HMS Vanoc (H33)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HMS Vanoc
The Royal Navy during the Second World War A4596.jpg
Ship data
flag United KingdomUnited Kingdom (Naval War Flag) United Kingdom
Ship type Destroyer
escort boat
class V- and W-class
long range escort
Shipyard J. Brown & Co. , Clydebank
Build number 462
Keel laying September 20, 1916
Launch June 14, 1917
Commissioning August 15, 1917
reactivation July 1939
Decommissioning 1945
Whereabouts Scrapped in 1946
Ship dimensions and crew
length
95.1 m ( Lüa )
91.4 m ( Lpp )
width 9.1 m
Draft Max. 2.7 m
displacement Standard : 1188  ts
 
crew 134 men
Machine system
machine 3 White-Forster type steam boilers,
2 Brown Curtis steam turbines
Machine
performance
27,000 PS (19,858 kW)
Top
speed
34 kn (63 km / h)
propeller 2
Armament

The HMS VANOC was a destroyer of the V and W class of the British Royal Navy , who in the First and Second World War was used. On March 17, 1941, the Vanoc sank the German submarines U 99 and U 100 together with HMS Walker under two of the most successful commanders.

History of construction and use of the Vanoc

The HMS Vanoc was the first ship of the Royal Navy with this name, which refers to a knight of the round table of King Arthur and the first completed destroyer, the V-Class converted from a flotilla leader to a fleet destroyer .

The keel was laid at J. Brown & Co. in Clydebank on September 20, 1916, the launch on June 14, 1917. On August 15, 1917, the destroyer was delivered to the Royal Navy. Since mid-1918, she and the sister ship HMS Vanquisher, also manufactured by Brown, belonged to the twelve boats of the 20th destroyer flotilla of the Humber Force , which were to be used as mine layers with 44 mines. She suffered damage before the end of the war and after its repair in May 1919 replaced the British intervention forces in the eastern Baltic Sea with the 5th Light Cruiser Squadron (5 Danae-class cruisers ) and twelve destroyers of the 20th Destroyer Flotilla. On February 5, 1920, the Vanoc was then assigned to the reserve in Devonport .

In 1939 the Vanoc, like many other boats and ships with reservists, was reactivated to take part in a tour of the British reserve fleet by King George VI on August 9, 1939 . in Weymouth Bay participate with 132 other units. She remained in service and was assigned to the 11th destroyer flotilla in Plymouth , which secured the south-west access routes to the British Isles. As a rule, the departing or arriving convoys were accompanied for one to two days.

Operations in front of Norway and France

MS Chrobry (11,400 GRT, 1939)

In April 1940, the destroyer moved to Scapa Flow to take part in the Home Fleet operations in Norway . On April 17th, he secured the arrival of the Polish troop carrier Chobry to Namsos . On April 29th he evacuated allied troops from Mo and Bodø to Harstad with the destroyers HMS Echo , Firedrake , Havelock and Arrow in preparation for the final withdrawal from Norway.

In June 1940, the Vanoc , relocated to Plymouth, was used to evacuate troops and civilians from St. Nazaire together with the destroyers HMS Berkeley , Beagle and Havelock and civilian transports, which from June 16 to 18 carried 24,000 soldiers, including many Poles , evacuated despite German air raids.

Use in anti-submarine defense

The VANOC was then used for the protection of convoys of the Atlantic and to the beginning of 1941 with a radar equipped type 286m. In March she belonged to the 5th Escort Group under Commander Donald Macintyre , which secured the incoming convoy HX 112 (41 ships) with the destroyers HMS Walker , Vanoc , Volunteer , Sardonyx , Scimitar and the corvettes Bluebell and Hydrangea . On the 16th the convoy suffered its first loss. During the night U 99 (Kapitänleutnant Otto Kretschmer ) managed to penetrate the convoy and sink five ships and torpedo another tanker. On the morning of the 17th, the Vanoc succeeded in its first successful location with the radar type 286, when it located the U 100 approaching from behind under Lieutenant Joachim Schepke at 1000 m and rammed it while diving. Schepke was trapped in the tower by the ram and killed. Six crew members of U 100 were picked up by the Vanoc , which was damaged at the bow and secured by the Walker . The U 99 , which settled and was fired empty, observed this and tried to escape underwater. It was located by the destroyers with Asdic and forced to surface by Walker with six depth charges. Kretschmer ordered the evacuation and sinking of his boat and was taken prisoner with 39 men from his boat.

The Boston (4989 BRT, 1924) sunk in convoy RB.1 like her sister ship New York

After a necessary repair, the Vanoc was back in service from June and from November also secured a large number of convoys as the lead ship of the EG.5 together with other destroyers and up to six corvettes.

In July and August 1942, she was also in service on the Canadian and American east coasts and with the destroyer HMS Veteran took over the security of the convoy RB.1 from eight passenger steamers from the Great Lakes, which were to be transferred to Great Britain. The fast moving convoy was sighted by a submarine which mistakenly mistook the ships for troop transports, so a large number of submarines were used against it. He lost three steamers and also the destroyer Veteran to U 404 on September 26th .

In October 1942, the Vanoc was assigned to the security forces for the planned landing of the Allies in French North Africa ( Operation Torch ) and was initially deployed in front of Algiers , then in front of Bougie . From January 1943 she returned to the North Atlantic and led the 38th Escort Group with four corvettes.

Use as a long-range escort boat

From March 1943, the boat was converted into a long-range escort . To increase the range of the converted boats, one of the boilers and the front chimney were removed from the front boiler room and a new transverse bulkhead was installed. The new room created in this way was used as an additional fuel bunker in the lower area and parts of the crew were accommodated in the upper room, as the destroyers offered insufficient space for the considerably increased war crews. The two remaining boilers shared the rear chimney and were able to enable the converted boats to travel at a speed of 26 knots. Higher speeds were seldom necessary in anti-submarine defense, especially since the Asdic could no longer be used at speeds of over 20 knots . For this purpose, the boats were re-armed, had only two 102 mm cannons and gave up the torpedo tubes. They received enhanced anti-aircraft armament and a Hedgehog launcher. From December 1943 the converted Vanoc was ready for use again.

Shortly after their allocation to ensure access to the Mediterranean the destroyer achieved another success, as on 16 March 1944, the three Catalina -Flugbooten the US Navy relay team VP-63 geortete U 392 together with the frigate HMS Affleck in Strait of Gibraltar could be sunk with hedgehog launchers.

On January 21, 1945, the Vanoc rammed the British fish steamer HMS Computator off Normandy, which was used as a mine sweeper , and it sank immediately. The destroyer was severely damaged. It is not clear whether a repair was carried out before the end of the war.

Final fate

After the Second World War the Vanoc was taken out of service and was scheduled for scrapping. On the way to being demolished in June 1946, the boat ran aground in tow off Penryn (Cornwall) . The hull had to be salvaged and was ultimately scrapped in Falmouth .

literature

  • Bodo Herzog: 60 years of German submarines 1906–1966. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1968.
  • 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.

Web links

Commons : V- and W-class destroyers  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ S. Stokes: Naval actions of the Russian Civil War. (PDF; 392 kB)
  2. ^ Rohwer: Sea War. P. 109.
  3. ^ Rohwer, p. 285.
  4. ^ Rohwer, p. 432.