HMS Dragon (D46)
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The HMS Dragon (D46) was a light cruiser of the Royal Navy in World War II and was part of the Danae class . The warship was handed over to the Polish Navy on January 15, 1943 and taken over as ORP Dragon .
The cruiser was badly damaged by a German submarine on July 8, 1944 off the coast of Normandy and was later sunk by itself.
Construction and design features
The ship was laid down in Greenock near Glasgow on January 24, 1917 , launched on December 29, 1917 and entered service on August 16, 1918.
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 the Dragon could travel 1,480 nautical miles (2,741 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 15.2 cm guns, twelve torpedo tubes , two 7.62 cm and two 4.0 cm anti-aircraft guns .
Mission history
In British service
Between October and November 1919, the Dragon and her sister ships HMS Danae and HMS Dauntless operated in the Baltic Sea . They intervened in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White Army . The association supported the Lithuanian armed forces against the Bolsheviks .
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 and the structurally identical light cruisers HMS Delhi , Danae and Dauntless . The association was joined by the Dunedin in the Indian Ocean , 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 Mombasa were called. 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 Esquimalt (June 21). The union reached San Francisco on July 11, 1924 and was split up there. During the two battle cruisers with the Adelaide through the Panama Canal to the Caribbean and via Jamaica to Halifax and Quebec .
The four light cruisers of the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron circled South America and visited Callao ; Dragon and Dauntless Talcahuano (August 8th to 13th), while the other two cruisers had stopped a day earlier in Valparaíso , the port of the Chilean capital. The cruisers went through the Strait of Magellan into the Atlantic and visited Punta Arenas , the Falkland Islands and the Dragon alone the Argentine naval base Bahía Blanca from August 21 to 26, while Danae and Delhi continued to Buenos Aires and the Dauntless continued to Montevideo . After the subsequent visit to the Brazilian capital Rio de Janeiro (September 1 to 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 Dragon ended the voyage with the Danae on September 29, 1924 in Sheerness .
Until the end of 1928 the cruiser, initially with the other cruisers of the "Empire Cruise", stayed with the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron, which had been transferred to the Mediterranean.
After an overhaul, the Dragon came to the "8th Light Cruiser Squadron" at America and West Indies Station in March 1930 , where it remained in service until July 1937, alongside the flagship York and various sister ships. It was replaced by the more modern light cruiser Orion . The ship was then overhauled and assigned to the reserve on the Nore.
Second World War
At the beginning of the Second World War, the Dragon was assigned to the 7th Cruiser Task Force and patrolled the Shetland Islands in search of German submarines . In November 1939 she took part in the hunt for the German armored ship Admiral Graf Spee , operated in the Mediterranean in February 1940 and then returned to the Atlantic . The French destroyer Touareg was captured on September 16, 1940 .
On September 23, 1940, the cruiser drove off the coast of the under Vichy-French control Dakar in what is now Senegal and took part in Operation Menace , a failed Free French attempt to take over the colony. Together with the destroyers HMS Inglefield and HMS Foresight , the port of Dakar was shelled. The Foresight sank the French submarine Persée . The Dragon then ran to Freetown and took part in the unsuccessful hunt for the German ironclad Admiral Scheer in December 1940 .
Until November 1941 she was used in the Atlantic as an escort ship for various convoys and then ordered to Asia. On January 20, 1942, the warship was assigned to the task force in the Yellow Sea . After the fall of Singapore , the Dragon had to work together with the HMS Caledon and the Dutch Mr. Ms. Jacob van Heemskerck operate from Ceylon . The Dragon ran to Madagascar in May 1942 , where most of the crew was put ashore. The men were intended for use on other units. The ship was supposed to go to the UK for an overhaul. Only manned by a hull crew, the cruiser was no longer able to operate completely independently. One was forced to join various convoys. The crossing to Liverpool took over half a year.
In Polish service
On January 15, 1943, the Dragon was handed over to the Polish Navy and put into service by her under the same name. She was then overhauled and modernized by the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead . The anti-aircraft armament was strengthened, depth charges were introduced, but the torpedo tubes and a heavy artillery were also disarmed. Modern electrical equipment such as radar was also installed. The stay at the shipyard ended on August 23, 1943. The cruiser then ran to Scapa Flow . Several escort missions followed in the tonnage war of the Atlantic battle . From February 20, 1944, the Dragon escorted the northern sea convoy JW-57 to Murmansk together with the cruisers HMS Berwick and HMS Jamaica and the convoy RA-57 on the way back .
After their return, attacks on land targets and support for a sea landing were intensively practiced in preparation for the landing in Normandy, together with several large units.
On June 2, 1944, the Dragon ran together with the battleships HMS Ramillies and HMS Warspite , the cruisers HMS Mauritius , HMS Frobisher and HMS Arethusa and the sister ship Danae and 24 smaller units in the direction of Normandy. Shortly before landing, German coastal batteries at Colleville-sur-Orne and on Sword Beach were shot at from around four kilometers away as part of Operation Neptune . Three sailors were injured by German 10.5 cm defensive fire and the cruiser withdrew, with the Ramillies and the monitor providing fire protection to HMS Roberts . The 10.5 cm coastal battery was then switched off by the Roberts . On the morning of June 6, 1944, D-Day , the Dragon was ordered to Juno Beach to support the Allied landing forces with her artillery. The following day she took German positions near Caen under fire. On June 8th there were serious technical problems with the communication systems and the bombardment could only be continued during the night. The goal was the 21st Panzer Division near Varaville . On June 9th there was an artillery duel with a German coastal defense position near Houlgate . The Polish warship then ran to Portsmouth to load new ammunition.
Land targets at Caen , Gouneville , Lebisey and Varaville were fired again between June 12 and 17 . During this period, an unknown submarine attacked the cruiser unsuccessfully with torpedoes. On June 18, the Dragon escorted the battleship HMS Nelson to Portsmouth. The Nelson ran into a sea mine and was damaged.
On July 7, 1944, the cruiser returned to Caen to provide artillery support in taking the city, which had been besieged for a month. In the early morning of July 8, at 49 ° 22 ' N , 0 ° 21' W at 5:40 a.m. , the Dragon was attacked and severely damaged by a German micro-submarine of the Neger type . 21 Polish sailors were killed in the attack. The ship listed 9 ° and began to sink, but was stabilized and later towed into shallower waters. The small submarine was piloted by Corporal Walter Gerhold , who was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for the successful attack .
After pumping out the flooded engine room, it could be seen that the hull had a leak of approximately 5 × 15 m. Although the ship was still buoyant and repairable, it was decided to abandon it. On July 10, most of the surviving crew left the ship. 15 men were left behind to dismantle important equipment. Two bodies were found that were buried at sea. On July 16, the Dragon was decommissioned and sunk on July 20 as an artificial reef for Mulberry Harbor B near Courseulles-sur-Mer .
On October 4, 1944, the sister ship Danae was put into service as the successor to the Dragon by the Polish Navy as ORP Conrad . The crew of the cruiser consisted mostly of the survivors of the Dragon .
See also
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, also ORP DRAGON - World War 1 D-type Light Cruiser on naval-history.net
- HMS DRAGON - August 1919 to July 1921, British Waters, Baltic Sea, Atlantic Fleet on naval-history.net (logbooks)
- "The Empire Cruise" - The Visit of 'HMS Dauntless' to Bluff, May 1924 with stages of the journey
- HMS Dragon on uboat.net ( engl. )