HMS Defense (1907)
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 HMS Defense |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| Shipyard |
Pembroke naval shipyard , |
| Keel laying | February 22, 1905 |
| Launch | April 24, 1907 |
| delivery | February 9, 1909 |
| period of service |
1909-1916 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk May 31, 1916 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
14,600 ts , max. 16,100 ts |
| length |
158.2 m over everything |
| width |
22.7 m |
| Draft |
7.9 m |
| crew |
893-903 men |
| drive |
24 Yarrow boilers |
| speed |
22.9 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Coal supply |
2,060 ts |
| Armor | |
| Belt armor |
152 mm (6 in) |
| Armored deck |
up to 40 mm (0.75–1.5 in) |
| Towers |
120–200 mm (4.5–8 in) |
| Barbeds |
76–175 mm (3–7 in) |
| Ammunition lifts |
52–76 mm (2–3 in) |
| Command tower |
250 mm (10 in) |
| Sister ships | |
The HMS Defense ( dt. Defense ) was a battleship of the Minotaur class . She was the last armored cruiser built for the Royal Navy. In 1916 she was lost in the Battle of the Skagerrak.
Use before the world war
Initially, she was assigned to the Home Fleet . At first she formed the 5th Cruiser Squadron with the two sister ships Minotaur and Shannon , in July 1909 she was assigned to the 1st Cruiser Squadron .
In November / December 1912 she served as the escort ship for the Royal Yacht Medina . This was the tenth M-class ship of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company . She was supposed to transport King George V and Queen Mary of England to Delhi , where on December 12th of the same year George was to be crowned Emperor of India and to come into service as a royal yacht. At the beginning of 1913 the Defense was moved to the China Station . In 1914 she was relocated to the 1st Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean and served in the Adriatic Sea off Montenegro and Albania.
War effort
Use in the Mediterranean and South Atlantic
At the beginning of the First World War she was the flagship of the 1st Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Ernest Troubridge in the Mediterranean . Troubridge participated unsuccessfully in the hunt for the SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau . Above all, it was supposed to prevent German ships from breaking through into the Adriatic. In addition to the Defense, he had three other armored cruisers, the HMS Warrior , the HMS Black Prince and the HMS Duke of Edinburgh , the light cruiser HMS Gloucester and eight destroyers.
On the night of August 5th he had been looking for the Germans with his armored cruisers and destroyers, as he had only been informed four hours late that the Germans were arriving in Messina. During the day he had withdrawn to the east to the Greek coast, as he expected coal steamers there and his destroyers had only limited supplies. Directly in front of Messina was only the Gloucester, which Troubridge had left there .
When the Germans left around 5 p.m. on the evening of 6 August, the Gloucester under Captain William A. Howard Kelly immediately took up the chase and informed the British command by radio. The Germans tried to disrupt radio traffic, which they occasionally succeeded in and at times led to incomplete information. They ran northeast along the Italian coast, apparently towards the Adriatic Sea, Troubridge's association off the Greek coast to the north. At 11 p.m. the German commander, Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon , changed course and the two German ships were now heading southeast. They continued to try to interfere with the Gloucester radio communications, but only partially succeeded. At 12:10 a.m. on August 7, Troubridge turned around with his 1st Cruiser Squadron and ran south with the four armored cruisers to intercept Breslau and Goeben during the night. Its destroyers still had insufficient coal stocks to be used effectively. At 3:47 am, still near the Greek coast and far to the north, Troubridge broke off the march to the south, as a night battle was hardly possible and he saw no chance against the Goebes during the day . He was charged with the fact that the German ships were able to escape to Constantinople and had to answer to a court martial, which, however, acquitted him. However, like the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Archibald Berkeley Milne , he was never again given command at sea.
On August 16, 1914, she took part with the Warrior and Destroyers in the advance of the French fleet with three battleships, 10 older liners, three cruisers and destroyers into the Adriatic in order to provoke the Austrian fleet into a battle. However, only the light cruiser SMS Zenta and the destroyer SMS Ulan , the Antivari, today Bar , were shot at. The Zenta was sunk by the French ships of the line, the Ulan escaped. Then the task of cordoning off the Adriatic was left to the French and the remaining British ships, including the Defense , moved to the eastern Mediterranean. The Defense was deployed in front of the Dardanelles in September and then sent to the South Atlantic to reinforce Admiral Christopher Cradock's squadron , which was supposed to intercept Vice Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee's German East Asia squadron . Only sent to Cape Town , after the defeat of the Royal Navy at Coronel , she was assigned to the newly formed British Cape Squadron under Vice Admiral Herbert Goodenough King-Hall , which also includes the sister ship Minotaur and the light cruisers HMS Astraea , HMS Hyacinth and HMS Weymouth as well as the battleship HMS Albion the Canopus class belonged. The also newly formed West Africa squadron included the Black Prince and the Duke of Edinburgh , who had been stationed in Gibraltar since November 1914 after a mission in the Red Sea .
However, the German squadron was captured and wiped out in the naval battle off the Falkland Islands in December 1914, which is why the armored cruisers were ordered back to the Grand Fleet in Great Britain in the winter of 1914/15.
Loss in the Battle of Skagerrak
After being reassigned to the Home Fleet, the Defense became the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Robert Arbuthnot's 1st Cruiser Squadron. In the Skagerrak Battle on May 31, 1916, the Defense together with the Warrior , which also belonged to the 1st Kreuzer Squadron, attacked the small cruiser Wiesbaden , which was badly damaged and unable to move between the two enemy fleets. She came under concentrated fire from the German large cruisers ( battle cruisers ) Lützow and Derfflinger and was sunk at 18:15. All 893 men of the crew (according to other sources: 903) were killed.
The burning warrior retreated west. She was badly damaged by shell hits right at the start of the battle and was towed away by the aircraft mother ship HMS Engadine during the night . This also took the surviving crew of 743 men on board. On June 1, 1916, the Warrior was abandoned at 8:25 a.m. and sank after the tow cables broke. 67 men had fallen on it.
During the night around 12:12 a.m., HMS Black Prince , which was also part of the 1st cruiser squadron , and had lost the connection, was shot down by the German battleships SMS Thuringia , SMS Ostfriesland and SMS Friedrich der Große without firing a shot can. The 852 crew members and five civilians who worked as stewards on board went down with the ship. There were no survivors.
Defense wreck
The Defense wreck was located and first dived in 2001 during an expedition by the British wreck diving expert Innes McCartney . Contrary to the reports of her sinking, which indicated massive destruction, the ship is in good condition. At least four of the turrets are still in place and facing the enemy. Since May 31, 2006, the 90th anniversary of the battle, the wreck has been protected as a “Protected Place” by the British “ Protection of Military Remains Act ” of 1986. It may be viewed from the outside by divers, but entering, collecting souvenirs or performing salvage work is prohibited. This also applies to the wreck of the Black Prince, which was also found in 2001 .
Sister ships
The Defense's sister ships , the Minotaur and the Shannon , both took part in the Skagerrak Battle in the association of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, which did not actively intervene in the battle and were abandoned in 1920 and 1922, respectively.
literature
- Geoffrey Bennett: The Skagerrakschlacht, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich (1976), ISBN 3-453-00618-6
- John Campbell: Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting , Conway Maritime Press, London (1998), ISBN 1-55821-759-2
- Roger Chesneau (Ed.), Eugene M. Kolesnik (Ed.), John Roberts, HC Timewell: Warships of the World 1860 to 1905 - Volume 1: Great Britain / Germany , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz (1983) ar, ISBN 3- 7637-5402-4
- Arthur J. Marder: From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919. III: Jutland and After, May 1916 - December 1916 , Oxford University Press, (Second ed.) London (1978), ISBN 0-19-215841-4 .
- Innes McCartney: The armored cruiser HMS Defense. A case-study in assessing the Royal Navy shipwrecks of the Battle of Jutland (1916) as an archaeological resource , in: The international journal of nautical archeology , Oxford u. a. (Blackwell) ISSN 0305-7445 , ZDB -ID 120505-5 , Vol. 41, 2012, 1, pp. 56-66.
Web links
- HMS Defense missions
- Wreck of the HMS Defense
- The dead of the HMS Defense
- HMS Defense
- Data on HMS Defense at Minotaur class cruiser
- Defense data and images about the HMS Defense at armored cruiser Minotaur class
Footnotes
Coordinates: 56 ° 58 ′ 2 " N , 5 ° 49 ′ 50" E