HMS Hero (H99)

Hero

The HMS Hero

Ship data flag  United Kingdom of Canada   other ship names HMCS Chaudiere Ship type destroyer Shipyard Vickers-Armstrong , Newcastle-on-Tyne Build number 3 Order December 13, 1934 Keel laying February 28, 1935 Launch March 10, 1936 Commissioning October 23, 1936 Whereabouts Scrapped March 1946

Ship dimensions and crew length 98.45 m ( Lüa ) width 10.05 m Draft Max. 3.78 m displacement 1340 ts standard 1859 ts maximum   crew 145 men

Machine system machine 3 Admirality three-drum boiler 2 Parsons turbines with single gear Machine performance 34,000 PS (25,007 kW) Top speed 36 kn (67 km / h)

Armament 4 × 120 mm Mk.IX naval guns 2 x 4- 12.7 mm Vickers AA machine guns 2 × 4-21-inch torpedo tubes 20 depth charges  last hero : 2 × 4.7 inch ship guns 1 × 76.2 mm anti-aircraft gun 2 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannons 1 × 4-21-inch torpedo tubes 1 × 24f.- Hedgehog thrower 70–125 depth charges

HMS Hero (H99) was a destroyer of the eight destroyers and a Leader comprehensive H-Class of the British Royal Navy in World War II . After the war began, the Royal Navy took over six very similar destroyers that were under construction for the Brazilian Navy in British shipyards. The Hero was awarded eight Battle Honors by the end of 1942 . In the autumn of 1943 she was handed over to the Royal Canadian Navy with another five older destroyers in order to be used primarily as HMCS  Chaudiere (H99) in convoy security on the North Atlantic. The largely used destroyer was no longer repaired after severe sea damage at the end of 1944 and was finally scrapped in 1950.

History of the ship

Vickers-Armstrong's High Walker shipyard in Newcastle received the order for two new class hulls on December 13, 1934, which had been approved in the 1934 construction program. The actual contractor was the neighboring Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Co. in Wallsend-on-Tyne . The keel laying of the two destroyers with hull numbers 3 and 4 took place on February 28, 1935. The low hull number was a result of the takeover of the Armstrong-Whitworth company by Vickers in 1928 . The new owners wanted to concentrate shipbuilding on their parent shipyard in Barrow . The shipbuilding site that was built in High Walker in 1913 as the Armstrong shipyard was only to be built in exceptional cases. Priority was given to full utilization of the Barrow shipyard. In High Walker 73 ships were built by 1929, including the battleship HMS Nelson from 1922 to 1927 (hull number 991). The construction numbers of the ships built in High Walker did not have their own sequence of numbers under the aegis of Armstrong. In 1933/34 the hulls of the destroyers HMS Fame and Firedrake were built in High Walker and were completed by the Parsons Marine Turbine Co. in Wallsend . From the light cruiser Newcastle , started in 1934 , the High Walker Yard was finally a shipyard of the Vickers Group with its own construction number sequence.

The ship was launched on March 10, 1936 together with the sister ship Hereward in High Walker. The shipyard had already built two destroyer hulls side by side at the same time with the aforementioned Firedrake and Fame and maintained this practice in their pre-war buildings. The drive system was manufactured and installed by Parsons. The HMS Hero entered service on October 23, 1936 as the third H-class ship.

Assignments in the Royal Navy

The destroyer was initially used together with the majority of its sister ships in the 2nd destroyer flotilla in the Mediterranean with Malta as a base. In October 1939 the Hero moved with the sister ships Hardy , Hostile and Hasty to the "Force K" in Freetown , which was formed around the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the battle cruiser Renown . The Hereward also joined the association, which was able to bring up the German blockade breaker Uhenfels (7603 GRT), discovered by an Ark Royal plane, on November 5, before it self-scuttled. After the battle in front of the mouth of the Río de la Plata and the arrival of the damaged Admiral Graf Spee in Montevideo on December 13, the "Force K" was sent to Rio de Janeiro for supply and on the 17th joined the destroyer association with Hardy , Hostile , Hasty and Hereward , who had run from Freetown via Pernambuco with the greatest force to the La Plata estuary. The Hero also went to Pernambuco, but then to Gibraltar for urgent repairs. Since a stay in the shipyard was necessary, she secured the convoy OG 17F from February 7, 1940 on the voyage from Gibraltar to Liverpool together with the destroyers Broke , Velox , Versatile , Winchester and the Sloop Enchantress , in order to be overtaken in Portsmouth.

On April 5, the Hero joined the cover group with battlecruiser Renown and destroyers Hyperion , Greyhound and Glowworm off Norway as part of Operation Wilfred . The Glowworm lost contact in a heavy storm while attempting to rescue a sailor who had fallen overboard, encountered the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and on the 8th became the Royal Navy's first destroyer loss when attempting to repel the German occupation of Norway . Hero and Hyperion feigned the laying of a mine lock, while the mine-laying destroyers Express , Esk , Icarus and Impulsive , secured by the 2nd destroyer flotilla with Hardy , Havock , Hunter and Hotspur , laid a real mine lock at Bodø .

After German troops had been landed by German destroyers in Narvik as part of the Weser Exercise operation , the Hero ran out together with her sister ships to block the Ofotfjord . The Hero did not take part in the first attack on the German destroyers in Narvik on April 10 by the British 2nd Flotilla with Hardy , Hunter , Hotspur , Havock and Hostile , in which two were lost and two were badly damaged . She was then the only destroyer of the flotilla on April 13, 1940 to the association of nine destroyers around the battleship Warspite , which put the remaining eight German destroyers out of action in the second naval battle near Narvik .

→ Main article : Battle for Narvik

This was followed by further missions off the Norwegian coast up to their relocation with the destroyers Ilex , Hasty , Hereward and Havock to the Mediterranean in mid-May 1940 in anticipation of Italy's entry into the war.

In May 1940, all operational ships of the flotilla were moved to the Mediterranean, where they were stationed in Alexandria . HMS Hero was used to escort convoys and took part in the naval battle at Punta Stilo in July as escort for the battleships . The sea ​​battle at Cape Spada followed only a few days later , in which the Italian light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni was sunk by a British association led by the light cruiser HMAS Sydney . The Italian cruiser, which was set on fire by the Sydney , sank after torpedo hits from Ilex and Hyperion . The British destroyers ( Havock , Hyperion , Hasty , Hero and Ilex ) saved 525 men from the sunken Colleoni . The sister ship Giovanni dalle Bande Nere accompanying the Colleoni was able to escape to Benghazi . In November, the destroyer was called in for a Malta escort. After the escort task ended, the covering fleet, including the Hero, attacked the southern Italian naval base Taranto using torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal .

After another escort to Malta, the destroyer was in continuous use during the evacuation of mainland Greece in April 1941 ( Operation Demon ). Another escort task was followed by uninterrupted operations at the end of May / beginning of June as part of the ultimately unsuccessful attempts to defend the island of Crete against German landing operations ( Operation Merkur ) and the subsequent evacuation of the Allied troops. Here took HMS Hero Greek King George II. On board and brought him to Alexandria.

The HMS Latona

In the following years the destroyer was also used in the eastern and central Mediterranean. In a convoy of fast utilities to besieged fortress Tobruk was Hero by Nahtreffer by on October 25, 1941 Ju-87 - Stukabombern the StG 3 damaged when serving as Transportation minelayer Latona was sunk. The destroyer was involved in the second naval battle in the Gulf of Syrte in March 1942 . Subsequently, U 568 was sunk together with the Hunt destroyers Hurworth and Eridge northeast of Tobruk on May 29, 1942 .

In June 1942, the HMS Hero ran out again as a convoy cover during a large escort to Malta ( Operation Vigorous ). The next success came on October 30, 1942, when U 559 was sunk together with the destroyers Pakenham and Petard , the Hunt destroyers HMS Hurworth and Dulverton and an aircraft in the eastern Mediterranean . Some secret documents were captured in the process.

The next bigger task awaited the destroyer in February 1943, a large escort of troops (Operation Pamphlet), with which 30,000 Australian soldiers on the passenger ships Queen Mary (80,774 GRT), Aquitania (45,647 GRT), Ile de France (42,050 GRT), Nieuw Amsterdam (36,287 GRT) and the auxiliary cruiser Queen of Bermuda (22,575 GRT) were brought back to Australia from the Middle East. In the Red Sea and off Aden, the troop transports were secured by the Hero and the British destroyers Pakenham , Petard , the destroyer escort Derwent and the Greek Vasilissa Olga , before the cruisers Devonshire and Gambia took over the security of the convoy on the crossing of the Indian Ocean.

In the Royal Canadian Navy

On November 15, 1943, the ship was handed over to the Royal Canadian Navy and renamed HMCS Chaudiere (H99) . With increased anti -submarine and anti-aircraft armament, it was subsequently used to secure convoys in the North Atlantic . On March 5, 1944, while securing the HX.280 convoy in the "Escort Group C2", it was also involved in the sinking of the German U-boat U 744 together with the destroyers HMS Icarus and HMCS Gatineau and other escorts.

Special hunting groups were formed against the danger of German submarine attacks during the invasion. The Chaudière came to the 11th Escort Group with the Canadian destroyers Ottawa (II), Kootenay , St. Laurent and Gatineau . With three destroyer groups and seven frigate groups, from the beginning of June 1944, mostly several groups were in action. On the night of June 26th, three German speedboats tried to break through from Alderney to Dieppe . South of Selsey Bill they are caught by the destroyers Gatineau and Chaudière , who evaded the torpedoes fired at them and damaged the S 145 with their artillery. The S-Boats gave up their plan and ran to St. Malo . In action against newly arrived submarines from Norway, the Chaudière, together with the Ottawa (II) and Kootenay, succeeded in sinking U 621 with Hedgehog launchers northwest of La Rochelle and two (twelve) days later west of Brest the from U 984 . In September the Canadian group moved to Londonderry to secure the north-western access routes to the British Isles and to Iceland in October. In November the Support Group became an escort group and escorted convoy ON 267 from Londonderry to Halifax. The Chaudiere , which was only partially operational after weather damage , went with us to be repaired in Canada. When the anti-submarine forces were reorganized in mid-December 1944, the 11th Escort Group was to remain in the western Atlantic. Only Gatineau , Kootenay and Restigouche were ready for action ; In addition to the Chaudière , the Qu'Appelle , Ottawa (II), St. Laurent and Sasketchewan could not be used due to repairs or routine downtime .

The repairs did not begin until the end of January 1945 and continued with low priority until May. Then it was decided that the condition of the ship was not worth further repair and on August 17, 1945 the HMCS Chaudiere was decommissioned. In 1948 the ship could be sold to a demolition company and in the course of 1950 the former HMS Hero was scrapped in Cape Breton .

Individual evidence

1. ^ HMS Nelson
2. ^ History of the HMS Fame
3. ↑ VICKERS ARMSTRONG (Shipbuilders) Ltd, List of ships built at the Naval shipyard, Walker-on-Tyne
4. ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the naval war. P. 35.
5. ^ Rohwer, p. 38
6. ^ Rohwer, p. 60
7. ↑ Rohwer, p. 62
8. ^ Rohwer, p. 120
9. ^ Rohwer, p. 127f.
10. ^ Rohwer, p. 128
11. ↑ Rohwer, p 176f.
12. ^ Rohwer, p. 229
13. ↑ Herzog: German UBoote. P. 277.
14. ↑ Herzog, p. 276
15. ^ Rohwer, p. 429
16. ^ Rohwer, p. 456
17. ↑ Herzog: German UBoote. P. 278.
18. ↑ Herzog, p. 283
19. ^ Rohwer, p. 466

literature

• Bodo Herzog: 60 years of German submarines 1906–1966. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1968.
• Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-0097 .
• MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War Two. Arms and Armor Press, London 1988, ISBN 0-85368-910-5 .

Web links

Commons : HMS Hero (H99)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Chronicle of naval warfare 1939–1945
• HMS Hero (H99) on uboat.net (engl.)
• Service history HMS HERO (H 99), later HMCS CHAUDIERE - H-class Destroyer
• HMS Hero 1936