HMS Impulsive (D11)
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HMS Impulsive (D11) was a destroyer of the I-Class of the British Royal Navy . During the Second World War , the destroyer was awarded the Battle Honors "Norway 1940", "Dunkirk 1940", "Arctic 1941-1944", "Atlantic 1942-1943", "Normandy 1944" and "English Channel 1944". The Impulsive belonged to half of the ships of this class that could be equipped as mine layers; two guns and the torpedo tubes then had to be given off board to compensate for the load on the mine. At the end of the war in Europe, the destroyer served as a submarine hunter and was stationed in Portsmouth .
History of the ship
The Impulsive was one of eight I-class destroyers ordered on October 30, 1935, which were largely identical to the previously ordered G- and H-class destroyers. She was commissioned with the sister ship Intrepid from J. Samuel White in Cowes , Isle of Wight . The keel was laid on January 29, 1936 and launched on March 1, 1937. The Impulsive was put into service on January 29, 1938 as the last ship of the class. She was the first ship in the Royal Navy to be named Impulsive . The completion of the ship had been delayed considerably. The reasons were delays in the delivery of the main artillery and the burden on the shipyard with the simultaneous construction of the Grom-class destroyers for the Polish Navy .
The destroyer was initially used together with its sister ships of the I-class in the Mediterranean . They formed the "3rd Destroyer Flotilla" of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean Fleet . After the war began, the flotilla was ordered back to the waters around the British Isles . The destroyers were supposed to secure shipping traffic in the area of the south-western access routes and hunt down German submarines . The aircraft carrier Courageous , which was at sea with four ships from the flotilla on September 17, 1939, was also used for this task . When a radio message came in from a British freighter reporting an attack by a German submarine, four Swordfish launched from the carrier to support the freighter. For this purpose, the flotilla commander Inglefield and the Intrepid were dispatched to combat the submarine, as the ASDIC devices of the destroyers did not detect any signs of a vehicle in the vicinity. In the evening, U 29 managed to score two torpedo hits on the carrier, which sank very quickly. While the Impulsive tried to save the castaways, the Ivanhoe attacked the now recognized submarine unsuccessfully. Three civilian ships participated in the rescue of the castaways, including the Dutch passenger ship Veendam , which used fourteen lifeboats. A total of 741 men were saved. 518 men died in the sinking of the Courageous .
From the end of October 1939 the Impulsive was used in the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow and secured their heavy units during advances. On January 17, 1940, the destroyer towed Duncan, damaged by a collision in a Norwegian escort, to Rosyth . The tow was secured by the Exmouth .
Operations in the North Sea and the English Channel
The destroyer was then assigned to the 20th (Minelayer) Destroyer Flotilla in Immingham and converted into a miner in Portsmouth. At the beginning of the Second World War, this flotilla laid defensive minefields off the British coast and offensive minefields in the German Bight .
In April 1940, the ship was supposed to cover other destroyers that were supposed to lay mines in the coastal waters of Norway , which was still neutral at the time , as part of Operation Wilfred . After that, Impulsive was used as escort of the battle cruiser Renown , when the latter fought a brief, undecided battle with the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on April 9, 1940 in front of the Ofotfjord , which served as remote security for the Weser Exercise company . The destroyer itself was not used because of the bad weather.
At the end of May 1940, the destroyer and many other ships evacuated the allied troops encircled around Dunkirk ( Operation Dynamo ). It was damaged on May 31, 1940 by German dive bombers off Dunkirk, but was able to run back to Great Britain to repair the damage. By then, the destroyer had successfully carried out four trips and evacuated 2917 soldiers to England.
The destroyer continued to serve as a mine-layer until April 1941, laying both defensive and offensive minefields. Most recently he was active with Icarus and Intrepid against the new German bases on the Canal and in Brittany . In Immingham, the ship was restored to a destroyer with strong anti-submarine capabilities.
Northern sea
The destroyer Impulsive was assigned to the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla at the Home Fleet, which was supposed to secure the heavy fleet units during advances as well as providing security forces for the North Atlantic convoys in the area of the North Western Approaches . In addition, in the summer of 1941, the northern sea convoys were secured , which supplied the Soviet Union with war material. She accompanied the first of these convoys with the code name Dervish from August 21, 1941 until it arrived in Arkhangelsk on August 31, and was also part of the security of the second northern sea convoy PQ 1 , which was on the way from September 29, 1941 to October 11. From October 18, the destroyer marched back and secured the heavy cruiser Suffolk with the Escape . A chain of minor defects during the year led to a major overhaul of the Impulsive at Thornycroft in Woolston near Southampton in late December 1941 .
The destroyer was not ready for action again until August 1942. The first deployment took place in the local security of convoy PQ 18 , which after the extensive failure of PQ 17 was of great importance for the support of the Soviet ally. During this mission the crew of the Impulsive succeeded on September 16, 1942, northeast of Murmansk in the Barents Sea , in sinking the German submarine U 457 . Of the 40 ships in the convoy, 13 were lost. The local security group immediately took over the return of QP 14 . Impulsive and Fury were temporarily detached in order to accommodate the tanker RFA Oligarch (6897 BRT, built in 1919) lying as a supplier off Spitzbergen and to protect it on the return journey. The convoy, which had been driven far apart by a heavy storm, was brought together again with the help of the radar of the battleship of the long-range coverage group. The Impulsive stayed with the ships of the escort, who ran to the UK to Iceland. She secured these ships together with the old destroyer Worcester , which had lain with the tanker RFA Oligarch off Svalbard. Since there was no northern sea convoy to Murmansk in October, as many ships of the Home Fleet were seconded to support the Allied landing in North Africa, there was only the return QP 15 , which the Impulsive ran towards to reinforce the escort security. In November, the destroyer then belonged to the long-range coverage group of the now renamed Northern Sea Agency JW 51B around the battleship Anson . This convoy was attacked by the Kriegsmarine with two cruisers and six destroyers ( see Battle of the Barents Sea ); the long-range coverage group was too far away to be able to intervene in the battle.
From February 21, 1943 the Impulsive belonged to the Fighting Escort Group of the Nordmeergeleits JW 53 around the anti-aircraft cruiser Scylla with the destroyers Milne , the Polish Hurricane and Orwell , Opportune , Obedient , Obdurate and the Faulknor , Fury , Boadicea , Eclipse , Inglefield and Intrepid . The group then also secured the return RA 53 . The negative experiences with the summer escorts of the previous year, the readiness of the German Navy in Northern Norway and the planning of the Allies in the Mediterranean led to the abandonment of convoys through the North Sea in the summer of 1943.
The Impulsive was assigned to the Western Approaches Command , where she formed the 3rd Support Group with the destroyers Offa , Penn and Panther . Such groups were sent to support the attacked convoys and their areas of operation determined the successful packs of submarines, so that the Impulsive was also used from Newfoundland . During this mission until the end of May 1943, the destroyer briefly reinforced the security forces of eight different transatlantic convoys.
After a brief repair in Hull, the destroyer came back to the Home Fleet. During the winter of 1943/44, further escort missions in the North Sea followed from November 1943 on the convoy trains JW 54A , RA 54B , JW 55B (the discovery of which led to the departure of the Scharnhorst and the naval battle off the North Cape ), RA 55B , RA 57 , JW 58 and RA 58 .
D-Day
In May 1944, the Impulsive took part in training for the Allied landings in Normandy. On the first day of landing, the destroyer also had to provide artillery support for the landing forces. Then he was used to secure the landing area against submarine attacks and to secure the supplies. Even after the end of the actual landing operation ( Operation Neptune ), the destroyer remained stationed on the English Channel and secured the supply traffic via Portsmouth against submarine attacks. After an overhaul, the Impulsive was assigned to the "14th Escort Group" operating in the south-western access routes to the British Isles in October 1944. When the English Channel gained importance as a shipping route for supplying the Allied armies advancing on the continent, the Impulsive was subordinated to the "8th Destroyer Flotilla" in Portsmouth. After the end of the war, the Impulsive visited the liberated St. Peter Port on Guernsey on May 14, 1945 and accompanied the cruiser Jamaica on June 7, 1945 , with which the English King George VI. visited the liberated Channel Islands .
On June 17, 1945, the destroyer in Harwich was assigned to the reserve and then decommissioned. In 1946 the Impulsive was sold for demolition, which began in January 1946 in Sunderland , where the destroyer was towed.
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981. Ian Allen, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1075-7
- 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. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley 2009, ISBN 978-1-84832-049-9 .
- HT Lenton: Warships of the British and Commonwealth Navies. Ian Allan, 1969,
- Antony Preston: Destroyers. Hamlyn, ISBN 0-600-32955-0 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War 2nd Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1988, ISBN 0-87021-326-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Service History HMS Impulsive
- ↑ Rohwer, May 28, 1940 Kanal, start of Operation "Dynamo" (repatriation of the British expeditionary army) and May 31, 1940 Kanal, fourth day of Operation "Dynamo".
- ↑ Rohwer, 12.- 18.09.1942 North Sea, the fight against allied supply convoys PQ.18.
- ↑ Rohwer, 30.- 31.12.1942 North Sea, company "Rainbow".
- ↑ Rohwer, 15.2.- 14.3.1943 North Sea.
- ↑ Rohwer, 11.- 04.19.1943 North Atlantic.
- ↑ Rohwer, 4-6 May 1943 North Atlantic.
- ^ Rohwer, December 12–31, 1943 North Sea, Allied convoy operations in the North Sea.
- ↑ Rohwer, February 20-28, 1944 Nordmeer, convoy operation JW.57.
HMS Inglefield † (Flotilla Leader)
HMS Icarus |
HMS Ilex |
HMS Imogen † |
HMS Imperial † |
HMS Impulsive |
HMS Intrepid † |
HMS Isis † |
HMS Ivanhoe †
built for Turkey: HMS Inconstant | HMS Ithuriel †
Demirhisar Class : Demirhisar | Sultanhisar | Muavenet ex Inconstant