HMS Walker (D27)
 The sister boat HMS Wrestler as a "long range escort"
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The HMS Walker (D27) was a British destroyer of W class . The destroyer, which was completed in the First World War , was one of the most successful and best-known destroyers in anti-submarine combat during the Second World War . On March 17, 1941, the Walker succeeded in sinking the German submarine U 99 and capturing the most successful submarine commander Otto Kretschmer .
After the conversion to a "long range escort" in 1943, the Walker was mostly used for the close security of North Sea convoys . At the end of the war in Europe, the HMS Walker was decommissioned and sold for demolition in 1946.
construction
The construction of the destroyer was commissioned on December 9, 1916. On March 26, 1917 the keel of the destroyer with hull number 1082 took place at the shipyard William Denny and Brothers , Dumbarton , which was launched on November 29, 1917 under the name HMS Walker . On February 12, 1918, the Walker , which could also be used as a mine-layer, was completed.
She was an Admiralty W-class destroyer of which 19 boats were completed. The boats differed from the previous V-Class by their triple torpedo sets as soon as they were completed and by higher masts. In 1907/08, the shipyard had four coastal destroyers of the cricket class of 250 tons. first built boats for the Royal Navy. The first full-fledged destroyer was the HMS Maori (build number 850) of the Tribal class , which was launched in 1909. Since then, the shipyard has been a regular contractor. The type of V and W class , the shipyard had built four boats and manufactured with the HMS Westcott (Baunr. 1083) yet another destroyer of W-Class and HMS Volunteer (BauNr. 1110) a boat the final modified Shape. Further orders were partly started but not completed.
The Walker was converted into a “long range escort” from January to May 1943, just like the Volunteer and Westcott before . The V- and W-Class destroyers were supposed to support the Grand Fleet in the North Sea when they were launched and were optimized for short advances at high speed. During the Second World War, the boats were mainly used as escort vehicles in the middle of the Atlantic, where speeds over 20 knots made the ASDIC largely unusable and endurance was more important than large firepower. To improve this, 22 of the V and W class boats were converted into long-range escorts. The conversions were not entirely uniform. Usually the front smaller boiler room was converted into an additional tank in the lower area and additional living rooms above. The missing boiler reduced the top speed to 24.5 kn. At the same time, only a reduced fuel consumption was possible. The guns in positions 'A' and 'Y' were removed and used in the front by a Hedgehog volley launcher and in the rear by storage space for depth charges and additional launchers. The two torpedo tube sets were also removed and replaced with a 12 pdr anti-aircraft gun and a platform with two 20 mm Oerlikon cannons, two of which also came to the ends of the bridge. In addition, the converted boats received modern radar equipment for target location and monitoring of the airspace.
Mission history
The Walker was used in the 11th destroyer flotilla of the Grand Fleet during the First World War.
In 1918/1919 it was one of the units that blocked Soviet Russian units in Kronstadt in the Baltic Sea in order to prevent their intervention against the Baltic states. The British 6th Light Cruiser Squadron under Rear Admiral Edwyn Alexander-Sinclair was sent with destroyers to the Baltic Sea at the request of the Estonian government in December 1918 to supply the Estonians with weapons and to prevent the Soviet Russian fleet from intervening in the civil war . In January 1919, Vice Admiral Walter Cowan took command, who had arrived with the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron and other reinforcements. Together with the cruisers Cleopatra , Dragon and Galatea, as well as the destroyers Wallace , Vanessa , Wryneck , Versatile , Vivacious and Voyager , it blocked the Soviet fleet in Saint Petersburg from the end of May 1919. The Walker received a hit from Petropavlovsk while attempting to break out of the Red Fleet .
From 1921 to 1930 the Walker belonged to the 1st destroyer flotilla of the Atlantic Fleet and was then assigned to the reserve fleet, where it was in Rosyth in 1932 .
Operations in World War II
In September 1939, the destroyer was reactivated and assigned to the 11th destroyer flotilla in Plymouth with the flotilla leader Mackay and the destroyers Vanquisher , Versatile , Vimy , Warwick , Whirlwind and Winchelsea to secure the canal and the south-west approaches of the United Kingdom . While securing a convoy, the Walker collided with the Vanquisher , both boats were severely damaged and many were injured. There were 14 fatalities on the Vanquisher . The Walker was repaired in the Devonport naval shipyard in October and November 1939 and was only able to reinforce the flotilla in December.
On April 8, 1940, the Walker was assigned to the Home Fleet to secure troop transports to Norway . She suffered first damage in a German air raid the following day. From the evening of April 30, she supported the withdrawal of the Allied troops from Åndalsnes and Molde . Together with the sister boat Westcott, she evacuated troops from the coast to the cruiser HMS Sheffield, which remained at sea, and was the target of German air strikes. She also took the last troops on board at Andalsnes on May 1st. The destroyer remained in Norway and, like many ships and boats in the Royal Navy, changed its identifier to I27 to enable better distinctions. On May 28, the Walker supported the advance of Allied troops on Narvik with their artillery in the Rombaksfjord, together with the destroyers Beagle , Fame and Havelock . On June 8, 1940, the Walker was with the last transport from Harstad of the allies retreating from Norway. She was the last Allied ship to leave the conquered Narvik, where the Arandora Star had taken the troops back on board.
On July 2, 1940, the Walker arrived as the second auxiliary ship after the HMCS St.Laurent at the sinking site of the Arandora Star 75 nm off the Irish coast at Bloody Foreland , Donegal . The Walker came too late to rescue any more castaways. The St. Laurent had already fished 868 men out of the water, which they brought to Greenock . The former cruise ship Arandora Star was with 1676 men, 1213 civil internees and 86 prisoners of war, on the way from Liverpool to Canada when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U 47 under Günther Prien .
Then the Walker was overtaken and continued to serve in the convoy protection near the British coasts. In February 1941 she became the command boat of the newly formed 5th "Escort Group" in Liverpool, which still included the destroyers Vanoc , Volunteer and the formerly American Caldwell .
Convoy HX 112
In connection with the escort of the convoy with the identification HX 112 (Halifax - Liverpool), the HMS Walker became famous because the ship's crew managed to sink the boat of the most successful submarine commander of the Second World War, Otto Kretschmer and capture most of the crew including the commander in the process.
German submarines operated in a so-called wolf pack on the above. Escort, including the submarine aces Otto Kretschmer ( U 99 ), Fritz-Julius Lemp ( U 110 ) and Joachim Schepke ( U 100 ). In a difficult convoy battle, the German submarines succeeded in sinking five ships of the 41-ship convoy; but they lost both U 100 (was rammed by the Vanoc ) and U 99 , and thus two of the most successful submarine commanders in the German Navy.
U 99 wanted to break away from the convoy when it came across the Walker , which was just picking up six U 100 survivors . Kretschmer decided to go underground, which in retrospect, also by Kretschmer himself, was viewed as a serious mistake, as the Walker then became aware of U 99 through an ASDIC location . After several depth charges, U 99 had to appear badly damaged. The serious damage included blocked screws, which made the boat practically impossible to maneuver and therefore had to be abandoned. Three men, including the chief engineer Schroeder, had died. The remaining 40 crew members could be picked up by the Walker .
Further missions
In 1941 and 1942, the Walker remained in service for securing the convoy of the Western Approaches . From January to May 1943 the Walker was converted into a "Long Range Escort" and was then back in the submarine defense with the "4. Escort Group ”. In January 1944 she was transferred to the Home Fleet for securing North Sea convoys . The first use took place in February 1944 as a local security of the convoy JW 57 together with the British destroyers Beagle , Boadicea , HMS Keppel and four corvettes of the Flower class , which came to the Soviet Union without losses . Further deployments followed until May 1944. a. with the JW 58 , RA 57 , and RA 59 . In June the Walker moved to Milford Haven to secure transports to the invasion front. From July to September, deployments followed to secure a convoy in the Atlantic and, from October 20, another deployment to a North Sea convoy (JW 61), again without losing a ship. After the escorts of RA 61 and JW 63, she accompanied a North Sea convoy with RA 63 for the last time from January 11 to 23, 1945 in very bad weather together with the Keppel and the sister boat Westcott back to Scotland. The Walker stayed in British coastal waters until the end of the war .
literature
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981. Ian Allan, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- Antony Preston: Destroyers. Bison Books, London 1977, ISBN 0-600-32955-0 .
- Terence Robertson: The Wolf in the Atlantic. Weltbild Verlag, ISBN 3-89350-695-0 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
Web links
- HMS Walker . Details of War Service
- Tabular data on convoy HX 112
Individual evidence
- ↑ TB 17 , TB 18 (construction no. 798/799) last in Gibraltar, and TB 29, TB 30 (construction no. 833/834) last in Malta.
- ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. P. 42.
- ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. P. 46.
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↑ The Arandora Star was supposed to transport a total of 1213 German and Italian civil internees and 86 prisoners of war from England to Canada.
The Arandora Star ( Memento of the original from May 1, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. had a crew of 174 men, 200 guards, 479 German civilian internees and 86 prisoners of war as well as 734 Italian civilian internees on board, of which 92 British, 243 Germans and 470 Italians did not survive the sinking. - ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. P. 109.
- ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. Pp. 147, 295.
- ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. P. 443.
- ^ Rohwer: Chronicle of the Naval War 1939–1945. P. 508.
