Gaulois (1896)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
flag
The Gaulois
The Gaulois
Overview
Type Ship of the line
Shipyard

Arsenal , Brest

Keel laying 1893
Launch October 6, 1896
Namesake Gaul
Commissioning December 1899
Whereabouts Sunk on December 27, 1916
Technical specifications
displacement

11,300 t

length

117.7 m over everything

width

 20.3 m

Draft

  8.4 m

crew

725 men

drive

20 Belleville boilers ,
3 triple expansion
machines 11.9 MW (16,200 hp ), 3 screws

speed

18 kn

Armament

• 4 × 305 mm cannon
• 10 × 138 mm cannon
• 8 × 100 mm cannon
• 20 × 47 mm cannon
• 4 × 450 mm torpedo tube

Armor

Harvey system

Armored deck

40 to 90 mm

Belt armor

250 to 400 mm

artillery

up to 400 mm

The ship of the line Gaulois of the French Navy , which was launched in October 1896, formed the Charlemagne class with its sister ships Charlemagne and St. Louis , which entered service in 1899 and 1900. From 1900 to 1913 the Gaulois was part of the Mediterranean squadron.

At the beginning of the First World War , Gaulois , who was last entrusted with training tasks, was used to secure the troop transports between Algeria and France. In November 1914 she was sent to the Dardanelles to support the British in the blockade in the French squadron of Rear Admiral Guépratte . She was involved in the first shelling of the Turkish positions on February 19, 1915 as part of the Battle of Gallipoli , and on March 18, 1915, she took part in an attempt to force the passage through the straits. The Gaulois suffered such severe damage that it was difficult to walk back out of the Dardanelles and had to be put aground in front of the strait near small islands in order not to become a total loss. After the repair, it did various tasks in the eastern Mediterranean. On a trip to Saloniki , the Gaulois was torpedoed by UB 47 on December 27, 1916 and sank. The crew was almost completely rescued by the escort ships, only four crew members died.

Building history

The Gaulois displaced 11,300 t, was 117.5 m long, 20.3 m wide and had a draft of 8.4 m. Her three steam engines developed 14,500 PSi and gave her a top speed of 18 knots.

Rift of the Charlemagne- class from Brassey's 1896

With her sister ships, she was one of the first French ships of the line to have the main armament in double towers. The bow and stern twin turrets contained 305 mm L / 40 cannons of the 1893/96 model with a magazine of 90 shells per turret.

The middle artillery consisted of ten 138 mm cannons. Eight of them were erected on both sides of the superstructure in shatterproof casemates and two individual towers one deck higher on both sides of the rear chimney. There were also eight 100 mm L / 45 cannons of the 1893 model with protective shields.

Twenty 47 mm L / 50 rapid-fire guns of the Hotchkiss 1885 type for torpedo boat defense were distributed on the superstructures and combat marshes. When it was commissioned, the Gaulois carried four 450 mm torpedo tubes.

The Gaulois was completely armored with Harvey steel in the waterline . As with all French battleships, the belt armor was narrow and stretched the entire length of the ship. Between the upper edge of the belt armor and the lower edge of the battery deck, the ship's side was curved inwards and had no armor protection.

Mission history

The Gaulois began her trials on January 15, 1898, but was not added to the fleet until December 1899.

Pre-war missions

From January 18 to 24, 1900, the Gaulois moved together with her sister ship the Charlemagne from Brest via Marseille to Toulon to the Mediterranean squadron. From March 1912 to November 1913, she was part of the Cherbourg reserve division. In January 1914 she moved back to Toulon. Repair work there resulted in a boiler explosion with injuries. On June 8, 1914, she was assigned to the school division.

War effort

The Gaulois' first war mission was to secure troop transports from Algeria to France, where they were used together with the liners Suffren , St. Louis and Bouvet . In November the Gaulois replaced the suffrs in front of the Dardanelles .

Defense positions on the Dardanelles, February – March 1915

When the Suffren , who had returned, fired at the Turkish Fort Kum Kale at the entrance to the Dardanelles on the Asian side on February 19, the Gaulois tried to eliminate the coastal artillery , some of which were mobile . Later that day, the British Vengeance attempted an attack on Orhaniye Tepe Fort, a little further south on the Asian side , but came under heavy fire early on. Suffren and Gaulois intervened there and the Vengeance was able to withdraw. On February 25, the attack on the same targets was repeated more successfully, as this time the targets were within 3000 m. On March 2 and 11, the French attacked targets on Gallipoli from the Gulf of Saros to the north of the peninsula and on March 7 they supported another British attack on the aforementioned forts, fighting the positions of the coastal artillery.

On March 18, the planned main attack took place, initially with British ships leading the association. As the narrow point of the Dardanelles was approached, the French ships Gaulois , Bouvet , Suffren and Charlemagne took over the lead about eight nautical miles within the Dardanelles in order to shut down the forts that secured them. The Turks shot the attackers from their fixed positions and with mobile batteries from the bank. The Gaulois was the left ship of the attack line and received an early hit in the bow below the waterline, which penetrated the tank and caused considerable water ingress. The outer ship on the other side, the French flagship Suffren , was also badly hit. The British Commander-in-Chief de Robeck therefore exchanged the first line of attack again after about an hour's advance and let the French ships retreat. The Bouvet hit a mine and sank within 55 seconds. The badly damaged Gaulois rescued herself laboriously from the Dardanelles and had to be aground ten kilometers northeast of Tenedos near the Karayer Adaları archipelago with the islands of Tavşan, Yılan, Orak and Pırasa , in order not to sink completely.

There it was pumped out and sealed. The damaged liners Gaulois and Suffren were due to return to Toulon via Malta from March 25th . On the 27th, both ships got caught in a severe storm and had to take shelter in the Bay of Navarin . The repair of the Gaulois appears to have actually taken place in Malta.

From June 8, 1915 she was again available for artillery support to the troops that had landed on Gallipoli. The Gaulois was used for various security tasks in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. At the end of July 1916 she went to France for repairs, which were completed by December.

Loss of the Gaulois

On December 27, 1916, on the way from was Corfu to Thessaloniki located Gaulois east in the Aegean Sea 30 miles from Cerigo from the German submarine UB 47 Type UB II under Lieutenant Wolfgang Steinbauer of the submarine flotilla Pola torpedoed. The fishing steamer Rochebonne (235 ts, 1913) securing the Gaulois - along with two other boats - went alongside the slowly sinking liner and took over almost the entire crew. The Gaulois dropped within 25 minutes at the position 36 ° 30 '  N , 23 ° 45'  O coordinates: 36 ° 30 '0 "  N , 23 ° 45' 0 '  O . Only four of the 631 Gaulois crew members lost their lives

Under Lieutenant Steinbauer, UB 47 had already sunk the Franconia , a passenger ship of the British shipping company Cunard Line , in the Mediterranean 195 miles east of Malta on October 4, 1916 . At 18,150 GRT, she was the eighth largest ship that was sunk by a German submarine during World War I. Steinbauer (1888-1978), who sank 49 ships with a total volume of 170,432 GRT in the Mediterranean with the submarines UB 47 and SM UB 48 of the type UB III under his command, was awarded the order Pour le Mérite in 1918.

literature

  • Philippe Caresse: The Battleship Gaulois. In Warship 2012. Conway, London, ISBN 978-1-84486-156-9 , pp. 113-135.
  • Roger Chesneau, Eugène M. Koleśnik, NJM Campbell: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
  • Bodo Herzog: 60 years of German submarines 1906–1966. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1968.
  • John Evelyn Moore: Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. Military Press, New York 1990.

Web links

Commons : Charlemagne- class ships of the line  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 305 mm / 40 (12 ") Model 1893/1896
  2. ↑ 138.6 mm / 45 (5.46 ") Models 1884, 1888, 1891 and 1893
  3. ↑ 100 mm / 45 (3.9 ") Model 1893
  4. ↑ Hotchkiss 3-pdr (1.4 kg) -1.85 "/ 40 (47 mm) QF Marks I and II
  5. ↑ Caresse, p. 20.
  6. ↑ Caresse, p. 21f.
  7. ↑ Caresse, p. 22
  8. ^ French Navy In World War I. (accessed June 1, 2011)
  9. ^ Ships hit during WWI: Gaulois (accessed June 2, 2011)
  10. ↑ Big French cruiser torpedoed and sunk . In: The Washington Post , December 31, 1916, p. 1.  According to this article, the Gaulois is said to have been reclassified as a cruiser at the beginning of the war.
  11. ↑ Herzog, p. 144.