HMS Barham (1914)
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The HMS Barham was a battleship of the Royal Navy and was part of the Queen Elizabeth class . The ship was laid down at the John Brown & Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland, in 1913 and was named the third ship of this name after Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham . The ship entered service during the First World War and received modernization in the interwar period. The Barham sank in World War II after being torpedoed by the German submarine U 331 ; the downfall could be captured on film.
Mission history
First World War
During the First World War she was part of the British Grand Fleet and stationed in the North Sea . From 1916 she served as the flagship of Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas , who commanded the 5th Battle Squadron. In the Battle of the Skagerrak , the Barham was part of the battle cruiser fleet of Admiral David Beatty and received five hits. In return, they fired 337 grenades at the German ships. 25 men died on the ship during and shortly after the battle.
Interwar period
After the war ended, the Barham served as an active part of the British battle fleet. From 1931 to 1934 the ship was completely modernized. The Barham got a single chimney and its protection against marine artillery , torpedoes and bombs was increased. Furthermore, more modern anti-aircraft guns and an aircraft catapult were installed. As a result of the conversion, the standard displacement of the Barham had risen to 31,100 ts.
Second World War
During World War II , the Barham was mainly used in the Atlantic and Mediterranean .
Collision with destroyer
On December 12, 1939, the Barham was escorted from Malta to domestic waters by the three destroyers Duchess , Diana and Dainty . In dense fog in the north channel at the level of the Mull of Kintyre , all ships ran zigzag courses despite the dense fog due to the submarine danger, while the Barham rammed the destroyer Duchess in the haze at around 5:35 a.m. , which cut it in half broke up and sank with 137 crew members. There were only 23 survivors.
Torpedo hit by U 30
On December 28, 1939, around 3:50 p.m., the German submarine U 30 managed to hit a torpedo hit on the port side of the Barham about seventy nautical miles west of the Hebrides , killing four crew members and part of the substructures of the heavy gun turrets A and B ran full of water. The heavily damaged battleship, on the march back from a joint watch mission with the battle cruiser Repulse and the destroyers Isis and Nubian , had to be repaired by June 30, 1940 at Mersey Docks & Harbor Company in Liverpool .
Dakar and Mediterranean
After the capitulation of France , the Barham attacked the French battleship Richelieu near Dakar ( Operation Menace ) at the end of September 1940 , where it was hit by a 380 mm shell from the Richelieu in the forecastle and by fire from some medium-sized coastal batteries. The damage was limited, however, and the ship remained operational. In return, however, the shelling of the British squadron could do little. The British later broke off operations against Dakar without success.
Subsequently, the battleship moved to Gibraltar for Force H and covered several convoys to Malta . In 1941, the Barham was in the Mediterranean, where it was involved in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March . In May she was used during the fighting for Crete and on May 27 was hit by a 250-kilogram bomb on her heavy artillery tower Y, which caused a fire that could be brought under control after 20 minutes. There were five dead to mourn. The heavily damaged ship was then temporarily repaired in Alexandria , then finally restored in Durban by the end of August 1941. In September the ship moved back to the Mediterranean.
Downfall
When the Barham on 25 November 1941, Captain Geoffrey Clement Cooke from the Egyptian port Sollum out with two other battleships and eight destroyers hunt for an Italian convoy made looking towards Libyan coast ran, it was north of the Egyptian Sidi Barrani by German U- Boat 331 under Kapitänleutnant Hans Diedrich von Tiesenhausen attacked with four torpedoes. Three hit the ship around 4:30 p.m. in the area of the aft tower group ; then the Barham was quickly listed to port , when the rear ammunition magazine exploded when it capsized. The battleship sank within four minutes, killing 862 crew members, including Captain Cooke. 450 survivors were later rescued.
The sinking was filmed by a camera team on board the Valiant . In addition to the filmed sinking of the SMS Szent István in World War I, this is the only film sequence about the sinking of a battleship.
After the aircraft carrier Ark Royal had been sunk eleven days earlier - also by a submarine - the loss of the Barham was another major blow to the British Mediterranean fleet. For this reason, among other things, the sinking of the ship was kept secret by the British Navy for about two months. The sinking of the Barham was the only sinking of a battleship by a German submarine during the Second World War on the high seas.
literature
- Robert Gardiner (Ed.): Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921 . Conway Maritime Press Ltd, London 1985, ISBN 0-85177-245-5 , pp. 33-34 .
Web links
- Pictures and documents about the HMS Barham (English)
- Full Webpage on the ship (English)
- Movie sequence of the explosion (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jones, Geoffrey P. (1979). Battleship Barham. London: William Kimber. ISBN 0-7183-0416-0 .
Coordinates: 32 ° 34 ′ 0 ″ N , 26 ° 24 ′ 0 ″ E