HMS Valorous (L00)
Valorous in Kristiansand 1945
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
The fifth HMS Valorous (ID: L00) of the Royal Navy was commissioned under the name Montrose as a flotilla commander and was used as a fleet destroyer at the end of the First World War and during the Russian Civil War .
Shortly before the beginning of the Second World War , she was converted into a convoy and came back into service as one of the first boats of the so-called WAIR conversions of destroyers of the V and W class . During the Second World War it was mainly used on the British North Sea coast to secure coastal traffic.
Building history
.jpg)
The boat was ordered in April 1916 as the first unit of the Royal Navy to be named Montrose . It was one of the five (first) V-class boats that were ordered as flotilla commander for the S-class destroyers. The keel was laid on May 25, 1916 at William Denny and Brothers in Dumbarton , Scotland together with the sister boat HMS Valkyrie . Before it was launched on May 8, 1917, the boat was renamed HMS Valorous . On August 21, 1917 the delivery took place as the fourth boat of the class, which has since been procured in large numbers as a new class of destroyer.
Mission history
The Valorous joined the Grand Fleet in the First World War and was one of the three flotilla commanders of the 11th Destroyer Flotilla in the fall of 1918, of whose 17 destroyers twelve belonged to the new V- and W-Class. It could also be used as a mine layer.
In July 1919, as part of the third replacement of the British intervention units to protect the Baltic States against the Soviet Union and Germany, they moved to the eastern Baltic Sea together with the seaplane carrier HMS Vindictive (twelve aircraft), seven motor torpedo boats and eight other destroyers of the 1st and 3rd class. Destroyer Flotilla. On July 26, 1919, she was attacked by the Russian submarine Vepr ' (Вепрь), which she pursued and damaged with HMS Vancouver . In October and November she supported the Latvians in the defense of Libau with two light cruisers and other destroyers , with the newly arrived monitor HMS Erebus with its heavy artillery suppressing the last German attack by the so-called Iron Division .
From 1921 the Valorous was used in the 4th Destroyer Flotilla in the Atlantic Fleet and later in the Mediterranean Fleet . There she was replaced by a B-class destroyer in 1931 and transferred to the reserve.
Conversion to escort boat
.jpg)
In 1938 the British Royal Navy decided on an armament program that also included the conversion of older units and their fundamental modernization. Older destroyers of the V and W class were to be converted into escort boats with strong anti-aircraft armament. During these so-called WAIR conversions, almost all the superstructures of the affected boats were removed and new superstructures were built. A boiler was removed and the drive system renewed, which then produced 18,000 hp and made 25 knots possible.
The completely removed armament was replaced by two 4-inch twin anti-aircraft guns with the associated fire control system. As light anti-aircraft weapons, the boats received two quadruple Vickers machine guns side by side on an elevated position behind the funnels and in front of the rear deckhouse, which were soon replaced by 20-mm Oerlikons . In addition there was a strong depth charge armament. The originally planned conversion of 36 boats was not carried out because shortly after the start of the war the trade war shifted mainly to the Central Atlantic outside the attack possibilities of the German air force and the 4-inch twin guns were not available to the desired extent and then preferably in new destroyers escort of the Hunt class were installed.
In addition to the HMS Wallace as the only flotilla leader, 15 V- and W-class boats were subjected to the WAIR conversion. The conversion, which was done at naval yards, began peacetime on most of the boats, but only the Whitley , Wallace and Valorous were finished when the war began. The other boats were in service with the Royal Navy until the end of 1940. The conversion of the Valorous took place at the state shipyard in Chatham (Kent) until June 1939.
Use in World War II
The HMS Valorous received the new identification L00 (instead of D82 ) as an escort boat and was assigned to the new security group ("Escort Force") in Rosyth in August 1939 . At the beginning of the war, this had the completed WAIR conversions Valorous , Whitley and Wallace as well as the sloops Bittern , Enchantress , Hastings , Pelican and Stork . When the Second World War broke out, it was used to secure convoy trains in the North Sea and on the north-western access routes to Great Britain. From the end of September 1939, the "Escort Force" formed four mixed task forces with i. d. R. three ships together with the destroyers of the "Division 29" of the reserve ships formed "15th Destroyer Squadron" ( Brooke , Wanderer , Whitehall , Wren ). From January 1940 their use was concentrated on the entire British North Sea coast to the canal . Despite its good anti-aircraft equipment, however, it was not used to evacuate British troops from the mainland and Dunkirk.
Like most of the WAIR conversions, it remained in the security service of the coastal convoy until the end of the war, with its radar and fire control system being modernized several times. She was regularly involved in the defense against German air strikes on these escorts and rescued shipwrecked people from the victims of these attacks on several occasions. One of the rare interruptions of this service was in March 1942 when merchant ships broke out of Swedish ports ( Operation Performance ) with other units of the Home Fleet (HMS's Eskimo , Faulknor , Escapade , Wallace , Vanity ). Ten Norwegian ships tried to escape from Gothenburg to Scotland, which five ships had done a year earlier. Recognized early by the Germans, only the motor tanker PB Newton (10,324 GRT) and the little Lind (461 GRT) achieved the breakthrough. Two ships entered Gothenburg again. Six were partly lost through self-immersion.
After the German surrender, the Valorous supported the occupation of the western Norwegian ports with other units of the "Rosyth Escort Force" and ran at Kristiansand on May 14, 1945 with the Venomous and three Norwegian minesweepers . Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim were each called at by two boats of the "Rosyth Escort Force", on which the German local commanders had to repeat the surrender process and received the orders of the Allied commanders.
The escort boat was decommissioned in August 1945 and then scrapped in Thornaby from March 1947 .
List of WAIR conversions
| Surname | Launch | in service | BauWerft | modification | to | Final fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HMS Whitley (L23) | 04/13/1918 | 10/11/1918 | Doxford | Chatham | October 1938 | Sunk on 19 May 1940 off Nieuwpoort |
| HMS Valorous (L00) | May 8, 1917 | 08/21/1917 | Denny | Chatham | June 1939 | Scrapped in 1947 |
| HMS Wallace (L64) | 10/26/1918 | 09/14/1919 | Thornycroft | Devonport | June 14, 1939 | Decommissioned March 20, 1945 |
| HMS Woolston (L49) | 01/27/1918 | 06/28/1918 | Thornycroft | Chatham | September 1939 | August 1945 out of service |
| HMS Vivien (L33) | 02/16/1917 | 05/28/1918 | Yarrow | Chatham | October 1939 | May 1945 out of service |
| HMS Vega (L41) | 09/01/1917 | 12/12/1917 | Doxford | Chatham | November 1939 | August 1945 out of service |
| HMS Vimiera (L29) | 06/22/1917 | 09/19/1917 | Swan Hunter | January 8, 1940 | Sunk January 9, 1942 after being hit by a mine | |
| HMS Westminster (L40) | 06/22/1917 | 09/19/1917 | Scotts | Devonport | January 8, 1940 | August 1945 out of service |
| HMS Wolsey (L02) | March 16, 1918 | 05/14/1918 | Thornycroft | Malta | January 21, 1940 | August 1945 out of service |
| HMS Verdun (L93) | 08/21/1917 | November 3, 1917 | Hawthorn Leslie | Catham | March 1940 | August 1945 out of service |
| HMS Wryneck (L04) | 05/13/1918 | 11/11/1918 | Palmers | Gibraltar | March 1940 | Sunk on April 27, 1941 off Crete |
| HMS Winchester (L55) | February 1, 1918 | 04/29/1918 | JS White | Portsmouth | April 9, 1940 | Out of service in February 1945 |
| HMS Wolfhound (I56) | 03/14/1918 | 04/27/1918 | Fairfield | Chatham | April 1940 | August 1945 out of service |
| HMS Valentine (L69) | March 24, 1917 | 06/27/1917 | Cammell Laird | Devonport | April 1940 | Sunk in the Scheldt on May 15, 1940 |
| HMS Vanity (L38) | May 3, 1918 | 06/21/1918 | Beardmore | June 1940 | May 1945 out of service | |
| HMS Viceroy (L21) | 11/17/1917 | 01/14/1918 | Thornycroft | January 10, 1941 | August 1945 out of service |
Individual evidence
- ↑ S. Stokes: Naval actions of the Russian Civil War (PDF; 392 kB)
- ^ Norman Polmar: Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies. P. 66.
- ^ HP Willmott: The Last Century of Sea Power: From Port Arthur to Chanak, 1894-1922. P. 330.
- ↑ Weyers, p. 40.
- ↑ Operation Performance.
- ↑ The Liberation of Norway: HMS Woolston at Bergen (Operation Conan) May 1945.
literature
- Norman Polmar: Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies 1798–1990. Naval Institute Press, 1991.
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- Alexander Bredt (Ed.): 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 .
- HP Willmott: The Last Century of Sea Power: From Port Arthur to Chanak, 1894-1922. Indiana University Press, 2009.
Web links
- HMS VALOROUS (L 00) - V & W-class Destroyer (Engl.) Accessed November 7, 2013
- uboat.net HMS Valorous (L 00 ) accessed November 7, 2013
- Operation Performance March 31st, 1942, accessed November 7, 2013
- HMS VALOROUS ; John Garforth: HMS Valorous at Kristiansand in May 1945. Retrieved October 3, 2016