HMS Newcastle (C76)
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The HMS Newcastle (C76) was a light cruiser of the Town class of 1936 and was among the first group of five ships of this class, as Southampton were designated class. Originally the cruiser was supposed to be named Minotaur . She was the seventh ship in the Royal Navy to be named after the city of Newcastle . Most recently, the cruiser Newcastle of the old Town class , which was built at the predecessor shipyard Armstrong-Whitworth in Newcastle- Elswick , had used the name from 1910 to 1921 .
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history
The Newcastle of the new Town class was built from 1936 at the High Walker shipyard in Newcastle. The shipyard there had been set up by Sir WG Armstrongs, Whitworth & Co. from 1910 to build large warships, as the company's main shipyard for warship building Tyne-up in Elswick hardly allowed the construction of capital ships. Due to the First World War, however, warship construction was continued in Elswick and the last large ship to be built there was the Eagle , launched in June 1918 , which had started as a battleship for Chile, but was bought by the Royal Navy in early 1918 to be used as a Aircraft carrier to be completed. With the keel laying of a battleship for the Royal Navy in October 1913, the construction of large ships began in High Walker. The Malaya, which was delivered in early 1916, was built there under construction number 678 . Up until the end of the war and beyond, a wide variety of ships were built at the shipyard, including the light battle cruisers Courageous and Furious , the aircraft carrier Hermes and, as the last ship for the Royal Navy from 1922 to 1927, the modern battleship Nelson . The construction numbers of the newbuildings did not make it clear in the Armstrong period at which of the three shipyards on the Tyne the ships were built. When the Vickers company took over Armstrongs-Whitworth at the end of 1927, the Vickers-Armstrong Group's shipbuilding should concentrate on Barrow . The shipyard in Elswick had already stopped shipbuilding with the Eagle in 1920 , Low Walker still built a few tankers up to 1931 and High Walker delivered the last order to Norway with the motor freighter Brimanger at the end of 1929. Only intended as a repair yard and occasional new build yard in the event of a surplus of orders, however, the Monarch of Bermuda, which is over 22,000 GRT, was built at the shipyard almost afterwards , which was closed after the completion of this three-chimney in 1931. With the award of Newcastle (hull number 2) to High Walker in 1934, regular use of the shipyard for warship construction began again.
The keel of the new Newcastle was laid on October 4, 1934, the launch on January 23, 1936 and the acceptance of the cruiser on March 5, 1937 as the first ship of the new cruiser class. During the construction of the cruiser, the shipyard completed two H-class destroyers , brought the follow-up order to the water with the sister ship Sheffield and began building the battleship King George V and four destroyers of the Tribal class .
Mission history
After its commissioning in March 1937, the Newcastle belonged to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron in the Home Fleet until 1939 and was in Devonport for overhaul when the war broke out. From September 15, 1939, the cruiser was operational again with the Home Fleet and was used to protect British shipping traffic and to monitor the northern approaches to the North Sea. On November 12, 1939, Newcastle placed the Hamburg-Süd freighter Parana (1921, 5986 BRT) on the Denmark Strait off Iceland , which had left Montevideo on October 9 to reach Germany. The crew sank their ship before being captured by the cruiser itself. On November 23, the cruiser discovered the German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst between Iceland and the Faroe Islands , which rescued survivors of the sunk auxiliary cruiser Rawalpindi . The Newcastle was able to withdraw from the German ships. These then broke off their attempt to break through into the Atlantic. Alarmed by Rawalpindi and Newcastle , the Home Fleet tried in vain to capture the Germans. The cruiser was only able to keep in touch with the enemy ships for a short time in very poor visibility and bad weather. At the beginning of January 1940, the Newcastle sank the wreck of the Bahia Blanca (1918, 8558 GRT) of the Hamburg-Süd, which had collided with an iceberg while trying to break through the Denmark Strait. From the end of January to the end of May 1940, the cruiser had to be overhauled at the shipyard due to an accumulation of minor defects.
Operations from 1940 to 1942
On October 11, 1940, the cruiser belonged to an association around the battleship Revenge , which after coordinated bombing raids by the Royal Air Force on the port facilities in Cherbourg with Blenheim and Wellington bombers, it was still together with the 5th destroyer flotilla ( Javelin , Jupiter , Kelvin , Kipling , Jackal , Jaguar and Kashmir ). In the early morning hours of the 11th, the battleship fired 120 rounds in 18 minutes with its 38 cm guns from a distance of 13 km at the port facilities of the French city; in addition there were 801 shells from the 12 cm guns of the accompanying destroyers. The Newcastle was only used to protect against feared German surface attacks with the destroyers Wanderer , Broke as well as the Polish Burza and Garland and some motor cannon boats (MGBs) and did not take part in the bombardment, for which the cruiser Emerald fired flares for target illumination. The complex operation was intended to disrupt German preparations for invasions and the use of French ports as bases for the navy and to demonstrate the access possibilities of the British.
On October 17, there was a brief battle at a distance of about 16 km between the Newcastle and the Emerald as well as five destroyers and four German destroyers off the British south-western tip. The German leader of the destroyers (FdZ), captain at sea Erich Bey on the Friedrich Ihn wanted to carry out an advance to the Bristol Channel against the Allied shipping traffic, which was stationed in Cherbourg, with the destroyers Erich Steinbrinck , Hans Lody and Karl Galster stationed in Brest 5. Should support torpedo boat flotilla with sea eagles , falcons , griffins , jaguars , condors and wolves . The German destroyers withdrew from the superior British unit; the warned torpedo boats did not reach the battlefield. The Newcastle suffered damage from the killing of the front towers at a great elevation and could not follow the faster German boats, especially since problems occurred with the machine.
In November 1940, the cruiser was involved in a convoy operation through the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Alexandria and on the 27th south of Sardinia in the naval battle against the Italian fleet at Cape Spartivento .
From December 1, 1940 to August 1941, the Newcastle served as the flagship of the Royal Navy units deployed in the South Atlantic against German trade troublemakers and blockade breakers . So she looked for the German auxiliary cruiser Thor after its battle with the British auxiliary cruiser Carnarvon Castle on December 5th and later that month for the German ironclad Admiral Scheer . The cruisers Cumberland and Enterprise were also involved in the two unsuccessful search operations . During the mission in the South Atlantic, the cruiser was also equipped with radar. On July 25, 1941, Newcastle succeeded in placing the German freighter Erlangen southeast of the mouth of the Río de la Plata , which wanted to break through from Argentina into the German sphere of influence. The German crew sank their ship itself when the British cruiser approached.
From August 7, 1941, the cruiser then moved from Rio de Janeiro via Freetown to the USA for a major overhaul, which began on September 20 at the Boston Navy Yard . Remaining work, in particular a new radar equipment, then took place in Plymouth in January 1942 , before the ship was transferred to the 4th Cruiser Squadron in the Eastern Fleet to be used there to secure supplies and troop transports. On May 27, the Newcastle was delivered with the sister ship Birmingham and the destroyers Fortune and Griffin to the Mediterranean fleet to take part in Operation Vigorous to supply Malta. The eastern convoy with eight cruisers (two of them of the town class as the heaviest units) was finally canceled because of the expired Italian battle fleet and the intensive air attacks. On the march which was Newcastle on 15 June 1942 by a torpedo of German speedboat S 56 (Lieutenant Siegfried Wuppermann ) 90 nautical miles north-west of Derna made. The cruiser had a large hole on the starboard side which caused further damage to the hull and the engine. The bow tower could no longer be used either. However, there were no staff losses. The heavily damaged ship reached Alexandria, where only makeshift repairs could be carried out. A first attempt to bring the ship to South Africa for repairs ended with severe weather damage behind Aden . After another emergency repair in July in Aden, the cruiser was transferred to Bombay , where it was prepared for a trip to the USA. On September 7th, the damaged ship marched via Mauritius , Cape Town , Pernambuco and Bermuda to the USA, where on October 11th the repairs could begin in the Brooklyn Navy Yard . From the end of December 1942 to March 1943 the cruiser was finally equipped with current British radar equipment (Type 281 for air surveillance, Type 284 for fire control of the main artillery and Type 285 for fire control of anti-aircraft weapons) and additional 20 mm Oerlikon cannons to improve the Close-range air defense.
Further missions from 1943
After the shipyard stay, the Newcastle escorted the WS 29 troop transport from Great Britain via Freetown to Cape Town from April 6, 1943 , in order to rejoin the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean. As the flagship of the 4th Cruiser Squadron, she unsuccessfully searched for the German submarine supplier Charlotte Schliemann at the end of June 1943 with the cruiser Suffolk and the destroyers Nizam ( RAN ), Racehorse and Relentless . After further routine safeguards in the Indian Ocean, an intensified search for the German submarine supplier from Mauritius began again from January 19 to 30, 1944 with Suffolk and the river frigate Bann and the escort carrier Battler . At the same time, the auxiliary cruiser Canton , the cruiser Kenya and the Australian destroyer Nepal also searched in vain for the supplier in bad weather conditions. Another search operation of the Newcastle from March 5th from Mauritius with the Battler and the destroyers Quadrant (RAN) and Roebuck for the German submarine supplier Brake southwest of the Cocos Islands was more successful, since a machine of the Battler on the 12th the tanker discovered which sank itself when the Roebuck approached .
From April 16 to 21, 1944, the Newcastle participated from Trincomalee with the battleships Queen Elizabeth and Valiant as well as the French Richelieu , the cruisers Ceylon , Gambia and the Dutch Tromp in securing an advance of the carriers Illustrious and USS Saratoga on air strikes Sabang . From May 6th to May 27th, the similar operation TRANSOM followed with air strikes on Soerabaya , on which the ships used were supplied on the 15th in the Australian Exmouth Gulf .
In June, the Newcastle went to Simonstown for overhaul, and on October 10th, the Eastern Fleet could be used again. From November 1944 to January 1945, further escort missions followed with aircraft carrier groups that flew air strikes against land targets near the front in Burma or Indonesia. In addition, the cruiser was used as a transporter of troops as part of the landings of British troops behind the front. After two months in the convoy security in the Indian Ocean, the cruiser started its march back home in April 1945 and reached Devonport on May 23, 1945.
The cruiser was overhauled on the Tyne and finally refitted in Rosyth from September .
Post war uses
The overtaken Newcastle was used for troop transports from the Far East to the home after the work was completed. In 1948 she was used as the flagship of the 1st cruiser squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet and then overhauled again. In 1952 she was relocated to East Asia and took part in UN operations in Korea . After graduation, she returned to the UK through the Panama Canal . It was followed by another application in the Far East, while the Olympic Games in Sydney visited in November 1956th During this last season she also visited the Persian Gulf and Rangoon . She returned from the Far East through the Panama Canal and was decommissioned in Portsmouth in September 1958. In 1959 it was sold for demolition, which began in Faslane in August .
literature
- Peter Brook: Warships for Export, Armstrong's warships 1867-1927. World Ship Society, Gravesend 1999, ISBN 0-905617-89-4 .
- Robert Gardiner (Ed.): Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships. 1922-1946. Conway Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-85177-146-7 .
- Alan Raven: TOWN Class Cruisers. ENSIGN 5, Bivouac Books, London.
- Mike J. Whitley: Cruiser in World War II. Classes, types, construction dates. Stuttgart 1997.
Web links
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- Newcastle on tynebuiltships
- HMS NEWCASTLE-Town-type Light Cruiser on naval-history.net
- HMS Newcastle on Uboat.net
- HMS Newcastle - WWII cruisers
- Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945 , Library for Contemporary History, Württemberg State Library, Stuttgart 2007
Individual evidence
- ^ High Walker's Armstrong New Buildings
- ^ Brook: Warships for Export , pp. 11ff. and ship articles
- ↑ Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd, High Walker (new buildings 1928–1956)
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j servicehistory HMS Newcastle
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War, November 12-23, 1939 North Atlantic
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War, November 21-27, 1939 North Atlantic
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , October 11–12, 1940 Canal Operation »Medium«.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 17.- 18.10.1940 channel.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 12/05/1940 South Atlantic
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 25/07/1941 South Atlantic
- ↑ uboat.net 25 Jul 1941
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War , June 12-16, 1942 Mediterranean Double convoy operation to supply Malta.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 3.- 29/02/1944 Indian Ocean.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 3.3.- 10.4.1944 Indian Ocean.
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , April 16–24, 1944 Indian Ocean Operation "Cockpit".
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , May 6–27, 1944 Indian Ocean Operation "Transom".
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 17.- 11.23.1944 Indian Ocean operation "outflank".
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 11.- 24.12.1944 Indian Ocean operation "Robson".
- ↑ 2.– 4.1.1945 Indian Ocean Operation "Lightning"; 16.1.– 4.2.1945 Operation »Sankey«
Remarks
- ↑ The supplier was only provided by the Relentless on February 12, 1944 and evaded the capture by scuttling itself.
Southampton Group:
HMS Birmingham |
HMS Glasgow |
HMS Newcastle |
HMS Sheffield |
HMS Southampton
Gloucester Group:
HMS Gloucester |
HMS Liverpool |
HMS Manchester
Edinburgh Group:
HMS Belfast |
HMS Edinburgh