Sao Paulo (1910)

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Brazilian battleship São Paulo trials.jpg
history
Builder: Vickers , Barrow-in-Furness
Budget and start of construction: 1907
Launch: April 19, 1909
Commissioning: July 1910
Fate: missing November 4th 1951
Technical specifications
Displacement: Standard: 19,508  t
Maximum: 21,717 t
Length: between the perpendiculars: 152.4 m
over all: 165.5 m
Width: 25.29 m
Draft: 7.4 m
Speed: 21  kn
Crew: 1010 men
Drive:
Bunker amount: 2400 t coal maximum oil
plus 370 t oil maximum
Range: 8000  nautical miles at 10 knots
Armament:
  • 12 × 30.5-cm (12- inch ) L / 45
  • 22 (from 1917: 12) × 12-cm L / 50
  • 4 × 47-mm (3-pounder)
  • from 1917: 2 × 7.6 cm L / 50 flak
Armor:
  • Belt: up to 229 mm (11 inches)
  • Main armored deck: up to 51 mm (2 inches)
  • Gun turrets: 229 mm (11 in)

The Brazilian battleship São Paulo was a 1910 built on a British shipyard Dreadnought of Minas Geraes class . After its decommissioning in the late 1940s, it was cannibalized and was supposed to be towed to Great Britain for final scrapping in 1951 . The ship went down on the overpass. The São Paulo is the largest lost warship in maritime history to date.

History of the ship

After its commissioning, the São Paulo was transferred to Rio de Janeiro, where it arrived on October 25th. Shortly thereafter, she and her sister ship Minas Geraes were involved in the Revolta da Chibata on November 22, 1910.

After Brazil declared war on the Central Powers on October 25, 1917 , the São Paolo should reinforce the British Grand Fleet . Due to its poor condition and the lack of modern fire control equipment, it was first sent to the USA for a major overhaul in June 1918. Due to machine problems, she had to stop at Salvador da Bahia on the way . The modernization lasted until 1920. It received a fire control system from Sperry , and rangefinders from Bausch & Lomb were installed on the raised towers “B” and “X” . The five middle casemate guns on each side and the 47 mm guns were removed, two anti-aircraft guns were placed and the main turrets received armored longitudinal bulkheads. In early 1920, the ship returned to Brazil.

Between 1920 and 1921 the São Paulo made three trips to Europe.

In 1922, the ship was used against the first Tenentismo revolt and shot at the Forte de Copacabana , which was held by insurgents . In November 1924 there was a mutiny on the São Paulo . The mutineers transferred the ship to Montevideo , where it was again taken over by the Brazilian Navy .

The São Paulo was scheduled for the same modernization as her sister ship in the 1930s, but her condition was so bad that it was abandoned. After Brazil entered the war in 1942, the ship was transferred to Recife , where it served as a floating battery for port defense. The São Paulo was decommissioned in 1946 and canceled in 1947.

The downfall

Since the Hulks of the two battleships in Brazil could not be scrapped and recycled due to a lack of technical possibilities, the Brazilian government sold them to England and Italy. On September 10, 1951, the two British salvage tugs Bustler and Dexterous began in Rio de Janeiro to tow the Hulk with a nine-man transfer crew on board to England. On November 4, the tow train got into a hurricane a good 280 kilometers west of the Azores . Presumably on the night of November 5, both tow ropes of the tug broke, so that the Hulk drifted alone in the Atlantic. The radio connection to the crew had already broken off beforehand. After the bustler's towline broke , her radar was switched on, but the Sao Paulo apparently capsized and sank within a very short time. An intensive search of the sea area in question, also with the help of aircraft, was unsuccessful. No parts of the wreckage were sighted. The disappearance of such a large and solidly built ship is still a mystery to many laypeople. In fact, there were understandable reasons for the disaster that cost nine people their lives.

At the negotiation of the Maritime Administration , which took place in 1954 on the occasion of the sinking of the São Paulo in England, it turned out that the Hulk had already been heavily looted by scrap dealers. There were no machines or drive units on board. This meant that the Hulk could only be steered by the two tugs. Allegedly, openings in the Hulk were still poorly sealed at a Brazilian naval shipyard, but the suspicion remains that this work was carried out very negligently. Due to the delay in this work, the tug started moving much later than expected and ended up in the area of ​​the European autumn storms. It remained unclear whether the tow cables actually broke on November 4, 1951 or were cut by the ship's command of the Bustler and Dexterous in order to avoid an accident with the drifting São Paulo . The nine members of the transfer team were presumably dead when the São Paulo sank. There was no light or other energy sources on the ship, and all protective devices and wooden parts had already been removed from the ship in Rio de Janeiro.

See also

literature

  • Siegfried Breyer: battleships and battle cruisers 1905–1970; JF Lehmanns Verlagsgesellschaft mbH Munich 1970; ISBN 3-88199-474-2
  • Fritz-Otto Busch : Battleship "Sao Paulo". A battleship disappears . In: Anchor booklets. Seafaring all over the world , Arthur Moewig-Verlag, Munich 1954.
  • Adrian J. English: Armed Forces of Latin America. Their Histories, Development, Present Strength and Military Potential , Jane's Publishing Inc., 2nd ed. London 1985.
  • Mike J. Whitley: Battleships of World War Two; Cassel & Co London 2001; ISBN 0-304-35957-2
  • Article Battleship Sao Paulo , in: Alan Villiers: Verschollen auf See , Bielefeld 1965, pp. 73–94.
  • Weyers Taschenbuch der Kriegsflotten 1943/44 , Munich / Berlin 1944, 3rd new edition Bonn 1996.

Web links

Commons : São Paulo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ History of the São Paulo and her sister ship (port.)