HMS Bristol (1910)

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flag
Town class
HMS Bristol
HMS Bristol
Overview
Type Light cruiser
Shipyard

John Brown & Company , Clydebank

Keel laying March 23, 1909
Launch February 23, 1910
delivery December 1910
Namesake City of Bristol
period of service

1910-1921

Decommissioning 1921
Whereabouts Sold for demolition May 1921
Technical specifications
displacement

Standard : 4800  ts
Maximum: 5300 ts

length

overall: 453 ft (138.1 m),
430 ft pp

width

47 ft (14.3 m)

Draft

15 ft 6 in (4.7 m)

crew

411-480 men

drive
speed

25 kn , 26.84 on acceptance

Range

5070 nm at 16 kn

Armament
  • 2 × 6 "/ 50 BL Mk XI
    (15.2 cm L / 50)
  • 10 × 4 "/ 50 BL Mk VIII
    (10.2 cm L / 50)
  • 4 × .303 British machine guns
  • 4 × 3 Pdr 1.85 "/ 50 QF
    (4.7 cm L / 50)
  • 2 × torpedo tubes 18 "(45.7 cm)
  • 1 × 3 "anti-aircraft gun in the war
Fuel supply

600 normal –1353 ts coal and
260 ts heating oil

Armor
deck

2 in (50 mm)

Embankments

3/4 in (20 mm)

Command tower

6 in (100 mm)

Sister ships

HMS Glasgow
HMS Gloucester
HMS Liverpool
HMS Newcastle ,

The sixth HMS Bristol the Royal Navy was a light cruiser , which on 23 March 1909 as the first ship of the Town Class ( Bristol Group) in the shipyard John Brown & Company in Clydebank was laid (Scotland) in Kiel and on the 23rd Launched in February 1910. Sister ships were HMS Glasgow , HMS Gloucester , HMS Liverpool and HMS Newcastle , all of which came into service between September and December 1910.
By 1916 another twelve similar cruisers came into service with the Royal Navy, with the last two ships under construction for Greece at the start of the war. Four more were completed for the Royal Australian Navy between 1912 and 1922 .

Technical specifications

The first ships of the class displaced around 4,800 tons and ran up to 27 knots with their Parsons turbines . Only the Bristol and later the HMS Southampton , built at the same shipyard, had Brown Curtis turbines . They were 131 m long and 15.2 m wide and had a draft of 4.9 m. The armament consisted of two 15.2-cm and ten 10.2-cm guns as well as four three-pounders, four Maxim machine guns and two 45.7-cm torpedo tubes. During the war the crew numbered up to 500 men.

history

When it entered service, the Bristol was assigned to the 2nd Battle Squadron of the Home Fleet . On December 22, 1912, she ran up in Plymouth Sound , but returned to fleet service in January. In July 1913, she was assigned to the 2nd Light Cruiser squadron . In 1914 she moved to the 5th Cruiser Squadron in the Atlantic and only shortly before the outbreak of war was the 4th Cruiser Squadron in the Caribbean assigned.

Outbreak of war

When the war started, the Bristol was one of the first ships in the British Navy to enter combat.

First use in the Caribbean

The Bristol belonged to the West Indienstation and its commander Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock distributed the ships under his command in order to counter the threat to British sea traffic in the opinion of the Admiralty. The main opponents were the two small cruisers SMS Karlsruhe and SMS Dresden located in the Caribbean , as well as the fear that the Germans would use a large number of their passenger ships located in the USA as auxiliary cruisers .

In fact, Cradock found the Karlsruhe with his flagship Suffolk when she was outfitting the German express steamer Kronprinz Wilhelm on the high seas. The Germans broke off this and fled separately. Suffolk tried to follow the Karlsruhe , which however easily escaped the old armored cruiser. Cradock from Karlsruhe tried to block the escape routes by radio . The on the way to Pernambuco located Bristol changed course and actually found the Karlsruhe and took a fight on. The German cruiser escaped the battle with its superior speed. Bristol then went on to South America to strengthen the British position there, which was represented solely by the sister ship Glasgow .

Rear Admiral Cradock had hoisted his flag on August 15 on the armored cruiser HMS Good Hope , which had arrived as reinforcements in Halifax , Nova Scotia , because it was faster than his previous flagship. Cradock marched into the South Atlantic, drove with the Good Hope and the two light cruisers escort for British ships off the Brazilian coast, since both escaped small cruisers were suspected here. Leaving the Bristol behind in front of Brazil, Cradock's armored cruiser Good Hope and the Monmouth , which had meanwhile arrived as reinforcements , the Glasgow and the auxiliary cruiser Otranto left Montevideo for Tierra del Fuego on September 18 and arrived in Punta Arenas on September 28 . Here the British discovered that the Dresden had already moved to the Pacific. Since there were further indications that the German small cruiser Leipzig , which was on the Pacific coast of Mexico when the war broke out, was moving south.

This made it more likely that the cruisers wanted to unite with the German East Asia Squadron. However, Cradock should strengthen his squadron with the older ship of the line HMS Canopus . He therefore first ran back to the Falkland Islands to await its arrival. On October 22nd, Cradock changed his cruisers around Cape Horn in the Pacific, possibly in the hope of still providing one of the cruisers alone. The ship of the line followed, but it was not able to join the cruiser formation. In the sea ​​battle at Coronel off the Chilean coast with the German squadron on November 1, 1914, Good Hope and Monmouth were lost with their entire crews.

The squadron of Rear Admiral Archibald P. Stoddart , who moved south from his previous position in the mid-Atlantic with his flagship Defense , the armored cruiser Cornwall , sister ship of the Monmouth sunk at Coronel , the Carnarvon and the auxiliary cruiser Orama, gathered off the Brazilian coast which was subordinated to Bristol . Glasgow , which had escaped at Coronel , also joined this squadron on November 11th.

Battle of the Falkland Islands

On November 26-28, the British forces gathered in search of Admiral Spee's East Asia Squadron at Abrohols Rocks under Vice-Admiral Frederik Doveton Sturdee , who had been dispatched from Great Britain on the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible to stop and close Spee's squadron destroy. Stoddart switched to Carnarvon , Cornwall's newly commissioned sister ship HMS Kent had come into service , and in addition to the Bristol , the Glasgow, which had been repaired in Rio de Janeiro , was available again. Then there were the auxiliary cruisers HMS Macedonia and Orama . The latter marched with the coal steamers. Stoddart's previous flagship Defense was released to Cape Town .

On December 7, 1914, the British Association reached Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. When the German East Asia Squadron appeared off the Falkland Islands on the morning of December 8th, the British were still at the coal. The Bristol had started the coal and was ready to go in two hours.

Plan of the battle

Later in the morning, the British discovered three suppliers of the German squadron near Port Pleasant on the east coast of East Falkland , who had already spent the night there and fled because of the noise of the battle. The commander of the Bristol was to intercept them with the auxiliary cruiser Macedonia, which was under his control . They placed the coal steamers Baden (7676 GRT) and Santa Isabell and sank them after the crews had left the ships. Only Seydlitz escaped to be interned in Argentina. The sinking of the two modern German freighters seems absurd, as they could easily be brought in and the two British warships involved did not intervene in the actual battle, nor was there any danger from the German warships. The Seydlitz let them escape without further pursuit.

In December 1914, the Bristol took part in the search for Dresden , who had escaped near Falkland .

In 1915 the Bristol was relocated to the Mediterranean and in 1916 was assigned to the Italian-British squadron that monitored the exit of the Adriatic from Brindisi .

Battle on Otranto Street

On the night of May 14, 1917, under the command of Captain Miklós Horthy , the three Austrian rapid cruisers SMS Novara , SMS Saida and SMS Helgoland , disguised as large British destroyers, attacked the Allied Otranto Barrier in order to keep as many guard ships as possible during the night to destroy. They succeeded in sinking fourteen loggers and damaging another four and forcing all the blockade ships to retreat.

Under the Italian Rear Admiral Alfredo Acton on HMS Dartmouth , Italian and British ships tried to cut off the retreating Austrians. They were first placed by the Italian flotilla leader Carlo Mirabello and the French destroyers Commandant Rivière , Bisson and Cimeterre , who were inferior to the cruisers and only pursued them. A little later, Acton met with Dartmouth , the Bristol and the Italian destroyers Mosto , Pilo , Schiaffino , Acerbi and Aquila on the Austrian destroyers Csepel and Balaton , who had carried out a diversionary maneuver to the Albanian coast and had already sunk the destroyer Borea and an ammunition ship and another Had set the transporter on fire. The Italian destroyers managed to catch up with them and engage them in a battle. Csepel was able to shut down Aquila’s machine with a hit . The Austrians reached the shelter of the coastal batteries at Durazzo and escaped.

At around 9:00 a.m., the Bristol discovered the smoke from the Austrian cruisers south of her. The Allies turned and looked for the battle, in which they went out numerously and in terms of armament. But that superiority was lost when some destroyers got machine problems and the rest had to be turned off to protect them. The Dartmouth opened fire and immediately hit the Novara , but was alone within shooting range as the Bristol was considerably slower. The Austrians put a curtain of smoke in order to get closer to the British cruiser, on which they then scored several hits.

At around 11:00 am Acton had the speed reduced so that the Bristol could catch up. Novara was hit several times and gradually lost speed. At 11:05 am Acton turned a little to separate the Saida from the Novara and the Helgoland . As the armored cruiser Sankt Georg was approaching with destroyers and torpedo boats, Acton gathered his strength. This break was enough for the Saida to tow the Novara while the Helgoland secured both.

The damaged Novara after the battle in Otranto Street

Since he did not realize that the Novara had failed and he feared to be pulled too close to the enemy base Cattaro , Acton broke off the pursuit. The destroyer Acerbi misunderstood the signal and carried out a torpedo attack, but was driven away by the cruisers. When Acton recognized the situation of the cruisers at 12.05, it was too late because the Sankt Georg was now close and the destroyers Csepel and Balaton also appeared.

On the march back, Dartmouth was badly damaged by a torpedo from the German submarine UC-25 and was temporarily evacuated.

Whereabouts

In 1918 the Bristol was reassigned to the South American Station and returned to Portsmouth after the end of the war in June 1919 , where it was decommissioned. It was put on the sale list in 1920 and sold to Ward in Hayle for demolition on May 9, 1921 .

literature

  • Geoffrey Bennett: The Sea Battles of Coronel and Falklands. Heyne Verlag 1980, ISBN 3-453-01141-4 .
  • Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Mundus, Ratingen, ISBN 3-88385-028-4 .
  • Arnold Kludas: The ships of Hamburg-Süd 1871–1951. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg, 1976, ISBN 3-7979-1875-5 .
  • Maria Theresa Parker de Bassi: Cruiser Dresden. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Herford, 1993, ISBN 3-7822-0591-X .
  • Anthony Preston, Randal Gray (ed.): Conway's All the World Fighting Ships 1906-1921 , Conway Maritime Press Ltd, London 1985, ISBN 0-85177-245-5 .

Web links

Commons : Town class cruiser (1910)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files