HMS Abercrombie (F109)
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HMS Abercrombie (F109) was in World War II built monitor the Roberts class . She was the second ship in the Royal Navy to be named after General Sir Ralph Abercrombie . Before that, a heavy monitor had already been named after the First World War .
The monitor was awarded the Battle Honors Sicily 1943, Salerno 1943 and Mediterranean 1943. After a mine hit on September 9, 1943 and another mine hit in the summer of 1944, the monitor was not actively used again until the end of the war.
From December 24, 1954, the Abercrombie was canceled as the penultimate monitor of the Royal Navy in Barrow .
Mission history of the Abercrombie
At the beginning of the Second World War, the Royal Navy still had two heavy monitors: Erebus and Terror . The development of the war showed early on that an Allied victory would only be attainable through landing operations. Monitors seemed suitable to support this without using valuable and complex vehicles. Therefore, the two Roberts class ships were developed. The Abercrombie monitor was built on Vickers Armstrong's High Walker Yard on the Tyne . The keel was laid on April 26, 1941 and the launch took place on March 31, 1942. On May 5, 1943, the Abercrombie was delivered as the second and last ship of the Roberts class. The 381 mm gun turret installed on the ship had already been manufactured as a reserve turret for the light battle cruiser / later aircraft carrier Furious during the First World War .
Mediterranean use
After completion, the Abercrombie was used from June 1943 to support the Allied invasion of Sicily . The new monitor was to be used in the US landing section together with US Navy cruisers. On July 8th, the ship left Tunis to support the landing of the 45th US Infantry Division at Scoglitti in the CENT sector together with the Philadelphia and 15 destroyers US Navy on the 9th
. On the 16th, the monitor, together with the American cruisers Birmingham and Philadelphia, shot at Porto Empedocle in support of the advance of the US 7th Army . the mainland In August 1943 the monitor returned to the other Royal Navy units to support the British landings on mainland Italy. On September 2, the Abercrombie, together with the monitors Erebus and Roberts , the battleships Valiant and Warspite and the cruisers Orion and Mauritius, shelled the Italian coast between Reggio Calabria and Pessaro . From the 3rd, the monitor supported the landing of the XIII. British AK near Reggio and Villa San Giovanni . For the following landing near Salerno ( Operation Avalance ), the monitor was reassigned to the American landing segment . With the convoy FSS2 , the ship marched from Bizerta to Paestum on the 7th , where it supported the landing of Allied troops with the American cruisers Philadelphia , Brooklyn and Savannah , the Dutch gunboat Flores and 17 American destroyers. The Abercrombie triggered a mine on the evening of the first day of operation and was severely damaged. The mine exploded under the anti-torpedo bead on the starboard side at the height of the tripod mast. It tore a large leak there, causing a significant list that could be compensated for by flooding. Worse, however, was the failure of the main command post and the radar. The planned missions were so impossible. It was also feared that further deployments would widen the existing damage. The monitor therefore ran back to Palermo and then to Bizerta and finally to Taranto .
The repair of the damage took place from October 7, 1943 in Taranto with the new allied Italy. For a week again operational the ship ran on August 21, 1944 during an exercise southeast of Malta again on two mines; one exploded again to starboard; the new leak was smaller than the one last year, but the second mine exploded under the keel. Both drive shafts were bent by the explosions, and support struts broke off. The monitor reached Malta with difficulty and was out of action for a further eleven months.
The end of the ship
It was not until the summer of 1945 that the monitor was ready for use again and moved to the Eastern Fleet in order to be used for the planned landings on the Malay Peninsula . When the first American atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, the monitor left on its march to the new Aden operational area in the direction of Malaya. The trip was canceled in the Indian Ocean because military use was no longer necessary. In November 1945 the ship arrived at Chatham and then served as an artillery training and accommodation ship until 1953. The monitor was towed to Portsmouth and placed in Fareham Creek. The monitor was sold for demolition, which took place in Barrow from December 1954 .
The British monitors built during World War II
| HMS | shipyard | start of building | Launch | in service | fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HMS Roberts (F40) | John Brown & Company , Clydebank | 04/30/1940 | February 1, 1942 | 10/27/1942 | from August 1965 demolition in Inverkeithing |
| HMS Abercrombie | Vickers-Armstrongs , Newcastle upon Tyne | 04/26/1941 | March 31, 1942 | May 5, 1943 | from 1954 demolished in Barrow |
The sister ship HMS Roberts
The lead ship of the Roberts- class monitors built for the Royal Navy during World War II was built from April 30, 1940 to October 27, 1941 at the John Brown shipyard in Clydebank . The new monitors were a further development of the war structures of the Erebus class . The Roberts again used the gun turret of the HMS Marshal Soult from the First World War. The monitor was the Royal Navy's second ship and monitor to be named after British Field Marshal Earl Roberts .
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Calls
Roberts supported Operation Torch in North Africa with their artillery from November 8, 1942 . On the 11th, the monitor secured the landing of Allied troops near Bougie (today Béjaïa ) when about 30 Ju 88 bombers and torpedo planes of the German Air Force attacked the port in the afternoon . The transporters Awatea and Cathay were sunk and the Roberts were damaged by two 500 kg bombs. It had to go to the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead for repairs . After repairing and replacing the radar system, the ship was ready for operation again for Operation Husky . After the mission off Sicily in the British attack sector, support for Operation Avalanche at Salerno followed again in the British attack area. In 1944, the monitor was used on the landings in Normandy , where it was used on the Seine side and first on Houlgatebeschoss, and on Walcheren . Until the end of the year the ship remained in readiness to support further operations of the army if necessary.
Then again overtaken, the Roberts left Great Britain in July 1945 to take part in the planned reconquest of Singapore together with the sister ship Abercrombie . When the Japanese surrendered on August 15, the monitor had left Port Said for India. When the ship was recalled on September 11th, it had reached Kilindini Harbor in Kenya . The monitor returned to Plymouth via the Mediterranean and Malta, where it returned on November 27, 1945. The Roberts was sold for demolition in 1946, but immediately rented back to be used as a barge in Devonport until 1965. She was then towed to Inverkeithing , where the ship's demolition began in August.
One of the Roberts ' guns originally installed on the Resolution is now on display outside the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth, along with a gun from the Ramillies battleship .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d HMS ABERCROMBIE - Roberts-class 15in gun monitor
- ^ A b Rohwer: Sea War , July 10, 1943 Mediterranean, Operation Husky
- ↑ a b Rohwer: Naval Warfare , 2. – 3.9.1943 Mediterranean Sea, Operation Baytown
- ^ A b Rohwer: Sea War , 9.– 16.9.1943 Tyrrhenian Sea, Operation Avalanche
- ^ HMS Abercrombie (F 109) Monitor of the Roberts class
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War , November 8-11, 1942, French North Africa, Operation "Torch"
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 06/06/1944 channel Allied invasion ( "Decision Day") in Normandy
- ↑ The HQ Ships Map D-Day Naval Bombardment (map)
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 11/01/1944 North Sea operation infatuate
- ↑ HMS ROBERTS - Roberts-class 15in gun monitor
- ^ British 15-inch Naval Guns - Imperial War Museum, Lambeth, London, UK
- ↑ 15 in Mk I Naval Gun
literature
- Ian Buxton: Big Gun Monitors: Design, Construction and Operations 1914-1945 , Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley (2008), ISBN 978-1783469116 .
- HT Lenton & JJ Colledge: Warships of World War II , Ian Allan, London (1973), ISBN 0-7110-0403-X .
- John A. Young: A Dictionary of Ships of the Royal Navy of the Second World War , Patrick Stephens Ltd, Cambridge (1975), ISBN 0-85059-332-8 .
Web links
- HMS Abercrombie (1942) on tynebuiltships.co.uk
- HMS Abercrombie-Roberts-class 15in gun monitor on naval-history.net
- HMS ROBERTS - Roberts-class 15in gun monitor on naval-history.net
- HMS Abercrombie-Roberts-class 15in gun monitor on uboat.net
- HMS ROBERTS - Roberts-class 15in gun monitor on uboat.net
- Roberts Class on battleships cruisers
- ROBERTS monitors (1941–1943) on old-navypedia