ORP Ślązak (L26)
 The Ślązak
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The ORP Ślązak was a destroyer escort the British Hunt class , that of the Royal Navy in World War II loan of Polish (exile) Marine was left. The warship was originally built as HMS Bedale (L26) for the British Navy, but was handed over to the Polish Navy before completion. It was particularly used on Allied landings in Europe.
In 1946 the Royal Navy took back the ORP Ślązak . The ship that remained in the reserve was made available to the Indian Navy in 1953 . It remained there until 1976 as the Godavari training ship . After severe damage by running aground on March 23, 1976 in the Maldives , the ship was painted in 1979 and scrapped.
History of the ship
The ship was ordered as a Type II destroyer escort of the Hunt-class on December 12, 1939 as part of the British war building program at Hawthorn, Leslie in Newcastle . The shipyard, which for the first time received orders for ships of the Hunt class, was to build two orders as Bedale and Bicester of 16 reordered ships of the type . On May 25, 1940, the keel of the first new Bedale building was laid , four days before the Bicester . On July 23, 1941, the Bedale was launched, which was first given the name of this hunting dog breed in the Navy.
On May 9, the ship was completed, which had been taken over by the Polish (exile) navy the previous month and has now been renamed ORP Ślązak . After Krakowiak and the Kujawiak, which was sunk in June 1942, she was the third ship of the class flying the Polish flag .
Like the other two ships, Ślązak was named after one of the three German A 56 class torpedo boats that Poland acquired in 1921 for the purpose of setting up a navy. The first Ślązak was completed as the German torpedo boat A 59 in 1917 by the Vulcan shipyard in Stettin and bought in September 1921 with two sister boats . In 1937, the obsolete boat was sorted out and used as a target ship .
Polish destroyer escort
Shortly after commissioning, the Ślązak was involved in the British raid against Dieppe . With nine DropShips over 6000 Canadian soldiers and British Marines were landed on August 19, 1942.
The main part of the security were eight Hunt destroyers, including the Ślązak . Two of them were hit by artillery, all of which were targeted by German air strikes that seriously damaged a destroyer and seriously damaged the Berkeley , so that it was sunk by the Albrighton , later the German school frigate Raule , while retreating.
Ślązak rescued over 80 trapped soldiers of the Royal Regiment of Canada from the beach, was involved in the downing of German aircraft and suffered minor damage, three crew members were fatally wounded on board. After a few hours, the British broke off the attempt to land. The staff shortages amounted to 4,350 men, 1,179 dead and 2,190 prisoners.
In January 1943 the Ślązak had to go to a shipyard in Liverpool for repairs after weather damage when securing the convoy in the area of the south-western access routes to the British Isles. In addition to improved radar equipment, it also received a single 2pdr 40 mm L / 39 gun on the bow to defend against speedboats. It was not until March that she returned to Plymouth. In May 1943 she was transferred to Gibraltar and took on convoy security tasks from there in June.
In July 1943, the Ślązak and Krakowiak were one of the giant security units during the Allied landing on the south and south-east coast of Sicily on July 10, when the majority of the existing Hunt destroyers were in service.
When the 5th US Army landed in the Bay of Salerno at the beginning of September, the two Polish destroyers belonged to the security of the support group of four escort carriers and the light carrier Unicorn .
In December 1943, Ślązak and Krakowiak of the Hunt Flotilla of the Mediterranean Fleet were stationed alongside six British Hunt's in Malta and supported sea operations on the Italian coasts.
In April 1944 the Ślązak moved to Plymouth to the "15th Destroyer Flotilla". In May she began, equipped with two additional Oerlikons, the training for the use in the "Force S" from Portsmouth in the planned invasion of northern France. The ship secured ten minesweeping operations in the canal and on June 6th led convoy S2 through a cleared corridor from the Isle of Wight to the Sword landing area with the sister ship Middleton and the destroyers Scourge and Serapis .
With the Middleton , the Ślązak gave the troops landed direct artillery support, which was later joined by two British battleships (as Force D), the Monitor Roberts , five cruisers (including the Polish Dragon ), and eight other destroyers from the 23rd Flotilla (including the Stord and the Svenner sunk on the morning of June 6th, two Norwegian) and the "Hunt" destroyer Eglinton arrived. Of the other units in the Polish fleet, the Krakowiak was in the gold sector in a similar mission with the (Norwegian) sister ship Glaisdale and the destroyer Ursa . The Polish destroyers Błyskawica and Piorun belonged to the 10th destroyer flotilla, which secured the landing area to the west against German surface forces.
The success of the Allies led to the relocation of the Ślązak to the “16th Destroyer Flotilla” in Harwich in October . The ship, which was not damaged during the invasion fighting , was used with the sister ship Krakowiak , five British Hunt destroyers and the Norwegian Arendal to secure convoy and monitor the North Sea and the canal accesses.
At the end of the war in Europe, the Polish destroyers escorted to Chatham (Kent) and, in addition to securing military escorts, also used them to support the Allied occupation in north-western Europe. On May 27, 1945, Ślązak and Krakowiak were the first Polish warships to call at Wilhelmshaven , which had been captured by the 1st Polish Armored Division under General Maczek and a Polish occupation zone was established in the vicinity . Up until the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946, the two destroyers escorted several times at German ports on the North Sea. On September 28, 1946, the ORP Ślązak was returned to the Royal Navy and remained as HMS Bedale over five years in the reserve in Harwich. An attempt by the Polish government to swap Ślązak and Krakowiak for older Polish vehicles failed in 1947.
Destroyer Godavari
In 1952 the ship was prepared with others for delivery to India. For this purpose, the ship was completely overhauled at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead and taken over by the Indian Navy on April 27, 1953 . It was to be named Godavari after the Indian river and the sloop Godavari , which came to Pakistan as Sind as the flagship of the Royal Indian Navy in 1948 .
In April and May the Hunt II destroyers HMS Lamerton (L88) as Gomati and HMS Chiddingfold (L31) as Ganga , which were also overhauled at Liverpool shipyards, were also taken over by the Indian Navy. The three ships took part in the fleet parade on the occasion of the coronation of the British Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, before all three ships were ceremoniously handed over to the Indian Navy on June 18, 1953 and given their new names. The three lent ships drove across the Mediterranean with exercises with the British fleet and Saudi Arabia to the Indian naval base in Cochin . There they formed the 22nd destroyer flotilla with Godavari (D92) as flotilla leader, Gomati (D93) and Ganga (D94). Despite the influx of newly built frigates, the ships were purchased in April 1959 and, as training ships, formed the 11th destroyer flotilla. In 1975, Gomati and Ganga were canceled and demolished. The Godavari remained in service as a training ship. After severe damage by running aground on March 23, 1976 in the Maldives , which could no longer be repaired, the ship was painted in 1979 and scrapped.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Polish ORP SLAZAK (L 26)
- ^ Rohwer: Chronik des Maritime Warfare , p. 276
- ^ Rohwer, p. 383
- ^ Type I: Atherstone , Cleveland ; Type II: Calpe , Liddesdale , Type III: Catterick , Haydon
- ^ Lenton: Warships of the British and Commonwealth Navies , p. 128 f.
literature
- HT Lenton: Warships of the British and Commonwealth Navies , Ian Allan 1969,
- Antony Preston: Destroyers , Hamlyn, ISBN 0-600-32955-0
- Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945. Manfred Pawlak Verlag, Herrsching 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7 .