HMS Shikari
 The Shikari as an escort boat 1942
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HMS Shikari the Royal Navy was as destroyers of the S-Class in the First World War were laid down. The boat was not completed until 1924 as a remote control boat for radio-controlled target ships.
At the beginning of the Second World War , the unarmed boat was converted into an escort boat. In May 1940, the Shikari was one of the boats that British troops evacuated from Dunkirk back to England. After that, the Shikari was used to secure convoy trains to Great Britain until the autumn of 1944.
Building history
The second Shikari (D85) of the Royal Navy was ordered in April 1917 along with the 23 other boats by the Admiralty according to a new design.
Nine shipyards received orders for the new S-Class , which was based on the modified R-Class and how it had two chimneys. At the same time and up to July 1917, 45 more destroyers of this type were ordered, some of them from other shipyards, which were built in the shipyards between or next to boats of the V- and W-Class originally developed as a flotilla leader for the S-Class . All boats were given names beginning with "S" or "T". Three slightly different groups of 55 boats based on the Admiralty's design , seven based on a Yarrow shipyard design and five Thornycroft "specials" were completed. All boats had a long forecastle and a high bridge behind the deck jump. The majority of the boats (41) were not put into service until after the end of the First World War. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the Second World War only eleven of these boats were still in service, and mostly only in subordinate tasks. Most of the boats had been scrapped in the 1930s, also to meet the requirements of the London Naval Agreement of 1930, which also limited the permitted destroyer tonnage.
The order to build the Shikari went to the Doxford shipyard in Pallion near Sunderland , which had built destroyers as early as the 1890s, but only began building destroyers during the World War and already received orders for ten M-class boats , four of the R- Class and four of the V and W classes . Under the hull number 526, the Shikari was launched there on July 14, 1919 as the third S-destroyer from this shipyard after the Success and the Shamrock (hull numbers 522 and 524; June and August 1918). The first two boats were completed by the shipyard in 1919 and came into service for the Australian Navy and the Atlantic Fleet . The hull of the third boat was towed to the naval shipyard in Chatham for final fitting, but completion of the boat was postponed. In September 1923 it was decided to complete the Shikari as a radio control boat for the former battleship HMS Agamemmon, which was used as a remote-controlled target ship . The Shikari received the necessary control devices in Chatham and came into service without armament in April 1924 as the last S-class boat.
Mission history
The Shikari began testing in 1924. The previous target ship of the fleet, HMS Agamemmon , was retired at the end of 1926 and replaced by the Centurion . With the Centurion , the destroyer Tetrarch and the Sloop Snapdragon ran Shikari mid-September 1931 in Invergordon one than for there mutiny came from parts of the Atlantic Fleet. In the period that followed, the Shikari continued to serve as the Centurion's steering boat until 1939 . In 1933, Frederic John Walker was temporarily in command of the boat, which was to become one of the most successful Allied commanders in the fight against the German submarines.
In 1939 there were still eleven S-class boats in the Royal Navy. Five were in action in the Far East as combat boats ( Scout , Stronghold , Tenedos , Thanet , Thracian ), while the boats at home served as tenders at schools, target ships or were in the reserve.
The two boats in the RCN and the five boats in the RAN had been eliminated in 1937.
Service in World War II
After the war began, the Shikari was armed and prepared as an escort vehicle. In January 1940 the boat was ready for use and served as an escort boat at the western canal exit . From May 28, 1940, she and her sister boats Saber , Saladin and Scimitar belonged to the units that were used to evacuate Allied troops from Dunkirk . The Shikari was ordered from Portsmouth with the Scimitar to Dover on the 27th and began regular evacuation trips on the 28th. From their 16th destroyer flotilla, the flotilla leader Malcolm and the destroyers Venomous and Anthony were also used during Operation Dynamo.
On June 1, she took over about 500 French soldiers at sea just off the British coast from the heavily bombed Prague (4220 GRT), which was also supported by the escort boat Shearwater and the Queen of Thanet and was finally set aground and later recovered . On June 2nd the Shikari evacuated 470 soldiers and on the night of the 3rd another 700 men. In the early morning hours of June 4th, it was the last Allied vehicle to leave the port of Dunkirk; 383 French soldiers were on board. After landing in Dover, the boat ran to Portsmouth to repair the damage sustained by air strikes.
On July 24, 1940 the Shikari rescued them again . The French passenger steamer Meknes (6127 GRT, 104 men crew) used as a troop transport had left Southampton in the morning with 1277 French navy members who did not continue to fight with the free French armed forces under General de Gaulle , but wanted to return to Marseille in the unoccupied zone of France. The ship was marked as a neutral French ship and was stopped in the canal by the German speedboat S 27 with machine guns. When the Meknes sent calls for help, the speedboat torpedoed the transporter. The British destroyers Viscount , Wolverine , Saber and the Shikari ran from Portsmouth to rescue the castaways. For 416 French, however, this aid came too late.
The restored and modified Shikari came to the escort security with the base in Londonderry and Iceland. On September 21, 1940, she joined the Sloop Lowestoft and three corvettes as a backup to the convoy HX 72 of 41 ships, which was attacked by submarines. The Shikari was sent to support the already torpedoed ships, as the commander of the security was still waiting for the skate and the scimitar as reinforcement. The convoy lost eleven ships, however.
On October 24, 1941, the Shikari then suffered considerable damage in very severe storms while securing unattacked convoy trains and, like the skate, lost the rear chimney. Until the end of December it was canceled due to the necessary repairs. Repaired again, she was assigned to the escort group around HMS Keppel with the former American destroyer St Albans and four corvettes. From 1942 to August 1944, the old destroyer was mostly only used in the closer coastal area of the north-western access roads or Iceland. At the beginning of April 1943 , the Shikari rescued seven men from the Liberty ship William Pierce Frye , sunk by U 610 on March 29, 1943 , who had been drifting in a landing craft of the deck cargo on the Atlantic for five days.
From August 1944 until April 1945, the Shikari secured submarines between Scapa Flow , Holy Loch and other bases or served the boats as a training target. On August 14, 1945, she is said to have celebrated the victory over Japan in Reykjavík with the crew of the USS Davenport . It was then decommissioned and scrapped in Newport , Wales from November 1945 .
literature
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945 . Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7
- Alexander Bredt (Hrsg.): Weyers Taschenbuch der Kriegsflotten 1941/1942 . Lehmanns Verlag, Munich / Berlin, 1941
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War 2 . Cassell Publishing, 1988, ISBN 1-85409-521-8
Web links
- HMS Shikari (D85) - Old S-class Destroyer (English) accessed November 18, 2013
- HMS Shikari (D85 ) accessed November 18, 2013
- Extract of the Doxford construction list (English) accessed November 21, 2013
- Operation Dynamo accessed November 21, 2013
- Memory of the Meknes Dead (French) accessed November 21, 2013
Individual evidence
- ^ Rohwer: Seekrieg , p. 46.
- ^ Mason: Service histories of Royal Navy warships in World War 2 ; HMS Shikari (D 95) - Old S-class Destroyer
- ^ Naval Events, 24th July 1940
- ^ Rohwer, p. 72
- ↑ History of the USS Davenport (PF-69)