HMS Glasgow (1909)

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flag
Town class
HMS Glasgow in Valparaiso before the Battle of Coronel
HMS Glasgow in Valparaiso before the Battle of Coronel
Overview
Type Light cruiser
units 5/21
Shipyard

Fairfield , Govan

Keel laying March 25, 1909
Launch September 23, 1909
delivery September 1910
Namesake City of Glasgow
period of service

1910-1926

Decommissioning March 1926
Whereabouts Sold for demolition April 1927
Technical specifications
displacement

Standard : 4800 ts
Maximum: 5300 ts

length

overall: 453 ft (138.1 m),
430 ft pp

width

47 ft (14.3 m)

Draft

15 ft 6 in (4.7 m)

crew

411-480 men

drive
speed

25 kn

Range

5070 nm at 16 kn

Armament
  • 2 × 6 "/ 50 BL Mk XI
    (15.2 cm L / 50 )
  • 10 × 4 "/ 50 BL Mk VIII
    (10.2 cm L / 50)
  • 4 × 3 Pdr 1.85 "/ 50 QF
    (4.7 cm L / 50)
  • 4 × .303 British machine guns
  • 2 × torpedo tubes 18 "(45.7 cm)
  • 1 × 3 "anti-aircraft gun in the war
Fuel supply

600 normal –1353 ts coal and
1250? ts heating oil

Armor
deck

2 in (50 mm)

Embankments

3/4 in (20 mm)

Command tower

6 in (100 mm)

Sister ships

HMS Glasgow
HMS Gloucester
HMS Liverpool
HMS Newcastle ,

The sixth HMS Glasgow of the Royal Navy was a light cruiser , which the March 25, 1909 as the third ship Town Class ( Bristol Group) in the shipyard Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan (Scotland) was placed on keel and at 30 September 1909 was the first ship in the group to be launched. Sister ships were HMS Bristol , HMS Gloucester , HMS Liverpool and HMS Newcastle , all of which entered service between September and December 1910.

Technical specifications

The first ships of the class displaced about 4800 tons and ran with their Parsons turbines (only Bristol and HMS Southampton had Brown Curtis turbines ) up to 27 knots. They were 131 m long and 15.2 m wide and had a draft of 4.9 m. The armament consisted of two 15.2-cm and ten 10.2-cm guns, as well as four three-pounders, four Maxim automatic cannons and two 45.7-cm torpedo tubes. During the war the crew numbered up to 475–500 men.

history

When it was commissioned, the Glasgow was assigned to the 2nd Battle Squadron of the Home Fleet . But in 1911 she moved to the South America station. In 1913 it was also in service off North America.

Outbreak of war

Before the war began, the Glasgow was again stationed in South America and visited Rio de Janeiro in the last days of peace . On August 14, 1914, she captured the German steamer Santa Catherina (4247 BRT, 1907) from Hamburg-Süd , which was on its way from New York to Santos , and ran with it to Abrolhos Rock, one of the secret British coal stations. There the bunker coal of the Santa Catharina caught fire on the 16th due to spontaneous combustion. Since it was not possible to extinguish the fire, the Glasgow sank the German ship on August 20.

Then the Glasgow was assigned to the squadron of Rear Admiral Christopher Cradock , who was looking for the German cruiser SMS Dresden , which had escaped from the Caribbean . She then took part in the sea battles at Coronel on November 1, 1914 and the Falkland Islands on December 8, 1914 with the German East Asia Squadron and in the search for the cruiser Dresden , which had escaped from the Battle of the Falklands .

On September 18, the Glasgow left with Cradock's armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth and the auxiliary cruiser Otranto Montevideo towards Tierra del Fuego and arrived on September 28 in Punta Arenas . Here the British discovered that the Dresden had already moved to the Pacific. Since there was further evidence that the German small cruiser Leipzig, which was on the Pacific coast of Mexico at the outbreak of war , was moving south, it became more likely that the cruisers wanted to unite with the German East Asia Squadron. However, Cradock should strengthen his squadron with the older Canopus ship of the line . He therefore first ran back to the Falkland Islands to await its arrival. On October 26th, Cradock moved with his cruisers to the Pacific, possibly in the hope of providing one of the cruisers alone. The ship of the line followed, but it was not able to join the cruiser formation. In search of the Leipzig , whose radio traffic had been determined, the Glasgow called Coronel on October 31 . Shortly before, the suppliers of the East Asia Squadron Yorck and Göttingen had arrived there. Göttingen lifted anchor again and radioed outside the three-mile zone at 2.50 on November 1st: "Cruiser Glasgow is anchored in Coronel Roads." Spee's squadron immediately marched south at 14 knots to intercept the Glasgow .

Skirmish at Coronel

So it came to the sea ​​battle at Coronel on November 1, 1914, in which both sides marched in the belief that they had a single cruiser of the enemy in front of them. When the Germans opened fire at 6:34 p.m. on 11 kilometers, SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau fired at the British armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth , both of which were eventually sunk, and the Leipzig on the Glasgow , each one at the stern and one at the bow and was hit by a dud. When the Otranto fled, the Dresden shot at the Glasgow and scored five waterline hits. However, the hits from the German 10.5 cm guns left only insignificant damage. When the Gneisenau also took the Glasgow under fire, John Luce, the captain of the Glasgow , turned to preserve his ship, especially since the darkness no longer allowed a battle while the Germans used his kills to aim. Glasgow had not scored a hit on the small cruisers, but temporarily shut down their rear tower with a hit on the Gneisenau . With a space under water, the Glasgow could still run 24 knots and left the battlefield in search of the Canopus . She was spotted from Nuremberg without an exchange of fire.

After the battle, Glasgow ran south for 3 days at 20 knots and through the Strait of Magellan into the Atlantic. The Canopus , informed by radio , also marched back, but reached a cruising speed of 9 knots as the highest. On November 6, both ships met and slowly sailed to the Falkland Islands, where they replenished their coal stocks. Both were to march north towards the approaching reinforcements. But the Canopus's engine collapsed again, so that the Glasgow sailed north alone, while Canopus was set aground in the inner harbor of Stanley to serve as a defense battery.

Battle of the Falkland Islands

The Glasgow met on 11 November 1914 the Brazilian coast to the squadron of Rear Admiral Archibald P. Stoddart , who from his previous position in the mid-Atlantic with its flagship Defense , the armored cruiser Cornwall , sister ship of Coronel sunken Monmouth , of Carnarvon and the auxiliary cruiser Orama moved south.

The Glasgow ran on to Rio de Janeiro on the 12th , where the Brazilians allowed her to stay for five days in the local dry dock to repair the damage caused by Coronel despite violent German protests.

On November 26th to 28th, the British armed forces gathered at Abrohols Rocks under Vice Admiral Frederik Doveton Sturdee , who was supposed to stop and destroy squadrons from England with the battlecruisers HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible Spees. Stoddart switched to Carnarvon , Cornwall's newly commissioned sister ship HMS Kent had come into service , and her sister ship Bristol had arrived alongside the repaired Glasgow . Then there were the auxiliary cruisers HMS Macedonia and Orama . The latter marched with the coal steamers. Stoddart's previous flagship Defense was released to the Cape.

On December 7, 1914, the British Association reached Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. When the German East Asia Squadron appeared off the Falkland Islands on the morning of December 8th, the British were still at the coal. At 09:40, the Glasgow was the second ship to leave port to pursue the German squadron, which had a lead of around 15 nautical miles. The British ships made more speed, however, and the good visibility and the calm sea on that day allowed them to easily see the German ships heading east on the horizon and slowly catch up with them.

After Graf Spee had recognized that he could not escape in the closed unit, he dismissed the Leipzig at 1:15 p.m. and at 1:20 p.m. he signaled: “Small cruisers dismissed. Try to escape! ”Sturdee reacted immediately: He had expected this behavior. On an agreed signal, the armored cruisers Kent and Cornwall and soon afterwards the Glasgow began to pursue the small cruisers. She came up to the German ship Leipzig , and fought an artillery duel with her. The three German cruisers then separated at around 2:30 p.m. The Leipzig steered south and was initially overtaken by the Glasgow , which, however, temporarily abandoned it after violent defensive fire from the Leipzig . Shortly before 2:40 p.m., the armored cruiser Cornwall had approached, and the Leipzig was temporarily under fire from the Kent . Although it received more and more hits, burned and slowed down, it kept firing back and was able to achieve eighteen hits with its 10.5 cm guns on the Cornwall alone , but mostly ineffective. Glasgow had received two hits that damaged a steam boiler. One dead and four wounded, one of whom died from his injuries, were to be mourned.

The fight dragged on until around 7 p.m. After all of Leipzig's ammunition had been fired, torpedoes were unsuccessfully shot at the British. At 7:17 p.m., Commander Haun gave the order to detonate the ship, and at 7:20 p.m. to leave the ship. At around 7:50 p.m. the Leipzig was shot at again. At 9:23 p.m. the small cruiser Leipzig sank 37 days after Coronel when the cruisers Cornwall and Glasgow were shot at . Only 18 sailors from Leipzig were rescued.

The Dresden managed to escape, however, the search of the Suffolk , which began with the sinking of the Leipzig , was started too late.

Destruction of the Dresden

Then the Glasgow took part in the search for the last remaining small cruiser Dresden from the East Asia Squadron . The Dresden was finally discovered on March 14, 1915 by the Glasgow and the armored cruiser Kent in the Cumberland Bay of the island of Más a Tierra (called Robinson Crusoe Island since 1966 ) in the Chilean Juan Fernández archipelago . In defiance of Chilean neutrality , the two British cruisers shot at the ship, which it was impossible to escape again. The self-sinking of the Dresden preceded a boarding command of the British .

Further use

In 1915 the Glasgow was relocated to the Mediterranean. In February and September 1916 she was sent from there to the Atlantic to take part in the unsuccessful search for the German auxiliary cruiser SMS Möve . From 1917 she belonged to the 8th Light Cruiser Squadron , which monitored the exit of the Adriatic from Brindisi .

Whereabouts

After the end of the war, the Glasgow served briefly as a training ship for stokers . It was decommissioned in 1922 and scrapped in 1927.

literature

  • Geoffrey Bennett: The Sea Battles of Coronel and Falklands. Heyne Verlag, 1980, ISBN 3-453-01141-4 .
  • Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Mundus, Ratingen, ISBN 3-88385-028-4 .
  • Arnold Kludas : The ships of Hamburg-Süd 1871–1951. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg 1976, ISBN 3-7979-1875-5 .
  • Maria Theresa Parker de Bassi: Cruiser Dresden. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1993, ISBN 3-7822-0591-X .
  • Anthony Preston, Randal Gray (eds.): Conway's All the World Fighting Ships 1906-1921. Conway Maritime Press, London 1985, ISBN 0-85177-245-5 .

Web links

Commons : Town class cruiser (1910)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files