HMS Danae (D44)
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The HMS Danae (D44) was a light cruiser of the Royal Navy during the First and Second World War and the lead ship of the Danae class named after her . The warship was handed over to the Polish Navy on October 4, 1944 and used by them as ORP Conrad .
The cruiser survived the war and was scrapped in Great Britain in 1948.
Construction and design features
The ship was laid down on December 1, 1916 at Armstrong Whitworth in Walker, a suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne . It was launched on January 26, 1918 and was named after Danaë , a lover of Zeus and mother of Perseus , from Greek mythology . On July 22, 1918, the Danae was put into service.
At 29 knots (54 km / h), the ship was one of the fastest cruisers of its time. The drive consisted of two Brown Curtis steam turbines with six boilers, which together delivered 40,000 hp (29.4 MW) on two screws . The fuel supply was 1,060 t, with which it could travel 1,480 nautical miles (2741 km) at a top speed of 29 knots and up to 6,700 nautical miles (12,408 km) at 10 knots (18.5 km / h). The cruiser was lightly armored. The thickness of the armor on the sides and the command deck was 76 mm. The tanks and the ammunition chambers were protected with 57 mm armor steel, the main deck with 25 mm.
The armament initially consisted of six 152-mm guns, twelve torpedo tubes, two 76.2-mm and two 40-mm "pom-pom" anti-aircraft guns .
From 1943, the armament consisted of five 152-mm guns, one 102-mm, eight 40-mm and twelve 20-mm anti-aircraft guns. In addition, the ship was equipped with devices for depth bombing.
Mission history
1918 to 1920
The cruiser was in Harwich stationed 5th Light Cruiser Squadron assigned and patrolled in the last months of World War I in the North Sea . Between October and November 1919, the Danae and her sister ships Dragon and Dauntless operated in the Baltic Sea and intervened on the side of the whites in the Russian Civil War . The association supported the Lithuanian armed forces against the Bolsheviks .
In February 1920, the Danae was assigned to the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet .
1921 to 1929
In 1923 the Special Service Squadron took over the cruiser. It was a small fleet, which also included the battle cruisers HMS Hood and HMS Repulse , the structurally identical light cruisers HMS Delhi , Dragon and Dauntless . The association joined the Indian Ocean on the Dunedin , which then remained in New Zealand as a station ship. From Australia, the Australian light cruiser Adelaide joined the battlecruisers on the march back to Great Britain. The association served propaganda purposes and should carry out a world trip. The ships left Devonport on November 27, 1923 for Freetown . Thereafter the ports of Cape Town , Port Elizabeth , East London and Durban , which was reached on December 31, were called. In the new year, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam were called by the Danae in mid-January , while the association stopped in Mombasa . Before Trincomalee , the Dunedin joined the association, which also visited Singapore , Albany , Adelaide , Melbourne , Hobart , Sydney and Wellington via Penang . New Zealand was left on May 16 and then entered Suva and Samara in Fiji . The next destinations were Honolulu (June 6) and, for the light cruisers, the Canadian naval base Esquimault (June 21). The union reached San Francisco on July 11, 1924 and was split up there.
While the two battle cruisers with the Adelaide were sailing through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean and via Jamaica to Halifax and Quebec , the four light cruisers of the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron circumnavigated South America and visited Callao , Danae and Delhi Valparaíso (August 7th to 12th) while the other two cruisers went to the more southern Talcahuano . The cruisers went through the Strait of Magellan into the Atlantic and visited Punta Arenas , the Falkland Islands and again Danae and Delhi Buenos Aires (23-28 August), while the others called at Montevideo . After visiting the Brazilian capital Rio de Janeiro (September 1-8), the cruisers ran back home via Cape Verde and met shortly before their destination with the battlecruisers Hood and Repulse from Newfoundland and the Australian Adelaide . The Danae ended the voyage with the Dragon on September 29, 1924 in Sheerness .
Until the end of 1928 the Danae then served with the 1st Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean together with the other light cruisers of the Empire Cruise. The cruiser was then ordered back to Great Britain . There the ship was fundamentally overhauled and modernized.
1930 to 1938
After the overhaul, the Danae was returned to active service in 1930 and was assigned to the 8th Cruiser Squadron based in the British West Indies as a replacement for the sister ship Durban . It remained there until it was replaced by the new Apollo in January 1936.
At the end of 1936 the ship was moved to China and escorted various evacuation transports from Shanghai to Hong Kong after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War . The cruiser was also shot at directly by the Imperial Japanese Navy . In November of the same year, the Danae was replaced by the new Birmingham , ordered back to Great Britain and placed in reserve.
1939 to 1944
The cruiser was reactivated in July 1939, initially operated in the South Atlantic and since October in the Indian Ocean . On March 23, 1940, the Danae was ordered to Malaya . She conducted several patrols in the sea area between Singapore and the Dutch East Indies . The ship was ordered into Chinese waters on January 20, 1941 and escorted convoys in the Yellow Sea and between the Dutch East Indies and Ceylon together with the Durban , the Dauntless , the HMAS Canberra and the HMS Cornwall . On February 20, 1942, she reached Batavia and then Colombo , from where the Danae was withdrawn to Cape Town for overhaul.
After an eleven month stay in the shipyard, the warship was put back into service in July 1943. In March 1944, the Danae returned to Great Britain and was assigned to the 1st Cruiser Squadron . Immediately before the Allied landing in Normandy , the cruiser ran off Sword Beach to attack land targets. Also participated in the operation, the HMS Ramillies , the HMS Warspite , the HMS Mauritius , the HMS Frobisher , the HMS Arethusa , the ORP Dragon and ten destroyers of S, V and Hunt-class part. The Danae entered the ports of Port-en-Bessin-Huppain and Ouistreham in July . She returned to the UK in August and was used as a Hulk in Plymouth .
From 1944
On July 7, 1944, a small German submarine of the Neger type sank the Dragon . Therefore, the Polish Navy received a new cruiser with the Danae . It was placed under Polish command on October 4th and renamed Conrad . Originally the cruiser was to be named either Wilno or Lwów . Since the cities of Vilnius and Lemberg were in the eastern Polish territories claimed by the Soviet Union , the British protested. Therefore, the politically more neutral name of the Polish-born English writer Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, who is better known under the pseudonym Joseph Conrad , was chosen. Most of the crew consisted of the survivors of the Dragon .
Under the command of Stanisław Dzienisiewicz, the Conrad was overtaken in Southampton and Chatham until January 23, 1945 . She was relocated to Scapa Flow in February and assigned to the 10th Cruiser Squadron on April 2nd . The cruiser group also included the HMS Birmingham , the HMS Bellona , the HMS Diadem and the HMS Dido .
Just a week later, the Polish cruiser had to be withdrawn due to engine damage. The ship did not leave the shipyard until three weeks after the end of the war in Europe on May 30th and was assigned to the 29th destroyer flotilla. The association also included the HMS Zodiac , the HMS Zephyr and the HMS Zest . The Conrad was stationed at the main base of the Kriegsmarine in Wilhelmshaven . The city had previously been captured by the 1st Polish Armored Division .
Until the end of 1945 she served as a transport ship for the Polish Red Cross . In January 1946 the ship returned to Rosyth, from where several training missions were carried out together with the remaining Polish destroyers ORP Błyskawica , ORP Piorun and ORP Garland .
From March the crew began to prepare the handover of the ship to Great Britain. In August the crew was halved. The ship was returned to the Royal Navy on September 28, 1946 and renamed Danae . The cruiser was transferred to Falmouth and sold to the TW Ward Company for scrapping on January 22nd, 1948. By March, the Danae was scrapped by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd in Barrow-in-Furness.
See also
- HMS Danae - another British warship named HMS Danae
- Pacific War
- Naval warfare during Operation Overlord
literature
- Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922-1946. Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich 1980, ISBN 0-85177-146-7 .
- Norman Friedman: British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, South Yorkshire 2011, ISBN 978-1-84832-100-7 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7
Web links
- HMS DANAE, ORP CONRAD - World War 1 D-type Light Cruiser on naval-history.net
- HMS DANAE - December 1920 to November 1921, Atlantic Fleet (1st Light Cruiser Squadron, including Baltic) on naval-history.net (logbooks)
- “The Empire Cruise” - The Visit of 'HMS Dauntless' to Bluff, May 1924 with stages of the journey
- HMS Danae on uboat.net ( engl. )