HMS Jackal (F22)

Jackal

Jackal at anchor, May 1939

Ship data flag  United Kingdom Ship type destroyer class J class Shipyard John Brown & Company , Clydebank Build number 556 Order March 25, 1937 Keel laying September 24, 1937 Launch October 25, 1938 takeover April 13, 1939 Whereabouts January 12, 1942

Ship dimensions and crew length 108.7 m ( Lüa ) 103.5 m ( Lpp ) width 10.9 m Draft Max. 4.22 m displacement 1773  ts standard; 2384 ts maximum   crew 218 men

Machine system machine 2 Admiralty three-drum boilers , Parsons geared turbines Machine performance 40,000 PS (29,420 kW) Top speed 36 kn (67 km / h) propeller 2

Armament 6 × Sk 120 mm L / 45 Mk.XII (3 × 2) 4 × Flak 40 mm L / 39 (2pdr) Mk.VIII (1 × 4) 8 × Fla MG Vickers 12.7 mm L / 62 (2 × 4) 10 × torpedo tube ø 533 mm (2 × 5) 20 depth charges , 2 launchers, 1 drop frame Mine detection equipment last: 6 × Sk 120 mm L / 45 Mk.XII (3 × 2) 1 × Flak 102 mm L / 45 Mk.V 4 × Flak 40 mm L / 39 (2pdr) Mk.VIII (1 × 4) 4 × Flak Oerlikon 20 mm L / 70 Mk.II 5 × torpedo tube ø 533 mm (1 × 5) 20 depth charges , 2 launchers, 1 drop frame Mine detection equipment Sensors ASDIC

HMS Jackal (F22) was a British J-class destroyer . The destroyer put into service in 1939 was awarded the Battle Honors Atlantic 1939–41 , Norway 1940 , English Channel 1940 , Crete 1941 , Mediterranean 1941 and Libya 1940–41 during World War II .

On May 12, 1942, the Jackal, severely damaged by an air raid and burning, was sunk with a torpedo after the Jervis had taken over the crew . During this advance against a convoy of the Axis powers , the destroyers Lively and Kipling sank immediately after bombing during the air raids the day before .

history

HMS Jackal was on 25 March 1937 as a destroyer of the J-Class along with a destroyer of K class at John Brown & Company in Clydebank ordered. Similar orders were also received from seven other British shipyards.

The Jackal from 1911

The keel of the new building with hull number 556 was laid on September 24, 1937 and on October 25, 1938 it was launched as the 7th  Jackal of the Royal Navy. The last name was an Acheron- class destroyer in service from 1911 to 1920.
On April 13, 1939, the Jackal was the first ship of the new class to enter service. After her commissioning she was assigned to the 7th Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet .

Operations of the destroyer

At the start of the war, the 7th Flotilla formed the Humber Force in Grimsby with the light cruisers Southampton and Glasgow of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron , in order to be able to repel any advance by the Navy against the British east coast or in the southern North Sea more quickly. The 7th Flotilla had the seven J-class destroyers already in service. The Jaguar , which was not yet completed on its own , was replaced by the older destroyer Echo in the flotilla by the end of September . One of the first tasks of the destroyer was to secure the repatriation of the embassy staff on both sides with a Dutch ferry between Gravesend and Rotterdam together with the sister ships Janus and Juno . This was followed by patrol and escort services in the North Sea, the English Channel and the western approach until the end of February 1940 . A collision with the Janus in Kirkwall in October 1939 required a 14-day stay in the shipyard in Grimsby to finally resolve it. On February 28, 1940 the destroyer collided while securing an east coast escort with the small Swedish steamer Storfors (555 GRT. 1918), which sank immediately. Its crew could be saved. The damaged Jackal ran to the Tyne secured by Janus and was finally repaired at Blyth Dry Docks by mid-April 1940.

From April 20, 1940, Jackal accompanied the British merchant ships Cedarbank , St. Magnus and St. Sunniva from Leith to Åndalsnes with Javelin during the transport of military supplies for the Allied landing forces south of Trondheim in Norway. On April 21, the Cedarbank was torpedoed and sunk by U 26 off the Norwegian coast . On the 29th, Jackal and Javelin took the cruiser Glasgow to Molde , where Jackal served the Norwegian King Haakon VII and Crown Prince Olav , parts of the Norwegian government and allied diplomats as a ferry to the cruiser in front of the port. He also took 35 tons of the Norwegian gold reserves on board and then ran securely from the two destroyers to Tromsø to bring the king and government to safety from the advancing Germans. Until May 13, the Jackal performed other security tasks off the Norwegian coast, including artillery support for landed Allied troops together with the cruiser Enterprise . Finally, she accompanied the severely damaged sloop pelican back home when she was supposed to be relocated to the southern North Sea to support the evacuation measures from the Netherlands and Belgium. In May 1940, the destroyer was assigned to the 5th Destroyer Flotilla and initially stationed in Harwich , later in Plymouth , where it carried out patrol missions in the English Channel . The 7th Flotilla was disbanded because several units of the J- and K-Class were relocated to the Mediterranean Fleet and formed the "14th Destroyer Flotilla" there. On the night of October 11, 1940, the Jackal and six other destroyers of the 5th Flotilla secured the bombardment of the port facilities of Cherbourg by the battleship Revenge , in which certain targets were also assigned to the destroyers. The following night the flotilla tried to provide the German 5th torpedo boat flotilla, which had advanced with griffin , condor , falcon , sea ​​eagle and wolf into the sea area off the Isle of Wight and sunk some light British and Free French units. The defeated German boats managed to escape the five modern British destroyers. In the night of October 18, there was a battle between the German destroyers Hans Lody , Karl Galster , Friedrich Ihn and Erich Steinbrinck under the FdZ , Corvette Captain Erich Bey , who wanted to advance to the Bristol Channel . The British had recognized the departure of five German destroyers from Brest in time, stopped their convoys and set up a formation with the cruisers Newcastle and Emerald and the destroyers Jackal (with the flotilla chief Louis Mountbatten ), Jupiter , Kashmir , Kelvin and Kipling against the German advance . When the enemy formations sighted each other, they opened fire at a great distance without scoring any hits. Since the British destroyers stayed with the cruisers, the Germans were able to withdraw. The German 5th Torpedo Boat Flotilla, which is in the sea as a support group with six boats, was unable to intervene in the battle. The attacks by the air forces on both sides on the retreating units only caused insignificant damage.

On November 29, 1940, there was a more intense battle between the German destroyers Karl Galster , Hans Lody and Richard Beitzen with Javelin , Jupiter , Kashmir , Jackal and Jersey , during which Mountbatten's lead destroyer Javelin was hit by two torpedoes and lost the bow and stern. Then the fight was broken off and the Jackal took over the wounded of the Javelin and brought them to Plymouth.

From the beginning of December 1940 to mid-January 1941, the Jackal was overhauled at a shipyard in Immingham , in order to then be used for security on the access routes to the British Isles and in some mining operations.

Operations in the Mediterranean

In April 1941 the Jackal was also assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet with other units of the 5th Flotilla and arrived in Gibraltar on April 24th , where it reinforced Force H. After her arrival in Malta on April 28th, she and her sister ships were placed under the command of Force K , which was tasked with attacking the enemy supply lines . The first use of the new destroyers of Force K was unsuccessful, but led to the loss of the Jersey when entering Malta on May 2, 1941 (see there) . With the other destroyers of Force K ( Kelly , Kelvin , Kashmir and Kipling ), the Jackal shelled Benghazi on the night of May 11th . On May 23, the destroyers of Force K ran into the sea area around Crete in order to prevent reinforcements over sea after the Germans landed on the island ( Operation Merkur ). All ships were attacked multiple times from the air, with Kelly and Kashmir being lost. Jackal was luckier and was able to evacuate allied troops from Heraklion on May 28th and from Sphakia on May 31st .

The guepard at anchor

At the beginning of June, the Jackal was used to support the Allied ground forces in the occupation of Syria, which was controlled by Vichy France . On the 9th, the French large destroyers Valmy and Guepard shelled allied ground troops and hit the British destroyer Janus several times in a battle off Sidon . Jackal as well as Isis and Hotspur were able to prevent its destruction by intervening in the battle. The French ships scored another hit on the Jackal , but then withdrew to Beirut . On July 4th, the Jackal was still involved in the bombardment of the last Vichy-French positions near Beirut by the cruisers Ajax and Naiad and the destroyers Kimberley , Havock , Hasty and the Australian Nizam .

In the following years the destroyer secured convoys to supply Malta and Tobruk and movements of the heavy units of the Mediterranean fleet. On November 19, he intervened in the land fighting with the Kipling near the Halfaya Pass . The Jackal was one of the backup forces of the 1st Battle Squadron of three battleships when the battleship Barham was torpedoed by U 331 on November 25, 1941 and sank after an ammunition explosion. In an attempt with Jaguar and Jervis to place Italian destroyers off the North African coast, the British association was attacked by Italian torpedo bombers off Derna in early December 1941 , which hit the Jackal . After an emergency repair of the steering gear, it was able to reach Alexandria again and was canceled until April 1942 due to the necessary repairs.

The end of the jackal

The anti-aircraft destroyer Lively

In May 1942 she was given the task of intercepting enemy supply convoys. On May 10, she tried together with the destroyers Jervis , Kipling and Lively to intercept a convoy to Benghazi . On May 11, 1942, the destroyer group was attacked by German Ju-88 bombers from Lehrgeschwader 1 about 90  nautical miles northwest of Marsa Matruh . The Lively was badly hit and immediately sank. During the ongoing attacks, the Jackal also suffered severe hits, which set off fires on board. Nevertheless she was towed by the Jervis . At the same time, the Kipling was hit and sank. When the fire in the boiler room got out of control on May 12, the crew was taken over by the Jervis and the Jackal was sunk with a torpedo. The wreck lies at the position of 32 ° 38 '  N , 26 ° 20'  O coordinates: 32 ° 38 '0 "  N , 26 ° 20' 0 '  O .

15 crew members lost their lives in the bombing and fighting damage. The Jervis reached Alexandria with 650 survivors of the three lost destroyers .

Armament

The armament consisted of six 120 mm cannons in double mounts Mk.XII for use against sea and air targets (two towers in front of the bridge, the rear in an elevated position; one mount on a platform in the rear). As anti-aircraft armament , the destroyer had a 2-pounder quadruple gun Mk.VIII on a platform behind the funnel and two quadruple 0.5-inch (12.7-mm) flak machine guns . Ten torpedo tubes in two sets of five tubes each and 20 depth charges completed the armament.

The poor defense ability of the class against air attacks led from 1940 to the exchange of the rear torpedo tube set for a 102 mm Mk.V flak . Later, the Vickers FlaMGs were also replaced by four individual Oerlikon automatic cannons .

literature

• MJ Whitley: Destroyer in World War II. Motorbuch Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 (Original: Destroyers of World War Two. Arms & Armours Press, London), pp. 114-118 (N-Class), 219, 215.

Web links

Commons : J, K and N classes  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• HMS Jackal (F22) on uboat.net (engl.)
• Service History HMS Jackal (F 22) - J-class Destroyer

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Service History HMS Jackal (F 22) - J-class Destroyer.
2. ↑ hull number 557, exchanged with the J-commissioned by Thornycroft 's name and was running as Javelin launched
3. ↑ ^{a b} Royal Navy, Ships. September 1939
4. ↑ SS Storfors +1940
5. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. April 21-25, 1940, Norway.
6. ^ Navy news
7. ^ ^{A b} Rohwer: Sea War. October 11-12, 1940, Kanal.
8. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. October 17-18, 1940, Kanal.
9. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. November 27-29, 1940, Kanal.
10. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. April 21-28, 1941, Mediterranean.
11. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 2-4 May 1941, Mediterranean.
12. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. May 5-12, 1941, Mediterranean Sea.
13. ^ ^{A b} Rohwer: Sea War. May 20 – June 1, 1941, Mediterranean Sea, Operation Merkur: German air landing on Crete.
14. ^ ^{A b} Rohwer: Sea War. 7.6. – 14.7.1941, Mediterranean, conquest of Syria by Australian / Indian and Free French. Troops.
15. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. November 18-27, 1941, Mediterranean Sea, Operation Crusader.
16. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. November 23-25, 1941, Mediterranean Sea.