HMS Warwick (D25)
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The HMS Warwick (D25) was a destroyer of the V and W class of Royal Navy , who in the First and Second World War was used. The destroyer was one of the Navy units that received Battle Honors in both world wars. After being honored for “Zeebrugge 1918” and “Ostend 1918”, the ship also acquired “Atlantic 1939–44” and “Biscay 1943”.
The lack of suitable escort vehicles forced the Admiralty at the beginning of the Second World War to also use the now outdated destroyers. The Warwick was used in the North Atlantic , under American command in the Caribbean and in British waters.
In the middle of the Second World War, the old destroyer was converted into a long-range escort boat. On February 20, 1944, the HMS Warwick was off Trevose Head (North Cornwall ) at 50 ° 27 '0 " N , 5 ° 23' 0" W torpedoed and sunk by the submarine U 413 .
Building history
The HMS Warwick belonged to the third subgroup of the V- and W-class boats delivered to the Royal Navy since 1917. Originally developed as a flotilla leader for the destroyers of the S-Class , the type was procured as a fleet destroyer just three months after the first order. The W sub-group recorded the boats that were delivered with triple torpedo sets and had been in service since November 1917. However, the British shipyards also delivered boats with twin torpedo sets (V-class) and the somewhat smaller destroyers of the S-class.
The keel laying of the Warwick took place on March 10, 1917 at the Hawthorn, Leslie & Company shipyard in Hebburn , England , which had been building destroyers for the Royal Navy since 1895. The boat was launched on December 28, 1917 and entered service on March 18, 1918. The shipyard had already completed three V-class destroyers in 1917 with Verdun , Versatile and Verulam and in May 1918 delivered the Wessex , a sister boat of the Warwick .
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At the same time, the shipyard built four S-Class boats of 1075 ts with HMSs Turbulent , Tenedos , Thanet and Thracian , construction of which began between November 1917 and January 1918 and all of which were only completed after the end of the war. The order for three boats of the modified W-class with 120 mm cannons was canceled again after the keel was laid in 1918.
In 1918, however, two flotilla leaders of the 1580 ts Scott class with HMSs Montrose and Stuart were completed .
Operations of the HMS Warwick
Barely completed, the Warwick with the identification H38 served as the flagship of Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes in the attack on the German submarine bases in Ostend and Zeebrugge on April 23, 1918 . Then it was used in the blockade of Oostende , but ran into a sea mine . The destroyer was so badly damaged that it had to be towed to Dover by HMS Velox and was out of action for the remainder of the war. Formally, the boat was one of seven flotilla leaders of the 6th destroyer flotilla of the Dover Patrol . in November, the Warwick is one of the units of the Royal Navy that were present at the handover of the deep-sea fleet in Scapa Flow.
The Warwick then joined the 1st Destroyer Flotilla and the Mediterranean Fleet . In the 1930s she was decommissioned and assigned to the reserve. She was one of the boats that were brought into service with reservists in August 1939 to participate in a tour of the reserve fleet by the British King George VI. to participate. She then remained on duty and was transferred to Plymouth .
Use in World War II
The HMS Warwick (D25) was used on the western access routes to the British Isles, mainly as an escort for convoys . Among other things, they rescued on September 16, 1939, the survivors of U 31 at the position 49 ° 11 ' N , 13 ° 38' W British merchant ship sunk Aviemore . This incident is noteworthy in that it was the first successful submarine attack on a convoy in World War II. As with many other boats, the identifier was changed in May and was now I25 .
Together with the destroyer Witch , on June 15, 1940, the boat reinforced the security of convoy US 3 , the third large troop transport from New Zealand and Australia to Great Britain, which was not found by the German submarines. On August 18, 1940, the Warwick was able to pick up eleven survivors of the motor ship Empire Merchant (formerly the fruit ship Pomona of the Laeisz shipping company ), which had been sunk two days earlier by U 100 186 nm west of Bloody Foreland . The following day, west of the Hebrides, she took in 29 survivors of the Ampleforth , a straggler of convoy OA 199 , which U 101 had torpedoed and sunk. The rescued were given ashore in Liverpool . With the formation of permanent escort groups, the Warwick was assigned to the 7th group operating from Liverpool. In December it was supposed to secure the convoy OB58 leaving Liverpool and overflowed a mine on the 20th, the explosion of which caused considerable damage. She was towed back to Liverpool by the similar Wild Swan .
It was not until March 1941 that the boat was ready for use again and could be used again in convoy security. In the course of the repair, she had probably given the rearmost gun in the "Y" position and the rear torpedo set from board to make room for more depth charges and anti-aircraft weapons.
In the spring of 1942, Warwick began to work more closely with the US Navy after the great successes of the German submarines in the company Paukenschlag against American shipping. In June she was assigned to a "Joined Caribbean Escort Force" with two British and one Canadian corvette alongside US ships. On July 3, 1942, the Warwick took on the crew of the American tanker Gulfbelle , which U 126 had torpedoed 21 nm north of Tobago . She was able to haul the damaged tanker into Port of Spain , Trinidad . In November 1942, the Warwick was placed under US Task Force 90.
In December 1942 she was withdrawn and accompanied a convoy from Trinidad to Great Britain with the escort group B5 on the march back, in order to be converted into a long-range escort in Dundee by May 1943 . These modifications included the removal of a boiler and its associated front chimney. This reduced the speed to a maximum of 25 knots. The space freed up as a result was used in the lower area as an additional bunker room and the upper part received urgently needed crew rooms for the considerably stronger crews for the intensive and longer security operations. Furthermore, the nose gun was exchanged for a " Hedgehog " water bomb launcher . The converted boats only had two cannons in the raised positions "B" and "X". The torpedo tubes were also removed and replaced by roll-off devices for depth charges, and the anti-aircraft guns were modernized and reinforced. All conversions received the modern tracking devices. From the beginning of 1941 to mid-1944, such conversions were carried out on around 20 V- and W-class boats.
From June 1943, the Warwick was back in service. First she was mainly used to secure convoys between the British Isles and Gibraltar again in the 5th Escort Group with the destroyer Havelock and the Volunteer and Vimy , who were also converted into long-distance escort boats, as well as the corvette Saxifrage , then in the Bay of Biscay in cooperation with of the Royal Air Force to combat incoming and outgoing submarines (Operation MUSKETRY). From the end of September to the middle of October, she was part of the 5th Escort Group among the security guards of three small convoys that British air force units moved to the Azores (Operation ALACRITY). The boat was then used again to secure the south-western access routes to the British Isles.
The ship, commanded since October 1943 by Commander Denys Rayner, DSC , RNVR , was torpedoed and sunk on February 20, 1944 off Trevose Head (North Cornwall ) by the submarine U 413 . The hit caused a severe explosion that tore the destroyer in two. 93 men of the crew were rescued by the destroyer HMS Scimitar accompanying the Warwick , 67 died. One of the survivors was Rayner, who wrote a book about his experiences during the war. Rayner is also considered the role model for the character of Captain Ericsson in Nicholas Monserrat's book "The Cruel Sea", a classic novel about the battle of the Atlantic .
The wreck
The two parts of the wreck are about two nautical miles apart. The tail at the position 50 ° 29 '24 " N , 5 ° 29' 54" W , the nose part on the position of 50 ° 29 '57.2 " N , 5 ° 25' 20.2" W . The remains of the ship at a depth of 52 m have been badly destroyed, only the engines and part of the bow still rise about 4 m above the seabed. The wreck has apparently been systematically looted by divers in recent years . Since 2006 the wreck of the HMS Warwick has been protected as a "Protected Place" by the " Protection of Military Remains Act " of 1986. It may be viewed from the outside by divers, but intrusion, collecting souvenirs or rescue work are prohibited.
Individual evidence
- ↑ May 1 - June 16, 1940, Indian Ocean / Atlantic
- ↑ October 1 to 8, 1943 Operation "Alacrity"
- ^ Rohwer, p. 425.
literature
- Bodo Herzog: 60 years of German submarines 1906–1966. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1968.
- DA Rayner: Escort: The Battle of the Atlantic. Kimber, London 1955. (Reprinted from US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1999)
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- Alexander Bredt (Ed.): WEYERS Taschenbuch der Kriegsflotten 1941/1942. Lehmanns Verlag, Munich / Berlin 1941.
Web links
- HMS WARWICK (D 25) - V & W-class Destroyer including Convoy Escort Movements on naval-history.net
- HMS Warwick on uboat.net
- THE SINKING OF THE HMS WARWICK
- THE SINKING OF HMS WARWICK