HMS Jaguar (F34)
 The Jaguar arriving in Malta
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
HMS Jaguar (F34) was a British J-class destroyer . He was awarded the Battle Honors Dunkirk 1940 , Atlantic 1940 , Spartivento 1940 , Matapan 1941 , Crete 1941 , Mediterranean 1941 , Libya 1941–42 and Malta Convoys 1942 during World War II .
The destroyer was on March 26, 1942 northeast of Sollum of U 652 met with two torpedoes and sank immediately in position 31 ° 53 ' N , 26 ° 18' O . 193 crew members died in the sinking; The submarine hunter Klo , a former Norwegian whaler, was able to save 53 castaways .
history
HMS Jaguar was laid down at William Denny and Brothers in Dumbarton on November 25, 1937 , launched on November 22, 1938 and commissioned on September 12, 1939 as the eighth J-class ship. The destroyer was the first Royal Navy ship to be named after the American big cat.
Calls
The destroyer was the only J-class ship that had not yet been put into service at the outbreak of World War II. After the commissioning, the Jaguar was the "7. Destroyer Flotilla "assigned to the Home Fleet , which belonged to the so-called Humber Force . It carried out patrols in the North Sea and the Dover Strait from the Grimsby base . On October 11, 1939, she ran aground in the Firth of Forth and damaged the shafts and propellers. The necessary repairs were carried out in Leith . At the beginning of November 1939 the destroyer was ready for action again. From mid-March to early May 1940, the ship failed again due to a stay in the shipyard in Dundee .
From May 26 to 29, 1940, the Jaguar was used to evacuate Allied troops from Dunkirk ( Operation Dynamo ). It was damaged by German air raids on May 29 on the way back to Dover . The repairs in Immingham dragged on until mid-June.
On October 11, 1940, the Jaguar and her sister ships Javelin , Jupiter , Kelvin , Kipling , Jackal and Kashmir left Plymouth to support the battleship Revenge in the bombardment of the French port of Cherbourg, which was occupied by German troops in July .
On 20 October, the patrolling Jaguar together with Kashmir , the Broke and the Polish destroyer Błyskawica in the English Channel . Four German destroyers were sighted. As the Allies approached, the Germans turned and returned to their base in Brest . The persecution was unsuccessful.
On November 15, she escorted the light cruisers Manchester and Southampton to Gibraltar with the Kelvin , where she joined the Force H on November 21 . The following week she provided escort services for larger combat ships in the area between Gibraltar and Sicily. On November 27, she was parked together with the Kelvin as protection for the aircraft carrier Ark Royal , but the combat group could no longer intervene in the sea battle at Cape Teulada (Spartivento). For the remainder of the year she continued to operate out of Gibraltar.
On January 1, 1942, the Royal Navy captured a French convoy with the passenger steamer Chantilly (9986 GRT), the tanker Octane (2034 GRT), the freighters Suroit (2318 GRT) and Sally Maersk (3252 GRT) and an armed trawler as escort Oran , having previously passed the Strait of Gibraltar unmolested. The light cruiser Bonaventure and the destroyers Jaguar , Duncan , Foxhound , Hero and Firedrake were used . Jaguar and Duncan fired a machine gun volley at the Chantilly that killed a man and a child and wounded another four people.
From January 6th, Jaguar secured the Excess convoy leaving Gibraltar with the motor ship Essex (11,063 GRT) with 4000 tn with the Bonaventure and the destroyers Hereward , Hero and Hasty . l. Ammunition, 3000 tn. l. Seed potatoes and twelve hurricane hunters for Malta and three freighters for Piraeus. From the Aegean Sea came the "Force B" with the light cruisers Gloucester and Southampton , which had 500 soldiers on board for Malta, and the destroyers Ilex and Janus . Force H accompanied the convoy almost to the Strait of Sicily until January 9 , where the first attack by the Italian Air Force took place. The security forces continued to run into the eastern Mediterranean, reinforced by Force B, which had left Malta heading west after the embarked soldiers landed. On January 10, the Italian torpedo boats Vega and Circe of the Spica class attacked the convoy south of Pantelleria with torpedoes, but were repulsed and the Vega was sunk. South of Malta, the convoy met the Mediterranean Fleet , which was heavily attacked by the Italian and German air forces. The aircraft carrier Illustrious was so badly damaged that it had to call at Malta. On January 11, with further air attacks were Ju-87 -Stukas the II./StG.2 the Gloucester hit by a dud and Southampton so badly damaged that they will be abandoned in the evening had to and from the cruiser Orion was sunk. Jaguar ran with Orion and Bonaventure on the 14th to Suda Bay (Crete) and from there in a larger association of the Mediterranean fleet to Alexandria until the 15th .
There the destroyer of the “14. Destroyer Flotilla ”. In February, the destroyer was moved together with the Dainty to the Bay of Souda on the northwest coast of Crete and placed under the British Association in the Aegean Sea, which also included the heavy cruisers York and Bonaventure and the destroyers Jervis , Janus and Mohawk . On February 27, Jaguar was involved with Bonaventure and Decoy , Hasty and Hero in the withdrawal from the unsuccessful Operation Abstention (invasion of the then Italian-administered island of Kastelorizo ). She was attacked by the Italian destroyer Francesco Crispi with torpedoes that missed her. The Jaguar took the enemy under fire with her artillery. However, a light hit put their searchlight out of action, so that precise fire was no longer possible. She broke off the action and returned to Alexandria on February 28.
The Jaguar escorted convoys to and from Greek ports in March and took part in the sea battle at Cape Matapan on March 28 . From April to the end of May it operated from Alexandria, escorting larger combat ships and assisting in the supply and then the evacuation of Allied troops in Crete.
In June she became the “10th Destroyer Flotilla ”and covered landing operations in Syria as part of Operation Exporter . From August to December the Jaguar was busy protecting the supply convoys between Alexandria and Tobruk .
On December 9th, the Jaguar was transferred to Force K in Malta to intercept Axis convoys to North Africa. On December 18, she ran out of Malta to support the destroyer Kandahar , which ran into an Italian mine off Tripoli . As it turned out, due to the weather conditions as impossible to walk alongside, she hid 174 survivors of Kandahar , which had jumped overboard and put the damaged destroyer with a torpedo .
The end of the jaguar
The destroyer accompanied the tanker RFA Slavol to Tobruk on March 26, 1942 together with the Greek destroyer Vasilissa Olga , when U 652 attacked the formation northeast of Sollum and torpedoed the tanker. When the Jaguar wanted to save survivors from the burning tanker, she too was hit by two torpedoes from the German submarine and sank immediately. 193 crew members died in the sinking. The former whaler Klo who came to the rescue was able to save 53 castaways.
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; a 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
- MJWhitley: Destroyer in World War II. Motorbuch Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 (English original: Destroyers of World War Two. Arms & Armors Press, London).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Service History HMS Jaguar (F34) - J-class Destroyer.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. May 28-29, 1940, Kanal
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 11. – 12.10.1940, Kanal, Operation Medium
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 1.1.1941, Mediterranean
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. January 6-13, 1941, Mediterranean Sea, Operation Excess to reinforce the island of Malta
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. February 8-14, 1941, Greece / Aegean.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. February 25-28, 1941, Aegean Sea.
J-class Jackal | Jaguar | Janus | Javelin | Jersey | Jervis | Juno | Jupiter
K-class Kandahar | Kashmir | Kelly | Kelvin | Khartoum | Kimberley | Kingston | Kipling
N class Napier | Nepal | Nerissa | Nestor | Nizam | Noble (G84) | Noble (G65) | Nonpareil | Norman
Australia :
Napier |
Nepal |
Nestor |
Nizam |
Norman
