HMS Sikh (F82)
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The HMS Sikh (F82) was a destroyer of the (second) Tribal-class destroyer of the Royal Navy , who in 1938 came into service. After operations off Norway, in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean Sea, the destroyer was lost off the Libyan coast in September 1942 when it was sunk by a German anti-aircraft gun while a commando was taken up.
History of the destroyer
The destroyer was part of the second construction contract for destroyers of the Tribal class, which the Royal Navy placed three months after the first contract in June 1936. The keel of the new building N ° 553 was laid at the end of September. After being launched on December 17, 1937 at the Alexander Stephen and Sons shipyard in Glasgow , the Sikh was commissioned on October 12, 1938 as the fifth ship of the class. It was named after the Indian Sikh ethnic group . This name had previously been borne by an S-class destroyer built by Fairfield in 1918 , which was scrapped in 1927, as well as a torpedo boat used in India before the turn of the century.
The sea trials and crew break-ins were suspended on November 15 to bring the Romanian King Carol and Crown Prince Michael of Boulogne to Dover , who were coming to Britain on an official visit. On the 18th both of them started their way back over the canal on the Sikh . Then the Sikh moved to the Mediterranean Sea to the "1st Tribal Destroyer Flotilla", where they arrived in Malta on December 12th and joined the flotilla of which they belonged until the outbreak of war. After exercises with the Home Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet from the Gibraltar base, the destroyer joined the international maritime control units in April and evacuated refugees from Cartagena to Marseille on March 21 .
In April the “Tribal Flotilla” was featured in “4. Destroyer Flotilla ”, which carried out exercises and visits to the Eastern Mediterranean with the Mediterranean fleet from May to July. The Aegean was also chosen as a training area in view of a possible war with Italy.
War missions
When the war with Germany broke out, the Sikh was in Alexandria and transferred to the Red Sea on September 3, 1939 with the sister ships Afridi , Gurkha and Mohawk . The destroyers cleared the coasts from Italian East Africa to Somaliland . The Sikh was soon relocated to Alexandria to control shipping in the eastern Mediterranean. From October 5th, the Sikh failed due to damage to the turbine blades and was repaired in Malta. The call for the ship to return to Great Britain was not able to be followed by the Sikh until December, when she moved from the 16th to the 26th to Chatham , where she returned to the shipyard. The ship was not ready for action again until February 1940. On April 7, she went to sea with five sister ships, two K-class destroyers and the three Polish destroyers ORP Grom , Blyskawica and Burza as well as the light cruiser Galatea after the first reports about movements of the navy along the Norwegian coast ( Operation Weser Exercise , beginning the occupation of Norway). On the 9th there was a meeting of this association at sea with the cruisers HMS Manchester , Glasgow , Sheffield and Southampton as well as three other tribal destroyers. An attack on the German landing forces was abandoned due to a misjudgment of the German strength. The retreating units were attacked from the air southwest of Bergen by 47 Junkers Ju 88s from KG 30 and 41 Heinkel He 111s from KG 26 . The tribal destroyer Gurkha was sunk, the battleship Rodney , which had arrived in the meantime , was hit and the cruisers Southampton and Glasgow were slightly damaged by close hits. The Sikh was one of the units (two cruisers, six tribals ) which, after replenishing the fuel and ammunition stocks, immediately returned to Norway from Scapa Flow and, after the situation was cleared up , were supposed to support the landing of Allied troops in Namsos on the 17th. The British units were repeatedly attacked from the air.
On April 30, 1940, the Sikh evacuated troops from Åndalsnes with the old destroyer Wanderer . She had to drag the accrued walkers free again and then supported the cruiser Southampton with further evacuations. On May 1, the Sikh left the combat area with 120 army soldiers on board. On the 3rd / 4th In May 1940 she made an unsuccessful foray into the Skagerrak with the sister ship Tartar and the French destroyers Tartu , Chevalier-Paul and Milan .
In the following months, the destroyer was mostly in use in the British coastal area, but also had several shipyard stops, often because of minor collisions. From the beginning of January to mid-April 1941, major repairs were carried out, in which the ship received a radar device for the first time , but it did not prove itself. At the same time, a 102 mm Mk.XVI dual-purpose twin gun was installed in the rear raised position in place of the 120 mm double mount (standard change for all ships of the class).
After a renewed training phase, on May 21, 1941 , the Sikh was assigned to securing the troop transport convoy WS 8B , which included the old anti- aircraft cruiser Cairo , the sister ships HMS Cossack , Maori and Zulu , the Polish ORP Piorun and the Canadian destroyers HMCS Restigouche and Ottawa . On the 26th, the Sikh with their sister ships and the Piorun were withdrawn from the convoy to take part in the pursuit of the German battleship Bismarck (see also: Operation Rhine Exercise ). The Bismarck was discovered by a Catalina flying boat, then shadowed by the cruiser Sheffield as a feeler and torpedoed by the Swordfish torpedo bombers of the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, making it almost impossible to maneuver. Eventually the five destroyers were dispatched to attack at night. The Piorun was the first to spot the battleship and held contact until the others were in attack position. The Sikh shot a volley of four torpedoes without success, and the other boats were also unsuccessful. The Bismarck could not score any hits, missed a lot of ammunition and could be shot down the next morning by the battleships King George V and Rodney .
Then the ship moved as part of the Force H in the Mediterranean. On December 13, 1941, the Sikh sank together with HMS Legion , Maori and the Dutch Hr.Ms. Issac Sweers used the Italian light cruisers Alberico di Barbiano and Alberto di Giussano as petrol transporters in a battle near Cape Bon .
In March 1942, the Sikh belonged to the security group of the supply convoy MW 10 from Alexandria to Malta. The four transporters were secured by the flak cruiser Carlisle and the 22nd destroyer flotilla, which also included the Zulu , Lively , Hero , Havock and Hasty . The Italian battleship Littorio was able to bombard the convoy at times, but only slightly damaged the units of the security and cover groups. The transporters came as far as Malta, but were all sunk or damaged there by the Air Force. Less than a fifth of the cargo could be brought ashore.
On August 4, 1942, the Sikh sank the German submarine U 372 off Haifa, together with Zulu and the destroyers escorted by Croome and Tetcott .
The end of the Sikh
On the night of September 14, 1942, HMS Sikh and Zulu covered a commando operation against Tobruk . The Sikh was severely damaged by German 8.8 cm anti-aircraft guns used as a coastal battery . The ship was towed by the sister ship, the Zulu , but could not be kept afloat and sank at 32 ° 5 ′ 52 ″ N , 24 ° 0 ′ 0 ″ E. , where 115 men of the crew were killed. The Zulu suffered the same fate the following day through air raids.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. P. 39.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 42
- ^ Rohwer, p. 43
- ^ Rohwer, p. 126
- ^ Rohwer, p. 195
- ^ Rohwer, p. 229
- ^ Rohwer, p. 266
- ^ Rohwer, p. 284
Web links
literature
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-0097 .
- David Lyon: HMS Cossack / Tribal Class destroyer. Profile Publication, N ° 2, Windsor 1970.
Royal Navy (HMS): Afridi | Ashanti | Bedouin | Cossack | Eskimo | Gurkha | Maori | Mashona | Matabele | Mohawk | Nubian | Punjabi | Sikh | Somali | Tartare | Zulu
Australian Navy (HMAS): Arunta | Bataan | Warramunga
Canadian Navy (HMCS): Athabaskan (I) | Athabaskan (II) | Cayuga | Haida | Huron | Iroquois | Micmac | Nootka