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Warship Wednesday, June 25, 2025: Rozhestvensky’s Pirates

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, June 25, 2025: Rozhestvensky’s Pirates

Above we see the Imperial Russian Navy’s auxiliary cruiser (vspomogatel’nyy kreyser) Terek, formerly the Royal Spanish Navy’s cruiser Rapido, formerly the Hamburg America Line steamer SS Columbia,

Terek just narrowly avoided combat in 1898 under the yellow and red Pabellon de la Armada, but some 120 years ago this week, she would land the final Tsarist Russian blows against the Empire of Japan at sea.

Kinda

The Tsar’s auxiliary cruisers

When war broke out with Japan in February 1904, the Russian admiralty activated its long-standing plans to cough up a series of armed merchant cruisers. Originally intended in the 1880s and 1890s to chase down British merchantmen should the “Great Game” turn hot, the Russians were able to activate nine large rakish steamers, all capable of making over 18.5 knots. Almost all (six of nine) were three-funnel liners, and all had been built as fine 1st class ships in the best German and British yards. In peacetime, they were operated by Dobroflot, the Russian state-controlled “Volunteer Fleet,” then switched to Navy crews during war.

These nine AMCs activated were generally named after rivers or Cossack hosts that lived along their banks, including: Angara (12,050 tons), Lena (10,675 t), Kuban (12,000 t), Don (10,500 t), Ural (10,500 t), Dnepr (9,500 t), Rion (14,614 t), Rus (8,600 t) and our Terek (10,000 t).

The main batteries typically consisted of a few 120mm/45 (4.7″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns augmented by a secondary of 75mm/50 (2.9″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns and a tertiary of 57mm/6-pdr, 47mm/3-pdr, or 37mm/1-pdr Hotchkiss counter-boat guns. Dedicated magazine space was set aside and rigged for emergency flooding if needed. As their promenade decks didn’t lend well to gun emplacements, most were arranged on the fore and aft well decks, with smaller guns on the poop and forecastle.

4.7-inch guns on auxiliary cruiser Lena

As the cruisers had at least two military masts complete with lookout tops, they would typically carry at least a 1-pounder in each. Two to four large searchlights were fitted as well.

The Illustrated London News on October 8, 1904, details the “Russian Menace to Neutral Shipping” during the Russo-Japanese War, focusing on converted cruisers in neutral waters, including Lena (Kherson), Terek, Peterburg (Dnepr), and Smolensk (Rion).

The presence of these Russian cruisers in neutral ports, particularly the well-armed Lena (35 guns in four diverse batteries), which called at San Francisco in late 1904, caused a huge surge in war risk insurances for vessels of all flags bound for Japan, threatening a general halt in shipments.

Fresno Bee, Sept 14, 1904

Russian auxiliary cruiser Lena in San Francisco, November 1904. Built in 1896 by Hawthorn Leslie, Newcastle– at the time the largest ship built on the Tyne– she sailed with the Volunteer Fleet in peacetime as Kherson. Activated in late 1903 as tensions with Japan grew, she operated out of Vladivostok until she arrived at San Francisco for repairs in September 1904 and was eventually interned for the rest of the war. She later served as Naval Transport N73 in the Black Sea Fleet, then, evacuating Russia with Wrangel’s White navy in 1920, had a short career with the London Steamship & Trading Co, then was broken up in Venice in 1925.

Besides acting as scouts and raiders, a role well-suited to the force due to their large ocean-crossing coal bunkers, they also had lots of spare room in their peacetime passenger cabins to accommodate troops for use as a fast transport, or captured enemy mariners. One, Rus, was used as a balloon aircraft carrier, toting nine Parseval-Sigsfeld kite balloons and making 186 controlled ascents from her deck.

Sailing as a scouting unit with Russian ADM Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific Squadron on its way to its destiny at Tsushima, several also bagged some prizes.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s turn this story back a bit.

Meet Columbia

Ordered in 1888, an express steamer of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) line, the Doppelschrauben-Schnelldampfer Columbia was intended to compete with the fastest liners of the British shipping companies. Built to the same plans as her AG Vulcan-built sister, SS Augusta Victoria, who claimed the fastest maiden voyage across the Atlantic in an east-west direction in May 1889, Columbia was fast.

Some 480 feet overall with a narrow 55-foot beam and knife-like bow, she was HAPAG’s second twin-screw express steamer on the North Atlantic. Equipped with twin VTR engines fed by nine boilers good for 13,300 shp, she made 20.5 knots on trials.

From The Engineer, 8 Nov 1889:

Some 7,300 GRT, she had accommodations for 1,100 passengers (400 first-class, 120 second-class, and 580 third-class).

German maritime artist Alexander Kircher penned several illustrations aboard the Columbia for the publication Die Rudermaschine in 1890.

A series of interior and exterior views upon delivery is in the collection of the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.

However, she and her sister were ready for war if needed. Following the government subsidy provided by the Imperial Postal Steamer agreement (Reichspostdampfervertrages), the Reich could use these steamers in the event of mobilization, and ships built for the service had to pass a Kaiserliche Marine inspection, including weight and space for deck guns and magazines. We saw how this played out with a host of German auxiliary cruisers in 1914 in past Warship Wednesdays. 

Columbia was delivered to HAPAG in June 1889 and began her maiden voyage from Hamburg via Southampton to New York on 18 July. Importantly, in July 1895, Columbia and Augusta Victoria transported the guests of honor at the opening of the Kiel Canal.

Besides the American runs, the sisters would cruise in winter to the Mediterranean, in midsummer north to Spitsbergen, and from 1896 also to the West Indies.

It was postcard and poster worthy.

War! (under a Spanish banner)

With Madrid in dire need of modern ships for their looming clash with the U.S., three weeks before war was declared, on 8 April 1898, HAPAG sold the proud Columbia and the slightly larger Normannia to Spain. Normannia became the Spanish auxiliary cruiser Patriota, armed with four 12 cm/L40 Skoda rapid-firing guns and ten 47 mm/L44 QF guns, while the speedy Columbia would enter Spanish service as the auxiliary cruiser Rapido. Her skipper was Capt. Federico Campaño y Rosset.

In Spanish service, Columbia/Rapido would carry four 16.2cm/35s, two 14cm/35s, and six 47 mm/L44s. The conversion, no doubt easy due to the weight and space reserved for guns and shells in her design, only took 12 days.

Originally part of Gruppo E of the Reserve Squadron, intended for action against American lines of communication along the Atlantic coast, both Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were reassigned to RADM Manuel de la Camara’s relief squadron for the Philippines six weeks after Dewey had destroyed RADM Patricio Montojo’s Spanish Pacific Squadron.

Sailing in line with the strongest Spanish ship in the fleet, the 11,000-ton 12-inch gunned battlewagon Pelayo; the armored cruiser Emperador Carlos V, destroyers Audaz, Osado, and Proserpina; and the troop-packed transports Buenos Aires and Panay, the force left Cadiz on 16 June 1898 and made Egypt ten days later, only to fight for coal with the English there for a week.

RADM Manuel de la Camara’s fleet under steam. Columbia/Rapido, with three masts and three stacks, is to the far left with Normannia/Patriota ahead of her. Original Location: Stanley Cohen, Images of the Spanish-American War (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Pub. Co., 1997). Via NHHC.

Rapido, Spanish auxiliary cruiser, at Port Said, Egypt, 26 June – 4 July 1898, while serving with Rear Admiral Manuel de la Camara’s squadron, which had been sent to relieve the Philippines. Copied from the Office of Naval Intelligence Album of Foreign Warships. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 88730

Camara’s squadron in the Suez Canal in 1898. Pelayo is in the foreground, with the rest of his fleet, Columbia/Rapido (visible between Pelayo’s masts) and Normannia/Patriota included. NHHC WHI.2014.36x

However, with Spanish VADM Pascual Cervera’s squadron’s defeat at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba on 3 July, and the fear that metropolitan Spain was left defenseless, Camara’s squadron was recalled home just as it made the Red Sea. Spending the rest of the war in European waters, Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were later used as troop transport to help bring the defeated Spanish forces home from the lost colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, shepherding (often towing) eight smaller, often derelict, vessels behind them back to Cadiz with stops in Martinique and the Canary Islands.

The Spanish admiralty having no further use for Columbia/Rapido, she was disarmed and sold back to HAPAG on 6 July 1899 for a nominal fee. Her career in Spanish service spanned just under 15 months and, as far as I can tell, she never fired a shot in anger during this period.

Meanwhile, Normannia/Patriota was given to the French government to resolve war debts. Renamed L’ Aquitaine, the former Normannia entered service with the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) line in December 1899, and, in poor condition, was scrapped in 1906.

Under a Russian flag

Following a refit and a fresh coat of paint, Columbia spent the next four years in a shuffle of commercial runs from Hamburg via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York.

It was while on a run to the Big Apple in May 1904 that HAPAG unceremoniously sold Columbia, along with her sister Auguste Victoria and the liner Furst Bismarck, for 7.5 million rubles to the Russian Navy, in need of hulls to take the fight to the Japanese. At the same time, NDL sold the Russians the fast little (6963 BRT) liner Kaiserin Maria Theresia.

Auguste Victoria became the Russian auxiliary cruiser Kuban, Furst Bismarck became the cruiser Don, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia the cruiser Ural.

Columbia departed New York after discharging her passengers for the Russian naval base at Libau (now Liepaja, Latvia) in the Baltic, joining Auguste Victoria, Furst Bismarck, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia, who had arrived earlier.

Terek in Libau 1904. Note that the other auxiliary cruisers are in dark military livery

At Libau, Columbia’s German civil crew took trains for the frontier while dock workers began the conversion process. Her deck was additionally reinforced, magazines for ammunition and devices for feeding shells to the upper deck were equipped. Some of the rooms in the emigrant class cabins were adapted to accommodate additional supplies of coal, fresh water, and food. Hatches were cut out for coaling at sea, a task rarely performed by ocean liners. To protect the engines and boilers from enemy shells, additional steel sheets were installed. Columbia was also equipped with additional equipment: two combat searchlights, a powerful wireless telegraph station, etc.

Columbia’s armament was lighter than in Spanish service, consisting of just two 12 cm L/45s, four 7.5 cm L/50s, eight 5.7 cm Hotchkiss guns, and two Maxim machine guns. The Russian naval staff had initially intended for each of the three new-to-them German-made auxiliary cruisers to carry fourteen 6-inch guns, but the ordnance just wasn’t available.

Our subject was named Terek after the fierce Cossack host on the river of the same name in the Caucasus region.

Terek Cossacks

Terek’s inaugural Russian skipper was Capt. (2nd rank) Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov, a 44-year-old career officer who had joined the fleet as a 14-year-old midshipman and had earned sea legs on everything from schooners to armored cruisers. His father, Aleksandr Konstantinovich, was friends with Nakhimov, took part in the Siege of Sevastopol as a battery commander, and retired as a rear admiral.

The rest of the wardroom was light, just four lieutenants and a dozen or so warrant officers and midshipmen rushed into service. Her sole surgeon was seconded from a teaching position at a Petersburg university. The new (again) cruiser’s crew of just over 400 was drawn from depots all over Russia.

As described by a Russian Tsushima veteran, Capt. Vladimir Ivanovich Semenov, of this force, “The naivety is almost touching…”

While Auguste Victoria/Kuban and Furst Bismarck/Don were repainted from their commercial livery to a heavy grey/green scheme, there wasn’t either enough time or paint left to do the same for Terek, and she sailed as-is.

War (against Japan, kinda)

Sent out from Libau on 12 August 1904 to hunt for Japanese merchant ships (or those of other flags carrying Japan-related contraband), Terek sortied out into the Atlantic before making Las Palmas, Vigo, and Lisbon for resupply then haunted the approaches to Gibraltar before she arrived back in the Baltic on 8 October, covering 9,190nm and inspecting 15 suspect vessels with no prizes. She earned enough attention from harassing ships with Red Dusters to be shadowed by the British cruisers HMS St. George and Brilliant.

Terek overhauling the British merchant ship Derwen off Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de San Vicente) off southern Portugal, August 1904.

As noted by Patrick J. Rollins in the 1994 Naval War College Review: “In August 1904, the three largest shipping firms in England, including the great P&O Line, suspended service to Japan. By the end of August, insurance rates on British ships bound for the Far East stood at 20 shillings per hundred, or four times the rate charged to the French and Germans.”

Terek was selected, along with her sister Auguste Victoria/Kuban and the auxiliary cruiser Kaiserin Maria Theresia/Ural, to join VADM Zinoy Rozhestvensky’s “2nd” Pacific Squadron, which was just the Russian Baltic Fleet, on its ill-fated mission to relieve besieged Port Arthur in the Pacific.

However, due to the nature of Rozhestvensky’s straggling fleet, Terek was not released to join the squadron until 18 November, following Ural, which had left four days earlier, and Kuban, which had sailed a full three weeks prior. Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope via Dakar, Terek only managed to link up with Kuban and Ural off Madagascar in January 1905. Dnepr (ex-Petersburg) and Rion (ex-Smolensk), who had spent the summer harassing British shipping off the East Coast of Africa, joined them. The five ersatz cruisers formed the fleet’s Reconnaissance Detachment.

By that time, Port Arthur had fallen and, much like Camara’s squadron in 1898, you would expect Rozhestvensky to be recalled back home. However, this was not to be, and the force, after weeks in Madagascar, was ordered to attempt to run past the Japanese to Vladivostok.

Another of the nine Russian auxiliary cruisers, Angara, was lost in the fall of Port Arthur, pounded into the mud by Japanese heavy artillery.

Once in the Pacific, Rion and Dnepr were detailed to escort a group of transports to Shanghai, then break off for commerce raiding along Japan’s sea lanes in the southern part of the Yellow Sea.

Ural would accompany the main force and would soon end up on the bottom.

According to Rozhestvensky’s order No. 380 of 21 May, the Kuban and Terek were to sail ahead and feint around the east of Japan and work in the area between the island of Shikoku and Yokohama. The cruisers were ordered to “without hesitation sink” all steamships on which military contraband would be noticed, a plan surely designed to draw Japanese Admiral Togo’s forces away from the Tsushima straits.

As noted by Semenov at the time back with the main fleet on 22 May, five days before the run through Tsushima, “Yesterday, the Kuban, and today the Terek, separated from the squadron to cruise off the eastern shores of Japan. May God grant them more noise.”

Kuban spent three weeks off Japan, in terrible weather, and only managed to close with two freighters, the German steamer Surabaya, carrying a cargo of flour from Hamburg to Vladivostok of all places, and the unladen Austrian freighter Ladroma. Down to her last 1,800 tons of coal, and finding out about the destruction of the 2nd Pacific Squadron from the latest issue of the Singapore Free Press newspaper aboard Ladroma, Kuban’s skipper called it quits and sailed for Saigon for coal, then made it back to Libau alone on 3 August.

Rion was able to break a few eggs, so to speak, after the battle. On 30 May, some 60 miles from Cape Shantung, she detained the German steamship Tetartos (2409 GRT), heading from Otaru to Tianjin with railway sleepers and fish, and sank it the next morning. Four days later, while 80 miles from Wusung, she stopped the English steamship Cilurnum (2123 GRT), heading from Shanghai to Moji. The steamship was released after its cargo of beans and cotton was thrown over the side. Her war over, Rion sailed for home, arriving in Kronstadt on 30 July.

Dnepr came across the British steamer St Kilda (3519 GRT) off Hong Kong on 5 June with a cargo that included rice, sugar, and gunnies bound for Yokohama. She then sent said steamer to Davy Jones and landed the crew back in Hong Kong before heading back home.

This left our Terek to strike the last blows. She did so against the British-flagged Ikhona (5252 GRT) of the Indian Steam Navigation Company on 5 June while north of Hong Kong in the Philippine Sea, during the latter’s voyage from Rangoon to Yokohama with a cargo of rice and mail. Taking off the crew, the shipwrecked mariners were transferred to the passing Dutch steamer Periak at sea two weeks later and eventually landed at Singapore. The ship’s skipper, one Capt. Stone reported that the capture and sinking had taken six long hours, with dynamite charges failing to scuttle the steamer before Terek opened up with “quick-firers.”

Ikhona was the fourth British ship lost to the Russians during the conflict after SS Knight Commander, St. Kilda, and the schooner Hip Sang. His majesty’s government later pursued a claim of £250,000 against Russia for the value of the ships and their cargoes, with Ikhona being the most expensive at £100,000.

Continuing in the South China Sea, on 22 June 1905, Terek came across the unlikely victim that was the Kiel-built Danish East Asiatic Company steamer Prinsesse Marie (5416 tons), bound with cargo for Japan, and sank the same. Another bloodless kill by old school “cruiser rules,” her crew was taken off and brought to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies a week later. With the Dutch refusing Terek coal, the Russian cruiser ended her sortie there and was interned for three months until the Treaty of Portsmouth ended the war. Capt. Panferov dutifully offered his flag and sword to the local Dutch naval commander, who refused them.

Det Østasiatiske Kompagni Prinsesse Marie

Ironically, the Danish EAC protested the sinking of Prinsesse Marie under the pretext that, while her cargo was bound for a Japanese port, it was manifested to go to a European concern. It’s possible the Tsar, his mother being a Danish princess, made that one right in the end.

Returning home to Russia, on 10 December 1905, an order was received to Kuban, Terek, and Don of “all weapons and things related to naval affairs,” and investigate the possibility of selling the ships.

On 18 November 1906, by order of the fleet and the Naval Department No. 300, the Terek and her sister Kuban were excluded from the naval lists and were handed over to the port of Libau pending auction. The following February, Vosidlo and Co. paid 442,150 rubles for both vessels and sent them to Stettin to be cut up for scrap metal.

Epilogue

Terek could arguably be listed as one of the most successful ships on the Tsarist side of the Russo-Japanese War. A huge 1:48 scale model of the ship was crafted for the Russian Naval Museum in St. Petersburg following the campaign. Although damaged by fire during German bombs in WWII, it remains on display.

Terek’s only wartime Russian skipper, Panferov, earned both the Order of St. Anne, 2nd degree, and the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree for his service on the cruiser. Promoted to Capt. 1st Rank in 1908, then, switching to a shoreside non-line duty, by 1913, rose to the rank of major general. During the Great War, as chief quartermaster of Kronstadt, he earned the St. Anne 1st degree in 1916. One of the rare senior officers retained by the Red Navy post-revolution, he retired in 1919.

Russian Navy MG Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov. His son, Georgy Konstantinovich Panferov, went on to become a surgeon colonel during WWII and a professor at the Naval Medical Academy (VMMA). His grandson, Yuri Georgievich Panferov, followed in his footsteps and became an officer in the Red Banner fleet.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, June 18, 2025: Death of a Destroyer

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says, “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, June 18, 2025: Death of a Destroyer

Naval History and Heritage Command photograph 80-G-309163

Above we see a Fletcher-class destroyer, almost certainly USS Twiggs (DD-591), resplendent in her late war Camouflage Measure 32, Design 6D, as she plasters Iwo Jima’s West Beach with 5-inch Willy Pete shells at 1600, 17 February 1945, during the pre-invasion bombardment of the island. Screening UDT Team 14 divers clearing obstacles in the water, the effect was dramatic, and she fired a mix of over 700 5-inch shells ashore that day, closing to within just 300 yards of the beach.

As detailed by Twigg’s report of the action: A fast ship sent in harm’s way, Twiggs‘ career from commissioning to loss– some 80 years ago this week– was a scant 620 days.

The Fletchers

The Fletchers were the WWII equivalent of the Burke class, constructed in a massive 175-strong class from 11 builders that proved the backbone of the fleet for generations. Coming after the interwar “treaty” destroyers such as the Benson- and Gleaves classes, they were good-sized (376 feet oal, 2,500 tons full load, 5×5″ guns, 10 torpedo tubes) and could have passed as unprotected cruisers in 1914.

Destroyer evolution, 1920-1944: USS HATFIELD (DD-231), USS MAHAN (DD-364), USS FLETCHER (DD-445). NH 109593

Powered by a quartet of oil-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers and two Westinghouse or GE steam turbines, they had 60,000 shp on tap– half of what today’s Burkes have on a hull 25 percent as heavy– enabling them to reach 38 knots, a speed that is still fast for destroyers today.

USS John Rodgers (DD 574) at Charleston, 28 April 1943. A great example of the Fletcher class in their wartime configuration. Note the five 5″/38 mounts and twin sets of 5-pack torpedo tubes.

LCDR Fred Edwards, Destroyer Type Desk, Bureau of Ships, famously said of the class, “I always felt it was the Fletcher class that won the war… they were the heart and soul of the small-ship Navy.”

Meet Twiggs

Our subject was the second warship to carry the name of Georgia-born Major Levi Twiggs, USMC. The son of Major General John Twiggs, the “Savior of Georgia” of Revolutionary War fame, the younger Twiggs was commissioned a Marine second louie at the ripe old age of 19 on 10 November 1813, the young Corps’ 38th birthday. He fought against the British and was captured on the 44-gun heavy frigate USS President in 1815 after a fantastic sea battle against the frigate HMS Endymion.

Returning to American service after the Treaty of Ghent, he continued to serve for another 32 years until he fell in combat– along with almost every other officer and NCO of the Marine Battalion– whilst leading a storming party in the assault on Chapultepec Castle before Mexico City on 13 September 1847.

Twiggs perished in battle at age 54, having spent most of his life leading Marines against all comers. The Chapultepec battle led to the “Halls of Montezuma” in the Marine Corps hymn and the “blood stripe” worn on the service’s dress blue trousers. Photos: NH 119304/Yale University Library/ Library of Congress photo digital ID: cph 3g06207.

The first USS Twiggs was a Wickes-class four-piper destroyer laid down but not completed during the Great War. The hardy warship (Destroyer No. 127) was mothballed on the West Coast from 1922-1930, and 1937-39, but was eagerly accepted by the Admiralty in 1940 as part of the “destroyers for bases” agreement with Britain.

USS Twiggs Description: (DD-127) circa the 1930s. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. NH 67822

Put into RN service as the Town-class destroyer HMS Leamington (G 19), she helped scratch at least two German submarines (U-207 and U-587) while on convoy duty in the Atlantic. Later loaned to the Canadians as HMCS Leamington (G49), she was used in a decent war film and further loaned to the Soviets as the destroyer Zhguchi. She was only scrapped in 1950, ironically outliving the second USS Twiggs.

Speaking of which, our subject, USS Twiggs (DD-591), was built side by side at the Charleston Navy Yard with her sister, the future USS Paul Hamilton (DD-590), laid down on 20 January 1943. The keels were officially laid by striking three arcs simultaneously on the keel of each vessel by the wives of the crews’ junior officers, assisted by their husbands.

205-43 US Navy Yard, SC, January 20, 1943. USS Paul Hamilton (DD 589) & USS Twiggs (DD 591) Keel Laying Ceremonies. DD591 striking the arc and officially laying the keel. Left to right: front row: Mrs. R. G. Odiorne, Mrs. A. A. Rimmer, Mrs. J. W. Clayton, Mrs. T. H. Dwyer. File 14783.” Via Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum.

With resplendent red and haze grey hulls, the two sisters launched side-by-side on 7 April 1943. Twiggs was sponsored by Mrs. Roland S. Morris (Augusta Twiggs Shippen West), the great-granddaughter of the late Maj. Twiggs, whose husband had served as a diplomat under Woodrow Wilson.

Original Kodachrome. USS Paul Hamilton (DD-590) and USS Twiggs (DD-591) are ready for launching at the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, 7 April 1943. 80-G-K-13833

Commissioned on 4 November 1943, Twiggs was built in just 288 days. Her plank owner crew was led by CDR John Benjamin Fellows, Jr. (USNA 1931).

A career surface warfare man, he had learned his trade on the old cruiser USS Chester, then served on the cruiser USS Chicago. His first XO stint was on the humble “Old Bird” minesweeper USS Sandpiper doing survey work in the Aleutians. Then came work on a string of tin cans, earning his first command on the Gleaves-class destroyer USS Gwin (DD-433) from whose deck he picked up both a Navy Cross and a Silver Star off Savo Island and in the Kula Gulf, respectively.

The young CDR Fellows led Twiggs on her shakedown cruise to Bermuda in December 1943. On her way down the East Coast, she was photographed by a Navy blimp from Naval Air Station Weeksville in North Carolina.

USS Twiggs (DD-591), 7 December 1943. Position: 36°54′, 75°13′; Course: 265; Time: 1414; Altitude: 300′; Camera: K-20; F.L. 4.5″; Shutter speed: f/250. 80-G-215535

She had post-shakedown availability in January 1944 back in Charleston. In April 1944, CDR Fellows was pulled from his command. Bumped upstairs to a crash course at the Army-Navy Staff College in D.C., she was then sent on to the CBI command in India and soon after assigned to the G3 shop in the U.S. 10th Army.

Twigg’s second and final skipper would be CDR George “Geordie” Philip, Jr. (USNA 1935). A former student of the South Dakota School of Mines in Rapid City before going to Annapolis, Philip had served on the battlewagons Mississippi and California as well as the destroyer USS Ellet (DD-398) before the war. Once the big show started, he served as the XO and navigator on the early Fletcher-class tin can O’Bannon (DD 450)— the Navy’s most decorated destroyer during the war– off Guadalcanal, earning a Silver Star. Twiggs would be his first command.

She then escorted “Big Ben,” the new (and ill-fated) Essex-class carrier USS Franklin (CV-13) to Hawaii via the Panama Canal and San Diego, arriving at Pearl Harbor on 6 June 1944.

War!

After exercises and drills in Hawaiian waters and escorted convoys operating between Oahu and Eniwetok, Twiggs was added to DESRON 49, which was busy rehearsing with TF 79 for the liberation of the Philippines. Her baptism of fire would be in support of the amphibious assault on Leyte Island in October 1944, providing antiaircraft protection for the transports during the landings.

This included popping star shells every 30 minutes at night over target areas, delivering fire support ashore, sinking floating mines, and engaging numerous air contacts. In doing so, our destroyer expended 345 5-inch, 800 40mm, and 1,600 20mm shells in just five days.

While off Leyte, she also plucked two downed FM-2 Wildcat pilots of Taffy 2’s jeep carriers from the drink: Ensign A.F. Uthoff of VC-27 from USS Savo Island (CVE-78) and LT Abe Forsythe of VC-76 from USS Petrof Bay (CVE-80).

Next, following escort duty back and forth between the PI and Papua New Guinea, came the Mindoro operation in mid-December. This time, she sailed with 14 other destroyers of DESRON 54 as a screen for RADM Ruddock’s TG 77.12 (battleships USS West Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado; cruisers Montpelier and Minneapolis, escort carriers Natoma Bay (CVE-62), Kadashan Bay (CVE-76), Marcus Island (CVE-77), Savo Island (CVE-78), Ommaney Bay (CVE-79), and Manila Bay (CVE-61) which was to provide heavy cover and air support for Operation Love III, the invasion of Mindoro Island.

Twiggs stood by her Boston-built sistership USS Haraden (DD-585) after that destroyer had been hit by a suicide plane on 13 December and picked up two survivors from the ship that had been tossed into the sea. Notably, one of those waterlogged bluejackets had already survived a hit from a Japanese Kate torpedo plane on the destroyer USS Smith (DD-378) during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and rated the impact on Haraden to be more violent. Due to the proximity of other ships, Twiggs had only been able to get off 96 rounds of AAA fire at the enemy planes, mostly 40mm.

As Haraden lay dead in the water, Twiggs came alongside to help with DC and casualty care. Haraden was soon underway on her own power, making 20 knots, after suffering 14 killed and 24 wounded, with seven men transferred to Twiggs for treatment, one of whom later expired from multiple wounds. With the damaged ship having no radio, Twiggs escorted her back out of the area until Haraden linked up with a tow convoy, then returned to the TF.

Mindoro Operation, December 1944. USS Haraden (DD-585) after being hit by a Kamikaze in the Sulu Sea on 13 December 1944, while en route to the Mindoro invasion. USS Twiggs (DD-591) is alongside, rendering assistance. Photographed from USS Kadashan Bay (CVE-76). 80-G-273000

Then came the Luzon/Lingayen operation in early January 1945, with Twiggs acting as an escort for VADM Oldendorf’s TG 77.2 as it sortied toward the PI from Kossol Roads.

Entering the Mindanao Sea on 3 January, late on the afternoon of the next day, she was standing by the jeep carrier Ommaney Bay at 1714 when the latter was zapped by a kamikaze that sparked uncontrollable fires and an order to abandon ship, with all survivors in the water picked up by 1834.

USS Ommaney Bay (CVE-79) exploding after being hit by a kamikaze attack, in the Sulu Sea off Luzon, during the Lingayen Operation, 4 January 1944. Two destroyers are standing by. NH 43063

Twiggs, accompanied by Charleston-built sisters USS Bell (DD-587) and Burns (DD-588), stood by while Ommaney Bay slipped below the waves and transferred the survivors they collected later that night to the battlewagon West Virginia. Twiggs had picked up 26 officers and 185 enlisted from the carrier and its air group, VC-75.

Twiggs continued fighting the Divine Wind off and on during the operation, and also clocked in as a lifeguard once more, picking up a group of downed American aviators just before sunset on 13 January, the crews of a Navy PBY and an Army F-6 (photo P-51 Mustang).

The next morning, she grabbed three more when the crew of an Avenger off another jeep carrier crashed near them, bringing her lifeguard count to a full 224 in less than a fortnight. Twiggs then chopped to TF 54, which sortied from Ulithi on 10 February for rehearsals that brought them as a fighting force off Iwo Jima by 16 February. Using the callsign “Gabriel,” Twiggs was ready to deliver fire ashore as needed.

While supporting the invasion of Iwo with NGFS in the three weeks between 16 February and 10 March 1945, she expended almost 5,000 5-inch shells as well as another 5,000 40mm. Past the initial beach landings, during much of the gunfire support work, she was heaving two 5-inch salvos a minute at targets unseen by the ship, 5,000-6,000 yards inland, spotted by aircraft in real time.

After a short break to rest and restock her magazines, she popped up two weeks later off Okinawa to take part in the preinvasion bombardment, alternating with anti-air picket duty and ASW patrols.

This work grew even more deadly serious on 28 April when a downed kamikaze crashed just feet abreast of Twiggs and exploded, delivering a “glancing lick.” The force carried away much of the destroyer’s running lines and radio antennas, blew in her hull plating along the starboard side from frames 46 to 60, wrecked most of “officer’s country,” and curled back her starboard prop.

This required her to fall out of the operation and retire to Kerama Retto, a safer harbor (though still subject to near continuous air attacks) in the forward area, where she could tie up next to the LST-turned-repair ship USS Nestor (ARB-6) for two weeks in “the boneyard” and get back in the fight.

Filled with a shipload of self-titled “Old Men” of experienced craftsmen drawn from shipyards across the country, many well past draft age, USS Nestor (ARB 6) completed 1,760 rush repair jobs on 47 warships and auxiliaries in her eight months at Kerama Retto, mostly kamikaze-induced. Ironically, besides Twiggs, they helped patch up the battered carrier Franklin, which Twiggs had escorted into the theatre from the East Coast. 80-G-236726

Just 20 days after her destructive near-miss, Twiggs was back on radar picket duties in the western fire support area off Okinawa, providing NGFS on Iheya Shima and Iheya-Aguni.

The end came on 16 June, while, on radar picket duty some 5,000 yards off Senaga Shima, Okinawa’s southern tip, that observers on Twiggs around 2030 observed a single, low-flying enemy aircraft moments before it dropped a torpedo into her port side, adjacent to the destroyer’s number 2 magazine.

Very few men stationed forward survived, in particular, most of the destroyer’s bridge crew, including CDR Philip, were lost in the conflagration.

As told by the ship’s assistant communications officer, LT Oscar N. Pederson. He was one of just three officers to live– all wounded– to tell his story: Not content with just hitting Twiggs with a fish and living to fight another day, the same torpedo bomber circled back around sharply and onto the starboard side of the stricken destroyer, then crashed between her No. 3 and No. 4 guns, starting a whole new set of fires and secondary explosions.

As illustrated in a press release by the Navy entitled “Death of a Destroyer.” The senior NCO still alive, CMM Charles F. Schmidt, one of just five surviving chiefs, led the fire-fighting efforts as best he could, but the hoses had no pressure, and the hand pumps just weren’t making headway. Arriving on deck to find fuel oil spread over the water on both sides of the ship and on fire, and 40mm ready ammo cooking off in all directions, it was Chief Schmidt who ordered Twiggs abandoned.

Directing the efforts to offload the crew astern safely, the last five men trying to get off confessed they couldn’t swim.

Schmidt did what chiefs do: give up his lifejacket, help them as best he could, and then later attribute any lives saved to two other chiefs who were working amidships: Most of those recovered from the water, including Lt Pedersen and Chief Schmidt, were picked up by the destroyer USS Putnam (DD 757), which reported:

Twiggs was burning furiously, particularly around the bridge structure and forward torpedo tubes, midship machine guns, and after deck house, including 5″ mounts three and four. Almost continuous minor explosions were observed, which were believed to be 40mm, 20mm, and 5″ ammunition. Burning fragments were thrown short distances about the ship, around the rescue boats, and further igniting the thick, heavy oil layer on the water. Attempts to close the surface oil fires with the ship at this time to extinguish flames were prevented by the survivors in the water and about the stern, and propellers. At 2129, there was a tremendous explosion on the Twiggs, followed by a momentary inferno of fire throughout the ship, and she sank in less than a minute, leaving a large burning oil fire on the surface, which gradually disappeared.

Speaking of burning fragments, as noted by Navsource, the only known surviving piece of the exploding Twiggs was later found by Earl Bauer, a signalman aboard Putnam who observed this jagged piece of the exploding destroyer land red hot into the Putnam’s flag bag.

He retrieved it the next morning. This blackened, twisted, 2″ long artifact was donated to the National Museum of the Pacific War in November 2022.

Today, Twiggs is believed to rest in deep water near 26º08’N, 127º35’E, while 193 of her crew of 314 lost with the ship remain on duty.

Also lost with the ship was Jeanie, the destroyer’s mascot, along with all five of her pups.

As noted by the NHHC, Twiggs was one of five American destroyers to have more than half their crew killed and wounded in suicide attacks during the battle for Okinawa– the others being Halligan (DD-584), Luce (DD-522), Morrison (DD-560), and Drexler (DD-741).

Epilogue

Twiggs was officially struck from the Navy list on 11 July 1945. She earned four battle stars for her war.

In 1957, her wreck was donated to the government of the Ryukyu Islands.

Twiggs has a memorial plaque at the National Museum of the Pacific War (the Nimitz Museum) in Texas.

As you may surmise, NARA has most of her deck logs and reports digitized.

A few of her crew who survived managed to leave behind oral history interviews. CDR Philip’s family was presented a posthumous Navy Cross. One of 57 members of the Annapolis Class of 1935 in Memorial Hall, the Navy in 1978 named a frigate in his honor, USS George Philip (FFG 12). The greyhound was sponsored by his daughter, Margaret.

USS George Philip (FFG 12) served until 2004, her motto, “Intrepide Impelle” (To Go Boldly)

Twiggs’ first skipper, CDR Fellows, was on Okinawa on joint service with the Army when his old ship went down. He continued to serve, surviving the war, and retired from the Navy as a rear admiral. He passed in 1974.

I can’t find out anything post-war about Chief Schmidt. It seems time has done what the Japanese never could.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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Warship Wednesday, June 11, 2025: Germans to the front!

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

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Warship Wednesday, June 11, 2025: Germans to the front!

Naval History and Heritage Command photograph NH 48215

Above we see S.M. kleiner kreuzer Gefion, part of the German Imperial Navy’s East Asia Squadron in 1899, anchored off Hankou (now Wuhan) after her nearly 600-mile voyage up the Yangtze River to protect the Kaiser’s interests in China– with Willy’s brother aboard.

The unique little cruiser would play a gunboat role in Chinese diplomacy some 125 yeas ago this month before shipping back home for the rest of her career.

Meet Gefion

Our subject was the second warship to carry the name of a Nordic sea goddess (the fourth goddess of Æsir following Frigg, the wife of Odin) to serve in the German Navy. The first was a 48-gun sail frigate (segelfregatte) built for the Royal Danish Navy in 1843 and captured during the war with her southern neighbors in 1849.

The former Danish frigate Gefion under German service. The Germans used the trophy ship as a training ship under her original name until 1880 and then as a coal hulk until 1891. Her bell, figurehead, anchors, and many other relics dot Eckernförde and Kiel.

The second Gefion was originally deemed a Kreuzerkorvette (cruiser corvette) J when designed in the early 1890s, an early attempt by the Kaiserliche Marine to create a cruiser suitable for both reconnaissance and fleet duties, as well as an overseas colonial service ship on independent duty.

Some 362 feet overall with a 43-foot beam, she sported a dagger-like 8.4:1 length-to-beam ratio. Lightly built, she had 0.98 inches of nickel-steel armor over her deck and equivalent armor on her conning tower. A second 0.6-inch steel plate cap was over her engine cylinder heads, backed by 5.9 inches of wood. She had a 4-inch cellulose belt at the waterline.

Steel hulled and using both transverse and longitudinal steel frames, she was sheathed below the water line with wood and copper, held with brass fittings, to help with fouling, especially when in colonial service.

Originally to carry six new 15 cm/35 (5.9″) SK L/35 guns in single mounts, with 810 shells in her magazine, this was later changed to 10 equally new but lighter 10.5 cm/40 (4.1″) SK L/40 mounts with as many as 1,500 shells at the ready. They were arranged two forward, two aft, and eight amidships in broadside, all protected by a thin armored shield. Her secondary battery was a half dozen 5 cm/40 (1.97″) SK L/40 rapid-fire (10 rounds per minute) torpedo boat guns with another 1,500 rounds in the magazine.

She also had a pair of 17-inch above-deck torpedo tubes (down from a planned six). Eight Maxim guns were arranged in her two spotting/fighting tops, they could be dismounted for use ashore. Likewise, almost a third of a 300-man crew could be issued small arms carried aboard and sent ashore. A small 6cm boat gun could back them up.

Gefion, Janes 1914

With six cylindrical two-sided boilers exhausting through a trio of stacks, driving two VTE engines, her plant was good for 9,800 shp. Extensively fitted for electric lights and hoists, she carried three 67-volt, 40-kW dynamos. Designed for 19 knots, on trials she made 20.53 knots at full power on forced draft. Loaded with 900 tons of good coal, she could theoretically steam 6,850nm at 11 knots, or 2,730nm at 18 knots on natural draft, the first German cruiser capable of such a range. This could be extended by rigging a cruising canvas from her two masts and rigging. It turned out that her decks vibrated extensively at full power, she struggled in tough seas, and she had insufficient ventilation below decks.

How she stacked up against contemporary cruisers, from the circa 1900 Professional Notes in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings:

Built for a cost of 5.171 million marks, she was ordered from Ferdinand Schichau’s new Danzig yard, as hull No. 486, and laid down on 28 March 1892. Launched 31 May 1893, she commissioned 27 June 1894.

This made her the forerunner of the 41 later kleiner kreuzers of the Gazelle, Bremen, Konigsberg, Dresden, Kolberg, Magdeburg, Karlsruhe, Graudenz, Pillau, Wiesbaden, Brummer, and Coln classes constructed between 1897 and 1918, all of which carried 4.1 inch guns on similar hulls along with torpedo tubes. The first four classes even carried the same model 4.1-inch SK L/40s as Gefion.

Geifon with her glad rags flying about 1895 IWM (Q 22323)

SMS Gefion was photographed sometime early in her career, between her commissioning date, 27 June 1894, and the receipt of this photo by the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence, 28 June 1895. NH 88636

Her first skipper was Korvettenkapitän Hans Oelrichs, an 1860s veteran of the old Norddeutsche Marine. Gefion’s first assignments were to escort the Royal yacht Hohenzollern to Norway in the autumn of 1894 and attend the inauguration ceremony of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal (Nord-Ostsee-Kanal) the following year when the double locks at Brunsbüttel and Holtenau were opened.

A white-liveried SMS Gefion photographed early in her career, possibly during her 1894-1897 service in home waters. The Levensau Bridge over the Kiel Canal appears in the background; the Canal opened in 1895. NH 88634

Gefion spent the next couple of years as a guardship at Wilhelmshaven while the larger second-class cruiser Kaiserin Augusta did the same at Kiel. During the winter and spring, they served as training grounds for the fleet’s new stokers and artificers. During the summer and fall, they clocked in on fleet maneuvers, performing scouting services for the main battle line, taking breaks to escort Hohenzollern.

In April 1897, Gefion escorted the Swedish passenger ship Rex on the inaugural voyage of the mail steamer line from Sassnitz to Trelleborg. She counted among her wardroom Prince Henry (Heinrich) of Prussia, the Kaiser’s younger brother and a career naval officer, who on at least one occasion hosted Willy and his sons aboard.

Sent abroad

With Gefion’s newness wearing off and new light cruisers joining the German fleet, she was put in overhaul in the summer of 1897, made ready for overseas service, upgrading her smaller generators with a trio of 110-volt, 58-kW sets.

Her new skipper was FKpt Max Heinrich Ludwig Rollmann, a career sailor who joined the German Navy in 1873 as a cadet. A skilled officer and torpedo expert, he was part of the so-called “Torpedobande” (torpedo gang) which influenced Tirpitz and others to warm to the weapons.

Originally to be sent to intervene in the ongoing dispute between Haiti and Germany, Gefion was instead selected to strengthen the Ostasiatischen Kreuzerdivision in the Far East.

Gefion, NH 48216

In December 1897, just ahead of the first winter ice, she left in company with the old 7,000-ton armored cruiser Deutschland and Kaiserin Augusta in a squadron commanded by Prince Henry. When Deutschland broke down in Hong Kong in April 1898 while heading to China, Henry switched his flag to Gefion and proceeded to the German fleet’s Pacific treaty homeport at Tsingtao.

It was with the German East Asian Squadron that Gefion kept tabs on Dewey’s squadron as it smashed the Spanish in Manila later that summer, steamed to Samoa to serve as a station ship in early 1899, and then steam nearly 600 miles up the Yangtze to Hankou (now Wuhan) where she landed 130 armed crew on 28 April to guard the new 103-acre German Concession (Deutsche Konzession) in that river city and escort Prince Henry, then head of the squadron.

Henry was received by the Governor-General of Huguang, Zhang Zhidong, along with the assorted foreign expatriates, and even the British and French Concessions in the city flew the German flag.

Zhang Zhidong entertains Prince Heinrich. The VanDyke-clad FKpt Max Rollman, Gefion’s skipper, is to the far left. After the reception, the Germans toured the local military academy and watched the drills of the Hubei New Army, which included several German officers as instructors, notably Lieutenants Carl Fuchs and Albrecht Welzel, a Sergeant A. Seydel, and a Rittmaster (cavalry master) named Behrensdorf.

Henry laid the cornerstone for the new German bund in Hankou on 30 April, flanked by Gefion’s officers and crew.

War!

After a second tour in Samoa in early 1900, Gefion, now reclassified as a Kreuzer III. Klasse, and the rest of the German Far East Squadron, now under VADM Felix von Bendemann, massed at Tsingtao as trouble rumbled with the anti-Western Boxers in China, who were mounting attacks on churches.

The German force at the time, besides Gefion, included two new 6,700-ton Victoria Louise-class protected cruisers (with 477-member crews), SMS Hansa and SMS Hertha, the Kaiserin Augusta, the light cruisers SMS Irene, Geier, Seeadler, Bussard, and Schwalbe, along with the gunboat Itis.

Die Gartenlaube, by Willy Stower, showing the German cruisers in the Far East, circa 1898. These include Arkona. Prinzeß Wilhelm. Kaiserin Augusta, Kaiser, (Flaggschiff der I. Division) along with. Kormoran, Irene, Gefion, and Deutschland, (Flaggschiff der II. Division)

On 30 May, the Chinese government allowed a force of 400 assorted troops from eight Western nations to land at Tientsin and head to Peking to protect the Legation Quarter there. However, the situation continued to deteriorate as the Boxers cut the rail line between the two cities on 5 June, and a week later, a Japanese diplomat was killed by Chinese regulars.

Cruiser SMS Gefion at Tsingtao, circa 1900

Joining an international task force that included British, Russian, French, and Japanese warships, the combined squadron on 17 June moved to seize the five Chinese forts at Taku (Dagukou) at the mouth of the Hai (Pei-Ho) River, which barred the way to Tientsin (Tianjin), some 40 miles downstream, and Peking (Beijing), 110 miles inland.

The combat was sharp but one-sided, with the forts falling after a six-hour bombardment and short action ashore by naval landing parties.

S.M. Kanonenboot ILTIS im Gefecht mit den Takuforts am 17. Juni 1900 Willy Stöwer, DMM 2000-014-001

Ersturmung von taku by Fritz Neumann, Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection

The Taku forts would remain garrisoned by the Eight Nations through 1902. Looking down the Peiho River toward North Port and Bay, from Northwest Fort, Taku, China. Underwood & Underwood, Publishers, 1901. LC-DIG-stereo-1s48075

The allied fleet also captured the Chinese government’s Dagu shipyard, complete with a gunboat that went to the Japanese and four new German-built Hai Lung class torpedo boats that were split between the British, Russian, French, and Germans.

Chinese Hai-Lung class torpedo boats captured at Taku, June 1900. Some 193 feet oal, these four German-made boats could make 32 knots and carried six Sk 4.7 cm L/35s while two 17-inch torpedo tubes weren’t fitted. Hai-Lung, yard number 608, became the German SMS Taku and was decommissioned after grounding on 30 December 1913. Hai-Ch’ing, yard number 609, became the French Takou and was written off after being grounded on the coast of Vietnam. Hai-Hoa, hull number 610, became the Russian Таку (Taku), and was sunk on 26 July 1904 off Port Arthur by Japanese forces. Hai-Hsi, yard number 611, became HMS Taku and was sold for scrap on 26 October 1916.

A Chinese second-class cruiser (Hai-Chi?) flying an Admiral’s flag was detained outside Taku by Gefion, who was ordered to release the vessel.

This triggered the start of the outright 55-day siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking, with some 900 Western troops and civilians, along with 2,800 Chinese Christians, holding out until relieved. The German minister, Baron von Ketteler, was killed by a Manchu officer escorted by Chinese lancers the same day while on his way to negotiate a solution to the incident, which was rapidly spiraling out of control.

A force that had tried to reinforce Peking before the siege was led by British VADM Sir Edward Hobart Seymour, who took the lead and scratched together a column of some 2,127 men drawn from the assorted ships crowding under the Taku forts, with the idea to force the way to Peking via Tientsin. His chief of staff was the young future admiral, Capt. John Jellicoe.

Seymour was able to muster 915 straw-hatted jack-tars and Royal Marines to spearhead the detachment. The Germans chipped in 511. Smaller contingents from allied fleets included 312 Russians, 158 French, 112 Americans, 54 Japanese, 40 Italians, and 25 Austrians.

Seymour Expedition, 1900, USN 901030

As detailed in Die Kaiserliche Marine während der Wirren in China, 1900-1901. Berlin: Mittler und Sohn, 1903. The German force was seriously ad hoc.

The German contingent, which consisted of 22 officers, two surgeons, and 487 enlisted men, was organized into two companies and two large platoons, armed with Gewehr 88 bolt-action rifles, single-action M1879 Reichsrevolvers, and four Maxim machine guns. Commanded overall by Kapitän zur See Guido von Usedom, the skipper of the Hertha, the four ships that coughed up landing forces contributed the following, each in turn led by the respective ship’s executive officer:

  • Hertha: 7 officers, 175 men under KL (CDR) Hecht
  • Hansa: 7 officers, 153 men, under KKpt (LCDR) Paul Schlieser
  • Kaiserin Augusta: 5 officers, 85 men, 1 doctor under KKpt Oltmann Buchholz
  • Gefion: 3 officers, 74 men, 1 doctor under KKpt Otto Weniger

Of course, Seymour thought he was just opposing a rabble of Boxer bandits, not 30,000 Imperial Qing Army regulars (Kansu Braves) who ultimately came out against him. These units consisted of Muslims from the remote Gansu Province, situated between the Qilian Mountains and the Gobi Desert, men renowned for their discipline and loyalty to the empire.

Flying long scarlet and black banners, the Gansu Army wore traditional uniforms but was well-trained and armed with Mauser M.71 repeater rifles and modern breechloading field artillery.

Chinese soldiers in 1899–1901. Left: three infantrymen of the New Imperial Army. Front: drum major of the regular army. Seated on the trunk: field artilleryman. Right: Boxers. Via Leipziger illustrirte Zeitung 1900

With this, the so-called Seymour Expedition was seriously outnumbered and fighting in a foreign land.

They left out for Peking from Tientsin on 10 June– a week before the Taku forts were seized– via five commandeered trains and by 14 June had suffered their first losses, among the Italian contingent. By the 18th, a pitched battle was fought against a key Western position, held by men largely drawn from Gefion.

As detailed in “The Boxer Rebellion: Bluejackets and Marines in China, 1900–1901” by Emily Abdow (NHHC, 2023):

A German garrison was at a coal depot near Langfang, christened “Fort Gefion” for their ship. Chinese Colonel Yao Wang [of Gen. Dong Fuxiang’s Gansu Army] and Boxer leader Ni Zanqing determined Fort Gefion was the weak point and amassed about 3,000 Qing soldiers and 2,000 Boxers for an attack. On 18 June, Boxers charged at Fort Gefion, teenagers and old men alike barreling into heavy allied fire in never-ending waves. When the Boxers fell, Colonel Yao’s soldiers attacked. Armed with modern weapons, they nearly forced the Germans’ right flank to retreat. British and French sailors reinforced the Germans, driving back the Chinese forces. At the end of the battle, the allied casualties were 10 dead and 50 wounded. The Chinese death toll was 400, over half of the casualties Qing soldiers.

With no hope of reaching Peking, Seymour’s force burned their trains and fought a slow, foot-borne retreat back to Tientsin for the next four days.

Coming upon the Chinese government’s Fort Xigu, the Great Hsi-Ku Arsenal (also seen in Western sources as Fort Hsiku/Osiku), eight miles northwest of Tientsin in the pre-dawn of 22 June, it made sense to occupy the works and wait for relief from the sea.

The problem was that the local Chinese garrison approached 1,500 troops, and the fort, with 16-foot-high mud walls protected by Krupp field guns, was a tough nut to crack.

With the Royal Marines tasked with an attempt to take the complex from the rear, Seymour passed the order, “Germans to the front.”

Leading the German column into the attack was KKpt Oltmann Buchholz, XO of the Kaiserin Augusta, with the men from the Hansa, Hertha, and Gefion behind him. The assault was quick and sharp, with the Germans battering down the front doors, then sweeping through and clearing the complex, turning the good Krupp guns around on their former owners. Inside were found, besides munitions, enough rations and supplies to revitalize the force along with a well-stocked medical clinic.

Buchholz was killed in the effort.

German artist Carl Röchling celebrated the event with his painting “Die Deutschen an der Front” (“The Germans to the front”).

The attack occurred at 0222. Roechling takes a bit of liberty with the amount of sunlight.

Seymour Expedition, 1900, likely at the Great Hsi-Ku Arsenal. USN 901028

A relief column of 2,000 fresh Western troops under Capt. (later RADM of Battle of Coronel fame) Christopher Cradock, RN, and Major (later MG) Littleton Tazewell “Tony” Waller, USMC, relieved Seymour near Fort Hsiku on 25 June, allowing his column to fully withdraw back to Tientsin. Seymour’s international column suffered at least 62 dead and 232 wounded, a casualty rate of about 1:6, during its fortnight in the Chinese countryside.

The German sailors and marines on the Seymour expedition ashore in June 1900 lost 16 killed and 60 wounded, including two young officers from Gefion (LT z. S. Hane v. Krohn from Wilhelmähoven and Frang Bustig from Hanover, both on 22 June in the assault on Fort Hsiku). The bombardment of the Taku forts on 17 June cost the Germans seven killed and 11 wounded, all on the gunboat SMS Itis (including her skipper, who caught 25 shrapnel wounds yet remained on the bridge, earning the Blue Max). Subsequent fighting in and around Tientsin cost the German force another 12 dead and 41 wounded, including three sailors from Gefion’s naval infantry (Wilhelm Wachsmund from Goblenz, on 27 June, along with Heinrich Hamm from Grünendeich and Emil Bonk from Raschang on 13 July). Of note, Hansa’s company suffered the greatest casualties of the German naval contingents during the Boxer rebellion (13 dead and 24 wounded).

Besieged Peking would ultimately be relieved in mid-August by the 20,000-strong force under British Maj. Gen. Alfred Gaselee (although fully half of the force were Japanese troops under Lt. Gen. Yamaguchi Motomi, a general senior in both grade and experience to Gaselee).

The 51 German marines (the fourth largest contingent in the Quarter) of III. Seebataillon under Oberleutnant Graf von Soden, holding out at Peking in the Legation, suffered 12 killed and 14 wounded during the siege, holding their line along the Quarter’s old Tartar Wall shoulder-to-shoulder with the 53 U.S. Marines and bluejackets landed from the USS Oregon and Newark.

German marines Peking 1900, AWM A05904

Peace

Following the arrival of more ships and troops rushed to China from Germany, Gefion was recalled home in September 1901.

Arriving back in German waters in time for Christmas, she was placed in ordinary and sent to Kaiserliche Werft in Wilhelmshaven for a drawn-out three-year overhaul. This saw her armament retained but relocated for both stability and protection purposes.

Emerging from overhaul in 1905, she was placed in reserve, the German fleet having much better cruisers to choose from at that point.

It was from these mothballs that she was recalled in 1914, but, with no crews available to man her, she was moved to Danzig for use as a barracks ship, her usable equipment and weapons cannibalized for other uses.

At the end of the war, the victorious allies elected not to claim the hulked Gefion as a war trophy, and she was stricken from the German naval list on 5 November 1919.

Ex-Gefion was purchased by the salvage concern of Norddeutsche Tiefbaugesellschaft along with her old Far East buddy Kaiserin Augusta, the cruiser Victoria Louise, several incomplete submarines, and the obsolete (circa 1890) battlewagon Brandenburg. While most of the company’s new assets were soon scrapped in Danzig, Gefion and Victoria Louise were sold to the shipping firm of Danziger Hoch- und Tiefbau GmbH (Behnke & Sieg), along with the four still-crated 1,200 hp MAN four-stroke diesel engines for the unfinished SM U-115 and U-116.

Most of the superstructure and the machinery from Gefion and Victoria Louise were removed, and two cranes and their associated stowage space were installed. Their old coal-fired boilers and VTE engines removed, each picked up a pair of former U-boat diesels. They entered service with DHT in 1920 as the cargo vessels (frachtdampfer) SS Adolf Sommerfeld and Flora Sommerfeld, respectively.

Seen in the 1922 Lloyds Steamers list as SS Adolf Summerfeld (sic). The ex-SMS Victoria Louise is listed in the same volume correctly as Flora Sommerfeld.

However, the Baltic timber route they served had shallow draft harbors, and the thin-waisted former cruisers drew too much water to make the venture successful. By 1923, both were scrapped in Danzig, and their still-young diesels were sold to an electric company.

Epilogue

The German Navy never used the name Gefion again, however, her bell has been spotted a few times since WWII and may be in circulation in private collections.

Several pieces of period maritime art, primarily German postcards, endure.

1902 lithograph of Gefion by Hugo Graf

An exquisite 1:100 scale model of the cruiser in her white overseas livery is on display under glass at the Internationales Maritimes Museum in Hamburg.

Speaking of models, Combrig has a 1:700 scale kit available. 

As for Gefion’s China-era (1898-1901) skipper, FKpt Max Rollmann returned to Germany, became the captain of the battleship SMS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, and commanded the 1st Squadron of the High Seas Fleet as a commodore, then the III Squadron as a vice admiral in 1910. Retiring in 1913 after 40 years with the colors, he was made a full admiral on the retired list, decorated with both the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle and the Order of the Crown. Eschewing his pension and returning to work in the admiralty as a civilian during the Great War, he passed in 1942 in Berlin, aged 85. His son, KKpt Max Rollmann, had passed the previous year while serving as the duty officer (Rollenoffizier) aboard the Bismarck.

Charakterisierter Admiral Max Rollmann. As part of his service in China, he carried top-level decorations and honors, including the Russian Order of Saint Stanislaus, the Grand Officer’s Cross of the Order of the Crown of Thailand, and the Commander’s Cross of the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure.

Kapitan zur See Guido von Usedom, the skipper of the cruiser Hertha that led the overall German naval infantry battalion under Seymour, was given a Blue Max and made an ADC to the Kaiser following the campaign. Quick with exotic anecdotes from the Orient to entertain Willy’s guests, he was given command of the imperial yacht Hohenzollern for a couple of years, followed by comfortable desk jobs until he retired in 1910 as a vice admiral after 39 years in the service, promoted to full Admiral on the retirement rolls.

Like Rollman, Von Usedom volunteered his services to the Kaiser once again in 1914 and soon found himself wearing a fez as an admiral in the Ottoman Navy in command of Sonderkommando Türkei. He strengthened the Dardanelles Straits until they became virtually impregnable from the sea in 1915, forcing the disastrous land Gallipoli campaign and earning a set of oak leaves for his 1900 Blue Max. He remained in Turkish service until 1918, when he retired a second time on the outbreak of peace.

Charakterisierter Admiral Guido von Usedom passed in 1925, aged 70. And yes, the center image is him showing a Mameluke-carrying Willy around the Dardanelles in 1915.

Albert Wilhelm Heinrich, Prinz von Preußen, was very much seen as the “Sailor Prince” of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Entering the German Navy at the age of 16 in 1878, he was a professional officer and earned his Großadmiral shoulder boards for sure, having spent decades on sea-going duty. During the Great War, he ably commanded the Imperial German Baltic Sea Fleet (Oberbefehlshaber der Ostseestreitkräfte) in operations against the Russians. He passed in 1929, aged 66.

The German treaty port at Tsingtao fell to an Anglo-Japanese force in 1914, and the Hankou Concession was retrograded by the Chinese in 1917, with the remaining German merchants closing up shop altogether in 1945. The old baroque German consulate in the Hankou Bund, where Prince Henry laid the cornerstone after a trip on Gefion in 1899, survives today on Yanjing Avenue as a Wuhan municipal office building, a red banner flying from its mast.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, June 4, 2025: Tiny Hull, Heart of Oak

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, June 4, 2025: Tiny Hull, Heart of Oak

“Goliath Wins,” painting by former RN FAA veteran and well-known marine and aviation artist, the late Jim Rae.

Above we see the Tree-class Admiralty type minesweeping trawler, HMT Juniper (T123), as she engages in a one-sided artillery duel with the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in the Norwegian Sea on 8 June 1940, some 85 years ago this week.

The Trees

The British, with thousands of hardy blue water fishing boats and generations of crews along their coast in the 20th Century, were quickly able to mobilize these home-grown assets as sort of a “pirate fleet” with little effort, much akin to how the USCG almost overnight was able to deploy their 2,000-boat so-called Hooligan Navy or Corsair Fleet during WWII.

The Brits already had volumes of experience with such transformation in the Great War, ordering 609 “Admiralty” military type steel hulled trawlers specifically for naval use, along with another 1,400 boats taken up from trade. 

Trawlers on patrol at Halifax, 1918, CWM

The concept in the Great War was simple: take a boat, add a deck gun, radio set, and searchlight; crew it largely with experienced trawlermen in uniform led by a reserve officer or two, and then specialize it into either anti-submarine work with listening gear and depth charges or minesweeping with sweep gear, sort said “battle trawlers” into flotillas, and turn them loose.

When 1935’s Italian invasion of Ethiopia, followed by Hitler’s abrogation of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles with the reoccupation of the Rhineland by German troops and rearmament to include U-boats, signaled a new war on the horizon, the Royal Navy dusted off its trawler plan as a quick way to boost coastal forces.

This led to the prototype for the British ASW/minesweeping trawlers of the next decade, with HMT Basset (T68) built by Robb in Leith, being launched before the end of 1935.

Coal-burning with a single boiler and VTE engine good for a humble 12.5 knots, Basset ran 160 feet oal, could float in just 10 feet of seawater, and displaced 521 tons. Armament was a 3″/40 12pdr 12cwt QF Mk I/II/V taken from a WWI-era destroyer and mounted on a “bandstand” on the bow, along with weight and space saved for as many as 30 depth charges and mechanical minesweeping gear.

Basset led to a series of nearly two dozen vessels for the Royal Indian Navy and a few for the Canadians, while the design was tweaked for the follow-on Gem and Tree classes.

The first WWII-era Admiralty standard minesweeping trawler type was the 20-member Tree class, so dubbed as all its members were named after trees. These were just barely larger than the Basset (Dog) class, hitting 545 tons standard (770 full) and running some 164 feet long.

Armament, like Basset, relied on a single old 12-pounder forward, a twin 50-cal Vickers rear (sometimes replaced with a second 12-pounder) a pair of Vickers .303s, two depth charge throwers and two depth charge racks with provision for 30 ash cans, along with the novel new Oropesa Mk II mechanical mine sweep or LL-type magnetic mine sweep.

A trawler’s gun crew manning the 12-pounder on the fo’castle. Photographer LT FA Hudson IWM (A 17176)

A trawler’s crew manning a 12-pounder. Photographer LT FA Davies IWM (A 12317)

Ordered from nine small yards around Britain, all were laid down on the eve of the war, augmented by 67 other trawlers purchased from trade.

HMT Birch, a Tree-class trawler

British Tree class naval trawler HMT Rowan, Pennant No T119 FL18332

British Tree-class naval trawler HMT Walnut, Pennant No T103

British Tree class naval trawler HMT Acacia, Pennant No T02, IWM FL 46

HMT Bay, Tree class Trawler, IWM A 6694

HM Trawler Pine – a “Tree” class minesweeper, she was torpedoed and sunk off Beachy Head by a Kriegsmarine Schnellboot with the loss of 10 of her crew.

HMT Walnut, Tree tree-class trawler

Crews were up to 40 souls, but typically more like 35, relying on a skipper and two junior officers, a couple of ratings from the RN or RNR, and the rest members of the newly stood up Royal Naval Patrol Service (RNPS).

Trained at the “stone frigate” HMS Europa, the commandeered Sparrows Nest Gardens in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the ad-hoc nature of the enterprise soon led to the force being known as “Harry Tate’s Navy” after a popular comedian of the era who had problems getting his car started and soon found it falling apart all around him but carried on with confidence nonetheless. In short, something akin to the “Rodney Dangerfield Navy.”

Meet Juniper

Our subject was the second warship to carry the name in the Royal Navy, with the first being an 8-gun Napoleonic-era Shamrock-class schooner that distinguished herself on Sir Arthur Wellesley’s campaigns in Portugal and Spain.

Ordered along with her future sister, HMT Mangrove from Ferguson Brothers (now Ferguson Marine) in Glasgow, Juniper was laid down as Yard No. 344 in August 1939 while Mangrove, built side-by-side, was No. 345. Their hull numbers would be T123 and T112, characteristically out of sequence, a class trait.

Juniper launched on 15 December 1939, as the Germans were digesting newly conquered western Poland, and commissioned in March 1940, as they prepped to turn West. She was modified while under construction and fitted with a more comprehensive AAA suite: three 20mm Oerlikons in place of the twin .50 cal Vickers.

20mm Oerlikon mounting on a British trawler. LT FA Davies IWM (A 12318)

Juniper’s first (and only) skipper was 42-year-old LCDR (Emergency) Geoffrey Seymour Grenfell, RN. An 18-year-old midshipman of impeccable background during the Great War (grandson of ADM John Pascoe Grenfell, grandnephew of Field Marshal Francis Grenfell, and the nephew of a VC holder killed with the 9th Lancers in 1914) he fought at Jutland on the famous HMS Warspite, a vessel holed 150 times in the sea clash by five German battleships. Leaving active service in 1920 as a lieutenant, after nine years with the colors, he was moved to the Emergency List, where he was made a LCDR in 1928 and remained there until activated in 1939.

Grenfell was a little bit famous at the time, having married the high-profile Countess of Carnarvon in 1938, an American heiress and descendant of the Lee Family of Virginia who had just divorced the 6th Earl of Carnarvon, leaving her son to inherit the title. Of note, the family home was the real Victorian Highclere Castle, the setting of the fictional Downton Abbey. Grenfell and the Countess’s marriage was important enough to be carried across the Atlantic in the NYT’s society pages.

The rest of Juniper’s tiny wardroom was made up of Probationary Temporary (Acting) Sub-Lieutenant Neville L. Smith, RNVR, and Probationary Temporary Lieutenant Ronald Campbell Blair Arnold Daniel, RNVR. Daniel, 40, was an architect in the Richmond practice of Partridge and a proud member of the Petersham Horticultural Society, having just joined the colors in April 1940.

War!

Rushed northward in June 1940 to take part in Operation Alphabet, the Allied evacuation of Norway, on the morning of 8 June, having departed Tromso the day before as the sole escort for the Aberdeen-bound 5,600-ton tanker SS Oil Pioneer, Juniper spotted a large cruiser on the horizon off Harstad.

It turned out to be the 14,000-ton Admiral Hipper, which at the time flew the signals of the British cruiser HMS Southampton.

Hipper off Norway, 1940

Realizing the ruse too late and being too slow to make a getaway, Juniper put the “battle” in battle trawler and made ready for a surface action. Signaling her merchantmen to evade as best they could, she began a cat-and-mouse artillery action with Hipper.

Some reports state that it took 90 minutes. Others are just 15. No matter how long it took to play out, the outcome was certain, and Juniper was smashed below the waves by Hipper’s secondary 4.1-inch SK C/33 battery, the bruiser saving its big 8-inch guns for more worthy prey. Any of Hipper’s four escorting destroyers, Z7 Hermann Schoemann, Z10 Hans Lody, Z15 Erich Steinbrinck, and Z20 Karl Galster, would have been more than a match for our trawler.

An on-board camera crew captured the event.

Shortly after, the nearby KM Gneisenau caught Oil Pioneer and sank her with a combination of gunfire and a torpedo from the destroyer Schoemann, leaving one reported survivor.

The bulk of Juniper’s crew were listed simply as missing or “Missing Presumed Killed” (MPK).

ALEXANDER, Ivor, Ordinary Seaman, LT/JX 179311, MPK
AUSTWICK, Clarence H, Engineman, RNR (PS), LT/X 59952 ES, missing
BARGEWELL, Arthur, Stoker, RNPS, LT/KX 106123, missing
BROWNJOHN, Denis E, Telegraphist, C/WRX 1246, missing
CHAPMAN, Charles, Seaman, RNR (PS), LT/X 20188 A, missing
COOPER, Robert, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 183134, MPK
DANIEL, Ronald C B A, Py/Ty/Lieutenant, RNVR, MPK
GEORGE, William, Stoker 2c, RNPS, LT/KX 104599, MPK
GRENFELL, Geoffrey S, Lieutenant Commander, MPK
HIND, Wilson K, Leading Seaman, RNR, D/X 10320 B, missing
JILLINGS, Henry A, Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 177687, missing
MARSHALL, William D, Stoker, RNPS, LT/KX 104048, missing
NEWELL, George W, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 172789, MPK
PENTON, Thomas S, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 176379, missing
PERKINS, James K, Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 177711, missing
PHILLIPS, Peter R S, Ordinary Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 183136, MPK
SAWKINS, Eric W, Ordinary Signalman, RNVR, P/SDX 1535, missing
SEABROOK, William H, Telegraphist, RNW(W)R, C/WRX 124, missing
SMITH, Neville L, Py/Ty/Act/Sub Lieutenant, RNVR, MPK
SUMMERS, George, Engineman, RNR (PS), LT/X 318 EU, missing
TIMMS, Ernest S, Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 180470, missing
VENTRY, Vincent, Seaman Cook, RNPS, LT/JX 185635, missing
WEAVER, Edgar A, 2nd Hand, RNPS, LT/KX 181715, missing

Those survivors picked up by the Germans were taken to Trondheim and eventually made their way to the Stalag IID Stargard in Pomerania. One of these survivors, Telegraphist Charles Roy Batchelor (499/X4624), though grievously wounded, survived the war and left a detailed account of his post-Juniper experience. He was repatriated home in October 1943 due to his wounds and would endure a series of skin and bone grafts for another 18 months. He went on to make a life for himself in to the 1980s and had a family, but walked with a limp, carried facial scars, and had difficulty chewing until the very end.

Soon after sending Juniper and Oil Pioneer to the bottom, Hipper found the empty troopship SS Orama (19,840 GRT) and made it a hat-trick.

German destroyer Z10 Hans Lody picking up survivors from British troop transport SS Orama, June 8, 1940

On the same afternoon as Juniper was lost and only a few miles away, the German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst would meet up and sink the carrier HMS Glorious, including her defending destroyers HMS Acasta and Ardent, with the loss of over 1,500 lives. That much larger disaster overshadowed our trawler’s ride to Valhalla.

Epilogue

Despite the heroic charge of Juniper, I cannot find where the vessel or her crew were decorated. British LCDR Gerard Broadmead Roope, skipper of the G-class destroyer, HMS Glowworm, sunk by Hipper under very similar circumstances in April 1940, earned a VC.

The only post-war mention I can find of the good LCDR Grenfell is a notice of the settlement of his estate, published in October 1941.

His wife, the former Countess of Carnarvon, mourned for a decade before taking her third husband in 1950, and passed in 1977.

The Trees had a tough war. Besides Juniper, five of her 19 sisters were lost in action: HMT Almond (T 14), Ash (T 39), Chestnut (T 110), Hickory (T 116), and Pine (T 101).

The British lost an amazing 122 minesweeping trawlers during the war.

The Royal Naval Patrol Service numbered some 66,000 men during WWII, manning 6,000 assorted small vessels. At least 14,500 of these “Sparrows” lost their lives, and no less than 2,385 RNPS seamen “have no known grave but the sea.”

Today, the Lowestoft War Memorial Museum at Sparrow’s Nest remembers their sacrifices. Bronze panels at the Museum hold the names of the 2,385 MPK, including those lost on Juniper, recorded on Panels No. 1 and No. 2.

“Harry Tate’s Navy” echoes into eternity. 

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, May 28, 2025: Part Eagle, Part Phoenix

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, May 28, 2025: Part Eagle, Part Phoenix

Photo received from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. Naval History and Heritage Command Catalog #: NH 45853

Above we see a port bow view of the Tsar’s brand-new Borodino-class squadron battleship Orel (also seen transliterated in some Western sources as “Oryol” and “Ariol”), taken in the Baltic soon after her completion in September 1904.

She had a curious history that saw her rushed to the losing side of one of the worst naval defeats of the 20th Century, some 120 years ago this week, after an 18,000-mile shakedown cruise. She would then be reborn to fight the Germans in China (!) while under a Japanese flag, return to her homeland under very different circumstances, and meet her ultimate fate at the hands of budding technology that would echo into another Pacific war.

The Borodinos

In the 1900s, the Imperial Russian Navy was full speed ahead to create three top-notch fleets: one in the Baltic to defend against the Germans (or attack Swedes, who knows); a second in the Black Sea to take on the Turks who were rapidly rearming with new vessels from America and Britain; and a third in the Pacific to be able to hold on to its Manchurian possessions which had been essentially stolen from Japan after the latter’s cakewalk victory against China in 1895.

A key acquisition during this period was the one-off 388-foot tumblehome hulled battleship Tsesarevich, which had been built in France at Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-sur-Mer. The same yard had produced a series of 12,000-ton leviathans for the French Navy (Jauréguiberry et. al.) and patterned the new Russian ship along those lines.

Tsesarevich. Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-Sur-Mer brochure published by the society for its fiftieth anniversary, Imprimerie Chaix, Paris, July 1906, p. 40.

Weighing in at 13,000 tons due to her thicker armor (up to 10 inches of good German Krupp plate), Tsarevich was powered by 20 Belleville water-tube boilers that ate coal like it was going out of style. Armament was in two pairs of impressive Russian-built (Obukhov) French-designed (Canet) 12″/40 (30.5 cm) Pattern 1895 guns mounted in double turrets fore and aft, with six French-made Canet Model 1892 6-inch guns in double turrets arrayed along the hull of the ship. Capable of 18 knots and able to steam over 6,000nm before needing more coal, she was capable of deploying to the Pacific, which was to be her homeport at Port Arthur.

With Tsesarevich as a cue, the Russians embarked on a campaign to build at least five (with potential for up to ten) new ships in the St. Petersburg area for their Baltic fleet. Just nine feet longer than their inspiration but with heavier engines, thicker armor, and larger turrets (but with the same general armament), the Russian admiralty packed another 1,400 tons onto essentially the same hull. This gave them a draft pushing 30 feet– on a hull just 397 feet long!

profile Borodino class

The new ships, the Borodino class, would have significantly less coal bunkerage, cutting their range in half, which was not seen as a hindrance, as their Baltic role would ensure they never operated very far from a Russian port. When loaded with more coal than designed, their protective armor belt submerged, and their 6-inch guns rode so low and close to the waves as to be useless at all but point-blank range.

armor plan Borodino class, with thickness in mm

Equipped with old-style (1880s-designed) French Lugeol stadiametric rangefinders, which typically maxed out after 4,000m, their guns were handicapped when it came to fire control. The Russians made a move to change these out for more modern British Barr and Stroud coincidence rangefinders, but training in their use was minimal before the class was rushed to war with Japan.

The five ships of the class were all ordered within months of each other from yards around Saint Petersburg, with Borodino constructed at the New Admiralty Shipyard; Imperator Aleksandr III, Knyaz Suvorov, and Slava contracted at the Baltic Works (now OJSC Baltic); and our subject, Orel, ordered from the Galernyi Island Shipyard (now JSC Admiralty Yard). The cost for each ran between 13.4 and 14.5 million rubles, with Orel being the cheapest.

Meet Orel

Our subject was at least the fifth ship to carry the Russian name for “Eagle” in the history of the Imperial Navy. The first was the first sea-going warship of the Russian Empire, a Dutch-style three-mast pinnace ordered by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1667 to protect Russian merchant ships on the Caspian Sea from pirates. Of note, the ship’s crew consisted of 20 Dutch sailors and officers and 35 Russian musketeers.

The original three-master Orel, a frigate in Russian parlance, was the first sea-going Russian warship. Today, the ship’s profile is the emblem of St. Petersburg. Likewise, her contracting date, 29 June, is celebrated annually as “Shipbuilder’s Day” (Den’ sudostroitelya) in Russia.

Our Orel was laid down on 20 May 1900, launched 6 July 1902, and– despite sinking to the bottom of Kronstadt during a storm while fitting out on 7 May 1904 and settling with a 24-degree list– was commissioned on 1 October 1904 following three weeks of builder’s trials.

Orel under construction, c. 1903

Her construction was overseen by Russian Maj. Gen. Mikhail Karlovich Yakovlev, the senior shipbuilder of the Admiralty.

Those who are savvy with military history will realize that Orel entered the fleet eight months into the Russo-Japanese War, at a time when the bulk of the Russian Pacific Fleet was bottled up by the Japanese in their besieged homeport at Port Arthur.

Orel was photographed in 1904. NH 92419

The bad news for Orel was that, with her three other finished sisters (Slava was still under construction), and almost everything in the Baltic fleet that could float, would be rushed to the Pacific to clock in against the Japanese, changing the course of the war.

At least that was the plan.

War!

Covering the nightmarish 7-month, 18,000-mile voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet (renamed the 2nd Pacific Squadron) to reach the Tsushima Straits from St. Petersburg is a bit beyond the scope of this post. We will be more narrow in our focus, relying on Orel’s part in the trip– which she began on 15 October, just two weeks after she was commissioned.

Not a misprint. She sailed to war a fortnight after hoisting her colors for the first time, and just six months after she sank pierside while fitting out.

Borodino class battleship of the 2nd Pacific Squadron getting ready to leave the Baltic in 1904.

With so many battleships rushed to completion in a country without a huge maritime tradition, the Russians were scraping the barrel to crew Orel. Many were pulled from shoreside assignments and the far-away Caspian Sea flotilla and Black Sea fleet. As the standard term of service for new Russian recruits was seven years active and four reserve, many of the men aboard were of the latter category and less than enthusiastic when it came to returning to the colors amid a war they did not understand.

Her skipper, Capt. (1st rate) Nikolay Viktorovich Jung (Naval Cadet Corps 1876), had dallied with the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary movement as a young officer, for which he had been arrested and blackballed for a time. Despite nearly 30 years of service, his largest command before Orel was a 4,600-ton cruiser, having spent most of his career on training ships.

Her XO, Capt. (2nd rate) Konstantin Leopoldovich Shvede, had entered the Navy in 1884 but had never held a seagoing command and had spent most of his career in shoreside service as a functionary. His last assignment before Orel was as the officer in charge of the mess hall at the Kryukov barracks.

A few capable young officers, such as LT (future RADM and polar explorer) Nikolay Nikolaevich Zubov, quickly sought transfer to other vessels. Zubov, reassigned to the destroyer Blestyashchy, fought his ship at Tsushima until it sank under his feet and made it to internment in Shanghai for the rest of the war.

47mm Hotchkiss with gunnery officer, LT Fedor Petrovich Shamshev on Orel, headed to the Far East in 1904. After graduating from the Naval Corps in 1891, he served in several posts until joining Orel in 1903. Wounded at his post in the ship’s burning conning tower, he spent much of his time as a POW in Japan in 1905 in the hospital. After the war, he returned to service, commanded the gunboat Gilyak, and the destroyer Storozhevoy. During the Great War, he was the skipper of the old monitor training ship Pyotr Velikiy and commanded the coastal artillery on Nargen Island off Tallinn. After the Revolution, he left Russia for exile in Denmark, where he died in 1959, aged 90.

Some among her enlisted only narrowly missed the brig, or worse. This included one of her senior sailors, Alexey Silych Novikov-Priboy, who had been cashiered as an “unreliable person” for spreading revolutionary propaganda while on the old cruiser Minin, but, with the fleet in need of bodies, was reassigned to Orel. Soon, with the help of a like-minded engineering officer, he maintained a full-blown revolutionary library aboard. As he was paymaster steward, Novikov-Priboy had contact with every member of the crew.

Orel suffered from numerous incidents of sabotage on the way to the Pacific, with steel shavings found in her engines, a propeller shaft nearly ruined on the outbound cruise, a grounding, a rudder cable incident that forced her to stop briefly at Tangier, and one good-sized fire reported. Still, she pressed on to meet her destiny, albeit punctuated by breakdowns.

Orel and her three sisters formed the Russian First Division, with Squadron commander, VADM Zinovy Rozhestvensky, flying his flag from Orel’s sister, Knyaz Suvorov. The Second and Third Divisions, respectively, were formed of increasingly older battlewagons. Of note, the Second Division commander, RADM Baron Dmitry Gustavovich von Folkersahm, who had previously been the naval gunnery school commander, was ill with cancer. He was pulled out of convalescence for his seagoing billet and would perish in his cabin while on the cruise, well before the force met the Japanese.

The morning of 27 May 1905, the end came as the Russian battleline was crossed by that of ADM Togo’s Japanese Combined Fleet. The revolutionary Novikov-Priboy recalled that, with the straits approaching, Orel’s crew held a mass on deck just before the battle, “crossing themselves furiously as if swatting away flies.”

Our subject fired the first shots of the battle at 11:42, hurling 30 12-inch shells unsuccessfully at a distant Japanese cruiser that was shadowing on the horizon some 9,000 yards out. Rozhestvensky’s flagship, Knyaz Suvorov, the lead ship in the Russian battle line, later opened fire at the Japanese battleship Mikasa, Togo’s flagship, at 14:05. Over the next five hours, the battle went very badly for the Borodino class.

Imperator Aleksandr III turned turtle and sank at 18:50, leaving but four survivors.

Knyaz Suvorov, with Rozhestvensky switching his flag to a destroyer, sank with all hands at 19:20.

Borodino went up in a flash when a shell from the battleship Fuji ignited her magazine at 19:30, leaving just one survivor. Gunlayer Semyon Semyonovich Yushchin swam out of a flooded casemate, held onto a floating debris, and was picked up by the Japanese destroyer Oboro later that night.

Orel was the only battleship of the First Division to survive the maelstrom; her three other sisters were sent to the bottom with just five men living to tell the tale. She limped off into the night, riddled with holes and her decks filled with mangled bodies. Her skipper was mortally wounded.

“Broken hell” Russian Battleship Orel leading 2nd Pacific Squadron last daylight hours during the battle of Tsushima by Alexander Zyakin.

The next morning, falling in with RADM Nebogatov’s Third Division, including the old battleship Imperator Nikolai I (his flag) and the two small coastal battleships General-Admiral Apraksin and Admiral Seniavin, the badly damaged Orel, under the command of her XO, surrendered to the Japanese just after 1300 on 28 May, the group’s withdrawal to Vladivostok cut off by the Japanese.

Capt. Jung, who succumbed to his wounds, was buried at sea as the group sailed toward captivity.

Fortunio Matanya. Drawing 1905. Burial at sea of the commander of the battleship Orel

Taken under escort by the battleship Asahi and the armored cruiser Asama to Maizuru Navy Yard in Japan, Orel’s crew was moved ashore, politely, and would spend the rest of the war under a very gentlemanly confinement, a stark contrast to how enemy POWs were treated by the Emperor’s forces in WWII. They were repatriated in February 1906.

Russian battleship Orel officers on Asahi, 28 May 1905, after Tshumia

Orel lost 43 killed in addition to Jung and had over 80 seriously wounded, casualties that amounted to about 15 percent of her complement.

One of those nursing a life-changing injury was LT Leonid Vasilyevich Larionov, the battleship’s junior navigator. Entering the service in 1901 and cutting his teeth on the cruisers Africa and Abrek, Larionov was at his battle station in the conning tower of Orel during the fight. Wounded seriously in the head, he persevered. He had managed to destroy the battleship’s sensitive papers before reaching Japan, keeping one of her logbooks hidden on his person. In captivity, he carefully began the task of reconstructing the ship’s brief history.

Knocked out by Japanese shrapnel while in command of the left bow 6-inch turret, LT Konstantin Petrovich Slavinsky later reported:

At about 3 o’clock I felt a strong blow to the tower, my eyes were blinded by the explosion on the roof, I was thrown from the command platform and lost consciousness. When I came to, I saw that I was lying on the floor of the tower, there was blood all around, a stream of which was flowing from my forehead, the gunners were trying to lift me up and arguing whether I was killed or just wounded. Having forbidden them to see me off, I got to the operations point with the help of the porters, where they bandaged two deep wounds to my head and a knocked out left eye, after which I was placed in a room in front of the operations point, where I again lost consciousness from severe pain.

Slavinsky recovered enough to help lead firefighting efforts until knocked unconscious by another shell. He spent three months in a Japanese hospital in Maizuru, wearing an eyepatch for the rest of his life.

Orel survived some serious damage. Some reports contend she had 76 hits (five from 12-inch shells, two from 10-inch, nine from 8-inch, 39 from 6-inch, and 21 from smaller shells). Russian sources, namely from engineer Vladimir Polievktovich Kostenko of Orel (who helped Novikov-Priboy store his library), cited that the ship suffered more than 140 hits.

New Jersey-born Lloyd Carpenter Griscom, the 33-year-old U.S. Minister to Japan, was able to almost immediately obtain several very detailed images of the captured Russian battlewagon, a vessel considered well-protected at the time. It is known that he passed them on to Teddy Roosevelt personally.

As they showed Russian/German armor (on ships largely designed with help by the French) under the effects of Japanese/British weapons (especally the Shimose powder/cordite filled shells and the new Barr and Stroud FA3 coincidence rangefinders and the Dumaresq, the latter an early mechanical fire control computer), the snaps were surely of great interest to the man who was readying his “Great White Fleet” to circle the globe.

Orel, shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66272

Orel photographed at Maizuru Navy Yard Japan, on 3 June 1905, following her surrender at the Battle of Tsushima on 28 May 1905. Courtesy of J. Meister collection, 1976. NH 84789

Same as above, NH 84788.

The Russian battleship Orel, shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Fragment of ship’s forward left twelve-inch gun, which lodged in a signal locker on the starboard side of the bridge. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66267

Orel shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Damages to the shelter deck and boats (overhead). Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66263

Orel, view of port side, looking forward from the after bridge, showing damage to superstructure and boats. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66264

Orel, view taken looking into a damaged searchlight on the after bridge. The reflector reverses the view. Notice that the photographer has photographed himself and a Japanese officer. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66261

Orel, damage near the port center six-inch turret. Looks like a shell exploded immediately upon impact with this bulkhead. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66262

Orel, note the shot holes around the 6-inch gun turret. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66270

Orel, damage near 47mm (3-pounder) quick-firing gun, port side of the fore bridge. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66265

Orel, fore 12-inch turret of the Russian battleship OREL, shortly after she was captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. The muzzle of the damaged twelve-inch gun was carried bodily to the starboard side of the bridge, and lodged in a signal locker. A Japanese sailor is in the foreground, standing guard. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66269

Orel, damaged 12-inch gun of the fore turret of the Russian battleship OREL, shortly after she was captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. This photograph graphically illustrates the construction of a “built up” gun. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66268

Orel, damage to fore port 6-inch turret and the deck. A 12-inch shell exploded on impact at the turret base. Notice the immense force of this Japanese shell, which exploded on impact, without penetration. The downward explosive force burst in the deck, and the upward force cut a wide piece out of the turret from top to bottom. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66266

The photos were likely widespread in Japan at the time, as one of Orel’s senior signalmen, one V.P. Zefirov, who filled at least three journals with drawings during his captivity in Japan (preserved in Russian archives), depicted several in his work.

Rebirth

By far the most powerful Russian warship captured at Tsushima, Orel was an important trophy. Further, unlike the Tsar’s ships salvaged from the mud of Port Arthur, her crew did not have extensive opportunity (and will) to wreck her.

Renamed Iwami on 6 June 1905 after a traditional feudal province, now the western part of Shimane Prefecture, the former Russian battlewagon was presented a statue of Umashimachi as the guardian deity of the ship by Mononobe Shrine in Oda City. The Japanese also renamed the other four captured Russian warships from Tsushima on the same day, with Imperator Nikolai I renamed the battleship Iki, Admiral Senyavin renamed the coastal defense ship Mishima, General Admiral Apraksin dubbed the coastal defense ship Okishima, and the destroyer Bedovy renamed the destroyer Satsuki.

This set up Orel for an extensive 29-month reconstruction which saw her French Bellville boilers replaced by Japanese-built Miyabara boilers, her superstructure and funnels rebuilt lower to help change her overloading, and her armament greatly modified. Retaining her Russian 12-inchers (the Japanese had a quantity of shells and replacement guns captured at Port Arthur), new gun tubes were later ordered from the Muroran Works of the Japan Steel Works.

Her heavy twin 6-inch turrets were placed by single 8″/45 Armstrong guns in deck mounts as used in the cruiser Takasago, further saving weight. Her 3″/48 Canet guns were landed, replaced by fewer Japanese Type 41 guns of the same caliber. Likewise, her 47/40 Hotchkiss and 37/20 Hotchkiss light guns were removed, replaced by a smaller number of Yamauchi-type 47mm guns. Even two of her four torpedo tubes were removed, saving only her twin submerged beam tubes, which were upgraded from 381mm to 450mm. The above-water torpedo tubes at the bow and stern were eliminated.

Emerging from the Kure Naval Arsenal on 26 November 1907, at the time, Iwami was the newest battleship in the Imperial Japanese Navy’s fleet at the time, excluding the two new Vickers-built Katori-class battleships, which were only slightly larger and only delivered in May 1906.

Battleship Iwami, 2 November 190,7 Kure via Kure Maritime Museum

Assigned to the 1st Fleet, Iwami was rated a first-class battleship and saw serious service with the Japanese fleet for the next five years, only re-rated to a second-class coastal defense ship in 1912 after the two 20,000-ton Satsuma-class and two 21,000-ton Kawachi-class dreadnoughts were completed under the 1907 Warship Supplement Program.

The U.S. Navy, keeping tabs on the Emperors’ increasingly suspect fleet from 1905 onward, dutifully photographed every Japanese warship when encountered in the region. Cataloged by the Office of Naval Intelligence, this left a ton of photos in the NHHC’s files.

Iwami. Starboard beam view taken between 1907 and 1914. Received in archives from ONI, 1935. NH 45832

Iwami photographed in a Japanese port, probably shortly before 1914. The battleship Settsu (1911-1947) is partly visible in left background. Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1987. NH 101762

Another War

When the Great War began, Japan, an ally of Britain, jumped at the chance to gobble up German colonies in the Pacific. Iwami helped in this task, joining in the reduction and capture of the Kaiser’s treaty port in China.

Added to the VADM Kato Sadakichi’s Second Fleet, from September to November 1914, Iwami was exclusively engaged in bombardment of the artillery batteries in the Tsingtao (Qingdao) area, adding her 12- and 8-inch shells to the more than 43,000 fired into the German positions during the siege. As Sadakichi’s force was made up primarily of cruisers (Tokiwa, Tone, Chitose, Akashi, Niitaka, Otoha, Kasagi, and Yakumo) and destroyers, Iwami was an important asset.

British Major-General Nathaniel Barnardiston next to a wrecked gun at Fort C, Tsingtao, November 1914. Barnardiston commanded the 1,500 British troops (2nd Battalion The South Wales Borderers and a detachment of the 36th Sikhs) sent to assist the 20,000 Japanese soldiers under General Kamio Mitsuomi in capturing Germany’s naval base at Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China. The port fell to the Allies on 7 November 1914. NAM. 1969-06-31-53

Allied troops inside one of Tsingtao’s forts, November 1914. The German naval base of Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China was captured by the Allies on 7 November 1914 following a two-month siege. Around 4,700 Germans were captured and sent to Japan for internment. NAM. 1992-08-139-21

Battleship Iwami, December 26 1915, Kure Arsenal

Spending the rest of the war on duty in Japanese home waters, Iwami was tapped for an ironic mission on 9 January 1918 when she received orders to leave Kure as part of the 5th Squadron, with the battleship Ashai under RADM Kato Kanji, bound for Vladivostok, where the newly-formed Bolshevik government was in charge.

Her marines and armed naval infantry spearheaded the seizure of the port on 6 April, and Iwami would remain in Russian waters for most of the next four years until the final Japanese withdrawal.

Japanese marines in a parade of Allied forces in Vladivostok before French and American sailors 1918

Japanese marines in a parade of Allied forces in Vladivostok before French and American sailors, 1918

Vladivostok, circa 1918-1919, during the Russian Intervention Operations. Ships in harbor include Suffolk (British cruiser, 1903); Iwami (Japanese Battleship, 1902); and Ashai (Japanese Battleship, 1902); NH 50290

Iwami Saihaku Incident 1918, with American officers aboard Iwami. National Diet Image 966644_0019

Battleship IJN Iwami anchored in Vladivostok, winter of 1921 22

With the Japanese evacuation from Russia, Iwami was removed from the fleet list in September 1922.

The following May, she was ordered disarmed and prepped, along with the old battleships Aki and Satsuma, the unfinished Tosa, and the Hizen (former Russian battleship Retvizan, salvaged from Port Arthur) for use as target ships in line with the naval limits of the Washington Conference of 1921–22.

Former Russian battleship Orel as Iwami floating target with a Tikuma-class light cruiser

In July 1924, the ships were used for the Japanese equivalent of Billy Mitchell’s Virginia Capes experiment in airpower, subjected to bomb runs from aircraft from the carrier Hosho, Navy H-450 and F-5 flying boats, and land-based Army T2 bombers. Heavily damaged over two days, Iwami slipped under the waves near Jogashima on 9 July.

Epilogue

Iwami’s armament outlived her, with her Armstrong guns emplaced in the coastal defenses around Tokyo Bay and on Iki Island in the Strait of Tsushima (what irony).

One of her Russian 12-inch guns was installed vertically in the schoolyard of Iwataki Elementary School in Yosano, Kyoto, in 1927, where it remains, surrounded by inert shells.

The statue of Umashimachi carried by Iwami from 1905 through 1922 was returned to the Mononobe Shrine in Oda City, where it remains today.

bronze statue of Umashide no Mikoto Mononobe Shrine Oda City. Photo by Professor Jun Kuno.

In Japanese service, her skippers included several officers who went on to lead the fleet in the 1920s and 30s, including Admiral Baron Sadakichi Kato, and vice admirals Kumazo Shirane, Ishibashi Hajime, and Yoshita Masaki. Kato had an outsized influence on Japanese naval thinking, advocating a “big-ship, big-gun doctrine” that ultimately led to the construction of the super battleships of the Yamato class.

As for Orel’s Russian crew that rode her into captivity, Capt. Shvede, the XO who was in command when she surrendered, was court-martialled when he returned to Russia in 1906. Acquitted as he was following RADM Nebogatov’s orders, he never did command another ship at sea, although he did continue in shoreside service until 1917. He passed in 1933.

The revolutionary Novikov-Priboy would become a noted writer under Soviet rule– after penning scathing essays on the loss of his ship and the Russian fleet at Tsushima, which sent him into exile in Western Europe until 1913. Serving on hospital trains along the Eastern Front during the Great War, his fame grew under Stalin with the publication of the rather spicy novel “Tsushima,” which saw seven printings. During WWII, he wrote numerous patriotic articles about the Red Banner fleet, having found his patriotism. He passed in 1944, aged 67.

The good LT Larionov, who saved Orel’s logs, recovered from his wounds while in Japanese custody, then returned home and served on the Naval Staff. Commanding the minelayer Neva during the Great War, he fell in with the Reds post-Revolution, then worked as a historian in the Central Naval Museum in Leningrad, compiling the official history of Tsushima and Orel. His shoulder straps that he wore in the battle are on display in the Peter the Great Naval History Museum.

Larionov died during the siege of Leningrad in WWII, aged 59, but his shoulder straps and compiled history of the Russo-Japanese War endure.

LT Slavinsky, who gave his eye to the service, returned to naval service and by early 1918 was a captain in the Volga-Caspian Flotilla. Post-war, he was tossed into a Red prison for three years. Released in 1923, he worked as an engineer in Soviet shipyard concerns until 1930, when he was arrested on charges of “espionage” during the Gulag Archipelago phase of Soviet history. Sentenced to 10 years at hard labor, he was released in 1940 and died in exile in remote Syktyvkar, some 500 miles north of Moscow.

Since 1905, the Russians have recycled the name Orel several times. This included an auxiliary cruiser in the Siberian Flotilla during the Great War and being attached to at least two CVN projects (Project 1153 and 1160) in the late 1960s – early 1970s that never left the drawing board.

Since 1993, a Project 949A Antey-class (NATO “Oscar II”) SSBN, (K-266) has carried the name Orel as part of the 11th Submarine Division of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy.

Orel, Murmansk, April 2017

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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

***

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Warship Wednesday, May 21, 2025:  Mess with the Goat, You Get the Horns

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

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Warship Wednesday, May 21, 2025:  Mess with the Goat, You Get the Horns

Swedish Marinmuseum photo MM01624

Above, we see a trio of happy ratings (Besättningsmen) aboard the unique Flygplanskryssare (aircraft cruiser) HSwMS Gotland, likely in the late 1930s. One of the warship’s Bofors 6″/55 guns makes a cameo in the upper left corner. Behind the Swedish bluejackets are at least four Hawker Osprey S9 scout floatplanes with room on the rails to spare, showing that Gotland was no ordinary cruiser.

While Sweden often gets written off for its impact during WWII, the country, particularly this ship, made a key difference that made history some 84 years ago this week.

Meet Gotland

Our subject came about following the increased use of aircraft by the Swedish Navy in their summer maneuvers in 1925, which pointed to the dire need for a persistent seagoing aircraft carrier/tender of sorts.

From the 1926 report (mechanically translated):

The air forces assigned to an operating naval force now appear to be an indispensable, fully integrated part of the naval force, and numerous experiences from our fleet’s annually recurring exercises show that the air force’s participation in naval operations cannot be limited to sporadic engagements, but must be permanent and immediate.

As a stopgap, the old 3,600-ton coastal battleship Dristigheten was refitted as a seaplane carrier (flygmoderfaryget). With this conversion, she lost her big guns (two 210mm/44cal. Bofors M/1898s and six 152mm/44cal. Bofors M/98s) as well as her two torpedo tubes, trading them in for a few smaller caliber AAAs and the capability to handle as many as four floatplanes as well as tend small craft such as patrol boats and coastal gunboats. Her magazine space was largely converted to avgas bunkerage.

Dristigheten as seaplane tender

Dristigheten as seaplane tender

The Swedish Navy’s Marinens Flygväsende (MFV) at the time flew a host of early Friedrichshafen and Hansa models with Dristigheten lifting these reconnaissance seaplanes from her deck to take off on the water and retrieving them from the drink on their return. In her later years, she carried Heinkel HD 16/19s.

A more permanent fix would be preferable for two ships intended from the keel up to support aircraft. That’s where Gotland and her unrealized sister came in.

Gotland was designed to be a Swiss Army knife of sorts, carrying both a decent main battery, torpedo tubes, extensive aviation facilities meant to support a squadron of up to a dozen aircraft, as well as both minesweeping and minelaying gear. Her original plan was of a 5,600-ton, 460-foot hybrid aviation cruiser that included six 6-inch guns in three twin turrets, two forward and one rear, as well as two catapults and a rear hangar/aviation deck. It was also thought she would be able to run at up to 29 knots.

The original Gotland concept, as depicted in the 1929 Jane’s.

However, money being tight, the design was shortchanged, still with a six-gun main battery but with two of those carried in antiquated casemate mounts (this in the 1930s!). Also, she would not have a hangar, would only carry one catapult, and while able to carry 12 aircraft in theory, the government only allotted enough funds for six. She also shrank some 34 feet in length and lost a corresponding 340 tons in weight.

Correspondingly, using an upgraded form of the 24,000 shp machinery used by the Swedish 36-knot Ehrenskold-class destroyers (four oil-fired Penhoet boilers up from three Thornycroft boilers, in both cases supplying steam to two De Laval steam turbines), Gotland could make 27.5 knots on her 33,000 shp plant. Armor was just a slight smear over the machinery, turrets, and conning tower, generally just at or over 1 inch of steel.

Jane’s 1931. What a difference two years make.

A postcard of the new Gotland is seen in exceptionally clean condition with a single Osprey on her flight deck. D 14983:38

Postcard showing the new aircraft cruiser in fleet operations with a bone in her teeth. The three aircraft in tight formation look to be added to the photo. B132:8

Gotland showing off her Bofors 6″/55 with two guns shown left foreground in one of her high-angle turrets and one of her two casemated variants seen to the right background. She was the only non-American ship (Omaha class cruisers) of the age to have some of her main guns in casemates, with every other navy relegating the secondary guns to such use. Also note the paravane, one of at least four carried. I669

Her stern 6″/55 Bofors gun house. The crew is gathered on deck to celebrate the ship’s champion rowing team. D 15044:111

One of her twin 75mm /60 Bofors M/28 luftvärnskanon. She carried two such mounts in addition to a light battery of six 25mm Ivakan M/32 guns and four 8mm machine guns. D 15123:4

Like most cruisers of her era, she also carried a decent torpedo battery consisting of two trainable triple M/34 533mm tubes on turnstiles.

A set of Gotland’s torpedo tubes being fired during her long 1937-38 voyage. MM11659:28

She had a smoke generator (Dimbildning) equipment of the sort traditionally seen on smaller craft such as torpedo boats, seen her in action off her stern. MM01622

She was also equipped with extensive minesweeping gear, including four large paravanes, stored on the deck forward of the superstructure.

The crew of the aircraft cruiser Gotland runs around a windlass to pull up the ship’s anchors the old-fashioned way. Note a large paravane on deck. D 15044_70

When it came to her aviation operations, her aircraft were launched via an onboard catapult firing process (katapultskjutning) and recovered via crane. While her initial theory was that she would carry 12 aircraft in a hangar, this was deleted for cost reasons, and all storage and maintenance were done on an open deck, although a complicated canvas awning system could be installed if needed. It soon proved that she could only store five aircraft and use her catapult at the same time, which ironically made six aircraft the magic number anyway.

The aircraft of choice was a special version of the Hawker Osprey floatplane (the British Fleet Air Arm used 124 of the type), termed the Spaningsflygplan (reconnaissance aircraft) 9 in Swedish service. This made sense as the Swedes already had 42 Hawker Harts, which were essentially the same plane but without floats, used as light bombers. Sent to Stockholm in kits, they were outfitted with Swedish NOHAB (licensed-built Bristol Pegasus IM2) My VI 9-cylinder 600 hp engines rather than the standard 630 hp Rolls-Royce Kestrel.

Similarly, while British variants carried a synchronized forward-firing Vickers and a flexible Lewis gun for the observer, the S9 had a Swedish 8mm Flygplankulspruta ksp m/22Fh (Carl Gustaf made FN-licensed air-cooled M1919 Browning) fixed with 500 rounds while the back seater had a flex variant of the same gun, the ksp m/22R. Speed was about 140 knots while range was only about 400nm. In a pinch, 500 pounds of bombs could be carried underwing.

The Swedish Air Force ordered a grand total of six S9 Hawker Osprey, which were given reg no. 401 to 406; the picture shows machine no. 403 ashore on float dollies with her wings folded. The planes were delivered from 1934 and were mainly stationed at Hägernäs when not aboard the aircraft cruiser Gotland. Land-based after 1942, S9s served until 1947 when they were retired, seeing late life service as target tugs. Fo220033

Gotland in the summer of 1938, showing her deck full of Hawker Osprey S9s. MM01503

A Hawker Osprey S 9 seaplane aboard Gotland with its wings stowed, summer 1935. D 15044:62

An S9 ready to go on a crossbeam catapult (katapulten) in the summer of 1935. Note the stern 6″/55 guns are raised at the maximum elevation to allow a clear path. D 15044:63

Another great Hawker Osprey S 9 motif, showing one aircraft on the catapult with crew aboard, ready to go while a second aircraft is stowed to the left. D 15123:3

An engineering petty officer on Gotland’s catapult (katapulten) control stand. MM01623

Catapult in action with an S9 humming off for a sortie. MM01626

Boom! D 15044:66

Recovering an S9 via crane. Note the large ensign on her bow and her open second deck, which had rails and chutes for 100 sea mines. B133:3

The aircraft could be shuttled around the handling deck via a rail system that interfaced with the floats.

A good view in the summer of 1935 showing an S-9 being readied to catapult off Gotland, with the rail system on display in the foreground. D 15044:61

Gotland at quay with her crew’s hammocks (hängmattor) drying in the breeze, summer 1935. You also get an unobstructed view of her forward casemated 6″/55 Bofors. Of note, her enlisted and petty officers were housed in the aft of the ship while officers were housed in single and double cabins forward, the reverse of most warships. D 15044:58

The aircraft cruiser Gotland at the Mobiliseringskajen (mobilization quay) at the Karlskrona naval base. I668

Laid down at Lindholmen, Göteborg/Götaverken, in 1930, our subject launched on 14 September 1933, christened by Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustav VI). She was only the second Swedish warship to carry the name, with the first being a circa 1682 50-gun ship of the line that fought at Rügen in 1715.

Swedish aviation cruiser Gotland launched on 14th September 1933

After fitting out and trials, she was commissioned on 14 December 1934.

Her wartime assignment was to lead the modern destroyers of the Kustflottans, or Coastal Fleet, a job well suited as her draft was 18 feet at maximum load but could go as shallow as 15 when light. She would drill with these forces each summer.

Swedish warships in color, 1937 Stockholm Sverige is lead, Drottning Victoria second, then Gotland

Gotland dressed for inspection, summer 1938 Fo87354C

Meanwhile, during peacetime, she was an envoy for the country and a training tool for its fleet, deploying on an annual winter cruise between December and April, to warmer climes down south while the rest of the Swedish Navy was locked into the Baltic by ice.

Equipped with four generators (two diesel and two running off the steam turbines), Gotland had a saltwater evaporator and extensive reefers to allow for overseas cruises. Her endurance at 12 knots was well over 4,000nm.

She completed seven winter cruises before WWII halted such operations.

Gotland visiting Hamburg, December 1935. MM01621

The aircraft cruiser Gotland in Dartmouth in 1936. Perkins, Richard. Maritime Museum Archives/SMTM

Gotland in Bordeaux, late 1930s. Note the S9 on her deck. MM01635

Gotland in glasslike coastal waters, likely in the Baltic during a summer cruise. D 15120:2

War!

When Germany invaded Poland and France and Britain soon joined in what became WWII in September 1939, Gotland was undergoing an overhaul between her summer maneuvers and a planned winter overseas cruise. Rushed to completion, she made ready for war and joined the Kustflottan instead.

It was while serving on Swedish neutrality patrol (neutralitetsvakten) that, just after noon on 20 May 1941, Gotland’s aircraft spotted the new German battlewagon KMS Bismarck and her consort the cruiser Prinz Eugen and a destroyer screen in the Kattegat between Sweden and Norway. Closing to within visual distance an hour later, Gotland shadowed the Teutonic force for two hours and transmitted a report to naval headquarters, stating: “Two large ships, three destroyers, five escort vessels, and 10–12 aircraft passed Marstrand, course 205/20′.”

This report soon made its way to one Captain Henry Mangles Denham, RN, the British naval attaché in Stockholm, who duly transmitted the information to the Admiralty, and thus kicked off the great Hunt for Bismarck. Denham, a gentleman of the first sort who saw service on the battlewagon HMS Agamemnon as a midshipman of 16 in the Dardanelles in the Great War, had been seconded to Naval Intelligence in 1940 and, as you can see, was soon able to establish very good relations with the Swedish secret service. Just a week later, Bismarck was sunk– as was HMS Hood in the process.

The intelligence tip was the highlight of Gotland’s wartime service.

By the winter of 1943-44, it was decided that Gotland would be better suited to continue service as an anti-aircraft cruiser (Luftvärnskryssare) due to the fact that her aircraft were considered obsolete and anything heavier, such as the Saab 17 dive bomber, would need a more advanced catapult as they weighed over 9,000 pounds, over twice as much as the S9 Osprey Hawker.

Removed was all the aviation gear. She then packed on the Bofors AAA guns to include eight 40mm/56 K/60 M32s (6 of them in advanced power-controlled gyrostabilized mounts) and four (2×2) 20mm/63 K/66 M40s.

Postcard of Gotland, post Luftvärnskryssare conversion. B132:10

Looking over Gotland’s stern, post AAA conversion. MM04940

Gotland seen post-AAA conversion in her warpaint. Note the white identifying band to keep Swedish coastal artillery or submarines from lighting her up. Friendly fire isn’t. D 11085:4:64

And another great late war camo shot, circa 1944, this time in profile. IV857

Cold War, and another rebuild

In 1946, Sweden flirted with the idea of a more full-fledged light aircraft carrier/cruiser (hangarkryssare) with a hangar and a flight deck. Running some 8,100 tons (full), the 465-foot craft would be able to carry 20 Vampires backed up by a gun armament of eight 120mm guns in four turrets, 16 40mm guns in eight twin mounts, and 26 20mm guns.

The Swedish 1946 aircraft carrier hangarkryssare concept never got off the drawing board

This never came to pass, and, in the meantime, with the Swedes building two new cruisers, Gotland was relegated to use as the command ship of the Swedish naval academy (Sjostridsskolan) during the summer and returned to her traditional long winter voyages, completing 10 additional cruises after the war.

Gotland pier side in Rotterdam 13 March 1949. Dutch Nationaal Archief Bestanddeelnummer 903-2666

“HM Kr. Gotland, which was my home during the trip around Africa in the winter of 1948-49,” as noted by the photographer, crewman, Ernst Holger Laarson. The picture shows three launches racing while the ship’s crew stands at the railing and watches. On the port side, a steamer is moored. D 15075:2

Crossing the Line, winter 1948-49 cruise. The crew has gathered on deck to await the arrival of King Neptune’s envoy – the running elf (löparnisse) – for the christening of the line aboard the cruiser Gotland. By Ernst Holger Laarson. D 15075:12

Crossing the Line ceremony MM01689

The entire court of King Neptune has gathered for a group photo aboard the cruiser Gotland, winter 1948-49 cruise. By Ernst Holger Laarson. D 15075:16

Crossing Line December 1948 Löjtnant E.B.V. Tornérhjelm MM 14924

Swedish cruiser Gotland, on a visit to Rotterdam in June 1950, in AAA cruiser layout. Dutch Nationaal Archief Bestanddeelnummer 934-7038

Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. “At sea off Morocco in 1951 with the cruiser Gotland.” Note the casemated guns are still aboard, probably one of the last warships with such an installation. B 1664:90

Looking over her stern, with the ensign flying, circa 1951. Note the ship’s band. Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. B 1664:63

Ship’s band (Militärmusiker) assembled aft while in port, 1951. Note the heavy winter blues and the snow present on the roofs ashore. Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. B 1664:67

Armed quarterdeck guard while in Casablanca, 1951. Note the blue winter jumper and cap, white gaiters, and distinctive four-cell SMG magazine pouch for the Husqvarna m/37-39 9mm sub gun. Period Kodachrome by David Ingvar. B 1664:94

Over the winter of 1953-54, she was overhauled and rebuilt for the second time in her career. The refit included radar (a British-supplied Type 293 short-range aerial-search) and triple racks (raketstall) for 103mm Bofors illumination rockets on each side of the 6″/55 gun houses. She also finally lost her casemate guns.

Her 1955 layout, showing clearly her radar fit and 103mm rocket racks on her main gun turrets. KR 3003

Gotland at sea, circa 1955-56. D 15093:4

Gotland’s 1955-56 cruise. D 15093:2

Seen on the pier side, ablaze in electric lights, circa 1955-56. D 15093:50

With the new cruisers added to the fleet and the Swedish Navy strapped for cash and manpower to keep three such vessels active, Gotland, even though she was just overhauled, was laid up in material reserve (materielberedadstand) as the winter of 1956 approached.

Jane’s 1960 entry on the old girl.

On 1 July 1960, she was marked for disposal and sold for scrap two years later.

Epilogue

She is well remembered in her home country. While she was in commission, she carried an extensive art collection and accumulated a series of goodwill relics from overseas port calls during her 17 winter training cruises. These, along with a tremendous number of logs and informal cruise books and ship’s papers, are retained by the Swedish Marinmuseum.

The Marinmuseum also has a wooden 26-inch scale model (Fartygsmodell) of Gotland in her flight cruiser arrangement that was constructed by Arne Åkermark at Europafilm in the 1940s.

MM 20681

They also have a larger 34-inch model made in the 1960s.

MM 25196

Swedish maritime artist Carl Gustaf Ahremark created a great image of the S9 Osprey in domestic service.

The third HSwMS Gotland is the class leader (A19) of a series of advanced AIP diesel-electric subs that joined the fleet in 1996.

Her motto, borrowing from the province of Gotland’s goat coat of arms, is the Latin “Gothus sum, cave cornua, (I’m a Goth, beware of the horns.) Photo: Saab.

As for Captain Henry Mangles Denham, RN, the British naval attaché who passed along Gotland’s report on Bismarck leading to the “release of the hounds,” he remained at his post in Stockholm until 1947, when he retired, capping 32 years of service to the crown. His cloak-and-dagger work in Scandinavia earned him one of the very few CMGs (Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George) given to naval officers and was also decorated by numerous Allied governments.

After leaving the service, Sir Henry, a keen member of the Royal Cruising Club and the Royal Yacht Squadron, cruised the Mediterranean in his yacht and during this period wrote his many guides to the seas and coasts of the region as well as volumes covering his military service. He passed in 1993, aged 96, leaving behind one son and two daughters.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

 

***

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, May 14, 2025: Apogee

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, May 14, 2025: Apogee

Department of the Navy Bureau of Ships photograph, National Archives Identifier 7577927

Above we see the brand new Worcester-class light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145) off the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 6 January 1950, the day she left for her first Mediterranean deployment.

Laid down some 80 years ago this week, she was the last American light cruiser commissioned, capping a legacy that started in 1908, and went on to be the next to last all-gun light cruiser decommissioned.

The Worcesters

The Worcester class stemmed from a May 1941 project for BuShips to develop a fast (33 knot) cruiser capable of keeping up with the new classes of fast battleships and aircraft carriers. Designed specifically to splash high-flying enemy bombers, they were to have little in the way of side armor in place of heavily armored decks to withstand bombs while carrying a dozen high-angle 6″/47 DP guns.

However, the long gestation period and wartime experience tweaked this concept a bit.

As detailed by Friedman: 

The Worcester class was designed almost as a platform for the 6-in/47 gun. BuOrd applied the same design concept to an 8-in/55 gun, and the Des Moines class resulted. Both types competed for the tail end of the wartime cruiser program, hull numbers originally scheduled for construction as Clevelands being reordered. Both designs also showed a degree of tactical obsolescence since the missions for which they had been designed were no longer valid at the time of their completion. The Worcester arose from a 1941 demand for a ship capable of defending the fleet against heavy bombers, a role that died as soon as it became obvious that conventional heavy bombers could not hit maneuvering ships from high altitude. The records are far from clear on this point, but it appears that the continuing 6-in/47-gun project kept the cruiser project alive in 1941-43. Ultimately, BuShips justified the very heavy antiaircraft gun as a counter to guided missiles, which the Germans introduced at Salerno in 1943; the old 5-in/25 gun was already obsolete, the 5-in/38 gun barely sufficient; surely something more would be needed for the future.

The Mark 16DP 6″/47s used on the Worcesters were unique.

Whereas the Mark 16 6″/47 was by no means a new gun– the 37 assorted Brooklyn, Cleveland, and Fargo class light cruisers carried them in a variety of triple turrets– the twin high-angle (+78 degree elevation) turrets on our subject class had faster training and elevation rates which, coupled with a 12 round per minute per gun rate of fire, could prove a real threat to high-flying aircraft of the 1940s at anything under 35,000 feet. Plus, there were plans afoot to double that rate of fire to 20-25 rounds per minute per gun by making their loading fully automatic.

The inner workings of the 6″/47 Mk 16 DP mount.

The 6″/47 Mk 16 DP was trialed on the old battlewagon USS Mississippi (AG-128) prior to installation on the Worcesters.

Worcester-class light cruiser USS Roanoke in 1954. Here the after 6″/47 Mk 16 DP main guns and the Mark 27 gun fire control are visible.

With 40mm and 20mm guns seen as outdated with jets on the horizon (the original plan was for 11 quadruple and two twin Bofors for a total of 48 guns, as well as 20 twin 20mm guns), the Worcesters were given 12 dual 3″/50 twin Mark 22 guns in Mark 33 mounts (with a tertiary battery of eight twin Oerlikons). Trainable to 85 degrees elevation, they were good for up to 30,000 feet and could fire 40-50 rounds per minute per gun, allowing the Worcesters to fill the air with 1,200 rounds of 24-pound 3-inch AA VT every 60 seconds.

Bluejackets on USS Roanoke (CL-145) cooling their heels on the starboard 3-inch 50 Mk 33 gun mount blister.

Fire control was via four Mk 56/35 GFCS and six Mk 27s, while they had a quartet of radars (SR-2, SPS-6 2-D air search, SG-6 surface search, and SP-2).

Mark 56 gun fire control system aboard the U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145), in 1956

While the original plan was to concentrate the armor over the decks, this later morphed to a more comprehensive arrangement that ranged from a 1-inch armored box over the deck, 2 inches on the rear of the gun houses and 3 inches on the belt taper to 6.5 inches on the turret sides and 5 inch on the barbettes and the engineering belt. In all, they carried a massive 2,119.7 tons of armor. Compare this to the preceding Cleveland-class light cruisers that only had 1,199 tons of protection.

Although a “light” cruiser class, the Worcesters went 679 feet overall length and hit the scales at 18,300 tons when fully loaded. Compare that to the brooding and infamous Admiral Hipper-class cruisers of the Kriegsmarine that went 665 feet oal and 18,200 tons.

Rather than the 100,000 shp plant on the preceding Cleveland and Fargos, the Worcesters, using four high-pressure (620 psi) Westinghouse boilers and four General Electric geared steam turbines, was able to wring 120,000 shp, which still surpasses the 105,000 shp seen on today’s speedy Arleigh Burke-class destroyers on four gas turbines. The speed was 33 knots, and the range was 8,000 nm at 15.

Originally planned to carry 4 seaplanes with two catapults, this didn’t happen, as we shall see.

Ten Worcesters were planned (to start) with the first four (Worcester-Roanoke-Vallejo-Gary) ordered from New York Shipbuilding Corporation as Yard Nos. 465, 466, 467, and 468, respectively.

Meet Roanoke

Our subject is at least the fifth U.S. Navy warship named after the Virginia city and river system.

The first was a circa 1855 steam frigate that was converted to an oddball triple turret ironclad during the Civil War.

Steam frigate USS Roanoke, brig of war USS Dolphin, and new buildings at Charlestown Navy Yard, Massachusetts, possibly 1861. 80-G-424917

USS Roanoke (1857-1883). Lithograph depicting the ship during the final stages of her conversion from a steam frigate to a triple-turret ironclad, at Novelty Iron Works, New York City, circa the first half of 1863. The original drawing of the scene was done by G. Hayward for “Valentine’s Manual”, 1863. Note the large derrick on the left and the Novelty Works’ building on the right. LC-USZ62-24408

The second USS Roanoke (ID # 1695) was a civilian vessel taken up for service as a dazzle-painted mine layer in the Great War and disposed of shortly after.

U.S. Navy Mine Layers. Steaming in line abreast during the laying of the North Sea mine barrage, September 1918. Analysis of camouflage patterns indicates that these ships are (from front to rear): USS Roanoke (ID # 1695); USS Housatonic (ID # 1697); USS Shawmut (ID # 1255); USS Canandaigua (ID # 1694); USS Canonicus (ID # 1696); with USS Quinnebaug (ID # 1687) and USS Saranac (ID # 1702) in the left and right center distance. A four-stack British cruiser is in the distance. NHHC Photograph Collection: NH 61101.

The third and fourth Roanokes, a frigate (PF-93) and light cruiser (CL-114) respectively, never sailed under the name, with the escort joining the fleet briefly as USS Lorain while the cruiser was canceled before her first steel was cut.

Whereas late-war Cleveland-class light cruisers were constructed in as little as 16 months, it was immediately evident that the Worcesters were not going to be finished before Berlin and Tokyo fell, and their construction stretched out.

Worcester Class Light AA Cruiser USS Roanoke New York Shipbuilding Corp Shipyard July 1, 1948

Worcester Class Light AA Cruiser USS Roanoke New York Shipbuilding Corp July 1, 1948

USS Roanoke (CL-145) nearing completion, January 1949

Roanoke was laid down on 15 May 1945, just a week after VE-Day. She only launched on 16 June 1947 and, at the time, was NYSB’s last wartime vessel under construction, with sisters Vallejo and Gary canceled in 1945.

“The USS Roanoke, last naval vessel presently under contract at the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, was launched today. The 14,700-ton light cruiser went down the ways of the Camden yard at 12:18 P.M., after being christened by Miss Julia Ann Henebry, daughter of Leo P. Henebry, former mayor of Roanoke Va. Miss Henebry’s maid of honor was Miss Margaret Donnell Smith, daughter of R. H. Smith, president of the Norfolk & Western Railway.” Temple University Libraries, Special Collections Research Center P563088B

“Down the ways and into the Delaware River goes the USS Roanoke at the launching yesterday at the New York Shipbuilding Corp., Camden. Workmen watch as the cruiser nears the water.” George D. McDowell, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photographs. Temple University P563087B

Roanoke only completed fitting out and was commissioned on 4 April 1949, capping just under four years of construction. As it was, the brand new NYSB-built Fargo-class cruisers USS Fargo (CL-106) and Huntington (CL-107) were decommissioned just weeks after to balance the scales of the new Worcesters joining the fleet.

The future USS Roanoke (CL-145) “off the bow” at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard 29 March 1949, just prior to commissioning. NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354877

Jane’s 1960 Worcester class listing. Some of the specifics are incorrect.

Cold War!

Following shakedown in the Caribbean, Roanoke conducted maneuvers in the Atlantic as a unit of the shrinking Battleship-Cruiser Force before she got underway to join the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean for her first deployment on 6 January 1950.

USS Roanoke (CL 145) January 6, 1950 NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354889

USS Roanoke (CL 145) January 6, 1950 NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354894

USS Roanoke (CL 145) January 6, 1950 NARA 19-NN-CL 145 Roanoke-1354890

USS Roanoke (CL-145) underway at slow speed, circa the early 1950s. Note the ship’s crew at quarters, her call sign NIQE flying at the port yardarm, a motor whaleboat off her port side amidships, and the lighthouse on the tip of the jetty in the background. NH 106501

USS Roanoke (CL-145) underway off the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, January 6, 1950. Note the automobiles and the Sikorsky HO3S helicopter on the fantail.

The U.S. Navy light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145) at anchor off Famagusta, Cyprus, on 22 February 1950. The ship is dressed for Washington’s Birthday.

She would continue this tempo, conducting six Med deployments with the 6th Fleet over the next five years.

USS Newport News (CA 148); USS Roanoke (CL 145), and USS Columbus (CA 74) at Naples, Italy. Mt. Vesuvius is in the background. Photograph released February 9, 1951. 80-G-426897

Same as above 80-G-426898

Same as above 80-G-426896

When not cruising the Med, Roanoke would continue to drill in exercises in the Western Atlantic and carry midshipmen on training cruises to the Caribbean.

Mids on USS Roanoke (CL-145) stand in formation, 1949-1958. Marquette University MUA_013485

An unidentified Navy ROTC student pets a cheetah, presumably while on a summer cruise with the USS Roanoke (CL-145), 1949-1958. Marquette University MUA_013496

In the fall of 1955, she landed her 20mm guns and older SG-6 and SP-2 radars, replaced by SPS-10 and SPS-8. They were also fitted for more extensive helicopter operations.

Her rigging arrangement post-refit:

On 22 September 1955, Roanoke departed Norfolk for her new homeport in Long Beach, via the Panama Canal. While in California, she conducted nine Naval Reserve cruises and deployed to the WestPac twice (May to December 1956 and September to October 1958).

Naval Reservists undergoing inspection with on active duty on deck of USS Roanoke (CL-145), 2 August 1956. Note the helicopter silhouette. 80-G-692014

A U.S. Navy Piasecki HUP Retriever landing aboard the light cruiser USS Roanoke (CL-145), in 1956.

USS Roanoke (CL-145) at Sasebo, Japan, circa 1956.

With the battleships gone and the cruisers going, the writing was on the wall for these obsolete all-gunned warships in the atomic era.

Roanoke was decommissioned on Halloween 1958. Her active career lasted just 9 years, 6 months, and 27 days.

Still new enough to be reactivated if needed, she was assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet at Mare Island, where, along with her sister, she was preserved and placed in mothballs.

It should be noted that she was only outlived by seven all-gun heavy cruisers: USS Des Moines, Salem, Newport News, Saint Paul, Toledo, Macon, and Bremerton, although it should be noted that the latter three were decommissioned shortly after the Worcesters in 1960-61.

USS Worcester (CL 144) arrives at Pier 23, Mare Island Naval Shipyard on 26 May 1959 for inactivation. The stern of the USS Roanoke (CL 145) is to the right. YTB 268 Red Cloud is on the cruiser’s starboard bow.

Sisters USS Worcester (CL-144) and USS Roanoke (CL-145) at Pier 23, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 26 May 1959, with guns covered for mothball preservation.

Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, view of Berths 21 through 24, looking northwest, 12 July 1960, showing Pacific Reserve Fleet and other ships. Those present include (from bottom): Two Cleveland-class light cruisers, USS Roanoke (CL-145), USS Worcester (CL-144), another Cleveland-class light cruiser, USS Lyman K. Swenson (DD-729) undergoing FRAM II modernization, two auxiliaries, and a destroyer receiving a FRAM I modernization. Courtesy of Stephen S. Roberts, 1978. NH 88082

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Ships laid up in reserve at Bremerton, 19 March 1970. They are, from left to right: USS Fort Marion (LSD-22), USS Missouri (BB-63), USS Roanoke (CL-145), and USS Worcester (CL-144). USN 1143678

Stricken 1 December 1970 after 12 years in reserve (a period longer than her active career), Roanoke was sold for scrap to Levin Metals Corporation of San Jose, California, on 22 February 1972.

Roanoke didn’t get to fire a shot in anger, coming too late for WWII and deployed to Europe to hold the line against the Russkis during Korea, but she did serve as the breeding ground for the Navy’s future admirals. Of her 11 skippers, seven would earn stars, including two who would reach VADM rank- John Louis Chew (USNA ’31) and Harold Thomas Deutermann (USNA ’27).

Epilogue

She is remembered in maritime art by Wayne Scarpaci.

A painting of USS Roanoke (CL 145) entering San Francisco Bay in 1957 by artist Wayne Scarpaci. The title of the painting is “Summer Fog,” via Navsource.

A surprising amount of Roanoke is preserved.

Her bell can be seen on display outside Elmwood Park at the Roanoke Public Library.

A large scale model of Roanoke is on display in the Virginia Museum of Transportation, Roanoke, Virginia

The National Archives holds an extensive collection of photographs as well as her deck logs.

As part of their scrapping process, at least 200 tons of armor plate from both Worcester and Roanoke were put to use at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where some no doubt is still catching particles.

The Navy recycled her name for a 40,000-ton Wichita-class replenishment oiler, (AOR-7), which joined the fleet in 1976 and served for 19 years then was laid up at Suisun Bay with the thawing of the Cold War. She was scrapped in 2012.

A port bow view of the replenishment oiler USS Roanoke (AOR-7) participating in an underway replenishment operation with the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) during RIMPAC ’86, 17 June 1986. The Australian frigate HMAS Darwin (F-04) is on the starboard side of the Roanoke. PH2 Galaviz. NARA DN-SC-87-02027

It’s probably time that the Navy commissioned a seventh Roanoke.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

Ships are more than steel

and wood

And heart of burning coal,

For those who sail upon

them know

That some ships have a

soul.

***

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, May 7, 2025: Ray of Hope

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, May 7, 2025: Ray of Hope

Photo by CDR Gerald Durbin of Shangri-La (CVA-38) via Bob Canchola, via Navsource.

Above we see the Gato-class fleet boat turned submarine radar-picket USS Ray (SSR-271) in Hong Kong Harbor while on her way home from her 1956 6th Fleet deployment. During WWII, she was a menace to the emperor’s fleet, running up a tally of 155,171 tons across eight war patrols.

However, she was also one of the most impressive lifesavers of the conflict.

The Gatos

The 77 Gatos were cranked out by four shipyards from 1940 to 1944 for the U.S. Navy. They were impressive 311-foot-long fleet boats, diesel-electric submarines capable of extended operations in the far reaches of the Pacific. Able to swim an impressive 11,000 nautical miles on their economical power plant while still having room for 24 (often cranky) torpedoes.

A 3-inch deck gun served for surface action in poking holes in vessels deemed not worth a torpedo while a few .50 and .30-cal machine guns provided the illusion of an anti-aircraft armament. Developed from the Tambor-class submarines, they were the first fleet boats able to plumb to 300 feet test depth, then the deepest that U.S. Navy submersibles were rated.

Meet Ray

Our subject is the first U.S. Navy warship named for the flat-bodied, whip-tailed marine cousin of the shark. She was one of the “Manitowoc 28” submarines (10 “thin-skinned” Gatos with a test depth of 300 feet and 18 thicker follow-on Balaos) constructed by the Manitowoc Shipbuilding Company of (wait for it) Manitowoc, Wisconsin between 1942 and 1945.

With all 28, initial sea trials were done in Lake Michigan then the boats were sent down the Mississippi River (via the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, then the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers to the “Mighty Miss”) to New Orleans, a freshwater trip of just over 2,000 miles, for completion and fitting out.

Gato-class submarine USS Peto (SS-265) side launched at Manitowoc

Laid down 20 July 1942, Ray launched 28 February 1943, just a month after sister USS Raton (SS-270) and a month before USS Redfin (SS-272). Ray’s sponsor was the wife of Capt. Sam Colby Loomis, Sr. (USNA ’02) and mother of then LCDR Sam Loomis, Jr. (USNA ’35), the latter one of the most decorated sub skippers of WWII.

Ray commissioned 27 July 1943 and her plank owner skipper was CDR Brooks Jared Harral (USNA ’32), a New Yorker by way of New Orleans who had learned his trade on the cramped “Sugar Boat” USS S-17 (SS-122) earlier in the war, carrying out seven short war patrols in the Panama and Caribbean area.

Ray on Great Lakes sea trials

After six weeks motoring around Lake Michigan in light conditions in the summer of 1943, she departed the Lakes on 15 August, bound for the Big Easy, where she arrived a short week later, propelled by the Mississippi. Loading stores and torpedoes there, she left for Coco Solo, Panama, on 26 August, then spent five weeks training in those tropical waters for her war in the Pacific.

Deemed ready for combat, she left Baltra Island in the Galapagos on 9 October, bound on a 7,800-mile direct trip for Brisbane.

War!

Arriving in Australia on 30 October 1943– just three months after her Manitowoc commissioning– a fortnight later, Ray departed from Milne Bay, New Guinea for her 1st War Patrol, ordered to stalk Japanese shipping north of the Bismarck Archipelago. For 60 percent of her crew, it was their first war patrol on any submarine.

On the early morning of 26 November, she sank the Japanese army Shinkyo Maru-class auxiliary transport Nikkai Maru (2562 GRT) south-west of Truk, with the vessel breaking apart into three pieces and sinking. For this, Ray suffered her first depth charging in return.

A few hours later, she pressed an attack on a ship of some 10,000 tons and reported a sinking. This could be the 2,700-ton auxiliary water carrier Wayo Maru, which was sailing with Nikkai Maru but arrived at Truk on 28 November with no damage.

In her attacks, Ray expended 10 torpedoes for seven claimed hits, which is rather good for American fish at this stage of the war. Recalled for operational reasons, Ray completed her 1st patrol on 7 December 1943, returning to Milne Bay after covering 7,479 miles in 24 days. She was credited with sinking two freighters of 9,800 tons and 4,500 tons, respectively.

Ray departed Milne Bay on her 2nd War Patrol on 11 December after a three-day turnaround alongside the tender USS Fulton, ordered to patrol in the Banda Sea.

On the overnight of 26/27 December, she stalked, then torpedoed and sank the Japanese fleet tanker Kyoko Maru (5800 GRT, former Dutch Semiramis) in the Tioro Strait 14 miles northwest of Kabaena Island. She broke in two and sank, carrying 41 passengers and crew to the bottom along with 7,500 tons of crude oil cargo.

The six-torpedo attack left a “huge billowing column of orange flames” some 75 feet wide that “mushroomed out like a thunderhead as it rose hundreds of feet in the air.”

From Ray’s patrol report:

On New Year’s Day 1944, Ray celebrated by sinking the Japanese auxiliary gunboat Okuyo Maru (2904 GRT), towing a landing craft some five miles from the mouth of Ambon Bay, with three torpedoes, killing 135 passengers and crew.

Three days later, she attacked two Japanese cargo ships in the Savu Sea just off Timor with four torpedoes, reportedly damaging one of them.

On 12 January, Ray ended her 2nd war patrol at the big Allied sub base at Fremantle, completing 7,007 miles in 46 days. She was given credit for sinking a 10,020-ton AO (Sinkoku type) and a 7,886-ton auxiliary.

Having steamed over 25,000 miles since leaving her builders six months prior, Ray was allowed a full three-week turnaround time before she left on her 3rd War Patrol on 6 February 1944.

Ordered to patrol in the Java and South China Seas, she also carried a cargo of mines to sow off Japanese-occupied Saigon, French Indochina.

Working close to shore, she grounded in the shallows on 17 February but was able to float free with the tide and the next day shrugged off two near-miss bombs dropped from a Japanese Rufe (Nakajima A6M2-N) floatplane. She dodged three more on 24 February.

Coming across a nine-ship convoy on the night of 2/3 March in the South China Sea, she fired four torpedoes, claiming a damaging hit on a 10,000-ton tanker and suffering a “severe” depth-charging in the process.

She ended her patrol back at Fremantle on 27 March after 51 days, covering 10,688 miles.

Her 4th War Patrol started on 23 April, ordered to range south off the Davao Gulf in the Philippines.

Haunted by Japanese land-based Betty bombers (Ray logged 71 aircraft contacts on the patrol), she birddogged several small enemy convoys but couldn’t line up an attack– that was until she found a “well disciplined” large convoy (Convoy H-26) of six escorts (with some emitting radar signals) covering eight Marus and a tanker on the afternoon of 21 May. Just after midnight on 22 May, she had lined up on the largest targets, the Japanese army tanker Kenwa Maru (6384 GRT) and the cargo ship Tempei Maru (6097 GRT), firing six torpedoes that damaged the former and sank the latter. Tempei Maru blew up and went to the bottom with a cargo of rice and gasoline, along with 35 crew and passengers.

The next day, teaming up with sister USS Cero, she sank the freighter Taijun Maru (2825 GRT) carrying a cargo of Daihatsu landing barges.

She made four radar-assisted night attacks on the convoy in all, firing 18 torpedoes in two successful runs, and claimed six kills.

Then she came across a Japanese cruiser task force on the afternoon of 31 May that she continued to track but could not attack for the next two days. However, she did get ineffectively strafed by one of the cruiser’s floatplanes for her efforts.

Wrapping up her 4th War Patrol at Fremantle on 14 June, she was credited with 42,000 tons of shipping, roughly three times what she bagged, but hey, it’s war.

With that, LCDR Harral was pulled from Ray and bumped upstairs to COMSUBPAC staff. In his four patrols on our boat, he had earned the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, and two Bronze Stars, so it’s safe to say he deserved the promotion.

His replacement was Keystone stater LCDR William Thomas Kinsella (USNA 1935), late of the old (had been laid up in 1931) USS O-8 (SS-69), a training boat out of New London.

Kinsella took the repaired Ray out on her 5th War Patrol (his first) from Fremantle on 9 July, headed to patrol in the South China Sea.

He proved a fast study and sank three Japanese tankers– Jambi Maru (a.k.a. Janbi Maru and Jinbi Maru) (5244 GRT, former Dutch Djambi), Nansei Maru (5878 GRT, former British Pleiodon), and Taketoyo Maru (6964 GRT)– as well as two cargo ships– Koshu Maru (2812 GRT) and Zuisho Maru (5286 GRT) over the next month. The Koshu Maru was a particularly sad footnote, as she was packed with 1,500 Javanese laborers destined to repair the Japanese airfield at Makassar, and 540 other passengers, with most perishing as she disappeared below the surface in just two minutes.

The chase for the unescorted Jambi Maru was almost pyrrhic, with Ray firing 22 torpedoes (!) in six attacks to get eight hits on the tanker– a move that forced the sub to return to Australia mid-patrol to quickly grab more fish and head out for more havoc.

She ended her extraordinarily successful 5th War Patrol at Fremantle on 31 August 1944, completely out of torpedoes (going through 46!), capping 14,237 miles underway in 67 days.

She was credited with four “kills” totaling 36,400 tons.

On 23 September 1944, Ray departed Fremantle to begin her 6th War Patrol, ordered again to the South China Sea where she had been so busy the month before. Setting off for the waters around the Japanese-occupied Philippines with 16 Mk 14-3A torpedoes loaded forward and eight newer Mk 18 electric fish loaded aft, it would be one of her most historic sorties.

On 12 October, she sank the Japanese troop transport Toko Maru (4180 GRT) near Cape Cavalite, Mindoro, and ate 30 depth charges in return.

Two days later, a hatch inadvertently left open while submerging ended up flooding two-thirds of the control room. While she suffered mechanically from this– and was forced to call on the services of the tender USS Orion at Mios Woendi for five days of emergency repairs– she had no casualties.

On 1 November, Ray sank the Japanese coastal tanker Horai Maru No.7 (834 GRT) west of Mindoro, then completed a “special mission,” typically code for landing agents or supplies to resistance groups. Post-war, it was known that this mission saw a landing party sent ashore on the west coast of Mindoro to recover two Naval Aviators that had been shot down during carrier raids and rescued by Filipino insurgents, along with two U.S. Army officers that had been fighting with the guerillas since 1942, and a local escaped political prisoner.

Three days later, operating in a Yankee wolf pack with USS Bream, Guitarro, and Raton, the pack came across Convoy TAMA-31A and shared in sending the big Japanese transport ship Kagu Maru (6806 GRT) to the bottom off Dasol Bay, Philippines, with Ray delivering the coup de grace by blowing off the damaged ship’s bow with two torpedoes.

On 5 November, lookouts from the submarine USS Batfish spotted Japanese Convoy MATA-31, some 15 ships with air cover, heading from Manila to Formosa. The convoy included six freighters, two kaibokan frigates, and five subchasers, while the heavy cruiser Aoba and famed Mogami-class heavy cruiser Kumano were riding along for good measure. Batfish tried to get in an attack on Aoba but came up short. She nonetheless passed on the contact, and Ray’s wolfpack made ready to receive.

Cruiser Kumano, circa Oct 1938, as seen in the U.S. Navy Division of Naval Intelligence’s A503 FM30-50 booklet for identification of ships

The next day, while off Cape Bolinao, Luzon, the four waiting American submarines concentrated on Kumano and would fire an amazing 23 fish at the big 14,000-ton bruiser.

Two hits– one blowing off her bow section and the second flooding her engine rooms– left Kumano dead in the water with an 11-degree list. However, with the swarm of aircraft keeping Ray deep during daylight hours, and the swarm of escorts too tight once she surfaced after dark, Kinsella found himself presented with a dream target– but one he could not claim. Kumano, towed to Dasol Bay by the freighter Doryo Maru, would be finished off in Santa Cruz harbor less than three weeks later by carrier aircraft from USS Ticonderoga.

Operating independently, on 14 November, Ray sank the Japanese corvette Kaibokan CD-7 (745 tons) about 65 nautical miles north-west of Cape Bolinao while the vessel was escorting Convoy MATA-32. She was sent to the bottom with 156 men. The sub followed up on this by sinking the transport Unkai Maru No. 5 (2,841 GRT) from the convoy seven minutes later.

On 19 November, Ray performed lifeguard missions, scooping up Lt. James Arthur Bryce, USNR, of VF-22, from the drink off Cape Bolinao. A young fighter pilot flying from USS Cowpens (CVL-25), his F6F-5 was damaged by anti-aircraft fire while attacking a Japanese convoy. Bryce would pick up a DFC for his actions that day, adding a second one to his salad bar in January 1945 for downing three enemy aircraft in the same sortie. Sadly, this ace (he ended up with 5.25 victories) was killed in an accident soon after.

Ending her 6th War Patrol on 8 December at Pearl Harbor via Midway with a waterlogged Lt. Bryce aboard, Ray covered a lucky 17,777 miles in an exceedingly long 98 days, firing all 16 of her Mk 14-3A torpedoes. She was given credit for 6.5 kills (sharing Kumano) for a total of 35,100 tons.

This brought her running tally sheet to 20.5 kills for 146,206 tons.

Following a much-needed refit and overhaul at Mare Island Navy Yard– which allowed her crew to spend Christmas stateside, Ray only made it back to “the line” in April 1945, at which point she was in a quite different war.

USS Ray, Mare Island 9 March 1945

With Japanese convoys no longer abundant on the high seas, her 7th War Patrol, off Kyushu in Japanese home waters and in the Yellow Sea, would be one of surface engagements against small craft that didn’t rate a torpedo.

Departing Guam on 30 April 1945, she capped this patrol at Midway on 16 June, having traveled 14,463 miles. In that interval, she had made 46 surface contacts in the Yellow Sea, with about a quarter of those being other American submarines patrolling the same area.

The rest were small coasters and trawlers– which she was determined to destroy.

Throughout 21 gun attacks, most at night, she expended 815 rounds of 40mm and 137 rounds of 5-inch, accounting for 19 small craft (two sea trucks, two small patrol boats, 15 four-masted rice schooners) carrying supplies between Japan and Korea for a total of 6,000 tons. She also encountered 24 mines, exploding or sinking most via gunfire.

However, her most important piece of work during this patrol was in two large rescues while spending 11 days on a lifeguard station off Japan. In one week, she pulled aboard 20 aviators, 10 from an Army B-29 and 10 from a Navy PBM Mariner. As noted by COMSUBDIV 141, “This second rescue was a particularly beautiful piece of work, being conducted at night in heavy seas and in close proximity to rocks and shoals.” Ray transferred the rescued crews to USS Lionfish and Pompon and continued her patrol.

In all, 86 American submarines spent 3,272 days on life guard duty during the war, with the bulk of that time (2,739 days) in 1945 when the conflict moved to the Japanese home islands. They rescued 504 men from the sea. Ray was the second most prolific life guard sub with 23 recoveries, just behind USS Tigrone, which had an impressive 52, the latter largely due to spending most of two patrols on such duty.

Ray’s 8th War Patrol, beginning on 11 July 1945, saw the boat leave Subic Bay headed south to the Gulf of Siam, one of the few areas that still had enemy shipping traffic, albeit of the shallow draft kind.

Arriving in the patrol zone, by 2 August, she fought her first surface action in the region– against two junks– with Kinsella noting in his log, “We now have 3 fathoms of water under us. This is indeed poor employment for as valuable a fighting unit as a U.S. submarine, but this is the way we must get our targets nowadays.”

She continued her rampage against the lilliputian shipping on an epic scale. It was a necessary war, as the craft, under Japanese orders, were carrying salt, fish, rice, and sugar to enemy units, all inside the 10-fathom curve.

Case in point: On the morning of 7 August, while patrolling off Lem Chong Pra, she encountered a coaster and, stopping it by ramming, found the vessel with contraband and sank it via boarding party.

Pursuing another small coaster, which beached itself, Ray spotted seven two-masted cargo junks in a hidden cove as well as masts for another 16 vessels (six 250-ton schooners, a 180-ton schooner, 5 75-ton junks, a 50-ton junk, and three 30-ton junks) further down the anchorage. At 1950, on all four engines running on the surface and all deck guns loaded, “With range 2,000 yards and 1 fathom of water under keel, turned right to bring 5-inch gun to bear.” An hour later, after 64 rounds of 5-inch, all 16 of the vessels at the anchorage were sunk or sinking.

To destroy the junks in the hidden cove, just after dusk, a boarding party consisting of a JG and two gunners mates in the sub’s No. 1 rubber boat, loaded with small arms, covered No. 2 rubber boat with the ship’s XO and two torpedo mates with demo gear.

By midnight, all seven junks, floating in just four feet of water, were “burning furiously,” and the away team had been recovered with no casualties, with 40 rounds of 40mm pumped into the illuminated targets for good measure. The sub had destroyed 24 vessels in 24 hours.

On 9 August, having expended almost all of her 5-inch rounds in sinking 35 small craft (totaling 2,915 tons), she was ordered back to Subic Bay.

She covered 12,165 miles in what turned out to be her final war patrol. Ordered stateside with the outbreak of peace, she made Pearl Harbor on 15 September 1945, celebrating VJ Day underway, and left for New London five days later, arriving in Connecticut on 5 October.

She ended the war with an unofficial tally of 75.5 enemy ships sunk (including all the coastal vessels) for a sum of 155,171 claimed tons, later adjusted post-war to a more correct 49,185. She also rescued no less than 23 aviators, laid at least one minefield with unknown results, and conducted two special missions.

USS Ray earned eight Battle Stars across her WWII patrols, along with the Navy Unit Citation and the Philippine Republic Presidential Citation.

Her Jolly Roger, complete with eight battle stars under the submarine insignia, dozens of warships and maru tallies and parachutes for her 13 Naval aviators and 10 Army aircrew rescued

Ray served in a training capacity at New London until 12 February 1947, when she was placed out of commission in reserve.

SSR conversion

The Navy embarked on a series of radar picket conversions to fleet submarines starting just after WWII. This carried across three Project “Migraine” series conversions that saw 10 veteran boats land their guns and torpedoes in exchange for large surface search and height-finding radars.

Of course, this kneecapped the subs for operations as…subs… since they had to lock their radar arrays parallel with the axis of the boat before diving, and they were relegated to 6 knots or less while submerged.

Migraine I: (pre-SCB number) two Tench-class submarines, USS Requin (SS-481) and USS Spinax (SS-489), in which radar panels and electronics took up the space of the rear torpedo room, originally intended to serve in the invasion of Japan in 1946. They still had their forward torpedo room, and the stern tubes could be loaded/reloaded externally and retained their forward deck guns.

Migraine II (SCB 12): belowdecks radar equipment moved to aft battery room, radars moved to masts, and rear torpedo room and two forward torpedo tubes converted to berthing for operators. This limited these boats to just four forward tubes and eight torpedoes. Four subs were converted: Balao-class boat USS Burrfish (SS-312), Tench class USS Tigrone (SS-419), while Spinax and Requin were upgraded. These boats were all redesignated SSR (submarine, radar).

Migraine III (SCB 12A): All six of the boats in this program were “stretched” Manitowoc-built Gatos: USS Pompon (SSR-267), Rasher (SSR-269), Raton (SSR-270), Ray (SSR-271), Redfin (SSR-272), and Rock (SSR-274), with each given a 29-foot hull insert amidships ahead of the main control room to allow a dedicated CIC compartment for the radars. This grew these 312-footers to 341 feet oal and saw the entire sail replaced with an enlarged, more streamlined version. It was also the first SSR conversion to delete all installed deck guns. However, the addition of the CIC “plug” allowed these boats to retain all six of their forward torpedo tubes. They carried a sail-mounted BPS-2 search radar mounted aft of the periscopes, a BPS-3 height finding radar on a pedestal behind the sail, and an AN/URN-3 TACAN beacon on the afterdeck.

The profiles of the three Migraine project generations from the Navy’s ONI 31 sighting guide from 1955:

Redfin (SSR-272) as a radar picket submarine, Migraine III (aka SCB 12A)

In December 1950, Ray was towed from mothballs to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for her Migraine III conversion, and she was recommissioned on 13 August 1952.

She was one of ultimately eight SSR/SSRNs in the Atlantic fleet in the 1950s and made two deployments (1 March to 26 May 1954 and 5 March to 4 June 1956) to the Med under 6th Fleet orders, the rest of her short second career was occupied in a series of fleet exercises and type training.

30 April 1954. USS Ray (SSR-271) acting as a radar picket submarine for USS Randolph (CV-15) during operation “Italic Sky One” in the Mediterranean. 80-G-639551

The SSR was made obsolete by the one-two deployment of the new land-based EC-121 Warning Star in 1954 and the carrier-borne E-1 Tracer in 1958, which could operate from even older Essex-class flattops. 

USS Mauna Kea (AE-22) highlines ammunition to the USS Bennington (CVS-20) in the Gulf of Tonkin the 10 September 1968. Our carrier has nine S-2E Trackers, two E-1B Tracer “Stoof with a Roof” models, and at least four SH-3A Sea Kings on deck. This would be Bennington’s final deployment and would end on 9 November. USN 1137061

With the nature of their conversion rendering them less than ideal for retention as traditional fleet subs, the end of the road was reached.

Ray departed Norfolk on 30 June 1958 and entered the Charleston Navy Yard for inactivation. Placed out of commission in reserve on 30 September 1958, she was struck from the Navy list on 1 April 1960, stripped of anything useful to keep her sisters in service, and her hulk was sold for scrap.

Her unconverted sisters lingered on for a few more years as USNR training boats.

Gato-class submarines Jane’s, 1960

The salvage price for most of the WWII fleet subs sold for scrap during this period was about $35,000 per hull, versus a $4.6 million construction cost.

Epilogue

Ray has a detailed marker as part of the Manitowoc “28 Boat Memorial Walk” at USS Cobia.

U.S.S. Ray (SS 271) Marker

She also has her war history, war patrols, and 1950s deck logs in the National Archives.

As for her two wartime skippers, plank owner Brooks Harral was a submarine division and squadron commander in Panama, Key West, and San Diego before returning to Annapolis, where he served as head of English, history, and government until 1957. Retiring as a rear admiral in 1959, he later penned “Service Etiquette” for all military academies.

He passed in 1999 and is buried in the Naval Academy Cemetery.

Ray’s second wartime skipper, Bill Kinsella, also retired from the Navy as a rear admiral after a stint teaching at the Naval Academy. During his time on SS-271, he earned two Navy Crosses and the Legion of Merit. He passed in 2003 at age 89.

In the early 1980s, he wrote a pamphlet about the boat, “The History of a Fighting Ship U.S.S. RAY (SS271)” by Rear Admiral William T. Kinsella, USN (Ret.), which is long since out of publication.

The Navy soon recycled Ray’s fine name for a Sturgeon-class submarine (SSN-653) commissioned in 1967. Notably, she was the first of her class to become Tomahawk certified in 1985, capable of shooting both TLAM and TLAM-N cruise missiles through her torpedo tubes, a game changer for SSN ops.

A port bow view of the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Ray (SSN-653) underway near Naval Station, Norfolk, Virginia, February 1991. DNST9105698

This latter Ray earned five Navy Unit Commendations, six Meritorious Unit Commendations, six Navy Expeditionary Medals, and at least three Arctic Service ribbons across her 26-year career.

USS Ray (SSN-653), USS Hawkbill (SSN-666) USS Archerfish (SSN-678) surfaced at geographic North Pole, 6 May 1986 330-CFD-DN-SC-86-07408

Tell me again why we aren’t recycling these great old submarine names?

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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Warship Wednesday, April 30, 2025: Pride of Puget Sound

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

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Warship Wednesday, April 30, 2025: Pride of Puget Sound

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the Naval History and Heritage Command collections. Catalog: L45-35.04.01

Above we see the Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Bremerton (CA-130) all aglow in Sydney, in town to celebrate the 17th anniversary of the historic Battle of the Coral Sea in December 1959. While she didn’t get any licks during WWII, Bremerton was nonetheless a “war baby,” commissioned some 80 years ago this week. And she did manage to get some serious combat time during another conflict.

The Baltimores

When the early shitstorm of 1939 World War II broke out, the U.S. Navy, realized that in the likely coming involvement with Germany in said war– and that country’s huge new 18,000-ton, 8x8inch gunned, 4.1-inches of armor Hipper-class super cruisers– it was outclassed in the big assed heavy cruiser department. When you add to the fire the fact that the Japanese had left all of the Washington and London Naval treaties behind and were building giant Mogami-class vessels (15,000 tons, 3.9 inches of armor), the writing was on the wall. That’s where the Baltimore class came in.

These 24 envisioned ships of the class looked like an Iowa-class battleship in miniature with three triple turrets, twin stacks, a high central bridge, and two masts– and they were (almost) as powerful. Sheathed in a hefty 6 inches of armor belt (and 3 inches of deck armor), they could take a beating if they had to.

They were fast, capable of over 30 knots, which meant they could keep pace with the fast new battlewagons they looked so much like, as well as the new fleet carriers that were on the drawing board.

Baltimore class ONI2 listing

While they were more heavily armored than Hipper and Mogami, they also had an extra 8-inch tube, mounting nine new model 8-inch/55 caliber guns, whereas the German and Japanese only had 155mm guns (though the Mogamis later picked up 10×8-inchers). A larger suite of AAA guns that included a dozen 5-inch/38 caliber guns in twin mounts and 70+ 40mm and 20mm guns rounded this out.

In short, these ships were deadly to incoming aircraft, could close to the shore as long as there were at least 27 feet of seawater for them to float in and hammer coastal beaches and emplacements for amphibious landings, then take out any enemy surface combatant short of a modern battleship in a one-on-one fight.

They were tough nuts to crack, and of the 14 hulls that took to the sea, none were lost in combat.

Meet Bremerton

Our subject is the first warship named for the Washington city home to Puget Sound Navy Yard, which dates back to 1891. As explained by the Puget Sound Navy Museum, the Navy held a war bond competition in 1943 between the workers at Puget and those at California’s Mare Island NSY with the winner earning the naming rights to a new heavy cruiser whose keel had been laid on 1 February (as Yard No. 449) at New York Shipbuilding Corps. in Camden, New Jersey.

Puget won the competition– with the yard’s workers pledging an amazing 15 percent of their wages for six months– and earned the right to send a delegate to the East Coast to sponsor the vessel. The worker sent had been with the yard since 1917. As detailed by the museum:

Betty McGowan, representing the Rigger and Shipwright Shop, was chosen to christen the cruiser in New Jersey on July 2, 1944. She broke the ceremonial bottle of champagne across the ship’s bow with a single swing. In Bremerton, residents marked the occasion with a baseball game, a flag raising ceremony, and the sale of more than $11,000 in war bonds.

Bremerton was commissioned on 29 April 1945, with her first of 15 skippers being Capt. (later RADM) John Boyd Mallard (USNA 1920) of Savannah, Georgia. Mallard had seen the elephant previously as skipper of the oiler USS Rapidan (AO 18), dodging U-boats in the Atlantic, and earned the Legion of Merit as commander of a task group of LSTs during the assaults on Lae and Finschhafen in September 1943.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) off Portland, Maine, 6 August 1945, just nine days before the Empire of Japan would signal that they were quitting the war. 80-G-332946

Bremerton’s WWII service was brief, with her Official War History encompassing a half-dozen short paragraphs. The new cruiser left Norfolk for her shakedown cruise in the waters off  Cuba on 29 May 1945.

Three weeks later, having wrapped up gunnery trials off Culebra Island, she sailed for Rio de Janeiro to serve as flagship for Admiral Jonas Ingram, Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, during his South American inspection tour. Bremerton returned to the States and engaged in early July, arriving at Boston Navy Yard on 18 July, then became part of TF 69 for experimental work at Casco Bay, Maine, until 2 October.

Spending the next five weeks in post-shakedown overhauls at Philadelphia, she cleared that port on 7 November for Guantanamo and, after passing inspection, sailed through the Panama Canal to join the Pacific Fleet on 29 November 1945 with orders to report to Shanghai via Pearl Harbor under the 7th Fleet for occupation duties.

Arriving at Inchon, Korea on 4 January 1946, she would spend the next 11 months in the Far East– earning an Occupation Medal and China Service Medal– before making for San Pedro, California.

Homeported there, Bremerton managed to get in a training cruise along the West Coast in 1947 before her discharge papers hit.

13 February 1948. “USS Bremerton (CA-130) (foreground) and USS Los Angeles (CA-135) are towed from the Nation’s largest drydock, at San Francisco Naval Shipyard, while being prepared for inactivation and addition to the Pacific Reserve Fleet. Constructed during the war, the 1100-foot drydock is capable of handling the largest ships afloat. Besides handling these two cruisers at one time, the huge dock has accommodated four attack transports in one operation. World’s largest crane at right.” Note that many other laid-up ships are in the area. Among them, on the right, are USS Rockwall (APA-230) and USS Bottineau (APA-235). NH 97453

Bremerton was placed out of commission, in reserve, at San Francisco on 9 April 1948, capping just under three years of service.

No less than nine of 14 Baltimore-class heavy cruisers were mothballed after WWII as the Navy’s budget nosedived. With each needing a 1,100+ member crew (not counting the Marine det), they had an almost prohibitive cost to keep them in service even if they were pierside. A deployment, requiring 2,250 tons of fuel oil and a trainload of provisions just to get started, could be better spent on a half-squadron of 3-4 destroyers that could make triple the port calls– and in more diverse locations.

The Baltimores were seen as quaint in the new Atomic Age, and, with a couple of battlewagons and newer heavy cruisers (of the Oregon City and Des Moines class) on tap for fire support missions should they ever be needed (and nobody thought they would), the six remaining class members on active service were mostly used as flagships and high-profile training vessels for midshipmen’s and reservist cruises.

War!

With the Soviet-backed North Korean Army rushing over the 38th Parallel to invade their neighbors to the south on 25 June 1950, the Navy rushed units from Japan to the embattled peninsula and things soon got very old school in a conflict heavy with minefields, amphibious landings and raids, and an active naval gunline just off shore.

This, naturally, led to a call for more naval fire support. Ultimately, 10 of 14 Baltimores (all except USS Boston, Canberra, Chicago, and Fall River) were in commission or reactivated for the Korean War.

Bremerton was pulled from mothballs at San Francisco and, after a short overhaul at Hunters Point and giving her crew some refresher training, she was bound for the gunline, arriving in theatre under 7th Fleet command on 7 May 1952.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, San Francisco, California, on 21 November 1951. She was recommissioned for Korean War service on 23 November after having been in reserve since April 1948. 80-G-436084

USS Bremerton (CA-130) underway on 14 February 1952. 80-G-439986

Same as the above, 80-G-439985

Her first tour off Korea, which wrapped up in September 1952, and she let her 8-inchers sing at Wonsan, Kojo, Chongjin, and Changjon Hang.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) loading ammunition at Mare Island Ammunition Depot. October 1952

USS Bremerton (CA-130) in San Diego harbor, California, circa 1951-52, with her crew manning the rails. NH 97454

After an overhaul, she returned to Korea in April 1953, remaining through November.

Forecastle of the heavy cruiser USS Bremerton (CA-130) in heavy seas, in 1953, likely during her second Korean tour. Note the awash gun tub forward.

On this second tour, she repeatedly dueled with Nork/ChiCom coastal artillery batteries.

From Korean War: Chronology of U.S. Pacific Fleet Operations: 

  • 5 May 1953: During a heavy gun strike in the Wonsan Harbor area, USS Bremerton (CA 130) was fired upon by 18 rounds of 76 to 105 mm shells. One near miss caused two minor personnel casualties and superficial top-side damage.
  • 24 May 1953: During a heavy gun strike in Wonsan Harbor, USS Bremerton (CA 130) received 10 rounds of well-directed enemy artillery fire. Although all shells landed close aboard, Bremerton escaped unscathed.
  • 14 June 1953: USS Bremerton (CA 130) received four rounds of 90 mm counterbattery fire while blasting the enemy shore gun positions on the Wonsan perimeter. The enemy fire was ineffective.
  • 19 June 1953: In Wonsan Harbor, USS Bremerton (CA 130) was the target for four rounds of 90 mm shore fire but was not hit.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) under fire from North Korean shore batteries, in 1953

Besides Bremerton, the Navy deployed no less than six Baltimores for escort missions and coastal bombardment in Korea.

Heavy cruisers USS Saint Paul (CA-73) and USS Bremerton (CA-130) and the light cruiser USS Manchester (CL-83) are underway off Korea. Saint Paul and Bremerton were deployed to Korea and the Western Pacific between April and September 1953.

While I cannot find how many shells our girl let fly off Korea, all told, the Navy expended over 414,000 rounds and 24,000 missions against shore targets between just May 1951 and March 1952. While most of those rounds (381,750) were from 5-inch guns, at least 22,538 came from 8-inch pipes on heavy cruisers, so distill from that what you will.

In all, Bremerton was authorized two (of a possible 10) Korean Service Medals (battle stars), with the breaks in dates often due to leaving the gun line to get more shells:

  • K8 – Korean Defense Summer-Fall 1952: 12-28 May 52, 11-26 Jun 52, 9 Jul-6 Aug 52, and 20 Aug-6 Sep 52.
  • K10 – Korea, Summer-Fall 1953: 1-30 May 53, 13 Jun-8 Jul 53, 23-27 Jul 53.

She also served in Korean waters post-cease fire on two stints, 26 Sep-8 Nov 53 and 8 Jun-27 Jul 54, the latter on a May-October West Pac cruise. On top of her two battle stars, she also earned a Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, the United Nations Korea Service Medal, and the Republic of Korea War Service Medal.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) In Drydock Number 5 at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, in July 1954 during a West Pac deployment. Note her side armor, and men painting her hull. 80-G-644556

Cold War swan song

She would spend the first half of 1955 at Mare Island undergoing an overhaul and modernization. Her armament and fire control were updated. Importantly, she shipped her 40mm guns ashore for 10 twin 3″/50 (7.62 cm) Mark 33 Mounts and new Mk 56 FC radar fits.

April 1955. San Francisco. Port bow view of the heavy cruiser USS Bremerton (CA 130). Her original close-range armament of 20 mm and 40 mm guns has been replaced by twin 3-inch/50 Mark 26 guns controlled by Mark 56 directors, two of which may be seen abreast the forward superstructure. Her catapults have been removed, although the crane for handling aircraft remains for use with the boats now stowed in the former aircraft hangar under the quarterdeck. Note the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Period caption: “The USS Bremerton, heavy cruiser, which will be berthed at Pier 46-B Saturday, April 21 and 22, will be open for public inspection from 1 to 4 p. m. each day, as a part of the civic observance of the 50th anniversary of the 1906 fire. The U. S. Navy played a vitally important role in bringing aid to the stricken city.” (Naval Historical Collection)

Then came a second post-Korea West Pac cruise, from July 1955 to February 1956, during which she earned a second China Service Medal for operations off Chinese-threatened Formosa/Taiwan.

Great period Kodachrome by of USS Bremerton by Charles W. Cushman showing the cruiser steaming into San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge, 8 May 1956. Bloomington – University Archives P08766

Her third post-Korea West Pac deployment, from November 1956 to May 1957, saw her make port calls from Vancouver to Yokosuka to Manila, Hong Kong, and Melbourne, where her crew was on hand to support the XVI Olympiad.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) photographed on 4 November 1957 while at Puget Sound before heading to Bangor. 80-G-1027859

Same as the above 80-G-1027857

Same as the above 80-G-1027858

USS Bremerton (CA-130) at Pearl Harbor while en route to Asia, circa 1957. The original photograph bears the rubber-stamp date 3 December 1957. NH 97455

Around this time, the Navy decided to reconstruct Bremerton into an Albany-class guided missile cruiser.

This extensive (three-to-four year) SCB 172 conversion involved removing almost everything topside including all armament and superstructure, then installing a huge SPS-48 3D air search radar, a twin Mk 12 Talos launcher (with its magazine, Mk 77 missile fire-control system, and SPG-49 fire control radars), a twin Mk 11 Tartar launcher (along with its magazine, Mk 74 missile fire-control system, and SPG-51 fire control radars), a huge CIC and tall navigation bridge, a bow mounted sonar, a helicopter deck, etc. et. al.

Only three CAs (USS Albany, Chicago, and Columbus) completed the conversion, and it left them unrecognizable from their original form.

Two views of the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Chicago, as built and after her conversion to a guided missile cruiser. Upper view: USS Chicago (CA-136) as a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser off the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Pennsylvania (USA), on 7 May 1945. Between 1959 and 1964, Chicago was rebuilt at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, California (USA), leaving virtually only the hull. The complete superstructure and armament were replaced. Lower view: USS Chicago (CG-11) as an Albany-class guided missile cruiser underway in the Pacific Ocean during exercise “Valiant Heritage” on 2 February 1976. NH 95867 and K-112891

However, as the Albany class conversion still required a massive nearly 1,300 man crew to run the 17,000 ton CG with 180 assorted missiles aboard, and the bean counters realized the new 8,000-ton Leahy-class DLGs (later re-rated as cruisers in 1975) could carry 80 missiles on a hull optimized to run with a 400-man crew, the choice was clear.

With that, Bremerton never did get that conversion, instead being used increasingly to hold the line in the Far East for the next couple of years.

She started 1958 at anchor in Long Beach, preparing for yet another Westpac deployment (from March to August) under TF 77 orders that would take her to the Philippines, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and the like.

From her log:

She repeated another Westpac cruise from January to May 1959 and yet another abbreviated sortie from November 1959 to February 1960. It was on New Year’s Day 1960, while deployed, that her mournful log entry told her looming fate– that of an early (second) decommissioning at the ripe old age of 15, bound once again for mothballs.

Assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet, while moored at Naval Station Long Beach’s Pier 15, at 0900 on 29 July 1960, USS Bremerton was decommissioned and then towed to the reserve basin first at Mare Island and then, fittingly, at Puget Sound.

1960 Jane’s entry for the Baltimore class.

USS Bremerton (CA-130) and USS Baltimore (CA-68) lay up at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, early 1970s. Photograph by Melvin Fredeen of Seattle. This picture was likely taken shortly before the two cruisers were sold for scrap in 1973. At the right of the picture, one will note several civilians on the pier, next to the gangplank leading to USS Missouri (BB-63), which is moored just outside the frame. During the three decades the battleship spent laid up at Bremerton before her 1980s reactivation, she would often be opened to the public for walking tours of her weather decks, particularly of the spot where the surrender of Japan took place. Several other decommissioned ships are visible, including a destroyer, a carrier, and in the far background, a third Baltimore-class heavy cruiser out in Sinclair Inlet. NH89317

Bremerton languished for 13 years in mothballs, and, once the war in Vietnam had drawn down, was stricken from the Naval List on 1 October 1973. She was subsequently sold for scrap to the Zidell Explorations Corporation of Portland, Oregon, and broken up.

Epilogue

Several relics of the cruiser remain in the Kitsap area.

Her bell, presented to the city of Bremerton in 1974, is on display at the Norm Dicks Government Center building downtown.

Her anchor and part of her mast are also preserved in the region, with the hook at Hal’s Corner (guarded by 40mm guns from the old battlewagon USS West Virginia) and the yardarm at Miller-Woodlawn Memorial Park.

Both are often visited by Navy working parties to keep them in good shape.

The Navy recycled the name for an early Los Angeles-class hunter-killer, SSN-698, which was in commission from 1981 to 2021.

Los Angeles-class hunter-killer USS Bremerton (SSN-698) underway 1 February 1991. DN-ST-91-05712

A veterans’ group for the latter Bremerton, which also keeps CA-130’s memory alive, is active. 

x

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

 

Ships are more than steel

and wood

And heart of burning coal,

For those who sail upon

them know

That some ships have a

soul.

 

***

 

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, April 23, 2025: The Seas are Alive…with the sound of Torpedoes

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

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says, “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday, April 23, 2025: The Seas are Alive…with the sound of Torpedoes

Above we see le croiseur cuirasse Leon Gambetta.

She was a beautifully obsolete ship that intersected history in several unusual ways and was lost to an infamous Austrian submarine skipper some 110 years ago this week.

French armored cruiser Amore

The French invented the concept of the true armored cruiser when Dupuy de Lome was ordered in 1888. A 6,300-ton steel-clad iron-hulled steamer, Dupuy de Lome could make 20 knots on her 11 Amirauté fire-tube boilers and three engines and had no auxiliary sail scheme.

The French armored cruiser Dupuy de Lome

Swathed in as much as 5 inches of plate armor, she carried eight large (7.6 and 6.4-inch guns) as well as 18 smaller pieces (37mm, 47mm, and 65mm) while also carrying four small (17.7-inch) torpedo tubes.

Able to operate alone and far from home if needed (Dupuy de Lome could steam at 12.5 knots for 4,000 nm), she was capable of defeating anything smaller than a genuine battleship, which she could outrun.

The concept ship was followed by the four-ship Amiral Charner class, the one-off cruisers Pothuau and Jeanne d’Arc, the trio of Gueydon-class cruisers, the three ships of the Dupleix class, and the five-unit Gloire-class. In all, in the 13 years between 1888 and 1901, the French had ordered 18 armored cruisers, with each class learning from the preceding one.

The result, the Gloire and her sisters, ran 9,996 tons, had an amazing 28 boilers (!) to drive three engines to obtain a 21-knot speed, and could steam 6,500 miles ecumenically. They carried 10 large guns (2x 7.64″/40, 8x 6.5″/45) as well as six 3.9″/50s, 18 x 45mm guns, and 4 x 37mm guns, plus five 17.7-inch torpedo tubes. All of this was protected by as much as 6.9 inches of armor.

Gloire-class armored cruiser Conde is pictured at Arsenal de Brest, c1918. A true floating castle with four funnels and a curious mix of armor and armament.

The three follow-on Gambetta class armored cruisers (class leader Leon Gambetta and Jules Ferry, followed by half-sister Victor Hugo) were up-sized Gloires, displacing 11,959 tons on a hull some 30 feet longer (489 feet vs 458 feet) and four feet beamier.

All three ships used different boiler arrangements (Gambetta 28 Niclausse boilers, Ferry 20 Guyot du Temple boilers, and Hugo 28 Belleville boilers) with triple engines that produced roughly 28,500 shp to make about 22 knots and steam 6,600nm at 10 knots.

Armament on the Gambettas was a repeat of the Gloires, albeit with two fewer 6.5-inch guns and a third more 47mm mounts (24 up from 18). Likewise, they only had two torpedo tubes. The armor plan was also similar to that of the Gloire.

To speed things up, the trio was laid down at three different naval yards, with Gambetta constructed at Brest, Ferry at Cherbourg, and Hugo at Lorient, with all constructed between January 1901 and April 1907.

A heavier update to the class with more guns and armor, the 13,000-ton Jules Michelet, was constructed soon after joining the fleet in 1908.

French cruiser Jules Michilet, American cruiser USS Huron, and Japanese Cruiser Yakumo in the Whangpoo River, Shanghai, 1925

Naval architect Emile Bertin kept tinkering with the Gambetta design to produce the 13,644-ton cruiser Ernest Renan in 1909 and her half-sisters Edgar Quinet and Waldeck-Rousseau, which were the most powerful (and last) armored cruisers built in France, commissioned in 1911.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Meet Gambetta

Our subject is the first French warship named after the 1870s political and cultural juggernaut, Leon Gambetta, who was key to the formation of the Third Republic and served at various times as the country’s minister of the interior, Président du Conseil, and Président de la Chambre des deputes before his young death at age 44 in 1882. Something like 200 towns have a Rue Gambetta in France to this day, and his likeness remains borne in numerous statues throughout the Republic.

Odds are, if you have been to France in the past 140 years, you have either walked upon a street named for Leon Gambetta or gazed on his face. He is right up there with Leclerc, Ferry, Foch, and Clemenceau.

The armored cruiser ordered in his honor was laid down at Arsenal de Brest on 15 January 1901.

Lead ship, Armoured Cruiser Léon Gambetta, construction at Arsenal de Brest, 1901

She was launched into the waters of the Bay of Biscay on 26 October 1902.

Brest. Launching of the armoured cruiser Leon Gambetta.

Lancement du croiseur cuirassé Léon Gambetta Petit Journal 10 novembre 1901

While on sea trials in February 1904, she ran aground in the fog and required dry docking for another six months, then promptly ran aground a second time, sending her back to the yard for further repair.

Gambetta, Brassey’s Naval Annual 1905

She finally finished her trials and was accepted and commissioned on 21 July 1905, with her cumulative construction cost hitting 29,248,500 francs.

Made the flagship of VADM Camille Gigon’s (later VADM Horace Jaureguiberry’s) 1re Division de croiseur as part of the Northern Squadron, she immediately sailed to Portsmouth in August 1905 for the Anglo-French naval review to celebrate the historic Entente Cordiale, which ended centuries of tension between London and Paris and helped set the stage for the Great War.

Entente Cordiale: The French squadron in Portsmouth Harbor – from the French magazine Le Petit Journal, August 13, 1905.

The French ships were reviewed by King Edward VII and hosted in a variety of events ashore for the Gallic visitors throughout the week, including a garden party in Victoria Park.

Remaining a ship of state, she carried President Clement Armand Fallieres to England in May 1908 for an official visit and, later that summer, represented France at the Quebec Tercentenary.

French cruiser Léon Gambetta at the Quebec Tercentenary 1908 LAC 336185

Gambetta and HMS Minotaur at the Quebec Tercentenary 1908 LAC

Quebec Tercentenary, HMS Minotaur, Leon Gambetta, Don de Dieu, and HMS Indomitable

Quebec Tercentenary Illumination of Indomitable, Minotaur, Leon Gambetta and the Chateau Frontenac

By 1911, the three Gambetta sisters would make up the 1re Division legere in the French Mediterranean fleet with RADM Louis Dartige du Fournet hoisting his flag on our subject.

War!

Carrying the flag of RADM Victor-Baptistin Senes, Gambetta entered the Great War at the head of the 2e Division legere out of Toulon and was soon busy escorting troopships moving colonial troops from French North Africa to the Republic proper.

Then came orders to join the force of ADM Augustin Boue de Lapeyrere’s fleet of two dozen battlewagons and cruisers blockading the Austro-Hungarian coast along the Adriatic. This included several sharp skirmishes with Austrian ships, tracking the neutral Italians, supporting the Serbian and Montenegrin armies ashore, and escorting troop ships through U-boat-infested waters.

Speaking of the latter, on 26 April 1915, she was found at sea by SM U-5 of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine. A humble 105-foot gasoline-electric submarine designed by Electric Boat of Connecticut to the same plans as used by the U.S. Navy’s C-class, U-5 only carried four 17.7-inch Whitehead torpedoes to be fired from her two forward tubes.

Kuk S.M. U 5 

The tiny boat, good only for 10 knots under the best sea conditions, her new skipper, Linienschiffsleutnant Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, had only assumed command nine days prior. Von Trapp, from a noble family and husband to Agathe Whitehead, granddaughter of the torpedo godfather, had joined the Austrian fleet at age 14 in 1894 and had served in China during the Boxer Rebellion with the surface fleet before switching to submarines in 1908.

SM U-5 of the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine and her commander, Linienschiffsleutnant Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, at the joint Austro-German U-Boat base in the northern Adriatic in the Brioni (Brijuni) islands off Pula in Croatia during the War.

Von Trapp, in his tiny a risky little boat, continued to stalk Gambetta in the Ionian Sea off Italy’s Cape Santa Maria di Leuca into the night and, closing to within 500 yards, fired both tubes at point blank range just after midnight on 27 April.

With hits against the massive target inevitable, both fish exploded and created havoc on Gambetta, which soon began settling in the water, her boilers knocked out. Ten minutes later, it was all over, and the proud cruiser was on the bottom, taking every single one of her officers and the bulk of her 800-man crew with her.

Escorted by Italian destroyers who had only entered the war that week, they rescued 137 waterlogged survivors from the lost French cruisers.

Von Trapp made history that pre-dawn morning, conducting the first-ever underwater nighttime (and only the second) submarine attack on a vessel in the region. Gambetta remained one of the largest ships hit by a U-boat during the war.

For the feat, he would eventually earn the coveted Militär-Maria-Theresien-Orden, the highest military honor of the old Habsburg monarchy, and he would become a household name in both Austria and Germany.

Propagandists on both sides took advantage of the loss to show how brave French sailors met Poseidon without fear and how, for the Central Powers, the U-boat was a modern marvel of war, commanded by a brave modern-day knight of the sea

Engraving from the Petit Journal of May 5, 1915: “How French sailors know how to die.” Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

French armoured cruiser Leon Gambetta, sinking SMS U-5. 2

German propaganda art of Gambetta sinking by Alexander Kircher

Sinking of the French armoured cruiser Léon Gambetta on 27 April 1915, by German artist August von Ramberg

Torpedoed and sunk by the Austro-Hungarian Submarine U-5 on 27 April 1915. Austrian War Art painting. NH 60194

As for Von Trapp, just three months after sending Gambetta to the bottom, he sank the Italian submarine Nereide on 5 August 1915, just off Pelagosa (Palagruza) Island. He followed that up with capturing the Greek steamer Cefalonia three weeks later. Before the end of the war, Von Trapp would add 11 more steamers to his tally sheet, surviving 19 war patrols.

Epilogue

Little remains of Gambetta topside that I can find.

Her sisters, Jules Ferry and Victor Hugo, survived the war and, after overseas service policing French colonies in the Far East, were retired and scrapped in the late 1920s.

French armored cruiser Jules Ferry at sea, around 1905-1911, Gambetta class

Léon Gambetta-class cruiser Victor Hugo Melbourne 1923

Von Trapp, left without either a navy or a sovereign when Austrian Emperor Karl left the throne in November 1918, had to fall back on his personal inherited fortune. Left a widower with seven children in 1922 upon the passing of his wife due to scarlet fever, he hired one Maria Augusta Kutschera, a young novice from the nearby nunnery, as a live-in tutor, and the old sea dog later married her in 1927 despite the 25-year age difference, and had three further children.

The Von Trapp family then drifted into a singing career, and the rest is history.

Von Trapp, exiled from Austria in 1938, later settled in the U.S., where he passed in 1947, aged 67. He is buried in Stowe, Vermont.

Christopher Plummer portrayed him in the 1965 movie, The Sound of Music, which was very loosely based on the family’s story in the 1920s and 30s.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

 

Ships are more than steel

and wood

And heart of burning coal,

For those who sail upon

them know

That some ships have a

soul.

 

***

 

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

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

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

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

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

I’m a member, so should you be!

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