HMS Quentin (G78)
_at_anchor_in_1942.jpg) The sister boat Queenborough
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The HMS Quentin (G78) was the first completed destroyer of the Q- and R-Class of the Royal Navy , the 1939/40 than third and fourth order for fleet destroyer in World War II were ordered. The destroyer was awarded the Battle Honors Atlantic 1942 , Mediterranean 1942 , Malta Convoys 1942 and North Africa 1942 .
(HMS stands for "Her (or His) Majesty's Ship", prefix for all naval ships of the Royal Navy since 1789/1790). The Quentin was lost after less than eight months of service in an air force attack off the North African coast.
History of the boat
In December 1939, the orders for the eight boats of the new Q class (3rd emergency flotilla) were placed at three shipyards. The start of construction of the boats was delayed due to the high need for repairs by the Royal Navy after the Navy deployed in Norway and northern France in the first half of 1940.
Building history
The construction of the Quentin began on November 25, 1940 at J. Samuel White in Cowes as the first of three boats ordered from the shipyard. The boats in the new Q-Class took over the hull construction of the pre-war J-Class . The fewer guns on the new boats resulted in less need for ammunition chambers. This made larger fuel bunkers possible, which increased the operating range of the boats. The Quentin was launched on November 5, 1941 as the second boat of the new class and was completed as the first Q-class boat on April 15, 1942 at White. At this time, only nine boats of the 16 O- and P-class destroyers ordered previously had been delivered.
The boat had the traditional British destroyer armament of four 120 mm Mk.IX cannons . These guns could only be raised up to 40 ° and had not proven themselves in aircraft defense. It also had a 2-pounder "pom pom" quadruple and six 20 mm Oerlikon automatic cannons .
Mission history
On April 15, 1942, the Quentin came into service as the first ship of the class and moved to Scapa Flow in May to be brought into the Home Fleet . From June 1st to July 23rd her first deployment took place as part of the security of the convoy WS 19 , which was supposed to transport almost 40,000 men to South Africa and further on 23 ships . The battleships Nelson and Rodney were assigned as security , their security against submarines was the Quentin together with Penn and Pathfinder of the previous O- and P-class and the destroyer escort Derwent of the Hunt-class , all boats that were also recently put into service were educated. The Quentin escorted the battleships via Freetown (June 15) to position 12 ° 19 ′ 0 ″ S , 8 ° 39 ′ 0 ″ E west of the south of Angola , where they disembarked on June 26 on the orders of the Admiralty, to be available for a renewed attempt to get a supply convoy through to Malta . The Quentin and the two boats of the previous class formed the direct escort of the battleships over the entire voyage, was partially refueled from these at sea and was also assigned to the new attempt to get through a convoy to Malta.
The march out for Operation Harpoon took place in early August and Gibraltar was passed on the 10th ; the Quentin belonged with twelve other destroyers to the cover group of the convoy with the two battleships and four aircraft carriers.
After this operation, the boat did not return to the Home Fleet, but moved to Freetown. At the end of the month, the Quentin was used to secure the battleship Queen Elizabeth , which was being transferred to the USA for repairs. On September 3, the battleship released part of its security on reports of submarine attacks off Trinidad . Together with the Pathfinder and the Vimy , the destroyer succeeded in sinking the German submarine U 162 off Trinidad at 12 ° 12 ′ 0 ″ N , 59 ° 29 ′ 0 ″ W. The destroyers could rescue and capture 49 survivors of the boat (only two dead). After further missions in the Caribbean to protect Allied shipping, the Quentin secured an escort of seven oil tankers from the West Indies to Freetown with the Pathfinder and Corvette Snowdrop . The boat then went to Great Britain in October to take part in the preparations for the Allied landings in North Africa ( Operation Torch ). During the landings in November she was part of the security of the "Central Task Force" and secured the cruiser Aurora and the anti-aircraft cruisers Argonaut , Charybdis and Scylla of the Dido class during the landings in Oran . On November 18, the destroyer came to the "Force Q", which should take action with the cruisers Aurora , Argonaut and Sirius against the shipping traffic of the Axis powers to North Africa. On the 28th, the Quentin sank the Italian submarine Dessiè north of Bône with her sister boat Quiberon of the RAN, which had since arrived . On the march back to the port, she supported the destroyer Ithuriel, which was badly damaged in air strikes, and dragged him out of the port area, where he was set aground.
The end of the Quentin
On the night of December 2, 1942, the "Force Q" attacked with Aurora , Argonaut and Sirius as well as the destroyers Quiberon and Quentin an Italian convoy of four transporters north of Cape Bon . The four transporters Aventino , Puccini , Aspromonte and the German KT-1 with their cargo of 1766 soldiers (1527 dead), four tanks, 32 other vehicles, 12 guns and 698 tons of military equipment (mainly ammunition) were sunk. The destroyer Folgore was sunk by escorts (120 dead) and the Da Recco (118 dead) was seriously damaged. The destroyer Camicia Nera and the torpedo boats Clio and Procione escaped with minor damage .
On the march back to Algeria, the British unit was attacked from the air by Italian Savoia Sparviero and German Junkers Ju 88 and the Quentin was hit near the Galite Islands . They sank to the position of 37 ° 40 '0 " N , 8 ° 55' 0" O . 20 men died, the survivors were rescued by the Quiberon .
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981 , Ian Allen (1983), ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- Norman Friedman: British Destroyers: From Earliest Days to the Second World War , Seaforth Publishing (Barnsley 2009), ISBN 978-1-84832-049-9 .
- HT Lenton: Warships of the British and Commonwealth Navies , Ian Allan 1969.
- Antony Preston: Destroyers , Hamlyn, ISBN 0-60032955-0 .
- 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
Footnotes
- ^ Rohwer : Der Seekrieg , p. 270
- ^ Rohwer: Der Seekrieg , p. 272
- ↑ Sinking the Dessiè
- ↑ . Ithuriel was later towed to Algiers, but repairing it did not prove economical
- ^ Rohwer: Der Seekrieg , p. 309
