G-Class (Royal Navy)

This article covers the 1933 class of Royal Navy destroyers, for the 1908 class of Royal Navy destroyers see Beagle class .

G-Class from 1933
Technical specifications
Ship type :	destroyer
Displacement :	1,350 ts HMS Grenville : 1,465 ts
Length:	323 ft (98.5 m) HMS Grenville : 330 ft
Width:	33 ft (10.05 m) HMS Grenville : 34 ft 6 in
Draft :	12 ft 5 in (3.78 m) HMS Grenville : 12 ft 9 in
Drive :	3 Admirality three-drum water tube boilers 2 steam turbines with a total of 34,000 HP HMS Grenville : 38,000 HP
Speed:	36 kn
Range:	5,530 nautical miles at 15 kn
Crew:	145 men HMS Grenville : 175 men
Armament: (as a new building)	4 × 4.7-in ship guns HMS Grenville : 5 × 4.7 in 8 × 0.5-inch anti-aircraft machine guns, 2 × quadruple HMS Glowworm, 2 × 5-bay 21-in tubes, 20 depth charges

The G-Class was a class of eight destroyers built for the British Royal Navy as part of the 1933 naval program. A ninth ship, HMS Grenville , had a slightly modified design to serve as a flotilla commander . The G-Class destroyers were used in a variety of combat missions during World War II ; seven of the nine ships were lost during the war, one was given to the Royal Canadian Navy and another to the Polish Navy .

draft

The design for the G-Class was essentially based on the design for the previous F-Class . The minor changes included a. the abandonment of marching turbines. Proposals to install more modern boilers instead of the previous low-pressure boilers were rejected by the Admiralty .

HMS Grenville was slightly larger than the other ships to accommodate the flotilla commander , staff, and other crew members.

As long as they were not lost prematurely, the equipment and armament of the destroyers were modified considerably during the course of the Second World War . This includes, for example, the equipment with radar and the Huff-Duff radio direction finding system , with additional or modified guns, above all anti-aircraft guns and rapid-fire weapons, as well as new depth charges.

War effort

During the Second World War, the G-Class ships were mainly used as escorts for convoys and warships and when hunting submarines . Seven of the nine ships were lost in these operations, all of them through combat operations or mines. In return, the G-class destroyers were involved in the sinking of four German and three Italian submarines, and they also damaged a German heavy cruiser and a French large destroyer .

The two surviving ships were technically obsolete after the end of the war and had been used up by years of military service and were hardly usable.

G-Class ships

• HMS Gallant -damagedby German bombers during Operation Dynamo , involved in the sinking of the Italian submarine Lafole in October 1940. Retired after mines and bombs in January 1941 before and in Malta, later sunk as a block ship.
• HMS Garland - handed over to Poland in 1940. Involvedin the sinking of U 407 inSeptember 1944. Returned after the end of the war and given back to the Netherlands, scrapped in 1964.
• HMS Grafton -Sunkby U 62 on May 29, 1940 during Operation Dynamo off Dunkirk .
• HMS Greyhound -damagedby German coastal guns duringOperation Dynamo, took part in the attempted landing near Dakar in September 1940 ( Operation Menace ) and damaged the large destroyer L'Audacieux . Then sank the Italian submarines Neghelli and Anfritite in January and March 1941and took part in the sea ​​battle at Cape Matapan , before the ship itself on May 22, 1941 in the course of the evacuation of the Allied troops from the island of Crete by German bombers Kythera Canal was sunk.
• HMS Gipsy - Sunk near Harwich on November 21, 1939 after being hit by mines .
• HMS Glowworm - Sunk on April 8, 1940 in a battle with German units in the Norway operation after the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper had been damaged by a ram blow.
• HMS Grenade - Sunk by bomb hits on May 29, 1940 during Operation Dynamo off Dunkirk.
• HMS Griffin - Was involved in the sinking of Lafole in October 1940, as well as in the sea battle at Cape Matapan in March 1941; Released to the Royal Canadian Navy in March 1943 and renamed HMCS Ottawa II . Was involved in the sinking of U 678 , U 621 and U 984 in the English Channel and Biscay in July and August 1944, broken up in1946.

Flotilla Leader:

• HMS Grenville -Sunkon January 19, 1940 after being hit byminesin the Thames estuary.

literature

• Maurice Cocker, Ian Allan: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893–1981. ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
• Leo Marriott, Ian Allan: Royal Navy Destroyers since 1945. ISBN 0-7110-1817-0 .
• HT Lenton: British and Empire Warships of the Second World War , Greenhill Books, ISBN 1-85367-277-7 .
• Robert Gardiner (Ed.): Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1922-1946. Naval Institute Press, ISBN 0-87021-913-8 .
• MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War II, An International Encyclopedia. Arms and Armor Press, 1988, ISBN 1-85409-521-8 .

Web links

Commons : G and H Class  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• G-Class on uboat.net (English)