HMS Tartar (F43)
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HMS Tartar (F43 / G43) was a (second) Tribal class destroyer of the British Royal Navy . The Tartar was in service off Norway, in the North Sea and from 1942 in the Mediterranean. Operations in Western Europe followed in 1944, and in 1945 the destroyer was transferred to the Eastern Fleet . In November 1945 the Tartar arrived back in Great Britain. She was one of the four ships of the class to survive the war. In 1948 it was scrapped.
History of the ship
The ship was ordered on June 12, 1936 from Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson in Wallsend . The newbuilding with the number 1528 was laid down on August 26, 1936 as the second destroyer of this type at Swan Hunter. On October 21, 1937, the ship was launched as the 17th Tartar of the Royal Navy. Its predecessor was a Thornycroft- built destroyer of the first Tribal class , which was in the Royal Navy from 1908 to 1921 and was considered the fastest ship in the world when it was commissioned. The new Tartar was executed as a flotilla commander and put into service on March 10, 1939.
After the acceptance tests, the Tartar was assigned to the 6th Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet . The tests were interrupted by the sinking of the HMS Thetis in Liverpool Bay on June 1, 1939, when she served as the command center for the rescue operations, in which other ships of the 6th Flotilla were involved.
War missions
When the war broke out, it was used together with its sister ships as escort for convoys, protection for larger warships and submarine hunting . When the first reports of an attack by the Germans on Norway reached the British fleet, the Tartar was at sea to secure convoy HN.24 between Norway and Great Britain. The 31 merchant ships in the convoy included some that were already on the run from the Germans. The three Polish destroyers ORP Blyskawica , Burza and Grom , who had been evacuated to Great Britain at the beginning of the war , joined the convoy . When on the afternoon of April 7, 1940 the British Navy sent two light cruisers and four destroyers in addition to the units routinely at sea to the Norwegian coast, the four destroyers were ordered to join them during escort HN.24. In the following period, the Tartar mostly stayed with the heavy units of the Home Fleet off Norway. From the 18th she escorted the heavy cruiser Suffolk , which was badly hit in an air raid, back to Scapa Flow. On the night of May 1, the Tartar evacuated 2200 men of the "Sickleforce" from Åndalsnes and Molde under cover of four light cruisers with the sister ships Sikh and Mashona and the old destroyers Walker , Westcott and Wanderer as well as two transporters . On the night of the 4th, the Tartar was involved in an unsuccessful advance into the Skagerrak with the Sikh and the French destroyers Tartu , Chevalier-Paul and Milan . On May 31, the commander of the 6th destroyer flotilla on the Tartar had the sister ships Ashanti , Bedouin and Mashona ready for action, while Somali , Matabele , Punjabi and Eskimo were under repair.
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On June 20, 1940, the Tartar was sent to the Faroe Islands , along with the Maori and Mashona , to confiscate four warships that had been handed over to Sweden by Italy . The destroyers Psilander (ex Giovanni Nicotera ) and Puke (ex Bettino Ricasoli ) of the Sella class (970 ts, 2 × 2 120 mm, 1926/27) as well as Romulus (ex Spica ) and Remus (ex Astore ) of the Spica class ( 800 ts, 3 × 100 mm, 1935) had been on their way to their new home since April, accompanied by two auxiliary ships. The British feared that the ships could be passed on from the Swedes to the Germans. On June 20, the British forced the Swedish crews to leave their boats and sent them to the escort ship Patricia (ex Patris II , 3994 GRT) and the tanker Castor (8714 GRT) with which they were to return home. The confiscated four warships brought the British to Scapa Flow by the 30th. The tartare began the transfer on the 21st with Puke and Remus . With the Remus she reached the British base on the 23rd; Puke had a machine breakdown en route and had to be brought in by a tractor. The protesting Swedes followed their ships and were able to take them back on July 2nd and continue their voyage from Kirkwall on July 5th . They reached Gothenburg on July 10, 1940 via Kristiansand , which was occupied by the Germans .
From the beginning of October to December 1940, the Tartar was in the naval shipyard in Devonport , where - like all tribal destroyers after their mission in Norway - they used the raised rear 120-mm double bayonet against a Mk-XVI-105-mm-L / 45 twin guns and received initial radar equipment.
On March 21, 1941, the Tartar with the sister ships Bedouin , Eskimo and Somali as well as the destroyer Legion and the landing ships Queen Emma and Princess Beatrix (former Dutch Canal ferries) with 500 commando troops took part in Operation Claymore against the Lofoten . The commando company was supposed to destroy the fishery processing facilities there.
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In May 1941 the battleship Rodney escorted the troop transporter Britannic (26,943 GRT) to Canada with four tribal destroyers . At the news of the sinking of the Hood , the Rodney took part with Mashona , Tartar and Somali in the search for the Bismarck and left only the Eskimo with the transporter, which was continuing to Canada. On May 26th, the destroyers were dismissed after encountering the naval flagship King George V , as they could hardly follow the battleships at high speed due to the weather conditions and also had threateningly little fuel. Mashona and Tartar tried together to reach British ports at an economically favorable speed. On May 28, 1941, the Mashona was hit by heavy attacks by Junkers Ju 88 of the I./KG 77 of the Luftwaffe and sank off the coast of Galway . 184 survivors of the sinking were recovered from the Tartar and the town-class destroyers (1940) HMS Sherwood and HMCS St. Clair arriving at the sinking site and brought to Greenock on the Tartar .
The British cruiser Nigeria was directed in June 1941 with the three destroyers Tartar , Bedouin and Jupiter to the weather observation ship WBS 3 / Lauenburg (344 GRT), whose weather reports had been set by HF / DF . In thick fog, the Lauenburg could be found on June 28th near the island of Jan Mayen . Under the artillery bombardment of the British ships, the crew left the Lauenburg , then the Tartar went alongside and was able to retrieve valuable key documents that allowed the British radio reconnaissance in Bletchley Park to decipher the messages from the key circle "domestic waters" in July. For fear of the success of the secret radio reconnaissance ( code name "Ultra" ), further attempts of this kind were strictly forbidden.
On July 27, 1941, the newly formed "Force K" ran under Rear Admiral Vian ) with the cruisers Nigeria and Aurora and the destroyers Punjabi and Tartar from Scapa Flow to Spitsbergen , in order from July 31 to the Norwegian and Russian branches there for a suitability as Investigate supply base. On the march back, the Norwegian weather station on Bear Island was evacuated and destroyed. An advance against the Norwegian coast was recorded prematurely by the German aerial reconnaissance and canceled. On August 8, the British units returned to their base.
At the end of August, the Tartar was one of the units evacuating the Norwegian and Russian branches on Svalbard. The Tartar escorted two convoys to the Soviet Union (January 1942: PQ 7B , counter-conduct QP 5 ; March PQ 12 , on 5 March 1942 discovered. Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor convoy PQ 12 70 nm south of Jan Mayen On 6. The battleship Tirpitz, under Vice Admiral Ciliax , went to sea with four destroyers from Trondheim to attack the convoy. The reports deciphered by the British about the departure of the German ships enabled countermeasures. The main part ran to the cover group with two battleships, a cruiser and six destroyers the Home Fleet under Admiral Tovey with the battleship King George V. , the carrier Victorious , a cruiser and six destroyers, including the Tartar . Due to poor visibility, neither the Home Fleet found the Tirpitz , nor the German ships PQ 12. They missed, however just under the counter- convoy QP 8 , secured only by two minesweepers and two corvettes , from which the fallen Soviet freighter Izora ( 2815 GRT) was sunk by the destroyer Friedrich Ihn . Mutual air strikes were unsuccessful. The Tirpitz initially only ran back to Narvik. On 11/12 March the Tartar and the destroyers Bedouin , Eskimo , Punjabi as well as Faulknor , Fury , Intrepid and Icarus tried to intercept the Tirpitz expected before Bodø , but the battleship did not move to Trondheim until the following night. In March, the Tartar returned to Great Britain with the QP 9 in order to secure the PQ 13, which went to Russia .
In August 1942 the Tartar was temporarily assigned to Force H and took part in Operation Pedestal to supply Malta together with the sister ship Eskimo in the cover group, from whose porters also machines were to fly to Malta. On August 12, the cover group was attacked both by submarines and from the air. The Tartar was able to displace submarines and towed the destroyer Foresight, which was badly damaged by an Italian air torpedo . As the condition of the Foresight deteriorated and the threat persisted above and below the water, the Tartar took over the crew of the unpowered destroyer and sank the Foresight on the 13th by a torpedo.
The Tartar then returned to the Home Fleet in order to protect the PQ 18 , which was going to Russia, in the middle of September 1942 with the local security. In October she returned to the Mediterranean , where she supported the Allied landing ( Operation Torch ) in North Africa in the Algiers area in November .
After the war ended, the Tartar returned to Plymouth on November 17, 1945 . It served for some time as accommodation for naval personnel and was sold for scrapping on January 6, 1948 and scrapped in Newport on February 22 .
Individual evidence
- ^ HMS Tartar Fastest Vessel in the World , New Zealand Herald. January 31, 1908
- ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of naval warfare. P. 42.
- ^ Rohwer, p. 43
- ^ Rohwer, p. 48
- ↑ NAVAL EVENTS, JUNE 1940 (Part 3 of 4) Saturday 15th - Friday 21st
- ^ Rohwer, p. 107
- ^ Rohwer, p. 126
- ↑ formerly USN-Vier-Schornsteiner: HMS Sherwood ex USS Rodgers (DD-254) ; HMCS St. Clair ex USS Williams (DD-108)
- ^ Rohwer, p. 150
- ↑ Rohwer. P. 283f
- ^ Rohwer, p. 270
- ^ Rohwer, p. 271
- ↑ Rohwer. P. 283f.
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