HMS Delight (H38)

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HMS Delight
The Delight
The Delight
Ship data
flag United KingdomUnited Kingdom (Naval War Flag) United Kingdom
Ship type destroyer
class D class
Shipyard Fairfield Shipbuilding , Govan
Build number 646
Order February 2, 1931
Keel laying April 22, 1931
Launch June 2, 1932
Commissioning January 31, 1933
Whereabouts Sunk by Stukas on July 29, 1940
Ship dimensions and crew
length
100.3 m ( Lüa )
96.9 m ( Lpp )
width 10.1 m
Draft Max. 3.78 m
displacement 1,375 ts standard
1,890 ts maximum
 
crew 145
Machine system
machine 3 Admiralty 3-drum boilers
2 Parsons - geared turbines
Machine
performance 		36,000 PS (26,478 kW)
Top
speed 		36 kn (67 km / h)
propeller 2
Armament
Sensors

Type 121 sonar

HMS Delight (H38) was one of eight destroyers of the D-class of the British Royal Navy . During the Second World War , the destroyer was awarded the Battle Honor "Norway 1940". On July 29, 1940, the destroyer was sunk in the English Channel by German dive bombers .

History of the ship

The Delight was the second ship of the two D-class destroyers ordered on February 2, 1931 at Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. in Govan . The ship was launched on June 2, 1932 as the fifth of the class and was put into service on January 30, 1933 as the seventh ship of the class.
The new destroyer was the twelfth ship of the Royal Navy with the name Delight since 1583. The last time a gunboat had carried the name from 1856 to 1867.

Mission history

The destroyer was fully operational on April 24, 1934 and then carried out a few tests with a new type of torpedo before moving to the sister ships of the Mediterranean Fleet . They replaced V- and W-class units in the 1st (British) destroyer flotilla . In the fall of 1933 the flotilla moved briefly to the Persian Gulf with its destroyers . In the autumn of 1934 the Delight was overhauled at the Portsmouth naval shipyard , and from January 1935 with the other units of the class at the China Station it began service in the 8th (from spring 1939: 21st) destroyer flotilla, while that was there until then used units of the V and W class in the Mediterranean. However, the Abyssinia crisis between Italy and the United Kingdom led to the transfer of the majority of the D-class destroyers to the Red Sea in September 1935 to monitor Italian activities. The Delight was one of the first units there, but moved back to East Asia in October 1935. The tasks of the units at the station included friendship visits to various ports, safeguarding British interests and British citizens, especially after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, and the fight against pirates. At the end of August 1939, the Delight belonged to the division of the 21st Flotilla, which left Hong Kong and the station area before the outbreak of the war in Europe for the Mediterranean.

War missions

Like the sister ships, it was used in the Mediterranean for various escort tasks and the search for German merchant ships or ships with cargo destined for Germany. At the end of the year, the Delight was one of the units in the class that were relocated to the Home Fleet . On December 21, 1939, she left Malta together with the Diana to secure the battleship Malaya, which was laying in the North Atlantic, to Gibraltar, and then returned home with the sister ship.

On December 30th, the Delight arrived in Portsmouth and on January 27th, 1940, she was ready for the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow . Initially, the destroyer was assigned to the 3rd Flotilla there. The D-class Delight , Duncan and Diana replaced four I-class destroyers surrendered to the 20th (mine-laying) destroyer flotilla in this flotilla . During the Allied operation against the German occupation of Norway (Operation Weser Exercise ), the Delight and parts of the flotilla were initially destroyer escorts of the aircraft carrier Furious . When the Allies gave up the attack on Trondheim , the Delight was one of the destroyers on May 1, 1940, who evacuated Allied troops from Åndalsnes and delivered them in the fjord to the light cruisers Manchester and Birmingham , which could not call at the port themselves.
In the course of the withdrawal movements of the Allied troops from Norway ( Operation Alphabet ) after the start of the German offensive in France , the ship repeatedly secured the troop transporters and also transported troops itself. Delight was involved in the withdrawal of the Allied troops from Bodø at the end of May . On June 7th, the Delight was part of the securing of the second fast evacuation convoy from Harstad with seven troop transports that carried 10,000 soldiers back to Great Britain. To secure this convoy also belonged the cruiser Southampton , flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, Fleet Admiral Lord Cork and Orrery , the anti-aircraft cruiser Coventry as well as the destroyers Havelock , Fame , Firedrake and Beagle . The company Juno of the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau did not lead to the discovery of the British evacuation convoys, especially since the Germans stopped their advance north after the sinking of the aircraft carrier Glorious and its two security destroyers because of the torpedo hit on the Scharnhorst by the destroyer Acasta . The Delight was supposed to be looking for the auxiliary ship Vandyck (13,241 GRT), which did not appear at the agreed meeting point. It was sunk on the 10th by the Luftwaffe off Andenes . The evacuation convoy and its security were first attacked on the 9th by the Luftwaffe ; further attacks followed on June 12th. The Germans could not get a bomb hit on one of the British ships. Close hits caused damage to a number of ships, but neither a transport ship nor a security unit failed as a result of these attacks. The convoy reached Greenock on June 12, 1940 .

After the end of the operations off Norway, the ship remained with the Home Fleet in the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, whose areas of operation were the English Channel and the western access routes to the British Isles. Their tasks now included in particular securing the coastal escorts with which Welsh coal and goods were transported from overseas to London.

The end of the delight

In the first phase of the Battle of Britain , when the attacks were mainly directed against escorts, the Delight left Portsmouth in the early evening of July 29, 1940 to return to the Clyde through the Channel and the Irish Sea . A new Freya radar system in northern France discovered this at a distance of 60 nautical miles and alerted the Air Force. Then twelve attacked Ju 87 -Stukas the III./Sturzkampfgeschwader 2 under Group Commander Walter Enneccerus the Delight about 30 km off Portland Bill to. The destroyer received a bomb hit on the forecastle, which started a fire and eventually led to an explosion. The ship sank in the evening in Portland Harbor to 50 ° 34 '  N , 2 ° 26'  W coordinates: 50 ° 34 '25 "  N , 2 ° 26' 1"  W . In the sinking, 18 crew members were killed, another 59 were injured, some seriously. The survivors were rescued by the destroyers Broke and Vansittart who had come to the rescue, as well as a large number of smaller boats.

Today Delight lies broken into several parts at a depth of over 60 meters. The wreck is a protected space under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NAVAL EVENTS, DECEMBER 1939, Friday 15th - Sunday 31st
  2. ↑ German : Amazon to Ivanhoe , p. 58
  3. ^ Service History HMS Delight
  4. ↑ Haarr: The Battle for Norway , p 141
  5. ↑ Haarr: The Battle for Norway , p 166
  6. ↑ Haarr: The Battle for Norway , S. 271 f.
  7. ^ A b Rohwer: Sea War , June 4–10, 1940 Norway
  8. ^ Rohwer: Maritime War, July 9-30, 1940 Canal
  9. ↑ German : Amazon to Ivanhoe , p. 58
  10. ↑ NAVAL EVENTS, JULY 1940 Monday 15th - Wednesday 31st
  11. ^ The Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 (Designation of Vessels and Controlled Sites) Order 2008 No. 950 Article 2.k)

Remarks

  1. ^ The troop transporters [[Duchess of York (ship) |]] (20,021 GRT), Oronsay (20,043 GRT), Ormonde (14,982 GRT), Arandora Star (15,501 GRT) and the ferries Royal Ulsterman (3244 GRT), Ulster Prince ( 3791 BRT) and Ulster Monarch (3791 BRT); the ferries then brought the French troops to France

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 2009, ISBN 978-1-59114-081-8 .
  • Geirr H. Haarr: The Battle for Norway: April – June 1940 , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 2010, ISBN 978-1-59114-051-1 .
  • MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War Two , Arms and Armor Press, London 1988 ISBN 0-85368-910-5

Web links