HMAS Australia (1911)
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|
|---|---|
 HMAS Australia |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Battle cruiser |
| Shipyard |
John Brown Shipbuilding & Engineering Ltd. |
| Keel laying | June 26, 1910 |
| Launch | October 25, 1911 |
| delivery | June 21, 1913 |
| period of service |
1913-1921 |
| Decommissioning | December 12, 1921 |
| Whereabouts | Blown up in Sydney on April 12, 1924 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
19,100 ts , max. 22,800 ts |
| length |
179.8 m |
| width |
24.4 m |
| Draft |
8.2 m |
| crew |
820-1017 men |
| drive |
31 Babcock & Wilcox boilers |
| speed |
25.8 kn |
| Range |
6300 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
from 1915:
|
| Armor | |
| Belt armor |
4–6 in (102–152 mm) |
| Towers |
7 in (178 mm) |
| Armored deck |
1–2 in (25–51 mm) |
| Command tower |
10 in (254 mm) |
| Barbeds |
7 in (178 mm) |
| Sister ships | |
HMAS Australia was a battlecruiser of the Indefatigable class of the Royal Australian Navy during the First World War . It was built in 1910 at the John Brown Shipbuilding & Engineering Ltd. Commissioned in Scotland and, when completed in 1913, was both the flagship and the centerpiece of the newly formed Australian Navy.
Pre-war period
Together with the newly built cruiser HMAS Sydney , the Australia left Portsmouth on July 21, 1913 and ran after a stopover in Cape Town on the morning of October 4, 1913 accompanied by the entire Australian fleet (in addition to the Sydney the cruiser HMAS Melbourne and the destroyer HMAS Parramatta , HMAS Warrego and HMAS Yarra ) into Sydney Harbor . From now on, the Australian Navy had with the Australia a ship that was stronger than all other warships of European powers in the region. In order to show the new Navy as many Australians as possible, the battle cruiser called at numerous Australian ports in the following year and played the leading role in the film Sea Dogs of Australia , which was released in August 1914.
First World War
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Australia operated under the British Vice Admiral Patey in the Pacific . There it served as a counterweight against possible attacks by the German East Asia Squadron . Together with the rest of the Australian fleet, she took part in the operations to occupy the German colonies in the Central and South Pacific. In doing so, the German steamer Sumatra succeeded.
On November 22, 1914, Patey formed a new squadron to the German cruiser squadron in the Mexican Magdalena Bay , Baja California Sur , with the Australia and the cruiser Newcastle and the Japanese ship of the line Hizen (the former Russian Retwisan ), as well as the armored cruisers Izumo and Asama block the route north into Canadian waters and protect the Panama Canal . Rear Admiral Moriyama Keizaburo became the commander of the Japanese American Union .
From December 4th to 6th, the association searched the Galápagos Islands . This was to be followed by a review of the South American coastal area from the Pearl Islands off Panama to the Gulf of Guayaquil . The German squadron, however, was on its way to the Atlantic around Cape Horn and was destroyed on December 8 at the Falkland Islands . Patey's squadron learned this on December 10th in the Gulf of Panama . On the 11th the British and Japanese ships separated off the coast of Ecuador . Since the Australia was not allowed to pass the new Panama Canal, Patey went through the Strait of Magellan to his new station in the West Indies. He should continue to search for the remaining German trade disturbers (the cruisers Dresden and Karlsruhe , whose sinking was unknown to the Allies, as well as the auxiliary cruisers Crown Prince Wilhelm and Prince Eitel Friedrich ).
Because after the destruction of the East Asia Squadron in the Falkland Islands, the Central Powers no longer had larger warships in the Pacific or Atlantic, which necessitated the presence of a battle cruiser, which laid Australia early 1915 to Rosyth for Grand Fleet . There she became the flagship of the 2nd battle cruiser squadron, which consisted of the Australia and her two sister ships New Zealand and Indefatigable . On the way to Europe, on January 6, 1915, she sank the German freighter Eleonore Woermann , 4624 GRT, off the Argentine coast , which was to serve as a supply ship for the German East Asia Squadron and was now on its way to Dresden , which was left alone . This was the last enemy contact of the battle cruiser, despite participation in numerous operations, there were never any encounters with German ships.
On April 22, 1916, she collided with the New Zealand in thick fog and had to go to the shipyard to repair the damage. The repairs were not completed until June 9, 1916, causing Australia to miss the Battle of the Skagerrak . On December 12, 1917, another collision, this time with the battle cruiser Repulse, led to another three-week stay in the shipyard. At the beginning of 1918 volunteers for a special assignment were sought among the crew of the ship, several crew members reported, 11 of whom finally took part in the attack on Zeebrugge and Ostend in February 1918 . In the last months of the war, experiments with aircraft were carried out on the ship, so in March 1918 a Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter was successfully launched from a platform built on a gun turret .
After the end of the war, Australia was part of the fleet that escorted the German deep-sea fleet to Scapa Flow for internment . During the internment, every German ship was assigned an Allied ship to guard, the Australia was the guard ship for the battle cruiser Hindenburg until April 1919 .
post war period
The battle cruiser left Europe on April 23, 1919 and returned to Australia, where it entered Fremantle on May 28 . An incident occurred there when the ship was supposed to leave port after four days. More than 80 crew members gathered in the aft and asked the commanding officer, Captain C. Cumberlege, to extend their stay so that they could spend more time with their families and friends on site. After the captain told them that this was impossible, the sailors dispersed again, but when the ship was about to leave the stokers were not at their posts. The Australia therefore only left Fremantle one hour late. 32 sailors were sentenced to 90 days' arrest, five more were sentenced by a court martial for mutiny to prison terms of between one and two years. However, after public outcry, all five were released in December of the same year.
For the next two years, the Australia took over the duties of the flagship of the Australian fleet. The maintenance of the battle cruiser, which was already out of date despite its age of less than nine years, devoured a large part of the naval budget. Therefore, the ship was first declared a training ship and stationed with a hull crew in the Flinders Naval Depot .
On December 12, 1921, however, it was finally decommissioned and finally sunk by explosive charges on April 12, 1924, 24 nautical miles from Sydney. This was officially justified with the Washington Naval Agreement, which allowed the Royal Navy (in the sense of the treaty the ships of the Royal Australian Navy were included) only 15 capital ships, which is why the older ships like the Australia had to be scrapped. However, it would probably have been possible to exclude the Australia from it, as it was too weak to be considered a real capital ship. Several parties to the contract obtained such an exception for some older ships. Presumably the Australian government failed to do this because the funds that the maintenance of the battle cruiser caused were needed more urgently in other places and the scrapping of the ship could be achieved without great resistance.
literature
- Siegfried Breyer: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905–1970 . JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-88199-474-2 .
- Arthur W. Jose: The Royal Australian Navy 1914-1918 The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 , 9th Edition, Sydney 1941
Web links
- Australia I , side of the Australian Navy (English)
- Discussion of scrapping of Australia , the Australian Marine page (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ Commander of the Australian fleet ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in london gazette
- ^ Jose, p. 125.
- ^ Jose, p. 126.
