Halcyon class
Sharpshooter 1938
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The Halcyon class consisted of 21 minesweepers . They were built between 1933 and 1939 as "fleet minesweeping sloops" for the British Royal Navy . They were given names that had previously mostly been used by other smaller Navy ships. All ships of the class were used in World War II. Nine were sunk and another was badly damaged and scrapped. This total write-off and two of the sinkings were the result of an accidental attack by British fighter-bombers on August 27, 1944.
Building history
The 21 ships of the Halcyon class were created in two groups. The first used steam engines, the second was powered by steam turbines. The new ships were a smaller version of the Grimsby-class escort sloops . The Halcyon and Skipjack were first delivered in April / May 1934 by John Brown & Company . After five ships, in 1936 the Niger and Salamander of the first group, unlike the sister ships, received triple expansion engines for the otherwise used twin composite steam engines . Due to the increased performance of their engines, the two ships supplied by J. Samuel White & Company were half a knot faster, although they had a shorter hull.
The slightly shorter hull was also used by the fourteen turbine ships of the second group, of which the Hebe built in Devonport was the first to enter service in autumn 1937. However, since the performance of their propulsion systems was lower, the maximum speed of the turbine ships decreased again to 16.5 knots (31 km / h). Many parts were welded when the ships were built. The Seagull , completed in May 1938, was the Royal Navy's first fully welded ship. As the last ship of the class, the Britomart came into service in August 1939 shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War . Of the 21 ships, 16 were given names of torpedo cannon boats of the Sharpshooter , Alarm and `` Dryad '' classes , the boats that were still in existence and were mostly used as mine sweepers during the First World War.
Survey vessels
As survey vessels without armament were Jason (June 1938), Gleaner and Franklin (August 1938) and Scott (Feb 1939) completed. The latter two should only be converted in exceptional cases and differ from the "normal" version in terms of the mast with loading gear in front of the bridge and a large working area at the rear. The two other ships completed as survey ships had the standard masts of the Halcyon class, plus loading posts on the forecastle and the additional deckhouse at the rear.
At the beginning of the war, the Gleaner was already backfitted and the Jason , which was being converted, came into service as a combat ship in September 1939. The Scott was also converted from October, but was converted back to a survey ship in April 1940. At the end of 1940 the two survey ships were armed to a lesser extent. They received one as a twelve-pounders designated 3-inch- (76.2-mm) L / 40 anti-aircraft gun on the bow and light anti-aircraft guns on the large deck house (House of Cards) back. Franklin and Scott remained in this service during the war and primarily supported mine-laying operations, but also reconnaissance for commando raids, landings and other tasks. Scott remained in service as the last active ship in the class until 1964.
After the end of the war, the Sharpshooter and Seagull were converted into survey ships in 1945 . The Sharpshooter was renamed Shackleton in July 1953 and remained in service until the end of 1962.
Mission history
At the beginning of the war, 16 Halcyon- class ships were deployed at home and two in Gibraltar as mine sweepers. One of the survey ships was being converted. Of the other two survey vessels, only the Scott was temporarily converted.
On February 3, 1940, the Sphinx was searching for mines in an area 15 nautical miles north of Kinnaird Head with sister ships Speedwell and Skipjack when it was attacked by German aircraft. Sphinx received a bomb hit on the forecastle , which destroyed it. Skipjack was shot at by the machines with on-board weapons, suffered several hits, but had no staff losses. The Sphinx initially remained buoyant and was towed by the undamaged Speedwell . As more and more water penetrated, the tow rope tore and the Sphinx finally capsized and sank. The wreck later drifted north of Lybster on the north side of the Moray Firth and was sold for demolition. The commander of the Sphinx and 53 men of the crew died in the loss of the Sphinx .
At the Operation Dynamo the evacuation of the British expeditionary force (BEF) from the continent at the end of May 1940 nine ships were Halcyon involved class. Gossamer , who had withdrawn from Gibraltar in the spring, was able to make six round trips in the Dunkirk area and rescue 3200 soldiers to Great Britain. Leda , which was also stationed in Gibraltar until October 1939, was able to carry out eight journeys and bring 2,848 military personnel across the English Channel. There were two collisions with other units involved without major damage. On her last trip to Dunkirk on June 3, 1940, she was unable to take on any more troops. Hebe long served as the flagship of the naval commander in front of Dunkirk and brought the commander of the BEF, Lord Gort , to Dover on June 1, 1940 .
On the same day, the Skipjack was attacked and sunk by German dive bombers off De Panne . The Skipjack carried 250-300 soldiers rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo . The eyewitness William Stone said: “ she just disappeared ” (German : “ she just disappeared ”). When the Skipjack capsized after five bomb hits and drifted for a while, 19 crew members and around 275 soldiers lost their lives, most of whom were trapped in the hull.
The ships of the Halcyon -class were often used for anti-submarine defense in the first years of the war; this task took off, came as slowly more purpose-built for this task ships in service, as the Corvettes of the Flower-class . Ships of the Halcyon class initially accompanied almost every convoy in the North Sea, where they were used as minesweepers and submarine hunters. Some stayed longer on Soviet bases such as Murmansk and tried to clear German mine barriers in the routes of the supply escorts and the Soviet supply routes on the coast of Kolas and in the White Sea . On December 17, 1941 Hazard and Speedy encountered four large destroyers of the 8th German destroyer flotilla ( Z 25 , Z 23 , Z 24 and Z 27 ) stationed in Kirkenes , 14 nm off the coast of the Kola peninsula . The British minesweepers who set out to pick up the Northern Sea Convoy PQ 6 were mistakenly addressed by the Germans as Russian destroyers of the Gnevny class and were taken under fire from a great distance. The Speedy received four hits, the Hazard was undamaged. The two minesweepers escaped the German attackers, who did not discover the seven freighters of the convoy secured by the cruiser Edinburgh and the destroyers Echo and Escapade . The heavy cruiser Kent , which went to sea with two Russian escort destroyers on reports from the minesweepers , could not find the German destroyers who had returned to their base.
Four ships of the Halcyon class were lost during operations in the Northern Sea.
The Gossamer had already accompanied the very first Arctic convoy ( Dervish ) and then stayed in the Soviet Union to accompany the convoys on the last part of the journey. While securing convoy PQ 11 , she attacked a submarine. She later helped rescue the crew of the sinking cruiser Edinburgh , from which she took over 440 men. Lying at anchor, the Gossamer sank on June 26, 1942 after a Stuka attack in the Kola Fjord . 23 men of the occupation lost their lives and another twelve were seriously wounded.
The Niger had already caught fire in a Stuka attack in May 1940, had been able to rescue around 1,500 men from Dunkirk after being repaired, and in the summer of 1941 had been deployed with two sister ships to secure the British bases on Iceland . A transfer to the Soviet Union with PQ 2 , which was planned for autumn 1941, had to be canceled due to urgent overhaul work. The Niger then belonged to the backup of PQ 11 and the return QP 11 . After the sinking of the Edinburgh , she took over parts of the rescued crew, which were first brought to the naval base Polyarnoe near Murmansk . On July 5, 1942, the Niger was lost, which was supposed to return to Great Britain as part of the securing of Convoy QP 13 . In heavy seas and poor visibility, part of the convoy led them into a British minefield off Iceland. Four freighters also sank when hit by mines. 148 men lost their lives on the Niger , some of them passengers on their way home.
The Leda came to Arkhangelsk for the first time on September 29, 1941 with Britomart , Hussar and Gossamer as part of the security of PQ 1 , in order to then do three months of service there without being prepared for arctic use. After an overhaul and equipment for use in the arctic, the Leda moved again to Karelia in the convoy PQ 15 . After supporting the remnants of PQ 17 , she was supposed to return to Great Britain in the securing of the return line QP 14 . After her sonar failed, the Leda was sunk with two torpedoes on September 20, 1942 near Greenland at the end of the convoy of U 435 . On the same day, the destroyer Somali was torpedoed by a submarine, which its sister ship Ashanti wanted to tow to Iceland. Since the Leda sank only slowly, the commandant, 84 men of the crew and two officers of the merchant marine could be rescued from the rescue ships of the convoy; 34 men lost their lives when the mine sweeper went down.
The Bramble was one of the first ships of the class to be sent to Arkhangelsk in autumn 1941. She was temporarily stationed in the Soviet Union and took part in securing eleven convoy trains. She became one of the victims of the battle in the Barents Sea on December 31, 1942, when she looked in vain for the remaining ships of the convoy JW 51B . When she was running after the convoy alone, she was discovered by the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper in search of the convoy and was badly damaged. The cruiser ran on to attack the convoy and left the destruction of the Bramble to its destroyer companions, who first had to search for the damaged ship. Friedrich Eckoldt found the Bramble and sank the mine sweeper, which was lost with its entire crew of 121 men. The sinking of the Bramble brought no luck to Friedrich Eckoldt . When the convoy JW 51B approached again, she mistook the British cruiser Sheffield for the Hipper and ran towards him. The Sheffield immediately destroyed the German destroyer from a very short range.
In the course of Operation Harpoon , the Royal Navy tried not only to bring supplies and material from Gibraltar to Malta, but also to improve the island's defensive capabilities with four minesweepers and six MGB. The Hebe and Speedy of the Halcyon class, for example, were used to secure close-range security for freighters and tankers destined for Malta. The two minesweepers had previously been deployed around the British Isles, during the evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk and in the Northern Sea to secure escorts and the Soviet shipping lanes, and they are now moving from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.
When a battle with two Italian light cruisers and destroyers broke out on June 15, 1942 south of Pantelleria and dive bombers attacked the escort at the same time, the Hebe took the hit tanker Kentucky in tow. In order to get the two undamaged freighters to Malta, the Hebe had to abandon the severely damaged Kentucky and sink it, receiving a 15 cm hit. When the remaining convoy got into a minefield shortly before Malta, the Hebe was one of the units that had been hit by a mine and had to be docked in Malta for repairs due to a hole in the hull and a damaged screw. When the following convoy was in the middle of Malta, the minesweepers stationed there ran out with Hebe and Speedy and helped the damaged ships to reach Malta. Both were involved in bringing in the heavily damaged tanker Ohio . They were used in the following convoys to Malta and the Allied landing in North Africa . In mid-May 1943, the Speedy was hit by a mine near Malta (four dead) and, after an emergency repair, had to go to Great Britain in the summer for repairs. It was not ready for use again until autumn 1944. As early as autumn 1942, two more Halcyon minesweepers had been relocated to the Mediterranean for Operation Torch with Hussar and Speedwell , but they were relocated to the North Sea again in the summer of 1943. They were replaced by the Hazard and Sharpshooters , which arrived in May and were used with lifting gear for the landing on Pantelleria and the landing on Sicily .
After the capitulation of Italy , the main threat to British ships in the Mediterranean came from the German Air Force and the remaining German submarines. U 453 put mine barriers off Brindisi and Bari. Hebe sank on one of these mines off Bari on November 22, 1943 . When the Hebe sank , which sank very quickly , 38 men of her crew were killed, although the accompanying sister ships immediately initiated rescue measures.
Loss from own fire
After the invasion of Normandy , the 1st minesweeper flotilla with Britomart , Hussar , Jason and Salamander was supposed to support the advance of the Allied armies by clearing German minefields north of Normandy in order to make further ports usable for the supply of the armies. On the afternoon of August 27, 1944, the ships looked for mines off Cape d'Antifer to enable the battleship Warspite and the monitors Erebus and Roberts to bombard the German coastal artillery near Le Havre , which delayed the advance of the Canadian troops. The staff officer in charge of the minesweeping operation did not inform the British attack sector naval commander who was also responsible for defending the invading beaches against speedboat attacks from Le Havre. The British minesweepers ran to the southwest at this time and were mistaken for German ships that were on their way to the invasion beaches to attack the supply traffic.
The naval commander's staff requested two squadrons of fighter bombers to stop the supposedly German ships. The seasons No. 263 and No. 266 of the RAF attacked with 16 Typhoons armed with four 20 mm cannons and unguided "60 lb" RP-3 missiles . Used pilots recognized the minesweepers as their own ships, but received the answer when asked that there were no British ships in the attack area.
The Typhoons' then school-based attack came from the sun at 1.30 p.m. and sank the Britomart and the Hussar ; the salamander was badly damaged and later written off as not worth repairing. The mine sweepers had identified the Typhoons as their own machines and had taken no defense measures. The sudden attack from the sun prevented an early detection of the unexpected attack of the own machines. The Jason was able to establish radio contact with the machines too late and stop the attack from being aborted. 86 British seafarers were killed and 124 others were injured.
Post-war missions
At the end of the war in Europe, the Royal Navy had eleven operational ships of the Halcyon class. Nine ships had sunk, and one was beyond repair. This and two of the sunk ships were mistaken victims of the (vg) British attack near the Seine estuary.
Seven ships were used as mine sweepers until 1946 and then transferred to the reserve. Two others ( Sharpshooter , Seagull ) were converted into survey vessels as early as 1945, although the former survey vessels Gleaner and Jason were still there. Three ships were sold to private users in 1946. The four remaining minesweepers were scrapped in 1949/1950 ( Hazard , Halcyon , Gleaner , Harrier ).
Private use
The Jason came into service as the coastal freighter Jaslock , but was scrapped in 1950. The Speedwell came under the Belgian flag as the Topaz and was lost in 1954 on the way to a demolition yard. The Speedy was renamed Speedon and only canceled in Aden in 1957 .
Survey vessels
In addition to the two original survey ships Franklin and Scott , which also remained in service in this function during the war, two additional survey ships of the class with the converted Sharpshooter and Seagull were built in 1945 .
Before the war, Franklin was the only one on foreign service when she worked off the coast of Labrador in the summer of 1939 . Of the four ships in service from 1946 onwards, only the Sharpshooter 1946/1947 was deployed abroad off Malaya and Borneo . The ships measured the coastal waters of Great Britain and the consequences of the war, such as wrecks and restricted areas, and were given NATO identifiers as auxiliary ships. The Seagull (A309) was the first ship to retire from this service in 1950; the Franklin (A304) followed at the end of 1952 . Both ships were scrapped in 1956. In June 1953, the Sharpshooter was given a name that better suited the task with Shackleton (A310). It remained in service until November 1962 and was canceled in late 1965. The longest in service was the Scott (A308), which was not decommissioned until November 1964 and was scrapped in Troon from 1966 .
The ships of the class
| Surname | Shipyard | start of building | Launch | finished | Final fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st group | (Compound machines) | ||||
|
Halcyon (J42) |
John Brown Building No. 536 |
03/27/1933 | December 20, 1933 | 04/18/1934 | sold for demolition in April 1950 |
|
Skipjack (J38) |
John Brown Building No. 537 |
4.04.1933 | January 18, 1934 | May 3, 1934 | after air raid on June 1, 1940 at 51 ° 3 ' N , 2 ° 24' O sunk |
|
Harrier (J71) |
Thornycroft | 07/11/1933 | 04/17/1934 | 11/9/1934 | sold for demolition in June 1950 |
|
Hussar (J82) |
Thornycroft | 08/10/1933 | 08/27/1934 | January 16, 1935 | Sunk on August 27, 1944 at 49 ° 41 ′ N , 0 ° 6 ′ W by mistaken air raid |
|
Speedwell (J87) |
William Hamilton Building No. 419 |
06/30/1934 | 03/21/1935 | 09/30/1935 | Sold December 1946; Coastal freighter, renamed Topaz , abandoned in 1954. |
| variant | (Triple expansion machines, shorter) | ||||
|
Niger (J73) |
JS White | 1.04.1935 | 01/23/1936 | 4.06.1936 | Sank on June 4, 1942 off Iceland to 66 ° 35 ′ N , 23 ° 14 ′ W after being hit by a mine. |
|
Salamander (J86) |
JS White | 04/18/1935 | March 24, 1936 | 07/18/1936 | Badly damaged by mistake by RAF aircraft off Cape d'Antifer on August 27, 1944 , sold for demolition in 1946 |
| 2nd group | (Turbine drive, short fuselage) | ||||
|
Lifting (J24) |
Devonport Dockyard | 04/27/1936 | 10/28/1936 | 10/23/1937 | sank on November 22, 1943 off Bari to 41 ° 8 ′ N , 16 ° 52 ′ E after being hit by a mine, |
|
Hazard (J02) |
William Gray Building No. 1068 |
May 27, 1936 | 02/26/1937 | 11/24/1937 | Sold for demolition in 1949. |
|
Sharpshooter (J68, A310) |
Devonport Dockyard | June 8, 1936 | December 10, 1936 | December 17, 1937 | Converted to a survey ship in 1945, renamed Shackleton in 1953 , sold for demolition in 1965 |
|
Gleaner (J83) |
William Gray Building No. 1069 |
06/17/1936 | 06/10/1937 | 03/30/1938 | Completed as a survey ship, dismantled as a minesweeper in 1939, sold for demolition in 1950 |
|
Gossamer (J63) |
William Hamilton Building No. 431 |
November 2nd, 1936 | October 5, 1937 | March 31, 1938 | by bombing in the on June 24, 1942 Kola Bay at 68 ° 59 ' N , 33 ° 3' O sunk |
|
Leda (J93) |
Devonport Dockyard | 11/16/1936 | July 8, 1937 | 05/19/1938 | September 20, 1942 by German submarine U 435 in the Greenland Sea torpedoed and 76 ° 30 ' N , 5 ° 0' O declined. |
|
Seagull (J85, A309) |
Devonport Dockyard | 02/15/1937 | 10/28/1937 | 05/30/1938 | Converted to a survey ship in 1945, sold for demolition in 1956 |
|
Jason (J99) |
Ailsa Shipbuilding Building No. 425 |
12/12/1936 | 10/6/1937 | June 9, 1938 | Completed as a survey ship, dismantled in 1939, decommissioned and sold in 1946, merchant ship Jaslock , sold for demolition in 1950 |
|
Franklin (J84, A304) |
Ailsa building no. 426 |
December 17, 1936 | 12/22/1937 | 08/17/1938 | Survey ship, sold for demolition in 1956 |
|
Scott (J79, A308) |
Caledon, Dundee | 08/30/1937 | 08/23/1938 | 02/23/1939 | Survey ship, sold for demolition in 1965 |
|
Speedy (J17) |
William Hamilton Building No. 435 |
1.12.1937 | 11/24/1938 | April 7, 1939 | Sold in 1946, merchant ship Speedon , broken up in 1957 |
|
Bramble (J11) |
Devonport Dockyard | 11/22/1937 | 07/12/1938 | 06/22/1939 | sunk by German warships on December 31, 1942 in the Barents Sea , |
|
Sphinx (J69) |
William Hamilton Building No. 436 |
January 17, 1938 | February 7, 1939 | 07/27/1939 | Bomb hit on February 3, 1940 during attack by German aircraft off Kinnaird Head , sank in tow, wreck driven off at Lybster on the north side of the Moray Firth , recovered in 1950 and scrapped |
|
Britomart (J22) |
Devonport Dockyard | 08/01/1938 | 08/23/1938 | 08/24/1939 | sunk by RAF aircraft off Cape d'Antifer by mistake on August 27, 1944 |
literature
- HT Lenton: British and Empire Warships of the Second World War. Greenhill Books, ISBN 1-85367-277-7 .
Web links
- Halcyon class website
- HMS Bramble "BBC People's War"
- HMS Hussar "BBC People's War"
- Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Ed .: Library for Contemporary History, Württemberg State Library, Stuttgart 2007 ( wlb-stuttgart.de )
Footnotes
- ^ Lenton: British and Empire Warships. P. 252.
- ^ History of HMS Speedwell
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. February 3, 1940, North Sea
- ^ History HMS Sphinx
- ↑ BBC NEWS | UK | Surviving WWI: Veterans' stories
- ↑ History HMS Skipjack
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 8-23 December 1941 u. December 17, 1942, North Sea
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 16.-30. June 1942, Northern Sea
- ^ History HMS Gossamer
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 26.-30. June 1942, Northern Sea
- ^ History HMS Niger
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 20.-26. September 1942, Northern Sea
- ^ History of HMS Leda
- ^ History HMS Bramble
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 30.-31. December 1942, Northern Sea
- ^ Rohwer: Sea War. 12-16 June 1942, Mediterranean Sea, double convoy to supply Malta
- ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 15.- 28 November 1943 Mediterranean
- ↑ History HMS Hebe
- ↑ a b c Sinking of HMS Britomart and HMS Hussar by friendly fire . Halcyon Class. Retrieved January 27, 2014.