HMS Oribi (G66)
 '
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
The HMS Oribi (G66) was an O-Class - destroyer of the Royal Navy , whose eight destroyers were ordered on September 3, 1939 as "1st Emergency Flotilla". The destroyer ordered from Fairfield Shipbuilders in Govan was originally to be named Observer . Since South Africa supported the construction, it was named after the antelope species Oribi when it was launched on January 14, 1941 . It was one of only four destroyers (all O-Class) with the main armament of four 120-mm cannons originally intended for the destroyers of the O- and P-Class .
Commissioned on July 5, 1941, the destroyer was awarded the Battle Honors Norway 1941 , Malta Convoys 1941 , Atlantic 1942-43 , North Africa 1942 , Arctic 1942-44 , and Normandy 1944 during World War II .
The Oribi , assigned to the reserve at the beginning of 1946, was handed over to the Turkish Navy as a replacement for the HMS Ithuriel after an overhaul in the summer of 1946 . She was renamed Gayret there and used as a command ship until it was demolished in 1965.
History of the ship
Fairfield was one of the four shipyards that immediately after the outbreak of war received orders for two destroyers of the new O-class, the first destroyers of the War Emergency Program.Six weeks later, eight more identical P-class destroyers were ordered, with three ships were ordered from Fairfield. However, only the first boats from Fairfield (BauNr. 680: Oribi and BauNr. 681: Offa ) as well as the Onslaught started there as Pathfinder (BauNr. 684) and the Onslow (ex Pakenham ) built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank received the original intended main armament with 120 mm cannons. The other four O-class destroyers and all P-class ships received 102 mm guns instead of the originally intended main armament , which were also suitable for aircraft defense.
The keel laying of the Oribi and her sister ship Offa took place on January 15, 1940 as the first units of the war building program. Oribi was launched on January 14, 1941 as the first ship of the new class and was also the first of the class to enter service on July 5, 1941.
During the construction period of the O-Class, the Royal Navy had equipped the normal fleet destroyers of the A to I-Class with a 102-mm anti-aircraft gun instead of the rear torpedo tube set for better defense against aircraft . This measure was also carried out with the four destroyers of the O-class with 120 mm cannons, which were delivered equipped in this way. As another anti-aircraft weaponry possessed oribi and their three sister vessels over a 40 mm "pompom" -Vierling behind the chimney and four 20 mm-Oerlikon-machine guns on the same level beside the bridge and on the headlight platform between the remaining torpedo tube set and the 102 mm flak.
Calls
After its commissioning, the Oribi moved to the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow to train the crew. The new O-class destroyers were supposed to form the “17th Destroyer Flotilla”, but Oribi as a single ship was first assigned to the “6th Destroyer Flotilla”. On August 4, 1941, she took British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on board in Scrabster to take him to the battleship Prince of Wales . Churchill wanted to take the battleship to Placentia Bay ( Newfoundland ) to meet for the first time since taking office with the American President Roosevelt , where they agreed the Atlantic Charter , which was published on August 14, 1941. Oribi accompanied the battleship with the Laforey far into the Atlantic and took it back on the march back together with Tartar , Punjabi , Eclipse and Escapade on the 17th.
In September the Oribi was assigned with other units of the Home Fleet to the largest supply convoy for Malta of the war with nine transporters and 81,000 tons of military equipment and supplies. Together with the Force H , the association ran on the 24th with the aircraft carrier Ark Royal , three battleships, five cruisers and 18 destroyers into the western Mediterranean ( Operation Halberd ). The cruisers Kenya , Edinburgh , Sheffield , Hermione and Euryalus formed with the destroyers Oribi , Cossack , Zulu , Foresight , Forester , Laforey and Lightning as well as the escort destroyers Farndale and Heythrop the "Force X", which the nine transporters through the strait from Sicily to to Malta. After separating from the cover formation, the Imperial Star (12,427 GRT) was hit by Italian torpedo bombers on the evening of the 27th . Oribi was supposed to tow the struck ship to Malta with the help of the Heythrop . The attempts failed, however, and the convoy leadership decided to sink the transporters themselves in order not to let the severely damaged ship fall into Italian hands and to maintain the unity of the association. Oribi took over the crew, since the sinking did not succeed immediately, she then ran to Malta alone behind the unit. On the 28th, eight transporters and the security forces arrived in Malta in order to leave the British base in the evening together with the Oribi and return with three empty transporters to Gibraltar , which was left immediately by the units of the Home Fleet.
Arrived in Scapa Flow, the "17th Flotilla" was actually formed on October 8, 1941 with Onslow , Offa and Oribi , who secured mine layers at the end of the month at the southern end of the Northern Barrage between Iceland and the Faroe Islands . Then the three destroyers were supposed to support the heavy cruiser Berwick in securing the Northern Sea Convoy PQ 5 . On November 27, the destroyers left Iceland, but could not find the escort due to false information from the naval staff. It was not until December 3 that they found the escort they were protecting, the close security of which was formed by minesweepers of the Halcyon class . The convoy reached Arkhangelsk with its seven transporters without any enemy contact .
The last operation of the year of the Oribi with her two sister ships took place from 24 to 28 December 1941 in the command raid against Vågsøy on the Lofoten ( Operation "Archery" ).
1942
In the first half of 1942 Oribi was used again to secure northern sea convoys . During the first use on convoy PQ 12 , the destroyer suffered severe weather damage and also lost two crew members. After a repair in Russia, assignments as local escorts with QP 9 and PQ 13 followed together with Russian destroyers and British Halcyon class sloops stationed there. To secure the QP 10 with Marne , Fury , Eclipse and Punjabi as well as two trawlers, the Oribi returned to the base in Iceland in April. Further missions on PQ 15 , QP 11 and PQ 16 followed , before the destroyer was overhauled from May 30 to mid-September.
Back in action, Oribi was assigned together with Offa and Onslow to the units in support of the Allied landing in North Africa ( Operation Torch ), where they secured the heavy units.
At the end of November Oribi was back in Scapa Flow and then formed the backup of the Northern Sea Corridor JW 51B together with Onslow , Obedient , Orwell , Obdurate and Achates as well as the Bramble . The last two were lost when the German heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper and Lützow tried to attack the convoy with destroyers. Oribi was unable to support the sister ships, as they had lost contact with the convoy in very bad weather and their navigation equipment was also unusable due to total icing.
1943
With the return RA 52 , Oribi returned to Iceland at the end of January 1943 and was then overtaken in Hull by mid-March .
With Offa , Obedient , Orwell , Onslaugt and Impulsive , she now formed the “3rd Support Group” to defend attacked Atlantic convoys against submarines. As of March 27, the group supported the fuses of SC 123 , HX 230 and HX 233 . While supporting the ONS 5 convoy with Offa , Impulsive , Penn and Panther , which was going to St. John's , six merchant ships sank. However, the Oribi managed to ram the attacking submarine U 125 . The submarine could no longer dive and was eventually sunk by the corvette Snowflake . Oribi suffered severe damage to the bow and lost a propeller. The destroyer then moved to Boston for repairs . In September the ship was operational again, was assigned to the "10th Support Group" and was used in the defense of ONS 19 and SC 143. Due to a collision, the destroyer was out of action for another two months at the turn of the year.
1944
From February to mid-April 1944, further deployments took place on northern sea convoys at JW 57 , RA 57 , JW 58 and RA 58 .
From May, the destroyer was preparing for use in the invasion of Normandy , where it was supposed to fend off German high-speed boats and submarines with its sister ships in attacks on the landing forces and reinforcement convoys. In September the destroyer was released from this task.
From October to mid-December 1944, deployments on Northern Sea convoys followed with JW 61 , RA 61 , JW 62 and RA 62 . Then the Oribi was parked for backup tasks in the area of the North Western Approaches .
1945
In the first two months of the year, the tasks in the area of North Western Approaches continued. She now escorts large troop transports when they leave the USA or when they arrive from there on the first or last two days of their crossing. The first task shortly before Christmas 1944 was to secure the USS `` Wakefield '' (AP-21) , the former luxury liner Manhattan (1932, 24,289 GRT), which returned to the with over 2800 American soldiers (mostly wounded) and 1000 prisoners of war States ran. This security in the access routes to the Irish Sea and the Clyde were mostly done by two destroyers, Oribi doing these jobs together with the sister ship Offa , but also with new destroyers of the Ca class . She also secured the two largest ships with the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary as well as the Île de France , Aquitania , Nieuw Amsterdam and other ocean liners that carried out the Atlantic passage alone at high speed.
From the German surrender in May 1945, the destroyer supported the distribution of Allied occupation troops and moved to Copenhagen in May 1945 with the light cruiser Diadem . From June 6th to 8th, both escorted the German supply ship Nordmark to Rosyth , which was later taken over by the Royal Navy. The Oribi stationed in Rosyth was then used with its sister ships Offa , Obedient and Obdurate as a guard ship in Baltic ports.
In January 1946, the Oribi was decommissioned and assigned to the reserve.
Delivery to Turkey
The HMS Oribi was sold to the Turkish Navy in 1946 and renamed Gayret and given the number D 341.
Four Demirhisar-class destroyers were under construction for Turkey in Great Britain in 1939 , two of which were delivered to neutral Turkey during the World War, but two of which were used by the Royal Navy. The Inconstant was finally delivered in early 1946 and was given the originally intended name Muavenet . Her sister ship Ithuriel was so badly damaged in a German air raid on Bône (now Annaba) on November 28, 1942 that she was a total constructive loss. It now replaced the outdated Oribi , which was also given the originally planned name Gayret .
Before delivery, the 102 mm flak was replaced by a second set of torpedo tubes. Already at the end of the war, the light anti-aircraft armament consisted of a pompom quadruple and two twin and two single Oerlikon automatic cannons. In addition, up to 60 depth charges could be carried. Turkey modernized the ship in the early 1950s and replaced the light anti-aircraft armament with two 40-mm Bofors twin guns on the significantly enlarged rear deckhouse.
In 1965 the destroyer was removed from the fleet list and canceled.
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981 , Ian Allen (1983), ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- JJ Colledge, B. Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy , Casemate, Havertown, 2009. ISBN 978-1-935149-07-1
- Norman Friedman: British Destroyers: From Earliest Days to the Second World War , Seaforth Publishing (Barnsley 2009), ISBN 978-1-84832-049-9 .
- Francis E. McMurtrie (Ed.): Jane's Fighting Ships of World War II . ISBN 0-517-67963-9
- Antony Preston: Destroyers , Hamlyn, ISBN 0-600-32955-0 .
- Alan Raven, John Roberts: War Built Destroyers O to Z Classes , Bivouac Books, London 1978, ISBN 0-85680-010-4 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War 2 , Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1988, ISBN 0-87021-326-1 .
Web links
- Service History HMS ORIBI (G 66) - O-class Destroyer
- HMS ORIBI (G 66) on uboat.net
- Rohwer, Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939-1945 , Württemberg State Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o HMS ORIBI (G 66) - O-class Destroyer on naval-History.net
- ↑ Former British O-class destroyers at battleships-cruisers.co.uk
- ↑ a b Raven / Roberts: War Built Destroyers O to Z Classes , p. 7
- ^ Raven: O to Z Classes , p. 9
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War , September 24-30, 1941 Mediterranean, Operation Halberd.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War , December 22nd, 1941 - January 1st, 1942 North Sea, British commandos against the Lofoten.
- ^ Raven: O to Z Classes , p. 13
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War , April 8–17, 1942 Northern Sea, operations against convoys PQ.14 and QP.10.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 15.- 12.25.1942 North Sea operations against the convoys PQ.14 and QP.10.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 14.- 03.20.1943 North Atlantic Largest Geleitzugsoperation of World War II.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 15.- 04.18.1943 North Atlantic.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 25.4.- 1.5.1943 North Atlantic.
- ↑ HMS Oribi (G66) 6 May 1943
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War , 4-6 May 1943 North Atlantic, main battle for convoy ONS.5.
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War , October 6–9, 1943 North Atlantic, northwest route.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 06/06/1944 channel Allied invasion ( "Decision Day") in Normandy.
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , 6.– 13.6.1944 Canal / North Sea, attempted attacks by German surface ships against the invasion fleet.
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 3.- 7.31.1944 channel inserts German S-boats in the channel.
- ↑ HMS Oribi (G66) 3 Jul 1944
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 20.10.- 6.11.1944 Arctic Ocean, convoy operation JW.61 / JW.61A.
- ↑ Arnold Hague: Convoy Database
- ↑ a b Ivan Gogin: GAYRET destroyer (1941/1946)
HMS Obdurate | Obedient | Offa | Onslaught | Onslow | Opportune | Oribi | Orwell
HMS Pakenham | Paladin | Panther | Partridge | Pathfinder | Penn | Petard | Porcupine
Pakistan :
Tariq |
Tippu Sultan |
Tughril