Royal Navy Section Belge

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The Royal Navy Section Belge were the naval forces of the " Free Belgian Army " during the Second World War and was founded in 1940. Belgian sailors manned British ships and fought on the side of the Allies under the Belgian flag. In 1946 the Royal Navy Section Belge was transferred to the newly founded Belgian Navy .

Prehistory and foundation

Belgian sailors during training in Skegness in 1945

When the Belgian army had to surrender to the Wehrmacht on May 28, 1940 , several units of the Belgian naval forces continued the fight against the Germans. The small Belgian navy, the "Corps de Marine", which was only re-established in 1939, had only a few units - it consisted of 22 boats: 3 patrol boats, 6 trawlers, 7 outpost boats, 4 yachts as well as a tugboat and an old tanker. After the fighting in retreat and internment, only one boat, the patrol boat P6 - later HMS Kernot - made the crossing to Great Britain. The sailors as well as the ship were integrated into the Royal Navy there.

Belgian civilian seamen had also found their way to Great Britain - fishermen who had helped evacuate Allied troops from Dunkirk ( Operation Dynamo ), seafarers from Belgian merchant ships or members of the army with experience in seafaring, but also seamen and cadets from the Congo surprised by the war civilian sailing training ship Mercator . They were also taken over into the Royal Navy and used on various British ships. The Royal Navy integrated around half of the Belgian fishing fleet, around 280 trawlers, into floating units and used them in coastal protection for patrols, monitoring network locks or as balloon carriers. The Ministry of War Transport, in turn, used Belgian cargo ships for military transports.

When the Belgian government in London succeeded in obtaining warring party status from Great Britain in October 1940, the first legal foundations for negotiations on Belgian armed forces in exile were laid. The initiator and organizer of the creation of Belgian naval forces in British exile was the naval officer, Lieutenant Victor Billet . In talks between representatives of the Belgian economic mission and the Belgian Shipping Advisory Committee as well as the British Admiralty, he succeeded in founding a Belgian section within the Royal Navy - the Royal Navy Section Belge (RNSB). It was agreed that Great Britain would provide the ships and Belgium the crews - exclusively volunteers. On April 3, 1941, both parties also agreed that the ships of the RNSB could set their own national in addition to the "White Ensign" of the Royal Navy. The units of the RNSB were operationally subordinate to the British Admiralty and administratively to the Belgian naval administration - in the form of the Belgian Ministry of Communications, which had also been responsible for the navy before the war.

Ready on 22 October 1940, the first Belgian volunteers in training camp " HMS Royal Arthur " in Skegness in the county of Lincolnshire arrived. For the duration of the war, "Royal Arthur" was used for five-week basic training before the teams were transferred to the next camp for further courses as shooters, radio operators, signal mates, drivers, stewards, etc. The officer cadets first came to the “ Royal Naval College ” of Greenwich before they too went on to special courses in weapons, torpedoes, mine detection and anti-submarine defense.

Units and missions

HMS Buttercup

From January 1941, the first Belgian teams were used in the RNSB.

Royal Navy units assigned to the Royal Navy Section Belge (RNSB) (1940–1945):

The two corvettes were used in convoy protection and carried during the war together in the “5. Escort Group ”to protect around 70 convoys - mainly in the Atlantic, on the American coast and the Caribbean, in the Mediterranean and during the operation for the Allied landing in Normandy in 1944.

HMS Phrontis
  • Patrol boats
    • HMS Kernot , ex P 16 of the "Corps de Marine": seized by the Royal Navy in July 1940. In service from March 1943 and until around September / December 1944 as a guard boat in the port of Liverpool .
    • Quentin Roosevelt , former Aviso of the French Navy: Served January 1941 to January 1942 with the 24th Anti-Submarine Group in Kirkwall . The volunteers who later formed the crews of the corvettes HMS Godetia and HMS Buttercup were trained on the ship.
    • HMS Raitea : In service from January to September 1941
    • HMS Sheldon : In service between April 1941 and July 1943
    • HMS Electra II , former trawler: in service between April 1941 and July 1943
    • HMS Phrontis , former trawler: in service between April 1941 and July 1943 with the “Auxiliary Patrol” in Stornoway , Scotland .
MMS 187
  • 9 British minesweepers as the 118th minesweeping flotilla
    • The RNSB also operated the 118th minesweeping flotilla, consisting of wooden coastal minesweepers of the MMS class with the boats MMS 43 (in service February 1944 to July 1945), MMS 75 (August 1945 to May 1946), MMS 77 (February 1944 to October 1945), MMS 79 (October 1945 to May 1946), MMS 112 (August 1944 to May 1946), MMS 182 (May 1946 to July 1954), MMS 187 (30 September 1943 to July 1954), MMS 188 (28 May 1942 to July 1954), MMS 189 (May 1946 to July 1954), MMS 191 (July 1942 to July 1954), MMS 193 (September 30, 1943 to September 1954) and MMS 266 (May 1946 to July 1954). From 1943 the Harwich flotilla operated in the Canal and the North Sea to clear mines. In November 1944 she cleared the Scheldt estuary and opened the port of Antwerp for Allied supplies.

There were more Belgian officers on the manning of the ships and boats mentioned than could be deployed on Belgian-manned ships. These officers served on ships of the Royal Navy and were deployed in the Channel, on the British coasts or in the Mediterranean on patrols, escort services, mine clearance, in landing departments in southern Europe and in Normandy.

From the RNSB to the Belgian Navy

A change in the associations used by the RNSB took place after the liberation of Belgium by the Allies. The Belgian government withdrew the crews of the two corvettes from the ships and returned the two units to the British Royal Navy. The crews were now needed in Belgium and deployed in the ports. The minesweeping units were still in action - even after the end of the war.

At the end of the war in Europe, the RNSB presented the following picture: The RNSB consisted of 96 officers, 1,230 NCOs and sailors. There were also 796 recruits in Great Britain. At the same time, the Belgian government was working to create its own navy. Their tasks were defined as: defending the Belgian coast, escorting Belgian merchant ships, placing the air defense crews on board these ships, keeping coastal waters and estuaries open and supporting other navies in the event of an invasion. On February 1, 1946, the Belgian naval forces were created by decree. Around 1,200 men from the former RNSB formed the basis of the navy.

literature

  • Frank Decat: De Belgen in Engeland 40/45: de Belgische strijdkrachten in Groot-Brittannië tijdens WOII , Terra-Lannoo, Uitgeverij 2007, ISBN 978-90-209-6981-8 .
  • Johnny Geldhof: Royal Navy Section Belge 1940-1945 , Verraes, Heule 2002, ISBN 9074705081 .
  • Johnny Geldhof: De Strijd op Zee in 1940–1945. Verteld door de Royal Navy Section Belge , 2000, Uitgeverij Groeninghe nv, ISBN 9071868338 .
  • Robert W. Allen: Churchill's guests: Britain and the Belgian exiles during World War II , Praeger, Westport, Connecticut 2003, ISBN 9780313322181 .
  • Robert Gardiner / Roger Chesneau: Conway's All the world's fighting ships 1922-1946 , Conway Maritime Press, London 1980, ISBN 0-8317-0303-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/corps_de_marine_077.htm
  2. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/royal_navy_section_belge_047.htm
  3. ↑ ibid., Http://marinebelge.be/royal%20navy.html
  4. ↑ ibid.
  5. ↑ ibid., Http://marinebelge.be/instruction%2040.html , http://marinebelge.be/royal%20navy.html
  6. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/royal_navy_section_belge_047.htm , http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/flotte_rnsb_105.htm
  7. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/les_corvettes_776.htm
  8. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/les_corvettes_776.htm , http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/hms_godetia__k226__244.htm , http://marine-mra-klm.be/hms_buttercup__k193__539 .htm
  9. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/flotte_rnsb_105.htm , http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/royal_navy_section_belge_047.htm
  10. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/hms_kernot_255.htm , http://www.marinebelge.be/kernot.html
  11. ↑ Decat, p 67
  12. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/les_mms_777.htm , http://www.marinebelge.be/118%20flottille%20mms.html , cf. Also listed in Gardiner, p. 385 and http://www.navypedia.org/ships/belgium/be_ms_mms1.htm
  13. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/royal_navy_section_belge_047.htm
  14. ↑ http://www.marine-mra-klm.be/de_la_rnsb_a_la_force_navale_795.htm
  15. ↑ ibid., Http://marinebelge.be/royal%20navy.html