HMS Kent (1901)
|
|
|---|---|
 HMS Kent |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | February 12, 1900 |
| Launch | March 6, 1901 |
| delivery | October 1, 1903 |
| Namesake | Kent county |
| Whereabouts | Sold for demolition in 1920 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
9,800 tn.l. |
| length |
pp: 134.11 m (440 ft ) |
| width |
20.12 m (66 ft) |
| Draft |
7.6 m (25 ft) |
| crew |
678 men |
| drive |
|
| speed |
23 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Coal supply |
1,600 tn.l. |
|
Armor belt armor / casemates |
|
| Towers / barbeds |
127 mm (5 in) |
| deck |
50–170 mm (2–7.5 in) |
| Command tower |
250 mm (10 in) |
The eighth HMS Kent of the British Royal Navy was one of a total of ten armored cruisers of the Monmouth - or County class . The sister ships were HMS Monmouth , HMS Essex , HMS Bedford , HMS Donegal , HMS Berwick , HMS Cornwall , HMS Cumberland , HMS Suffolk and HMS Lancaster . The Kent sank the SMS Nürnberg in December 1914 in a sea battle near the Falkland Islands . In March 1915, with the HMS Glasgow in the Chilean Cumberland Bay of Robinson Crusoe Island , she fired at the cruiser SMS Dresden , which had escaped in the Falklands battle , until it sank itself.
history
The keel laying of the Kent took place on February 12, 1900 as the third ship of the class. The Kent was launched as the first ship on March 6, 1901 in Portsmouth Dockyard and then came into service with the Royal Navy as the second cruiser in the series on October 1, 1903.
Like her sister ships, she displaced 9,800 tons, had a top speed of only 21.7 knots and a crew of around 680 men. The main armament of fourteen 6- inch (15.2-cm) rapid-loading guns, four of them in a bow and a stern twin turret (one MK VII and one Mk VIII gun) and ten of the Mk VII type in Casemates were comparatively weak for an armored cruiser of the time. Since the lower six casemate guns were not very far above the waterline, they could only be used effectively when the sea was calm. The armor wasn't very strong either.
Initially, the ship was with the Home Fleet , and then served on the China Station from 1906 to 1913 . In 1911, the Kent made a voyage across the Pacific, as she and the protected cruiser HMS Challenger of Australia Station visited Chile to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the South American state's independence, which took place six months after the anniversary. After having had radio contact for the first time two days earlier, the cruisers met in Caldera (Chile) to take over coal again. On April 5, the two British ships entered Valparaíso , where they stayed for 14 days. Together they then made the return trip via Iquique , Callao , Panama , San Salvador , San Jose , Acapulco and Los Angeles to Honolulu , where they separated to march back to their stations. When the Chinese Revolution broke out , the Kent was at the China Station together with her sister ship Monmouth , the armored cruiser Minotaur , the modern Newcastle and the old cruisers Flora and Astraea as well as many smaller ships, trying to prevent any excesses against Europeans. In 1913 the Kent left East Asia and was assigned to the reserve upon return.
War effort
In September 1914, the Kent was put back into service and sent to Rear Admiral Archibald P. Stoddart's squadron in the South Atlantic . She was one of the ships on December 8, 1914 against the German East Asia Squadron , the Battle of the Falkland Islands led and destroyed the squadron.
When the Germans appeared off the Falkland Islands on the morning of December 8, the British were still at the coal. The Kent was the alert ship and was the first ship to leave port to pursue the German squadron, which had a lead of around 15 nautical miles. The British ships made more speed, the good visibility and the calm sea on that day allowed them to easily see the German ships heading east on the horizon and to slowly overtake them.
After Graf Spee had recognized that he could not escape in the closed unit, he dismissed the SMS Leipzig at 1:15 pm and signaled at 1:20 pm: "Small cruisers dismissed. Try to escape! ”The British commanding officer, Sturdee , reacted immediately: he had expected this behavior. At an agreed signal, the Kent , which had meanwhile fallen behind the battle cruisers, her sister ship Cornwall and soon afterwards the HMS Glasgow began to pursue the German small cruisers.
The Kent chased the SMS Nürnberg , which ran south-east . This was hampered in its speed by the poor condition of the engine and boiler, so that the Kent could approach after three and a half hours. After forty minutes of bombardment, the Nürnberg turned to port in order to relieve the heavily damaged aft ship and to shoot down its own broadsides. In the following fight the Kent received 38 hits from the Nuremberg's 10.5 cm guns . The Kent turned and shot down the Nürnberg with her 6-inch guns until all guns had failed. At 6:30 p.m. the captain of the Nürnberg gave the order to demolish it, after which the corresponding preparations were started. After she had to stop badly damaged at 6:35 p.m. but did not drop the flag, the Nürnberg was shot at from short range by the Kent until she finally sank at 7:27 p.m. 18 men of the Nuremberg crew were pulled out of the water, but five of these men died shortly after their serious injuries. There were five dead and eleven wounded on the Kent , three of whom died. Since she had not yet coaled as an alert ship, she returned to Stanley (Falkland Islands) with a small amount of coal ; in a longer chase she would have been left lying around without any coal, and her radio room was destroyed by a hit.
After the Falklands Battle, the NDL steamer Sierra Cordoba , which had already supplied the auxiliary cruiser Crown Prince Wilhelm , was dispatched from Montevideo on December 18 with 1,600 tons of coal, provisions and spare parts to support the cruiser Dresden , which had escaped from the Falklands Battle . The Sierra Cordoba entered the Strait of Magellan on December 24, 1914 and visited Punta Arenas . It was then controlled by the Kent , which monitored the Strait of Magellan. Since it was in neutral waters, it could not stop the German supplier and German pilots managed to hide the Sierra Cordoba in an unmapped bay - just like the Dresden .
The Dresden later managed to escape to the Pacific with its supplier. While waiting for another supply ship, the Gotha , the Kent found her on March 7, 1915. Through the radio messages she had found the track of the Dresden again. With five hours of maximum speed, the Dresden managed to escape again.
On March 9, 1915, the German cruiser anchored in the Cumberland Bay of Robinson Crusoe Island off San Juan Bautista. He only had 80 tons of coal on board and the machines had become almost unusable due to the long maximum journey. The next day the commandant decided to be interned in Chile. Instead of the expected Chilean forces, the British cruisers Glasgow and Kent came into view on the morning of March 14, 1915 . In disregard of neutrality, they shot at the anchored Dresden . Eight sailors were killed. The commandant sent his adjutant, First Lieutenant to the Sea, Wilhelm Canaris , to negotiate. But the British were not impressed by his reproaches about the neutral waters; this could be discussed after the war. At least this gave the commandant of the Dresden time to prepare for the sinking of his ship. It shouldn't fall into the hands of the enemy. After opening the sea valves, the Dresden sank in Cumberland Bay at 11:15 a.m. at position 33 ° 38 ′ 6 ″ S, 78 ° 49 ′ 30 ″ W.
The Kent returned to Great Britain via China in May 1915. In 1916 the Kent moved to South Africa to Cape Station . In June 1918 she took on duties at the English channel convoy escort. On June 4, she accompanied five destroyers to Durham Castle and Kenilworth Castle , two Union Castle Line ships from South Africa. The Kenilworth Castle collided with the destroyer Rival when she tried to avoid the Kent , which surprisingly approached her.
In July 1918, the Kent moved again to China Station , where the sister ships Suffolk and Lancaster were stationed. In January 1919 she was sent to Vladivostok to support American and Japanese troops in the fight against the Bolshevik Red Army .
In 1920 the Kent was decommissioned and sold for demolition in June 1920.
literature
- Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Ed.): Warships of the world 1860 to 1905. Volume 1: Great Britain and Germany. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5402-4 .
- Geoffrey Bennet: Coronel and the Falklands. Birlinn Limited, Edinburgh 2000, ISBN 1-84158-045-7 .
- John Moore: Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. Studio Editions, London 1990, ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .
Web links
- Monmouth class at worldwar1 (English)
- Monmouth-Class battleships-cruisers (English)
- Monmouth class at historyofwar (English)
- HMS Kent at maritimequest
- u. a. Sturdee's report on the battle
- Kent's log books on oldweather
Individual evidence
-
↑ The only difference between Mk.VII and Mk.VIII was that with Mk.VIII the shutter opened to the left instead of to the right.
The Mk.VIII were installed as a left tube in the twin towers, which made reloading easier, as the locks swiveled away from the tower walls. - ^ The Kenilworth Castle Incident, 1918 - South African Military History Society - Journal. Retrieved December 6, 2019 .
- ↑ UNION, CASTLE AND UNION CASTLE LINES. Retrieved December 6, 2019 .