HMAS Hobart (D63)
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| period of service | |
| Builder: | Devonport Naval Dockyard at Plymouth |
| Keel laying: | August 15, 1934 |
| Launch: | October 9, 1934 |
| Commissioning: | January 13, 1936 |
| Fate: | Decommissioned on December 20, 1947, scrapped in 1962 |
| Technical specifications | |
| Ship type : | Light cruiser |
| Displacement : | 6830 ts standard |
| Length: | 169 m |
| Width: | 17 m |
| Draft : | 5.8 m |
| Drive : | 4 steam boilers 4 Parsons steam turbines 72,000 WPS on 4 screws |
| Speed: | 32.5 kn |
| Range: | 7400 nautical miles at 13 knots 1920 nautical miles at 30.5 knots |
| Crew: | 570 |
| Armament: | 8 × 6 inch guns (4 × 2) 4 (after conversion 8) × 4 inch (4 × 1, after conversion 4 × 2) 8 × 21 inch torpedo tubes (2 × 4) |
| Board aircraft: | 1 × Supermarine Walrus |
The HMAS Hobart (D63) was a city after Hobart named light cruiser of the Royal Australian Navy during the Second World War . She was one of three modified Leander- class cruisers that were built for the Royal Navy and handed over to the Australian Navy in the late 1930s.
history
construction
The cruiser was laid down in Devonport on August 15, 1934 , and was launched on October 9, 1934. On January 13, 1936, it was commissioned by the Royal Navy as HMS Apollo . It was one of three modified Leander- class cruisers in which, in contrast to the previous units, the engine and boiler rooms were again arranged in the alternating order customary for warships, which was externally recognizable by the two funnels (one per boiler room) . In the first ships of the class, the boiler rooms were side by side under a single large chimney, followed by the two adjacent engine rooms. The alternating arrangement of the rooms ensured that a single hit at the interface between two departments or in the chimney could not switch off the entire drive in one fell swoop due to the loss of all boiler or machine rooms.
1936-1941
The Apollo was stationed in the North Atlantic and the Caribbean from October 1936 to October 1938 before being sold to the Royal Australian Navy in 1938. Australia paid part of the purchase price by transferring the aircraft mother ship HMAS Albatross to the Royal Navy. The cruiser was to be handed over to Australia on October 6, 1938 in Devonport, but due to the mobilization of the British fleet during the Sudeten crisis , the ship was put into service as HMAS Hobart on September 28 . The cruiser arrived in Australia at the end of 1938.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, the cruiser was used for escort duties for British convoys in the Indian Ocean . After entry into the war of Italy , the bombed Walrus - board aircraft of Hobart on 19 June 1940, the Italian radio station on Center Peak Iceland in the Red Sea . On August 1, the ship escorted reinforcements to Berbera in British Somaliland . Due to the numerical superiority of the attacking Italian forces from Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia , however, the evacuation of British Somaliland had to be ordered on August 15. The Hobart served as operational headquarters during the evacuation, the crew set up an additional makeshift pier, and their motor boats served as ferries to bring troops to the transports. The port was often attacked by Italian aircraft, but the Hobart was not damaged. The aircraft on board was used again as a bomber, this time against the Italian headquarters in Saylac . In addition, a 3-pdr gun from the cruiser was brought ashore to be used by the army as an anti-tank gun . Three volunteers from the crew operated the gun and fell into Italian captivity during a battle of retreat , from which they were freed in April 1941 during the British conquest of Massaua . On April 19, 1940, the cruiser was the last ship to leave the port of Berbera and destroyed the last intact port facilities with gunfire.
The cruiser remained in service in the Red Sea until October 1940. a. he escorted the convoy WS 2 . He then returned to Australia after an overhaul in Colombo , where he carried out escort duties until mid-1941. In August 1941 he joined the British Mediterranean Fleet, replacing his sister ship HMAS Perth with the 7th Cruiser Squadron. In the following months she was in action in the eastern Mediterranean, she supported both the occupation of Syria by British and Free French troops and the fighting in North Africa . After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia , the Hobart, like all Australian naval units, was relocated to Southeast Asia in order to stop the Japanese marching on Australia.
1942-1945
From January 1942 the cruiser was used as part of the ABDA fleet in the area of Malaysia , Sumatra and Java , where the combined forces of the Australians, British, Dutch and Americans tried to stop the Japanese advance. The Hobart escorted several convoys to Singapore . During this time, the ship was repeatedly involved in the most severe air raids, which it survived without major damage. On February 25, the ABDACOM was disbanded by its Commander-in-Chief, British Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell , as he had to realize that there were not enough forces available to defend the area. Nevertheless, the ABDA fleet under the Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman decided to make one last attempt to prevent the Japanese invasion of Java . All larger ships still available in the area were combined in a task force and were to attack the Japanese invasion fleet, including the Hobart and her sister ship Perth . However, when the Hobart took over fuel from a tanker in Tandjong Priok on February 25, the port was attacked by Japanese bombers. Around 60 bombs fell in the immediate vicinity of the cruiser. There were no direct hits, but there was considerable damage from bomb fragments to both the Hobart and the tanker, which is why the fuel takeover had to be canceled. As a result, the Hobart could no longer join the main combat unit and missed the catastrophic battle in the Java Sea for the ABDA forces .
Together with the late arriving cruisers HMS Danae and HMS Dragon and the destroyers HMS Scout , HMS Tenedos and Hr. Ms. Evertsen was attempted on the night of February 28th to advance the Japanese invasion fleet in eastern Java. However, the ships encountered superior Japanese forces, only a misidentification of a Japanese scout who reported the three light cruisers as a battleship and two heavy cruisers prevented the Japanese from pursuing the formation. The ships fled south through the Sunda Strait without being bothered by Japanese ships. The Mr. Ms. Evertsen returned to Batavia after being separated from the other ships by a storm. A day later she was sunk in the battle of the Sunda Strait, along with the Perth and the American heavy cruiser USS Houston .
_at_Espiritu_Santo_on_23_July_1943.jpg)
The Hobart's next mission was in the Battle of the Coral Sea . There they formed together with the heavy cruisers HMAS Australia and USS Chicago and the destroyers USS Perkins , USS Walke and USS Farragut , the Task Force 44 under the command of Rear Admiral John Crace . This association was supposed to intercept Japanese transporters and their escort ships on the way to Port Moresby . When the ships reached a position 180 km from the southern tip of New Guinea, they were attacked by 27 Japanese aircraft. Just minutes after the end of the Japanese attack, American B-17 bombers launched from Australian air bases mistakenly bombed the formation. However, there was hardly any damage worth mentioning in either of the attacks.
On August 7, 1942, the cruiser was part of the Allied forces occupying Guadalcanal , which was the prelude to months of fighting over the island . On the night of August 8th to 9th, the Hobart patrolled the eastern approach to Ironbottom Sound together with the USS San Juan and two destroyers , thereby avoiding the destruction of the western cover groups in the battle off Savo Island . After an overhaul in Sydney in October, she worked in the Coral Sea as part of Task Force 74 in the following months. On July 20, 1943, the Hobart was hit by the torpedo of a Japanese submarine at the stern and badly damaged. The hit caused severe water ingress, the force of the explosion was so strong that the deck with the 60 ton gun turret Y was bent upwards. In addition, the cruiser lost both port screws. Thirteen crew members and an American naval officer on board were killed. The cruiser made it to Espiritu Santo , from where the destroyers HMAS Arunta and HMAS Warramunga escorted it to Sydney after making makeshift repairs. The repairs to the damage in the Cockatoo Island Dockyards lasted almost two years until early March 1945. Then the cruiser took part in the landing on the Visayas .
1945-1960
On April 24, 1945, the Hobart supported the landings at Tarakan and participated in the landings at Wewak in New Guinea in May , followed by the landings in Brunei on Borneo in June and the retaking of Balikpapan in July. On August 31, 1945, the ship arrived in Tokyo Bay on the occasion of the Japanese surrender . In the post-war period she was used several times as part of the Allied occupation forces in Japan before she was decommissioned in 1947 and assigned to the reserve fleet. Extensive modifications were made between 1950 and 1953 to turn the Hobart into a training ship, but the ship was not put back into service and was finally scrapped in Japan in 1962.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to other information 7105 ts, cf. http://navalwarfare.blogspot.de/2007/09/hms-apollohmas-hobart.html