HMS Partridge (1916)
 The sister ship Pasley, also built by Swan Hunter
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The HMS Partridge was a destroyer of the Admiralty M class of the Royal Navy . She was the eighth ship of this class built by the Swan Hunter shipyard and joined the 14th destroyer flotilla. While securing a convoy from Scotland to Norway, the destroyer was sunk on December 12, 1917 by German destroyers in a naval battle off Bergen near the Norwegian coast. Only 24 crew members survived.
History of the Partridge
The Partridge was started at Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Ltd in Wallsend on July 20, 1915 as a new building with construction number 1001. It was launched on March 4, 1916; the destroyer was the sixth ship in the Royal Navy to be named Partridge . A gunboat had previously been called the Partridge from 1888 to 1909 . For the shipyard it was the eighth order for an M-class destroyer; With the Pasley , the shipyard built another destroyer of this class.
The Partridge was again equipped with Brown Curtis turbines . On June 25, 1916, the destroyer began its service with the newly established 14th Destroyer Flotilla at the Grand Fleet . The new flotilla initially shared the destroyer tender Hecla in Scapa Flow with the 4th Destroyer Flotilla and from August 1916 received a flotilla leader with Botha .
In the autumn of 1917, the Vampire was in the meantime flotilla commander of the 14th DF , which also included the Anzac and 18 M-class destroyers.
Loss before mountains
On December 11, 1917, a convoy left Lerwick with the destination Bergen , which consisted of six merchant ships and was accompanied by the destroyers Pellew (flagship) and Partridge of the M-class and four trawlers to protect against submarines .
In the early morning hours of the same day, eight modern and powerful German torpedo boats of the II. Torpedo boat flotilla , under the command of the first leader of the torpedo boats , Commodore Paul Heinrich with his flagship SMS Emden (II), set out to attack British convoys. After passing the mine barriers in the German Bight , the unit split up at 4 p.m .: the 3rd half flotilla under the command of Lieutenant Hans Kolbe then headed for the Norwegian coast.
On December 12th at 11:45 a.m. English time, the German torpedo boat destroyers G 101 , V 100 , G 103 and G 104, belonging to the 3rd Half Flotilla , encountered the British escort from a north-westerly direction, which was only about 50 nautical miles from its destination port . Partridge spotted the attackers first, but was only able to report this ten minutes later due to a defective Morse code headlight. The three front approaching German destroyers attacked about 5,000 m escort ships with artillery, the fourth ( G 104 ) only ran 25 knots due to engine problems and instead turned to the freighters. The convoy commander on the Pellew ordered the merchant ships to disperse and tried to counterattack the Germans. As in the Shetland Islands , the Germans disrupted British radio communications, but the Partridge managed to make an emergency call that was received by a nearby British combat group consisting of the armored cruisers HMS Minotaur , HMS Shannon and four destroyers. The Partridge was put out of action at 12:15 by an artillery hit that damaged the main steam line and made the ship unable to maneuver; the port turbine, a torpedo tube and the aft gun were also damaged. One torpedo launched by the Partridge got stuck in the damaged tube set, a second hit V 100 but did not explode. Shortly thereafter, the Partridge was hit by a torpedo in turn, and the commander ordered the crew to leave the ship before it was sunk by two more torpedo hits. The Pellew also received damage in the engine room and on the torpedo tubes. The German destroyers then sank all merchant ships and trawlers; they rescued four Partridge officers and 21 men who were captured. They also took in 23 civilian seamen and then withdrew under shelter from bad weather. There were three wounded on the German ships.
In addition to the destroyer Partridge (97 dead), the British steamer Cordova (2284 BRT, 1894), the Swedish steamer Bothnia (1723 BRT, 1881) and the Torleif (832 BRT, 1888) built in Flensburg as Gemma , the Norwegian steamers Bollsta were sunk (1,701 GRT, 1910) and Kong Magnus (1101 GRT, 1884 Reiherstieg as Anna Woermann ) and the coal-laden Danish motor ship Maracaibo (526 GRT, 1916) and the Navy trawler Commander Fullerton (227 GRT, 1915), Livingstone (213 BRT, 1900), Tokyo (295 BRT, 1907) and Lord Alverstone (164 BRT, 1917).
Only the badly damaged Pellew , who mourned three dead and several wounded, escaped the attackers in a rain squall and was towed into the Selbornfjord by a Norwegian ship. The alerted British cruiser group reached the battlefield too late, but was still able to recover around 100 survivors of the cargo ships and trawlers.
An attempt by another British cruiser squadron to intercept the German destroyers also failed because the Germans were marching back through Skagerrak and Kattegat across the Baltic Sea.
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981 , Ian Allan 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- James J. Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy , Chatham, 4th ed. London 2010, ISBN 9-7819-3514907-1.
- Harald Fock: Z-before! International development and war missions of destroyers and torpedo boats, vol. 1. 1914 to 1939. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7822-0762-9 .
- Paul G. Halpern: A Naval History of World War I , Naval Institute Press (2012), ISBN 1-6125-1172-4 .
Web links
- Partridge 1916 Swan Hunter
- History of the GREAT WAR, NAVAL OPERATIONS, Vol. II by Sir Julian S. Corbett
- Report on HMS Partridge with links to the other lost ships and a detailed list of losses
- Report of the battle from a British perspective, with links to original documents
- The Crisis of the Naval War by Admiral John Rusworth Jellicoe
- How WW1 sailor saved his life by laying it down for a friend
Individual evidence
- ^ Supplement to the Monthly Navy List. (July, 1916), p. 12.
- ↑ Scheer, p. 325
- ↑ Hans Kolbe (1882–1957), September 30, 1934 Farewell with character as Vice Admiral (Ing.)
- ↑ HMS Partridge (+1917)
- ↑ a b The sinking of HMS Partridge, December 12th, 1917 ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Cordova (+1917)
- ↑ Bothnia (+1917)
- ↑ SS Torleif (+1917)
- ↑ SS Bollsta (+1917)
- ↑ SS Kong Magnus (+1917)
- ↑ MV Maracaibo (+1917)
- ↑ Commander Fullerton (+1917)
- ↑ Livingstone (+1917)
- ↑ Tokyo (+1917)
- ↑ Lord Alverstone (+1917)
- ↑ http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10409/10409-h/10409-h.htm
