HMS Brilliant (H84)
 The Brilliant in front of Spithead
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The HMS Brilliant (H84) was a B-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy . The destroyer put into service in 1931 was awarded the Battle Honors “Atlantic 1941–43”, “North Africa 1942” and “English Channel 1940–45” during World War II .
In 1948 the Brilliant was scrapped.
History of the ship
The destroyer was one of the two new B-class destroyers ordered from Swan Hunter in Wallsend , Tyne and Wear on March 22, 1929 . The keel of the new building with hull number 1409 was laid on July 8, 1929, one month before the flotilla leader Codrington of the previous A-Class was launched , the shipyard's first new destroyer for the Royal Navy since the end of the First World War . The Brilliant was launched on October 9, 1930, two months before the sister ship Bulldog , which was ordered at the same time . The destroyer entered service on February 21, 1931 as the third ship of the class. On the two previous days, the Royal Navy had taken over the Blanche , built by Hawthorn Leslie , and the Boreas , built by Palmers , which had also been built at shipyards on the Tyne.
The destroyer Brilliant was the eighth ship in the Royal Navy to bear that name. The last time the Royal Navy had in service from 1893 to 1918 was the Apollo-class cruiser HMS Brilliant, which was sunk there as a block ship during the unsuccessful 1st attack on Ostend on April 23, 1918 .
Mission history
After taking over the service of the Royal Navy, the destroyer Brilliant became, like its sister ships, the "4th Destroyer Flotilla", with the Mediterranean Fleet , where it remained until September 1936. When the Imperial Airways flying boat Short Calcutta City of Kharthoum crashed shortly before landing in Alexandria on December 31, 1935 , the Brilliant first reached the scene of the accident and was able to save the pilot. He was the only survivor of the accident; Despite an intensive search, the remaining three crew members and the nine passengers could not be rescued. Shortly after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the Brilliant was temporarily stationed as an observation ship in Málaga to support the British colony. After the 4th Flotilla was moved back to the Home Fleet , the Brilliant was one of the units in the fleet that monitored the Spanish ports on the Bay of Biscay in order to enforce the arms embargo imposed by Great Britain and France on both warring parties .
The "4th Destroyer Flotilla", which was replaced at the Mediterranean Fleet by the "2nd Destroyer Flotilla" with the H-class destroyers that were just coming into service at the end of 1936 , was disbanded at the Home Fleet in early 1939 and replaced by a flotilla of replaced by new tribal destroyers . The B-Class ships took on special tasks or joined the reserve fleet .
War missions
When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, the B-class destroyers were already activated and manned again and formed the newly established "19th Destroyer Flotilla" in Dover. The flotilla secured convoys and the laying of defensive mine barriers . The Brilliant was out of action for 6 weeks from the middle of September 1939, because she had run against the breakwater in Dover. After the start of the German offensive in the west , the Brilliant dropped British units in Rotterdam on May 12, 1940, which were supposed to destroy goods that were important for the Germans (especially fuel stores) and returned with 100 refugees on board. On May 15, the Brilliant collided with her sister ship Boreas on her way to a similar mission in Hoek van Holland and came to Sheerness Dockyard for repairs until June 17, 1940. The destroyer was therefore used for the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk ( Operation Dynamo ) and was assigned to the reorganized 1st Destroyer Flotilla on the canal after the repair . On July 25, 1940, the destroyer fought together with the Boreas in a battle with German speedboats. When the British destroyers withdrew as ordered, the Brilliant was attacked by eight Ju 87 Stukas . The destroyer received two bomb hits that hit the ship as duds. There were no casualties on board, but the steering gear was destroyed. The ship stopped and ran over the stern full of water. To keep it afloat, all weapons were removed from the stern and the rear main guns and depth charges were thrown overboard. So the ship could be brought in, which was repaired at the naval shipyard in Chatham until mid-October 1940. 22 men died on the Boreas , which was attacked at the same time, and it was not ready for action again until January 1941. The Brilliant then came to the Home Fleet by February 1941.
In February / March 1941 the destroyer was overhauled in Southampton and received a type 286 radar unit. The anti-aircraft armament was reinforced by a 76 mm L / 40 (12 pdr) flak for the rear torpedo tube set and two 20 mm Oerlikon - automatic cannons . The normal depth charge has been increased to 60 for this purpose. From May 12, 1941, the Brilliant moved to Freetown in Sierra Leone to perform security tasks there until the spring of 1942 and to search for German ships. On June 4 and 5, 1941, the Brilliant discovered the oil tankers Esso Hamburg and Egerland used as supply ships by the Navy with the heavy cruiser London . The two German ships sank themselves to prevent their capture by the British ships. The discovery of the ships was facilitated by the decryption and evaluation of German radio messages.
In October 1942, the HMS Brilliant picked up most of the survivors of the Oronsay troop carrier , which had been sunk by an Italian submarine, in the Atlantic . In November 1942, the ship took part in the Allied landing in North Africa ( Operation Torch ). It sank the French minesweeper La Surprise . The destroyer was then stationed in Gibraltar until the end of 1943 and entrusted with escort duties.
The HMS Brilliant was reassigned to the 1st Destroyer Flotilla in early 1944, which was stationed in Portsmouth . In the following months there were several battles with German speedboats . From the summer of 1944, after landing in Normandy , the destroyer then directed transports across the English Channel . During one of these escorts, in which HMS Anthony was also involved, the troop transport Leopoldville, torpedoed by U 486 , sank on December 24, 1944 with considerable loss of life off Cherbourg . The ship was damaged in a collision with the Canadian corvette HMCS Lindsay in January 1945. The repair and conversion to a target ship had not yet been completed by the end of the war in Europe.
In April 1948, HMS Brilliant was sold for scrapping.
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 MD 2009, ISBN 978-1-59114-081-8 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War Two. Arms and Armor Press, London 1988, ISBN 0-85368-910-5 .
Web links
- Brilliant 1931
- HMS Brilliant (H 84) - Service History
- HMS Brilliant (H 84)
- Chronicle of naval warfare 1939–1945
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c English: Amazon to Ivanhoe , p. 39.
- ^ Commercial Aviation: The Mediterranean Tragedy . In: Flight International , January 9, 1936, volume XXIX, issue 1411, p. 45
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War, May 10-14, 1940 Netherlands
- ↑ Rohwer, July 25–26, 1940 Kanal
- ↑ English, p. 39f.
- ↑ Rohwer, 3.- 06/25/1941 Atlantic
- ^ Rohwer, November 8–11, 1942 French North Africa Operation "Torch": Allied landing in French North Africa.
- ↑ Rohwer, 1.1.- 02.08.1943 Mediterranean.
- ↑ Rohwer, April 12 - May 1, 1944 Kanal.
- ↑ Rohwer, December 1–31, 1944 North Atlantic and Canal, operations German snorkel submarines in British coastal waters.
HMS Keith (Flotilla Leader) †
HMS Basilisk † |
Beagle |
Blanche † |
Boadicea † |
Boreas / Salamis 
|
Brazen † |
Brilliant |
Bulldog