HMS Rodney (29)
 The Rodney in the war off Liverpool
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The HMS Rodney (29) was a battleship of the Royal Navy . It was the first of two Nelson- class ships to enter service in 1927 and was scrapped in 1948 after serving in World War II .
history
Launched until World War II
The Rodney , after George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney named the winner in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent , was in December 1922 at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead placed on Kiel . The ship was christened and launched in December 1925. The commissioning was in November 1927; The construction costs amounted to 7,617,000 pounds sterling .
From commissioning until the outbreak of World War II, the Rodney was part of the Atlantic Fleet or the Home Fleet . In 1931 her crew took part in the Invergordon Mutiny . In late December 1931 the ship was repaired due to problems with the rudders.
Second World War
On April 9, 1940, German aircraft damaged the Rodney near the island of Karmøy (Norway) . A 500 kg bomb penetrated the armored deck without exploding. On September 13, 1940, the ship was moved from Scapa Flow to Rosyth to operate against the expected German invasion in the English Channel (" Operation Sea Lion ").
In November and December she escorted convoys between the UK and Halifax in Nova Scotia . In January 1941 she took part in the unsuccessful hunt for the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau . When she escorted a convoy across the North Atlantic on March 16, she came into contact with the German battleships. But there was no battle because the German ships turned away in view of the greater enemy firepower.
In May 1941, the Rodney and two destroyers escorted the troop transport Britannic to Canada. The Britannic had civilians on board and was supposed to bring Canadian troops to Britain on the return voyage. On May 24th she was assigned to hunt the German battleship Bismarck . On May 26, they joined forces with the King George V to battle the Bismarck . In the early morning of May 27, both ships attacked the Bismarck together with the cruisers Norfolk and Dorsetshire . The steering system of the German ship was damaged after being hit by an aircraft torpedo the day before. After the Bismarck had to stop firing, the Rodney came closer to the Bismarck until its projectiles had a very flat trajectory and the observers could follow the projectiles to the target. A 16- inch (406 mm) shell was tracked from the gun to the Bismarck's second turret , where it exploded and blew off the turret's rear wall. The Rodney later broke off the fight and was released for refueling because of her low fuel supply .
It was then sent to Boston for repairs to the machinery . In September she was stationed in Gibraltar with Force H and escorted convoys to Malta . She returned to the UK in November and was stationed in Iceland for a month. She was then overtaken until May 1942 and then returned to Force H , where she again escorted convoys to Malta and took part in the invasion of Northwest Africa ( Operation Torch ). She later took part in the landings in Sicily ( Operation Husky ) and Salerno ( Operation Avalanche ). From October 1943 she was in the Home Fleet and participated in the Invasion of Normandy in June 1944, where she destroyed targets in Caen and Alderney . In September 1944 she escorted convoys to Murmansk .
She covered over 156,000 nautical miles throughout the war, with the machines not being overhauled after 1942. Because of frequent problems with the propulsion, she was not modernized like her sister ship Nelson from December 1944, but kept in reserve in Scapa Flow. The crew was distributed to other ships. The ship remained in Scapa Flow until it was sold for scrapping in February 1948. The scrapping began on March 26, 1948 in Inverkeithing .
literature
- Siegfried Breyer: Battleships and battle cruisers 1905–1970. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1970.
- Robert Gardiner, ed .: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922-1946. Conway Maritime Press, London 1980.
Web links
- HMS Rodney - Nelson-class 16in gun battleship. Mission history at naval-history.net (English)