Rawalpindi (ship)
.jpg) As HMS Rawalpindi
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
The Rawalpindi was a passenger ship put into service in 1925 by the British shipping company Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), which was used in passenger and mail traffic between London and Bombay . After the start of the Second World War , the ship served as HMS Rawalpindi as an auxiliary cruiser until it was sunk southeast of Iceland by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau on November 23, 1939 . 265 people died. The Rawalpindi was the first British Armed Merchant Cruiser (auxiliary cruiser) sunk during World War II .
Passenger ship
In 1923, P&O left four new passenger ships on keel as part of a post-war development program . These were the four R-class ocean liners named after cities and regions in India and Pakistan . The Ranpura (1925, 16,688 GRT) and the Ranchi (1925, 16,650 GRT) were built by the Hawthorn, Leslie & Company shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne and the Rawalpindi and Rajputana (1926, 16,644 GRT) by Harland & Wolff Heavy Industries Ltd. in Greenock , a branch of the Belfast shipyard Harland & Wolff . The Ranpura was launched on September 13, 1924, the Ranchi on January 24, 1925, the Rawalpindi on March 26, 1925 and the Rajputana on August 7, 1925.
Each time the ship was launched, the wife of a high-ranking representative of the shipping company or shipyard christened the ship in question. At the Rawalpindi it was Margaret Furneaux, Countess of Birkenhead, wife of Parliamentarian Frederick Edwin Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead . All four steamers were handed over to their shipping company in the order in which they were launched during 1925. The Rawalpindi was handed over on September 3, 1925. The day before, she had successfully passed her test drives. She had reached a top speed of 19.6 knots - over two knots more than her planned maximum speed.
The ships of the R-Class had a volume of over 16,000 GRT, a carrying capacity of over 8,000 tons and were equipped with four-cylinder quadruple expansion steam engines, which enabled a maximum cruising speed of 17 knots (31.5 km / h). They each had two propellers , two masts and two chimneys. They were built to transport passengers, freight and mail from London to Bombay and back via the Mediterranean and Suez Canal and were the first P&O ships to be equipped for the transport of frozen food. The dimensions of the Rawalpindi in detail were 16,695 GRT, 9416 NRT and 8850 DWT. Their machines made 15,000 PSi .
The passenger capacity was 307 passengers in the first and 288 in the second class. The passenger cabins were on decks A and B. The lounges of the first class, such as the lounge, the smoking salon and the music salon, were arranged amidships on the A and B decks. The smoking salon and the lounge of the second class were located in the aft part of the B-deck. The dining rooms of both classes were on the C deck. Large parts of the interior were designed by the decorator, pilot and actress Lady Elsie Mackay (1893–1928). She was the youngest daughter of the British colonial official James Mackay , who had been chairman of the British India Steam Navigation Company since 1913 .
Auxiliary cruiser
On August 26, 1939, a few days before the start of the Second World War, the Rawalpindi was requested by the British Admiralty and then converted into an auxiliary cruiser by the R. & H. Green & Silley Weir shipyard in the Royal Albert Dock . The aft chimney was removed and the ship was equipped with eight 152-mm and two 76-mm anti-aircraft guns.
Edward Coverley Kennedy was selected as the new commanding officer for the ship. Kennedy, who celebrated his 60th birthday on August 31, 1939, was a retired merchant ship captain with a lot of experience and a good reputation. He was the father of Ludovic Kennedy , who was also serving in the Royal Navy at the time . Ludovic Kennedy later said that his father was "very pleased" that the Admiralty had placed him in command of the Rawalpindi . On September 19, 1939, the converted ship was transferred to the Admiralty as HMS (His Majesty's Ship) Rawalpindi . It served from then on in the Northern Patrol , an operation of the Royal Navy, which controlled the waters around Iceland .
Sinking
On Thursday, November 23, 1939, the Rawalpindi was on another patrol when she sighted an unknown ship about 145 nautical miles northwest of the Faroe Islands at around 3:30 p.m. They first mistakenly identified it as the German armored ship Deutschland , which was known to be nearby at the time. The Rawalpindi radioed the position of the sighted ship to the base. However, it was not about the Deutschland , but about the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , which tried to break through the GIUK gap from the European Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic .
The two German ships signaled the crew of the Rawalpindi to stop and leave the ship. Captain Kennedy decided instead to take up the fight with the superior, modern battleships and turned his ship to seek protection in a rising fog bank. The chief mechanic of the ship heard him on the bridge saying "We'll fight them both, They'll sink us, and thatwill be that. Good-bye ”(We'll both fight, they'll sink us and that's it. Goodbye.). In the meantime, the ship's alarm was given and smoke barrels set on fire and thrown overboard, but they did not ignite. Before the cannons on board the Rawalpindi could be made ready for use, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau opened massive fire on the inadequately armed auxiliary cruiser.
After 13 minutes of intense bombardment, the Rawalpindi went up in flames. Grenades and anti-aircraft bullets smashed the superstructure. It sank within 40 minutes to the position 63 ° 40'N, 12 ° 31'W. Captain Kennedy, 38 officers and 226 other ranks were killed in the sinking (a total of 265 people). 26 survivors were taken in by the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau , while eleven more were rescued the day after the attack by the Chitral (15,248 GRT), another P&O ship that had been converted into an auxiliary cruiser. The Rawalpindi was able to prevent other ships from being affected. The two battleships did not continue their breakthrough but returned to Germany to avoid the Home Fleet battleships . The Newcastle and Delhi were already on their way to the scene of the accident.
Captain Edward Kennedy was posthumously Mentioned in Despatches . On December 6, 1939, Admiralty First Lord Winston Churchill honored the Rawalpindi crew in a speech to the British Parliament with the words “... whose glorious struggle against overwhelming superiority deserves the respect and honor of the House of Commons and the nation ". In an address to the nation on December 18, 1939, he compared the loss of the Rawalpindi with the sinking of the Admiral Graf Spee off Montevideo the day before.
Web links
- Rawalpindi in the Clydebuilt Ships Database
- Detailed description of the ships of P & O's R-Class ( Memento from October 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- Facts about the time of the Rawalpindi as an auxiliary cruiser
- Description of the Rawalpindi on one page about auxiliary cruisers from World War II
- Stephen Cashmore, David Bews: Against all Odds - Course of the attack on the Rawalpindi
- Rawalpindi in a list of sunk auxiliary cruisers