HMS Kimberley (F50)
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HMS Kimberley (F50) was a destroyer of the K-class of the Royal Navy . The ship built by John I. Thornycroft & Co. in Woolston near Southampton was started in 1938 and came into service with the Royal Navy in December 1939 after the start of the war. It was the first Navy ship to be named after the town of Kimberley in South Africa, the defense and relief of which was of great importance to the British public after a four-month siege in the Second Boer War .
During the Second World War , the destroyer was awarded the Battle Honors Narvik 1940 , Norway 1940 , East Indies 1940 , Greece 1941 , Crete 1941 , Libya 1941–42 , Malta Convoys 1941 , Aegean 1944 and Adriatic 1944 .
Only the K-series Kimberley and Kelvin survived the war. From June 1949, the Kimberley in Troon was the last destroyer of the J and K class to be abandoned.
history
Like all J- and K-class ships, HMS Kimberley was ordered in March 1937. The eight commissioned shipyards were to produce a ship of each class, which were largely identical. On January 17, 1938, she was laid down at John I. Thornycroft & Co. as the seventh K-class ship and launched on June 1, 1939 as the eighth K-class ship. She was then the second ship of the class that was built by Thornycroft, since in April the Kashmir was launched at the shipyard that was originally to be named Javelin . On December 21, 1939, the Kimberley was delivered as the last ship of the class. After her commissioning she was assigned to the 5th Destroyer Flotilla with the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow .
Calls
The destroyers of the "5th Destroyer Flotilla" were used to secure convoys in the North Sea and in the area of the North Western Approaches or to search for German submarines and German merchant ships that were trying to reach their homeland. On February 21, 1940, the cruiser Manchester and the Kimberley south of Iceland stopped the German freighter Wahehe (4709 GRT), which had broken out of Vigo to reach Germany. Due to the bad weather, the Kimberley can only send a prize crew to Wahehe the following day , which the German ship brought to Kirkwall on February 23 .
On the evening of April 7, 1940, the British Home Fleet ran with two battleships , a battle cruiser , two light cruisers and ten destroyers from Scapa into the Shetland-Norway Strait, followed by a French cruiser with two large destroyers to target a German occupation of Norway prevent. The British destroyer association formed five units of the Tribal class as well as the Kimberley with her sister ships Kelvin , Kashmir , Jaguar and Jupiter . The association set sail too late to be able to prevent the primary goals of the German Weser Exercise company . The British search associations were considerably strengthened and reorganized several times. On April 13, the Kimberley took part as the only ship of its class in the second British attack on the German destroyers in Narvik and tried in vain to tow the damaged Cossack .
Relocation to the Red Sea
In May 1940 she was posted to the Mediterranean and arrived in Alexandria on May 23 . Together with the sister ships Kandahar , Kingston and Khartoum, she was designated for use in the Red Sea and placed under the East Indies station there . The main task of the destroyers and the other units of the Royal Navy and Commonwealth Marines deployed in the Red Sea was to secure supply convoys for the British base in Egypt from attacks by the Italian Navy or air force from bases in Italian East Africa . In August 1940 the Kimberley also assisted in the evacuation of British Somaliland .
After Italian air raids on convoy BN.7 (32 merchant ships, secured by the light cruiser Leander , the Kimberley , the sloops Auckland (RN), Yarra (RAN) and Indus (RIN) as well as two minesweepers) shortly after leaving Aden , tried on the night of October 21, 1940 in the Red Sea the Italian destroyers Pantera and Leone of the Leone class and Nazario Sauro and Francesco Nullo of the Sauro class to attack the convoy 150 miles east of Massaua . The attackers were pushed away from the security. The Kimberley chased and shot at the Francesco Nullo , who finally sat on the beach at Harmil Island in order not to sink or to be sunk by torpedoes from the Kimberley . The British destroyer got into the area of an Italian coastal battery while in pursuit and was hit in the engine room, which put it out of action. It was eventually towed by cruiser Leander to Port Sudan , where only emergency repairs could be made. At the end of October 1940 the Kimberley was partially operational again at reduced speed. The crashed Italian destroyer was sunk by three RAF Blenheim bombers the day after the nightly battle .
The final repair of the destroyer took place in Bombay from January to March 1941 .
Operations in the Mediterranean
Subsequently, the destroyer was used in the British Mediterranean Fleet to secure convoys to Malta and Greece and to evacuate Allied troops from Greece and Crete. On May 21, which was Kimberley with the cruisers Dido , Orion and Ajax , as well as the destroyers Janus , Hasty and Hereward at the extensive sinking of the first German motor glider squadron north of Chania involved, the Italian torpedo boat Lupo of Spica class was sent defended. On the night of June 1, the destroyer was involved with Phoebe , Abdiel , Jackal and Hotspur in the last evacuation from Sphakia , with which 4000 of 6000 men were transported away.
Subsequently, the Kimberley was used in support of the conquest of Syria, which was defended by Vichy-loyal French troops, where they intervened with their artillery in the land fighting. From the end of July 1941, the destroyer was mostly used to secure the fleet, but on 19 November it intervened with the Jackal in the land battles in North Africa near the Halfaya Pass. At the end of November, the Kimberley was relocated to Force K in Malta , where it was used with the cruisers Aurora , Penelope , Ajax , Neptune and the sister ship Kingston against the Axis power supplies to North Africa. From mid-December onwards, operations were again carried out to secure supply convoys to Malta or Tobruk.
In January 1942 the Kimberley supported the Tobruk garrison and escorted supply convoys. On January 12, she was hit by a torpedo from the German submarine U 77 and suffered severe damage to the stern, which was partially torn off. The destroyer escort Heythrop the Hunt class was the NUC Kimberley entrain to Alexandria. The first repair work there and after the transfer in tow in Bombay took the rest of the year and the following year to complete. It was not until April 1944 that the destroyer was operational again and was able to move back to the Mediterranean.
On August 15, 1944, the British prime minister visited Churchill aboard the Kimberley during Operation Dragoon , the invasion fleet on the south coast. In August the destroyer moved to the Adriatic Sea to support the Allied advance from sea with other destroyers and gunboats. From September on, operations against German troops in the area around Rimini took place .
In October the Kimberley then moved to the Aegean Sea to support the occupation of mainland Greece and to prevent the evacuation of German troops in isolated positions. On October 28, she escorted the (formerly Italian) hospital ship Gradisca (13,870 GRT), which had been seized by a British submarine, to Chios . On November 12th, the Kimberley shelled German batteries on Alimia near Rhodes and on the 14th destroyed two landing ships.
On May 1, 1945, the Kimberley made another advance against Rhodes with the destroyer escorts Catterick and Kriti (ex Hursley ) of the Hunt class .
The end of the Kimberley
On May 8, the Kimberley off Rhodes took the German commander of the German troops remaining in the Dodecanese , Major General Otto Wagener , on board to bring him to the British headquarters to sign the surrender. At the end of the month, the destroyer moved with over 100 selected prisoners of war to Alexandria. The destroyer remained in the Mediterranean until the end of the year. In January 1946 he was decommissioned in Dartmouth and assigned to the reserve. Segregated in 1948, the Kimberley was demolished in Troon from June 1949 .
Armament
The armament consisted of six 120 mm cannons in double mounts Mk.XII for use against sea and air targets (two turrets in front of the bridge, the rear in an elevated position; another double 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) Fla-MGs . 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 .
1942/43 the armament of the Kimberley was further improved. Since there were now many units with improved anti-aircraft armament, the 102 mm anti-aircraft gun was removed and the second torpedo tube set reinstalled. Two of the individual Oerlikons have been replaced by two 20mm twin cannons. In addition, there were now 45 depth charges with twice the number of drop devices.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Service History HMS Kimberley (F50) - K-class Destroyer
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 10.2. – 3.3.1940 North Atlantic
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 7–8 April 1940, Norway
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. August 4–19, 1940, Red Sea / Gulf of Aden, Italian occupation of British Somalia.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. October 20-21, 1940, Red Sea
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. October 20-21, 1940, Red Sea
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. May 20 – June 1, 1941, Mediterranean Sea, Operation Merkur: German air landing on Crete.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 7.6. – 14.7.1941, Mediterranean, conquest of Syria by Australian / Indian and Free French. Troops.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. January 9-17, 1942, Mediterranean
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. August 15, 1944, Mediterranean Sea, Operation Dragoon
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 1. – 13.9.1944, Mediterranean.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. October 1–28, 1944, Mediterranean / Aegean.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. May 1, 1945, Mediterranean / Aegean.
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981. Ian Allen, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- 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 0-600-32955-0 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyer in World War II. Motorbuch Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 (Original: Destroyers of World War Two. Arms & Armors Press, London).
Web links
- HMS Kimberley on uboat.net
- Service History HMS Kimberley (F50) - K-class Destroyer
- Jürgen Rohwer with Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Published by the Library for Contemporary History Stuttgart
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
