Indus (ship, 1935)
 The Indus 1935
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The Indus (L67, from 1940: U67) was the fourth new building of a sloop for the Royal Indian Navy after the First World War . It was a replica of the Hindustan delivered in 1930 . Because of its armament with 120 mm cannons, however, it was assigned to the Grimsby class . After the flow Indus named Sloop ran 1934 from the stack and in 1942 close of Japanese planes Akyab to 20 ° 7 ' N , 92 ° 50' O sunk.
History of the ship
The Indus was built on behalf of the British Indian government from August 1933 to March 1935 at the Hawthorn, Leslie & Co. shipyard in Hebburn on the Tyne . The ship was ordered in August 1933, its keel was laid on December 8, 1933 and the launch took place on August 24, 1934. In terms of its dimensions and its equipment for use in tropical waters, the Indus largely corresponded to the Hindustan built by Swan Hunter in 1929/30 . When the order was placed, the shipyard had already built the two Brigdewater-class sloops for the Royal Navy and supplied the machines for two Hastings-class sloops and Hindustan built by Swan Hunter . For this purpose, she manufactured two 950 ts sloops similar to the Bridgewater class and two larger 1785 ts 330 ft sloops for the Portuguese Navy .
The Indus was with a length of 90.32 m (296.3 ft) as long as the Hindustan , but over 9 meters longer than the same for the Royal Navy emerging "escort sloops" of Grimsby class (81.15 m / 266.25 ft) and also longer than the previous sloops of the Shoreham class (85.64 m / 281 ft), but the hull was 10.82 m (35.5 ft) wide and 3.28 m (10, 75 ft) draft is a little wider than the Hindustan , but a little narrower and deeper than the hull of the Grimsby class. Of the armament of the Grimsby class, the Indus lacked 76 mm flak. In contrast to the Grimsby class, the ship was prepared for use as a mine sweeper.
Mission history
With the outbreak of World War II, the Indus was subordinate to the East India Station of the Royal Navy and was relocated with the Hindustan to the "Persian Gulf Division" to replace sloops from the Royal Navy. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, there were also enemy bases in the station area operated by the Italian naval units in Italian East Africa . The Indus was soon moved to the Red Sea to secure British convoys between Aden and Suez . After Italian air raids on convoy BN.7 shortly after the departure from Aden, four Italian destroyers attempted the convoy in the Red Sea on the night of October 21, 1940 (32 merchant ships, secured by the light cruiser Leander , the destroyer Kimberley , the Sloops Auckland (RN), Yarra (RAN) and Indus (RIN) as well as two minesweepers). The attackers were pushed away from the security.
In order to prevent the Italians from further activities and to secure British traffic through the Red Sea to Egypt, the Royal Navy formed a "Red Sea Force" as part of the Mediterranean Fleet , which used Aden and Port Sudan as bases and Bombay as a repair base . At the turn of the year 1941, the "Red Sea Force" included the light cruisers Leander and Caledon , the anti-aircraft cruiser Carlisle , four K-class destroyers and nine sloops ( Auckland , Flamingo , Grimsby and Shoreham of the Royal Navy, the Australian Parramatta and Yarra as well the Indian Clive , Hindustan and Indus ) as well as some auxiliary ships.
On June 10, 1941, a unit of the "Red Sea Force", consisting of the new cruiser Dido , the auxiliary cruiser Chakdina , the Indian sloops Clive and Indus and a transporter, an Indian battalion landed in Assab (Operation Chronometer), with which the Italians theirs last port lost on the Red Sea. The Indus and her half-sister Hindustan remained stationed in Aden until Japan entered the war and moved to India at the end of the year.
The end of the Indus
The Indus secured in the following months mostly transports from Indian ports to Burma. When the British Indian Army and the British Army had already evacuated Rangoon in March 1942 in order not to be destroyed by the Japanese Army , which also had air sovereignty, the Eastern Fleet did not withdraw its units from the coast of Burma, where the Indus and the newer Sloop Sutlej still carried out surveillance drives in front of Akyab. On April 6, 1942, the Indus was attacked by land-based Mitsubishi G3M bombers. The Indus , which had no effective anti- aircraft weapons , received three direct bomb hits in the airstrike and sank within 35 minutes. Fortunately, only ten crew members were wounded and the crew was saved.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gonçalo Velho , Goncalves Zarco
- ^ NRP Afonso de Albuquerque , Bartolomeu Dias
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 20-21 October 1940, Red Sea
- ↑ Kindell: ROYAL, DOMINION and INDIAN NAVY SHIPS, JANUARY 1941
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. June 10, 1941, Red Sea
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. April 6, 1942, Indian Ocean
literature
- Arnold Hague: Sloops: A History of the 71 Sloops Built in Britain and Australia for the British, Australian and Indian Navies 1926-1946. World Ship Society, Kendal 1993, ISBN 0-905617-67-3 .
- HT Lenton. British and Empire Warships of the Second World War. Greenhill Books, ISBN 1-85367-277-7 .
- Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1922-1946. Naval Institute Press, ISBN 0-87021-913-8 .
