Serrano class

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Serrano class
The Hyatt
The Hyatt
Ship data
country ChileChile Chile
Ship type destroyer
Shipyard Thornycroft ,
Woolston, Southampton
Construction period 1927 to 1929
Launch of the type ship January 25, 1928
Units built 6th
period of service 1929 to 1962
Ship dimensions and crew
length
91.4 m ( Lüa )
87.9 m ( Lpp )
width 8.84 m
Draft Max. 3.86 m
displacement Standard : 1,090 tons
Maximum: 1,430 tons
 
crew 130 men
Machine system
machine 3 Thornycroft boilers
2 sets of Parsons geared turbines
Machine
performance
28,000 PS (20,594 kW)
Top
speed
35 kn (65 km / h)
propeller 2
Armament

The Serrano class was a destroyer class in the Chilean Navy . The six destroyers of the class were completed in Great Britain at Thornycroft in 1928/29 and were a scaled down version of the Royal Navy's experimental destroyer HMS Amazon . The six ships were decommissioned between 1957 and 1966.

Building history

The British builders for warships tried to sell ships abroad in the twenties, as the Royal Navy hardly ordered any newbuildings, as it had a large number of wartime newbuildings in many areas and its construction activity was also limited by the naval contracts . The British governments supported these efforts in part to preserve jobs in the shipbuilding industry. Military deliveries showed and created bonds without entering into firm alliances. In addition, the competition in the civilian sector was difficult, as in addition to the German, Scandinavian and Dutch shipyards offered good and innovative buildings. When the Royal Navy first wrote out destroyers in 1924, only orders for two prototypes followed. It was not until 1928 that the first order was placed for new standard A-class destroyers .

The shipyard John I. Thornycroft & Company of the prototype HMS Amazon tried to sell modifications of their design. When the British government decided in 1927 to procure the nine A-class boats, Thornycroft had requisitioned the order for six of the Amazon- like destroyers from Chile at fixed prices, the keel-laying of which then took place before the orders for the Royal Navy.

The Chilean boats should be a little smaller than the Amazon . With a length of 91.4 m over all, a width of 8.84 m and a draft of 3.86 m, the standard displacement was only 1090 t, a maximum of 1430 t. Three superheated steam boilers from the shipyard supplied two Parsons gearbox turbine sets with a maximum output of 24,000 hp, which enabled a maximum speed of 35 knots via two propellers. The ships had facilities to be used in both tropical and arctic conditions.

The armament differed from the British model in that it did not have the rearmost gun. The main armament was only three 4.7 inch (12 cm) guns of the Armstrong export version of the British standard destroyer gun . There was also a 3 inch anti-aircraft gun and three machine guns . The torpedo armament of the new buildings consisted of two triple sets for 21 inch (533 mm) torpedoes and two depth charges were available for anti-submarine defense. Three of the six destroyers could also be used as mine layers, the other three destroyers had a mine search facility.

Destroyer Teniente Serrano
Ingeniero Hyatt torpedo boat

Thornycroft built all six ships for the contract at the Woolston shipyard near Southampton . The keel-laying of the first two newbuildings took place in June 1927 and the last destroyer of the class in March 1928. The launch of the new destroyer took place between January 25, 1928 and November 24, 1928 with the participation of Chilean representatives in Southampton. The ships were given names that had previously carried Chilean torpedo boats. The new destroyers were completed by July 1929. Two were always taken over at the same time at the shipyard, which were then transferred together to Chile.

Commissioning and transfer

As the first of the new buildings, Teniente Serrano and Capitan Orella were taken over on December 18, 1929 and started on January 3, 1929 in Southampton for Valparaíso. The two destroyers ran via Portland, Las Palmas , Pernambuco , Montevideo to Punta Arenas , where they arrived on February 13. They reached Valparaíso on February 22, 1929 via Puerto Bueno, Puerto Edén and San Antonio .

On April 15, 1929 Guardiamarina Riquelme and Ingeniero Hyatt were taken over and began their transfer trip the following day. On the last leg from San Antonio to Valparaiso on June 2, the Chilean President, the Minister of the Navy and high-ranking naval members were on board the new ships.

As the last couple, Cirujano Videla and Sargento Aldea were taken over on July 26, 1929 at the shipyard, which from August 9th via Weymouth, Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife , San Vicente de Cabo Verde , Pernambuco, Montevideo, Punta Arenas, Puerto Bueno and Puerto Grappler reached Talcahuano on September 28th , where the Aldea carried out some repairs, while Videla continued to Valparaiso via San Antonio until October 1st; the sister ship arrived on October 4, 1929 as the last destroyer in Valparaíso.

The ships in Chilean service

The ships were considered extremely successful. However, they appeared to be less suitable and too easily built for the sea conditions in the south of the country. For service close to the Southern Ocean, the Chilean Navy preferred the older destroyers of the Almirante Lynch class .

Almirante Condell

The Chilean government, however, had problems maintaining the relatively large navy. In 1931 the government cut the wages of the sailors by 30%, whereupon a mutiny broke out in Coquimbo on August 31, 1931 , where the Chilean Navy regularly had long training stays in the southern winter. The starting point was the battleship Almirante Latorre , which had returned from Europe after being overhauled , was in training and was the flagship of the training squadron , which also included the Almirante Lynch and the destroyers Serrano and Orella . All fourteen units of the Chilean Navy in Coquimbo joined the mutiny, including the flagship of the active fleet, the battleship O'Higgins and the destroyers Hyatt, Videla , Aldea and Riquelme of the active squadron. The army and air force that remained on the side of the government tried to prevent the navy units mutinying in other locations from interacting with the Coquimbo fleet. The air force attacked the fleet in Coquimbo with 20 aircraft on September 6, but this was successfully repulsed. Only one submarine was damaged, five aircraft were damaged, one of which crashed. But the destroyers Hyatt and Riquelme left the association the following night and returned to the government in Valpareiso. The massive reactions of the armed forces loyal to the government against Coquimbo and especially Talcahuano as well as the loss of unity through the defection of the two destroyers caused the mutineers to give up. The fleet ran to Valparaiso on September 7 and surrendered to the authorities. In the court martial that followed, in addition to many prison sentences, six death sentences were pronounced but not carried out. When in 1932 a “República Socialista de Chile” existed for a short time, all mutineers were pardoned.

The service of the ships went without any particularities. Since Chile did not participate in the war until the end of World War II and Chile, unlike in World War I, was hardly used as a stage for overseas operations by the German Reich, there were few tasks for the Chilean Navy to protect the neutrality of the country.

After the end of the First World War, the small destroyers of the Serrano class were only slightly modernized. The anti-aircraft armament for close range was strengthened in the late 1940s by the installation of three 20 mm L / 70 Oerlikon automatic cannons . A fundamental modernization of the ships did not take place. Only Serrano and Orella are said to have been converted into anti -submarine ships in the 1950s and to have received appropriate sensors. No information could be found on the extent of a change in armament.

The ships of the class

Surname start of building Launch takeover Type period of service
Teniente Serrano 06/21/1927 01/25/1928 December 18, 1928 ML February 22, 1929 in Chile, December 1962 a. D.
Capitan Orella 06.1927 March 8, 1928 December 18, 1928 ML February 22, 1929 in Chile, December 1962 a. D.
Guardiamarina  Riquelme 07/18/1927 05/21/1928 04/15/1929 MS June 1929 in Chile,
August 1962 a. D.
Ingeniero Hyatt 09/23/1927 07/21/1928 04/15/1929 ML June 1929 in Chile,
August 1962 a. D.
Cirujano Videla 01/25/1928 10/16/1928 07/26/1929 MS October 1929 in Chile,
June 1957 a. D.
Sargento Aldea March 8, 1928 11/24/1928 07/26/1929 MS October 1929 in Chile,
June 1957 a. D.
Note: The ships are usually only mentioned with the family name in their name; However, like most Chilean ships, they probably had a name made up of the rank / function and family name of the honored hero of the Chilean Navy. The first letters of the family names were used to identify the individual units.

New namesake

Serrano , Orella and Riquelme were named three US-preserved express transporters of the Charles Lawrence- class, a variant of destroyer escorts of the Buckley-class .

Individual evidence

  1. 311 ts / 30 kn destroyer, 1896 Laird: 1 ° Teniente Serrano , 1 ° Capitán Orella , both deleted in 1924 , 1 ° Guardiamarina Riquelme , renamed in 1928 / deleted in 1930
  2. 140 ts / 26.8 kn torpedo boats, 1896 Yarrow: 1 ° Ingeniero Hyatt , 1 ° "Cirujano Videla", both deleted in 1922
  3. ^ "Sargento Aldea", 80 ts / 20 kn torpedo boat, 1885 Yarrow, deleted in 1920 ( Memento from January 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )

literature

Web links