HMS Somali (F33)
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HMS Somali (F33 / L33 / G33) was a (second) Tribal class destroyer of the British Royal Navy . The destroyer used by the Home Fleet landed the first German merchant ship in World War II in 1939 . During the fight against the German occupation of Norway, the Somali was damaged by the air force .
Used mainly in the North Sea, the ship repeatedly captured German key resources from guard and weather ships. On September 20, 1942, the German submarine torpedoed U 703 , the Somali on Convoy QP 14 ; the destroyer sank in the tow of its sister ship Ashanti on September 25, 500 nm off Iceland in heavy seas at position
69 ° 11 ′ 0 ″ N , 15 ° 32 ′ 0 ″ W .
History of the ship
The ship was part of the re-order for further ships of the class in June 1936 and was laid down on August 26, 1936 at the shipyard of Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in Wallsend , Tyne and Wear , launched on August 24, 1937, and on Commissioned December 12, 1938. With the Tartar , the shipyard built another destroyer of the class.
The Somali was the first Tribal class destroyer in the Home Fleet, for which the "2nd Tribal destroyer flotilla" was formed.
The ship had its first use in January 1939 when visiting Lisbon together with the submarine Starfish , where the two British warships were visited by over 5000 people. It then moved to Gibraltar for the annual Home Fleet and Mediterranean Fleet maneuvers , which this time over 100 ships took part. In Gibraltar, the ship was damaged in a collision by the Dutch passenger ship Sibajak ( KRL , 12,040 GRT) during a storm . After the emergency repair in Gibraltar, a shipyard stay in England followed.
Then she was again the leader of the tribals of the Home Fleet, whose flotilla was now called the 6th Destroyer Flotilla. From May 3rd to 8th she visited Cherbourg with Ashanti , Eskimo and Matabele .
War missions
On September 3, 1939, the Somali intercepted the German freighter Hannah Böge (2377 BRT, shipping company Johann MK Blumenthal, 1938) 350 nautical miles south of Iceland . This was the first enemy merchant ship to be taken as a prize during World War II . As Crown Arun , the Hannah Böge was sunk by U 99 on September 17, 1940 .
For the greater part of the winter of 1939/40, the Somali, as the lead ship of the British 6th destroyer flotilla in Scapa Flow, was busy securing patrols for the home fleet and convoys. At the beginning of 1940, like many destroyers of the Tribal class, the ship had to be taken to a shipyard to have problems with the turbines repaired. In April 1940 the ship was back in service and took part in the fighting for Norway. On April 9, she was part of a newly formed attack force against Bergen with the cruisers Manchester , Southampton , Sheffield and Glasgow and the sister ships Gurkha , Sikh , Mohawk , Afridi , Matabele and Mashona and the joining Aurora . The attack was interrupted due to a misjudgment of the German strength when 47 Junkers Ju 88 of KG 30 and 41 Heinkel He 111 of KG 26 attacked the British ships southwest of Bergen and sank the destroyer Gurkha , as well as damaging the cruisers Southampton and Glasgow with close-up impacts. The battleship Rodney and the heavy cruiser Devonshire were also slightly damaged in the main part of the Home Fleet . Only four Ju 88s were shot down. On May 15, 1940, the Somali was hit by an aerial bomb on the way from Mo i Rana to Harstad , which hit the ship below the starboard anchor and tore a hole in the ship's side. The Somali steamed at the reduced speed of 10 knots to the next shipyard stop and was canceled for further missions against the Germans to repel the occupation of Norway , where two sister ships were lost and others were badly damaged.
On October 24, 1940 she was back in front of Norway and sank there together with her sister ships Matabele and Punjabi the German weather observation ship Adolf Vinnen ( WBS 5 ).
On March 21, 1941, the Somali took part with the sister ships Bedouin , Eskimo and Tartar as well as the destroyer Legion and the landing ships Queen Emma and Princess Beatrix (former Dutch Canal ferries) with 500 commando troops in Operation Claymore against the Lofoten . The commando company was supposed to destroy the fishery processing facilities there. The merchant ships Hamburg (5470 BRT), Felix Heumann (2468 BRT), Pasajes (1996 BRT), Eilenau (1404 BRT), Bernhard Schulte (1058 BRT), Gumbinnen (1381 BRT) and Mira (1152 BRT) were sunk, other vehicles damaged. The Norwegian fishing vessel Myrland (321 GRT) voluntarily joined the British association on the march back. 213 Germans and 12 Norwegians were captured, 314 Norwegians voluntarily went to England. The operation was successful, in addition to the destruction of all targets, the Somali managed to capture code documents and a cylinder of the Enigma cipher machine from the German outpost boat Krebs . The British reconnaissance center Bletchley Park managed to decipher the German radio traffic over a closed period of time and several individual days. This booty was certainly more important to the war than the destruction, but the attack and support from the Norwegians forced the Germans to leave more troops in Norway.
In May 1941 the cruisers Edinburgh , Manchester , Birmingham and the Australian destroyer Nestor as well as the Tribals Bedouin , Eskimo and Somali were looking for a German weather ship in order to capture further key materials. The wanted German weather observation ship Munich was boarded by the Somali . The crew of the Munich managed to throw the ship's Enigma in a weighted sack overboard and sink it in time. However, the operating manuals of the machine and important coding books were forgotten on board and enabled the Allied code breakers to break through in decoding the German naval codes.
Later that month, the Somali took part in the Rodney's security destroyer with Tatar and Mashona briefly in the hunt for the Bismarck , had to return to the base due to lack of fuel and so did not take part in the sinking of the Bismarck . Also Tartar and Mashona were the Rodney not follow and were attacked on the way back from the Air Force; Mashona was sunk. During a subsequent visit to the shipyard, the Somali armament was reinforced, the rear funnel was shortened and radar was installed. In August 1941, the Somali was one of the escort ships of the Prince of Wales , who went to Newfoundland with Winston Churchill on board to sign the Atlantic Charter , but was released on the third day because she could not follow the speed of the battleship in the prevailing weather .
At the end of August Somali with Matabele and Punjabi secured the voyage of the old carrier Argus and the cruiser Shropshire to Arkhangelsk with Hawker Hurricanes and RAF personnel. The 151st RAF Wing supported the defense of Murmansk and trained Russian personnel on the machines. On December 8, 1941, the Somali under the Soviet flag brought the Soviet ambassador to Great Britain from Invergordon to Scapa Flow. At the end of December 1941, the ship also took part in the second Commando attack on Lofoten (Operation Anklet). The Royal Navy used a total of a light cruiser , six destroyers, three mine sweepers, two dropships, two submarines and a survey ship as well as two tankers, a transporter and a tug. There were also two Norwegian corvettes and two Polish destroyer escorts. 300 men were landed, 77 of them Norwegians. On December 26th and 27th, 1941, they occupied the cities of Reine and Moskenes , only to withdraw without losses with 32 German prisoners and some arrested Norwegian collaborators (quislings) as well as 200 Norwegian volunteers. The operation was only a diversionary maneuver compared to the simultaneous Operation Archery in Vågsøy . In addition to supporting the landing, the Navy had the radio station in Flakstadoy destroyed by the Bedouin and went with the cruiser Arethusa and the destroyers Somali , Ashanti and Eskimo into the Vestfjord , where they took the Norwegian freighters Kong Harald (1125 GRT) and Nordland (725 GRT ) and sank the outpost boat Vp.5904 (ex fish steamer Geier , 145 GRT) and captured its crew. Anchored in the Kirkefjord, the Arethusa was just missed by the bomb of an attacking seaplane on the 27th, but suffered considerable damage. This attack accelerated the retreat, as the association did not have its own air security, as no attacks from the air were expected due to the light conditions north of the Arctic Circle.
From April 1942, the Somali was used as an escort ship for the northern sea convoys . From May 13, she secured with the destroyers Foresight , Forester and Matchless the return march of the damaged cruiser Trinidad from Murmansk after emergency repairs there. After repeated bomb hits in German air raids, the Somali took over the crew of the cruiser on the 15th, which was then sunk by the Matchless . On the 19th the Somali reached the Clyde with the survivors of the Trinidad .
End of Somali
On September 20, 1942, the Somali was hit by a torpedo from U 703 in the engine room while accompanying convoy QP 14 to Loch Ewe . The ship lost all engines and was only held together by the deck and the starboard side. The submarine trawler Lord Middleton took over most of the crew. Although the Ashanti tried to tow her sister ship Somali to safety, the Somali sank four days later on September 25 after heavy seas worsened the damage and it finally broke. Of the 102 men on board, only 35 could be rescued.
The Somali was the last British Tribal class ship to be lost in World War II.
literature
- JJ Colledge, Ben Warlow: Ships of the Royal Navy: the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy. Chatham / London 1969 (rev. Ed. 2006), ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8 , OCLC 67375475.
- David Lyon: HMS Cossack / Tribal Class destroyer. Profile Publication N ° 2, Windsor 1970.
- David Lyon: The British Tribals, 1935. In Superdestroyers. Conway Maritime Press, Greenwich 1978, ISBN 0-85177-131-9 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyer in World War II. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 .
Web links
- HMS Somali on Uboat.net
- HMS SOMALI (L 33) - Tribal-class Destroyer
- "TRIBAL" destroyers (1938-1948)
- History of the MS Sibajak
Individual evidence
- ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Pp. 39, 42.
- ^ Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. April 1940. Retrieved February 9, 2019 .
- ^ Rohwer, p. 48
- ^ Rohwer, p. 107
- ↑ Rohwer, pp. 205f.
- ^ Rohwer, pp. 239, 258, 283
- ^ Rohwer, p. 246
- ^ Percy E. Schramm: War Diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht 1942. Part 2, Bernard & Graefe, Bonn, ISBN 3-7637-5933-6 , p. 1433.
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