HMS Rifleman (1910)
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_IWM_SP_000320.jpg) The sister boat HMS Redpole |
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| Overview | |
| Type | destroyer |
| units | 20th |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | December 1909 |
| Launch | August 22, 1910 |
| Commissioning | March 1911 |
| Whereabouts | Sold for demolition in May 1921, scrapped by 1923 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
772 tn, maximum 970 tn |
| length |
75.1 m above sea level (246.5 ft) |
| width |
7.7 m (25.5 ft) |
| Draft |
2.6 m (7 ft) |
| crew |
72 men |
| drive |
4 Yarrow boilers, |
| speed |
27 kn |
| Range |
> 1620 nm at 11 kn / 170 t oil |
| Armament |
2 × 102 mm L / 40 Mk.VIII guns |
| Sister boats |
Redpole , Ruby |
The HMS Rifleman of the Royal Navy was a 1911 Taken into service destroyer of Acorn class , later known as H-Class was named and included 20 destroyers. The boat was built according to plans by the Admiralty at the J. Samuel White shipyard in Cowes .
After the First World War , the boat was sold for demolition in 1921.
Building history
The Rifleman was one of three in the 1909–1910 financial year of the Royal Navy at the J. Samuel White shipyard ordered fleet destroyers of the oil-powered Acorn class. The boats were launched as Redpole (June 24), Rifleman (August 22) and Ruby (November 4, 1910) and were taken over by the Royal Navy from February to April 1911. On their test drives, the White boats Redpole reached 29.8 kn, Rifleman 28.6 kn and Ruby 29.3 kn, making them among the fastest boats in their class. At 720 tn, the boats displaced relatively little in normal equipment compared to the other boats in the class and were the only ones equipped with four White-Forster type water tube boilers .
Mission history
The three boats, like the other boats in the class, all came to the Home Fleet 's 2nd Destroyer Flotilla operated by the scout cruiser HMS Bellona in 1911 .
War effort
In 1914, the 20 Acorn- class boats were all with the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla at the Grand Fleet , which was relocated to Scapa Flow shortly before the outbreak of war . The command cruiser of the 2nd Flotilla was the HMS Active . In September 1914, for was Chile located at White under construction HMS Broke the Faulknor class determined as Halbflottillenführer that arrived in December in the flotilla.
Use in escort security
From October 1915 a detached unit of the flotilla was established under the flotilla leader Tipperary , a sister boat of the Broke , at the west entrance to the canal with the initially seven boats Acorn, Comet, Fury, Hope, Redpole, Sheldrake and Staunch , which also included the Rifleman in November kicked. In January 1916 she belonged to the second group of Acorn boats that moved to the Mediterranean, where she joined the 5th Destroyer Flotilla in the Mediterranean Fleet .
In May 1917 another sub-unit was formed with the "Malta Flotilla", which initially consisted of the eight Acorn, Minstrel, Sheldrake, Cameleon, Larne, Nemesis, 'Nereide and Rifleman of the Acorn class. In June 1917, Minstrel and Nemesis were loaned to the Japanese Navy and remained in service from Malta as Sendan and Kanran .
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On January 1, 1917, the German submarine UB 47 torpedoed the Cunard ship Ivernia (1900, 13799 GRT), secured by the Rifleman , off Cape Matapan , Greece , which was on its way to Alexandria with 2,400 Scottish troops . Rifleman took over 650 men from the transporter and brought the crew and troops to Crete with the accompanying belay boats, which towed the lifeboats of the Ivernia . 85 soldiers and 36 crew members could not be rescued.
On April 15, 1917, used as a troop transport in January 1917 Cameronia the Anchor Line (1911, 10963 BRT) on the way from Marseille to Alexandria with 2,650 soldiers on board the German submarine U 33 east 150 miles from Malta torpedoed. Eleven men of the crew and 129 soldiers lost their lives when the Cameronia sank . The Rifleman was again involved in rescuing the castaways and brought large numbers to Suda .
In January 1918, the Rifleman was routinely overhauled in Gibraltar , while the two sister boats were overhauled in Malta.
At the end of the war, the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, the Royal Navy's largest destroyer flotilla, had 51 boats, including all seventeen Acorn boats still in existence ( Acorn, Alarm, Brisk; Cameleon; Fury; Hope; Larne, Lyra, Martin, Nereid, Nymphe; Sheldrake , the Japanese Sendan ex HMS Minstrel and Kanran ex HMS Nemesis as well as the three White boats Redpole, Rifleman, Ruby ).
When, after the end of the war, the Allied fleet marched through the Dardanelles to Constantinople on November 12th, 31 British destroyers were part of the association, including eleven Acorn- class boats including the three White boats. The Rifleman belonged to the foremost group of British ships and was then briefly in service in the Black Sea.
Destiny of the Rifleman
The British units of the Mediterranean Fleet were completely swapped out in 1919 and replaced by more modern units. The Rifleman and her two sister boats were sold for demolition in May 1921.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jane's Fighting Ships 1919, p. 112
- ↑ 2nd Destroyer Flotilla
- ↑ 41. British ACORN class, SENDAN , KANRAN
- ↑ UB-47 (type UB II) assembled in Pola and in service in July 1916, July 1917 as kuk U 47 to Austria
- ↑ Achievements of UB 47
- ^ Ivernia
- ^ Bonsor: North Atlantic Seaway. Vol I, p. 155
- ↑ Sinking of the Ivernia
- ↑ Successes of U 33
- ↑ SS Cameronia
- ↑ The sinking of the Cameronia
- ^ Fall of the Cameronia
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 .
- TD Manning: The British Destroyer. Putnam 1961.
- Antony Preston: Destroyers. Hamlyn, ISBN 0-600-32955-0 .
- Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Conway Maritime Press (1985), pp. 72f.
- Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. (Ed. John Moore), Studio (London 1990), ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .