HMS Suffolk (1903)
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|---|---|
 The sister ship HMS Berwick |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Armored cruiser |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | March 25, 1901 |
| Launch | January 15, 1903 |
| delivery | May 21, 1904 |
| Namesake | Suffolk county |
| Whereabouts | Sold for demolition in 1920 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
9,800 tn.l. |
| length |
pp: 134.11 m (440 ft ) |
| width |
20.12 m (66 ft) |
| Draft |
7.6 m (25 ft) |
| crew |
678 men |
| drive |
|
| speed |
23 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Coal supply |
1,600 tn.l. |
|
Armor belt armor / casemates |
|
| Towers / barbeds |
127 mm (5 in) |
| deck |
50–170 mm (2–7.5 in) |
| Command tower |
250 mm (10 in) |
The fifth HMS Suffolk British Royal Navy was one of ten battleships of Monmouth - or County class . The sister ships were Monmouth , Bedford , Essex , Kent , Berwick , Cornwall , Cumberland , Donegal and Lancaster .
The Suffolk was mostly used in the Mediterranean from 1904 to 1912. From 1913 she was stationed on the Mexican east coast during the Mexican Revolution to protect British interests. She became the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock of the North America and West Indies command , which also included sister ships Berwick , Essex and Lancaster as 4th Cruiser Squadron . When war broke out, the Suffolk was still the flagship of the 4th Cruiser Squadron under Cradock and was in Vera Cruz at the end of July . Cradock took her on the search for the SMS Karlsruhe , while he sent the Berwick towards Jamaica to find the SMS Dresden . Although the Suffolk found the Karlsruhe , it escaped thanks to its higher speed. On August 16, Cradock switched to the Good Hope off Halifax (Nova Scotia) , with which he went down in the sea battle at Coronel off the Chilean coast. The Suffolk stayed at the North America and West Indies station until July 1916 , and then switched to the China station from September 1917 until the end of the war . It was canceled after returning home.
history
The keel laying of the Suffolk took place on March 25, 1901 as the tenth and last ship of the class. As the penultimate ship she was launched on January 15, 1903 in Portsmouth Dockyard and then came into service with the Royal Navy on May 21, 1904 as the eighth cruiser in the series.
Like her sister ships, she displaced 9,800 tons, had a top speed of 23.7 knots, and a crew of around 680 men. The Suffolk had Niclausse boilers like her sister ship Berwick , but also other cruisers of the Royal Navy.
The main armament of fourteen 6- inch (15.2-cm) rapid-loading guns, four of them in a bow and a stern twin turret and ten in casemates , was comparatively weak for an armored cruiser of the time. Since the lower six casemate guns were not very far above the waterline, they could only be used effectively when the sea was calm. The armor wasn't very strong either.
Pre-war missions
Briefly deployed with the Home Fleet , the cruiser moved to the Mediterranean, where it was commanded by David Beatty from October 1904 to September 1, 1905 . From 1906 to August 1912 the cruiser stayed in the Mediterranean together with the sister ship Lancaster . In 1906 both cruisers belonged to the “3. Kreuzergeschwader ”, to which the armored cruisers HMS Leviathan (as flagship) and HMS Carnarvon belonged.
In 1913 it was used on the Mexican east coast to protect British interests. She was the flagship of Rear Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock , who could also have the sister ships Berwick , Essex and Lancaster . At the end of February 1914, the Suffolk were in Kingston (Jamaica) and moved to Bermuda , where they arrived on March 1, 1914. The cruiser was routinely overhauled and left the British base on May 1 for a three-day stop at Vera Cruz via Port au Prince , where it met sister ships Berwick and Lancaster . He went on to Tampico , where the commanding admiral was taken over by the Essex . The British flagship then returned to Veracruz via Tuxpan (May 24). The Lancaster hit en route was released to Bermuda during the routine docking time. American warships were also stationed in all ports, especially in Vera Cruz. On June 27, the German cruiser SMS Dresden and a Dutch warship also entered Vera Cruz. Dresden , stationed off Mexico since the beginning of the year, left Vera Cruz again on the 30th, although originally it was planned to be replaced there by SMS Karlsruhe and a change of commanding officer. On July 20, Dresden brought Mexican President Victoriano Huerta and other members of the government from Puerto Mexico into exile in Kingston, Jamaica. Then the replacement between the German cruisers in Port au Prince took place. On July 29, the Berwick then left Vera Cruz and the flagship Suffolk sailed for Jamaica at 16 knots the following day, shortly after the HMS Bristol arrived. Suffolk , which was in full war readiness, filled its coal bunker in Kingston again on August 2nd, which it left again on the evening of August 4th.
War effort
When the war broke out, the Suffolk was still the flagship of the North America and West Indies command and the 4th Cruiser Squadron under Cradock, who took up the search for the Karlsruhe with her , while he sent the Berwick to Jamaica to find the Dresden . He sent the Essex to Halifax to watch out for any German auxiliary cruisers. The other sister ship Lancaster carried out a routine overhaul in Bermuda and should accelerate its operational readiness again. The light cruiser Bristol, which was still part of the command, was supposed to go to Pernambuco in order to work together with her sister ship Glasgow , located in Rio de Janeiro , off South America .
North American use
On August 6th, the Suffolk met the small cruiser Karlsruhe when it was equipping the express steamer Kronprinz Wilhelm as an auxiliary cruiser. Immediately the Germans finished the equipment and both ships departed on different courses. The Suffolk pursued the Karlsruhe and was able to increase her speed to over 19 knots. The Karlsruhe was able to evade the pursuit thanks to its higher speed and the onset of night. The sister ship Berwick of Suffolk and the light cruisers Bristol were instructed by radio, the German cruiser to move to escape to the north and south. Although the Bristol managed to put the Karlsruhe in a short battle, the latter eluded it again due to the higher speed. The Crown Prince Wilhelm escaped unmolested and, as a trade troublemaker, brought a total of 14 ships with a total of around 56,000 GRT, which were sunk.
On August 8, 1914, the Suffolk brought up the tanker Leda (1913 Howaldtswerke , 6766 BRT, DPAG). She then marched north, met on August 11th with the Essex and ran with this on the 13th in Halifax, Nova Scotia . The armored cruiser Good Hope , which had left Portsmouth on August 2nd, arrived for reinforcements the following day. With his ships back at sea, Rear Admiral Cradock switched to the Good Hope on August 16 , as she was faster than his previous flagship. When Cradock marched with parts of the squadron into the South Atlantic and finally went down in the Pacific with the armored cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth in the sea battle at Coronel against the German East Asia Squadron off the Chilean coast, the Suffolk stayed in the North Atlantic, where she initially made the sea lanes in front of the ports of the USA with the Essex observed as the British expected more trade disruptors to leave these ports.
The Suffolk controlled the traffic from the USA to Europe with other units until July 1916. Halifax and Bermuda were used as bases and control lines in front of the Chesapeak Bay and New York were occupied. On July 9, the Suffolk ran from the position in front of New York to Jamaica and then left the North American station from July 22, 1916 via Bermuda, Gibraltar and Lisbon, which was visited from August 12 to 14, home and became decommissioned on August 18, 1916 in Portsmouth.
Far East use
On June 1, 1917, the Suffolk ran from Plymouth to Freetown , Sierra Leone , from Plymouth to Freetown , Sierra Leone , and from there with a convoy to Simonstown to secure merchant ships and with some replacement personnel . Intended as the flagship of the China Station , the armored cruiser marched after a visit from Durban via Mauritius through the Indian Ocean to Singapore , where it reached the station area on July 28th. The danger of German trade troublemakers, such as the auxiliary cruiser SMS Wolf , only led to the operation in the Gulf of Bengal , where the cruiser carried out two larger inspection trips, searched the Andaman and Nicobar Islands , partly collaborated with the HMS Venus and even marched west again as far as Colombo , before moving from Singapore to the main base of the station in Hong Kong from November 11 to 17, 1917 . In mid-January 1918, the Suffolk then moved via Sasebo to Vladivostok , where they stayed from January 14, 1918 to January 7, 1919.
At the end of the war, the Suffolk and her sister ship Kent, which arrived in 1918, were the cruisers at China Station . The Lancaster was still in the Pacific. The four sister ships Berwick, Cornwall, Cumberland and Donegal were among the thirteen cruisers on the North America and West Indies Squadron at the end of the war .
Final fate
In 1919, the Suffolk traveled to the station area by marching via Yokohama to Hong Kong and then to Singapore. She then visited Shanghai via Hong Kong , where she stayed for almost a month before starting her return journey to Europe on April 9, 1919 in Hong Kong, which led via Singapore, Colombo, Aden , the Suez Canal and Malta to Plymouth. May arrived. On June 6, 1919 it was assigned to the ´Devonport reserve´ for conservation. In 1920 it was finally decommissioned and sold for demolition on July 1, 1920.
The demolition of the HMS Suffolk took place in Germany in 1922.
swell
literature
- Geoffrey Bennet: The sea battles of Coronel and Falkland and the sinking of the German cruiser squadron under Admiral Graf Spee (= Heyne books. 5697). Translated, supplemented with notes and an afterword by Reinhard K. Lochner. Heyne, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-453-01141-4 .
- Roger Chesneau, Eugene M. Kolesnik (Ed.): Warships of the world 1860 to 1905. Volume 1: Great Britain and Germany. Bernard & Graefe, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5402-4 .
- Carl Herbert: War voyages of German merchant ships. Achievements of the merchant navy and their men in World War II. Broschek & Co, Hamburg 1934.
- Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: The German warships. Biographies. A mirror of naval history from 1815 to the present day. 7 volumes. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1983.
- John Moore: Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. Studio Editions, London 1990, ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .
Web links
- Monmouth class at worldwar1 (English)
- Monmouth -class at battleships-cruisers (English)
- Monmouth class at historyofwar (English)
- HMS Suffolk at maritimequest
- Logs of HMS Suffolk at oldweather
Remarks
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↑ The only difference between Mk.VII and Mk.VIII was that with Mk.VIII the shutter opened to the left instead of to the right.
The Mk.VIII were installed as a left tube in the twin towers, which made reloading easier,
as the locks swiveled away from the tower walls.
