River class (1910)
|
|
|---|---|
| River, then I class | |
.jpg) The HMAS Warrego |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | destroyer |
| units | 6 RAN |
| Shipyard |
1+ Fairfield , Govan |
| Order | 1909/1913 |
| Launch | 1910 to 1915 |
| delivery | 1911 to 1916 |
| Namesake | Australian rivers |
| Whereabouts | segregated until 1930 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
750 tons |
| length |
75.0 m above sea level (246 ft); |
| width |
7.4 m (24 ft 3.75 in) |
| Draft |
2.6 m (8 ft 6 in) |
| crew |
66–73 men |
| drive |
3 Yarrow boiler |
| speed |
26 kn |
| Range |
2690 nm at 11.5 kn / 178 t oil |
| Armament |
|
The River class of the Royal Australian Navy was a class of six destroyers put into service from 1910, which was referred to as the Acheron class of the Royal Navy as an I-class from August 1912 when the British destroyer classes were named by letters . The boats were a new development of an oil-powered destroyer smaller than the Tribal class and considerably larger than the Royal Navy's cricket class . The boats were about the same as her following boats Acorn - and the Acheron class of the Royal Navy.
In 1909 three boats were ordered as the first newbuildings for the Commonwealth Naval Forces, the combination of the former naval units of the Australian colonies. Two were built in the UK, while the third boat was only built until it was launched, only to be dismantled and shipped in parts to Australia. There it was put back together.
Three more boats were ordered in Australia in 1913 and built until 1916. In 1917/1918 the six Australian boats were used in the Mediterranean. The outdated boats were also eliminated in 1929/1930 for cost reasons.
Building history
In the course of the establishment of the "Commonwealth Naval Forces", the later Royal Australian Navy , three destroyers ( Parramatta , Yarra and Warrego ) were ordered on February 6, 1909 as the first newbuildings .
Parramatta and Yarra were completed in Great Britain at Fairfield in Govan and W. Denny in Dumbarton , the Warrego was built at Fairfield until it was launched, but then dismantled again and the parts transported by ship to Australia for assembly and final assembly. The boats were forerunners to the Acorn class. The keel-laying of the first boat took place on March 17, 1909, its launching on February 9, 1910. The first boat of the Acorn class was started in February 1910 and launched in July 1910, the keel-laying of the Acheron , as a further development of the boats often incorrectly designated, took place in September 1910 and the launch on June 27, 1911, 16 months after the Parramatta . As oil-powered boats, they were smaller than the Beagle- class boats of the Royal Navy, whose armament they were initially given, had three shafts like the Acorn- class boats , but only two funnels, which probably means they are classified in the "I" class led.
The Australian destroyers had a displacement of 750 tons and a length of 75 meters. They were powered by three oil -fired Yarrow boilers and Parsons turbines , which enabled a top speed of 26 knots over three shafts with 10,000 hp. The crew of the boats consisted of 66 to 73 men with five officers. The boats were armed with a 102 mm L / 40-4-inch Mk.VIII cannon and three 12-pounder 76-mm L / 40 rapid-fire guns . For this purpose, they had three machine guns of the types Vickers and Lewis (2) and three single 18-inch torpedo tubes.
Of this type, three more boats ( Huon, Swan, Torrens ) were reordered in Australia on January 25, 1913 and were completed during the First World War , which were slightly longer. All six boats in the class were named after Australian rivers in the various states: the Parramatta River near Sydney in New South Wales , the Yarra River near Melbourne in Victoria , the Warrego River mainly in Queensland , the Huon River in Tasmania , the River Torrens near Adelaide in South Australia and the Swan River near Perth in Western Australia .
After their completion, the Parramatta and Yarra were placed in the service of the Royal Navy for the transfer voyage and immediately taken over by the Commonwealth Naval Forces when they reached Broome . The Warrego was only built until it could be launched, but then dismantled and transported in parts to Australia by ship. It was reassembled at the Cockatoo Island Dockyard . This should raise the standard of the Australian shipbuilding industry and give the shipyard on Cockatoo Island experience in military shipbuilding. This measure also made it possible to award the construction of the three boats of the 2nd series to the shipyard on Cockatoo Island.
Mission history
On September 19, 1910, the first two boats Parramatta and Yarra began their ferry trip in Portsmouth. The crews had been sent from Australia and the Royal Navy had provided 30 seamen. On November 15, the two boats reached Broome Australia. They were accompanied by their Dutch supply tanker. They covered the last leg of Singapore at an average speed of 13.7 knots. During this stage they had always been in radio contact with the cruiser Gibraltar , which accompanied the destroyers from Portsmouth with exchange crews for the cruisers Challenger and Prometheus of Australia Station .
Under the Australian flag, the two destroyers called at several ports along the west coast of Australia and were received in Melbourne. On March 1, 1911, the Parramatta was taken into service as HMAS (His Majesty's Australian Ship), although this designation only became official after July 10, when King George V gave the Commonwealth Naval Forces (CNF) permission to move into the Royal Australian Navy to be renamed, which from this point also led the White Ensign . The Australian Commonwealth flag then replaced the Union Jack on the bow.
On October 4, 1913, the destroyers Parramatta , Yarra and the Warrego, now completed in Australia, took part in the arrival of the Australian fleet in Sydney Harbor, which was organized on the occasion of the arrival of the new battle cruiser HMAS Australia and the takeover of the continent's naval defense Royal Navy meant. The Australian cruisers Melbourne , Sydney and Encounter were also involved .
War effort
In 1914 three River class boats were operational. The Warrego was at sea and met with the Sydney and sister boat Yarra at Thursday Island . The rest of the Australian fleet, including the Parramatta , ran north as the German East Asia Squadron was expected in the area of the German protected area in the Bismarck Archipelago . The Yarra cleared the port of Matupi and Warrego and Parramatta called at Simpson port (now Rabaul) on the night of August 11 ; German ships were not discovered. After completing other tasks, Sydney and Warrego landed troops on September 11 to occupy Rabaul, the radio station at Bita Paka and the governor's seat in Herbertshöhe (now Kokopo) . On September 17th, the German governor Eduard Haber surrendered .
The large units of the fleet were then withdrawn, while the three destroyers supported the Australian troops in the occupation of the Bismarck Archipelago and the rest of German New Guinea . In December 1914 they even ran a considerable distance up the Sepik because a German auxiliary cruiser was suspected there. In fact, the German auxiliary cruisers Cormoran and Prinz Eitel Friedrich were temporarily in the sea area without being discovered. The Cormoran , which arrived at the end of August , was in Alexishafen on September 23 , when the Australians occupied Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen (today Madang) , 25 km further south on the 24th . The auxiliary cruiser escaped via Yap to Guam , where he was interned in December 1914. The Prinz Eitel Friedrich appeared on September 28 for a meeting with the Cormoran in Alexishafen and decided to follow the East Asia Squadron to South America in view of the occupation of the reserve by Australian troops. The only uncontrolled German "unit" in New Guinea was a small survey team under Lieutenant Hermann Detzner .
On February 5, 1915, the destroyers Parramatta , Yarra and Warrego were withdrawn to Australia to take over coastal protection tasks on the Australian east coast after an overhaul in Sydney. In October 1915 the boats were moved to Sandakan via Thursday Island and Timor in order to control any activities of the German ships interned in the Dutch East Indies or the Philippines . Singapore and Saigon were also used as bases .
From the summer of 1916, the three boats were replaced by the Australian newbuildings Houn , Torrens and Swan in the "Far East Patrol", which had since come into service and arrived in Sandakan by September 17th. The older boats were overhauled at home and then used to secure Australian waters.
At the request of the Admiralty , the decision was made in spring 1917 to use the six Australian boats to reinforce the anti-submarine defense in the Mediterranean. The boats were repaired in Australia and Singapore and met on July 7, 1917 at Cocos Islands and marched via Diego Garcia to Aden and reached Port Said on August 9, 1917 .
Use in the Mediterranean
In August 1917, the six boats of the Australian River Class arrived at the Mediterranean Fleet and strengthened the 5th Destroyer Flotilla with the first I- Class destroyers.
Before they could carry out a planned training on anti-submarine defense, the boats were used for the first escort security. Parramatta , Yarra , Houn and Torrens accompanied a convoy to Malta without losses and attacked unsuccessfully suspected submarines on the way. Swan and Warrego secured ships on the way to Alexandria and then ran to Malta until August 21, where all boats underwent brief training. From October the Australian flotilla was then stationed in Brindisi and was part of the surveillance of the Otranto lock , which was usually carried out every four days by three boats. Some relief came in December thanks to additional French destroyers.
During the routine overhauls, the boats were also retrofitted for anti-submarine defense and received four drainage lanes for depth charges and two depth charge launchers. The rearmost torpedo tube was dismantled for this. Parramatta , Yarra, and Houn were also able to carry an observation balloon with them. On November 16, 1917, the Parramatta succeeded in hauling the Italian transporter Orione (1883, 4016 GRT) into Taranto , which had received a torpedo hit on the stern from the Austrian submarine U-43 . Warrego and Swan rescued castaways who had left the sinking transport and the Yarra was trying to track down the attacker.
On December 25, 1917, the Huon in Taranto took the Greek Prime Minister Venizelos and his staff on board on the return voyage from an Allied conference in London and brought him, accompanied by the Warrego , to Athens .
On the night of April 22nd to 23rd 1918, the five Austro-Hungarian destroyers Triglav , Uzsok , Dukla , Lika and Csepel of the Tátra class under frigate captain Karl Herkner attempted the allied shipping between Italy and Albania near Valona (today Vlorë , Albania). Six Allied destroyers stood at sea, divided in pairs and secured the strait at a distance of ten miles from each other. The Australian Torrens formed a group with the French Cimeterre , another the two Acorn boats Alarm and Comet and the third the Hornet and Jackal of the Acheron class. The latter sighted the Austro-Hungarian destroyers and took up combat with them after the Hornet had been hit and an ammunition chamber in the forecastle exploded. The burning boat went in circles with its oars jammed. Jackal turned around in support of the sister boat, but the Austrian commander Herkner on the Triglav broke off the engagement after 15 minutes because he assumed that the Allied fleet had been alerted. The Jackal could not follow the faster kuk destroyers and lost sight of them after midnight. 25 minutes later, Torrens , Alarm and Cimeterre caught up with the Jackal , but after another 50 minutes the four boats broke off the search and pursuit without result. The Austrians ran back to Cattaro (now Kotor in Montenegro ) and had not suffered a single hit. Seven men lost their lives and 25 were wounded on the two British boats.
On the morning of May 14, 1918, the Acheron destroyer Phoenix was lost at the Otranto Barrier when it fell from the Austro-Hungarian submarine U-27 at position 40 ° 12´30´´N, 18 ° 52´12 ´´O was torpedoed Warrego tried unsuccessfully to tow the damaged boat to Valona; After more than 4 hours the Phoenix sank to 40 ° 23.5´N, 19 ° 14´E directly in front of the harbor. With the exception of two seamen who were killed in the torpedo hit, their crew was recovered before the boat capsized.
On August 8th, Yarra and Huon collided and both had to go into the dock. The Huon came to Genoa for repairs, where the Spanish flu broke out on board and claimed five lives. It was not ready for action again until the day before the end of the war. When the Allied fleet bombarded Durazzo (today Durrës ), which was occupied by the Austrians, on October 2nd, the Australian destroyers Swan and Warrego were involved. The Torrens was in Messina , the Parramatta in Piraeus for overhaul.
In view of the impending collapse of the Central Powers, Torrens and Yarra moved with British units to Mudros on October 17 , where the Parramatta from the overhaul in Greece also moved. Swan and Warrego first went to Alexandria to accompany troop transports to Saloniki .
End of war
When, after the surrender of Turkey on October 30, 1918, the Allied fleet entered the Dardanelles on November 12 and marched to Constantinople , four Australian boats were also there, as the Swan with British and Greek officers had also moved in front of the Dardanelles at the end of the war .
Some boats also took on duties in the Black Sea. On November 25, Parramatta and Swan sailed with six British destroyers to Sevastopol to support the takeover of Russian ships by anti-Bolshevik Russian officers. The Parramatta then provided a regular postal service between Sevastopol and Constantinople. Yarra and Torrens ran Batum and Novorossiysk and returned to Constantinople Opel over Sevastopol. The Swan with a Russian admiral clarified the situation in eastern Ukraine with the French destroyer Bisson . The destroyers called at Kerch and Mariupol and dispatched liaison officers to the Cossacks under Krasnov, who were fighting the Red Army, until an advance by the Red Army forced the mission to be abandoned. The Warrego also ran to Sevastopol once. After her repair , the active Huon was also relocated to İzmit on the Marmara Sea , the main Allied berth. Before the turn of the year, the Australian boats left the Mediterranean fleet to return home via Great Britain.
Return to the Homeland
_-_Project_Gutenberg_eText_18333.jpg)
On the voyage to Great Britain, the destroyers came into a heavy storm off the Portuguese coast. Only the Yarra ran to Plymouth until January 8, 1919. Warrego , Torrens and Swan had taken refuge in the Tagus estuary and arrived on the 11th, followed by Parramatta and Huon on the 14th, who had taken refuge in El Ferrol .
On March 6, 1919 and from Malta, the six destroyers ran with the cruiser Melbourne in association via Aden, Colombo , Singapore and Darwin back to Sydney, where they entered on May 21, 1919. Parramatta and Yarra ran out of fuel on their return voyage shortly before Darwin, and the Warrego had to haul in their sister boats to Darwin.
Final fate
.jpg)
The three older boats went into reserve in the southern winter of 1919. On the occasion of the visit of the British heir to the throne Edward on the HMS Renown , all boats were activated again. In the following years, they were mostly only used as stationary training boats at the naval bases in the states and were finally eliminated in the years 1926 to 1929 - also due to a lack of budget.
The delivery of the so-called “gift fleet” by the Royal Navy provided the RAN with considerably modern boats with the flotilla leader Anzac and five destroyers of the 'S' class Swordsman , Success , Stalwart , Tasmania and Tattoo .
Of the discarded boats, three were used as target ships. The first boat to be sunk was the Torrens on November 4, 1930. Huon followed on April 10 and Yarra on June 11, 1931. Warrego was disarmed in Cockatoo Island in 1929 and then used as a barge in the shipyard. On July 23, 1931, the hull sank at the berth and was demolished on site.
The Parramatta and Swan were also disarmed and sold to the New South Wales Justice Department as a barge for prisoners of work in road construction along the Hawkesbury River . In 1933, boats were sold several times to serve as a houseboat for fishermen or as barges on the river. In early 1934 Swan and Parramatta were dragged down the river to be demolished in Sydney. In extremely bad weather, the tow lines were cut for safety reasons. The Swan sank in the river and the Parramatta ran aground. In 1973 the bow and stern of the Parramatta were cut off to serve as monuments.
The river class boats of the RAN
| Surname | Shipyard | Keel laying | Launch | in service | Final fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parramatta D55 | Fairfield building no. 469 | 03/17/1909 | February 9, 1910 | 09/10/1910 | 20.04.1928 deleted, stranded in 1934 |
| Yarra D79 | William Denny building no. 899 | 1909 | April 9, 1910 | 1.03.1911 | 3 September 1929 canceled, sunk in 1931 as a target ship |
| Warrego D70 | Fairfield building no. 470 ; Cockatoo | 1909/1910 | 4.04.1911 | 1.06.1912 | April 19, 1928 deleted, dropped in 1931 |
| Huon D50 | Cockatoo Dockyard | 01/25/1913 | December 19, 1914 | December 14, 1915 | 6/7/1928 canceled, sunk in 1931 as a target ship |
| Torrens D67 | Cockatoo | 01/25/1913 | 08/28/1915 | July 3, 1916 | 19.07.1920 Reserve, sunk in 1930 as a target ship |
| Swan D61 | Cockatoo | 01/25/1913 | 12/11/1915 | 08/16/1916 | May 15, 1928 deleted, dropped in 1934 |
literature
- Vic Cassells: The Destroyers: their battles and their badges . Simon & Schuster, East Roseville, NSW 2000, ISBN 0-7318-0893-2 .
- Maurice Cocker: Destroyers of the Royal Navy, 1893-1981. Ian Allen, 1983, ISBN 0-7110-1075-7 .
- Norman Friedman: British Destroyers: From Earliest Days to the Second World War. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley 2009, ISBN 978-1-84832-049-9 .
- Paul Halpern: The Battle of the Otranto Straits: Controlling the Gateway to the Adriatic in World War I. Indiana University Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-253-34379-6 .
- Antony Preston: Destroyers. Hamlyn, ISBN 0-600-32955-0 .
- Chris Clark: David Stevens, John Reeve (Eds.): The Navy and the Nation: the influence of the Navy on modern Australia . Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW 2005, ISBN 1-74114-200-8 .
- David Stevens: David Stevens (Ed.): The Royal Australian Navy . Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, VIC 2001, ISBN 0-19-555542-2 .
- Vic Cassells: The Destroyers: their battles and their badges . Simon & Schuster, East Roseville, NSW 2000, ISBN 0-7318-0893-2 .
- Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Conway Maritime Press, 1985, pp. 72f.
- Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. (Ed. John Moore), Studio (London 1990), ISBN 1-85170-378-0 .
Web links
- Acheron class
- HMAS Parramatta (I)
- HMAS Yarra (I)
- HMAS Warrego (I)
- HMAS Huon (I)
- HMAS Torrens (I)
- HMAS Swan (I)
- Acheron - and River-class destroyers
- I-class in Jane's 1919
- HANDBOOK for the 4 "Mark VIII. And VIII. BL Guns
- Britain 4 "/ 40 (10.2 cm) BL Mark VIII and Mark XI
Individual evidence
- ^ Cassells: The Destroyers. Pp. 74, 138.
- ^ Cassells, p. 190.
- ↑ a b Cassells, p. 75
- ^ Clark, in Stevens & Reeve, The Navy and the Nation. P. 313f.
- ^ Cassells, p. 191
- ↑ THE NEW DESTROYEBS. WELCOME IN "THE WEST. The Advertiser (Adelaide), November 17, 1910
- ↑ The cruiser Gibraltar had already made a trip to Australia with exchange crews in 1908
- ^ Stevens: The Royal Australian Navy. P. 25f.
- ↑ Cassells, pp. 75f.
- ↑ Halpern: The Battle of the Otranto Straits: Controlling the Gateway to the Adriatic in World War I.
- ^ See: French Naval Operations, Engagements and Ship Losses in the Adriatic in World War 1
- ^ Austro-Hungarian Navy Website ( Memento from April 28, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Gibson: The German Submarine War, 1914-1918 p. 271
- ^ HMAS Warrego
- ^ David Hepper: British Warship Losses in the Ironclad Era 1860-1919. P. 133.
- ↑ Royal Naval Casualties May 1918
- ↑ Account of the Allied fleet's entry into the Dardanelles by SE Brooks ( Memento from February 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The Gift Fleet
- ↑ Cassells, pp. 46, 140, 200
- ↑ Cassells, pp. 192f.
- ↑ Cassells, p. 76 f.