HMS Chatham (1911)

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HMS Chatham
HMS Chatham
Overview
Type Light cruiser
units 6/21
Shipyard

Chatham Dockyard ,

Keel laying 1910
Launch January 3, 1911
delivery November 9, 1911
Namesake British port city of Chatham (Kent)
period of service

1912-1925

Commissioning December 1912
Decommissioning 1925
Whereabouts July 1926 Sale for demolition
Technical specifications
displacement

Standard : 5400  ts
Maximum: 6000 ts

length

overall: 457 ft (139.38 m),

width

50 ft (15.25 m)

Draft

15 ft 9 in (4.8 m)

crew

429-540 men

drive
speed

25.5 kn
(25.7 kn upon acceptance)

Range

4500 nm at 16 kn

Armament
  • 8 × 6 "/ 50 BL Mk XI
    (15.2 cm L / 50 )
  • 4 × 3 Pdr 1.85 "/ 50 QF
    (4.7 cm L / 50)
  • 4 machine guns
  • 2 × torpedo tubes 21 "(533 mm)
Fuel supply

1240 ts coal maximum (750 ts normal) and
260 ts heating oil

Armor
deck

2–3 in (50–76 mm)

Embankments

3/4 in (20 mm)

Command tower

4 in (102 mm)

The fourteenth HMS Chatham the Royal Navy was a light cruiser of the Town-class , in the First World War was used in the Mediterranean, but also on tracking the German light cruiser Konigsberg in the Rufiji was instrumental -Delta in East Africa. From 1920 to 1924 the cruiser served in the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, then as a flagship on the station in India. After returning home, it was sold for demolition on July 13, 1926.

Building history

After her keel was laid on January 3, 1911, the Chatham was launched on November 9, 1911 at Chatham Dockyard and was completed in December 1912. The light cruiser Chatham was the lead ship of the subgroup of the same name of the Town class. The Chatham Group was appointed to the 1911 budget and put into service between 1912 and 1916. It consisted of three ships for the Royal Navy: Chatham , Dublin , Southampton and three ships according to the same design plans for the newly created Royal Australian Navy : Melbourne , Sydney , Brisbane , which were referred to there as the Sydney- class and of which the Brisbane, completed in 1916 was the first cruiser built in Australia.

These six differed only slightly from the nine ships in the two previous groups. The armored deck was weaker to allow the installation of waterline armor. The displacement increased to 6,000 tons and the bow was wider than that of its predecessors. The armament consisted of eight 6-inch (152-mm) individual guns, which were protected by shields and were so far apart that a single hit could not put several out of action. There was no light artillery, but there were four 3-pounder guns for anti-aircraft defense when it was commissioned. In the course of the war, the anti-aircraft armament was reinforced by four 3-inch (76-mm) anti-aircraft guns.

First missions

The Chatham was assigned to the Second Battle Squadron after the commissioning. In July 1913 she joined the "1st Light Cruiser Squadron" of the Home Fleet . At the end of the year she was sent to the "2nd Light Cruiser Squadron" in the Mediterranean, where she was also stationed when the war broke out in 1914.

War effort

Pursuit of the German Mediterranean Division

The Chatham belonged to the "2nd Light Cruiser Squadron" of the British Mediterranean fleet and took part in the pursuit of the German Mediterranean division , consisting of Goeben and Breslau . On August 2, the Chatham left Malta at 5:12 p.m. for reconnaissance in Messina , from where the German ships were last reported. On August 3, at 7:30 a.m., the Chatham announced that the Germans had left Messina. She then searched the northern Sicilian coast and returned to Malta. On August 4, she brought up the German freighter Goldenfels and sent him to Malta with a prize squad . On August 5, she patrolled near Pantelleria to report a new advance by the German Mediterranean Division towards French North Africa or, if necessary , to stop an advance by the Breslau alone. On August 6th, she was sent around the north side of Sicily to the north exit of the Strait of Messina , where she remained after the German Mediterranean Division left.

In September the Chatham (Captain Sidney R. Drury-Lowe ) was relocated to the Red Sea in order to capture German merchant ships.

Search for the Koenigsberg

The sinking of the Pegasus on September 20, 1914 off Zanzibar led to the delegation of the Chatham and other modern cruisers to the East African coast in order to oppose the Koenigsberg with superior cruisers. During a search of the German merchant ship President in the port of Lindi , men of the Chatham found a receipt for a coal load to the Königsberg . The place Ssalale - a station in the Rufiji Delta - was also noted on it. The Chatham was then the ship that first discovered the German cruiser in its hiding place in the Rufiji Delta on October 30th. However, it was not possible for her to enter the delta. The hideout was also out of range of their guns.

The Weymouth

On November 5, two more Town-class cruisers arrived in front of the delta: the Dartmouth originally used on the "East Indies Station" and the Weymouth, which came from the Mediterranean like the Chatham . The three cruisers blocked the delta without knowing that the Königsberg was not ready for use due to missing machine parts. After November 1, 1914, the British cruisers, the Königsberg and the Somali began to fire in the delta. The Chatham shot at a very great distance without hitting the Königsberg directly, which retreated further into the delta. However, she met the Somali , who was closer to the sea, and set her on fire with a hit in the coal cargo that the Germans could not extinguish. The Somali burned out completely.

Somali wreck

The British sank the steamer Newbridge as a block ship in one of the mouths and pretended to have laid mines in other arms. On November 19, an aircraft was used for the first time to clear the position of the Königsberg . Until they were sunk, ten machines were gradually used, six of which were lost.

After the turn of the year, the commander handed over the management of the blockade to the commander of the Weymouth and went with his ship to Bombay to carry out urgent repairs and overhauls. In early March she returned to the Rufiji for two weeks before she was ordered to go to the Dardanelles on March 16. The period of particularly high floods, which the Königsberg might have facilitated the attempt to break out, was also over. In the meantime, the Goliath ship of the line with the commander of the Cape Squadron, Sir Herbert Goodenough King-Hall , arrived at the Rufiji Delta on March 7th, but was also recalled to the Dardanelles in March, where she was sunk in May.

Use in front of the Dardanelles

In May 1915, the Chatham returned to the Mediterranean to operate off the Dardanelles and support the landings at Gallipoli . On landing in the Suvla Bay she was the flagship of Rear Admiral John de Robeck (1862-1928, 1925 Admiral of the Fleet), who commanded the invasion fleet. The Chatham remained in action in front of the peninsula until Gallipolis was evacuated in January 1916 and provided artillery support.

At the Grand Fleet

In 1916 the ship returned to Great Britain and was the flagship of the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet . On May 26, 1916, the Chatham ran into a mine off the coast of Norfolk . She had to be brought in to Chatham , stern first, and was canceled because of the repairs necessary for the Battle of the Skagerrak . When fleet advance on August 19, in which there was no action, she was back in action, but this was canceled after the German submarine U 52 , the Nottingham 190 km southeast of the Firth of Forth had sunk. On the march back, the flagship of the "3rd Light Cruiser Squadron", the Falmouth, was torpedoed by U 66 and then sunk by another submarine, U 63 , off Flamborough Head . The Chatham supported the sinking cruiser and took over the flagship duties again. In October and December 1917 she was involved in two unsuccessful searches of the "3rd Light Cruiser Squadron" for the attackers on two Scandinavian convoys. At the time the German fleet was handed over, she was still the flagship of the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Allen Thomas Hunt . In 1919 the Chatham was decommissioned and assigned to the "Nore Reserve".

Post-war deployment

According to the Naval Defense Act of 1913, Australia and New Zealand planned to build their own navies. While Australia immediately implemented this and had sister ships of the Chatham built, New Zealand bought the battle cruiser New Zealand and had been training seamen for a war on the old cruiser Philomel since 1914 .

In 1919 the New Zealand government, advised by the new Governor General, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Jellicoe , decided to maintain a "New Zealand Division" of the Royal Navy. A light cruiser was to serve as the flagship. The British mainland offered the Canterbury and the Chatham . The New Zealanders opted for the Chatham because of the coal drive , since storage tanks would first have to be built for the oil-powered Canterbury . An independent New Zealand Navy was not created until 1941.

So the Chatham was thoroughly overhauled in Chatham from August 1920 and put into service on September 11, 1920 for the new "New Zealand Division" of the Royal Navy. At the end of the year, the Chatham began its departure through the Panama Canal under Commander Alan Geoffrey Hotham . She also visited San Diego , Acapulco, and Honolulu . The crossing of the long Pacific route to New Zealand was extremely strenuous for the crew, as it had to be covered at the most economical speed of around six knots for cost and supply reasons.

Acacia loop

On January 26, 1921, she finally reached Auckland and her new berth at Sheerlegs Wharf. There the ship was received by the Governor General Lord Jellicoe and the New Zealand Prime Minister William Massey . In his welcoming speech, Massey said he hoped that many parts of the crew would find their home in New Zealand, which actually happened in the period that followed. In February, the Chatham began a tour to all ports on the North and South Island to show the people of their new navy. The first Pacific voyage followed in July 1921. 1922 joined with the two mine sweeper sloops of the Flower class of the subtype Acacia , Veronica and Laburnum , further ships to the "New Zealand Division". In May 1924, the Chatham was replaced by the Dunedin , with a large part of the crew moving to the new ship.

The Chatham left Auckland on May 27, 1924, returned to normal service with the Royal Navy, but remained in the east as the flagship of the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron on the East Indies Station , where she replaced her sister ship Southampton . In November 1925 she was decommissioned in Devonport and sold on July 13, 1926 to the Ward company for demolition in Pembroke Dock .

literature

  • Jane's Fighting Ships of World War One. (1919) Jane's Publishing Company.
  • Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships. Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
  • Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford, 1983-88.
  • Arnold Kludas : The ships of the German Africa Lines 1880 to 1945. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, 1975, ISBN 3-7979-1867-4 .
  • Reinhard Karl Lochner: Fight in the Rufiji Delta. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-453-02420-6 .

Web links

Commons : Town class  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Use of the Philomel in the war ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.historyofwar.org
  2. ↑ The Acacia class, ordered in 1915, consisted of 24 ships that served as mine sweepers until 1917, then as escort vehicles; they were two-chimney, one-screw ships with a reinforced bow of
    1200 t displacement, oa. 80 m long, 10 m wide, 3.6 m draft, two boilers, 4-cylinder triple expansion steam engine, 17 knots, range 2000 nm at 15 knots and 250 t coal,
    two 12 pdr (76 mm ) Cannons, two 3 pdr (47 mm) anti-aircraft guns, 77 man crew.
  3. ↑ HMS Veronica (T67) was built in Port Glasgow in 1915 by Dunlop Bremner & Company and served in the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy from September 19, 1920 (?) To February 24, 1934
  4. ↑ HMS Laburnum (T48) was built by Connell & Company in Scotstoun in 1915 and served in the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy from March 11, 1922 to February 11, 1935