HMS Kennet
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|---|---|
 The HMS Kennet |
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| Overview | |
| Type | destroyer |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | February 5, 1902 |
| Launch | 4th December 1903 |
| Commissioning | January 1, 1905 |
| Decommissioning | 1919 in reserve |
| Whereabouts | 11 December 1919 sold to Dover for demolition |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
550 ts |
| length |
68.8 m (225.75 ft) |
| width |
7.3 m (23 ft 10.5 in) |
| Draft |
2.4 m (8 ft) |
| crew |
70 men |
| drive |
4 Thornycroft water tube boilers |
| speed |
25.5 kn |
| Armament |
1 × 76 mm / L40-12pdr-12 cwt Mk I cannon |
| Range |
1695 nm at 11 kn |
| Coal supply |
127 ts |
| Sister boats |
Jed , Chelmer , Colne |
| River class |
6 Hawthorn Leslie -type |
HMS Kennet was a destroyer of the River class of the British Royal Navy . At the beginning of the First World War , the Kennet was at the China Station and was used in front of Tsingtau . From the end of 1914 until the end of the war, the boat was in the Mediterranean . It was scrapped in Dover in 1919 .
Building history
The second Kennet of the Royal Navy was ordered in 1902 together with 10 other boats by the Admiralty after a new tender, from which further boats were ordered in the two following years and of which finally 36 boats came into the service of the Royal Navy as River class .
The concept of the class arose from a request by John de Robeck , commander of the destroyers of the Mediterranean fleet at the end of 1900 , who called for destroyers with a larger radius of action than the so-called "30-knotter" and "27-knotter" that had been procured up to then. Robeck demanded a range of 1650 nm at a cruising speed of 18 kn compared to the 1400 nm at 13 kn of the most recently acquired boats. Robeck's ideas and further suggestions were supported by his commander, Admiral "Jackie" Fisher , who also cited the German S 90 -class torpedo boats as good models for new torpedo boats.
In July 1901, the Royal Navy's chief designer, Sir William Henry White , approved the basic design of future destroyers, adopting many of the suggestions made by Robeck and his colleagues. The new boats should be more seaworthy, have a raised forecastle and a bridge that is set back further. You should get a heavier, more reliable machine. The required maximum speed was ultimately even reduced to 25.5 kn. However, this speed was to be achieved under almost realistic conditions with 95 tons of coal on board, which was not the case with the last "30 knots" ordered. The new destroyers were therefore faster than their predecessors in all weather conditions except for complete calm and absolutely calm seas.
As with the British destroyers built so far, the Admiralty asked private shipyards to submit drafts based on the rough draft. Through this process, the boats of the different shipyards differed in details in the external and internal design. Six shipyards, all of which had previously built destroyers for the Navy, received orders for River-class structures.
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With 16 boats since the first Daring delivered , the Thornycroft & Co. shipyard , then still in Chiswick , had delivered the majority of British torpedo boat destroyers by then. The shipyard also received construction contracts for four boats for the new type. The first to launch was the Kennet , named after a river in south-west England, on December 4, 1903. Initially, their armament did not differ from the boats delivered last. However, the five 6-pounders initially installed were replaced by three 12-pounders on the sides of the deck and at the stern in 1906.
Mission history
After commissioning at the beginning of 1905, the Kennet was assigned to the "East Coast Destroyer Flotilla" in Harwich . In this flotilla, all destroyers of the class began their service except for four boats delivered by Palmers ( Exe , Dee , Swale , Wear ), which went to China Station in 1904 .
During an exercise of the flotilla with sharp shooting and night maneuvers on April 27, 1908 off Harwich, the scout cruiser HMS Attentive rammed the Yarrow boat HMS Gala and cut it in two parts, which sank quickly. Except for the engineer officer at the gala , all crew members were rescued. Then the cruiser also rammed the sister boat HMS Ribble , which was able to call at Sheerness as a port of refuge on its own .
In 1909 the Kennet with its three sister boats Jed , Chelmer and Colne and the Yarrow boats Ribble , Usk and Welland were assigned to the China Station.
On August 30, 1912, the Admiralty ordered the renaming of all destroyer classes by letter. The river class boats then formed the E class . Of the eleven boats at the China Station, the four Palmer boats in service there since 1904 left China in the first half of 1914 and returned to Europe.
Service in the First World War
In July 1914, the units of the China Station gathered in Hong Kong . On the morning of August 6, 1914, the five destroyers Colne , Jed , Usk , Welland and Kennet left Hong Kong with the Allied China Squadron under Vice Admiral Sir Martyn Jerram . In addition to the flagship HMS Minotaur , the armored cruiser HMS Hampshire , the French Dupleix , the British small cruisers Newcastle and Yarmouth , the gunboats Clio and Cadmus and the hastily reactivated old ship of the line HMS Triumph belonged to the association. The destroyer Ribble stayed behind to protect the base; the Chelmer was not ready for use because of a boiler repair.
The ship of the line blocked the German base Tsingtau with the gunboats and the destroyers , while the cruisers looked for supplies for the German East Asia Squadron and began to scout out the German South Sea areas after the squadron's whereabouts.
On August 22nd, a battle broke out between the Kennet under Lieutenant Commander FA Russel and the German torpedo boat S 90 when the British destroyer discovered the patrolling S 90 and tried to intercept it. S 90 returned fire and thereby lured the Kennet into the fire area of a 105 mm land battery, which immediately scored hits. When SMS Jaguar also left , the Kennet turned away, with 3 dead and 7 wounded on board and whose starboard twelve-pounder was destroyed. On November 24, 1914, after the Japanese declaration of war, the British withdrew their units to Hong Kong. After the conquest of Tsingtau by the Japanese and the sinking of the German small cruiser Emden , the Triumph and the destroyers were withdrawn from the China station in November 1914 to support the Allied attack on the Dardanelles in the Mediterranean. The seven River class destroyers were assigned to the 5th Destroyer Flotilla of the British Mediterranean Fleet.
In mid-April 1915, the Kennet , the Jed and the Palmer boat Wear arrived in Skyros . On April 16, the three destroyers chased the small Ottoman torpedo boat Demir Hissar (97 t, delivered from France in 1907), which had attacked the Manitou transport off Tribouki . They drove the boat onto the coast of Chios and destroyed it. The crews of the destroyers were rewarded with prize money. The boats cleared the coast, and on April 25, 1915, the Kennet and Jed assisted the landings of parts of the 3rd Division in the so-called ANZAC Cove on Gallipoli .
At the beginning of July the Kennet was stationed in Port Iero on the island of Lesbos and belonged to the "Smyrna Patrol", which monitored 200 nm of the Turkish coast including Izmir (at that time mostly Smyrna). At the end of November, the Kennet was used again for artillery support at the British bridgeheads near Suvla on Gallipoli.
It then remained in the Mediterranean until the end of the war and only moved back to the British Isles in 1919, where it was decommissioned and sold to Dover for demolition in December 1919 .
Sister boats from Thornycroft- u. White-type and the Yarrow-type boats
| Surname | Launch | in service | commitment | off-duty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thornycroft type | Chiswick | two tall chimneys | ||
| HMS Jed | February 16, 1904 | . January 1905 | 1910 China, 1915 Dardanelles | July 29, 1920 |
| HMS Chelmer | December 8, 1904 | . June 1905 | 1910 China, 1915 Dardanelles | June 30, 1920 |
| HMS Colne | May 21, 1905 | . July 1905 | 1910 China, 1915 Dardanelles | November 4, 1919 |
| White type | Cowes | two tall chimneys | ||
| HMS Ness | January 5, 1905 | August 1905 | from 1915 Humber Patrol | May 27, 1919 |
| HMS Nith | March 7, 1905 | . October 1905 | from 1915 Humber Patrol | June 23, 1919 |
| Yarrow type | Poplar | four chimneys in pairs | ||
| HMS Usk | July 25, 1903 | . March 1904 | 1910 China, 1915 Dardanelles | July 29, 1920 |
| HMS Teviot | November 7, 1903 | . April 1904 | Portsmouth and Dover Patrol | June 23, 1919 |
| HMS Ribble | March 19, 1904 | . June 1904 | 1910 China, 1915 Dardanelles | July 29, 1920 |
| HMS Welland | April 14, 1904 | . July 1905 | 1910 China, 1915 Dardanelles | June 30, 1920 |
| HMS gala | January 7, 1905 | 570 t April 1905 | sank after collision on April 27, 1908 | |
| HMS Garry | March 21, 1905 | 570 t September 1905 | Portsmouth and Dover Patrol | October 22, 1919 |
Individual evidence
- ^ Friedman: British Destroyers: From Earliest Days to the Second World War , p. 86
- ^ Friedman, p. 88
- ^ Preston: Destroyers , p. 14
- ↑ Friedman, pp. 88f.
- ↑ http://www.naval-review.org/issues/1915-2.pdf THE ALLIED CHINA SQUADRON, p. 313
- ↑ Naval review 1915 p. 151f.
- ^ Preston, p. 25
- ^ "Arrowsmith" List - Part 1 Destroyer Prototypes through "River" Class . Retrieved June 1, 2013.
literature
- Norman Friedman: British Destroyers: From Earliest Days to the Second World War . Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley (2009), ISBN 978-1-84832-049-9
- Antony Preston: Destroyers , Hamlyn, ISBN 0-60032955-0
Web links
- Naval Database Kennet (1903 ) accessed November 21, 2013
- HMS Kennet , Destroyer, E or River-class also Log Books from Colne, Jed, Kennet, Ribble, Usk, Welland . Retrieved November 21, 2013
- River_Class_Destroyer_ (1903) (Eng.) Retrieved November 21, 2013