HMS Bedouin (F67)
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HMS Bedouin ( ship identification : F67, G67, L67) was a (second) Tribal class destroyer of the British Royal Navy .
After operations in Narvik, off Norway, in the North Atlantic and in the North Sea, the HMS Bedouin was sunk on June 15, 1942 in the Mediterranean by Italian naval and air forces while securing a supply convoy to Malta.
History of the ship
The ship was laid down on January 13, 1937 at the William Denny and Brothers shipyard in Dumbarton , launched as the second tribal destroyer built by the shipyard on December 21, 1937, and on March 15, 1939 at the Home Fleet in Service provided. She was assigned to the 6th Destroyer Flotilla and stationed in Portland , from where the ship completed the training of the crew in the English Channel and on the approaches to the British Isles. At the beginning of June, the ship and other units of the flotilla searched for the submarine Thetis, which had been lost in the Irish Sea . In August 1939, the Bedouin moved with the units of the flotilla to the intended war base in Scapa Flow .
War missions
The tasks of the flotilla after the start of the war were to secure the ships of the Home Fleet during operations and occasionally to search for German merchant ships that were trying to reach their homeland. From the end of January 1940 to mid-March, the Bedouin was overhauled at a shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne , as defects accumulated. On the evening of April 7, 1940, she went after the reports of the German operation off Norway with the core of the Home Fleet (the battleships Rodney and Valiant and the battle cruiser Repulse ) under Admiral Forbes from Scapa in the Shetland-Norway Narrow; the Bedouin formed with the sister ships Punjabi and Eskimo as well as seven other destroyers the safety screen of the association, which was still joined by the French cruiser Emile Bertin with two French destroyers. In response to the emergency report of the destroyer Glowworm attacked by the Germans, Forbes detached the repulse on the 8th with the cruiser Penelope and the destroyers Bedouin , Punjabi , Eskimo , Kimberley against the Admiral Hipper , which, however, had already sailed to Trondheim . The Repulse unit was sent further north to Renown off the Lofoten Islands .
On April 13, the Bedouin belonged to the Allied naval formation that attacked the German destroyers who had remained in Narvik . The battleship Warspite and eight other destroyers Foxhound , Forester , Hero , Icarus , Kimberley as well as the sister ships Bedouin , Punjabi , Eskimo and Cossack ran into the Norwegian port, supported by the Warspite aircraft , a Fairey Swordfish floatplane , into the Norwegian port Destroy German destroyers who lacked fuel and ammunition after the first battle on the 10th with the 2nd British destroyer flotilla (five H-class boats ). The first success came with the Swordfish , which sank the U 64 and warned the association of Erich Koellner , who was waiting in hiding and was sunk by Warspite , Bedouin and Eskimo . In the following battle with the five operational German destroyers, the Bedouin suffered minor damage. The German destroyers withdrew after they had largely used up their ammunition and finally sank themselves. The Bedouin escorted the heavily damaged Eskimo , who had lost its forecastle in a torpedo from Georg Thiele , together with Hostile and Ivanhoe to the Skelfjord , where the Royal Navy had set up a makeshift repair facility. The core of the provisional base was the disrupted German freighter Alster , which was supposed to serve the German destroyers in Narvik as a ship of the export squadron and was now used for the makeshift repairs of the British cruiser Penelope .
On May 4, the Bedouin , which was deployed further off Norway, was involved in the rescue of the survivors of the ORP Grom with Aurora , Enterprise and the Faulknor , sunk by the air force in the Ofotfjord . The Bedouin then went back to Great Britain and was overhauled in Glasgow to be ready for use again at the end of Allied operations in Norway.
In the second half of the year, the Bedouin mostly did routine work for the Home Fleet. During the shipyard layover, the ship received radar equipment for the first time and the 120 mm twin mount in the X position was exchanged for a 102 mm twin gun to strengthen the air defense.
On March 21, 1941, the Bedouin took part with the sister ships Somali , Eskimo and Tartar as well as the destroyer Legion and the landing ships Queen Emma and Princess Beatrix (former Dutch Canal ferries) with 500 commando troops in Operation Claymore against the Lofoten .
On 24 November 1941 took Bedouin in a joint operation of the Royal Navy and the Soviet fleet in part, as they with the cruisers Nigeria and the destroyer Intrepid and the Soviet destroyers Gremjaschtschi and Gromky (Type 7, 1939, 1587 ts, 4 × 130 mm) searched the northern Norwegian coast for German ships and installations and shot at Vardø . The British units had come to Arkhangelsk with the Northern Sea Convoy PQ 3 .
At the end of December 1941, the ship also took part in the second Commando attack on Lofoten (Operation Anklet). The Royal Navy used a total of a light cruiser , six destroyers, three mine sweepers, two dropships, two submarines and a survey ship as well as two tankers, a transporter and a tug. There were also two Norwegian corvettes and two Polish destroyer escorts. 300 men were landed, 77 of them Norwegians. On December 26th and 27th, 1941, they occupied the cities of Reine and Moskenes , only to withdraw without losses with 32 German prisoners and some arrested Norwegian collaborators (quislings) as well as 200 Norwegian volunteers. The operation was only a diversionary maneuver compared to the simultaneous Operation Archery in Vågsøy . In addition to supporting the landing, the Navy had the Bedouin destroy the radio station in Flakstadoy .
On March 5, 1942, a Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor captured the convoy PQ 12 around 70 nm south of Jan Mayen , whereupon the battleship Tirpitz under Vice Admiral Ciliax set sail with four destroyers from Trondheim to attack the convoy. The messages decrypted by the British about the departure of the German ships enabled countermeasures. To the cover group with the battleships Renown and Duke of York , a cruiser and six destroyers, the main part of the Home Fleet ran under Admiral Tovey with the battleship King George V , the carrier Victorious , a cruiser and six destroyers, including the Bedouin . Due to poor visibility, the Home Fleet could not find the Tirpitz , but the German ships did not find PQ 12 either, but narrowly missed the counter- convoy QP 8 , which was only secured by two minesweepers and two corvettes , the destroyer Friedrich Ihn only sank the fallen Soviet freighter Isora (2815 BRT). Attacks by Victorious torpedo aircraft against the Tirpitz , such as a German attack on the aircraft carrier, were unsuccessful. On 11/12 On March 8th, the Bedouin and the destroyers Eskimo , Tartar , Punjabi as well as Faulknor , Fury , Intrepid and Icarus tried to intercept the Tirpitz expected before Bodø , but the battleship did not move from Narvik to Trondheim until the following night.
The end of the Bedouin
On June 5, 1942, the Bedouin was posted to the Mediterranean . There she was involved in Operation Harpoon . She belonged with the flak cruiser Cairo , the destroyers Marne , Matchless , Partridge as well as the Ithuriel originally intended for Turkey and the escort destroyers Blankney , Badsworth , Middleton and the Polish ORP Kujawiak to the security group of the western convoy running from Gibraltar with five transporters and one tanker to Malta .
On June 15, south of Pantelleria, the Italian cruisers Raimondo Montecuccoli and Eugenio di Savoia attacked the convoy with five destroyers, severely damaging the Bedouin and then the Partridge that they were trying to tow. The Bedouin was finally on June 15, 1942 by Savoia-Marchetti-SM.79 - "Sparviero" torpedo bombers at the position 36 ° 12 ′ 0 ″ N , 11 ° 38 ′ 0 ″ E, sunk. 28 crew members were killed in the sinking, 213 were rescued by the Italian hospital ship Gradisca (13,870 GRT) and thus became a prisoner of war.
Only two of the transporters, one of them badly damaged, made it to Malta. Of the security vehicles , the Kujawiak sank when entering Malta due to mine hits and Matchless and Badsworth were badly damaged, and Cairo and Partridge were more easily damaged.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Rohwer: Sea War 1939–1945. P. 36.
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 39
- ↑ a fjord in the south of the island Flakstadøy in the municipality Flakstad (Lofoten)
- ^ Rohwer, p. 48
- ^ Rohwer, p. 107
- ^ Rohwer, p. 191
- ↑ Rohwer, pp. 205f.
- ↑ Rohwer, pp. 245f
- ^ Rohwer, p. 254f
literature
- Colledge, JJ and Warlow, Ben [1969]: Ships of the Royal Navy , Rev. Edition, Chatham, London 2006, ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8 , OCLC 67375475 .
- David Lyon: HMS Cossack / Tribal Class destroyer. Profile Publication, N ° 2, Windsor 1970.
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
Web links
Royal Navy (HMS): Afridi | Ashanti | Bedouin | Cossack | Eskimo | Gurkha | Maori | Mashona | Matabele | Mohawk | Nubian | Punjabi | Sikh | Somali | Tartare | Zulu
Australian Navy (HMAS): Arunta | Bataan | Warramunga
Canadian Navy (HMCS): Athabaskan (I) | Athabaskan (II) | Cayuga | Haida | Huron | Iroquois | Micmac | Nootka