Gulf of Paria, Trinidad, 20 March 1943 while the carrier was on her shakedown cruise. Note the white stripe marking around the boat, and call letters atop her pilothouse. Assigned to Trinidad for her entire career, she was disposed of there in November 1945. Good duty if you can get it! NARA photo 80-G-K-429.

“Due to their low silhouette and slight wake, these craft are often mistaken for submarines,” notes the Sept 1943 ONI 56 on the Coast Guard 83 foot cutters as sub-busters. 

Coast Guard Cutter 83354, 1944 based in Port ‘o Spain, Trinidad, British West Indies. Note she is set up for sub-busting with numerous depth charges on deck and a recognition stripe across her wheelhouse. Assigned to the CARIBSEAFRON for her entire career, this cutter was decommissioned in Nov. 1945 and disposed of locally

US Coast Guard 83-foot Cutter 83359 on patrol in Atlantic, January 1943, via LIFE Archives by Dmitri Kessel. Stationed at Southwest Harbor, Maine, CG 83359 was assigned to the EASTSEAFRON during WWII and would remain in service until June 1959 when she was decommissioned. She was sold that November.

same as above

Same as above. Note her depth charge racks

US Coast Guard 83-foot Cutter on patrol in Atlantic, January 1943, via LIFE Archives by Dmitri Kessel. Note the water-cooled M2 with slab ammo box

Same as above

Inside the cramped wheelhouse of a US Coast Guard 83-foot Cutter on patrol in Atlantic, January 1943, via LIFE Archives by Dmitri Kessel.

Same as above

US Coast Guard 83-foot Cutter on patrol in Atlantic, January 1943, via LIFE Archives by Dmitri Kessel. Note the depth charge arrangement with eight ash cans ready to go!

US Coast Guard 83-foot Cutter on patrol in Atlantic, January 1943, via LIFE Archives by Dmitri Kessel.

The most significant combat “kills” attributed to the 83s came from a Cuban-manned boat, Caza Submarino 13 (CS-13). One of 10 delivered to the Cubans at Miami, CS-13 splashed U-176, a Type IXC on 15 May 1943 in the Florida Straits northeast of Havana. 

CS-13 is the smallest U-boat killer.

Lifesavers

Deployed far and wide, the 83s in USCG service were often the first on the scene to pick up wrecked mariners after a U-boat slipped back under the sea, especially during 1942’s Operation Drumbeat submarine offensive.

83305– Rescued 11 from the freighter City of New York.
83309– Pulled nine survivors of the schooner Cheerio from the water.
83310– Rescued 25 from the tanker C.O. Stillman and another 50 from the tanker William Rockefeller.
83322– Rescued 14 from the freighter Santore.

In the lead-up to Overlord/Neptune, a group of 60 83s along with 840 Coasties were assembled on the eastern coast of England, under the suggestion of FDR himself. Dubbed Rescue Flotilla One under the command of LCDR Alexander V. Stewart, Jr., they would accompany the waves of LCIs and other landing craft into the beaches and, using their 5-foot draft, close in with sinking vessels to recover survivors and floaters.

To keep things easy, the craft was renumbered USCG 1 through USCG 60 and given a large white star on their wheelhouse for aerial recognition.

They landed most of their armament and trained in triage and lifesaving– ready to lower rescue swimmers over the side with a rope if need be.

A superb reference for the “Matchbox Fleet” at Normandy is the 1946 Coast Guard at War: The Landings in France which covers the operation of the flotilla across some 30 pages. Drawn from that is this page on the prep on these “Sea Going Saint Bernards”: 

US Coast Guard Cutter 16 at Poole, England in 1944. Notice USCG 10 to the left. CG 16, under LT (j.g.) R.V. McPhail, achieved the Flotilla’s rescue record, picking up 126 survivors and one cadaver on D-Day from three landing craft stricken within a half-mile of the beach, all handled in less than six hours. UA 555.03

Two U.S. Coast Guard 83-foot patrol boats operated off the Normandy beaches as rescue craft, in June 1944. They are USCG-20 (83401) and USCG-21 (83402). 26-G-3743

As noted by the Coast Guard Historian’s Office:

They earned the nickname “Matchbox Fleet” due to their wooden hulls and two Sterling-Viking gasoline engines — one incendiary shell hitting a cutter could easily turn it into a “fireball.”

They were assigned to each of the invasion areas, with 30 serving off the British and Canadian sectors and 30 serving off the American sectors. During Operation Neptune/Overlord these cutters and their crews carried out the Coast Guard’s time-honored task of saving lives, albeit under enemy fire on a shoreline thousands of miles from home. The cutters of Rescue Flotilla One saved more than 400 men on D-Day alone and by the time the unit was decommissioned in December 1944, they had saved 1,438 souls.

“Normandy Landings, June 1944. Coast Guard Invasion Rescue Flotilla Men on Alert. They wear the Death’s Head emblem of skull and crossbones on their helmets, these Coast Guard invasion veterans, but theirs is an errand of mercy. Here, members of an 83-foot Coast Guard rescue cutter, part of the famous flotilla which rescued hundreds of men from the cold channel waters off France, keep alert while on patrol.” 26-G-2388

The 83-foot Coast Guard cutter USCG 1 (83300) off Omaha Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944, tied up to an LCT and the Samuel Chase. Escorting the first waves into Omaha her crew pulled 28 survivors from a sunken landing craft before 0700 on D-Day. 

Do not get it confused, the Coasties weren’t just there as sort of a seagoing ambulance service, untargeted by enemy bullets. They took fire of all sorts all day. McPhail’s CG 16 for instance “nosed in among the struggling groups of men floundering in diesel oil and debris. Although shells were splashing around it and mines were detonating, the cutter’s crew calmly went about the rescue work. With 90 casualties as its first load, the cutter sped to the Coast Guard transport Dickman.”

“Normandy Invasion, June 1944. Coast Guard Rescue Craft Shelled by Nazis. Twin spouts boil close off the stern of a U.S. Coast Guard invasion rescue craft in the English Channel as Nazi shore batteries pour shellfire into the mighty Allied liberation fleet.” 26-G-2374

The boats of the Matchbox Fleet remained offshore for days, dodging gunfire from marauding E-boat raids, magnesium flares dropped by German planes at night, and bumping up against parachute mines.

“Normandy Invasion, June 1944. Towed back from Death. Torn by German shells, the landing barge was sinking. American soldiers aboard appeared lost as the little craft settled in the English Channel waters. Along came a Coast Guard Rescue Cutter poking boldly into the shoal waters. A line was cast and made fast.” 26-G-06-24-44(2)

“Sub Busters in Invasion Role. The U.S. Coast Guard’s famous 83 footers, sub-busters in the Battle of the Atlantic, and to their laurels as a rescue craft in the D-Day sweep across the English Channel to the French Coast. These swift, little, intrepid crafts are the Coast Guard boats that have been mentioned over and over again in radio and news dispatches for their gallant rescue role during the initial smash on France.”

Coast Guard 83-foot rescue boat CGC-16 unloading wounded troops off Normandy France June 6, 1944, to USS Joseph T. Dickman APA-13 0930 hrs morning of D-Day LIFE Archives Ralph Morse Photographer

Casualties were transferred from a U.S. Coast Guard 83-foot rescue boat to a larger ship, for evacuation from the combat zone, in June 1944. Note the name Miss Fury on the boat’s superstructure as well as the large white star for aircraft recognition and the radar on the mast. 26-G-2346

USCG 20 was driven ashore in Normandy during the storm that destroyed the artificial Mulberry harbors in June 1944. She was later repaired and transferred to the Royal Navy.

There were many other USCG-manned and operated craft off Normandy for Overlord/Neptune. 

Many also performed yeoman service that day.

“The Coast Guard-manned landing craft LCI(L)-85 approached the beach at 12 knots. Her crew winced as they heard repeated thuds against the vessel’s hull made by the wooden stakes covering the beach like a crazy, tilted, man-made forest… The Coast Guard LCI(L)-85, battered by enemy fire after approaching Omaha Beach, prepares to evacuate the troops she was transporting to an awaiting transport. The “85” sank shortly after this photograph was taken. The LCI(L)-85 was one of four Coast Guard LCIs that were destroyed on D-Day.”

Post-Overlord

In the days immediately after the landings, six 83-footers of the Matchbox Flotilla were detailed to operate a rush cross-channel courier service, making four crossings a day carrying mail and urgent Army dispatches to France every six hours. While the Army had originally planned to use planes for the task, it was found that the boats could get there more reliably, even if they had to maneuver around floating mines and unmarked wrecks in the process.

U.S. Navy motor torpedo boats (PT) and U.S. Coast Guard 83-foot patrol boats used the waterfront as a temporary base while operating out of Cherbourg, on 30 August 1944. CG 5, with her depth charge racks refitted, is closest to the camera. The PT boat at left is PT-199, a 78-foot Higgins that famously carried ADM Harold R. Stark to the Allied invasion beachhead at Normandy. Note the depth charges on the sterns of the USCG patrol boats in the foreground. 80-G-256074

The Pacific

Meanwhile, the 83s were involved in the push toward Tokyo as well. In January 1945, 30 boats were formed into USCG PTC Flotilla One and sent to Manicani Island in the Leyte Gulf, where the U.S. was busy rooting out Japanese holdouts in the quest to liberate the Philippines. Some eight miles west of Guiuan, Manicani would become a major destroyer repair base and a ship repair unit. Another 24 boats were dispatched late in the war to operate with the 7th Fleet at Okinawa, Saipan, Guam, Eniwetok, and elsewhere to serve as harbor defense vessels, on guard against Japanese suicide attacks and frogmen.

Speaking of which, one such vessel, USCGC 83525, was dispatched with Navy RADM M.R. Greer (COMMFLTAIRWING 18) from Tinian to remote Aguijan Island in the Northern Marianas on 4 September 1945 to accept the surrender of the tiny garrison from 2nd LT Kinichi Yamada of the Imperial Army. The Coastie was sent as a larger vessel could not negotiate the shallows of the island.

As detailed by one of the attendees of the event:

When Yamada climbed aboard from a landing craft, his greenish pallor matched the color of his faded uniform. He looked even smaller than he had at our first meeting, encumbered as he was with an outsized dispatch case. The confined deck space on the slender vessel posed a problem: where to place the surrender documents for the signing. Finally, the skipper of the Coast Guard boat suggested using the cover of a ventilator just behind the wheelhouse, and that was where the parties arrayed themselves, the Americans on one side and the three Japanese on the other. Nobody invited me to be part of the U.S. contingent, so I positioned myself directly behind Yamada.

Further, the 83s were influential to the war effort in a quiet way, as they were a big feature on period recruiting posters for the Coast Guard. Of course, less than 3,000 of the service’s 170,000 men at its wartime peak were assigned to these hardy boats at any given time, but you got to get the kids off the farm somehow.

USCG Combat Artist BMC Hunter Wood, a skilled maritime artist, spent some time among the 83s in the New York and New England area during the war and left a series of beautiful sketches of them at work. 

Protector of the Convoy! 83 Footer, CGC# 485, 6/7/1943, screens a freighter on a coastal convoy. By Coast Guard Artist Hunter Wood NARA

Ahoy, Old-Timer! Here’s My Spray, 5/14/1943. This image depicts artwork of The United States Coast Guard 83-footer zipping across the bow of the training ship Joseph Conrad as the craft meet offshore. Conrad spent the war training merchant marine cadets. Artwork by BMC Hunter Wood. NARA 205575840

Ash Cans Away! 83 Footer Attacking Sub. By Coast Guard Artist Hunter Wood. NARA 205575791

Raking the Raider! 83 Footer Attacking Sub, 6/17/1943. Hunter Wood. NARA 205575796

Post-war

Their wartime service was largely forgotten, the 83s earned no battlestars and unit citations. Those sent overseas were largely left there, either to rot or to be transferred to overseas allies. Several were lost during the war: 83301 and 83306 to a 1945 typhoon in Okinawa; 83415/CG 27 and 83471/CG 47 sank in a storm off Normandy two weeks after D-Day, their hulls were torn open on submerged wreckage, and 83421 was lost due to a midnight collision with a subchaser while on a blackout convoy. Others were soon disposed of in the inevitable postwar constriction of funds.

These wooden boats, after several years of hard work, were overloaded, stressed, and could typically by 1945 just plod along at about 12 knots, sustained by. By 1946, around 100 remained in Coast Guard custody, with many of those laid up. The Navy picked up a handful for such miscellaneous use as range control boats, yard boats, and torpedo retrievers.

Some were upgraded with Cummings diesel engines and all-white peacetime schemes and continued in Coast Guard service through the 1950s. Notably, their armament in peacetime seems to have solidified with a single 20mm Oerlikon over the stern, four abbreviated two-can depth charge racks clustered around the gun, and two mousetraps forward although the latter feature was not always mounted.

CG 83464 in 1949. Delivered in July 1943 from Wheeler, she served out of Charleston before joining the D-Day fleet as CG 43. She was decommissioned in 1961 and sold.

CG 83499 at Biloxi’s annual blessing of the fleet. Note the canvassed 20mm on her stern under an awning. This boat spent WWII as a training ship at Coast Guard HQ and was disposed of in 1959.

CGC 83499 in Pascagoula, MS circa late 1950s

Post-WWII 83-foot cutter CG 83483 in Friday Harbor, of Washington’s San Juan islands. Note her white scheme, lack of armament, and her radar mast. Delivered in September 1943, she was used by the Navy as an Admiral’s yacht, first with COM4THFLEET at Boston (43-44) and then with COM7THFLEET at Guam (1945) until chopping back to USCG control, based in the PacNorthWest. She served until May 1960 when she was sold.

The 327-foot Treasury-class cutter Bibb (note her post-war weather balloon hangar behind her stack, installed for use on Ocean Stations), is being serviced by the tug C B Loring, and a white-painted 83-foot patrol boat, 83486. According to Schena, 83486 was delivered Sep 43 and assigned to the 7th Naval District at New Smyrna Beach, FL until Dec. 44. It Transferred to the 1st Naval District and was stationed at Boothbay ME. She was decommissioned on 3 Nov 61 and sold Au 62, one of the last in service.

83s also repeatedly showed up in films throughout the 1940s-60s, such as this unmarked craft that portrayed a Japanese gunboat in 1964’s Cary Grant WWII Coastwatcher comedy, “Father Goose.” The large deck gun is likely fake but looks good from a distance. 

With the service gaining new and improved patrol boats of the Cape and Point classes, the days of the old 83s were fading.

Still, 45 remained on the CG List long enough to appear in the 1960 edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships. 

In the early 1960s, the remaining 45 hulls still holding on were liquidated, with many being disposed of by fire or scuttling post-decommissioning. The last on the USCG’s rolls was CG 83506, disposed of by sinking on 22 March 1966. 

Under other flags

Vessels in overseas service remained around for a few more years. The type was used by Cuba (12), the Dominican Republic (3), Haiti (1) Venezuela (4), Colombia (2), Peru (6), and Mexico (3) in the Americas.

CS-2, an 83-foot subchaser transferred from USCG to Peru in 1944. This is the CGC-487 seen above in New Jersey

Dominican Republic’s 83-foot CG cutters via the 1946 Jane’s

Patrullero caza submarino Briceño Méndez (CS-3) in Venuzelan service. Was later disarmed in the late 1950s and retained as a “Lancha Hidrográfica” until at least 1962.

Several boats, delivered post-war, remained on active duty until the 1990s with NATO naval forces. 

A Spanish Moustrap-equipped 83-foot anti-submarine boat, LAS-10, is seen crossing the Ferrol River. In the background of the image, the Pizarro-class frigate Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (F-41) docked at La Graña Naval Station. For a frame of reference, Pinzón was active between 1949 and 1983.

The LAS stood for “Lancha Anti Submarina,” and three (LAS-10, LAS-20, and LAS-30) were in service as late as 1993, by which time they had been redesignated Patrulleros Anti Submarinos with a resulting PAS-10, 20, 30 renaming.

They carried a 20mm Hispano-Suiza aft, two 7.62mm GPMGs on the bridge wings, and a pair of four-rail MK20 Mousetraps (“ratonera” in Spanish service).

Notably, four transferred to Turkey in 1953 were noted in Janes as late as 1995, still with their mousetraps.

Survivors

Some remaining vessels were converted into yachts, fishing boats, dive charter vessels, or workboats and ultimately faded into history.

Others had more pedestrian fates.

CGC 83499, the old ghost of the Mississippi Sound shown in the two above photos, was ashore as Pandora’s steak house in Destin until 2005. 

Stripped 83s for sale in the Tacoma area in the 1960s, as-is, how-is, where-is

CG-83527, which served on anti-submarine duties in the Gulf of Mexico in WWII, ended her career in Tacoma, Washington in 1962. She was saved in 2003 and restored slowly and extensively over a decade to roughly her 1950 appearance. Its operators have an extensive website with many resources on the class including a full set of plans.

Another of the class, 83366/D-Day CG 11, was purchased by a Seattle couple in terrible condition for $100 and they are in the process of returning her to her 1944 arrangement.

Notably, CG 83366 still has her bronze pilothouse.

LT Linwood A. “Tick” Thumm, one of the last of the wartime 83 skippers, passed at age 105 last year.

Speaking of vets, the 83-Footer Sailor portal, long maintained by Al Readdy, seems to be offline but can still be found via archives. Meanwhile, those interested in Coast Guard patrol boat history, in general, should check out HMC James T. Flynn, Jr., USNR(ret)’s excellent 61-page essay.

Today, the USCG Museum has a panel dedicated to the work of the Matchbox Fleet in their D-Day exhibit.

Specs: (extracted from U.S. Coast Guard Cutters & Crafts of World War II by Robert Scheina)

A Wartime 83 by Jack Read

Displacement: 76 tons fully loaded
Length: 83 ft
Beam: 16 ft
Draft: 5 ft. 4″
Main Engines: 83343 through 83348: 2 Hall Scott Defenders, 1.200 rpm; all others: 2 Sterling Viking II SHP All units: 1,200
2 Propellers: 34″Dia X 27° Pitch (Pitch varied with the mission)
2 Kohler Generators 120/240 VAC 60 cycle
Max Speed 15.2 kts, 215 mi radius (1945); 23.5 statute mi (trials,1946)
Max Sustained 12.0 kts. 375 mi radius (1945)
Cruising 10.0 kts, 475 mi radius (1945)
Economic 8.2 kts, 575 mi radius (1945)
Gasoline (95%) 1,900 gal
Complement 1 officer, 13 men (1945)
Electronics (1945)
Detection Radar SO-2 (most units)
Sonar QBE series (none on 83339. 83367-83369, 83427, 83476-83480)
Armament
1941 1 1-pounder. 2 .30cal mg
1945 1 20mm/80,4 dc racks with 8 Mark VI depth charges. 2 Mousetraps; none on 8330
83312, 83335, 83342, 83367, 83387, 83388, 83392, 83427, 83470, 83475. 83491. 83492. 83494,
83501, 83507, 83512, 83515, 83516, 83518-83521, 83529

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About Time, Fusiliers Marins edition

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Earlier this month, the Chief of Staff of the French Navy, Admiral Christophe Prazuck announced the that the names of the nine French Marine units, the Fusiliers Marins et Commandos Marins, will moving forward be tied to historic officers of the names of key heroes from the Free French 1er BFM/BFMC (aka Commando Kieffer) and 1er RFM (Régiment de Fusiliers Marins).

Raised from volunteers abroad and members of the French Navy who ended their 1940 war in British ports– many from the old battleships Paris and Courbet— the brand-new Forces Navales Françaises Libres (Free French Naval Forces) forces under Admiral Emile Muselier, allied with then-renegade Maj Gen. Charles de Gaulle formed these commandos along British lines.

Taking part in the Dieppe Raid in August 1942, they landed in force at D-Day and continued on to the Alps, earning more than 200 Croix de Guerre and 32 Légion d’Honneur.

While elite frogmen units such as Commando Hubert have the names of famous (posthumously) officers who have led them, up until this month, the modern French marines had unit names such as the uninspired but descriptive details such as the Groupe des Marines de l’Atlantique (Atlantic Marines Group). Now, the Groupe des Marines de l’Atlantique, for example, is the Amyot d’Inville Marines Battalion, named after French navy CDR Amyot D’Inville who commanded the Free French Marines at Bir Hakeim and was killed on the Continent in 1944.

More here. 

A bell lost, a bell found, a bell talked about, a bell returned

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On the 75th anniversary of D-Day, we highlighted the lost Operation Neptune minesweeper USS Osprey, which went down in the early morning of 6 June 1944, clearing a way for the invasion fleet.

In that Warship Wednesday, we covered that her bell had apparently been recovered sometime around 2007 and gave a lead to the dive op that may know more about it.

Well, one thing led to another and, after the post was shared, the NHHC got involved and, as noted by the BBC:

The US authorities contacted the UK coastguard when pictures of the ship’s bell appeared on the internet.

An investigation was launched by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency when it was established the bell had not been reported to the receiver of wreck.

Acting receiver Heloise Warner said the agency “put the word about” that it was searching for the bell and it was subsequently left anonymously at an undisclosed location last month.

“It’s absolutely fantastic that such a poignant part of our history is back in our possession,” she added.

Osprey’s bell via MCA

It is expected the NHHC will soon take possession of the recovered bell.

Bravo Zulu, guys, and, as always, thanks for sharing! Let’s continue to save history together.

A hearty toast to those lost on Osprey, who will never be forgotten so long as their names are still written:

  • Lieutenant Van Hamilton
  • Seaman 2nd Class John Medvic
  • Fireman 1st class Walter O’Bryan
  • Quartermaster 2nd Class Emery Parichy
  • Motor Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Joseph Vanasky, Jr
  • Motor Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Cleo Whitschell

Warship Wednesday, June 12, 2019: The End of l’Ancien Régime, Beginning of Another

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

Warship Wednesday, June 12, 2019: The End of l’Ancien Régime, Beginning of Another

NH 110742 French Warships in port, circa 1939 Mediterranean palm trees and old fort 2400-tonne type destroyer battleship Courbet, while a Duguay Trouin class light cruiser is to the right

Naval History and Heritage Command Photo NH 93575

Here we see the first French dreadnought, Courbet, class leader of a four-ship group of mighty warships built for the French Third Republic. She is the largest ship to the far left, seen at Villefranche during late 1938 or early 1939. She gave her last full measure some 75 years ago this week but left an interesting legacy.

When built, Courbet and her sisters were the Republic’s answer to the growing trend of all-big-gun battleships that started with the launch of the Royal Navy’s HMS Dreadnought in 1906.

French Battleship COURBET as Build 1911

French Battleship COURBET was Build in 1911

Part of the 1909 Naval Plan, these big French battlewagons went nearly 26,000 tons (FL) and carried an impressive main battery of a dozen new design 12-inch (305mm) 45 Modèle 1906 guns. These big boys, in six twin turrets, were comparable to the U.S. Navy’s 12″/45 caliber Mark 5 gun on five classes of American battleships (Connecticut, Mississippi, South Carolina, Delaware, and Florida) as well as the British BL 12-inch Mk X naval guns which were mounted on not only  Dreadnought herself but also a dozen other RN battleships and battlecruisers of the day.

Courbet, forward turrets photographed by Robert W. Neeser, probably at Toulon, France, circa 1919. Note the triplex rangefinder on the conning tower. She carried 100 rounds per gun in her magazines, which interestingly were refrigerated to 77-degrees, a bonus on a steel ship designed to operate in the Med. NH 42849

Courbet, forward turrets photographed by Robert W. Neeser, probably at Toulon, France, circa 1919. Note the triplex rangefinder on the conning tower. She carried 100 rounds per gun in her magazines, which interestingly were refrigerated to 77 degrees, a bonus on a steel ship designed to operate in the Med. NH 42849

Courbet 12-inch and 5.5-inch (138mm) guns photographed by Robert W. Neeser. These ships carried an impressive 22 of the latter, each with 225 shells. NH 42848

Laid down at Arsenal de Brest, our 21-knot beastie, named after famed French Admiral Amédée Courbet of Indochina fame, was soon followed by sister ship Jean Bart, constructed at the same time by the same yard. Two other sisters, France and Paris, were built by A C de la Loire, St-Nazaire, and F C de la Méditerranée, La Seyne.

French battleship Paris, trial at full steam from the 1 August 1914 issue of L'Illustration

French battleship Paris, the trial at full steam from the 1 August 1914 issue of L’Illustration

Courbet was commissioned in November 1913 and the entire class was all at sea by the time the lamps went out across Europe in August 1914. Their design was essentially recycled to create the follow-on Bretagne (Brittany)-class dreadnoughts who were up-armed with 13.5-inch guns.

Courbet entered the Great War monitoring the Otranto Canal, a vital sea route connecting the Adriatic with the Ionian while keeping an eye peeled for the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben. She served at the time as flagship for Vice Admiral Boue de Lapeyrère, who led a force that comprised most of France’s battle fleet along with two British cruisers.

Courbet

Courbet

On 16 August 1914, the fresh new battleship and her task force came across the small (2,500-ton) Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser SMS Zenta and a companion destroyer, SMS Ulan, off the coast of Bar, Montenegro. The ensuing action, remembered today as the Battle of Antivari, was brief, with Ulan escaping destruction and Zenta, her guns far outranged by the French, destroyed, taking 173 of the Austrian Kaiser’s men to the bottom of the Adriatic with her. The war was just two weeks old.

Painting showing SMS Zenta and SMS Ulan in action on 16 August 1914, by Harry Heusser via Illustrirte Zeitung 1915, wiki

Painting showing SMS Zenta and SMS Ulan in action on 16 August 1914, with Courbet and company in the distance, by Harry Heusser via Illustrirte Zeitung 1915, wiki

When the Italians entered the conflict on the Allied side in May 1915, the Austrian fleet was bottled up for the rest of the war, and Courbet, along with most of the French capital ships, were likewise sidelined, waiting the next four years just in case for a fleet action that would never come. After 1916, most of her crew was pulled and detailed to submarines and small craft, a common occurrence with the French navy at the time.

Remaining rusting in Corfu until April 1919, Courbet returned to Toulon where she became the nominal flagship of the West Mediterranean Fleet while she conducted extensive repairs through 1923.

Put back into service, she suffered a major electrical fire at the French North African port of Mers El Kebir which required further extensive repairs at FCM in La Seyne Sur Mer through 1924. Courbet was a member of an unlucky class perhaps, as sister ship France foundered at sea and was lost at about the same time.

In 1927, with Courbet‘s original design increasingly dated, she was hauled out of the water and given a three-year rebuild and modernization. This included returning into two funnels, down from three, and updating her propulsion plant by taking her old coal boilers and direct drive turbines with oil-burning small-tube boilers and new geared turbines which provided 43,000 shp (up from 29,250). She lost her torpedo tubes (like battleships really used them) and reinforced her anti-air defenses in the form of 76mm high-angle pieces and a smattering of 13.2mm machine guns. Jean Bart and Paris were given similar overhauls.

She emerged looking very different:

Courbet original and post modernization

Courbet original, top, and postmodernization, bottom

In 1934, she was made a full-time gunnery school ship, her place in the French battle line going to the new 26,000-ton Dunkerque-class of fast (29.5-knot) battleships ordered for the French Navy the same year. Likewise, her sister Jean Bart, renamed Ocean, was made a training hulk at about the same time while Paris was used as a school ship for signals rates.

Courbet and Jean Bart in Algeria

Courbet and Jean Bart in Algeria

With World War II on the horizon, Courbet and Paris were taken from their taskings on the training roster in June 1939 and placed in the French Navy’s 3eme Division de Ligne, fleshing out their ranks, taking on power and shell, and installing more AAA guns.

Reportedly, the ships had troublesome engineering suites, only capable of making about 15 knots and even that speed could not be sustained.

Tasked with coastal defense, Courbet was moved to Cherbourg on the English Channel in May 1940. From there, she engaged  German aircraft poking their nose over the harbor and helped support the withdrawal from the beaches of Dunkirk. Later, as the German Army broke through and swept towards Paris, Courbet fired on advancing Boche columns of Rommel’s 7. Panzerdivision outside of Cherbourg before she raised steam and headed across the Channel to Portsmouth on June 19/20. Her sister Paris, damaged by German bombs, likewise left Brest for Plymouth, England at about the same time.

With France officially dropping out of WWII and the Third Republic voting to give full powers to Philippe Petain, the elderly battleships Paris and Courbet were seized and disarmed at their British moorings by Royal Marines on the order of Churchill on 3 July as part of Operation Catapult.

On 18 July 1940, De Gaulle addressed France, and Frenchmen everywhere, with his famous “Report to me” speech in which he specifically mentioned French sailors. (“J’invite les chefs, les soldats, les marins, les aviateurs des forces françaises de terre, de mer, de l’air, où qu’ils se trouvent actuellement, à se mettre en rapport avec moi.”)

Courbet-class battleship Paris in British hands, 1940, note the Union Jack on her bow IWM

Courbet-class battleship Paris in British hands, 1940, note the Union Jack on her bow and false bow wave. IWM

Paris, in bad condition, had her crew totally removed– who largely decided to return to France. She would be turned over to the Free Polish Navy who would use her as a dockside trainer and clubhouse until 1945 when she was returned to French custody and scrapped.

As for Courbet, she was turned over to the brand-new Forces Navales Françaises Libres (Free French Naval Forces) forces under Admiral Emile Muselier, allied with then-renegade Maj Gen. Charles de Gaulle, on 10 July, becoming the largest and arguably most effective French warship, not under Vichy control. Meanwhile, hulked sister Jean Bart remained in Vichy’s hands in Toulon on the Med, along with the bulk of the French Navy that wasn’t hiding out in Africa or the Caribbean.

Cuirassé Courbet à Portsmouth 1940, note the false bow wave painted on her bow.

Rearmed in August 1940, Courbet‘s AAA gunners managed to splash five German bombers over Portsmouth during the Battle of Britain. She continued her role as a floating symbol for De Gaulle and receiving ship for the rapidly forming Free French Navy for the next four years but sadly never left port under her own steam again.

Some of her crew found themselves in North Africa, fighting Rommel.

A British Bofors 40mm manned by the Free French 1er bataillon de fusilier de marine, Bir Hakeim, 1942. Note the combination of British Army tropical uniforms and traditional French “Bachi” sailor’s berets. 

Others went in different directions.

Enter Monsieur Philippe Kieffer, stage left.

Philippe Kieffer

This guy.

The day after World War II started with the German invasion of Poland, Kieffer, a 40-year-old Haitian-born Alsatian bank executive in New York City, presented himself at the French consulate in Manhattan and signed up for the Navy. Having been schooled as a reserve naval officer in university but graduating too late in 1918 to fight in the Great War, the skilled financial analyst was given a sub-lieutenant’s commission and assigned to help flesh out Courbet‘s ranks, where he was assigned as an interpreter and cipher officer. Still aboard her when she left for England, he volunteered for the Free French Forces on 1 July 1940 and remained on her during the Battle of Britain.

In Portsmouth in May 1941, he formed a group of 40 volunteers, largely drawn from Courbet and Paris’s remaining crew who chose to not be repatriated to Vichy France, dubbed the 1re Compagnie de Fusiliers Marins (1st Company of Naval Rifles). Soon, his handful of bluejackets was wearing British uniforms and learning from the likes of former Shanghai Police Inspectors William Fairbairn and Eric Sykes at the commando training center in Achnacarry, Scotland. There, they picked up the general tricks of the dirty-deeds–done-dirt-cheap trade.

Free French Navy commandos parade at Wellington Barracks on Bastille Day, 1943. They were issued British uniforms, Pattern 34 kit, and .303 caliber SMLEs but maintained elements of their distinctively French heraldry and kit, including French Navy blue berets with red pompons. Also note the toggle rope, an essential bit of kit issued to British commando types during this period, which could be used as both a weapon or for climbing/lashing.

French marines of No. 1 Troop, No. 10 Commando. Note the British kit, to include No. 1 MK III Enfields. The officer at the left wears French naval insignia-- likely Keiffer -- and carries a Mle 1892 8mm revolver.

French marines of No. 1 Troop, No. 10 Commando. Note the British kit, to include No. 1 MK III Enfields. The officer at the left wears French sub-lieutenant naval insignia– likely Keiffer — and carries a Great War-era Mle 1892 8mm revolver.

His force became the No. 1 Troop and, No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando. Taking part in the Dieppe Raid in August 1942, his forces were expanded to include a second troop, No. 8, and his men were often used in small-scale raids and intelligence ops along the coasts of occupied Holland and Belgium for the next two years.

In early 1944, Kieffer’s two troops, along with a smattering of new recruits (including a few Belgians and at least four Luxembourgers) were carved off from No. 10 Commando and formed the new 1re Compagnie du Bataillon de Fusiliers-Marins Commandos (1st Company of the Battalion of Marine Fusilier Commandos, or just BFMC). Geared up for Operation Overlord, they were part of British No 4 Commando of Lord Lovat’s 1st Special Service Brigade and landed on Sword Beach on D-Day, some 177 men strong, for their official return to France, Tommy guns in hand.

Philippe Kieffer, in commando garb meeting Monty, along with early BFMC legends Augustin Hubert (glasses) and Charles Trépel (pointy thing.) The dashing Trepel would be killed in a commando raid off the Dutch coast in 1944 while Hubert was killed on D-Day by a sniper near the Ouistreham casino.

Philippe Kieffer, in commando garb, meets Monty, along with early BFMC legends Augustin Hubert (glasses) and Charles Trépel (making friends with the pointy thing.) The dashing Trepel would be killed in a commando raid off the Dutch coast in 1944 while Hubert was fatally shot on D-Day by a German sniper near the Ouistreham casino.

Kieffer’s Bérets Verts (Green Berets) would soon push from the beach to link up with the 6th Parachute Division at Pegasus Bridge and go on to suffer 21 killed and 93 wounded in the days that were to follow, with the latter including Kieffer.

French villagers welcome French Naval Commandos who D-Day landings. thompson tommy gun Near Amfreville, Calvados, Lower Normandy, France. 17 June 1944.

French villagers welcome BFMC French Naval Commandos who D-Day landings. Near Amfreville, Calvados, Lower Normandy, France. 17 June 1944. Note the green beret’s M1928 Thompson and Fairbairn-Sykes Commando knife.

Before the war was out, his men were the first unformed members of the Free French to enter Paris, see the elephant again at Walcheren, liberate Flessinge, help capture the port of Antwerp, and carry out raids along the Dutch Coast. Not bad for a banker.

As for Courbet, she was at Sword Beach as well, just a few days behind Kieffer’s famed 177.

By 1944 she was old news. The Free French Navy, after the collapse of Vichy France in November 1942, had picked up the scratch and dent but much newer fast battleships Jean Bart and Richelieu, which were given extensive refits in America, as well as the still (somewhat), combat-effective Bretagne-class dreadnought Lorraine, the latter of which was soon to see combat in the Operation Dragoon landings in the Med.

With her marginalization as De Gaulle’s unneeded 4th battleship, Courbet‘s bunker oil was pumped out and replaced with concrete as her crew removed their possessions. She was towed out of Portsmouth by HMRT Growler and HMRT Samsonia with her remaining French skeleton crew along for the ride on 9 June, bound for the invasion beaches of Normandy with TF 128.

Stopping some 3,360 meters in front of Hermanville near Ouistreham, her crew was evacuated at 13:15, and 10 minutes later her skipper, Capt. Wertzel, triggered the detonation of a series of installed scuttling charges that soon sent France’s first dreadnought 33 feet to the bottom, still flying her tricolor flag adorned with De Gaulle’s Cross of Lorraine, to give the impression that she was still in some form of service.

French Battleship Courbet was sunk as part of Gooseberry 5 on D+3. Note her decks are almost awash, the benefit of having a 29-foot draft in 33 feet of water.

Courbet was part of a line of blockships laid off the beaches to form a reef before the rest of the Mulberry dock system was assembled to bring supplies to the beach.

There were to be five “Gooseberry” breakwaters, one for each beach:
No. 1 Utah Beach at Varreville
No. 2 Omaha Beach at St. Laurent (Part of MULBERRY A)
No. 3 Gold Beach at Arromanches (Part of MULBERRY B)
No. 4 Juno Beach at Courseulles
No. 5 Sword Beach at Oistreham

In all, the breakwaters were to be formed by about 60 blockships (approximately 12 in each Gooseberry) which were all merchant vessels except the disarmed King George V-class battleship HMS Centurion, Free Dutch Java-class light cruiser HNLMS Sumatra, Danae-class light cruiser HMS Durban and our Courbet.

A typical Gooseberry breakwater

The sinking of blockships was to commence p.m. D+1 and the Gooseberries were to be completed by D+3, with Courbet being one of the final pieces of the puzzle at Sword Beach (Gooseberry 5), which was to include the merchant ships Becheville, Dover Hill, Empire Defiance, Empire Tamar, Empire Tana, and Forbin along with the old cruisers Durban and Sumatra.

Gooseberry 5 off the beaches at Ouistreham, showing Sumatra and Durban

Gooseberry 5 off the beaches at Ouistreham, showing Sumatra and Durban

Courbet, still with her war flag flying, was one of the few blockships to be “manned” with generators supplying power to her eight searchlights and a radio. A crew of 35 men from the Royal Artillery was left in charge of her AAA guns for the next several weeks to draw away Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine attacks on the vulnerable beachhead while at the same time possibly splashing a couple of raiders.

The concept worked, as reportedly the very grounded Courbet was hit by German Neger human torpedoes (Einmann-Torpedo) of K-Flottille 361 during the nights of both August 15/16 to 16/17, without effect.

As the breakout occurred and the fighting moved inland, her British gunners were withdrawn in September, and Courbet‘s flag was hauled down, and presented to De Gaulle’s government with honors.

On 14 February 1951, the wrecks in Gooseberry 5 were auctioned by the French government to be salvaged and slowly scrapped, a process that took until 1970 to be completed. By coincidence, Jean Bart, the last French (or European for that matter) battleship afloat, was scrapped the same year at Brégaillon near Toulon, making Courbet and Big Jean something of bookends on the tale of French dreadnoughts.

As for Kieffer, Courbet‘s star, he would die at age 63 in 1962, a Commandeur du Légion d’Honneur.

Of the current seven French Commando battalions today, three bear the name of officers of the WWII 1st BFMC: Augustin Hubert, Charles Trépel, and Kieffer. Meanwhile, French marine commandos still wear the badge Kieffer designed and issue the Fairbairn-Sykes.

French Fusiliers marins et commandos marine fighting knife green beret via French marines

In the seven decades since the 1st BFMC, more than 8,300 French commandos have followed in their footsteps. To say they have been extremely busy in the past 70 years is an understatement.

French heartthrob Christian Marquand would portray Kieffer in 1962’s The Longest Day, correctly wearing BFMC-badged green berets during the seizure of the Ouistreham casino (which had actually been destroyed before the landing). If Marquand looks familiar, he also played the holdout French plantation owner in Apocalypse Now Redux. Notably, Kieffer served on the film as a technical adviser just before he died.

Last week, on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, a monument to Kieffer and his 177 commandos was unveiled on Sword Beach, with Commando Kieffer frogmen and past veterans in attendance. A piece of salvaged steel plate from Courbet is incorporated into the display.

Specs:

Courbet class, 1914 Jane’s

Displacement:
23,475 t (23,104 long tons) (normal)
25,579 t (25,175 long tons) (full load)
Length: 544 ft 7 in (o/a)
Beam: 88 ft 7 in
Draught: 29 ft 8 in
Machinery (1913)
24 Niclausse coal-fired boilers with Bellville oil spray systems
4 shafts; 4 × Parsons direct-drive steam turbine sets
28,000 PS (20,594 kW; 27,617 shp)
2,700 tons coal/1,000 tons oil.
Range of 8,400nm at 10 knots
Machinery (1934)
16 oil-fired boilers
4 shafts; 4 × Geared steam turbine sets
43,000 PS
Speed: 21 knots (designed) only 20.74 on trials in 1913. 16 knots by 1940
Complement: 1,115 (1,187 as flagship)
Armor:
Waterline belt: 140–250 mm (5.5–9.8 in)
Deck: 40–70 mm (1.6–2.8 in)
Turrets: 250 mm (9.8 in)
Conning tower: 266 mm (10.5 in)
Armament: (1913)
6 × twin 305 mm (12 in) 45 cal guns
22 × single 138 mm (5.4 in) 45 guns
4 × single 47 mm (1.9 in) M1902 3-pdr AAA guns
4 × 450 mm (17.7 in) Model 1909 submerged torpedo tubes with 12 torpedoes
30 Blockade mines
Armament: (1940)
6 × twin 305 mm (12 in) 45 cal guns
14 × single 138 mm (5.4 in) 45 guns
8 x 75mm/50cal M1922 AAA guns
14 x 13.2mm machine guns

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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.

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Warship Wednesday, June 5, 2019: Overlord’s First Loss, now 75 years on

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

Warship Wednesday, June 5, 2019: Overlord’s First Loss

D-Day Map showing Firing Plan from USS Texas (BB-35) NHHC_1969-232-A_full

NHHC 1969-232-A

Here we see a British Admiralty chart entitled “Iles St Marcouf to Cap Manvieux,” covering a span of the Normandy Coast in France. This chart was used by the venerable New York-class battleship USS Texas (BB-35) during her bombardment operations in support of the Operation Neptune landings, 6 June 1944, the seaside part of Operation Overlord. If you note in the top right-hand quarter of the chart is a set of two parallel lines marked with dan buoys marking a 900-meter-wide channel that was swept of mines immediately prior to and on D-Day.

In short, if it hadn’t had been for those minecraft that cleared the aforementioned path, the whole invasion would have gone a good bit different. With that, today’s Warship Wednesday is on the loss of the Raven-class minesweeper USS Osprey (AM-56), which sunk 75 years ago on 5 June 1944. As noted by military historian and D-Day guru Stephen Ambrose, the six bluejackets killed on Osprey that day were the first Allied casualties of Overlord.

The two ships of the Raven-class were basically all-diesel predecessors of the later Auk-class minesweepers (which had diesel-electric drives) and came in a tad lighter, giving them a draft that was almost two feet shallower.

Osprey and Raven in Drydock 2 at Norfolk Navy Yard Aug 23 1940 NHHC

USS Raven (AM-55), Osprey’s sole sister, off Rockland, Maine, 19 March 1941, while running trials 19-N-24352

Built side-by-side in 1939-40 at the Norfolk Navy Yard as AM-55 and AM-56, the much more prolific (95 hull) Auks followed them with hull numbers that started at AM-57.

Named for the large, hawk-like bird with a dark brown back and a white breast, Osprey was the second such warship for the Navy with that moniker, with the first being the Lapwing-class minesweeper AM-29 which was commissioned in 1919 then soon transferred to the US Coast and Geodetic Survey as USC&GS Pioneer.

USS Osprey (AM-56) soon after her completion. Note her hull numbers. USN Photo 120-15

USS Osprey (AM-56) soon after her completion. Note her hull numbers and two-part scheme. USN Photo 120-15

Commissioned 16 December 1940, by mid-1941 Osprey was detailed with coastal patrol duties off the U.S. Eastern seaboard and, once America got more active in the European war after Pearl Harbor, soon found herself in England.

USS Osprey (AM-56) Underway, circa April 1941, probably while running trials. Note that her bow numbers have been freshly painted out. Photograph was received from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1972. NH 84026

USS Osprey (AM-56) underway with a bone in her teeth, circa April 1941, probably while running trials. Note that her bow numbers have been freshly painted out and she wears an all-over dark scheme. The photograph was received from the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1972. NH 84026

Osprey Off the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 19 April 1941 19-N-23990

Osprey Off the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 19 April 1941. Note she has been freshly fitted with depth charge racks on her stern. 19-N-23990

By November 1942, she convoyed with the USS Texas and company and later helped direct and protect the waves of landing craft moving shoreward at Port Lyautey, Morocco for the Allies Torch Landings.

North Africa Operation, November 1942 Invasion convoy en route to Morocco, circa early November 1942. Ships include more than twenty transports, with USS TEXAS (BB-35) and USS AUGUSTA (CA-31) in the distance. Photographed from an SBD off one of the invasion force aircraft carriers. Catalog #: 80-G-1032486

North Africa Operation, November 1942 Invasion convoy en route to Morocco, circa early November 1942. Ships include more than twenty transports, with USS TEXAS (BB-35) and USS AUGUSTA (CA-31) in the distance. Photographed from an SBD off one of the invasion force aircraft carriers. Catalog #: 80-G-1032486

After completing anti-submarine patrols off Casablanca, Osprey returned to Norfolk for a year of coastal escort assignments aimed at helping to curb the German U-boat threat off Hampton Roads. With other minesweepers, she escorted convoys from Norfolk and New York to ports in the Caribbean and along the Gulf Coast.

Raven photographed in camouflage paint in 1943 with depth charge rack at stern. Osprey had a similar scheme at the time NH 43519

Raven photographed in camouflage paint in 1943 with filled depth charge rack at the stern and additional AAA weapons. Also, note her false bow-wave and smaller but visible hull numbers. Osprey had a similar scheme at the time. NH 43519

By April 1944, Osprey was back across the pond and assigned to the growing invasion flotilla heading for Normandy. Rommel, who had wanted to sow millions of landmines in France to seal off the beaches from invasion, was also a fan of their seagoing variants.

“The Generalfeldmarschall himself had quickly grasped the value of naval mines in his system of defense. He continually requested an increased use of this weapon,” notes a U.S. Navy history.

Dropping mines from a German mine layer during World War II. The Seemine looks to be an EMC-type contact mine which used a charge of 551-pounds. The Germans were fans of contact (with both Hertz and three horns) and magnetic influence mines in moored and drifting flavors and used them liberally during the war from Greece to Norway, often with anti-sweep obstructors. NH 71333

Dropping mines from a German minelayer during World War II. The Seemine looks to be an EMC-type contact type which used a charge of 551-pounds. The Germans were fans of contact (with both Hertz and switch horns) and magnetic influence mines in moored and drifting flavors and used them liberally during the war from Greece to Norway, often with anti-sweep obstructors. NH 71333

German sea mines in a railroad car, abandoned in the railway station at Cherbourg, France, 3 July 1944. 80-G-254312

German sea mines in a railroad car, abandoned in the railway station at Cherbourg, France, 3 July 1944. 80-G-254312

The German naval minefield facing the Overlord invasion stretched 120 km across the Bay of Normandy and was 16 km deep.

The Allied plan was to use 255 vessels to clear 10 channels through the mine barrage– two channels per beach– in the immediate predawn hours of D-Day, with each sweeper ship, such as Osprey, clearing paths by cutting the moored contact mines. Specially equipped trawlers would follow on the search for magnetic mines while dan-laying launches would mark the swept zone. The channels were to be from 400 to 1,200 yards in width depending on their route.

The danger of mines in inshore waters was to be disregarded during the assault, but the areas were to be searched as soon as sweepers were available.

British Admiral Bertram Ramsay noted that “There is no doubt that the mine is our greatest obstacle to success,” when discussing the Cross-Channel attack. “And if we manage to reach the enemy coast without being disorganized and suffering serious losses, we should be fortunate.”

After months of intensive practice in combined sweeping operations with MinRon 7 off Torbay, England, en route to the Normandy invasion beaches on 5 June, Osprey soon struck an enemy mine. The crew put out the resultant fires but could not save their vessel. She sank that evening.

Early on the 6th, the mine division started sweeping the coast of France in assault and check sweeps to assure safe passage channels for the landing craft and the primary naval gunfire support for the beaches.

The only loss to mines on 5 June, Osprey was soon joined by numerous other craft who could not stay in the same cleared channel as the battleships or were hit by floating contact mines, cut free in the initial sweeping. This was later compounded by the Germans air-dropping mines and sowing them at night from E-boats and coasters.

On 6 June, the landing craft USS LCI(L)-85, LCI(L)-91, LCI(L)-497, LCT-197, LCT-294, LCT-305, LCT-332, LCT-364, LCT-397, LCT-555, LCT-703 and destroyer HMS Wrestler all struck mines just off the beachhead and were lost.

The next day saw the loss of the Army transport ship USAT Francis C. Harrington, Navy transport USS Susan B. Anthony, landing craft LCI(L)-416, LCI(L)-436, LCI(L)-458, LCI(L)-489, LCI(L)-586, and the Auk-class minesweeper USS Tide (AM-125), all to the infernal devices. Meanwhile, the Allen Sumner-class destroyer USS Meredith (DD-726) was damaged by a mine and sunk the next day by a Luftwaffe bombing which split her in two.

Auk-class minesweeper USS Tide (AM-125) sinking off Utah Beach after striking a mine during the Normandy invasion, 7 June 1944. USS PT-509 and USS Pheasant (AM-61) are standing by. Photographed from USS Threat (AM-124). 80-G-651677

Auk-class minesweeper USS Tide (AM-125) sinking off Utah Beach after striking a mine during the Normandy invasion, 7 June 1944. USS PT-509 and USS Pheasant (AM-61) are standing by. Photographed from USS Threat (AM-124). 80-G-651677

On 8 June, the net layer HMS Minster was sunk by a mine off Utah Beach while the Buckley-class destroyer escort USS Rich (DE-695) struck two mines and sank in the English Channel off Normandy.

The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Rich (DE-695) strikes a mine, amidships, while operating off Normandy, France, on 8 June 1944. She had previously hit another mine, which blew off her stern. NH 44312

The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Rich (DE-695) strikes a mine, amidships, while operating off Normandy, France, on 8 June 1944. She had previously hit another mine, which blew off her stern. NH 44312

Through the end of the month, mines off Normandy would continue to claim another dozen landing craft and steamers, as well as the British RN destroyers HMS Fury and HMS Swift along with the Dido-class cruiser HMS Scylla, proving just how hazardous the belt laid by the Germans, had been. It is easy to forget, with the scale of Overlord, but mines caused one hell of a butcher’s bill in June 1944 off the French coast.

As for Osprey‘s sister ship, Raven would sweep at least 21 German and Italian naval mines on D-Day alone. She would survive the war and pass into mothballs with three battle stars to her credit.

Raven seen flanked in the 1946-47 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships, shown as a single outlier among 63 Auk-class and 106 Admirable-class minesweepers in U.S. service.

Raven seen flanked in the 1946-47 edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships, shown as a single outlier among 63 Auk-class and 106 Admirable-class minesweepers in U.S. service.

Struck in 1967, she was sunk as a target in deep water off the coast of southern California.

As noted by DANFS, the name Osprey was assigned to AM-406 on 17 May 1945, but the construction of that ship was canceled just three months later with the end of the war.

Osprey would go on to grace the hulls of two later U.S. Navy minecraft: AMS-28, a small YMS-1-class minesweeper which served in Korea where she prepared a firing base anchorage for the big guns of the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63) at the Inchon landings– a true namesake to her predecessor– and MHC-51, the lead ship of late Cold War Osprey-class coastal mine hunters.

Four U.S. Navy minesweepers (AMS) tied up at Yokosuka, Japan, following mine clearance activities off Korea. Original photo is dated 30 November 1950. These four ships, all units of Mine Division 31, are (from left to right): USS Merganser (AMS-26); USS Osprey (AMS-28); USS Chatterer (AMS-40) and USS Mockingbird (AMS-27). Ship in the extreme left background is USS Wantuck (APD-125). Official U.S. Navy Photograph 80-G-424597, now in the collections of the National Archives.

Four U.S. Navy minesweepers (AMS) tied up at Yokosuka, Japan, following mine clearance activities off Korea. The original photo is dated 30 November 1950. These four ships, all units of Mine Division 31, are (from left to right): USS Merganser (AMS-26); USS Osprey (AMS-28); USS Chatterer (AMS-40) and USS Mockingbird (AMS-27). Ship in the extreme left background is USS Wantuck (APD-125). Official U.S. Navy Photograph 80-G-424597, now in the collections of the National Archives.

USS Osprey (MHC-51), a coastal minehunter in commission from 1993 to 2006. Of note, one of her sister ships was USS Raven (MHC-61), a familiar name on her family tree. NHHC L45-221.03.01

As for our D-Day Osprey, her bell surfaced some time ago, but I believe is in private hands in the UK.

USS Osprey ships bell Ivan Warren Michelle Mary Fishing & Diving Charters 2007 via wrecksite.eu

USS Osprey ships bell, via Ivan Warren Michelle Mary Fishing & Diving Charters in 2007, via wrecksite.eu

Still, if it had not been for Osprey and those like her, the Longest Day could have proved even longer.

Specs:

USS Osprey (AM-56) Off the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 19 April 194119-N-23989

USS Osprey (AM-56) Off the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, 19 April 194119-N-23989

Displacement: 810 tons, 1040 tons full load
Length: 220 ft 6 in overall, 215 w.l.
Beam: 32 ft 2 in
Draft: 9 ft 4 in mean
Machinery: Diesel, 2 shafts, 1,800 BHP
Speed: 18 knots
Complement:105 officers and men
Armament:
2 × 3″/50 caliber guns
2 × 40 mm AA guns
8 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannons (added 1942)
2 × depth charge tracks (added 1941)

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!