Demirhisar class
 The Sultan Hisar
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The Demirhisar-class was a destroyer class of the Turkish Navy and an export version of the I-class of the Royal Navy . The four destroyers of the class were ordered by Turkey in Great Britain in 1938. Due to the Second World War , only two ships were delivered to the customer, while the other two ships were taken over by the Royal Navy (RN).
Only one of the RN ships survived the war and was given a general overhaul to Turkey in 1946, where the three ships remained in service until 1960.
History of the class
The construction contracts for the four destroyers went to the shipyards William Denny & Brothers in Dumbarton and Vickers in Barrow . The keel laying of the ships was carried out at both shipyards at the same time for the ships to be built by them. In March 1939, Denny began his orders under construction numbers 1342 and 1343, which were to be named Sultanhisar and Demirhisar . At Vickers the keel laying of the construction numbers 747 and 748 took place on May 24, 1939, which should receive the names Muavenet and Gayret .
The ships resumed names of Ottoman Navy ships from WWI. A small torpedo boat of 97 ts carried the name Sultanhisar from 1907 to 1935, which landed the Australian submarine HMAS AE 2 in the Sea of Marmara in 1915 and forced it to sink itself . The lead ship of this class of torpedo boats built in France was called Demirhisar and was lost on April 16, 1915 when it ran aground near Chios.
The names of the other two destroyers were reminiscent of Schichau destroyers of 765 tons delivered in 1910. The Muavenet-i Milliye sank the British liner HMS Goliath on the Dardanelles in May 1915 . The sister boat Gayret-i Vataniye was lost on October 28, 1916 off the Bulgarian coast due to stranding.
The ships were to be built according to the plans of the British I-class. In contrast to the British ships completed in 1937/38, however, they should not receive the five-fold torpedo sets introduced with them, but the quadruple torpedo sets that were tried and tested in the pre-series. Also, the British Admiralty did not release the fire control system of British ships for the export buildings, so that the Turkish ships should receive a simplified system.
The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 put the further construction and delivery of the new buildings into question. When the First World War broke out , the British government immediately had all new buildings confiscated for neutral states. This had also hit Turkey / the Ottoman Empire heavily (confiscation of the almost finished battleships Reshadije and Sultan Osman I ) and the admission of the German Mediterranean Division and the entry of the Ottomans into the World War on the part of the Central Powers strongly supported by propaganda. The British were keen not to let the situation arise in the same way. The Turks were given the prospect of delivery of the ships in 1941. Finally, it was agreed that the two ships under construction at Denny would be delivered to Turkey despite the difficult situation in Great Britain and that the Royal Navy could take over the two Vickers structures in return for compensation.
Commissioning of the "British" ships
The Royal Navy took over the two ships left to her in the first quarter of 1942. The Inconstant , planned as Muavenet , was the first ship to enter active service on January 24, 1942. After an initial deployment in the Arctic Ocean, missions followed off Madagascar, in the Mediterranean, off Sicily, during the occupation of the Azores, again in the Arctic Ocean and off Normandy. At the end of the war in Europe she was stationed in Plymouth for anti-submarine defense.
The sister ship Ithuriel planned as Gayret followed on March 3, 1943 in the service of the Royal Navy and should also be used in the Eastern Fleet . However, they remained in Gibraltar in the Force H . On November 27, 1942, the destroyer suffered severe damage in the port of Bone (now Annaba) from close hits, which probably exploded under the ship. In order to use the required port, the Ithuriel was towed out and put on the beach for the time being. Due to a lack of material, the provisional repair was delayed to enable towing to Algiers until the end of February 1943, where a more thorough repair was not possible. During a stay in Gibraltar from August 1943 to July 1944, the ship arrived in tow on August 8, 1944 in Plymouth, where it was declared beyond repair and immediately sold for demolition.
On September 13, 1945 a major overhaul of the remaining Inconstant began and at the beginning of October the Admiralty agreed to transfer it to Turkey. On January 27, 1946, the overhaul of the ship was completed, which then sailed under the British flag into the Mediterranean and was handed over to the Turkish Navy in a ceremony in Istanbul on March 9, 1946 and was given the originally planned name Muavanet .
The ships in Turkish service
The ships Demirhisar and Sultanhisar , built by Denny, sailed under the British flag with the IDs H80 and H87 through the Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope, through the Indian Ocean and through the Suez Canal to Turkey and entered service with the Turkish Navy in 1942 . During the march, the destroyers joined British units, so the Demirhisar marched in late January / early February from Freetown to Cape Town in convoy WS 15 .
In addition to the Muavanet , which was still delivered after serving in the Royal Navy in March 1946 , Turkey received the somewhat larger destroyer Oribi from the Royal Navy's war building program, which was largely equally armed. The Oribi received the fourth originally planned name, Gayret .
The service of the ships went without any particularities. A fundamental modernization of the ships did not take place. Only the anti-aircraft armament for close range was changed in the early 1950s by the installation of six 40 mm L / 56 Bofors guns with the delivery of two Oerlikons.
The ships
| Surname | Shipyard | Launch | in service | Final fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demirhisar | Denny construction no. 1343 |
01/28/1941 | 03.1942 | 1960 for demolition |
| Sultanhisar | Denny construction no. 1342 |
December 17, 1940 | 03.1942 | 1960 for demolition |
|
HMS Inconstant Muavenet |
Vickers construction no. 747 |
December 15, 1940 | 01/24/1942 RN 03/09/1946 Tk |
1960 for demolition |
|
HMS Ithuriel Gayret |
Vickers construction no. 748 |
December 15, 1940 | 03/07/1942 RN | November 27, 1942 bomb damage, demolished in 1944 |
|
HMS Oribi Gayret |
Fairfields construction no. 680 |
01/14/1941 | 07/05/1941 RN 06/18/1946 Tk |
August 1946 to Turkey: Gayret , 1965 for demolition |
Note: The data on the construction process are different for the four ships in many sources.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.naval-history.net/xDKWW2-4201-41JAN01.htm Convoy WS.15 Monday, January 12th
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981 , Ian Allen (1983), ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- Antony Preston: Destroyers , Hamlyn, ISBN 0-60032955-0 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching, 1968 ISBN 3-88199-0097 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War 2 , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis (1988), ISBN 0-87021-326-1 .