HMS Eclipse (H08)
 The Eclipse
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HMS Eclipse (H08) was an E-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy . During the Second World War , the destroyer was awarded the Battle Honors "Norway 1940", "Artic 1941-42", "Sicily 1943", "Atlantic 1943", "Salerno 1943" and "Aegean 1943".
In April 1940, the destroyer was badly damaged in an air force attack on the Home Fleet northwest of Trondheim. A sister ship managed to tow the Eclipse across the North Sea to Lerwick . In March 1942, the Eclipse was hit hard again when it fended off the attack of the German destroyers Z 26 , Z 24 and Z 25 on the convoy PQ 13 in the North Sea with the cruisers Trinidad and Fury .
On October 24, 1943, during the British Dodecanese campaign , the Eclipse ran east of Kalymnos on a German mine barrier, broke and sank quickly at the position 37 ° 1 ′ N , 27 ° 11 ′ E . When the destroyer went down, 119 crew members and 134 of the embarked army soldiers were killed.
history
On December 1, 1932, the Admiralty ordered two E-class destroyers from Denny in Dumbarton on the Clyde . The keel laying of the newbuildings with construction numbers 1263/1264 took place at the end of March 1932 and on April 12, 1934 the Eclipse was launched as the last of the eight destroyers of the class. On November 29, 1934, the ship came into service with the Royal Navy one month after the sister ship Echo, which was also built by Denny .
The new destroyer was the tenth Eclipse of the Navy since 1715. At the beginning of the First World War , the cruiser Eclipse guarded the western entrance to the English Channel and landed two German merchant ships there. It was the lead ship of a class of nine protected cruisers II. Class and was then used from 1915 as a residential ship for submarine crews.
Mission history
Together with her sister ships, the new Eclipse formed the “5. Destroyer Flotilla ”at the Home Fleet. Because of the Abyssinia crisis , the flotilla was seconded to the Mediterranean Fleet until January 1937 . In 1939, the ships of the E-class were replaced by the newly arriving K-class destroyers in the flotilla, which was renumbered "7th destroyer flotilla". Eclipse joined the reserve fleet in Portsmouth in March 1939 as the second ship of the class .
War missions
The units of the E-class formed the "12th destroyer flotilla" in Portland with six units at the outbreak of the Second World War , as the Echo was still used in the 7th flotilla and because Esk and Express were in the equipment of mine layers. The main task of the flotilla was to secure shipping traffic in the English Channel and to secure the transfer of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to mainland Europe. When the German fleet with the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst advanced against the British Northern Patrol at the end of November 1939 , the battle cruiser Hood with the destroyers Exmouth , Echo and Eclipse ran south of Ireland into the Atlantic, in order to work with the French Atlantic fleet around the battleship Dunkerque to intercept the Germans in a possible breakout into the Atlantic.
In April 1940, the Eclipse secured convoys between Great Britain and Norway when the Germans attacked Denmark and Norway ( Operation Weser Exercise ). When trying to repel the German occupation of Norway , the destroyer was used to secure the Home Fleet. When the Luftwaffe attacked the Home Fleet around the battleships Rodney , Valiant and Warspite as well as the carrier Furious with He-111 bombers of III./KG.26 northwest of Trondheim on April 11, only the Eclipse received two bomb hits, which the machine incapacitated and the ship largely flooded. The heavy cruiser York , assigned to support, finally took over the wounded and about 100 men of the destroyer and tried to tow him away until he was attacked by a German submarine. Secured by the destroyer Hyperion , the sister ship Escort finally towed the badly damaged Eclipse at five knots to Lerwick. In addition to the York , other units on the march to or from Norway also briefly secured the slow tow. From Lerwick tugs brought the damaged vessel to the Clyde, where repairs were carried out.
In mid-August, the destroyer was operational again and was assigned to forces that were to occupy Dakar for the Free French in September 1940 ( Operation Menace ). The Eclipse did not take part in the failed attempt due to various defects and had to stay in Freetown . To repair all damage, she had to move back to Gibraltar .
In mid-November 1940, the ready-to-use Eclipse returned to the Home Fleet to be used as an anti-submarine destroyer. This was followed by operations with the heavy units, securing during mine operations to expand the defensive barriers in the Northern Sea (Northern Barrier) and escorting troop transports partly as far as West Africa.
Operations in the North Sea
In August 1941, the destroyer first deployed in the North Sea with the new ally, the Soviet Union, evacuating the Norwegian and Soviet miners from Spitsbergen (Operation Gauntlett) and the first test escort from Great Britain to Murmansk and Archangelsk (Operation Dervish). This was followed by further deployments to protect the northern sea convoys , including in October 1941 with the convoy PQ 2 and the return flight QP 2 and then in early March 1942 in the cover group for the convoy PQ 12 , when the Tirpitz also ran into the northern sea (company Sportpalast). Against the following convoy PQ 13 , which the cruiser Trinidad secured with the destroyers Fury and Eclipse and some former whalers, the Navy deployed destroyers Z 26 , Z 24 and Z 25 from Kirkenes , which were able to sink a scattered ship on the approach . On the morning of March 29, 1942, the German destroyers encountered the Trinidad and Fury , which were running in front of a part of convoy PQ 13, which had been reunited and which had been torn apart by a storm. In a battle hampered by heavy snowdrifts, the Trinidad radar-based Z 26 was unable to maneuver. When she finally wanted to sink this destroyer with a torpedo, the torpedo that was shot down - presumably because of a frozen guidance compass - turned into a circle and hit the cruiser. The own torpedo killed 34 men on the cruiser, whose drive temporarily failed and which could only continue its journey slowly. The two operational German destroyers recovered part of the crew from the sinking Z 26 and continued their search for the convoy. The Fury and the Eclipse , which has since been added, pursued and shot at them. The Oribi, who had come from Murmansk for support, and two Soviet destroyers also took up the battle and received artillery hits from the superior German destroyers, who broke off the battle because they could not find any other merchant ships. Eclipse was able to catch up with the damaged Trinidad and escort her to Murmansk with Fury . An emergency repair of the destroyer took place there from March 30th to April 6th. Then, with the cruiser Liverpool and the destroyers Oribi , Fury , Punjabi and Marne, he formed the security of the return line QP 10 , which was attacked from the air and by submarines, while the German destroyers Hermann Schoemann , Z 24 and Z 25 in vain looking for the convoy. The Eclipse returned home to be repaired at the Naval Yard in Devonport by early May.
Further deployments of the Eclipse took place at the end of May 1942 in remote security for the convoys PQ 16 and QP 12 . At the end of June, the destroyer accompanied the cruiser Manchester to Svalbard to supply the Allied garrison there and to replace some of the personnel. On the march back, the two ships joined the long-range coverage group for convoy PQ 17 . In September the destroyer was part of an association with the cruisers Cumberland and Sheffield as well as the destroyers Amazon , Bulldog , Echo and Venomous , which was supposed to not only supply the garrison on Spitsbergen, but also a supply base for the escort vehicles of the convoys PQ 18 and QP 14 should set up and protect in the local Lowe Sound .
The destroyer's last operations in the North Sea took place from mid-December on the convoy JW 51A and the counter- escort RA 51 , on JW 52 , JW 53 and at the beginning of April 1943 on the convoy RA 53 .
In the second quarter of 1943, the destroyer was assigned to one of the newly formed support groups (the "4th Support Group" initially with Inglefield , Icarus and Fury ), which rushed to the aid of the attacked convoys and reinforced their escort. In June, the Support Group had the Archer escort carrier in addition to more modern destroyers .
Operations in the Mediterranean
From mid-1943, however, the destroyer was mainly used in the Mediterranean . As part of Operation Husky , the Allied landing in Sicily , he sank the Italian submarine Ascianghi together with the destroyer Laforey on July 23 near Augusta . The ship was also used for the landing near Salerno ( Operation Avalanche ). During this time, the destroyer served as a anti-submarine destroyer and a fuse for heavier units.
On September 16, the destroyer arrived in the "8th Destroyer Flotilla" together with Faulknor , Echo , Intrepid , Raider and the Greek Vasilissa Olga from Malta in Alexandria . In the following period, the main focus of Eclipse was in the Aegean Sea to support the British Dodecanese campaign . On 17./18. September she attacked with Faulknor and Vasilissa Olga a German convoy, of which the Allied destroyers sank two freighters. On 23 September 1943, the damaged Eclipse in a battle against Rhodes , the German torpedo boat TA 10 (ex French. La Pomone ) so hard that this at Prasonisi be put on the beach and blown up two days later there had to. The Italian freighter Gaetano Donizetti , managed by TA 10 , with more than 1,500 Italian prisoners of war on board, was sunk, almost all of the prisoners of war sank with the ship.
Fall of the Eclipse
When trying to transport British reinforcements to Leros , Eclipse ran east of Kalymnos on October 23, 1943 on a German mine barrier , broke up and sank very quickly. When the destroyer went down, 119 crew members and 134 of the embarked army soldiers were killed. The petard accompanying them was able to take 42 castaways on board.
The day before, the destroyer escort Hurworth sank and the Greek Adriatic was badly damaged on the mine barrier laid by the German mine ship Drache ex Zmaj .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Service History HMS ECLIPSE (H 08) - E-class Destroyer.
- ↑ ROYAL NAVY SHIPS, September 1939
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. November 21-27, 1939 North Atlantic
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. April 11-13, 1940 Norway
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. March 24–31, 1942 Arctic Ocean
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. April 8-17, 1942 Arctic Ocean
- ^ Service History HMS Manchester Town-type Light Cruiser
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. September 12-18, 1942 Arctic Ocean
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. July 11–31, 1943 Mediterranean Sea
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. September 9-26, 1943 Aegean Sea
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. October 13-29, 1943 Aegean Sea
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 .
- Michael J. Whitley: Destroyers of World War Two. An international encyclopedia. Arms and Armor Press, London et al. 1988, ISBN 0-85368-910-5 .
Web links
- Service History HMS Eclipse (H 08) - E-class Destroyer
- HMS Eclipse (H 08)
- HMS Eclipse (H 08)
- Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Württemberg State Library, Stuttgart 2007.
HMS Exmouth (Flotilla Leader ) †
Echo / Navarion 
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Eclipse † |
Electra † |
Encounter † |
Escapade |
Escort † |
Esk |
Express / Gatineau .svg){kind=small}
HMS Faulknor (Flotilla Leader)
Fame / Generalissimo 
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Fearless † |
Firedrake † |
Foresight † |
Forester |
Fortune / Saskatchewan |
Foxhound / Qu'Appelle |
Fury †