HMS Arrow (H42)
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The HMS Arrow (H42) was an A-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy entered service in 1930 and lost in World War II . The destroyer was awarded the Battle Honors "Atlantic 1940-43", "Norway 1940", "North Sea 1942", "Lybia 1942", " Malta Convoys 1942 " and "Sicily 1943".
On August 4, 1943, the destroyer was lying in the port of Algiers when a munitions ship exploded in the immediate vicinity. The destroyer also caught fire and was badly damaged and no longer repaired. The disarmed wreck was demolished in Taranto in 1949 .
history
The ship was launched on August 22, 1929 as part of the Royal Navy's first class destroyer built after the end of World War I , at Vickers-Armstrong in Barrow-in-Furness , Cumbria . This destroyer was the only unit of the class manufactured at the Barrow shipyard. The experience with the two previously built prototypes Ambuscade from Yarrow and Amazon from Thornycroft flowed into the planning and construction of the new class. The new building was the seventh ship of the Royal Navy to be named Arrow . The last time he was guided by an iron gunboat of the Ant class from 1871 to 1922. The new destroyer entered service on April 14, 1930.
The Arrow initially replaced older V and W class destroyers in the Mediterranean fleet together with her sister ships in the 3rd destroyer flotilla . The A-class destroyers were then replaced by the new I-class destroyers in 1937 . In June 1937 the Arrow came to the reserve in the Nore and then served as an artillery training ship in Portsmouth from March 1938.
War missions
At the beginning of the war, the ship was assigned to the 18th destroyer flotilla in the English Channel . The tasks included securing convoys in this area, including in particular the troop transports to France . In January 1940, the destroyer was assigned to the 16th destroyer flotilla and secured the battleship Royal Sovereign in the canal with sister ships Achates and Anthony , which then sailed to Canada alone with a cargo of gold. At the end of January the destroyer had to go to a shipyard due to frequent machine problems and was not ready for use again until March 1940.
In April 1940 the destroyer was used in the attempted defense against the German landing in Norway ( Operation Weser Exercise ) to cover ships of the Home Fleet in the 12th destroyer flotilla. On April 26, 1942, the Arrow stopped the German trawler ship 37 (ex Schleswig, 433 GRT), disguised as a Dutch fish steamer, in front of the Romsdalsfjord , which tried to ram the destroyer. The British sink the ship and checked other fishing boats. It succeeded together with the destroyers HMS Acheron and HMS Griffin on the same day the German patrol boat "ship 26" to hijack that disguised under the Dutch flag as "Polar" continued. Extremely valuable secret code books and key slips were stolen. This allowed the British code breakers from Hut 8 (Barrack 8) in Bletchley Park, England, to break into the German naval radio key .
On June 7th, as part of the evacuation of Narvik by the Allies , the Arrow ran out of Harstad along with the destroyer Veteran , the Sloop Stork and ten armed trawlers to move the slow convoy with the freighters and tankers Blackheath , Oligarch , Harmattan , Cromarty Firth Secure , Theseus , Acrity , Cotswold and Conch .
The ship was then transferred to the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, which in turn was entrusted with the escort service in the English Channel and western Biscay . In early 1942, the destroyer was in service with the Force H in the Mediterranean . It served as an escort for aircraft carriers , from which fighter planes were flown to Malta , and for convoys , which mostly transported war material for the British troops in North Africa and supplies for Malta. A few months later the ship was assigned to the British Eastern Fleet in Trincomalee , Ceylon . During the Japanese attack in the Indian Ocean , it was used as cover for Group 2, which consisted of the slower units in the fleet.
After a brief deployment in the South Atlantic against German long -range submarines , the HMS Arrow was then used again in the Mediterranean with the 13th destroyer flotilla in 1943. During Operation Husky , the Allied landing on Sicily in July 1943, the ship supported the landing of British units with its artillery.
The end of the Arrow
On August 4, 1943, the destroyer was in the port of Algiers when the French ammunition ship Fort Le Montée exploded in its immediate vicinity. The Arrow caught fire and was badly damaged by the explosion. Over 30 crew members lost their lives in the accident. The damaged destroyer was towed to Gibraltar in September, where only an emergency repair was done to be able to tow the ship to a place where it could be repaired. In November the transfer to Taranto took place. Investigations have shown that repairs with reasonable effort, taking into account the age and condition of the ship, are no longer sensible. From October 1944, still usable equipment of the Arrow was removed. The destroyer was only canceled in January 1949.
literature
- John English: Amazon to Ivanhoe: British Standard Destroyers of the 1930s , World Ship Society, Kendal 1993, ISBN 0-905617-64-9
- Norman Friedman: British Destroyers From Earliest Days to the Second World War , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2009, ISBN 978-1-59114-081-8
- Michael J. Whitley: Destroyer in World War II. Technology - classes - types. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 (Original: Destroyers of World War Two. An international encyclopedia. Arms and Armor Press, London et al. 1988, ISBN 0-85368-910-5 ).
Web links
- Naval History (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronik des Seekrieges , April 26, 1940 Norway , accessed on September 20, 2016
- ^ Rohwer, Hümmelchen, June 4–10, 1940 Norway, evacuation of Narvik by the Allies. , viewed w. v.
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