HMS Inglefield (D02)
 The Inglefield in Malta in front of the Hood
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The HMS Inglefield was the last flotilla commander in the Royal Navy , who deviated significantly from his flotilla boats. At the beginning of the Second World War she was the leader boat of the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla stationed in Malta with the British Mediterranean Fleet, but moved back to the British Isles in September 1939. The boat was used in the North Atlantic, off Norway, securing supply convoys to Malta, in the North Sea and, from summer 1943, again in the Mediterranean. There the Inglefield was sunk on February 25, 1944 off Anzio by a Henschel Hs-293 glide bomb.
History of Inglefield
The flotilla leader HMS Inglefield was the ninth new flotilla leader for the A- to I-class standard destroyers of the Royal Navy, which had been delivered since 1930 . Like most of the predecessors of the other class, it was given the name of a British naval hero with the first letter of the class. The boat was named after the Admiral Sir Edward Augustus Inglefield (1820-1894) and for the first time a ship was named after this family of naval officers. The boat built in Birkenhead near Cammell Laird largely corresponded to the previously delivered flotilla leaders of the other classes. With a length of 102.7 m, it was over 4 m longer than the normal I-class flotilla boats , was slightly wider and - like most of the previous flotilla commanders - had a fifth main gun. Work on the boat ordered on November 14, 1935 began on April 29, 1936. It was launched on October 15, 1936 and entered service on June 25, 1937 with the registration number D02 . The flotilla boats were also put into service in May 1937 and with the delivery of the Impulsive at the end of January 1938, the flotilla was complete.
Mission history
At the beginning of the war, the Inglefield was stationed as the lead boat of the "3rd Destroyer Flotilla" in the Mediterranean fleet and in Malta .
Already in the first half of September 1939 she was transferred with the flotilla to the Home Fleet to secure the western access routes to the British Isles. One of the first missions of the boat together with the destroyers Ivanhoe , Impulsive and Intrepid was the escort of the aircraft carrier Courageous , which was torpedoed and sunk by U 29 on September 17, 1939 . According to orders , the Inglefield was absent from the attack with the Intrepid because of an emergency call from the steamer Kafirstan , which U 53 had sunk.
On October 14, 1939, the Inglefield with Icarus , Ivanhoe and Intrepid, southwest of Ireland at position 50 ° 58 ′ N , 12 ° 7 ′ W, succeeded in sinking U 45 , which sank with the entire crew.
When the German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst advanced against the British Northern Patrol on November 23, 1939 and sank the auxiliary cruiser Rawalpindi , the Inglefield was one of the British units looking for the German ships that were now on their way back. She guarded a sea area northeast of the Shetlands with the Glasgow and the destroyers Maori , Zulu , Imperial , Impulsive and Imogen .
On November 27th, the Inglefield was sent to the aid of the British submarine Triad , which had suffered damage to the subsurface rudder while on patrol in the Skagerrak. She towed the boat to Stavanger , where some repairs could be done within the 24 hour period. Then the destroyer towed the submarine on to Rosyth , where the two boats arrived on December 4, 1939.
On February 25, 1940, the Inglefield was involved in another submarine sinking. South of the Shetland they sank U 63 together with the destroyers Escort and Imogen and British submarine Narwhal in position 58 ° 40 ' N , 0 ° 10' W . One crew member of the German submarine was killed, 24 were rescued by the British boats.
In May 1940, the Inglefield was used to evacuate British troops from Åndalsnes . As of mid-May, the flotilla commander was in the naval yard in Devonport for repairs . At the end of the month it was ready for use again. At the end of the month, the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, Delight and Diana, had only two fully operational destroyers; Imogen and Isis were also at shipyards to be overhauled. Ilex and Imperial had been relocated back to the Mediterranean in mid-May and Icarus , Impulsive , Ivanhoe and Intrepid , the class's four mine-layers, were deployed between Dunkirk and Dover to evacuate the expeditionary force from mainland Europe.
The Inglefield stayed off Norway and accompanied the damaged destroyers Antelope and Electra from Norway to Scotland in June . The two boats had collided with each other as companions of the Ark Royal . In very bad weather the boats made difficult progress because of the heavily damaged Electra .
In the autumn of 1940, the Inglefield was one of the British units that attacked Dakar to prepare for a landing of Free French troops ( Operation Menace ). On the march south, she stopped the light cruiser Gloire off the Moroccan coast and escorted it to Casablanca . On September 23, she sank the French submarine Persée with the Foresight off Dakar . The flotilla leader was shot at by French coastal artillery and hit by a 7.5-inch projectile. The following day she led a battle with French destroyers and met the L'Audacieuse , which was set on fire by the Australia and badly damaged. Operation Menace was eventually canceled. Inglefield served a time before Freetown and then went back to Great Britain to secure a convoy. There it was overhauled and the rear torpedo set was replaced by a 76 mm anti-aircraft gun (3 inch 20 cwt).
In the following two years the Inglefield belonged to the Home Fleet and secured the heavy units, but also convoys from North America on the last part of their voyage. In May 1941 she was initially used to secure the British battleships King George V. and Rodney in search of the Bismarck , but had to leave the heavy units due to lack of fuel before they found the German battleship and shot down. In July she was escorted by British porters who attacked German bases in Norway. Together with the Icarus , she secured the tanker Black Ranger standing in the North Sea, which supplied the cruisers and destroyers of this longer mission with fuel at an agreed meeting point. During a visit to the fleet by the British King George VI. he used the Inglefield to visit the anchorage of Scapa Flow and to return to the mainland on August 9th.
The destroyer then performed various tasks in the first attempts by the British to support the Soviet Union by sea via Murmansk and in actions by the Home Fleet against the Germans in Norway. The run-up to an underwater crag off Spitzbergen in August led to another visit to the shipyard at the end of September 1941, which was also used to modernize their radar equipment. The destroyer, which was operational again in December, was then to take part in a commando operation.
In January 1942, Inglefield and Intrepid shot at Florø , the westernmost town in Norway between Ålesund and Bergen, in Operation Kitbag and damaged a factory. The landing of the commandos, which was also planned, had been canceled. At the same time, Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys of the RAF bombed the German Sola airfield . The attack by the destroyers on a German convoy damaged the steamer Hedwigshütte (2221 GRT) and the outpost boat V 5104 / Orkan was stranded .
From 14 to 26 April 1942, took Inglefield on companies Calendar part. The "Force W" formed from British and American units ran from Greenock into the Mediterranean to fly 47 British Supermarine Spitfire fighters into Malta. It consisted of the battle cruiser Renown , the US carrier Wasp and the British destroyers Inglefield , Echo , Partridge , Ithuriel and the American destroyers Lang and Madison . Before Gibraltar it was reinforced by the cruisers Cairo and Charybdis . On April 20, the fighters were launched in the Mediterranean and 46 reached their destination. Of four Italian submarines used against the association, only Velella was able to carry out an unsuccessful attack on a destroyer south of the Balearic Islands. The Force W returns undamaged to Scapa Flow on April 26th.
Use in the North Sea
The Inglefield and the American Madison were immediately afterwards in the British-American long-range coverage group for the convoys PQ 15 and QP 11 around the battleships King George V and Washington as well as the aircraft carrier Victorious in the North Sea between Iceland and Norway with nine other British and three American destroyers and two American heavy cruisers . The Inglefield remained at sea with the British cover group, in which the Duke of York had replaced her sister ship King George V to secure the retreat of the Trinidad, which had been makeshiftly repaired after the torpedo hit, in the event of an attack by German surface units. The cruiser was hit by a Junkers Ju 88 of III./KG 30 on May 14th , caught fire and had to be sunk the following day by the accompanying Matchless . Immediately afterwards, the Inglefield went back to sea with the destroyers Boadicea , Escapade and the Norwegian St. Albans and five other boats as "Western Local Escort" to carry the convoy QP 12 , which has been returning from Murmansk since May 21, on the last part of the voyage to Reykjavík , which the Germans discovered but not attacked.
From the end of August, the Inglefield was again overtaken and re-armed. She gave up her medium 120-mm cannon and the two anti-aircraft machine gun quadruplets and received four 20-mm Oerlikon automatic cannons . The remaining five-torpedo tube set was also given ashore, but replaced by two sets of four. The depth of the depth charges was also doubled and two additional launchers were installed on deck. The destroyer was operational again from November 9th.
Shortly thereafter, the Inglefield went to sea with five other destroyers and the cruisers Jamaica and Sheffield from Iceland to protect convoy JW 51A, which left Loch Ewe to Murmansk on November 15 with 16 freighters (over 100,000 tons of cargo) . The convoy reached Murmansk on December 25th without being captured by the German reconnaissance. However, five ships in the convoy were still lost in the Kolafjord due to air raids and mines.
On December 30, 1942 the convoy RA 51 left Murmansk in the opposite direction and the Inglefield formed the convoy protection with the destroyers Faulknor , Fury , Echo , Eclipse and Beagle as well as the mine sweeper Gleaner and four UJ trawlers. The convoy reached Loch Ewe on January 9, 1943 without touching the enemy . The local and long-range security with two battleships, five cruisers and another six destroyers were at sea at a distance from the convoy. Already on January 7, 1943, the following convoy JW 52 went to sea, in which the Inglefield, together with the destroyers Echo , Eclipse Faulknor , Montrose , Queenborough , Raider and the Polish ORP Hurricane, was part of the remote security around the battleship Anson and the cruiser Sheffield . The Germans attacked this convoy from the air and with submarines without success.
Also on the following convoy RA 52 , which left the Kolafjord on January 29, the Inglefield was with the hurricane and now Oribi and obedient with the remote security. The convoy only lost one ship to U 255 ; Despite the submarine reports, the German aerial reconnaissance did not find the convoy.
JW 53 , the following convoy to the east set sail on February 15th. In the event of a heavy storm, six steamers had to seek shelter in Iceland and the escort carrier Dasher and the cruiser Sheffield had to turn back with considerable storm damage. From the initially extensive escort, a “through escort group” with a mine sweeper, four corvettes and a trawler stayed with the convoy. From Seyðisfjörður a "Fighting Escort Group" with the cruiser Scylla and thirteen destroyers ( Milne , Orkan , Orwell , Opportune , Obedient , Obdurate , Faulknor , Boadicea , Inglefield , Fury , Intrepid , Impulsive , Eclipse ) joined the convoy on February 19 . The German aerial reconnaissance discovered JW 53 on the 23rd; In bad weather, the convoy avoided the German submarine line-ups, as the destroyers were able to identify them with their direction finders in good time or to identify and prevent the following attacks at an early stage. Two attacks by Ju 88 of I./KG 30 only damaged one freighter. Three Soviet destroyers and other security boats took the convoy, which arrived with 18 ships on the 26th in front of the Kolafjord. Six ships continued into the White Sea . The freighters arriving in Murmansk were attacked several times by Junkers Ju 87 of I./StG 5 and Ju 88. One freighter was destroyed and four seriously damaged.
The Scylla took ten destroyers, including the Inglefield , three corvettes and two trawlers, including the built in Germany HMS Northern Pride , the escort securing expiring on March 1, with 30 ships to the west convoy RA 53 , who has the second of U 255 was discovered and accompanied. The Fühlungshalter sank the American Executive (4978 GRT) on the 5th and torpedoed another freighter that was able to march on. An attack by twelve Ju 88s of I./KG 30 on the 6th failed in strong defensive fire. A strong storm then dispersed the convoy, in which a US freighter broke and sank. On the 9th U 586 sank the American Puerto Rican and on the 10th U 255 sank Richard Bland (7191 GRT), which he had already torpedoed . The merging of the scattered ships was largely aided by the radar of the battleship King George V.
Use in the North Atlantic
From March 14 to 20, 1943, the largest convoy operation of the Second World War took place in the North Atlantic. With a deployment of 43 submarines, 21 merchant ships with 140,842 GRT were sunk. Only U 384 was lost to a British Boeing Fortress . The losses of convoys SC 121 , HX 228 , SC 122 and HX 229 , which accounted for 20 percent of the participating ships, led Britain to fear that the convoy system - the backbone of the Allied strategy in the Battle of the Atlantic - was abandoned must become. It was therefore decided to form the destroyers of the Home Fleet Support Groups (“Support Groups”) to support convoys in the event of danger and to lead them through submarine formations that could not be bypassed. First, the “3rd” and “4th Support Group” were formed. The latter formed Inglefield with Icarus , Eclipse and Fury . In addition there was the American "TU.24.4.1" with the escort carrier Bogue and three USN destroyers. A 1st, 2nd and 5th Support Group were set up later.
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On April 4, 1943, the U 530 marching back to the base sighted the convoy HX 231 , which consisted of 61 ships - secured by the "Escort Group B7" with a frigate, the "long range escort" Vidette and four corvettes. The Löwenherz group and other nearby submarines were deployed against the convoy . On the night of the 5th the submarines were able to sink three ships, U 572 was rammed and damaged in an attempted attack. The air security that began during the day by British Liberators made further attacks difficult for the submarines. Two tankers and another freighter were sunk, but U 635 and U 632 were destroyed by the aircraft and U 594 were damaged. On April 6, the “4th Support Group” with the Inglefield and the destroyers Fury , Eclipse and Icarus arrived at the convoy and, together with the air security, pushed away all sentient submarines.
From May 9th, the Inglefield defended in the "5th Support Group" (escort Biter and, in addition to the Inglefield , the destroyers Obdurate , Opportune and Pathfinder ) alongside the regular escort group "EG C2" (destroyer Broadway , frigate Lagan , four corvettes and the Rescue tug Vizalma ) convoy HX 237 (46 ships)
Return to the Mediterranean
The next important mission of the Inglefield took place in July 1943, when she was one of 18 British, Greek and Polish destroyers who secured the battleships Nelson , Rodney , Warspite and Valiant as well as the aircraft carriers Indomitable and Formidable in the Ionian Sea with four cruisers of the Royal Navy . These units supported Operation Husky from July 10, 1943, the Allied invasion of Sicily and were supposed to prevent the Italian fleet from intervening. The main task of the Inglefield was the search for submarines of the Axis powers and artillery support of the landing forces. To fulfill these tasks, the boat was again stationed in Malta. The Inglefield took on similar tasks from 9 September after the Allies landed on the Italian mainland ( Operation Avalanche ) near Salerno . From September 25th she returned to the UK with other Home Fleet units. In November the Inglefield was back in Algiers and accompanied the battle cruiser Renown , on which the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was, from Algiers to a summit meeting in Cairo. In the second half of December 1943 the Inglefield was overhauled in Gibraltar.
The end of Inglefield
The boat was also supposed to support the next Allied landing operation at Anzio and Nettuno on the Tyrrhenian Sea in central Italy on January 22, 1944 ( Operation Shingle ). On the day of the landing, the Inglefield shelled the port city of Civitavecchia with the cruiser Dido and the destroyer Kempenfelt to distract the defenders at Anzio . The coastal road to Formia was then bombarded with the cruiser Mauritius . The Inglefield drove these missions from the Naples base . It transported troops and supplies to the bridgehead at Anzio and, if necessary, gave artillery support to the troops that had landed.
On February 15, 1944, the Inglefield escorted an ammunition transporter from Naples to Anzio. Then they stopped at Anzio, where he was on 25 February 1944 by a Henschel Hs-293 - glide bomb hit, the attacking at dawn Dornier Do 217 of II./KG 100 had dropped on them. When the Inglefield sank at position 41 ° 26 ′ 0 ″ N , 12 ° 38 ′ 0 ″ E, , 35 men lost their lives and 157 were saved.
The flotilla leaders of the A to I class
| Surname | Shipyard | Launch | finished | Displacement length |
Final fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Codrington D65 |
Swan Hunter construction no. 1355 |
August 7, 1929 | 4.06.1930 | 1540 ts 104.5 m |
July 27, 1940 before Dover dropped |
|
Keith D06 |
Vickers Barrow building no. 656 |
07/10/1930 | June 9, 1931 | 1400 ts 98.5 m |
Sunk off Dunkirk on June 1, 1940 |
|
Kempenfelt D18 |
White construction no. |
October 29, 1931 | 05/30/1932 | 1400 ts 100.3 m |
October 1939 HMCS Assiniboine , stranded on the way to demolition in November 1945 |
|
Duncan D99 |
Portsmouth DY construction no. |
07/07/1932 | 5.04.1933 | 1400 ts 100.3 m |
November 1945 demolished |
|
Exmouth H02 |
Portsmouth DY construction no. |
February 7, 1934 | October 3, 1934 | 1460 ts 104.5 m |
Sunk by U 22 on January 21, 1940 |
|
Faulknor H62 |
Yarrows building no. |
06/12/1934 | May 24, 1935 | 1495 ts 104.5 m |
1946 demolished |
|
Grenville H03 |
Yarrows building no. 1651 |
08/15/1935 | 07/01/1936 | 1465 ts 100.6 m |
Sunk January 19, 1940 after being hit by a mine |
|
Hardy H87 |
Cammell Laird building no. |
April 7, 1936 | December 14, 1936 | 1455 ts 102.7 m |
Sunk off Narvik on April 10, 1940 |
|
Inglefield D02 |
Cammell Laird building no. |
October 15, 1936 | 06/12/1937 | 1544 ts 102.7 m |
Sunk February 25, 1944 off Anzio |
Footnotes
- ^ Rohwer: The sea war. P. 16.
- ↑ Sea War, September 17, 1939, North Atlantic ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Rohwer, p. 32.
- ↑ Rohwer, pp. 74f.
- ^ Rohwer, pp. 148f.
- ^ Sea War, January 7, 1942, Norway
- ↑ 14.-26. April 1942, Mediterranean
- ↑ Naval War, 13.-18. May 1942, Northern Sea
- ^ Sea War, May 21 - June 1, 1942, North Sea
- ↑ 15th-25th December 1942, Northern Sea
- ↑ 1–9 . January 1943, North Sea
- ↑ naval warfare, 7.-1.29.1943, North Sea
- ^ Rohwer, p. 331.
- ↑ February 15 - March 14, 1943, North Sea
- ↑ March 1–10, 1943 North Sea
- ↑ 3–7 April 1943, North Atlantic
- ^ Rohwer, p. 346.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 383.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 421.
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 0-60032955-0 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-0097 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War 2nd Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1988, ISBN 0-87021-326-1
Web links
- HMS Inglefield , destroyer
- Convoy JW-53
- HMS Inglefield uboat.net
- "G", "H" and "I" leaders (1936–1937)
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