Nabob (ship)
Nabob after the torpedo hit in August 1944
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HMS Nabob (D77) was a Bogue-class escort aircraft carrier that was used in the Royal Navy during World War II . The ship was decommissioned in 1944 after a torpedo hit. In 1951/52 it was converted from an aircraft carrier to a freighter by AG Weser and, as the Nabob, was at times the largest ship of North German Lloyd . It was sold in 1967 and scrapped in 1978.
Construction and use as escort aircraft carrier
The keel was laid in Tacoma / Seattle in 1942 with the name Edisto (CVE-41). The small carrier was one of 45 Bogue- class escort aircraft carriers in the United States Navy . The ship did not come into service for them, but was handed over to the Royal Navy as part of the lend lease program like 32 of its sister ships.
The Nabob (D77) of the Bogue class were 151.1 meters long and 21.2 meters wide. The width of the flight deck was 24 meters. The carrier had a displacement of up to 15,400 ts in use. Like all escort carriers built on the west coast of the USA, the ship first went to Canada to receive adaptations to British equipment. The crew of the ship was provided by the Royal Canadian Navy. The group of fliers, however, was a British one. The ship should be used in Europe.
Although the Nabob was already taken over by the Royal Navy in September 1943, it did not arrive in Great Britain until the beginning of April 1944 with a load of Avenger and Corsair aircraft. The delay is probably due to the Canadian crew entering their home waters.
In June 1944, the FAA squadron 852 with twelve Grumman Avengers and four Grumman Wildcat was assigned to the escort carrier as a squadron. On August 10, the Nabob was involved in an advance by the Indefatigable and the Trumpeter against the German airfield Gossen near Kristiansand / Nord, which was secured by two heavy cruisers and eight destroyers, including the Canadian Algonquin and Sioux . Six Me 110s were destroyed and three steamers damaged (Operation Offspring).
The carrier was then to take part in an attack with carrier aircraft on the Tirpitz during the northern sea convoy JW 59 . The Home Fleet operates in two groups: The main group with the carriers Indefatigable , Formidable and Furious , the battleship Duke of York , two heavy cruisers and fourteen destroyers as well as a second group with the escort carriers Trumpeter and Nabob , the heavy cruiser Kent and the "5 . Escort Group ”under Commander Donald MacIntyre with the six escort destroyers of the Captain class . The Avenger aircraft of the two escort carriers were supposed to lay mines against the Tirpitz and did not take part in the first (unsuccessful) attack of Operation Goodwood on the morning of the 22nd, because the weather conditions and the unknown exact position of the German battleship did not make sense to use mines made appear. On the afternoon of August 22, 1944, U 354 discovered the escort group, which was preparing to supply the destroyer escorts with fuel, and torpedoed the Nabob with a torpedo fan. Another torpedo hit the Bickerton , the group's commander's ship, whose stern was shot down. A second attempt at attack against the already severely heeling Nabob was thwarted by Avenger bombers, which continued to take off from the already very inclined flight deck. The badly damaged Bickerton was abandoned and sunk by the destroyer escort Aylmer with a torpedo to concentrate on rescuing the carrier.
The Nabob was badly hit in the stern area, but could still use aircraft and drive slowly despite the bent propeller shaft. During the return journey of the second group, a machine crashed after a anti-submarine patrol, which damaged seven other aircraft on the Nabob flight deck . The situation on the carrier was sometimes very critical during the march back, so that the Algonqiun and the destroyer escort Kempthorne took over large parts of the carrier's crew.
The Nabob reached Scapa Flow under its own power on August 27th . She was then dragged to Rosyth and beached there. On September 30, 1944, she was decommissioned and slowly cannibalized. A repair did not take place until the end of the war. In 1946 the wreck was formally returned to the United States. Originally it was supposed to be scrapped in 1947.
Nabob in Bremen
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Dismantling to a freighter (1951/52)
Instead, it was sold to the Netherlands , the flight deck and the remaining military installations were removed, and in 1951 it was resold to the NDL in Bremen. The ship was converted into a freighter by AG Weser in Bremen and then had a 5-hatch ship - plus a small post hatch in front of the aft deckhouse - with a length of 150 meters, a width of 21.2 meters, a measurement of 7,900 GRT and a load capacity of 13,000 tdw. The propulsion was provided by a geared turbine with 6800 HP, which gave the ship a speed of 16 knots. Until the combined ships of the Schwabenstein class were commissioned in 1954, the Nabob was the largest ship of North German Lloyd. Larger pure cargo ships came into service with the Bremen shipping company with the Burgenstein class in 1958.
Used as a freighter at the NDL (1952–1967)
With a crew of 68 men and facilities for cadets and eight passengers, the Nabob was used as a training ship at the NDL subsidiary Roland-Linie Schiffahrts-GmbH (until 1959). The first voyage was to Canada in 1953 and then the Nabob was used in North America service. The Nabob was then used in various shipping areas until 1967 . In that year the sale took place and the Nabob sailed under the Panama flag as the Glory until it was scrapped in 1978 .
- Used as a freighter at Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen
Painting work on the port side of the bow of the TS Nabob
Erasing one of Adolf Hitler's company car on board the Nabob at New York Continental Piers, Brooklyn NY 1959
Horse stalls on the deck of the Nabob - 1959
Web links
- HMS NABOB , Escort Carrier, Ex USS Edisto ACV / AVG-41, Under RCN Commission 1944 (Canada), Became Nabob 1948, Glory 1967
- A History of HMS NABOB
- Pictures of the HMS Nabob and the renovation in Bremen
Individual evidence
- ↑ A History of HMS Nabob
- ↑ a b c d e Service History HMS NABOB.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare, 08/10/1944 Norway
- ↑ Rohwer, August 15–6. September 1944, Arctic Ocean, convoy operation JW.59.
Remarks
- ↑ The sister ship Khedive, which was completed shortly before her, had already arrived in Great Britain in November 1943, the Shah , which was completed after her, had reached Australia with a cargo of aircraft in January 1944.
literature
- The Lloyd freighter that attacked the “Tirpitz” ... In: Seekiste. Volume 19, No. 10, October 1968, Verlag Schuldt, Hamburg, p. 34.
- Gerhard Dannemann: TS NABOB, from aircraft carrier to freighter and training ship for North German Lloyd. 2nd Edition. Books on Demand , 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-5618-6 , p. 312.
- Arnold Kludas : The ships of the North German Lloyd 1920-1970. Pp. 124f., Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1992, ISBN 3-7822-0534-0 .