HMS Phoebe (43)
 The Phoebe in Belfast Harbor (1942).
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HMS Phoebe was a British anti-aircraft cruiser of Dido class . The ship was the third unit of this class and was on 2 September 1936 in Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Scotland's Glasgow to set keel . The cruiser was named after the titan Phoibe and was the fifth ship in the Royal Navy to be christened with this name. After being launched on March 25, 1939, the cruiser was put into service on September 30, 1940.
Armament and special features
Like all units of the Dido class, the Phoebe was to be provided with a main armament consisting of ten 13.3 cm guns . Due to production bottlenecks, however , the Phoebe was only completed with eight 13.3 cm guns in four twin turrets. Instead, an older 10.2 cm gun was installed on the turret position directly in front of the command bridge (this was, however, dismantled in 1942 and replaced by a 40 mm Flakvierling). The light and medium flak initially comprised (1940) eight 40-mm cannons (in four double mounts) and eight 12.7-mm machine guns. By the beginning of April 1944, the flak was gradually strengthened to twelve 40-mm flak (in three quadruple mounts) and 16 20-mm cannons (in six twin and four single mounts) during several visits to the shipyard. The 12.7 mm machine guns were dismissed in 1942. In addition, several different radar devices were installed on the cruiser, which was used as a fighter command ship from April 1944 , including a Type 281 radar (air warning device with a range of 220 kilometers) and a 600 MHz Type 285 radar (fire control of the heavy 13.3 cm guns against air targets up to about 16 kilometers away).
Since the cruisers of this class were intended for air defense and the escort of the fleet, there were no facilities on board for an on-board aircraft. The mass of the armor protection was around 670 ts, which corresponded to around 12.6 percent of the standard water displacement. If the turrets were only lightly armored (13 mm on the front sides), the thickness of the side armor was 76 mm and the thickness of the armored deck was 25 mm (51 mm above the rudder system and the ammunition areas).
Mission history
After the commissioning, the Phoebe initially belonged to the Home Fleet and took over the protection of troop transports. In February 1941, together with the light cruiser Birmingham and the auxiliary cruiser Cathay , she provided the escort for the WS-6A convoy , which ran from Great Britain to Freetown . Subsequently, at the end of March 1941, the cruiser moved via Cape Town , Aden and Sues to the Mediterranean for the 7th Cruiser Squadron.
Mission to the Mediterranean in 1941
There the Phoebe secured and supported the evacuation of British and Commonwealth troops from Greece ( Operation Demon ) in April and, among other things, evacuated around 2,500 soldiers from Nafplio on April 24, together with two destroyers .
In May 1941 the cruiser took part in the fighting for Crete and rescued Allied troops from Sfakia on May 30th . In June 1941, the Phoebe was operating off the Syrian coast against the French armed forces stationed there, loyal to Vichy ( Operation Exporter ). The search for Vichy-French supply and war ships (including the large destroyers Guépard and Valmy ) remained unsuccessful. During the advance of Commonwealth troops over the Litani , the cruiser provided fire support, but accidentally shot at Australian troops of the 21st Brigade on June 9, 1941 , with only minor losses.
Operations off Tobruk and the first torpedoing
In July and August 1941, the ship, together with the mine cruisers Latona and Abdiel , undertook several supply trips from Alexandria to Tobruk , which was besieged by the German Africa Corps . The Phoebe was only just missed with a torpedo on July 3rd off Tobruk by the Italian submarine Malachite . On August 27, during a renewed voyage to Tobruk, north of Sidi Barrani , the cruiser was attacked by Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 torpedo bombers and hit by an air torpedo on the starboard side, near the forward gun turret. The hit killed eight crew members and caused considerable damage. After an emergency repair in Alexandria, the Phoebe moved in October 1941 through the Suez Canal and via Cape Town to New York . There the ship was repaired at the naval shipyard . The cruiser was not ready for action again until June 1942.
1942: The torpedoing by U 161
After the repair, the Phoebe relocated to the Mediterranean and took part in Operation Pedestal in August 1942 . As early as September, however, the ship was commanded into the Atlantic to secure convoys on the route between Freetown and South Africa together with its sister ship Sirius and to search for German blockade breakers from Asia . The cruiser was attacked with four torpedoes by the German submarine U 161 on the morning of October 23, 1942, on the way from Simon's Town to Freetown, off the coast of French Equatorial Africa , about six nautical miles from Pointe-Noire . At 7.56 a.m. two torpedoes hit the Phoebe on the port side. As a result, 57 crew members were killed immediately and 59 wounded.
The turrets on the forecastle were put out of action, and three of four boilers and the power supply collapsed. In the fore a gaping 20 meters long and ten meters wide hole, and the cruiser quickly got list . With only one working screw and a maximum speed of six knots, the ship tried to get into port. In this situation, U 161 could have inflicted further torpedo hits if the South African corvette Protea had not left Pointe-Noire and chased the submarine away with depth charges.
The heavily damaged cruiser was brought into the harbor by the corvette and put there in shallow water. The damage was so severe that a two-month emergency repair was first necessary to make the ship buoyant again. Then it was moved to New York in December 1942, where repairs were carried out at the local naval shipyard. During the eight-week stay in Pointe-Noire, three other wounded crew members died as a result of malaria . The Phoebe was not fully operational again until August 1943 .
Mediterranean missions 1943/44
Relocated to the 15th Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean at the beginning of October 1943, the cruiser took part in the fighting in the Dodecanese in the same month , bombarding the island of Kalymnos on October 19, 1943 and transporting troops to Leros . In November, the ship operated against German supply escorts near the island of Kos , where it was exposed to heavy air strikes on November 13, which were survived unscathed. In January 1944, the Phoebe took part in the Allied landing at Anzio ( Operation Shingle ) and shelled German coastal positions. The cruiser remained in front of the bridgehead for air security until mid-February. In March, the ship was moved to Alexandria, where minor sea damage was repaired. Since the cruiser was to be used in the future as a fighter guide for carrier aircraft in the British Far East fleet, radar systems of type 281, type 284 and type 285 were installed.
In the fight against Japan in 1944/45
In May 1944 the Phoebe was detached to Ceylon , where she was used from June 1944 with the 4th Cruiser Squadron (stationed in Trincomalee ). The cruiser accompanied the British aircraft carriers Illustrious and Victorious on their forays against Sabang on Sumatra in July 1944. In October 1944 a carrier attack against the Nicobar Islands followed , and in November the Phoebe secured the operations against Arakan ( Burma ). In January 1945, as part of (British) Task Force 61, the ship covered the landing of Indian and British troops at Akjab and on the island of Ramree ( Operation Matador ), the cruiser itself transporting troops from Chittagong to Ramree in mid-January 1945 .
After participating in the reconquest of Rangoon ( Operation Dracula ) in February and March 1945, the Phoebe , together with the sister ship Royalist , took over the security of the 21st escort carrier squadron in April and May, which consisted of the escort aircraft carriers Hunter , Stalker , Emperor and Pursuer existed and flew attacks against Japanese land targets in Burma. From mid-May to mid-June 1945, the cruiser operated against suspected Japanese evacuation convoys in the Andaman region . In September 1945, after the capitulation of Japan and the end of the Second World War, the Phoebe moved back to Great Britain.
post war period
After a docking time in Chatham in October and November 1945, the cruiser was commanded into the Mediterranean in 1947. He stayed there until 1951 as the lead ship of the destroyer forces in the Mediterranean. Returned to Great Britain in March 1951 and transferred to the reserve, the Phoebe lay in Harwich until 1953 as the base ship of the commander of the reserve forces there. In 1956 the cruiser was finally decommissioned, sold to BISCO Ltd. sold and scrapped in Blyth on August 1, 1956 .
literature
- Roger Chesneau (Ed.): Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships. 1922-1946. Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-85177-146-7 .
- James J. Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy. The complete record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy from the 15th century to the present. New revised edition. Chatham, London 2006, ISBN 1-86176-281-X .
- Bernard Ireland: The Illustrated Guide to Cruisers. Hermes House, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-84681-150-0 .
- Alan Raven, H. Trevor Lenton: DIDO class Cruisers (= Ensign. 2). Bivouac books, London 1973, ISBN 0-85680-003-1 .
- Mike J. Whitley: Cruiser in World War II. Classes, types, construction dates. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-01842-X , pp. 129-133.
