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Warship Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017: Not just a figurehead

Posted on December 20, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

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

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2017: Not just a figurehead

LOC Photo

Here we see the one-of-a-kind full-rigged sail training ship Joseph Conrad in her career as a U.S. Merchant Marine schoolship during World War II where she minted enough new bluejackets to man a veritable fleet. Like her namesake, she has been around the world and sailed the seven seas.

“There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea,” said Polish-born British author and longtime seaman Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) in the first paragraph of chapter two of his 1900 novel, Lord Jim, which revolves around the abandonment of a stricken ship in distress.

Our ship was crafted in 1882, four years after Conrad, born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, joined the British merchant marine. Our subject vessel, of course, wasn’t named for Conrad from the start– at the time he was but a lowly second-mate on the old barque Palestine— which he later immortalized as Judea in his short story “Youth.”

No, our vessel was built by Burmeister & Wain, København, Denmark, specifically for the Stiftelsen Georg Stages Minde foundation (which is still around) to be employed as a sailing schoolship. Founded the same year by wealthy shipowner Frederik Stage to train youth for a life at sea, the foundation and their flagship were named for their son, Georg, who had died from tuberculosis two years prior.

Some 100-feet long (111-oal) with a displacement of just 400 tons, Georg Stages was a small ship for high seas mercantile service to be sure, but she was very accommodating and perfect for use in training as many as 80 cadets at a time, stretching 10,000 sq. ft. of sail as she went.

She was generally a happy vessel. From 1882 until 1934, a period that covered the Great War, during which Denmark walked a thin and often dangerous line of neutrality, Stages reportedly trained more than 4,000 young men in the art of working aloft, on deck, and below while underway.

She also survived an accidental collision with the English steamship Ancona in Hollænderdybet. The collision resulted in Georg Stage sinking, causing the deaths of 22 cadet sailors.

Sold in agreement with the Handelsradet (Danish Board of Trade) to one Capt. Alan Villiers and company, she was renamed Joseph Conrad and registered with Lloyds under a British flag.

Villers, an Australian-born author (of at least 44 published books) mariner (CDR in the RNVR during WWII after first going to sea on a merchantman at age 15), and overall adventurer, he gave the aging ship– which had been destined for the breakers– a quick refit and signed a 32-strong amateur crew of lads to sail her around the world on an epic voyage that took nearly two years and rounded both Cape Horn one way and the Cape of Good Hope the other.

Conrad figurehead installed by Villiers, Photograph by Alan Villiers via the Greenwich National Maritime Museum. The Danes kept the figurehead for the Georg Stage, and it has been sailing on a new ship of the same name for the Foundation since 1934, though it has recently been reconditioned.

Three-masted ship JOSEPH CONRAD was underway in December 1935 during her round-the-world cruise. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.

JOSEPH CONRAD at anchor, Sydney Harbor December 1935. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.

JOSEPH CONRAD in Sydney Harbor Dec 1935. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.

Three-masted ship JOSEPH CONRAD leaving Sydney Harbor Dec 18, 1935. This photo is part of the Australian National Maritime Museum’s William Hall collection.

When he was done, Villiers wrote two books about the 57,000-mile cruise– Cruise of the Conrad and Stormalong, both classics of maritime lit.

Moving on to other adventures in Arabia, in 1936 a bankrupt Villiers sold Joseph Conrad to George Huntington Hartford, the 25-year-old heir to the A&P supermarket fortune. Hartford converted the ship to an American-flagged yacht, added a diesel engine (“iron topsail”), and sailed her until the beginning of World War II.

Hartford, a different kind of patriot that what is afloat these days in the business world, promptly donated Conrad to the U.S. Maritime Commission for use as they saw fit, sought out a commission in the Coast Guard and later commanded a Mister Roberts-style Army supply ship— FS-179 — during the Pacific War.

Conrad would be used to train seamen for the merchant service. From the United States Maritime Commission Report to Congress for the Period Ended October 25, 1939:

There, at St. Petersburg’s Coast Guard wharf, USMSTS Joseph Conrad became the centerpiece of the brand new U.S. Maritime Service Training Station, arriving in November to later be joined by the old white-hulled training ship Tusitala (which maintained the school for cooks and bakers), the tugs Tickfaw and Morganza for training coal-burning firemen, SS Vigil for enginemen, and American Sailor for advanced training.

Conrad held school in basic training and schools that lasted up to eight weeks in good old Division 01-style deck work.

US Navy SNJ Texan training aircraft making a low-level pass near a three-masted sailing ship Joseph Conrad, photo taken in 1942.

Apprentice seamen in the United States Maritime Service manning the yards on the square-rigged training ship Joseph Conrad via LOC

Saint Petersburg, Florida. Trainees walking the anchor up of the training ship Joseph Conrad at the United States Maritime Service training station, 1943. LOC

Saint Petersburg, Florida. Enrollees march to class at the masts of the training ship Joseph Conrad in the background. LOC

Apprentice seamen in the United States Maritime Service manning the yards on the square-rigged training ship Joseph Conrad. LOC

Trainees at the United States Maritime Service training station handling a lifeboat in an abandon ship drill– note the Joseph Conrad. NARA

In all, more than 25,000 merchant seamen learned their trade at St. Petersburg’s Bayboro Harbor between 1939 and 1945, with most of them at one point or another walking Conrad‘s decks. Today, the facility is incorporated into the University of South Florida.

For Conrad, VJ Day looked like the end was once more upon her. She had spent 52 years working for the Danes, sailed around the world with a scratch crew, was a young yachtsman’s pride and joy, and spent 6 more years working for Uncle Sam.

However, Mystic Seaport, one of the nation’s leading maritime museums, reached out to add the hard-used Conrad to their extensive collection. In July 1947, the 80th Congress agreed with the caveat that St. Petersburg get the ship back if they couldn’t handle her.

Today, Mystic Seaport still has both the old girl’s records and her, and, though she does not sail anymore, Conrad remains very much in use as a training ship for the Mystic Mariner Program, and the Museum’s educational programs.

Joseph-Conrad via Mystic Seaport Museum

According to the museum, since 1949, the Joseph Conrad Summer Sailing Camp has been the overnight summer camp of choice for more than 350 campers annually.

Mr. Conrad would likely be proud.

Specs:

Length 30.7 m (100.8 ft.)
Beam 7.7 m (25.2 ft.)
Draft 3.3 m (11.0 ft.)
GRT 203
NRT 149

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

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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.

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

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Warship Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017: Who touches me is broken

Posted on December 13, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland 4 comments

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017: Who touches me is broken

Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205119997

Here we see the Renown-class 15in gun battlecruiser HMS Repulse of the Royal Navy sailing as part of Force Z from Singapore, 8 December 1941, the day WWII expanded to the Pacific in a big way with the entrance of the Empire of Japan to the conflict. Just 48 hours later, some 76 years ago this week and just three days after Pearl Harbor, Japanese aircraft caught Repulse and the new King George V-class battleship Prince of Wales in the South China Sea, unsupported and unable to resist the onslaught.

Originally part of the eight planned “R” type battleships of the Revenge-class, big 33,500-ton vessels with 8 15-in/42 cal guns, 13-inches of armor and a top speed of 21-knots on a 26,500shp plant, the last two of the class were carved off and improved upon a good bit. These ships, Renown and Repulse had much more power (126,000shp on 42 glowing boilers!) while sacrificing both armor (at their thickest point just 10 inches) and guns (six 15-inch Mark Is rather than 8). But what these two redesigned battlecruisers brought was speed– Renown making an amazing 32.58kts on builder’s trials, a speed not bested for a capital ship for almost a half-decade until the one-off HMS Hood reached the fleet in 1920.

HMS Renown and HMS Repulse in 1926, what beautiful ships

Our ship had a storied name indeed and was the 10th RN ship to carry the name introduced first for a 50-gun galleon in 1595 and last for a Royal Sovereign-class pre-dreadnought sold in 1911, earning a combined total of 7 battle honors between them. Her motto: Qui Tangit Frangitur (Who touches me is broken.)

Both Renown and Repulse were laid down on the same day– 25 January 1915, five months into the Great War, at two different yards. Repulse, built by John Brown, Clydebank, in Scotland, was the first one complete, commissioned 18 August 1916, just six weeks too late for Jutland.

Conning tower and forward turrets with 15-inch guns of HMS Repulse at John Brown & Co_s Clydebank yard, August 1916 National Records of Scotland, UCS1-118-443-295

HMS Repulse, Rowena, Romola and Erebus at the John Browns shipyard at Clydebank in July 1916.

THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR (Q 18131) British battle cruiser HMS Repulse. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205252642

THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR (Q 74265) Battlecruiser HMS Repulse below the Forth Bridge. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205319053

Battlecruiser Repulse view of the tank and the compass platform

Repulse became the first capital ship to carry an aircraft, mounting a tiny 800-pound Sopwith Pup on two bullshit looking flying off platforms from her “B” and “Y” turrets in September.

Sopwith Pup N6459 sits on a turret platform aboard HMS Repulse in October 1917

Repulse did get a chance to meet the Germans in combat, however, as the flagship of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron during the ineffective scrap of the Heligoland Bight on 17 November 1917 with RADM Richard F. Phillimore’s flag on her mast. The most severe damage done to the stronger German force under RADM Ludwig von Reuter was when one of the Repulse‘s 15-inch shells hit on the light cruiser SMS Königsberg, igniting a major fire on board.

Win one for the Repulse!

She later finished the war uneventfully but was on hand at the surrender of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow.

Post-war, Repulse was extensively rebuilt with some 4,500-tons of additional armor and torpedo bulges, drawing on lessons learned about how disaster-prone battlecruisers are in combat (“There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”) against battleships and submarines. This gave her a distinctive difference from her sister for years until Renown got the same treatment. This process is extensively documented by Ivan Gogin over at Navypedia.

She joined the brand-new HMS Hood and five “D” class cruisers in 1923-24 as part of the “Special Service Squadron” to wave the Royal Ensign in a round-the-world cruise that saw her visit several far-flung Crown Colonies as well as the U.S and Canada.

HMS Repulse entering Vancouver Harbor, as part of her round-the-world cruise in 1924 with HMS Hood

HMS Repulse off the coast of Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, on 12 June 1924. Photographed from an aircraft flying out of Naval Air Station Pearl Harbor. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 57164

Photographed through a porthole, circa 1922-24. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 525-A

In 1925, Repulse undertook Royal Visits to Portugal, South Africa and east coast of South America with Prince of Wales then largely spent the next 10 years in a reduced status with up to a third of her crew on furlough, though she put to sea for a number of exercises to give a good show between yard periods and a lengthy reconstruction.

HMS Repulse Firing her 15-inch guns during maneuvers off Portland, England, circa the later 1920s. The next ship astern is sister HMS Renown. Photographed from HMS Hood. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 57181

HMS Repulse leading other Royal Navy capital ships during maneuvers, circa the later 1920s. The next ship astern is HMS Renown. The extensive external side armor of Repulse and the larger bulge of Renown allow these ships to be readily differentiated. Photograph by Underwood & Underwood. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 57183

She also picked up some deck-mounted torpedo tubes, always a waste on a capital ship!

Back to work after 1935, she was a common sight in the Med, protecting British interests.

HMS REPULSE (FL 12340) Underway. May 1936. She was serving extensively off Spain in this period during the Spanish Civil War. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205166001

1938- British Renown-class battlecruiser HMS REPULSE after 1930’s reconstruction leaving Portsmouth.

Renown Class Battlecruiser HMS Repulse at Haifa, July13th and 14th 1938. Note the extensive hot weather awnings over her decks in this image and the below.

HMS Repulse, from the stern, as a Royal Marine in tropical kit stands guard with a bayonet-affixed SMLE during her visit to Palestine in 1938. That pith helmet, tho!

Assigned to the Home Fleet at the outbreak of WWII, she sailed first for Halifax to provide cover in the western north Atlantic for HX and SC convoys then returned to the UK in early 1940 to screen the Northern Patrol and the Norwegian convoys, later operating off Norway itself, primarily in the Lofoten Islands, during the campaign there, just missing a chance to sink the cruiser Adm. Hipper.

Repulse then formed part of Force A, intended to block German surface raiders including Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as well as a variety of lesser cruisers from massacring Atlantic convoys.

She got a break in late 1940 with a refit at Rosyth where these great images were taken.

‘JACK OF ALL TRADES’. 1940, ON BOARD HMS REPULSE DURING HER REFIT IN DRY DOCK. (A 1337) Signalman May of HMS REPULSE repairing flags while in harbor. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205135733

TYPES OF SEAMEN. 1940, ON BOARD HMS REPULSE DURING HER REFIT. (A 1339) This Seaman, who has grown a beard since joining the Navy, is known on board as the ‘Bearded Gunner’. Here he is shouldering a 4-inch shell. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205135735

By March 1941, Repulse was assigned to Force H in the Med, and dispatched to Gibraltar where she would help shepherd Freetown convoys. However, in May the great German battleship Bismarck broke out into the Atlantic and Repulse took part in the effort to run her to ground– though she never contacted the Germans.

Then, Churchill decided that HMS Prince of Wales, who did get in some licks on Bismarck, along with Repulse would be a terrific addition to bolster the defenses of Singapore against a lot of noise the Japanese– who had just taken over nearby French Indochina– were making.

THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR (A 6793) The battlecruiser HMS REPULSE, painted in a dazzle camouflage scheme, while escorting the last troop convoy to reach Singapore. Copyright: � IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205119433

British troop reinforcements come ashore at Singapore, November 1941 escorted by Repulse and Prince of Wales. These men would soon become Japanese prisoners of war.

When the Japanese entered the war with a vengeance, enemy troop convoys were spotted, and landings made at Kuantan in Malaysia– with Force Z directed to intercept. Bird-dogged by two Japanese submarines, the Japanese 22nd Air Flotilla, based out of the French facilities at Saigon, tracked the woefully unprepared British ships and some 90~ G3M “Nell” and GM4 “Betty” bombers soon took to the air to erase the Royal Navy from the Pacific on 10 December.

It was a slow-motion slaughter that lasted for hours as the aircraft hounded the British ships.

At approximately 12:30 midday, the battlecruiser Repulse which had dodged 19 torpedoes so far, finally rolled over, within six minutes of three simultaneous hits. At the same time the relatively new battleship Prince of Wales also took three torpedoes – leaving her in a dire situation. With a torpedo having already taken out two shafts earlier in the attack, she was now left with just one. With this and, incredibly, north of 10,000 tonnes of unwelcome seawater aboard, her speed was massively reduced. However, not yet slain her crew took up the fight with high level bombers as she clawed her way home. From that final wave of attackers, one 500lb bomb came to be the final nail and slowly rolling over to port, she settled by the head and sank at 13:18.

THE LOSS OF HMS PRINCE OF WALES AND REPULSE 10 DECEMBER 1941 (HU 2762) A heavily retouched Japanese photograph of HMS PRINCE OF WALES (upper) and REPULSE (lower) after being hit by Japanese torpedoes on 10 December 1941, off Malaya. A British destroyer can also be seen in the foreground. The sinkings were an appalling blow to British prestige. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205023031

THE SINKING OF HMS REPULSE AND HMS PRINCE OF WALES, DECEMBER 1941 (HU 2763) A Japanese aerial photograph showing HMS PRINCE OF WALES (top) and HMS REPULSE during the early stages of the attack in which they were sunk. HMS REPULSE had just been hit for the first time (12.20 hours). Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205022172

“Sea Battle off Malaya” Description: Photo #: SC 301094 Sea Battle off Malaya Japanese war art painting by Nakamura Kanichi, 1942, depicting Japanese Navy aircraft making successful torpedo attacks on the British battleship Prince of Wales (center) and battlecruiser Repulse (left) on 10 December 1941. Planes shown include Betty bombers. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives. Catalog #: SC 301094

In all, around 840 of HMs officers and men – including the task force commander Adm. Sir Thomas Spencer Vaughan “Tom” Phillips GBE, KCB, DSO, and flagship captain John Leach – lost their lives. The Japanese lost six aircraft and 18 aircrew. A squadron of land-based RAAF Brewster Buffalos, which were crap fighters compared to Zeroes but still could have fought off the lumbering twin-engine Japanese bombers, arrived after both ships were on the bottom. Four escorting destroyers, HMS Electra, Express, Vampire, and Tenedos, managed to pick up over 1,000 survivors.

Prince of Wales and Repulse were the first capital ships to be sunk at sea by aircraft alone, smothered in a wave of no less than 49 air-launched torpedoes, about 20 percent of which hit home. It was the final nail in the coffin in the air power vs the all-gun big warship debate following (ironically) the British raid on Taranto in November 1940 and, of course, Pearl Harbor. In the 13 months spanning these three engagements, there was a paradigm shift in naval warfare that found battleships on the bad end of the stick.

Of the attack, Winston Churchill said, “In all the war I never received a more direct shock. As I turned and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American capital ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbor who were hastening back to California. Over this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme and we everywhere were weak and naked.”

As for her crew, the survivors were scattered to the wind and continued as best they could once reaching dry land again, many winding up as prisoners of war when Singapore fell in Febuary 1942, a fate which some did not survive.

Repulse’s captain, Bill Tennant, survived the sinking and was not lost at Singapore, later going on to become one of the architects of the Normandy invasion, aiding in the setup of the Mulberry harbors and the Pluto pipelines. Sir William retired as an Admiral in 1949 and lived to the age of 73 and his earlier exploits during the miracle at Dunkirk before he arrived on Repulse were portrayed in large part by Kenneth Branagh in that recent film.

In 1945, when a major British fleet returned to the Pacific looking for a little payback and to take back Singapore and Hong Kong, it was centered around six heavily armored fleet carriers, escorted by a force of modern battleships slathered in AAA defenses– to include two sisters of Prince of Wales: HMS King George V and HMS Howe.

As for Repulse‘s own sister, Renown helped search for the pocket battleship SMS Admiral Graf Spee, traded fire with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, fought in the Med, covered the Torch Landings in North Africa, carried Churchill to the Cairo Conference and even made it to Java by 1944 to plaster the Japanese in honor of her lost classmate. She lived on to be scrapped in 1948 after 32 years of very hard and faithful service.

Both Renown and Repulse had their names recycled for an 8th and 11th time respectively, in the 1960s as two of the four Resolution-class Polaris missile submarines in the Royal Navy. Those boombers are currently laid up at Rosyth dockyard with their used nuclear fuel removed after three decades of deterrent patrols.

The 1941 loss of Repulse and Prince of Wales is still painfully remembered in the Royal Navy today, akin to the loss of the USS Indianapolis or the USS Arizona in the U.S. Navy.

At 1324 on 10 December 1941, the King George V battleship HMS Prince of Wales sank, along with HMS Repulse, and the loss of 840 lives. #WeWillRememberThem https://t.co/m0eChY0ttg

— HMS Prince of Wales (@HMSPWLS) December 10, 2017

The wrecks of Repulse and Prince of Wales were discovered in the 1960s and have been extensively visited and memorialized over the years.

There is now a campaign to urge recovery of some of the more important artifacts from Repulse (Prince of Wales‘ bell was salvaged some years ago) to beat illegal scrappers to the punch. As reported by the Telegraph, “The massive bronze propellers disappeared sometime between September 2012 and May 2013, followed quickly by components made of other valuable ferrous metals, such as copper. The scavengers have since turned their attention to blocks of steel and high-grade aluminum.”

And of course, she is remembered in maritime art across three continents.

Collinson, Basil; HMS ‘Repulse’, Sunk 10 December 1941; Royal Marines Museum; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/hms-repulse-sunk-10-december-1941-25157

Repulse, sketched at Colombo in 1941, on the way to her fate with destiny. Via the Laurier Centre for Military, Strategic and Disarmament Studies.

HMS Repulse & HMS Prince of Wales

Freedman, Barnett; 15-Inch Gun Turret, HMS ‘Repulse’; IWM (Imperial War Museums); http://www.artuk.org/artworks/15-inch-gun-turret-hms-repulse-6934

Specs:

Displacement:
27,200 long tons (27,600 t) (normal)
32,220 long tons (32,740 t) (deep load)
35,000 full (1941)
Length:
750 ft. 2 in p.p., 794 ft. 1.5 in (oa.)
Beam: 90 ft. 1.75 in
Draught: 27 ft. (33 at FL)
Installed power: 112,000 shp (84,000 kW)
Propulsion:
4 × shafts, 2 × Brown-Curtis steam turbines steam turbine sets,
42 × Babcock & Wilcox boilers water-tube boilers
Fuel: 4243 tons oil for 4700nm range @12kts.
Speed: 31.5 knots (28 by 1939)
Crew: 967 (designed) 1,222 (1919) 1,250 (1939)
Armor:
Belt: 3–6 in (76–152 mm) (later increased to 9-inches)
Decks: 1–2.5 in (25–64 mm) (later increased to 4-inches)
Barbettes: 4–7 in (102–178 mm)
Gun turrets: 7–9 in (178–229 mm)
Conning tower: 10 in (254 mm)
Bulkheads: 3–4 in (76–102 mm)
Aircraft carried: 2 Sopwith Pups (1917-20) 4 Sea Walrus (1936)
Armament: (1916)
3 × 2 – 15-inch (381 mm) guns
6 × 3, 2 × 1 – 4-inch (102 mm) guns
2 × 1 – 3-inch (76 mm) anti-aircraft guns
1x 3pdr Hotchkiss Mk I 47mm
2 × 1 – submerged 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armament: (1939)
3 × 2 – 15-inch (381 mm) guns
4 × 3 – 4-inch (102 mm) guns
6 × 1 – 102/45 QF Mk V
2 × 8 – 40mm (1.6 in) 2pdr QF Mk VIII “pom-pom” AA guns
4×4- Quad Vickers .50 cal mounts
8 × 21 in (530 mm) Mk II torpedo tubes

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

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!

Ward, who fired Pearl Harbor’s first shot, located after 73 years

Posted on December 7, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

New video in from the Philippines of Paul Allen’s RV Petrel exploring and documenting the remains of the Wickes-class destroyer, USS Ward (DD-139/APD-16).

USS Ward fired the first American shot in World War II on December 7, 1941, and of course is a past Warship Wednesday alumnus.

In a twist of fate, she was lost December 7, 1944, in Ormoc Bay and is now found and announced to the world again on that, now hallowed, date.

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017: The Emperor’s last battlewagon

Posted on December 6, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

Warship Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017: The Emperor’s last battlewagon

Catalog #: NH 2716

Here we see the lead ship of her class of fast super-dreadnoughts, the HIJMS Nagato photographed at the time of her completion. Ordered 100 years ago this August, she was Japan’s first battleship entirely planned and built domestically after generations of relying on British and American yards and firms. She would also be the Empire’s final battleship on active duty.

Designed in response to the British Queen Elizabeth class (35,000-tons, 24 kts, 8×15″/42 cal guns), Russian Gangut-class (28,000 tons, 24 kts, 12×12″/52 cal guns), and the U.S. New Mexico class battleships (32,000-tons, 21 kts, 12×14″/50 cal guns), the two ships of the Nagato-class (our subject and her sistership Mutsu) would be faster– capable of 26.5 knots on her Gihon geared steam turbines fed by 21 Kampon boilers– more heavily armed with eight 16.1″/45 cal 3-Shiki type guns, the first big ship guns designed wholly in Asia– and tip the scales at some 39,000-tons in her final configuration.

Laid down during WWI at Kure Naval Arsenal on 28 August 1917, Nagato is named for the historic castle-dotted province on the western end of Honshū. She was commissioned on 15 November 1920 while Mutsu, built at the same time in Yokosuka, joined the fleet the next year.

As detailed in the most excellent website Combined Fleets (go there NOW for a complete rundown of Nagato‘s movements as well as anything about the Imperial Japanese Navy you are curious about) during her speed trial at Sukumo Bight, Nagato beat the world record for a battleship and made first 26.443 and then 26.7 knots and when commissioned became a flagship– and the first battleship in the world in service with 16.1-inch guns.

Her peacetime service was relatively happy and she was visited and toured not only by the Emperor several times but also by King Edward VIII and German aircraft designer Ernst Heinkel, while Crown Prince Takamatsu Nobuhito served aboard her as a midshipman, as befitting her role as showboat vessel.

Dignitaries aboard battleship Nagato, date unknown

In August 1922, she helped cover the withdrawal of the Japanese interventionist forces at Siberia after the Russian Civil War and the next year helped provide relief for the Great Kanto Earthquake.

1924, Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

NAGATO Starboard bow view leaving Hong Kong, 14 April 1928. Note the change in her funnel from the above 1924 image. Description: Catalog #: NH 90764

NAGATO Starboard quarter view taken between 1924 and 1934. Description: Catalog #: NH 90774

Japanese battleships Fuso (foreground), Nagato (center), and Mutsu (background) at Mitajiri, Japan, 1928

Between 1932-36, pushing about 15 years of service, she was modernized at Kure Naval Arsenal, her birthplace, where her bow was lengthened and modified, and she was given the more modern turrets from the unfinished battleships Kaga and Tosa— not completed due to the London and Washington Naval Treaties while a smaller battery of 76mm guns was replaced with 127mm rapid-fire models.

Her suite was replaced, and her topside arrangement changed significantly, losing a funnel and picking up a reshaped superstructure. At the same time, her electronics were revamped, and rangefinders updated. Her torpedo tubes, never really a serious weapon for a battleship, were removed but she picked up anti-torpedo bulges as well as a catapult and facilities for seaplanes, for which she would later carry a trio of Nakajima E8N1 Type 95 (“Dave”) floatplanes.

War was coming.

Battleship Nagato fires her main guns during an exercise in Sukumo Bay, Japan. 21 May 1936.

In 1937, she carried 1,700 Imperial troops to active combat in Manchuria.

In 1938, as tensions increased, both Nagato and Mutsu gained a battery of 40mm and 25mm AAA guns.

NAGATO. The view is taken in Tsingtao, China, in the late 1930s. See how different her profile is from 1928 and 1924. Description: Catalog #: NH 82477

As part of the Combined Fleet’s BatDiv 1, Nagato was the flagship of Adm. Yamamoto for Operation Z, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and, along with her sister and four other Japanese battleships, escorted the carriers to Hawaii for that day which will live in infamy, arriving back at Hashirajima on 13 December 1941.

Chief of Staff Matome Ugaki, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, liaison staff officer Shigeru Fujii, and administrative officer Yasuji Watanabe aboard battleship Nagato, the early 1940s

Nagato never made it closer than 350 miles from Hawaii’s coast, but her role as the command and control ship for the operation was pivotal.

For the next six months, while most Japanese battleships were engaged in the Philippines, Malaysia, and the Dutch East Indies, Nagato remained in the Home Islands and served as a host to Prince Takamatsu’s headquarters (who was at that point a Captain). She then sortied out for the first time since Pearl Harbor to cover Nagumo’s carriers at Midway in June 1942, ending that operation by housing survivors from the carrier Kaga— whose turrets she ironically carried.

Back to Japan for another year as the war went on without her, the eternal flagship was not ordered out of the Home Islands again until August 1943 when she carried men and supplies to the outpost at Truk, where she remained until February 1944.

Her luck endured, and she was able to escape interaction with the Allied forces in the Pacific until her assignment to Operation “A-GO” in June 1944, a debacle that turned into what is now known as the Battle of the Philippine Sea, escorting carriers Jun’yō, Hiyō and Ryūhō. She would later pick up survivors of the Hiyō, though she did go down in ordnance history as firing 16.1-inch Sankaidan shrapnel shells at incoming U.S. Navy bombers.

She withdrew to Borneo to await round II.

Japanese Battleships at Brunei, Borneo, October 1944 Description: Photographed just before the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Ships are, from left to right: Musashi, Yamato, a cruiser, and Nagato. Courtesy of Mr. Kazutoshi Hando, 1970. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 73090

Musashi, Yamato, a cruiser, and Nagato at Brunei, Borneo. Oct 1944. At this point in the war, this was arguably the last untouched reserve in the Imperial Japanese Navy

By October, as part of the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, Nagato and the battleships Yamato, Kongō, and Haruna along with eight cruisers, came across Task Unit 77.4.3 (“Taffy 3”), commanded by RADM Clifton “Ziggy” Sprague, off Samar Island. Taffy 3 had six small escort carriers screened by seven destroyers/destroyer escorts. With a lopsided surface action looming and the option to run and leave the beachhead undefended not an option, Sprague directed his carriers to turn to launch their aircraft and then withdraw towards the east while the tin cans took on the Japanese battleships.

While Nagato‘s gunnery was deemed by most accounts in the battle to be ineffective, at the end of the almost three-hour melee Sprague lost four ships—the destroyers Johnston and Hoel, the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, and the escort carrier Gambier Bay— to naval gunfire while the Japanese traded severe damage to the battleship Haruna and four of their own cruisers but were forced to retire. Nagato came away from Leyte Gulf with five bomb hits and about 150 casualties.

Japanese battleship NAGATO firing 16.1-inch shrapnel “Sanshiki” beehive shells at attacking planes, during the battle of Sibuyan Sea, 24 October 1944. #: 80-G-272557

Battle off Samar, 25 October 1944 Description: Watercolor by Commander Dwight C. Shepler, USNR, depicting the counterattack by the escort carrier group’s screen. Ships present are (L-R): Japanese battleships Nagato, Haruna, and Yamato, with a salvo from Yamato landing in the left center; USS Heerman (DD-532), USS Hoel (DD-533) sinking; Japanese cruisers Tone and Chikuma. Note: the original watercolor was commissioned specifically for the dust jacket of Samuel Eliot Morison’s “History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II,” Volume XII, and reprinted in Volume XV of the same work. The painting was missing in 1973, so this photograph was made from the reproduction in the latter volume. Accession #: NH Catalog #: NH 79033-KN

Nagato returned to Yokosuka in November and remained there, largely an inactive floating anti-aircraft battery on shore power, for the rest of the war as the *last Japanese battleship still afloat. Her sister Mutsu was lost to an internal explosion in 1943 while the other 10 battleships in the Combined Fleet all went to the bottom between November 1942 (Hiei) and November 1944 (Kongo). (*the three hybrid battleship/carrier conversions Haruna, Ise, and Hyuga, largely immobile, were still “afloat” as late as July 1945 when they were sunk or foundered at their moorings after U.S. air attacks, but almost totally inactive as was the converted target, the old battleship Settsu).

The scheme was used on the battleship NAGATO while moored at Yokosuka, from February 1945. Description: Catalog #: NH 82542

On August 30, 1945, as the official surrender loomed, Nagato was secured by the U.S. Navy under the guns of the USS Iowa with the ship’s XO, CPT. Cornelius Flynn, taking command of the prize crew.

USS New Jersey and IJN Nagato in the SAME photo 30 December 1945

Nagato, Nov. 1945 Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Her flags were captured, with several making their way to the U.S., including one that was at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans for a while.

31 August 1945, a boarding party from USS South Dakota (BB-57) took possession of the battleship Nagato and replaced the Japanese flag with a U.S. ensign.

The crew of USS South Dakota (BB-57) and President George HW Bush with the NAGATO flag at a 2004 reunion in New Orleans during a Saints game at the Superdome. Saints owner Tom Benson, to the President’s left, served on SoDak after WWII before she was decommissioned. NHHC Accession #: UA 474

Nagato was then given front row seats at the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll the next summer. She was just under a mile from the Test Able blast and about 950-yards from the underwater 40kt Test Baker, sinking five days after riding the tsunami of the latter.

She is at the base of the mushroom

Note how wrecked she is

The battered superstructure of battleship Nagato after the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb test, 1946.

88-169-e Painting, Watercolor on Paper; by Arthur Beaumont; 1946; Unframed Dimensions 16H X 20W “Former Japanese battleship Nagato after Baker blast”

“The former Japanese cruiser Sakawa sank in frothy green waters the day after test ABLE. Damaged battleships USS Nevada (BB-36) and Nagato are in the background.”

Another Arthur Beaumont watercolor. “A panoramic view of the fleet after test ABLE sketched from the bridge of USS Arkansas (BB-33). The ship in the middle is the scorched USS Nevada (BB-36), with Nagato behind and Sakawa sinking in the foreground.”

“The 32,000 Ton Japanese Battleship Nagato, sinking” Painting, Watercolor on Illustration Board; by Grant Powers; 1946; Unframed Dimensions 14H X 19W Accession #: 88-181-M

She rests on the bottom near USS Saratoga (CV-3) and USS Arkansas (BB-33). Just 100~ feet down, her hull is a hot spot for scuba divers worldwide.

Since her loss, the Japanese have erected a shrine to her, and Yamato.

While one of her Kaigun ensigns is on display at the Yamato museum:

Another Imperial Japanese Navy flag recovered from Nagato by a Sailor assigned to high-speed transport USS Horace A. Bass (APD 124) in 1945 was donated to the National Park Service last year at the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center while a third, which had been on display at the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor, was sent back to Nagaoka city, Japan last month in an emotional ceremony.

“It was extremely important for us to make a connection with Nagaoka city and to return the flag from the Missouri to its rightful home,” said Mike Carr, USS Missouri Memorial Association.

Specs:

NH 111614 Japanese battleship H.I.J.M.S. NAGATO plans. March 1943

Displacement: 32,720 metric tons (32,200 long tons) (standard), 39,000 full (1944)
Length: 708 ft. 0 in (lengthened to 738 by 1936)
Beam: 95 ft. 3 in (111 by 1936)
Draft: 29 ft. 9 in (32 by 1944)
Installed power:
80,000 shp
21 × water-tube boilers (replaced by 10 in 1934)
Propulsion:
4 shafts
4 × steam turbines
Speed: 26.5 knots when built, 24 by 1940, 10 by 1945
Range: 5,500 nmi at 16 knots
Complement: 1,333 (1,800 by 1944)
Sensors (1943)
1 × Type 21-go air search radar
2 × Type 13-go early warning radars
2 × Type 22-go surface search radars
Armor:
Waterline belt: 305–100 mm (12.0–3.9 in)
Deck: 69 mm (2.7 in) + 75 mm (3.0 in)
Gun turrets: 356–190 mm (14.0–7.5 in)
Barbettes: 305 mm (12.0 in)
Conning tower: 369 mm (14.5 in)
Armament:
(1920)
4 × twin 41 cm guns
20 × single 14 cm guns
4 × single 76 mm AA guns
8 × 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes
(1943)
4 × twin 41 cm guns
18 × single 14 cm guns
4 × twin 127 mm (5 in)/40 DP guns
98 × 25 mm (1 in) AA guns
Aircraft carried (after 1936) 3 floatplanes, 1 catapult

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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017: The bruised-up U-boat bruiser of the Outer Banks

Posted on November 29, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2017: The bruised-up U-boat bruiser of the Outer Banks

Photo NOAA

Here we see the brand-new steel-hulled fishing boat Cohasset in Feb. 1942, just before she assumed her military guise as U.S. Navy Patrol Vessel, District (YP) #389, an anti-submarine trawler, and sailed off into a fateful, if one-sided battle.

Laid down at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts for R. O’Brien and Company of Boston as hull #1512 along with three sister ships on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II, the 110-foot trawler was meant to ply the fishing grounds off Gloucester and the Georges Bank.

R. O’Brien was reportedly a top-notch operation, and one of the first in the country to equip their whole fleet with R/T sets in the 1930s, and they landed in excess of 20 million pounds annual catch at the canneries in the area.

When war seemed unavoidable, the four new boats were quickly evaluated to be useful to the Navy and on 6 December 1940 the sister trawlers Salem, Lynn, Weymouth and Cohasset were signed over to the federal government in lieu of taxes by O’Brien and delivered under their ordered names as they were completed throughout October and November 1941. Cohasset was taken into custody by the Navy in February 1942 as a coastal minesweeper, USS AMc-202. This was changed to YP-389 on 1 May and she was refitted into a patrol craft at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Armed with a single 3″/23cal deck gun taken from naval stores, two Great War-era. 30 cal. Lewis machine guns, six depth charges on a gravity rack and assorted small arms, she was placed under command of one LT. R.J. Philips, USNR who sailed her with a crew that consisted of two ensigns and 21 enlisted (none higher than a PO1) with a mission to keep the U-boats terrorizing the Eastern Seaboard at bay– though she did not have sonar, ASDIC or a listening device of any kind.

(List of USS YP-389 crew and their disposition after the events of 19 June, 1942. Courtesy the National Archives)

In June 1942, USS YP-389 headed south to North Carolina with the primary duty to patrol the Hatteras minefield on her economic 6-cylinder diesels– just 9 knots when wide open.

There, in the predawn hours of 19 June, she came across Kptlt. Horst Degen’s Type VIIIC submarine, U-701, of 3. Unterseebootsflottille operating out of the pens at La Pallice, France.

The battle should have been over before it started, as the patrol boat’s 3-inch popgun was out of operation with a broken firing pin and Degen’s 88mm and 20mm guns far out-ranged the 389‘s Lewis guns. Still, the surface action took place over a 90-minute period and saw the small patrol craft resort to dropping their depth charges set as shallow as possible in the U-boat’s path in an unsuccessful effort to crack its hull.

In the end, the trawler-turned-fighter was holed several times and sank in 320-feet of water, carrying five of her crew with her to Davy Jones’ Locker some five miles off Diamond Shoals. The crew of YP-389 had fired more than 24 drums from her Lewis gun as the gunners took cover behind trawling winches, answered by 50 shells of 88mm. In all, she had been in the Navy for just five months, most of that undergoing conversion.

The 18 survivors and one body floated overnight, with no life rafts or lifebelts, until they were rescued by Coast Guard picket boats (CG-462 and CG-486) the next morning. Four required treatment at Norfolk Naval Hospital.

In 1948, a Naval Board found that her sinking was in large part avoidable, as she was ill-fitted and suited for the detail assigned to her and, in effect, never should have been there.

Here is how Degen described the action to Navy interrogators a few weeks later:

On the night of June 17, U-701 surfaced off Cape Hatteras close to a U-boat chaser which challenged her with a series of B’s from a signal lamp. Thinking he was going to be rammed, Degen put about and drew away, without answering the challenge. The following day he saw what he thought was the same cutter escorting a tanker and a freighter in line ahead. Degen believed the cutter had made contact with him in passing, for as soon as the convoyed ships were out of range, the cutter returned and dropped depth charges near U-701. Degen said that on this occasion he did not hear the “ping” of Asdic.

The next night, June 19, U-701 surfaced off Cape Hatteras and again sighted what Degen took to be the same cutter. He opened fire with his 8.8 cm gun to which the cutter replied with machine-gun fire. U-701 expended a large number of shells. Apparently, the gun crew, groping over-anxiously in the dark, seized every available shell in the ready-use lockers without discrimination. Thus, fire was an unorthodox mixture of SAP, HE and incendiary shell, but it sank the cutter. Prisoners considered this a wasteful and “untidy” piece of work, and the captain gave the impression that he was ashamed of it.

Degen said he approached to look for survivors with the intention of putting them ashore, but he found none. He said he thought the crew made off in a boat. Prisoners gave the position of the attack as near the Diamond Shoals Lightship Buoy.

The 389 was not the only YP lost during the war and no less than 36 were destroyed while at least 17 earned battle stars (one, USS YP-42, the ex-Coast Guard cutter Gallatin, picked up three battle stars on her own). Though many of those lost foundered in heavy weather, sank after collisions, or were written off due to grounding, a number matched our YP’s combat service:

YP-16 (ex-CG-267) lost in Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands
YP-17 (ex-CG-275) lost in Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands
YP-26 destroyed by undetermined explosion in the Canal Zone, Panama, 19 November 1942.
YP-97 lost due to Japanese occupation of the Philippine Islands
YP-235 destroyed by undetermined explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, 1 April 1943.
YP-277 scuttled to avoid capture east of Hawaii, 23 May 1942.
YP-284 (ex-San Diego tuna clipper Endeavor) sunk by surface ships off Guadalcanal, 25 Oct 1942.
YP-345 sunk southeast of Midway Island, 31 October 1942.
YP-346 sunk by surface ships in the South Pacific, 9 September 1942.
YP-405 destroyed by undetermined explosion in the Caribbean Sea, 20 November 1942.
YP-492 sunk off east Florida, 8 January 1943.

Cover art for David Bruhn’s book provisionally titled, “Yachts and Yippies: the U.S. Navy’s Patrol Yachts and Patrol Vessels.” The painting by Richard DeRosset, titled “Night Action off Tulagi”, depicts the destruction of USS YP-346 by the Japanese light cruiser HIJMS Sendai and three destroyers off Guadalcanal on 8 September 1942. Three Navy Crosses were awarded for this action. Via Navsource

As for U-701?

Commissioned 16 Jul 1941, her career lasted but 12 months and, after claiming YP-389 and 25,390 GRT of merchant ships, was herself sunk on 7 July 1942 off Cape Hatteras by depth charges from an A-29 Hudson patrol bomber of the 396th Bomb Sqn, taking 39 dead to the bottom in 100 feet of water. Degen and six survivors suffered at sea for two days and were taken into custody and interrogated by Naval Intelligence extensively.

U-701 (German Submarine) Survivors are rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, after their boat was sunk off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on 7 July 1942. She was lost just three weeks after she claimed YP-389, ironically just a few miles Diamond Shoals, where her victim rested. NH 96587

Horst Degen, Kapitänleutnant. C. O. U-701 as POW. U.S. Navy Photo

Known to researchers looking for the lost USS Monitor since the 1970s, in 2009, NOAA announced they had verified the wreck of YP-389, and documented the patrol boat and her combat as part of the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Photomosaic of USS YP-389 wreck site. Photo: NOAA, Monitor National Marine Sanctuary

U-701 rests near her and is a popular dive attraction in the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Both ships are protected.

Sonar visualization of the U-701 wreck site. Image ADUS, NOAA

Multibeam survey of U-701 wreck site taken by NOAA Ship Nancy Foster, 2016. Image NOAA

Diver taking images of U-701’s conning tower. Photo NOAA

Specs:

Displacement: 170 long tons (170 t)
Length: 110 ft. oal, 102.5 wl
Beam: 22.1 ft.
Propulsion: 4 6cyl diesel engines, 1 × screw
Speed: 9 kts, max.
Crew: 3 officers, 21 enlisted (1942)
Armament:
1 × 3 in (76 mm)/23 cal dual purpose gun (broken)
2 × .30 cal (7.62 mm) Lewis light machine guns
6 depth charges
small arms

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

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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017: The big Hawaiian Swede

Posted on November 15, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017: The big Hawaiian Swede

Photo via Sjöhistorisk Musumet, Göteborg, #Fo49335A Note her “neutral flag” as well and fore and aft blue and yellow racing stripes to help identify her during the war

Here we see the mighty four-masted barque, Abraham Rydberg, a Swedish cargo carrying schoolship (skolskeppet) that trained sailors and officers, as she approached New York in 1940. She managed to survive both World Wars and the end of her era of sea trade while putting in a lot of honest work.

Laid down for the merchant service in the heyday of the fast transcontinental clipper ships, she was ordered in 1892 from the Clyde firm of Charles Connell & Company, Glasgow (Yard #184) by the Hawaiian Construction Co. of San Francisco.

At some 2,400-tons, the big 270-foot four-master was built to run cargo on the cheap and she entered service as the Hawaiian-flagged Hawaiian Isles, operating out of Honolulu on the sugar trade, later inherited by the Planters Line by 1900, which added her to the U.S registry– one of just 24 Hawaiian-flagged vessels to which this was done.

The Matson Navigation Company of San Francisco bought her from Planters in 1906 and used her on a South American run for several years until she was sold once again to the Alaska Packers’ Association for $60,000 in 1910, a stalwart of the West Coast lumber trade alternating between running “100 or more Chinese and Mexican cannery workers to the fishing grounds in the spring and bringing them back in the fall, together with a hold full of canned salmon.”

That California-based company changed her significantly, reduced the rig and leaving her baldheaded as they elongated the poop over 30-feet to better accommodate the severe weather of the Northern Pacific. Sailing as Star of Greenland under the command of one Captain P.H. Peterson, she was a regular along the Pacific Northwest and in the frozen territory for 15 years until laid up at Alameda in 1926, managing to escape German raiders during the Great War (remember the raider Seeadler was active at the time and captured three American-flagged schooners in June-July in the Southeast Pacific, and the raider Wolf had poked her nose into the West Pac).

Her speed likely had her in good graces– she once made the 2,400-mile Unalaska to Golden Gate run for the Packers in just 7 days– a feat that took most of the other slow craft in the business 35 or more.

After three years of hard luck layup on the West Coast, the aging barque was acquired by the Rydbergska Stiftelsen organization from Sweden for a song ($19,000) and, carrying a full new triangular canvas set, made London in 134 days with a cargo of grain and a scratch crew. A number of changes were implemented in the vessel, including construction of a midships bridge deck and adding classroom spaces for up to 70 cadets– which were required by Swedish law to take a full-year of courses before gaining a certificate as a merchant seaman.

Founded in 1850 by an endowment left by Swedish shipping magnate Abraham Rydberg, the maritime school trained youth in practical sailing, in large part by taking them on lengthy cargo hauls from the Baltic to Australia and the Caribbean. Ages of the trainees, which came in many instances from all over Europe, ran from 14-20 and the Rydbergska foundation produced thousands of sailors for the Swedish merchant and naval forces over the course of a century.

Here is first Abraham Rydberg stiftelse schoolship, a 101-foot three master built in 1879. She served the school until replaced by the larger Abraham Rydberg II in 1912.

Here we see 129-foot three-master which served as the second Abraham Rydberg, which our ship replaced. As an aside, this ship was in U.S. waters in WWII as a privately owned yacht and used by the Navy as USS SEVEN SEAS (IX-68), performing a role as a station/training ship at Key West.

Purchased in 1930, the Hawaiian Isles/Star of Greenland became the institute’s third Abraham Rydberg under a Swedish flag, undertaking yearly training excursions on the wheat trade to Australia alongside other such school ships as the Kristiania Schoolship Association’s Christian Radich out of Norway and the Danish East Asiatic Company schoolship København— the latter of which disappeared on such a run.

Our Rydberg, taken from liner S/S Mauretania in seas, 1 April 1934, off Australia. Fo202759

By all accounts, she was a happy ship during this time apart from a collision with the British steamer Koranton (6,695-tons) just off Eddystone. While Rydberg, loaded with 3,200-tons of wheat at the time, lost several plates on the port side and her main top-gallant, she could make for England and repairs.

She was a celebrated Cape Horn windjammer still in operation during an age of steamships and drew a crowd every time she came near shore. As she carried some 35,000sq yds. of canvas and could make 14-knots on it with no sweat, she was a sight, indeed.

In the Thames:

Her cadets hard at work both on deck and aloft in the below video, with her skipper talking about the great “Grain Races” of the 1930s. Rydberg made seven round trips from Europe to Australia between 1933-38:

When WWII started, Rydberg kept in the dangerous service of merchant shipping under the nominal shield of her country’s flag. Operating on the less-risky Brazil-to-Boston run, a neutral ship between two neutral ports, she made Santos in just 49 days on one trip.

Skolskeppet ABRAHAM RYDBERG off New York, 1940. Note the ship’s name and Swedish flag amidships for the benefit of U-boat periscopes. The two stripes are in blue and yellow, national colors. Her crew participated in the New York World’s Fair that year. # Fo15244A

From astern, again note her flag, stripe, and marking. #Fo148032AF

Immediately following the outbreak of the war, both the Britsh and Germans thought some travel by Swedish merchantmen was good and entered into an odd agreement between the three that Stockholm’s ships going into and out of the Baltic through the two belligerents’ respective naval blockades were fine as long as all three parties agreed to each voyage. In all, some 226 sailings to and 222 sailings from Sweden were cleared in such a manner– though nine ships were lost on these “pre-screened” runs as not everyone got the message. Further, the agreement didn’t apply to Swedish ships outside of Northern Europe, hence Rydberg‘s change to operations from the U.S.

Make no mistake though, the Swedish merchant service suffered during the war (as did the Swedish Navy– the submarine HMSwS Ulven was sunk by the Germans in 1943), neutrality be damned. In all, an estimated 2,000-2,500 Swedish sailors and fishermen were killed during the conflict as no less than 201 unarmed Swedish-flagged merchant ships and 31 fishing vessels were sent to the bottom in attacks from the Germans, Soviets, and British. You can be sure that many men who trained as boys on the Rydberg are on this butcher’s bill.

However, when Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war and German U-boats became a regular sight off the East Coast as part of Operation Drumbeat, keeping Rydberg in service was considered too risky and she was laid up in Baltimore harbor, her crew transiting back to Sweden. She had retained a Lloyds 1A classification her entire career with the Swedes, an accomplishment for any merchant vessel pushing 50 years on her keel.

It was then that she was given the dishonor of becoming a diesel-powered freighter when, after she was bought by the Portuguese firm of Julio Ribeiro Campos in 1943 for $265,000, had her masts stepped and a pair of Fairbanks Morse M6s installed at Kensington Shipyard in Philadelphia. Her new name, Fox do Duoro.

As Fox do Duoro, taken in New Orleans, 1949. Note the maimed masts and black hull. Quite a difference from her gleaming white scheme and a sky full of canvas.

Poking around for another decade, she was resold twice more to various concerns in Lisbon until finally being offered for her value in scrap metal to Société Anonyme Bonita, Tangiers, who broke her in 1957.

Sadly, that was also the last year the Abraham Rydbergs group was in operation as a maritime institute, though it still exists as a foundation which provides a scholarship to other schools’ training programs. A fourth Rydberg, the former British yacht Sunbeam II, a 194-foot three-masted schooner built by Lord Runciman, was bought by the school in 1945 and used for a decade before they got out of the schoolship business for good. Incidentally, this final ship is in the service of the Hellenic Navy currently.

Our Rydberg, is, however, widely remembered in maritime art.

Deep Waters, by Montague Dawson, showing Rydberg on the high seas.

By Adolf Bock

Joe Francis Dowden, watercolor The Abraham Rydberg as she would have appeared in Planter Line Service as Hawaiian Isles in the 1900s

Specs:

Displacement: 2345 grt
Length: 270 ft.
Beam: 43 ft.
Draft: 23 ft.
Engines (1943) twin Fairbanks M6cyl 14″x17″ 1300bhp, 2-screw, machinery aft
Crew: 40 + up to 70 cadets on a one-year course (1930-42)

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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017: The Real McCoy

Posted on November 8, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2017: The Real McCoy

Here we see the mighty U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Seneca (CG-17), a warship that served in both World Wars and had a tussle or two while enforcing some unpopular laws.

Classified when constructed as a “derelict destroyer” for the then-U.S. Revenue Marine designed to deep-six semi-submerged vessels on the high seas while towing in those still salvageable, she was built by Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Virginia and commissioned 12 November 1908, named after the storied Native American tribe of the Iroquois confederation formerly living in New York state.

At least four Seneca’s served in the Navy during the Civil War and Great War while a fifth, AT-91/ATF-91, was a 205-foot Navajo-class fleet tug built during WWII and sunk as a target in 2003. However, the Revenue Service cutter that is the subject of this post was the first cutter by that name.

Built at a price of $244,000, she was a follow-on to the five modern cutters ordered at the turn of the Century, that, at 200~ feet and 1,200-tons were decent steel-hulled vessels that could serve their peacetime use as well as be capable modern naval auxiliary gunboats in times of conflict.

Constructed with lessons learned from those craft, the one-off Seneca tipped the scales at 1,259-tons and went 204-feet overall. Able to float in 18-feet of seawater, her twin boiler plant could chug her along at an economical 12-knots. A quartet of 6-pounders (57mm guns) and a supply of naval mines and explosives for scuttling completed her armament.

Early in her career, with black hull and buff stack

Her first “job” was helping to police the massive Hudson-Fulton international naval parade in New York. Her commander during the Hudson-Fulton parade was Captain J. C. Cantwell, USRCS, and she was shown off to both visiting dignitaries and naval personnel.

Seneca immediately went to a harder line of work, in 1909 towing the stricken White Star liner RMS Republic, which sent the first wireless distress signal in history via the then-novel Marconi apparatus after the vessel was mortally wounded in a collision with the steamer Florida off Nantucket.

Then, of course, there was the derelict duty and anti-smuggling work.

Seneca with a derelict in tow

As part of her tasking to destroy derelicts, Seneca put to sea from New York on 10 Feb 1910 following a report from the Dutch steamer Prins Wilhelm III of a dismasted, waterlogged sailing vessel far offshore. After searching all day, Seneca found the battered and broken three-masted schooner Sadie C. Sumner of Thomaston, Maine, nearly swamped but with a cargo of cypress timber. Over the course of the next four days, Seneca had to pull the reluctant schooner to port, losing the tow at least three times in heavy seas. She finally made Hampton Roads in one piece.

Cutter Seneca with the wreck of schooner Sadie C. Sumner on February 11, 1910, by M. Sarba

In March 1913, Seneca responded to the first International Ice Patrol, established in the aftermath of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Operating out of Halifax, Nova Scotia and ranging as far as Iceland, Seneca made no less than 10 patrols in the next three years looking for wandering ice, on one occasion saving adrift survivors of the British freighter Columbian.

During this time the Revenue Marine became part of the new Coast Guard, and Seneca changed her title and took part in the increasingly tense neutrality patrol work as the world descended into the Great War.

Upon the U.S. Declaration of War against the Kaiser in April 1917, the new service became part of the Navy. Accordingly, Seneca landed her battery of 6-pounders, picked up a new one of a quartet of 3″/50 cal guns, and for the next 28 months served as a haze gray colored gunboat for the Navy.

Seneca was assigned to Squadron 2, Division 6, of the Atlantic Fleet Patrol forces, heading to Europe along with the other large blue water cutters on convoy escort and general anti-submarine missions. Assigned to Base 9 (Gibraltar), Seneca joined the cutters Algonquin, Manning, Ossipee, Tampa, and Yamacraw.

USCGC Seneca. Description: (Coast Guard Cutter, 1908) Members of the ship’s crew pose on board, circa 1917-1918. The original image is printed on postcard stock. Donation of Charles R. Haberlein Jr., 2009. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 106709

Venturing into U-boat-infested seas proved dangerous for the small group of cutters. The small Ossipee, 165-feet of rock and roll, escorted an impressive 32 convoys consisting of 596 Allied vessels and made contacts with enemy submarines on at least 8 occasions, on one of these reportedly side-stepping a torpedo by about 15 feet. Tampa was not so lucky, sunk just six weeks before the end of the war by a torpedo hit with all hands; 111 Coast Guardsmen, 4 U.S. Navy personnel, and 16 passengers.

Seneca herself ran 30 convoys and escorted 580 ships, plucking 81 survivors from the torpedoed RN sloop HMS Cowslip in April. 1918 off Gibraltar, and 27 survivors from the stricken British freighter SS Queen in June.

Then came the Wellington.

Part of the 21-ship Convoy OM-99, outbound from Milford Haven to Gibraltar, the 5,600-ton freighter Wellington suffered an explosion that blew the first 30-feet off her bow and Seneca, responding to the scene, chased off a surfaced U-boat with her 3-inchers. Sending over a 20-man crew of volunteers to help keep the coal-laden merchantman from foundering with the hopes of making for Brest, about 350 miles away on the French coast.

While they could slow the flooding, and make 7.5-knots, a storm set in and the act turned hopeless, with 1LT Fletcher W. Brown ordering the boarding crew and remaining Wellington sailors to abandon ship and take their chances in the water.

Coast Guard Cutter SENECA places a damage control crew on board the torpedoed tanker WELLINGTON in an attempt to keep it from sinking September 16, 1918.

However, 11 went down with the freighter and were awarded the Navy Cross for their heroism while Acting Machinist William L. Boyce received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal for staying in the engine room until the very end. The final message from Wellington, sent by Electrician 2nd Class Morrill C. Mason, USCG: “We are turning over, you’ve done everything you could. Goodbye.”

In all, Seneca received three letters of commendation from the Admiralty for her service in Europe. She fired upon or dropped depth charges on no less than 21 occasions, often credited with sinking one submarine, though post-war analysis never firmed that up.

USS SENECA (1917-1919) Flying homeward bound pennant. Description Catalog NH 108752

Chopping back to Coast Guard duty in 1919, she picked up her white scheme, but she still had another battle to fight.

Once enforcement of the Volstead Act began in January 1920, it was the Treasury Department that was given the unpopular task of enforcing Prohibition, and “T-men” of the newly formed Bureau of Prohibition (which became ATF in 1930 and was transferred briefly to the Justice Department) became a popular term at the time for those engaged in the act of chasing down bootleggers, speakeasies and those with hidden stills. It should be noted that Elliot Ness and his “Untouchables” were T-men and not G-men of the FBI, as is commonly believed and for every public hero of the force, there were heavy-handed and unprofessional agents such as “Kinky” Thompson who gave the work a black eye– literally.

Nevertheless, as a branch of the Treasury going back to the days of Alexander Hamilton, the Coast Guard became responsible for enforcement on the seas, fighting booze pirates and rum-runners smuggling in territorial waters. The agency was hard-pressed to chase down fast bootlegging boats shagging out to “Rum Row” where British and Canadian merchantmen rested on the 3-mile limit loaded with cases of good whiskey and rum for sale.

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

However, Seneca and the other legacy cutters held their own as well.

Seneca, August 4, 1922, Harris & Ewing, photographer, via LOC

One of the more infamous on Rum Row was William “Bill” McCoy, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Nautical School in Philadelphia who went on to sail the seven seas for two decades before he opened a boatyard in Florida. Picking up first one schooner and then another, the 130-foot British-flagged Arethusa which he renamed Tomoka, McCoy specialized in running liquor from the Bahamas and Bermuda as well as from the French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (where Arethusa flew a French flag and went by the name Marie Celeste) to New England, reportedly making $300,000 in profit for each trip. His profits were high because he never stepped on his booze and cut it with water, with his whiskey being passed off as “the real McCoy.”

It was a night in November 1923 when Seneca came across McCoy and his hooch-laden Arethusa off the New Jersey coast.

From Rum Wars at Sea:

Agents in cooperation with the Coast Guard put into effect without warning the principal of search and seizure beyond the 3-mile limit, realizing the likelihood of legal complications. The cutter Seneca arrived near Tomoka at daybreak and found the schooner riding placidly at anchor. The ship was first boarded by agents, and as soon as they were on board a fist fight developed in which all hands took part. The agents, though badly beaten up, were able to search her and found 200 cases of whiskey remaining from an original cargo of 4,200. Then Tomoka got underway with the agents on board. Seneca ordered her to stop. When she disregarded this, the cutter sent two shots screaming across her bows with the desired result. She was then boarded by a larger group of coast guardsmen from Seneca and seized.

It was the end of McCoy’s rum-running days and he soon headed off to federal prison on an abbreviated sentence, with Arethusa sold at public auction.

Still, Seneca proved a scourge for those who remained in the business.

Aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Seneca, Prohibition agents examine barrels of alcohol confiscated from a rum runner boat. Via LOC

Aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Seneca, Prohibition agents stand amidst cases of scotch whiskey confiscated from a rum runner boat. Via LOC

One of the rum runners against its nemesis: the K-13091 alongside the Coast Guard cutter Seneca at the end of the chase, 1924. Via LOC. Note the 1903s and BAR

Badly worn out, Seneca was placed out of service in 1927-28 for reconstruction and spent the rest of Prohibition stationed in New York, transferring to San Juan in 1932 and Mobile in 1934. Showing her age, she was decommissioned 21 March 1936 and stored at the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore to make room for the new 327-foot Treasury-class cutters then under construction.

In September, the 28-year-old disarmed cutter was sold to the Boston Iron and Metal Co., of Baltimore, Maryland for $6,605, who did nothing with her and subsequently resold her to the Texas Refrigeration Steamship Line to turn into a banana boat on the Guatemala to Gulfport run. However, TRSL went bankrupt and Seneca never left Baltimore, leaving her to be reacquired at auction by Boston Iron, who still owned her in 1941 and weren’t doing anything with the old girl.

With another war coming, the Coast Guard took Seneca back into service in 1941. However, she was deemed to be in too poor a condition for escort duty and was instead shuffled to “The Real” McCoy’s alma mater, the Pennsylvania Nautical School in Philadelphia for use as a training vessel. Seneca, renamed Keystone State, replaced the old 1,000-ton gunboat USS Annapolis in September 1942.

During this time, admission requirements at the school were raised to high school graduates between the ages of 17 and 20 years and students were instructed in dead reckoning, the duties of an officer; theoretical and practical marine engineering; and in handling boats. Some 2,000 young men cycled through the school in the war years.

In April 1946, the Maritime Commission made the newly-decommissioned Artemis-class attack cargo ship USS Selinur (AKA-41) available to the school as Keystone State II, and Seneca was returned.

She was scrapped in 1950, one of the last vessels built for the Revenue Marine Service still afloat at the time.

Seneca, however, is well remembered.

In 1928, the U.S. Coast Guard Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, honoring the service’s war dead in general and those lost on Tampa and Seneca during WWI in particular, was dedicated.

The Coast Guard command holds a Veteran’s Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Nov. 11, 2012. The area where the Coast Guard World War I memorial, which honors the fallen crew members of the Cutter Seneca and Cutter Tampa, was placed is commonly referred to as Coast Guard Hill. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Timothy Tamargo

From Arlington:

Architect George Howe and sculptor Gaston Lachaise captured the spirit of the Coast Guard’s legendary steadfastness in the monument’s rock foundation and pyramid design. Above the Coast Guard motto Semper Paratus (meaning “Always Ready”), is a bronze seagull with its wings uplifted. The seagull symbolizes the tireless vigil that the U.S Coast Guard maintains over the nation’s maritime territory.

Further, the centennial medals issued by the U.S. Mint in 2018 honoring the service’s participation in the Great War depicts a lifeboat from the Coast Guard Cutter Seneca heading out in heavy seas toward the torpedoed steamship Wellington.

Coast Guard Cutter Seneca heading out in heavy seas toward the torpedoed steamship Wellington.

Her name was recycled for the “Famous” class 270-foot Medium Endurance Cutter, WMEC-906, was commissioned in 1987 and is homeported in Boston.

Specs:

Tonnage: 1,259 tons (gross)
Length: 204 ft.
Breadth: 34 ft. Breadth
Draft (or Depth): 17.3 ft. (depth)
Engines: Two Scotch boilers, one triple expansion steam engine, one shaft.
Speed: 11.2 knots
Crew: 9/65 designed, 110 wartime
Armament: (1908) 4- 6pdrs
(1917) 4 3″/50 cal guns, depth charges
(1937) disarmed

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Warship Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017: The Phrygian of the Great North

Posted on November 1, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017: The Phrygian of the Great North

At 11,000-tons and with four pipes, you would expect her to pack more than 6-inch guns. At least she had 16 of them! Photo via Naval History and Heritage Command NH 58647

Here we see the Diadem-class 1st rank protected cruiser HMS Niobe of the Royal Navy in 1899 just after her commissioning with her gleaming black hull. She was used to both help expand the British Empire and found the Canadian Navy.

In the 1890s, obsessed with the threat of commerce raiders such as the Russian and French armored and auxiliary cruisers of the era, the Royal Navy built an excellent duo of protected cruisers in the Powerful-class (14,000-tons, 2×9.2-inch, 12×6-inch guns, 22 knots), but the bottom line was they needed a larger series of cheaper vessels to help do the same on a budget. This led to the Diadem-class which were still big (11,000-tons), had as much as four-inches of armor in sensitive areas, could still break 20 knots (on 30! boilers) and packed a nice battery of 16 QF 6-inchers spread out among casemates and shielded deck guns.

Best of all, the Diadems, the last protected cruisers built for the RN, cost as little as £541,927 while the Powerful ran £708,619– a bargain that allowed eight of these more affordable cruisers to be ordered.

DIADEM Class British 1st Class Protected Cruiser. This ship is either DIADEM, NIOBE, EUROPA, or ANDROMEDA, near the beginning of her career. Note the torpedo nets deployed. Description: Courtesy of Paul H. Silverstone, 1983 Catalog #: NH 95005

The subject of our tale, Niobe, carried the name of the Greek woman of Phrygian who, according to legend, attempted to shield her children from Artemis and Apollo. Her crime of hubris was to brag about her 14 children which in turn led to the lot being slain by the gods and Niobe herself turned into stone. Yikes. Sounds like the gods couldn’t take a joke.

Niobe and her youngest daughter, Roman copy of Greek work from 4C or 2C BC. Firenze, Galleria d. Uffizi (Royal Cast Collection, Copenhagen via Maicar)

The moniker had been carried by at least three RN warships before our Niobe, making it a traditional name, though it has not been used since.

Laid down at Vickers, Barrow, in 1895, she commissioned 6 December 1898 and was made part of the Channel Squadron.

Via Postales Navales

Photograph (Q 43294) H. M. S. Niobe about 1899. Note all of the intakes to help feed her 30 boilers. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205277688

When the Boer War broke out in 1899, she spent two years on regular runs from the Home Islands to Cape Town escorting troop and supply ships, and during this same period ranged as far as India to do likewise. During this period, a significant number of her crew were composed of Australians.

SOUTH AFRICA, C 1900. JUNIOR OFFICERS OF HMS NIOBE AT CAPE TOWN. Via AWM

SOUTH AFRICA, CAPE TOWN, C 1900. SAILORS ON HMS NIOBE COLLECTING THEIR RUM RATIONS. Via AWM

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, 1900. MARINES ABOARD HMS NIOBE via AWM

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA, 1900. CUTLASS DRILL ABOARD HMS NIOBE via AWM

Following the conflict, she escorted the twin-screw ocean liner RMS Ophir, then on Royal Yacht duty, carrying the future King George V and Queen Mary, on a world tour.

HMS Ophir in 1902, with HRH the Duke of York and Duchess of York, (souvenir) Photographers: Winfred J. Erb and Lewis B. Foote.

Further service with the Home Fleet saw the increasingly obsolete Niobe (protected and armored cruisers had started to fall out of favor after a poor showing of the type during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905) paid off in 1910.

However, she was still useful for training and as such was sold to the Canadians who were in the process of building a blue-water navy of their own as something of a prestige ship that September for £215,000 (about half price).

Upon transfer to the Naval Service of Canada, the reclassified HMCS Niobe– along with much smaller 3,600-ton Apollo-class protected cruiser HMCS Rainbow– became the first two in a long and illustrious line of HMC ships and submarines.

The warship entered Halifax Harbor on 21 October 1910, having steamed across the Atlantic from Portsmouth, England. As noted by the Canadian Forces, HMCS Niobe was the first Canadian combat ship to enter Canada’s territorial waters, a landmark event in the beginnings of the nascent Naval Service of Canada.

HMCS Niobe, entering Halifax Harbor, color postcard by Baxter. Nova Scotia Archives accession no. 1979-221 no. 63

With that being said, her service in Canada was not particularly covered in glory.

After running aground off Nova Scotia in 1911, she spent six months in dry dock and emerged with her speed and capabilities limited, then, in turn, was largely left at pierside for the next several years undermanned and under loved. All those boilers and guns took a lot of Tars– which the young country just didn’t have. In fact, some returns from the time show the vessel with fewer than 300 men assigned– less than half her planned crew.

Still, she was a floating classroom and incubator for Canada’s fleet. It could be argued that if it weren’t for Niobe in 1910-14, there would not have been a foundation for the force numbering 9,000 officers and men by 1918 and is still in existence today as one of the most professional (if underfunded) sea services in the world.

HMCS Niobe, at wharf at North End of HMC Dockyard, Halifax, N.S Photograph via Nova Scotia Archives N-2599

When the Great War broke out, some 106 Newfoundland naval reservists were quickly assigned to Niobe, which was soon patched up enough to get back underway.

HMCS Niobe being readied for WW1 in August 1914 at the HMC Dockyard Halifax dry-dock. RC navy photo.

They searched the Strait of Belle Isle for German cruisers and spent 10 months patrolling the waters around New York and Boston as part of the Royal Navy’s 4th Cruiser Squadron.

Torpedo party, HMCS Niobe 1915. She carried 24 450mm torpedoed and three tubes. Nova Scotia Archives

Stokehold, HMCS Niobe, 1915. Did we mention she had 30 boilers? H.F. Pullen Nova Scotia Archives accession no. 1984-573 Box 3 F8

Mess deck, HMCS Niobe 1915 H.F. Pullen Nova Scotia Archives accession no. 1984-573 Box 3 F8

Notably, during this time she ran to ground the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Prinz Eitel Friedrich who had claimed 11 Allied ships over the winter of 1914-15. The low-speed stalk was remarkable for the fact that both Niobe and her nemesis were had engines and boilers that were worn out, but Friedrich narrowly made it to Newport News to be interned by the Americans.

The closest thing to Niobe’s biggest threat– the German passenger liner Prinz Eitel Friedrich. Converted to an auxiliary cruiser in 1914, she was interned first by the Americans at Norfolk and then at Philadelphia, where she is seen in this photo with U.S. battleships in the background, she was seized when the U.S. entered World War I. She was renamed USS DeKalb and placed in commission on 12 May 1917 U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.Catalog #: NH 100562

After the Niobe‘s boilers gave out in July 1915, the vessel was decommissioned that September and the Newfoundlanders were sent to Britain for reassignment while the abused cruiser was left at Halifax to serve as a station ship.

Photograph (Q 39724) H. M. S. Niobe. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205274258

There, at 8:45 a.m. on 6 December 1917 the 3,000-ton French freighter SS Mont-Blanc suffered a collision with the Norwegian ship, SS Imo. A fire aboard the French ship ignited her cargo of picric acid, TNT, and guncotton– all wonderful things to ship together.

At 9:04, the out-of-control fire aboard Mont-Blanc vaporized the ship, releasing the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT and causing what is known today as the Halifax Explosion, one of the largest non-nuclear blasts in recorded history. In all, some 2,000 were killed or missing and another 9,000 injured.

December 6, 1917, Halifax, Nova Scotia explosion

And Niobe was in the middle of it– a crew from the cruiser working to move the French ship before it went sky-high. In the blast, the 11,000-ton cruiser, moored with three good Admiralty Pattern bow anchors as well as a concrete embedded anchor holding her in place were all dragged, and some lost outright.

Niobe herself was seriously damaged topside though she was shored up, repaired, and kept in nominal service as a hulk until 1920.

Diadem Class Protected Cruiser HMCS Niobe pictured at Halifax late in her career

She was sold for scrap in 1922.

As such, she outlived many of her seven sisters.

Ariadne, converted to a minelayer, was torpedoed and sunk off Beachy Head by the German submarine UC-65 on 26 July 1917 while on the Dover Patrol. Diadem, Spartiate, and Andromeda all spent the Great War as harbor ships– with the latter existing in such a role into the 1950s. Amphitrite, Argonaut, and Europa all served with the 9th Cruiser Squadron during the war in the Mediterranean and Atlantic but were quickly disposed of after the Armistice.

Niobe is extensively remembered, with her name gracing the RCN’s training establishments in various forms.

Her bell is at the Naval Museum of Halifax and numerous small items are in maritime collections in the UK and Canada.

Two of her 6-inch QF guns are on shore at Saint John, New Brunswick with one at HMCS Brunswicker, and another at 3 Field Regiment.

Other parts keep popping up as well.

In 2014, a one-ton anchor from Niobe damaged in the Halifax Explosion was found during the demolition of building D19, Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Halifax buried beneath the parking lot of all places. The city now celebrates “Niobe Day” on October 21, the anniversary of her arrival in 1910.

During the demolition of building D19, Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Halifax an anchor (left) was found buried beneath the parking lot. It is believed that this anchor could possibility belong to Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Niobe. This image was taken on 20 October 2015. ©DND 2014 Photo by MCpl Holly Swaine, Formation Imaging Services Halifax Halifax

“The discovery of one of HMCS Niobe’s anchors in Halifax Harbor just a week before proclaiming October 21st to be known and celebrated in the Royal Canadian Navy as Niobe Day is astonishing,” said Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy. “This fantastic finding gives us a chance to reflect on our collective accomplishments since 1910, on the values in which we anchor our service as members of the profession of arms, and on what is required of us to ensure we continue to deliver excellence, both at sea and ashore, in the years to come. This is a true blessing and a rare opportunity to connect the dots between our forefathers and the next generations of sailors of the Royal Canadian Navy.”

She is also remembered in maritime art.

Specs:

Displacement: 11,000 tons
Length:
435 ft. (132.6 m)
(462 ft. 6 in (140.97 m) o/a)
Beam: 69 ft.
Draught:
25 ft. 6 in
27 ft. 6 in
Propulsion:
2 shaft triple expansion engines:
16,500 hp
30 Belleville boilers
Speed:
20.25 knots
Range:
2,000 nmi at 19 knots, 10000 (10)
(bunker capacity 1900 tons coal)
Complement: 677
Armament:
16 × single QF 152/40 QF Mk I/II 6-inch guns
14 × single 76/40 12pdr 12cwt QF Mk I guns
3 × single QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss Mk I (47 mm) guns
2 × 18-inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes (1 above water stern, 2 submerged on beam)
8 Maxim machine guns
Armor:
Casemates and gun shields 4.5 in (110 mm)
Hoists 2 in (51 mm)
Deck 4–2.5 in (102–64 mm)
Conning tower 12 in (300 mm) fore
6 in (150 mm) tube to the fore conning tower
2 in (51 mm) aft conning tower
Armor was Harvey Nickel steel, except for armored deck

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

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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017: Franco’s big stick

Posted on October 18, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

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

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017: Franco’s big stick

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

Here we see the lead ship of the Armada Española’s Canarias-class heavy cruisers– the mighty Canarias herself– in her pre-1953 arrangement. The big cruiser, though laid down in the 1920s, survived the Spanish Civil War and, in the end, even Franco himself.

The Spanish Navy of the old days was a colonial power and was very good at it for several hundred years until the 19th Century saw her Latin American holdings disappear along with, after the Spanish-American War, the crown’s Pacific Empire. Said conflict with the U.S. saw most of the Armada’s cruisers destroyed or captured in uneven fleet actions in the Caribbean and Manila Bay.

Post-1898, after losing or condemning 19 of her cruisers 21, all that was left was the old Velasco-class protected cruiser Infanta Isabel and the 5,000-ton Lepanto, which finished just too late for the war. Three single-class new ships were quickly built using lessons learned in the conflict: Emperador Carlos V, Rio de la Plata, and Extremadura, followed by the three ships of the Princesa de Asturias-class and the Reina Regente, ordered in conjunction with the three 16,000-ton mini-battleships of the España-class in 1909. This is the fleet the Spanish carried into the Great War, where they were an armed neutral.

In the 1920s, with their turn-of-the-century, coal-fired cruisers and dreadnoughts increasingly obsolete, and colonial conflicts such as the Rif War in North Africa draining resources while still setting the need to show the flag in far-away ports, the Spanish ordered the one-off Reina Victoria Eugenia (6,500 tons), two similar 6,300-ton Blas de Lezo-class cruisers, three very modern Almirante Cervera-class cruisers (9,385-tons, based on the Royal Navy’s Emerald-class) and planned for three 13,700-ton Canarias-class ships, with the plan to put the older WWI-era fleet to pasture and phase out their increasingly marginalized battleships.

Note that the class was always considered to be a Washington Treaty warship by the Spanish

Based on the British Crown County-class ships of Sir Philip Watts’ design but switched up to a degree, these 636-foot heavy cruisers were handsomely equipped with eight 8″/50 (20.3 cm) BL Model 1924 Mark D Vickers-Armstrong-designed guns, each capable of sending a 256-pound AP shell out to 32,530 yards every 20-seconds.

These things had some reach…

Another eight 12 cm/45 (4.7″) Mark F Vickers high-angle guns were to be mounted for AAA.

Note the “Todo por la Patria” (All for the Fatherland) logo. The 4.7″ guns would pick up splinter shields after the Civil War

Note the shell to the left

A dozen torpedo tubes, some smaller weapons, and a catapult for Heinkel He 60 seaplanes– one of the most dieselpunk-looking aircraft ever in my opinion— were to be fitted.

Overall speed on Parsons geared steam turbines was 33 knots and the range was sufficient to sortie to the Spanish outposts in the Moroccan shores, Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea.

Two vessels, class leader Canarias (Canary Islands) and sister Baleares (Balearic Islands) were laid down at Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval (SECN) in El Ferrol in 1928 and took more than eight years to construct, both still only semi-complete-by-1936–a pivotal year for Spain. The third ship of the class, Ferrol, was canceled due to tight budgets.

At Ferrol, colorised by Postales Navales

In July 1936, a pro-fascist military coup led by Gens. Goded and Franco in colonies outside of Metropolitan Spain quickly spread to all-out civil war with the Soviet-allied Republicans against the German-Italian-backed Nationalists.

Suffice it to say without chronicling the entire Civil War, the Spanish Navy took a beating in the three-year conflict.

On her trials, where she broke 33.8 knots at 99,000 shp. Note much of her equipment including her rangefinders and Turret C is yet to be fitted– and she never did get that seaplane rig

-Canarias‘ own sister ship, the Nationalist-controlled Baleares, was sunk in a battle with Republican destroyers at Cape Palos in March 1938.

Heavy cruiser Baleares sank after receiving several torpedo hits from republican destroyers during the Battle of Cape Palos in, early hours of 06 March 1938.

-While steaming off Santander on 30 April 1937, the Nationalist-controlled battleship Alfonso XIII struck a mine and sank.

-Spain’s last remaining battleship, Jaime I, was under the Republican flag and was struck by German bombers and eventually sunk by the Nationalists.

-The cruisers Miguel de Cervantes, Libertad, and Mendez Nuñez, part of the Republican Navy, escaped at the end of the war and were interned by the French at Bizerte only to be repatriated later in poor condition.

-Of the other ships in the Nationalist Navy, only the light cruiser Almirante Cervera escaped the war largely intact and was Canarias‘ partner in crime.

-The cruiser Reina Victoria Eugenia, renamed Republica by the Republicans and then Navarra by the Nationalists after they recaptured her, also survived though was less functional than either Cervera or Canarias.

The Civil War saw Canarias as the de facto flag of Franco’s fleet, especially after the loss of Alfonso XIII, their only battleship.

Note her 4.7-inch secondary guns amidships at elevation and that she has all four turrets for her main battery

A good picture of the cruiser Canarias in her original configuration.

The big cruiser plastered Republican positions near the coastline including bloody work along the Malaga-Almeria highway and in the bombardment of Barcelona, intercepted Soviet merchant ships headed to the Republicans with arms, and engaged Republican ships in naval actions– including vaporizing the Churruca-class destroyer Almirante Ferrándiz off Cape Spartel with three salvos of her big 8-inch guns.

In 1938, she almost captured the Republican destroyer Jose Luis Diez, who only narrowly made it to Gibraltar and internment carrying an 8-inch hit in her stern. During the war, she reportedly fired her guns in anger on at least 34 occasions.

crucero Canarias, via Postales Navales

In WWII, while Franco never officially entered the war despite being an ersatz Axis state, Canarias and Cervera were the Spanish Navy’s most effective units and the big cruiser put to sea in 1941 to help look for survivors of the German battleship Bismarck after the failed Operation Rheinübung. While she found no survivors after a three-day search of the fallen dreadnought’s debris field, they did recover some wreckage and five bodies.

During the war, she picked up 12 Rheinmetall 37mm AAA guns in a tertiary battery.

Post-VE-Day, she remained the most powerful naval unit under the Spanish flag and in 1952-53 underwent modernization at SECN that saw her wide Lexington-like funnel separated into two stacks as well as navigational and search radar fitted. Her torpedo tubes were landed.

View of the northeast section of basin #1, El Ferrol, looking northwest. Two graving docks appear, one partially hidden by shops in the right middle ground. In the left foreground is the cruiser CANARIAS with her new after stack in place but without her new forward stack. This refit occurred between October 1952 and February 1953. Some destroyers and smaller craft are also visible. Description: Catalog #: NH 93640

Post-1953, note her twin funnels

She helped support the Spanish Legion in the little-known Ifni War in 1957-58 which included some very muscular gunboat diplomacy against Morocco.

At Ceuta in 1960> Note, she is wearing her pennant number on her hull

Then came the hijacking of the Portuguese liner Santa Maria in 1961 which saw Canarias chase her across the Atlantic, cooperating with a U.S. Navy task force that also shadowed the cruise ship more than 20 years before the better remembered Achille Lauro hijacking. An important development considering Spain did not join NATO until 1982.

She also waved the flag, attended several European ceremonies, participated in goodwill trips to Latin America, exercises with Western navies, and visited overseas holdings.

Here she is in Africa in 1961:

In 1969, Canarias helped evacuate the Spanish from Equatorial Guinea as that Central African country gained independence from the ever-shrinking empire, a fitting final act for a colonial cruiser.

In Equatorial Guinea

She had outlasted all the other Spanish cruisers, with the three Almirante Cervera-class ships all striking by 1970, Mendez Nuñez retired in 1964, and Navarra paid off in 1955.

By that time, she was among the last all-big-gun cruisers left in the world. The British had broken up their last Crown Colony/Fiji-class near sister ships in 1968, though two, HMS Newfoundland and HMS Ceylon, continued to operate with the Peruvian Navy into the 1970s, and one, Nigeria, served the Indian Navy as INS Mysore (C60) until 1985.

Her last modernization came in 1969 when she was fitted with a modern CIC, new radars (Decca 12 navigation set, U.S. SG-6B surface search, Italian Marconi MLA-IB air search), and electronics, while 40/70 Bofors L70s replaced her WWII 37mm and 40mm suites.

CANARIAS Photographed in Barcelona, Spain, in about 1970. Note the large tower to the right for the gondola transport system going across the harbor. The 371-foot four-masted training barque Juan Sebastián Elcano is to her stern. Description: Catalog #: NH 90743

Spanish cruiser CANARIAS, Janes 1973

There was even a plan afoot to convert her to a light aircraft carrier. The old light carrier USS Cabot (CVL-28) was later purchased instead in 1972 after a five-year loan and was commissioned Delado.

The end game came for Franco in 1975, as the Green March wrested Spain’s hold in the Sahara and the overseas colonies shrank to the current lot that are the isolated cities of Ceuta, Melilla, and the Canary Islands. The old dictator himself marched off to the parade ground of lost souls that November.

Pushing 40 and considered obsolete for the last 30 of those years, Canarias was pulled from service and decommissioned on 17 December 1975, the end of an era. She had steamed 650,000 miles on 524 trips in her career.

While several cities sought to preserve her as a museum– including some she had bombarded in the Civil War– the money just wasn’t there and the old war wagon sailed to the breakers under her own steam in September 1977.

Her last cruise, Sept. 1977

Sailing past the Castillo de San Felipe at Ferrol

Parts of her were saved, however, including turret B and the entire admiral’s cabin interior at the Naval Academy at Marín, a 4.7-inch AAA at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria– the capital of the Canary Islands, a rangefinder at the Naval Museum at Ferrol, several anchors around Spain, and other items.

Canarias bell, wheel, and other items at Museo Naval de Ferrol

https://www.flickr.com/photos/elentir/14716849852 Via Contando Estrelas, Flickr

She is also remembered in maritime art.

Specs:

Displacement:
10,670 long tons (10,840 t) standard
13,500 long tons (13,700 t) full load
Length: 636 ft.
Beam: 64 ft. (20 m)
Draught: 21 ft. 5 in
Installed power: Yarrow-type boilers, 90,000 hp (67,000 kW)
Propulsion: 4 shafts, Parsons-type geared turbines
Speed: 33 knots (61 km/h)
Range: 8,000 nmi (15,000 km) at 15 kn (28 km/h)
Complement: 679
Armament:
(1936, designed)
8 × 8-inch (203 mm) guns in four twin turrets
8 × 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns
12 × 40 mm AA guns
3 × 20 mm AA guns
12 × 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes in triple mounts above water
(1969)
8 × 8-inch (203 mm) guns in four twin turrets
8 × 4.7-inch (119 mm) guns
8 40/70 Bofors
Armor:
Belt 2 in (51 mm)
Deck 1.5–1 in (38–25 mm)
Magazine 4 in (102 mm) box around
Turrets 1 in (25 mm), also splinter shields were added to 4.7″ mounts in 1940.
Conning tower 1 in (25 mm)

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

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

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Warship Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017: I’d like to be back on my horse

Posted on October 11, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland 2 comments

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2017: I’d like to be back on my horse

USN photo courtesy of Scott Koen & ussnewyork.com via Navsource

Here we see the Balao-class diesel-electric fleet submarine USS Tilefish (SS-307) returning to San Diego on 5 December 1958 for inactivation. You may not recognize her in the photo, but she was always ready for her closeup.

A member of the 128-ship Balao class, she was one of the most mature U.S. Navy diesel designs of the World War Two era, constructed with knowledge gained from the earlier Gato class. U.S. subs, unlike those of many navies of the day, were ‘fleet’ boats, capable of unsupported operations in deep water far from home.

Able to range 11,000 nautical miles on their reliable diesel engines, they could undertake 75-day patrols that could span the immensity of the Pacific. Carrying 24 (often unreliable) Mk14 Torpedoes, these subs often sank anything short of a 5000-ton Maru or warship by surfacing and using their 4-inch/50 caliber and 40mm/20mm AAA. They also served as the firetrucks of the fleet, rescuing downed naval aviators from right under the noses of Japanese warships.

We have covered a number of this class before, such as Rocket Mail-slinging USS Barbero, the carrier-sinking USS Archerfish, the long-serving USS Catfish, and the frogman Cadillac USS Perch —but don’t complain, they have lots of great stories.

Laid down at Mare Island Navy Yard in Vallejo, California, on 10 Mar 1943, USS Tilefish was the first and only naval vessel named for homely reef fish found in the world’s oceans.

1916 USBOF sheet on the Tilefish, via NARA

Commissioned just nine months later on 28 Dec 1943, Tilefish completed her trials and shakedown off the California coast and made for the Western Pacific in early 1944.

Broadside view of the Tilefish (SS-307) off Mare Island on 2 March 1944. USN photos # 1434-44 through1436-44, courtesy of Darryl L. Baker. Via Navsource

Her first war patrol, off Honshu in Japanese home waters, was short and uneventful.

Her second, in the Luzon Strait, netted a torpedo hit on the 745-ton Japanese corvette Kaibokan 17 south of Formosa on 18 July.

Her third patrol, in the Sea of Okhotsk and off the Kuril Islands, resulted in the sinking a sampan in a surface action, as well as two small cargo ships, a larger cargo ship and the 108-ton Japanese guard boat Kyowa Maru No.2. Tilefish also picked up a Russian owl in these frigid waters, which was duly named Boris Hootski with the ship’s log noting, “He is now official ship’s mascot and stands battle stations on top of the tube blow and vent manifold.”

She closed the year with her fourth patrol in the Kurils and Japanese home waters by sinking the Japanese torpedo boat Chidori some 90 miles WSW of Yokosuka.

Early 1945 saw her fifth patrol which sank a small Japanese coaster and effectively knocked the IJN minesweeper W 15 out of the war. She also plucked LT (JG) William J. Hooks from the USS Hancock (CV-19) of VF-80 out of the water after he had to ditch his F6F at sea off Amami Oshima in the Ryukyus.

After refit on the West Coast, Tilefish completed her sixth patrol on a lifeguard station off the Ryukyus where she ended the war, being ordered back to California on 7 September.

In all, Tilefish received five battle stars for World War II service. Her tally included 7 vessels for 10,700 claimed tons– though many were disallowed post-war by JANAC. Her six patrols averaged 48 days at sea.

While most of the U.S. submarine fleet was mothballed in the months immediately after WWII, Tilefish remained in service. She even managed a sinkex in August 1947 against the crippled Liberty tanker SS Schuyler Colfax, at 7,200 tons, Tilefish‘s largest prize.

Her war flag is represented as a patch from popularpatch.com. Note the 10 vessels claimed and the parachute for Lt. Hooks.

When the Korean War kicked off in 1950, Tilefish was made for the region.

As noted by DANFS:

“From 28 September 1950 through 24 March 1951, the submarine operated out of Japanese ports conducting patrols in Korean waters in support of the United Nations campaign in Korea. She made reconnaissance patrols of La Perouse Strait to inform the Commander, Naval Forces Far East, of Soviet seaborne activity in that area.”

Tilefish received one battle star for Korean service.

Hula dancers Kuulei Jesse, Gigi White and Dancette Poepoe (left to right) welcome the submarine, as she docks at the Pearl Harbor Submarine Base after a Korean War tour. Crewmen placing the flower lei around Tilefish’s bow are Engineman 3rd Class Donald E. Dunlevy, USN, (left – still wearing E-3 stripes) and Torpedoman’s Mate 1st Class Gordon F. Sudduth, USNR. This photograph was released by Submarine Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, on 26 March 1951. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the All Hands collection at the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 97068

The next nine years saw her conducting regular peacetime operations and exercises including a goodwill visit to Acapulco; a survey mission with four civilian geophysicists on board from the Hydrographic Office of Eniwetok, Wake, and Midway; and other ops.

USS TILEFISH (SS-307) Caption: Photographed during the 1950s. Description: Courtesy of Commander Donald J. Robinson, USN (MSC), 1974. Catalog #: NH 78988

These “other ops” included filming some scenes for the 1958 Glen Ford WWII submarine flick Torpedo Run, which was extensively augmented by scale models, and more extensive shoots for Up Periscope, a film in which James Garner, a Korean war Army vet and Hollywood cowboy, plays a frogman ordered to photograph a codebook at an isolated Japanese radio station.

The film was an adaption of LCDR Robb White’s book of the same name.

Garner was not impressed by the Tilefish.

James Garner as Lieutenant Kenneth M. Braden in Up Periscope

As related by a Warren Oaks biographer, Garner, bobbing along on the old submarine offshore at 9-kts in groundswells, said, “You know something? I’d like to be back on my horse.”

After her brief movie career and service in two wars, Tilefish was given a rebuild at the San Francisco Navy Yard and was decommissioned in May 1960.

Tilefish was then sold to Venezuela, which renamed her ARV Carite (S-11). As such, she was the first modern submarine in that force. She arrived in that country on 23 July 1960, setting the small navy up to be the fifth in Latin America with subs.

ARV S-11 Carite El 4 de mayo de 1960

As noted by El Snorkel (great name), a Latin American submarine resource, Tilefish/Carite was very active indeed, making 7,287 dives with the Venezuelan Navy over the next 17 years. She participated in the Argentine/Dominican Republic/Venezuelan -U.S. Quarantine Task Force 137 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and intercepted the Soviet tug Gromoboi in 1968.

In 1966, she was part of the Greater Underwater Propulsion Power Program (GUPPY) conversion program and (along with 20 other boats), was given the very basic Fleet Snorkel package which provided most of the bells and whistles found on the German late-WWII Type XXI U-boats– which would later prove ironic. This gave her expanded battery capacity, streamlined her sail conning tower fairwater into a so-called “Northern or North Atlantic sail”– a steel framework surrounded by thick fiberglass– added a snorkel, higher capacity air-conditioning system, and a more powerful electrical system, and increased her submerged speed to 15 knots while removing her auxiliary diesel. A small topside sonar dome appeared.

ex-Tilefish (SS-307), taken 12 Oct. 1966 after transfer to Venezuela as ARV Carite (S-11). Note the GUPPY series conversion, the so-called very basic “Fleet Snorkel” mod.

However, during this time, her most enduring exposure was in helping film Murphy’s War, in which a German U-boat (U-482) hides out in the Orinoco River in Venezuela after sinking British merchant steamer Mount Kyle, leaving Peter O’Toole as the lone survivor on a hunt to bag the German shark. The thing is, she looked too modern for the film after her recent conversion.

For her role, Carite was given a far-out grey-white-black dazzle camo scheme and, to make her more U-boat-ish, was fitted with a faux cigarette deck after her tower complete with a Boffin 40mm (!) and a twin Oerlikon mount (!!). Her bow was fitted with similarly faked submarine net cutting teeth.

Her “crew” was a mix of U.S. Peace Corps kids working in the area (to get the proper blonde Germanic look) with Venezuelan tars at the controls.

The movie, filmed in decadent Panavision color, shows lots of footage of the old Tilefish including a dramatic ramming sequence with a bone in her teeth and what could be the last and best images of a Balao-class submarine with her decks awash.

That bone!

Ballasting down– note the very un U-boat-like sonar dome. I believe that is a QHB-1 transducer dome to starboard with a BQR-3 hydrophone behind it on port

By the mid-1970s, Tilefish/Carite was showing her age. In 1972, the Venezuelans picked up two more advanced GUPPY II conversions, her Balao-class sister USS Cubera (SS-347), renaming her ARV Tiburon (S-12) and the Tench-class USS Grenadier (SS-525) which followed as ARV Picua (S-13) in 1973.

The Venezuelan submarine ARV Carite (S-11) demonstrates an emergency surfacing during the UNITAS XI exercise, in 1970. via All Hands magazine

Once the two “new” boats were integrated into the Venezuelan Navy, Tilefish/Carite was decommissioned on 28 January 1977 and slowly cannibalized for spare parts, enabling Cubera and Grenadier to remain in service until 1989 when they were replaced by new-built German Type 209-class SSKs, which still serve to one degree or another.

According to a Polish submarine page, some artifacts from Tilefish including a torpedo tube remain in Venezuela.

Although she is no longer afloat, eight Balao-class submarines are preserved (for now) as museum ships across the country.

Please visit one of these fine ships and keep the legacy alive:

-USS Batfish (SS-310) at War Memorial Park in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
–USS Becuna (SS-319) at Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
–USS Bowfin (SS-287) at USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park in Honolulu, Hawaii.
–USS Clamagore (SS-343) at Patriot’s Point in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. (Which may not be there much longer)
–USS Ling (SS-297) at New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, New Jersey. (Which is also on borrowed time)
–USS Lionfish (SS-298) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts.
-USS Pampanito (SS-383) at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California, (which played the part of the fictional USS Stingray in the movie Down Periscope).
–USS Razorback (SS-394) at Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

However, Tilefish will endure wherever submarine films are enjoyed.

Specs:

Displacement surfaced: 1,526 t., Submerged: 2,424 t.
Length 311′ 10″
Beam 27′ 3″
Draft 15′ 3″
Speed surfaced 20.25 kts, Submerged 8.75 kts
Cruising Range, 11,000 miles surfaced at 10kts; Submerged Endurance, 48 hours at 2kts
Operating Depth Limit, 400 ft.
Patrol Endurance 75 days
Propulsion: diesels-electric reduction gear with four Fairbanks-Morse main generator engines., 5,400 hp, four Elliot Motor Co., main motors with 2,740 hp, two 126-cell main storage batteries, two propellers.
Fuel Capacity: 94,400 gal.
Complement 6 Officers 60 Enlisted
Armament:
(As-built)
10 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes,
one 4″/50 caliber deck gun,
one 40mm gun,
two .50 cal. machine guns
(By 1966)
10 21″ torpedo tubes, six forward, four aft, 24 torpedoes,

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

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!

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laststandonzombieisland

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

Tag Archives: steampunk navy

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