HMS Nottingham (1913)

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flag
The sister ship HMS Birmingham
The sister ship HMS Birmingham
Overview
Type Light cruiser
Shipyard

Pembroke Dockyard ,
Pembroke Dock

Keel laying June 13, 1912
Launch April 18, 1913
Namesake City of Nottingham
Commissioning . April 1914
Whereabouts Sunk August 19, 1916 after being hit by torpedoes
Technical specifications
displacement

5,440  ts

length

overall: 139.4 m (457 ft)
pp: 131.1 m (430 ft)

width

15.25 m (50 ft)

Draft

4.8 m (15.75 ft)

crew

401-433 men

drive
speed

25.5 kn

Range

4680 nm at 10 kn

Armament

from 1915:

  • 1 × 76mm anti-aircraft gun
Fuel supply

1165 ts coal
235 ts oil

Armor
Belt armor

52 mm (2 in)

Armored deck

19–37 mm (0.75–1.5 in)

Command post

102 mm (4 in)

Sister ships

HMS Birmingham
HMS Lowestoft
HMS Adelaide

The fifth HMS Nottingham was a light cruiser of the Town class . She was launched in 1913 and was the last of the fifteen cruisers of the class ordered by the Royal Navy to enter service in 1914. It was used in the North Sea and was lost on August 19, 1916 by three torpedo hits from the German submarine U 52 off the coast of Scotland.

Building history

HMS Nottingham was the fifteenth Town- class light cruiser to enter service with the Royal Navy. She belonged to the fourth subgroup of these cruisers, also known as the Birmingham class. In the 1911 budget, the Royal Navy ordered three more cruisers of the light cruiser type, which had been built since 1909, which were still in service until the First World War . A sister ship of this last variant of the Town- class built for the Royal Navy was built for the Royal Australian Navy in Australia and did not enter service as Adelaide until after the World War.
The ships differed from their predecessors in that they had an additional 6 inch gun on the foredeck and they were equipped with the more modern Type XII. The ships of the Birmingham group were also considerably more heavily armored. In addition, the bow was changed to increase the seaworthiness of the cruiser.
Two other Town- class light cruisers under construction for Greece entered service with the Royal Navy during the Second World War with HMS Birkenhead and HMS Chester .
A stronger development of the Birmingham group were the five Hawkins-class cruisers started in the war, but only the HMS Vindictive , which was redesigned to a makeshift aircraft carrier and originally called Cavendish , came into service a few days before the end of the world war. These cruisers were the base of the heavy cruisers after the 1922 Washington Navy Agreement .

Mission history

The first use of the Nottingham took place in the naval battle near Heligoland on August 28, 1914 as one of the six British light cruisers of the light cruiser squadron alongside HMS Southampton , HMS Liverpool , HMS Falmouth and the sister ships HMS Lowestoft and HMS Birmingham , which were the destroyers invading Helgoland Bay and supported submarines of the Harwich Force , which involved the security forces of the Imperial Navy in a battle that led to the loss of the small cruisers SMS Ariadne , SMS Mainz and SMS Cöln as well as the torpedo boat V 187 on the German side . The Geschwaderkommore William Goodenough commanded first the two cruiser HMS Nottingham and HMS Lowestoft starting to Reginald Tyrwhitt strengthen ships. The two cruisers happened upon the German torpedo boat V 187, which was being pursued by British destroyers, and sank it at around 9:10 a.m. with their superior firepower without difficulty. However, in the fog they lost contact with the cruiser squadron.

At the end of September 1914 she accompanied the British submarine E5 on the march to investigate possible accesses to the Baltic Sea. On December 16, 1914, she tried to intercept the German battle cruisers on their march back from the bombardment of British coastal towns in Yorkshire ( Scarborough , Whitby , Hartlepool ), which had been discovered by the squadron flagship HMS Southampton . However, due to a partly misunderstood order by Beatty , the squadron 's contact was lost early.

She was also involved in the battle on the Dogger Bank on January 23, 1915, where she was mainly used for artillery observation. The following month she was assigned to the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron. On June 20, during a surveillance voyage in the North Sea, she was attacked by the U-boats U 17 and U 6 without being hit. In August 1915, the Nottingham and her sister ship Birmingham and other units were looking for the German auxiliary miner SMS Meteor .

On May 31, 1916, the Nottingham took part in the Association of the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron (2nd LCS) with Southampton , Birmingham and Dublin in the Skagerrak Battle , which originally did not clear up in the direction of the Germans and therefore only cleared up from 16:20 in front of the British battle cruiser fleet . At 4:38 p.m., the squadron reported the approach of the ocean-going fleet - which the British suspected was still in Wilhelmshaven - and which was first recognized by Nottingham (Captain Charles B. Miller) as the main German force. When Beatty ordered his ships to change course, Goodenough now held his position, even though it was fired at by the battleships of the ocean-going fleet. At around 8:40 p.m. in search of the deep-sea fleet that had disappeared in fog and darkness, a battle broke out between the 2nd Light Cruiser Squadron and the 2nd Torpedo Boat Flotilla, in which the German torpedo boat S 35 was sunk. From 10:15 p.m. there was a battle with the small cruisers SMS Elbing , SMS Rostock , SMS Stuttgart , SMS Frauenlob and SMS Hamburg of the IV reconnaissance group under Commodore Ludwig von Reuter , of which Frauenlob was sunk by torpedo and artillery hits . The Elbing and Rostock also sank later after further damage. The Nottingham did not use its headlights and was not hit at this stage of the battle, when the Southampton and Dundee were severely damaged and the squadron "lost" each other. .

Loss of Nottingham

On August 19, 1916, HMS Nottingham was involved in a routine foray into the North Sea when it was hit by two torpedoes from the German U 52 submarine 120 nautical miles southeast of the Firth of Forth at 6:00 a.m. in thick fog . The HMS Dublin tried to drive the submarine away. 25 minutes later, U 52 hit a third torpedo hit. The HMS Nottingham only sank at 7:10 a.m. with minor losses (38 dead) at position 55 ° 29 '  N , 0 ° 12'  E. Coordinates: 55 ° 28 '54 "  N , 0 ° 11' 30"  E , there after the first hits the engine failed and the evacuation of the ship began.

Memorabilia

In December 1993, during a ceremony in Emden , Admiral Otto H. Ciliax of the German Navy presented the commander of the Sheffield-class sixth HMS Nottingham with the flag of war, a cap ribbon and other memorabilia for the fifth Nottingham . The admiral's father, Otto Ciliax , as an officer on watch for U 52, had taken these pieces from an abandoned lifeboat on the Nottingham while looking for survivors after the ship's sinking. The pieces were exhibited in the captain's cabin of the sixth Nottingham .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 6 "/ 45 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XII and Mark XX
  2. ^ Bennett, p. 50
  3. ^ Bennett, p. 103
  4. ^ Bennett, p. 141
  5. ↑ Bennett, p. 151ff.

literature

  • Geoffrey Bennett: The Skagerrakschlacht , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich (1976), ISBN 3-453-00618-6
  • JJ Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy: the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy , Chatham, London (1969/2006), ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8
  • Randal Gray (Ed.): Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921 , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1985, ISBN 0870219073
  • Paul G. Halpern: A naval history of World War I. Routledge, London 1995, ISBN 1-85728-498-4
  • Bodo Herzog: 60 Years of German U-Boats 1906–1966 , JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich (1968)
  • Hans H. Hildebrand / Albert Röhr / Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships: Biographies - a mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present , Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford,

Web links