HMS Kingston Ceylonite
The HMS Kingston Ceylonite was a British fishing trawler which was used by the Royal Navy as a makeshift anti-submarine vehicle during World War II . The cutter was originally launched on February 6, 1935 at the Cook, Welton & Gemmill shipyard in Beverley, Yorkshire, and entered service on March 13, 1935 under the name Kingston Ceylonite . Until the outbreak of war in 1939, the ship served as a fishing vessel for the Kingston Steam Trawling Company in Kingston upon Hull . In September 1939, the British Navy commandeered the trawler and had it converted into a makeshift submarine hunting vehicle. For this purpose, the Kingston Ceylonite received a 10.2-cm gun on the forecastle, a 12.7-mm machine gun and a ramp at the stern for rolling depth charges. When HMS Kingston Ceylonite put into service at the end of 1939, the FY-214 cutter displaced 448 ts and had a crew of 32 men.
Bets and Loss
From the spring of 1940 the submarine hunter was first used in the 27th submarine hunting group in the English Channel , which consisted of six cutters. The trawler thus belonged to the Portsmouth Command (Admiral Sir William Milbourne James ) and was stationed in Portsmouth . In the following period, the HMS Kingston Ceylonite secured British coastal convoys between Plymouth and Dover . In February 1942, after the start of the German submarine offensive against shipping off the American east coast ( Operation Paukenschlag ), the trawler was loaned by the Royal Navy to the United States Navy , as the Americans were still at suitable U. - There was a shortage of boat hunting vehicles and Allied shipping off the east coast of the United States suffered heavy losses. After the transfer to the Americans, the HMS Kingston Ceylonite was used to secure convoys between Florida and New York.
As part of this task, the trawler got into a minefield consisting of 15 ground mines near Virginia Beach in the evening hours of June 15, 1942, as part of the escort of the convoy KN-109, which consisted of a total of twelve ships and ran from Key West to Hampton Roads . which was laid on June 11, 1942 by the German submarine U 701 (Kapitänleutnant Horst Degen ). After two tankers and the destroyer Bainbridge were initially damaged by mine hits - all three ships could be brought in later - the HMS Kingston Ceylonite , which was approaching for rescue operations, ran into a mine at around 7:27 p.m. The force of the explosion of the 580 kilogram mine broke the trawler's keel and caused the ship to sink within four minutes. 18 crew members went down with the submarine hunter. 14 men were later rescued by other security vehicles.
Aftermath
After the convoy KN-109 got into the hitherto unknown minefield - and detonated four mines - an extensive mine search operation took place, which resulted in the clearance of ten mines. Only a single mine of the field laid by U 701 remained off Virginia Beach (four of 15 mines had exploded and ten were cleared) - and still claimed one more victim: On June 17, 1942, two days after the sinking of the HMS Kingston Ceylonite , The American coal freighter Santore (7,117 GRT) belonging to convoy KS-511 ran into this last remaining mine and sank. Three sailors were killed.