HMAS Sydney (1912)
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The first HMAS Sydney was a light cruiser for the Australian Navy .
She belonged to the six-unit Chatham class , the third group of the Town class . Three of the ships, Chatham , Dublin and Southampton , went to the British Navy . The other three, Brisbane , Melbourne and Sydney itself, were handed over to the Australian Navy.
history
The Sydney was commissioned as the second Australian Town-class cruiser on June 26, 1913 in Portsmouth and began the voyage to Australia there on July 25. On September 19, 1913, she arrived in Albany , Western Australia.
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After a time in various ports on the Australian east coast, she moved to Singapore in March 1914 to support the submarines AE1 and AE2 , which had been on the march to Australia since February, on the last section of the voyage. On May 25, she arrived in Sydney with the first Australian submarines . She remained in Australian waters and was off the Queensland coast in early August .
First war missions
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On August 3, 1914, she met with the Australian destroyers Warrego and Yarra in Townsville and ran north with them on August 4 to join the Pacific Squadron Rear Admiral George Edwin Pateys at Thursday Island . This squadron with the battle cruiser Australia , the Melbourne , the cruiser Encounter and the destroyer Paramatta was supposed to prevent the German East Asia Squadron from entering Australian waters and at the same time deprive the Germans of their bases and resources. The destroyers cleared up the ports of Matupi and Rabaul (German until 1918: Simpsonhafen), but discovered neither larger German merchant ships nor warships. The German South Sea station was currently unoccupied and Maximilian von Spee and his squadron were far to the north of the German colony of German New Guinea . Patey therefore decided not to allow the New Zealand occupation of Samoa until 29/30. August 1914 and left only the Sydney and the destroyers in the north . Off Samoa, the French cruiser Montcalm joined the Pacific Squadron.
After the return of the Pacific Squadron, the Australian occupation of the southern part of the German reserve began on September 7th from Townsville. The two Australian submarines, a supply ship and three coal steamers were also available. The transporter Berrima (11,137 GRT, 1913 ex P&O ) transported the 1,500-man Australian expeditionary force AN & MEF . The Sydney supported the occupation of Rabaul from 9 to 11 September, while Melbourne destroyed the radio station on Nauru on the 9th . On September 14th an Australian warship (Encounter) shot at an enemy for the first time near Toma, near Rabaul, and with AE1 an Australian warship was lost for the first time. There was never a trace of the submarine on patrol near Rabaul and its 35-strong crew. On September 21, 1914, the so-called “total armed power of the protected area” - five officers, 35 German and 110 Melanesian armed men - was handed over to the Australian commander-in-chief. The other villages on Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land and in the Bismarck Archipelago were occupied by Australian forces one after the other without a fight. Morobe was the last German government station to be occupied on January 11, 1915 .
On September 26th, the Sydney destroyed the German radio station on Angaur / Palau Islands . The German auxiliary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich had emptied the coal depot located there eleven days earlier and at the same time ran on the opposite course to New Guinea. The German auxiliary cruiser Cormoran had only narrowly escaped discovery off New Guinea. In October, Patey sent the two town cruisers back to Australia as they were supposed to accompany the first large troop transport to Europe, which the German cruisers Emden and Königsberg , which are active in the Indian Ocean, could endanger.
This first Anzac convoy with 38 transporters, which had about 30,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers and 10,000 horses on board, left Albany on November 1, 1914 with the first destination Aden . However, the troops should not be brought to Europe, but initially only to Egypt, where they wanted to complete the training. Few of these first Anzac soldiers were ever to be deployed on the Western Front.
The first deployment of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers took place at the Battle of Gallipoli . The convoy was supposed to be secured by the previous flagship of the British China station, the armored cruiser Minotaur , the Japanese armored cruiser Ibuki , which had crossed the South Seas to New Zealand and had already led the 10 New Zealand transporters to Australia and the two Australian town cruisers. The old cruiser Pioneer was supposed to accompany the convoy as far as the Cocos Islands , but on the first day it broke down completely due to engine damage.
Battle with the Emden
On November 9th, the convoy was near the islands, and the Sydney was the closest warship when the radio station there reported a foreign warship. About 40 minutes after this report she left the convoy and discovered the Emden near the archipelago two hours later . The German small cruiser opened fire early in order to put the superior Australian cruiser out of action at a distance. The Germans hit the Sydney with the second volley and were able to score a total of 15 hits, although the shells only exploded to a small extent. Four people were killed in the battle on the Sydney .
The Sydney was able to carry out their greater firepower and speed, the battle in their favor and the Emden , in the Indian Ocean successfully trade war against the supply lines of the Entente to set had led, in just under two hours out of action. At around 11:00 a.m., the Emden was incapable of fighting after numerous hits and stopped fire. To save his ship from sinking, the commander Karl von Müller decided to put it on the beach of North Keeling Island, one of the Cocos Islands. At 11:20 a.m., the Emden ran aground on a coral reef offshore . The Sydney was now chasing the coal ship Buresk and overtook it after a while. The German prize crew therefore sank the ship. The Sydney took the Germans and returned around 16:00 pm Emden back. Since several signal requests regarding a handover were allegedly not answered and the war flag was still waving in the top, the Sydney continued bombarding the wreck until the war flag was lowered. As a result, 7 men were killed and 13 wounded. Four sailors drowned while trying to swim ashore.
The next day the survivors of the German crew were rescued from the wreck or from North Keeling Island. Then the Sydney ran to the nearby Direction Island with the telecommunications cable station. But the 50 men from the landing train, under the command of Lieutenant Hellmuth von Mücke , had escaped with the old schooner Ayesha the previous evening . After an adventurous odyssey through Arabia and Constantinople , they were able to return to Germany in June 1915.
After this battle, 136 dead crew members were recorded on the Emden . 197 seamen, including 65 wounded and the 16-man prize crew from the Buresk , were taken prisoner. Among them was the commandant Karl von Müller (until September 1918). There were only four dead and twelve wounded on the Sydney . The damage suffered was comparatively minor.
Station service in North and Central America
After the German cruiser was switched off, the Sydney caught up with the convoy again. Since the Königsberg was now blocked in the Rufiji Delta, the Australian cruisers left the no longer threatened convoy in the Indian Ocean and ran to Colombo , where the Sydney arrived on November 15. Melbourne , which entered the day before , had already sailed back towards the Mediterranean to go to the North American station and take part in the search for the Karlsruhe . However, this had already sunk due to an unexplained explosion, without the British knowing this. The Sydney followed the sister ship and reached Malta on December 3rd and then went to Bermuda . The North American and West Indies station extended from Canada through the Caribbean to northern Brazil, had its headquarters in Bermuda and Halifax (Nova Scotia) as its northern base. The cruisers looked for German auxiliary cruisers and guarded the neutral ports where German ships had found refuge. The Sydney was mostly stationed in Kingston (Jamaica) .
In the fall of 1916, the Australian cruisers moved to the Grand Fleet , where they served in the Second Light Cruiser Squadron until the end of the war.
Service in the North Sea
On September 9, 1916, the Sydney left Bermuda and reached Devonport on the 19th , to be overtaken in Greenock . On October 31, she briefly joined the 5th Battle Squadron in Scapa Flow and moved to Rosyth on November 15, 1916 for the Second Light Cruiser Squadron, which also included the sister ships Southampton , Dublin and Melbourne . The squadron was usually used together with the Second Battle Cruiser Squadron, whose flagship was the Australia .
On May 4, 1917, the Sydney , located on the way from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, fought with the German naval airship L 43 . L 43 threw all of its bombs unsuccessfully at the cruiser, which fired all its anti-aircraft ammunition just as unsuccessfully. From August the cruiser was then overhauled in Chatham . It received a new tripod mast and was the first warship to have a rotating launch platform for aircraft. On December 8th, a Sopwith Pup started for the first time from this ramp and on the 17th the first start with a rotation took place. In 1918 the Pup was replaced by a Sopwith Camel . On June 1, 1918, the British cruisers were attacked by German seaplanes while on patrol. Melbourne and Sydney started their camels. The Sydney Camel pursued the Germans and allegedly succeeded in shooting down a machine. Unsure whether she would find her own ship again, she landed next to the destroyer Sharpshooter and the pilot was rescued by the boat. The cruiser Canterbury managed to salvage the machine as well.
On November 21, 1918, the Sydney took part in the surrender and extradition of the German deep sea fleet .
Post-war use
On April 9, 1919, she returned to Australia. Until her final decommissioning, she served in Australian waters and only made a more extensive New Guinea voyage in 1922 and a voyage to New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands in 1927 . From April 13, 1923, the cruiser was in reserve. He returned to service on September 29, 1924 and was the flagship of the Australian Navy until October 1927.
On May 8, 1928, the Sydney was decommissioned.
From January 1929, she was scrapped on Cockatoo Island , on Sydney Harbor. The foremast and bow, however, were preserved and erected in Sydney Harbor as a memorial to the 1914 victory.
The masthead of the Sydney, which is erected at Bradleys Head , has been a national memorial for all Australian ships lost in wars and fallen seamen since June 2000.
Web links
- Description in the Australian Navy (English)
- HMAS Sydney in the Australian War Memorial (English)
- Report on the cruiser Sydney (English)
- Last living Sydney driver
Bristol Group:
HMS Liverpool |
HMS Glasgow |
HMS Gloucester |
HMS Newcastle |
HMS Bristol
Weymouth Group:
HMS Falmouth |
HMS Weymouth |
HMS Dartmouth |
HMS Yarmouth
Chatham Group:
HMS Chatham |
HMS Dublin |
HMS Southampton |
HMAS Melbourne |
HMAS Sydney |
HMAS Brisbane
Birmingham Group:
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HMS Lowestoft |
HMS Birmingham |
HMAS Adelaide
Birkenhead Group:
HMS Birkenhead |
HMS Chester