D-class (1912)

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flag
Thornycroft 30 knotter or D class
HMS Fame
HMS Fame
Overview
Type destroyer
units 10
Shipyard

John I. Thornycroft , Chiswick

Order 1895 to 1897
Keel laying 1895 to 1898
Launch 1896 to 1899
Commissioning from 1897
Whereabouts two losses
sold for demolition in 1914, 1920/1921
Technical specifications
displacement

Standard : 355 to 370 tons

length

overall: 210 ft (64.0 m),

width

19.75 ft (6.0 m)

Draft

7.66 ft (2.3 m)

crew

53-65 men

drive
speed

30 kn

Armament
Appointed in 1895

Desperate , Fame , Foam , Mallard

Reordered in 1895

Angler , Ariel

Appointed in 1896

Coquette , Cygnet , Cynthia

96 "Special"

HMS Albatross (C class)

Appointed in 1897

Stag

The D-class of the Royal Navy formed in the summer comprised ten torpedo boat destroyers of the "30-knotter" class delivered by the Thornycroft & Co shipyard in Chiswick from 1897 to 1900. From 1895 the Royal Navy ordered torpedo boat destroyers developed from HMS  Havock with a top speed of 30  knots . Since the detailed proposals were submitted by the shipyards, the boats made outwardly were quite different. In total, the Royal Navy acquired 74 boats from eleven shipyards.

In 1912, the Royal Navy introduced letters as the class designation for their destroyers. The “30-knotter” and existing test structures for higher speeds were classified according to the number of their chimneys in the B class with four, C class with three or D class with two chimneys. The latter consisted of ten “30 knots” supplied by Thornycroft. In addition, only the Chinese Schichau destroyer HMS Taku (ex-Hai Lung), captured in 1900, could be classified in this class .

history

The Thornycroft "30-knotter" were ten torpedo boat destroyers of the Royal Navy, the first four of which were ordered in the 1894/1895 budget. They were followed by two more boats in 1895/1896, three slightly modified ones in 1896/1897 and in 1897/1898 the last Stag boat with a slightly reinforced propulsion system, all of which, like the boats previously delivered, had two chimneys. In addition there was the HMS Albatross , ordered in 1896/1897  , a Thornycroft “special” with three chimneys, which was part of an ultimately unsuccessful program to build even faster boats (“ 33-knotter ”).

The then London-based shipyard John I. Thornycroft & Company was one of the shipyards that supplied the Royal Navy with the first destroyers ( Daring class ) and which remained their largest supplier of this type until the end of the First World War, most recently with flotilla leaders the Shakespeare class and special versions of the fleet destroyers V and W as well as the S class . Thornycroft built over 70 destroyers (12 percent) for the Royal Navy during this period and delivered boats of almost all series. In addition, the shipyard also built many export boats, almost simultaneously with the "30 knottern" eight similar destroyers for the Imperial Japanese Navy of the Murakumo and Shirakumo classes and the division torpedo boat D 10 for the Imperial Navy of the German Reich .

The new boats were faster than the previous ( Daring - and Ardent class ) and reached all the required 30 on their test drives  knots (kn) , but as usual without armament. The actual sea speed of the equipped boats was only 25 knots. The armament remained identical with regard to the guns, the two individual torpedo tubes were set up on deck, one behind the other, rotatable on both sides.

When the Royal Navy then introduced letters as the class designation for their destroyers in 1912, the "30-knotter" and the still existing experimental structures for higher speeds were in the new B (four), C (three) or D class according to the number of their chimneys (two chimneys) arranged. The latter consisted of ten “30 knots” supplied by Thornycroft. The ex-Chinese Schichau destroyer HMS Taku , which was captured in 1900 and remained at the China Station until 1916 , also belonged to this class  .

commitment

The new boats made their first major public appearance on June 26, 1897, when Desperate , Fame and Foam took part in the fleet parade in honor of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee on the Spithead . While the other two boats were preparing for their first foreign service, the Desperate then returned to the Chatham Division of the Harwich Flotilla, to which the sister boats Mallard (1897), Angler , Ariel (1898), Coquette , Cynthia (1899) and Cygnet (1900) entered. During the great fleet maneuver in 1899, the Angler served as a flotilla commander commanded by Commander John de Robeck . From January 1900, the Desperate was used by the Artillery School in Sheerness for training purposes. In April 1900, while visiting several destroyers at Wharf Pier in Brighton , the Desperate was involved in an accident when one of their boats with 12 sailors capsized and seven men drowned. In October 1901 the angler collided with the passenger ship Suffolk in a storm near Felixstowe Pier and was severely damaged. In October 1901, the Mallard was assigned to the school flotilla on the Medway . The Desperate joined the Mediterranean fleet in 1900 , the Cynthia and Ariel in 1901, and finally the anglers in 1903 . Only Mallard , Coquette and Cygnet stayed in their home waters forever. At the end of 1913, the Mediterranean boats of the type returned home. They sold the foam for demolition in 1914 before the start of the war and scrapped it in Norway.

Assignments abroad

In the second half of 1897, two of the boats that had just come into service - Fame and Foam - were handed over to foreign stations that were relocated to the China station and the Mediterranean fleet. The Desperate and the new Stag then joined the Mediterranean fleet in 1900 , the Ariel and the Cynthia in 1901 and finally the Angler in 1903 .

The Ariel was lost off Malta in 1907 when she ran aground in a storm off Ricasoli , Malta on April 19, 1907 . The five Thornycroft-type boats that remained in the Mediterranean were relocated back home in 1913.

In 1900 the Admiralty planned another foreign mission, when Cygnet and Coquette were to form a destroyer division with the White-Boot Conflict and the old Yarrow-Boat Hornet , which, supported by the cruiser HMS  Highflyer, were to carry out tropical tests in East India. The lack of operational readiness of the cruiser led three times to the cancellation of the departure at short notice, which was then finally canceled.

Meanwhile, the Royal Navy was embroiled in another war due to the Boxer Rebellion in China . On June 17, 1900, the Fame on the China Station and the Palmer boat Whiting occupied four Chinese Schichau destroyers during the attack on the Taku forts , which were later distributed among the intervention forces, so that it was temporarily in the British, French , Russian and German navy gave a destroyer named Taku . The former Hai Lung became HMS  Taku . For their work in front of Taku, the Fame was awarded the Battle Honor "China 1900". The fame later became the tender of the liner HMS  Triumph and remained at China Station during the First World War . In reserve from 1919 on, it was sold for demolition on August 31, 1921 in Hong Kong .

War missions

The desperates and anglers came to the Portsmouth Local Defense Flotilla after their return from the Mediterranean. Both boats were assigned to the Portsmouth Artillery School (HMS  Excellent ) in August 1914 and remained there for the duration of the war.

The Nore Local Flotilla in Sheerness had three D-boats since 1914 with the Cynthia , Cygnet and Coquette , which were used by the HMS Actaeon torpedo  school. The first two boats remained in this service until the end of the war. The HMS  Coquette , however, was the only war loss of the D-class when she ran into a mine of the German submarine UC 10 near Harwich on March 7, 1916 and sank about 10 nautical miles east of Clacton-on-Sea and 22 men drowned.

Since July 1914, the Stag and the Mallard belonged to the 8th destroyer flotilla in Sheerness. In August 1914, the flotilla moved with its tender HMS  Tyne to the Tyne estuary and took over the escort service with anti-submarine defense and mine search there. On September 25, 1914, the Stag was attacked on a control voyage at the Isle of May at the mouth of the Firth of Forth by an unknown submarine, whose two torpedoes missed the destroyer.

In November 1917, the two old D-class destroyers were then relocated to the Irish Sea Hunting Flotilla, where they were next to Earnest , Griffon , Seal , Lively , Sprightly and Orwell of the B-class, Kestrel and Avon of the C-class and the Zephyr of the A-Class remained in service against submarines and smugglers until the end of the war.

Final fate

All boats were decommissioned in 1919 and then scrapped in the following two years.

The boats

Surname Construction no. Launch in service commitment off-duty
HMS  Desperate 305 02/15/1896 02.1897 Portsmouth Local Flotilla 07/20/1920 for demolition
HMS Fame 306 04/15/1896 06.1897 14-18 China Station August 31, 1921 for demolition in Hong Kong
HMS foam 307 October 8, 1896 07.1897 May 26th, 1914 for demolition
HMS Mallard 308 11/19/1896 10.1897 8th DF (Tyne Patrol), Irish Sea Hunting Flo. 02/10/1920 for demolition
HMS angler 313 2.02.1897 07.1898 Portsmouth Local Flotilla May 20th, 1920 for demolition
HMS Ariel 314 5.03.1897 10.1898 19.07.1907 crashed off Malta
HMS Coquette 319 11/25/1897 01.1899 14-16 Nore Local Flotilla 03/17/1916 sunk after being hit by a mine
HMS Cynet 320 September 3, 1898 02.1900 14-18 Nore Local Flotilla 04/29/1920 for demolition
HMS Cynthia 321 January 8, 1898 06.1899 14-18 Nore Local Flotilla 04/29/1920 for demolition
HMS stag 334 11/18/1899 09.1900 8th DF (Tyne Patrol), Irish Sea Hunting Flo. March 17, 1921 for demolition

literature

Web links

Commons : D-Class Destroyer (1912)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Desperate, 1896 on Naval Database
  2. ↑ a b c d HMS Fame at the Naval Database website
  3. ^ HMS Foam at the Naval Database
  4. ^ HMS Ariel at the Naval Database
  5. ↑ a b "Arrowsmith" List - Part 1 Destroyer Prototypes through "River" Class
  6. ^ Lyon, p. 45.
  7. ↑ a b c HMS Cygnet at the Naval Database
  8. ↑ a b HMS Angler at the Naval Database
  9. ↑ a b HMS Cynthia at the Naval Database
  10. ^ HMS Coquette at the Naval Database
  11. ↑ Loss data from U-Boat.net ( Memento of the original from June 24, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / uboat.net
  12. ^ HMS Stag at the Naval Database
  13. ^ HMS Mallard at the Naval Database
  14. ↑ World War 1 at Sea - Royal Navy Vessels Lost and Damaged
  15. ↑ Royal Navy Destroyer Flotillas, November 1918

Remarks

  1. ↑ She and her three sister boats were confiscated by the British in Taku in 1900. They were distributed among the international intervention forces and were initially all named Taku :
    • SMS Taku (ex Hai Jing , BauNr. 608), 1902 to 1913 in East Asia in the service of the Imperial Navy;
    • Takou (ex Hai Nju , BauNr. 609), 1901 to 1911 in Indochina in the service of the French Navy;
    • Leitenant Burakov (ex "Таку" Hai Hola , BauNr. 610), fastest Russian torpedo boat sunk in 1901 to 1904 in the Far East in the service of the Russian Navy, off Port Arthur by Japanese forces and
    • HMS Taku (ex Hai Lung , BauNr. 611), October 26, 1916 sold for scrapping.