USS Jacob Jones (DD-61)
.jpg) USS Jacob Jones |
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Shipyard |
New York Shipbuilding Company |
| Keel laying | August 3, 1914 |
| Launch | May 29, 1915 |
| 1. Period of service |
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|
| Commissioning | February 10, 1916 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk by torpedo on December 6, 1917 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
1060 ts (standard) |
| length |
105.25 m (315 ft 5 in) |
| width |
10.15 m (30 ft 6 in) |
| Draft |
3.20 m (9 ft 8 in) |
| crew |
99 |
| drive |
4 Yarrow boilers, 2 screws |
| speed |
30 knots (52 km / h) |
| Armament |
4 × 4 " cannons (105 mm / L50) M9 in single mounts |
The USS Jacob Jones (identifier DD-61) was a destroyer in the US Navy during World War I and the first ship to bear that name. She belonged to the six-unit Tucker class and was named after the American naval officer Jacob Jones (1768-1850).
The ship's godmother was Mrs. Jerome Parker Crittenden (nee Paulina Cazenove Jones ), a great-granddaughter of the namesake; first in command was Lieutenant Commander William S. Pye.
technical description
Jacob Jones was ordered in 1913 as the fifth Tucker class ship (an improved Cassin class from 1911). The building yard was the New York Shipbuilding Company in Camden (New Jersey) .
It had four Yarrow boilers and two Curtis steam turbines that powered the two propellers . For long-distance cruises there was a third turbine that was switched to one of the propellers for this purpose. The power of the drive units was 17,000 WPS.
The guns of the main artillery of the type M9 weighed 6100 kg each and fired 15 kg grenades. With a pipe elevation of 20 °, the range was approx. 15 kilometers.
It is not clear whether the two anti-aircraft guns and the mine-laying device for 36 sea mines were ever installed on the ships of the Tucker class, which are required by the General Board of the United States Navy.
Mission history
After commissioning on February 16, 1917, the ship immediately began training trips off the coast of New England and then ran into the Philadelphia Navy Yard for repair work. After the war, the US entry on April 1, 1917, the patrolling Jacob Jones initially off the coast of Virginia , until May 7, 1917 by Boston sent out in European waters, and on May 17 in their base Queenstown (Ireland) arrived . From here the destroyer undertook patrol and escort trips in the Irish Sea . In the course of these tasks, the Jacob Jones rescued 44 survivors of the steamship SS Valetta, torpedoed by a German submarine, on July 8, 1917 . Two weeks later, the destroyer was escorting the British merchant ship SS Dafila when it sighted the periscope of a submarine. Before he could launch an attack on the German U 45 , however, it had already torpedoed the freighter, which was beginning to sink. The Jacob Jones then broke off the attack and rescued 26 men of the 54-man crew.
On October 19, 1917, the British auxiliary cruiser SS Orama and ten destroyers (including the Jacob Jones ) were escorting a convoy of 20 merchant ships eastward in this area when the German submarine U 62 appeared in the middle of the formation and fired its last torpedo at the auxiliary cruiser. While the Jacob Jones ' sister ship , the USS Conyngham (DD-58), took up the pursuit of U 62 with depth charges, the Jacob Jones managed to rescue over 300 castaways from the sinking Orama .
Sinking
At the beginning of December 1917, the Jacob Jones escorted five other destroyers in a convoy to Brest , from where she set out on her own return journey on December 6, 1917. She was driving a zigzag course when she was spotted by the German submarine U 53 under Lieutenant Hans Rose at around 4:20 p.m. and immediately torpedoed at a distance of 2700 m. Although the lookout posts were able to make out the torpedo at a distance of approx. 800 m to starboard , the "hard port" rudder maneuver, which was initiated immediately, was unsuccessful. The torpedo hit the destroyer amidships in a drift oil bunker. Although the oil did not catch fire, the Jacob Jones immediately began to sink over the stern. The captain, Commander David W. Bagley, gave the order to leave the ship as there were live depth charges on the deck that could explode at any time. When the stern was submerged so far that the bow was almost vertical in the air, the depth charges detonated and killed several crew members who had not managed to move away from the hull. Since the electrical power had also failed when the torpedo hit, the ship could not make an emergency call. After taking two seriously wounded American sailors on board and recognizing them, the German submarine radioed the sinking position to the US naval base in Queenstown to enable the survivors to be rescued. The USS Jacob Jones sank just eight minutes after the torpedo hit south of the Isles of Scilly , killing two officers and 64 sailors. The destroyer's first officer (surviving), Norman Scott , was promoted to admiral during World War II and fell in a battle with Japanese ships in November 1942 near Guadalcanal.
The Jacob Jones was the first US Navy destroyer to be lost to enemy action.
useful information
- Two US Navy destroyers were named after the Lieutenant Junior Grade , Stanton F. Kalk , who excelled in rescuing his comrades and who was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Medal . ( USS Kalk (DD-170) and USS Kalk (DD-611) )
- Although the USS Jacob Jones was only in use for six and a half months, it was the ship that had saved most of the castaways over the entire period of the First World War.
Coordinates: 49 ° 23 ′ N , 6 ° 13 ′ W
See also
literature
- AB Fire: The US Navy in World War I . Praeger Publishing Westport, Connecticut 1999, ISBN 978-0-275-96212-8 .
- Robert Gardiner: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1985, ISBN 978-0-87021-907-8
- The Navy Book of Distinguished Service . Fassett Pub. Co, Washington, DC 1921.