HMS Worcester (D96)
 The Worcester with the new identification (I96)
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HMS Worcester (D96) was a destroyer of the modified W class of the British Royal Navy and was at J. Samuel White & Co. in Cowes built; however, it was completed by September 1922 at the Portsmouth Navy Yard . The destroyer was then in service with the Atlantic Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet .
Reactivated in 1939, the Worcester was mostly used in home waters. In February 1942 she was one of the six destroyers who tried to prevent the heavy German units ( Enterprise Cerberus ) from breaking through the canal and was badly damaged in the process. After the repair work, the destroyer was hit by a mine on December 23, 1943 in the North Sea. Since further repairs no longer seemed sensible, the Worcester was only used as a residential ship in 1945/46 under the name Yeoman and then demolished.
History of the ship
In April 1918, the yard received J. Samuel White in Cowes the contract for the construction of the eighth Worcester Royal Navy as a destroyer of the improved W class . The shipyard had already received five orders for ships of the previous versions of the V and W classes , which they delivered between September 1917 and April 1918. In the meantime, White had also received orders for five smaller S-Class destroyers , which came into service with the Royal Navy between July 1918 and May 1919. The new order included four ships which were also completed as Witherington , Wivern , Wolverine and Worcester . There were also four more orders that were transferred to White from other shipyards. Of them only two among the 17 July 1919. In the were started but canceled in September 1919 Worcester spilled launched Werewolf , which was then canceled. The other two orders had been canceled before the keel was laid on April 12, 1919.
The Worcester was the eighth ship of her name since 1651, the first four of which had received fourteen Battle Honors between 1652 and 1783 . The new building was launched on October 24, 1919 and the destroyer was delivered on March 9, 1918. The ship was handed over to the nearby state shipyard in Portsmouth for final completion. In the post-war period, the reasons for the completion of other newbuildings at state shipyards were cost and employment reasons; Parts and equipment that had already been manufactured from canceled ships were also partially installed.
First missions
After its completion, the Worcester was assigned to the "4th Destroyer Flotilla" in the Atlantic Fleet. At the beginning of the 1930s, the ship was assigned to the "1st Destroyer Flotilla" with the Mediterranean Fleet, where the old V and W class destroyers were replaced by new D-class ships from 1932 onwards. The Worcester was a reserve ship in Malta in the autumn of 1933. The ship then came to Portsmouth and underwent a major overhaul. In 1937 the Worcester was used as a training ship in Portsmouth and then in March 1938 the "2nd Destroyer Flotilla" was assigned to replace the Hunter , who had been severely damaged in May 1937 off Almería . The flotilla has been used in the so-called neutrality patrols on the Spanish Mediterranean coast since the outbreak of the Spanish civil war . In the second half of the year, the destroyer returned to Portsmouth and remained there in reserve until the beginning of World War II .
War missions
Worcester , which was put back into service in September 1939, was assigned to the "16th Destroyer Flotilla" in Portsmouth, which had the flotilla leader Montrose and the sister ships Venomous , Verity , Veteran , Whitshed , Wild Swan and Wivern of the modified W-class. The flotilla was to provide escort and surveillance services in the English Channel and the south-western access routes to the British Isles. When the German offensive to the west began in May 1940 with the raids on Belgium and the Netherlands, the Worcester was assigned to the "Dover Command" to help evacuate Allied personnel before the advance of the Germans. It was used to transfer allied troops via Dunkirk to Great Britain ( Operation Dynamo ) and was able to evacuate over 4,300 men on six trips. An air raid on May 30, 1940 caused slight damage to the ship. In June the damage was repaired and the ship was given the new identification I96 .
In July 1940 the Worcester resumed its service with the 16th Destroyer Flotilla , now stationed in Harwich , but was transferred to the Western Approaches Command in August , where it remained until the end of the year. In January 1941 the ship returned to the "16th Destroyer Flotilla" in Harwich and was used with the flotilla leader Mackay and the destroyers Whitshed and Walpole on the British east coast to protect coastal traffic. On March 6, 1941, Worcester and Whitshed were attacked from the air while escorting south, and the following day they were lured away from the convoy by attacking German speedboats . They could not catch up with the retreating German boats, while other speedboats attacked the poorly defended convoy and sank two merchant ships. On March 12, could Worcester before Southwold relegate some S-boats from the convoy FS.37. Similar tasks followed until the end of the year.
The "Channel Dash"
In the winter of 1941/1942 the British expected that the Germans would withdraw their battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as well as the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from Brest, France, back to Germany. They definitely expected an attempt to break through on the short stretch through the English Channel and knew about the efforts of the Germans to make all three heavy ships operational. However, they expected the actual canal breakthrough on a new moon night around February 15, 1942. As the heaviest units in the Royal Navy, destroyers were supposed to prevent a breakthrough. The main weapon against a breakthrough should be the units of the Royal Air Force , which had been documenting the activities of the German ships since the beginning of February and also carried out attacks on the ships.
The Dover Command was assigned six destroyers from the "16th Destroyer Flotilla" with Worcester , Mackay , Walpole and Whitshed and from the "21st Destroyer Flotilla" in Sheerness with Campbell and Vivacious , which in the Dover Strait at the latest had one such attempt with their torpedoes should have finished. Only the flotilla leaders Mackay and Campbell still had two torpedo tube sets, the four "normal" destroyers only had one torpedo tube set of triplets. The six ships were practicing a joint torpedo attack off Harwich on February 12, 1942, when they were ordered to attack the German unit at the mouth of the Scheldt .
The German ships, which, contrary to the British expectation, wanted to pass Dover around noon and not at night, had left Brest unnoticed and were only discovered late in the canal. The destroyers immediately had to run at high speed through a mine-prone area in order to even reach the German ships. Five destroyers finally found the German association around Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen in the late afternoon with poor visibility east of the Scheldt and launched an unsuccessful torpedo attack on the two German ships. Worcester ran as the third destroyer behind Vivacious and Campbell and tried to get even closer to the German ships. Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen scored several hits with their heavy artillery (28 cm and 20.3 cm respectively) on the Worcester , which caught fire and remained lying. Since the Germans believed the ship was sinking, they stopped bombarding the Worcester again after the volleys had been hit . The torpedoes of the two following British ships also missed their targets and the German association ran away from the destroyers who had fired their torpedoes.
The burning Worcester was badly damaged, the front boiler room was flooded and the engine failed. 26 men were dead or fatally wounded, another 45 wounded were conditionally operational. The remaining crew managed to put out the fires and get the machine going again. So the Worcester could run back to the English coast on its own. The repair work on the destroyer lasted until September 1942.
Renewed missions
The destroyer, which was ready for action again, was retracted at the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow and took part in missions in the North Sea as early as September . With other destroyers, the
Worcester was sent to Lowe Sound (now Van Mijenfjord ) from Spitsbergen to set up a refueling station for the security vehicles of the next northern sea escorts. On September 20, 1942, the ship with the destroyers Fury and Impulsive and the naval tanker RFA Oligarch left the new base to join the return convoy QP 14 , which was successfully attacked by German submarines (loss of the Somali ), and its Reinforce security by September 26, 1942.
The Worcester received as many new or coming back into service destroyer of the Royal Navy and an operating time on the English Channel and was with the destroyers Whitshed and Vespers and the escort destroyers Brocklesby , Albrighton and the Norwegian Eskdale the Hunt class on December 12, the German shipping traffic attack. The attackers were able to sink the two German Sperrbrecher 144 (ex Beijerland , 387 GRT) and Sperrbrecher 178 (ex Gauss , 1236 GRT) between Dieppe and Le Tréport .
During the service time with the Home Fleet, the Worcester was involved in another large-scale operation when, at the end of December 1942, she belonged to the cover group of the return route RA 51 , which ran from Kola to Great Britain from December 30th . For this mission, the battleships King George V and Howe with the cruiser Bermuda and the destroyers Musketeer and Raider , the Australian Queenborough and the Polish Piorun had run into the North Sea to intervene in the event of heavy navy units spilling out, as is currently the case with the company Rainbow against the convoy JW-51B had happened.
In January 1943 the Worcester was reassigned to the "16th Destroyer Flotilla" in Harwich and in February 1943 she took up her duties in the North Sea. They secured escorts on the British east coast and tried to attack German speedboats before they could attack Allied convoys. Whether the ship received a 57-mm twin gun of the type QF 6-pdr-10cwt-L / 47-Mk.I , which was particularly suitable for fighting speedboats, in place of the 120-mm gun in the A position , is uncertain according to the sources. On October 24, 1943, she led off Norfolk together with the Mackay and smaller boats of the Coastal Forces a skirmish with speedboats that gathered for an attack on the convoy FN 1160 from the north and the convoy FS 1164 going north. Worcester , Mackay and the boats of the Coastal Forces succeeded in driving the German speedboat flotillas off Cromer on October 25, 1943 and preventing an attack on the escort. The German speedboats returned to their base in IJmuiden .
The end of Worcester
The destroyer remained in use in the North Sea and on December 23, 1943, overran a mine at Smith's Knoll that had been laid by German speedboats the previous month. The mine explosion destroyed the stern of the destroyer, which was nevertheless badly damaged and brought to Great Yarmouth . The first emergency repairs were started, but a thorough investigation showed that repairing the old ship was no longer useful, so that the destroyer, who had received six more battle honors by then ("Dunkirk 1940", "Atlantic 1940", "North Sea 1942– 1943 ”,“ Dover Straits 1942 ”,“ English Channel 1942 ”and“ Arctic 1943 ”), was canceled as a total loss in April 1944.
In May 1944 it was decided to still use the Worcester as a barge in London. After repairs and modifications for this task, she was towed to London in January 1945 and used there as a barge under the new name HMS Yeoman from June 1945 . In 1946 the ship was finally separated and sold for demolition on September 17, 1946. In February 1947, the former Worcester was towed to Grays , Essex , where it was scrapped.
Individual evidence
- ^ Between the wars: Royal Navy organization and ship deployments 1919–1939
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War, May 28, 1940, Canal, start of Operation Dynamo
- ^ Rohwer, May 30, 1940, Kanal, third day of Operation Dynamo
- ↑ Rohwer, 12. – 15. March 1941, North Sea
- ↑ Casualty Lists of the Royal Navy and Dominion Navies - February 1942
- ↑ Rohwer, February 12, 1942, Kanal, Cerberus company ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The sinking of the Beijerland by Eskdale
- ^ Sinking of the Gauss by Whitshed or Worcester
- ^ Rohwer, December 12, 1942, North Sea / Canal
- ↑ Rohwer, 1. – 9. January 1943, North Sea
- ↑ Britain QF 6-pdr-10cwt-L / 47 (57 mm)
- ↑ Rohwer, 23-25. October 1943, North Sea / Canal
- ↑ Rohwer, 4./5. November 1943, Canal / North Sea
- ^ Rohwer, December 23, 1943, North Sea
Remarks
- ↑ It was about the Destroyer Tribune (7.18–12.31), Trinidad (9.18–3.32), Trojan (12.18–9.36), Truant (3.19–11.31) and Trusty (5.19–9.36)
- ↑ Of the 52 modified W-Class destroyers ordered, only 14 were completed
-
↑ The Scharnhorst had received a mine hit off the Scheldt and only later caught up with the German association.
The Walpole had been unable to keep up with the other destroyers due to wave problems and had come on the march. - ↑ later frigate Raule (F 217) of the German Navy
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 .
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .
- MJ Whitley: Destroyers of World War 2. Arms & Armor, London 1999, ISBN 1-85409-521-8 .
Web links
- HMS Worcester (1919) accessed October 12, 2016
- VandW ship list accessed October 7, 2016
- HMS WORCESTER retrieved October 7, 2016
- HMS Worcester (D96 ) accessed October 12, 2016
- Britain QF 6-pdr-10cwt-L / 47 (57 mm) Mark I, accessed October 19, 2016