HMS Wakeful (H88)
.JPG) The Wakeful in the spring of 1940
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The HMS Wakeful (H88) was a destroyer of the British Navy , which was used at the end of the First World War and at the beginning of the Second World War and which was sunk in 1940 with high losses. The destroyer belonged to the so-called V- and W-Class consisting of a total of 67 units and was laid down on January 17, 1917 at the shipyard of John Brown & Company in Clydebank . After being launched on October 6, 1917, it was commissioned on December 16, 1917 as the first W-class destroyer .
Modifications
Around the mid-1920s, the Wakeful and almost all of its sister ships received a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun , which was positioned on the forecastle. As a result of the relatively early loss of the war in 1940, the Wakeful was hardly retrofitted during the Second World War , only the number of depth charges was increased to 33 in 1939.
Working time
First World War
Between January and November 1918, the Wakeful served in the British Grand Fleet , but was not involved in any combat operations. After the end of the First World War , the destroyer took part at the end of November 1918 in escorting the German deep sea fleet , which had to be extradited to the victorious powers in accordance with the armistice conditions of Compiègne , to Scapa Flow . In December she moved under Rear Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair with the 6th Light Cruiser Squadron ( HMS Cardiff as flagship and five sister ships) and the six destroyers Verulam , Valkyrie , Vendetta , Vortigern and Westminster of the 13th Flotilla in the Baltic Sea, around the newly founded To protect Baltic states against German or Soviet attacks. At Christmas 1918, the Wakeful was involved in the landing of two Soviet Russian destroyers off Tallinn together with Vendetta and Vortigern and the cruisers Calypso and Caradoc . The destroyers were made available to Estonia as the core of its own navy and served there as Wambola and Lennuk until 1933, when they were sold to Peru .
Following the deployment in the Baltic Sea, the Wakeful was transferred to the reserve , in which it remained until 1939.
1939/40: Security tasks at the beginning of the Second World War
With the outbreak of the Second World War , the Wakeful was brought back from the reserve in September 1939 and reactivated. The old destroyer was used in the following months under the command of Commander Robert S. Sherbrooke , who was later to become known primarily through the Battle of the Barents Sea in 1942, mainly to secure Allied convoys in the Western Approaches . The ship operated here as part of the 17th destroyer flotilla mostly from Plymouth . In total, the Wakeful helped secure and bring in over 20 convoys between September 1939 and May 1940. At the turn of the year 1939/40 a new commander came on board with Lieutenant Commander Ralph L. Fisher.
May 1940: Dunkirk
After the German attack in the west, the Wakeful was assigned to the "Dover Command". After the British expeditionary forces were encircled by the German Wehrmacht in the area around Dunkirk as part of the German western campaign from the third week of May 1940, the Wakeful was also involved in the British evacuation measures ( Operation Dynamo ). On May 26, the Wakeful ran together with the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Calcutta and seven destroyers for the first time from Dover to Dunkirk and was able to take 631 Allied soldiers on board, who could be safely landed in Dover on May 27. During this voyage, the Wakeful was attacked several times by German aircraft and was slightly damaged by a close hit by a 250-kilogram bomb.
Sinking the wakeful
On May 28, the destroyer ran again to Dunkirk and took 640 Allied soldiers on board under heavy air strikes. On the march back, together with the destroyer HMS Grafton , the armed fishing cutter HMS Comfort and two minesweepers , the Wakeful got caught on the night of 28/29. May near Nieuwpoort , about 13 nautical miles from the coast, in an attack by three German speed boats ( S 24 , S 30 and S 34 ) of the 2nd speed boat flotilla. After missed torpedo shots by " S 24" and " S 34" at around 0:20 a.m., a torpedo fired by " S 30" hit the destroyer on the starboard side near the forward engine room at 0:36 a.m. One survivor later recalled: “It was while we were sleeping that we were hit by a torpedo. There was a terrible explosion which lifted the ship up, put out the lights and smashed evrything around us. "
The torpedo hit and a boiler explosion triggered by it blew the Wakeful in two. The bow section sank almost instantly and disappeared below the surface of the water in only about 15 to 20 seconds. The rear directed steeply and fell shortly thereafter to 00:40 on the position of 51 ° 22 '44 " N , 2 ° 43' 22" O . Of the 640 soldiers, most of whom slept on the upper deck, 639 were killed, only one survivor was later rescued. The 134-man crew of the Wakeful had to mourn 98 deaths from the torpedo hit. 37 survivors, including the commandant, Lieutenant Commander Ralph L. Fisher, were taken in by the minesweepers and the cutter Comfort .
On the march back to England, however, the Comfort and one of the minesweepers collided with each other at around 2:50 a.m. , whereupon the cutter sank. Four members of the crew of the trawler and another 13 previously rescued castaways were killed by the Wakeful .
A total of 750 people (639 soldiers and 111 crew members) died in the sinking of the destroyer. Only 24 survivors later reached England. The loss of the Wakeful represents the most serious sinking of a destroyer in the history of the Royal Navy in terms of casualties .
Whereabouts
The wreck of the Wakeful is still lying off the Belgian coast at a maximum depth of around 24 m. The bow section is largely sunk in the silt , but the stern structure and parts of the basins scattered on the bottom can still be clearly seen and are in a relatively well-preserved condition, which is also due to the fact that the sea area in question is rarely fished and hardly visited by divers . Although it has been declared a war grave , dives to the ship can be carried out with a special permit. However, since there are still numerous remains of ammunition in the vicinity of the wreck and there are often strong currents, these should be carried out with great caution.
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The second wakeful
The lost destroyer was the first ship in the Royal Navy to bear the name Wakeful . The destroyer was awarded the Battle Honors "Atlantic 1939-40" and "Dunkirk 1940" and in his honor a new destroyer of the War Emergency Program from Fairfield in Govan was given the name Wakeful (identifier: R59) again in February 1944 in Service was provided. This destroyer was one of the British units that took part in the surrender ceremony of Japan outside Tokyo. In 1952/53 it was converted into a Type 15 anti -submarine frigate at Scotts in Greenock and then received the identification F159 . In 1971 the second Wakeful was scrapped.
literature
- Antony Preston: V&W Class Destroyers 1917-1945. Macdonald, London 1971.
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- Mike J. Whitley: Destroyer in World War II. Technology, classes, types. Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart 1991.
Web links
- The Wakeful at Naval History (English).
- Information about the Wakeful at uboat.net (English).
- HMS Wakeful at vandwdestroyerassociation.org (English)