HMS Dunedin

HMS Dunedin in Brisbane, 1925
Overview
Type	Light cruiser
Shipyard	Armstrong-Whitworth , Newcastle upon Tyne
Order	1916
Keel laying	November 5, 1917
Launch	November 19, 1918
Namesake	Dunedin City , New Zealand
Commissioning	September 13, 1919
Whereabouts	sunk by a German submarine on November 24, 1941
Technical specifications
displacement	Standard : 4,850  ts , maximum 6,030 ts
length	Lpp : 135.73 m Lüa : 144.11 m
width	14.18 m
Draft	4.27 m
crew	486 men (1941)
drive	6 Yarrow boilers 2 Brown Curtis turbines 2 screws 42.145  WPS
speed	29.18 kn (54 km / h)
Range	3500 nm at 15 kn
Armament	6 × 152 mm L / 45 Mark XII guns (1,200 rounds) 2 × 102 mm L / 45 Mark V guns (2 × 1) 8 × 12.7 mm Fla-MG (2 × 4) 12 × 533 mm torpedo tubes (4 × 3, on upper deck)
Fuel supply	up to 1,050 ts of oil
Armor	Side armor: 76 mm Deck: 25 mm Ammunition chambers: 25-57 mm
Radar equipment	from 1940: radar type 286M

The HMS Dunedin was a British light cruiser of Danae class . The ship was named after the city ​​of Dunedin on the South Island of New Zealand . The cruiser is the only British warship to be baptized with this name. The Dunedin was on November 5, 1917 the shipyard Armstrong Whitworth & Co. in English Newcastle upon Tyne on Kiel placed and ran on 19 November 1918 by the stack. Commissioning takes place on September 13, 1919.

Armament

The armament consisted of six 152 mm L / 45 Mark XII guns (each with 200 rounds of ammunition) in individual setup, with all six cannons in the center ship line (two each in front of and behind the superstructures in an elevated position and two in front and behind the two Chimneys) and thus could be brought to bear on a broad side . The weight of one broad side was around 272 kilograms. In addition, there were two individually set up 102 mm anti-aircraft guns on both sides of the funnels and two 40 mm Mark II rapid fire guns on board. Until the relatively early loss of the ship, this armament hardly changed, only the two older 40-mm cannons were exchanged for eight heavy 12.7-mm anti- aircraft machine guns in two quad mounts during a stay in the shipyard in 1940 .

The cruiser's torpedo armament was very strong, with twelve 533 mm torpedo tubes in four rotatable triple tube sets on the upper deck, with two tube sets each able to fire to port and starboard .

Operations in the prewar period

After commissioning and the completion of the test drives, the Dunedin initially operated as a patrol ship in the Baltic Sea, with Danzig , Libau and Copenhagen being called in June and July 1920 . From February 1921 the cruiser was back with the 1st cruiser squadron of the Atlantic Fleet and took part in their missions.

Service on the New Zealand station

In 1924 the cruiser was assigned to the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy to replace the older light cruiser Chatham . On the ferry trip through the Mediterranean and Aden , the Dunedin joined the Special Service Squadron in the Indian Ocean . It was a small fleet with the battle cruisers Hood and Repulse and the structurally identical light cruisers Danae , Delhi , Dragon and Dauntless . With these the Dunedin visited Ceylon , Penang , Singapore and Australia and reached New Zealand in May 1924 , where it was stationed in Auckland . The cruiser remained at this station until 1932. During this time, patrol and maneuvering trips in the Pacific in particular determined the everyday life of the ship, including Papeete and Suva . In 1931, the cruiser also participated in relief efforts in the city of Napier after the Hawke's Bay earthquake . In the spring of 1932 the Dunedin moved back to Great Britain for a major overhaul for five months. After the completion of this repair work in Chatham , the cruiser ran back to New Zealand, where it arrived in October 1932. Representation trips and patrol trips took the ship to Samoa , Tahaa , Sydney and Tonga in the following years .

reserve

In March 1937 the Dunedin finally moved back to the United Kingdom via Jamaica and, after the ship took part in the naval parade on the occasion of the coronation of King George VI in May 1937 . had participated, temporarily transferred to reserve there in January 1938. For 18 months the cruiser served as an artillery school and as a training ship for cadet training in Portsmouth . During a practice shooting, the Dunedin sank on November 15, 1938 over the Hurd's Deep , northwest of the island of Alderney , the former British fleet supplier Bacchus used as a target ship by artillery fire.

Second World War

When war broke out in September 1939, the ship was put back into active service and initially assigned to the 12th Cruiser Squadron in Scapa Flow . From September 30, 1939, the Dunedin operated from Scapa Flow, meanwhile detached to the 11th Cruiser Squadron, as part of the Northern Patrol in the area between the Faroe Islands and the Orkney Islands, in order to intercept any German merchant ships breaking through to Germany . Apart from a temporary (and unsuccessful) search for the two German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , which had made a brief advance against the Northern Patrol in November 1939, this period of operation was uneventful.

1940: Operations in the Caribbean and the Central Atlantic

In late February 1940, the Dunedin was withdrawn from the Northern Patrol and relocated to Kingston , Jamaica . During the transfer, the Dunedin put the German freighter Heidelberg (6,530 GRT), which had previously left Aruba , about 60 nautical miles west-southwest of the Windward Passage on March 2, 1940 . To avoid a capture, the Germans sank their ship by opening the sea valves themselves. The entire crew of the German ship was taken up by the Dunedin . The crew of the Heidelberg , who were treated politely and friendly on board the British cruiser, were landed in Jamaica on March 3 and interned there .

Only five days later, on March 7, 1940, the cruiser, together with the Canadian destroyer Assiniboine , sighted the German freighter Hannover (5,537 GRT) in the Mona Passage, which had previously left Curaçao . The German ship tried to evade access by the two warships and fled to the three-mile zone of the Dominican Republic . As the destroyer was still in the immediate vicinity, the Germans set their ship on fire in the hold in the early hours of March 8, around 1 a.m., and rowed the dinghies to the nearby coast. However, since the sea valves had not been opened and the fire had not ignited the cargo as suspected, the Hannover did not sink and could be boarded on the morning of the same day by a prize squad from the Dunedin . The British still needed almost four days to finally extinguish the smoldering fires on board, but were ultimately able to save the ship and tow it to Jamaica. After a makeshift conversion, the Hanover later became the first British escort aircraft carrier , the Audacity .

The Dunedin then remained until the summer of 1940 as part of the 8th Cruiser Squadron in the Caribbean and took over security services. Ordered back to Great Britain in August 1940, the ship received eight new 12.7 mm anti-aircraft machine guns during a shipyard overhaul in Greenock that lasted until September 13 and was demagnetized to improve mine protection. In the late 1940s, the cruiser secured the coast of southwest England and the southern foothills of the Irish Sea and was kept in readiness to combat any German invasion intentions (see also the article Sea Lion Company ).

Detached on Christmas Day 1940 to escort the large and heavily secured troop transport convoy WS-5A , which was en route from Liverpool to Freetown , the Dunedin fogged this convoy on the morning of December 25th, when the unit was about 700 nautical miles west of Cape Finisterre was attacked by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper (the Dunedin , however, had no direct combat contact with the German ship, which after a brief artillery duel with the British heavy cruiser Berwick broke off the attack unsuccessfully). Subsequently, the Dunedin moved to Gibraltar , where it arrived on December 29, 1940, and took over security tasks there until February 1941.

1941: Operations against enemy merchant ships in the Atlantic

After a stay in the shipyard in Devonport in March 1941, the Dunedin moved back to the Central Atlantic on April 8th to search for German blockade breakers , submarine supply ships and auxiliary cruisers as well as Vichy-French merchant ships. Here, the cruiser achieved some successes again:

• June 15, 1941: Seizure and capture of the large German supply tanker Lothringen (10,746 GRT) north of Cape Verde . The ship had previously been sighted by an aircraft belonging to the British aircraft carrier Eagle . In addition to top secret documents from the German Enigma encryption machine , 36 German submarine torpedoes were captured on board , which gave the British side an insight into the design of this weapon. The tanker was later incorporated into the British merchant fleet as Empire Salvage , survived the war and went to the Netherlands in 1946.
• June 30, 1941: The Vichy-French flagged freighter Ville de Tamatave (4,993 GRT) is seized and captured east of the Saint-Peter-and-Saint-Pauls rock . The ship was later made available to the British Elder Dempster Lines and was lost in January 1943 in a storm shipwreck in the North Atlantic (with 88 deaths).
• July 1, 1941: The capture and capture of the freighter D´Entrecasteaux (7,291 GRT) sailing under the Vichy French flag . The ship was later handed over to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) and used under the same name for the British Ellerman Lines . The ship was lost on November 8, 1942 in a torpedo attack by the German submarine U 154 .
• July 22, 1941: The capture and capture of the freighter Ville de Rouen (5,598 GRT), also flying the Vichy French flag, east of Natal . The ship was later handed over to the Ministry of War Transport (MoWT) and used under the same name. It was lost in December 1942 in a German submarine attack.

In total, the Dunedin was able to raise six German or Vichy-French merchant ships with a total of 40,695 GRT or force them to sink.

Until the autumn of 1941, the Dunedin operated together with the two heavy cruisers HMS Devonshire and HMS Dorsetshire , still in the Central and South Atlantic against German supply ships and auxiliary cruisers. All three ships operated independently of each other. The Devonshire succeeded in sinking the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis on November 22nd . After this success, the Dunedin received the order to search for the German submarine supply ship ( Z-Schiff ) Python (3,664 GRT), which was suspected in the sea area south of the Sankt-Peter-und-Sankt-Pauls-Fels.

Sinking

In the afternoon of November 24th, around 2:50 p.m., the lookout of the German submarine U 124 (under the command of Kapitänleutnant Johann Mohr ), which was searching for the submarine U 126 (that the surviving crew members of the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis , which was sunk on November 22nd ), coincidentally Dunedin, which is traveling south at about 17 knots, east of the Saint-Peter-and-Saint-Pauls rock , about 900 nautical miles west of Freetown . The periscope of the submarine was noticed on the British cruiser , but no evasive maneuver was initiated, but rather steered towards the submarine at high speed in order to be able to carry out a ramming. U 124 initially dived in front of the approaching opponent and got into a more favorable shooting position. About 25 minutes later the submarine reappeared diagonally behind the British ship and at 3:21 p.m. fired a fan of three torpedoes at the Dunedin from around 5,700 m away .

At 3:26 p.m., two torpedoes hit the Dunedin on the starboard side . The first hit amidships, causing severe water ingress in the engine rooms . He also destroyed the radio system and let the on-board power supply collapse. The second torpedo struck stern , tearing the rearmost 152 mm gun overboard and shattering the propeller shafts. Since the ship was running at a relatively high speed, the transverse bulkheads could not withstand the water pressure and broke. As a result, the Dunedin began to sink over the stern within a few minutes . An emergency call could not be sent because the radio system was destroyed. At 3:43 p.m. the ship disappeared from the surface of the water. An estimated 200 seamen were killed by the torpedoing and sinking alone, including the commander, Richard S. Lovatt.

Around 280 sailors, many of them wounded, clung to floating debris and seven Carley rafts . The submarine briefly circled the sinking site, but then ran away from the scene.

The fate of the shipwrecked

The crew members of the Dunedin who stayed behind at sea gradually died in the following days from their wounds or exhaustion, died of thirst or fell victim to attacks by sharks . Since no emergency call had been made, no ship was sent to the rescue and the fate of the cruiser remained unknown for the time being. It was not until November 27, three days after the sinking, that the single American freighter Nishmaha , on the way from Takoradi to Philadelphia , accidentally stumbled upon and found a scattered field of debris east of the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Rocks 72 completely exhausted castaways.

The US freighter recovered the survivors, but five more died of exhaustion or injuries on board the Nishmaha the following day . Thus of the 280 or so sailors who were initially able to save themselves from the sinking Dunedin , more than 200 had died during the three days of drifting on the Atlantic. The rescued were later brought to Trinidad by the American ship .

A total of 419 British seamen died in the sinking of the Dunedin ; only 67 crew members (four officers and 63 crew ranks) ultimately survived.

See also

• USS Indianapolis , an American heavy cruiser that was sunk in similar tragic circumstances in 1945.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/40-03.htm
2. ^ Ludwig Dinklage, Hans Jürgen Witthöft: The German merchant fleet 1939-1945. Nikol Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2001, p. 304.
3. ^ Dinklage, Witthöft: The German merchant fleet. P. 342f.
4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from February 12, 2012 on WebCite )
5. ↑ http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-06CL-Dunedin.htm
6. ^ Jochen Brennecke: The turning point in the submarine war. Causes and consequences 1939–1943. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, p. 187.
7. ^ Dieter Jung, Martin Maass, Berndt Wenzel: Tanker and supplier of the German fleet 1900–1980. Motorbuch Verlag. Stuttgart 1981, p. 397.
8. ↑ http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?58898
9. ↑ http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/3517.html
10. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/41-07.htm
11. ↑ http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/seekrieg/41-11.htm

literature

• Jochen Brennecke: The turning point in the submarine war. Causes and consequences 1939–1943 . Wilhelm Heyne Publishing House. Munich 1998, p. 187.
• Ludwig Dinklage, Hans Jürgen Witthöft: The German merchant fleet 1939-1945. Nikol publishing company. Published by the Working Group for Defense Research in Stuttgart. Hamburg 2001, p. 304 and p. 342f.
• Dieter Jung, Martin Maass, Berndt Wenzel: Tanker and supplier of the German fleet 1900–1980. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1981, p. 397.
• Mike J. Whitley: Cruiser in World War II. Classes, types, construction dates. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, pp. 83-88.

Web links

• History of the ship at Naval History (English)
• Entry about HMS Dunedin at uboat.net (English)
• Entry on the HMS Dunedin on the Wrecksite database (English)