Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: Feb. 17, 2016, The Frozen Northern Lights(hip)

Shot of the lightship renamed for the Flensburg station post 1924, pre-1939. Note the two lights shown on fore and aft masts

Here we see the one of a kind lightship (feuerschiff) Flensburg as she appeared while on station about 1924 as an auxiliary for the Weimar Republic’s Seezeichenbehörde service. Before the days of large offshore buoys, LORAN, Omega, and GPS, lightships were needed to warn ships at sea about dangerous shoals too far at sea for traditional lighthouses.

A three-masted schooner rig with a relatively shallow draft, this particular feuerschiff was ordered in 1909 for the Kaiserliche Marine (though paid for via 184,000 Goldmarks by the Royal Government of Schleswig) from Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft (the same yard that went on to build the huge Deutschland and Bremen merchant submarines during WWI) and named Feuerschiff Kalkgrund (with that designation written in white letters on both sides of the vessel’s red hull).

The 118-foot vessel was assigned to the Kalkgrund shoal (go figure) at position 53 °49’45” north latitude, 9 ° 53’30”O-Lg off the Flensburg Firth until further notice in July 1910, replacing the lightship that held that duty since 1874.

The old Kalgrund lightship…not much to look at…

The new and improved 1910 model Feuerschiff Kalkgrund

With alternating 15-man crews that shuttled out every six weeks, the vessel shone her lights, rang her bell, and, at night and during fog, fired off a shot from a black powder signal cannon every five minutes (talk about monotony). Besides this, they saluted passing foreign warships (as they were technically a naval vessel), observed the weather, and just tried to keep from being run over by passing steamers in the dark. When the Baltic iced over in winter, the crews would spend a very cold season aboard the locked-in schooner.

Changing station in 1910, every six weeks or so a harbor tug would bring out a rotating crew and provisions.

World War I came and went and Kalkgrund remained put but kept a lookout for Allied naval ships. After the war, when the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet was interned and the Reichsmarine took over, the lightship was transferred to the Seezeichenbehörde and, in 1924, moved slightly to 54°50´18´´N, 9°53´55´´O, where she picked up the new name Flensburg and some decent radio gear.

There she remained, shone her lights, rang her bell, and, at night and during fog, fired off a shot from a black powder signal cannon every five minutes (talk about monotony). Besides this, they saluted passing foreign warships (as they were technically still kind of a Naval vessel), observed the weather, and just tried to keep from being run over by passing steamers in the dark. (Sound familiar?)

When war came again in 1939, she chopped to the Kriegsmarine proper who removed her center-most mast and replaced it with a deckhouse, added a 20mm AAA gun and a few machine guns, and waited out the war. Remarkably, she wasn’t holed by a Soviet submarine or a British bomber and survived long enough to land her guns in 1945 and just get back to the business of shining her light, ringing her bell…

As she appeared in 1960 with a boat from the Wanderfahrt rowing club very far out to visit her. Note her mid mast has been jettisoned and a pilot house has been built in its place

Anyway, in October 1963 a large automated leuchtturm (“light tower”) was built in the Flensburg Firth and our trusty lightship was put to pasture after over 50 years of continuous service in four different agencies and two world wars.

1961, she would be retired in just two years

Laid up by the government, she languished until 1991 when the Möltener Segelkameradschaft Yacht Club bought her for a paltry 16,000DM for use as a floating clubhouse.

This led to a subsequent sale to Ted van Broeckhuysen of the Netherlands who refitted and restored the old lightship to a sailing schooner with room for 20 passengers in double cabins, new nav gear, two zodiacs for going ashore, an auxiliary engine for the first time, and a lengthened and rebuilt bow.

After rerigging in Holland

After putting her to use in cruises of the Canaries and Azores, she found a new lease on life after 2002 as a one-of-a-kind ice hotel cruising in the Norwegian Svalbard archipelago under the name S/V Noorderlicht— Dutch for “northern lights” (call sign PGJG) out of Enkhuizen.

As Noorderlicht

In the 2014 season, which was uncommonly warm, there was no ice in the fjords

She sails with a crew of Captain, 1st Mate, 2nd Mate, Chef, and Expedition Leader. We say expedition leader because the red-hulled ship with white letters (somethings never change) likes to park in Spitsbergen and freeze in over the winter there, proving service as literal ice station, offering tours of the glaciers and polar bear-ridden attractions.

Located 60km northeast of Longyearbyen, this ship was accessible only by snowmobile or dog sled from mid-February to mid-May, dependent on ice condition.

Since 2002, an estimated total of between 6,600 and 7,200 guests stayed on board while she wintered over in Svalbard, averaging about 600 guests each season. In the Spring each year, the Norwegian Coast Guard Cutter K/V Svalbard broke the Noorderlicht out.

Every day there will be excursions on land, weather and ice permitting. The landings will take three to six hours per day over untracked area. According to circumstances (the weather, the ice-situation or the passengers´ wishes) the program can sometimes be adjusted. Ample time will be devoted to wildlife, vegetation, geography and history.

Can you tell where she gets her current name from?

“We thought then that we had to have a ship that has a greater relation to the Fram and came on the trail of the Noorderlicht,” said Steinar Rorgemoen, administrative director Basecamp Spotsbergen. “This is the only freeze-in hotel ship on Earth and kind of a symbol of what one can achieve if one dares to think outside the box.”

However, the days as a floating ice station are over. Noorderlicht‘s owners, Oceanwide Expeditions, advised this last freeze-in will be her final one in Svalbard. However, the ship, now in her 116th year, is far from retiring from the land of the Northern Lights altogether and has more than a baker’s dozen cruises scheduled for this year alone.

“Sv Noorderlicht will now spend her winter time sailing the beautiful fjords of North Norway, starting 30 October, 2016,” says a statement on their website.

For more information on the ship, including an amazing photo gallery, please go to their website

Specs:

As feuerschiff Kalkgrund/Flensburg
Displacement: 251 tons
Length overall 118 feet
Beam 6,50 meters (21.33 feet)
Draught 9 feet
Propulsion: Sail only. Three master 1910-1939, two master 1940-63.Gasoline generator for powering signal and lights only
Speed: 6 knots though rarely moved.
Crew: 15 (likely double during wartime service)
Armament: Signal cannon. (1914-18) small arms (1939-45) 20mm AAA guns, light weapons

As Gaffelschoner “Noorderlicht” post 1994
Displacement: 300 tonnes
Gross tonnage 140 GT
Net register tonnage 60 NT
Length overall (LOA) 46,20 meters, (151 feet)
Load waterline (LWL) 30,58 meters
Beam 6,50 meters
Draught 3,20 meters
Ice class: Strengthened bow
Propulsion: Caterpillar 343D 360 hp diesel
Sail area 550 m2
Speed: 7 knots maximum
Passengers: 20 in 10 cabins
Staff & crew: 5

Current armament: Mauser carbines for polar bear defense as the number of those great predators dwarfs the number of inhabitants and attacks are a real possibility.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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By the time the wreaths are ready to drop on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland/Skagerrak (May 31-June 1 1916), Danish diver and historian Gert Norman Andersen, in connection with the Sea War Museum, and working with Danish sculptor Paul Cederdorff, will be hard at work on 26 11.5-foot high stone obelisks, one for every ship lost in that great naval battle (25 were lost, the 26th will be for casualties from other vessels).

Positioned along the coast near the Danish fishing village of Thyborøn– the closest spot on land to the battle, each ship obelisk will be surrounded by their own collection of 4-foot high lost sailors, one for each who went down with their ship.

For more information, visit the Memorial page

The Coast Guard Historical Foundation posted this excellent find from Periscope Film from the cusp of WWII.

“Made in 1939 just before WWII, this short film shows the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, and a Cadet Cruise. The cruise begins in Cartagena, Colombia. There’s a visit to a Colombian warship and old town Cartagena. The cruise then progresses through the Panama Canal at the 3:18 mark, including the port of Balboa. Crossing the Equator, a special ceremony is conducted at the 4:10 mark. This is a shellback initiation. Next is a visit to Guayaquil, Ecuador at the 4:50 mark, and then a ride on a railroad in Peru (6:30), followed by Valparaiso, Chile and the Chilean Naval Academy. At Santiago (7:45), the Coastguardsmen are guests at a military review. The film ends with gunnery practice at sea.”

This led to a debate on their social page over which ship is shown in the film, in which I weighed in (from my sketchy fake Facebook account like the troll I am).

Bibb in later years, a much earlier less racing stripe version is seen extensively in the video above

In several shots its clear its a 327, and I have a pretty confirmed kill that its the USCGC Bibb (WPG-31) a 327-foot Treasury-class commissioned in 1936. At one point it shows an invitation with the ship’s name on it. Then at the 8.25 mark it shows the ship’s log with “Henry Coyle, Comdr, USCG” at the top as CO, which is the clencher.

Born in Portland, Maine in 1889, his father was John Brown Coyle (page 20) who was appointed to the Revenue Cutter Service in May 1888 as a 2Asteng (and retired in 1923 as a Chief Engineer).

The future Bibb commander Henry was appointed as a cadet to the Revenue Cutter School of Instruction (now the Coast Guard Academy) then at Curtis Bay, MD (now the Coast Guard Yard) on Oct. 14, 1907, resigned and was reappointed in 1910 then graduated from the academy– which by then had moved to the old Army base of Fort Trumbull in New London, Connecticut– and was promoted to ensign in June 1913 followed by Lieutenant (j.g.) in June 1918 stationed at Woods Hole, Mass., where he doubtless took part in the Attack on Orleans (more on this in an upcoming Warship Weds).

Post-WWI, Coyle made full lieutenant in January 1923 and LCDR in April 1924 (times moved fast in the days of Prohibition when the USCG was adding ships every week to fight the rum runners).

CDR Henry Coyle and Reporter W. E. Debnam, 1937 – Norfolk, Virginia Via Hampton Roads historical project

CDR Henry Coyle Describes Rescue of Survivors of the Shipwreck of the Tzenny Chandris, 1937 – Norfolk, Virginia. Via Hampton Roads historical project.

Commander Henry Coyle next commanded the Coast Guard cutter Mendota in 1937 which was involved in rescuing 21 survivors from the 5,815-ton Greek freighter Tzenny Chandris (ex-Eastern Packet) who were in the water for nearly a day and a half suffering from shark attacks.

Coyle, with 25 years at sea under him, then became skipper of the Bibb in 1938 for the above cadet cruise and the entry of the U.S. into WWII.

Coyle went on to command the Coast Guard-manned Navy transport USS General William Mitchell (AP-114) during WWII, was authorized to receive a decoration from Greece, retired as a full captain in 1952, and died the same year.

Interestingly, his slightly-modified M1852 Naval officer’s sword issued to the Revenue Cutter Service (from Sico Bros in Baltimore– remember the cadet academy was then in nearby Curtis Bay ) recently came up for auction.

From Cowans:

With 30″ blade retailed by the Sisco Bros./Baltimore having etched panels of nautical motifs and the name (without rank), Henry Coyle etched in a panel on the reverse. Shagreen and twisted brass wire wrapped handle. Brass pommel with chased oak leaves, brass knuckle bow with branches and earlier pre-1915 service designation, USRCS. Leather scabbard with brass bands and rope designed carrying rings. Throat inscribed with large fouled anchor. Brothers Charles T. and John E. Sisco operated “a regalia and military equipment” store in Baltimore until 1925. This uncommon sword dates to before 1915 when the numerically small United States Revenue Cutter Service was officially merged with the Life Saving Service to form the United States Coast Guard.

As for the Bibb, she was decommissioned 30 September 1985 after 48 years of service and sunk as an artificial reef off the Florida Keys on 28 November 1987.

However, the Revenue Cutter School of Instruction that Coyle graduated from at Fort Trumbull in New London has since 1915 been the USCGA, where the cadets left from in the 1938 tour video at the top of this post, and is still very much in daily use.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: Feb. 24, 2016, Calling the Conestoga, Calling the Conestoga…

Courtesy of W.P. Burbage, 1970. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 71299

Here we see the civilian designed and built, ocean-going steel-hulled tugboat, USS Conestoga (AT-54) at San Diego, California, circa early 1921. Note her popgun forward. While everyone likes a happy ending to our Warship Wednesday tales, sometimes it just doesn’t work that way…and the above picture may be the last one ever taken of her.

SS Conestoga was designed as one of a pair of large seagoing tugs built to the same design by the Maryland Steel Co. Sparrows Point, MD for the Philadelphia and Reading Transportation Line of Philadelphia in 1904-1905. She and her sister, SS Monocacy, were meant to pull huge coal barges up and down the East Coast. These hardy tugs were 170 feet in length and displaced some 420 tons when fully loaded.

(American Tug, 1904) Photographed before being acquired by the U.S. Navy. This tug was USS Conestoga (SP-1128, later AT-54) from 1917 until 1921. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 89793

Conestoga (American Tug, 1904) in port, prior to World War I. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 89794

Commercial service suited the pair, but when the Great War came a-calling to the United States in 1917, both Conestoga and Monocacy were purchased by the Navy, on 14 September and 27 July of that year respectively, and sent to the Philadelphia Naval Yard where they were given a haze gray paint scheme, fitted with a 3″/50 gun mount and some smaller guns as well.

Both were placed in commission on 10 November with Conestoga being classified as a patrol craft, USS Conestoga (SP-1128), while her sister was renamed USS Genesee (SP-1116).

As noted by DANFS, both ships soon found themselves busy as they transported supplies and guns, escorted convoys to Bermuda and the Azores, served as standby for deep sea rescue work, and operated with the American Patrol Detachment in the vicinity of the Azores and Ireland (respectively).

USS Genesee (SP-1116) under way at Queenstown, Ireland, in 1918. Wartime fittings included the gun platform and 3″/50 gun forward and the crow’s nest on the foremast. US Naval History and Heritage Command. Photo # NH 53873, Photographed by Zimmer. Via Navsource.

Conestoga remained in the Azores for a year after the guns fell silent, towing charges as needed among the war weary shipping crossing the Atlantic, only returning to New York on 26 September 1919.

While most ships taken up from trade by the Navy were quickly disposed of in the days following the Armistice, the sea service kept Conestoga as a fleet tug, redesignating her AT-54 in 1920. Genesee was likewise reclassified as AT-55 and, sent to the Pacific, arrived at Cavite, Luzon, 7 September 1920 for permanent duty on the Asiatic Station.

Conestoga, on the other hand, was to become the station ship at Tutuila, American Samoa, the literal “gun boat” in gunboat diplomacy. As such, she was refitted first at Norfolk then at Mare Island in California after she transitioned oceans.

USS Conestoga (AT-54)’s six-man “Gunnery Department” posing with her sole 3″/50 gun, 1921. The Sailor at left marked “me,” may be Seaman 1st Class W.P. Burbage. US Navy photo # NH 71510, Courtesy of W.P. Burbage, 1970, from the collections of the US Naval Historical Center. Via Navsource. Burbage, luckily, was not aboard Conestoga when she left California.

USS Conestoga (AT-54) at Mare Island, California, February 1921, preparing to ship to Samoa. Courtesy of H.E. (Ed) Coffer, 1988. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 102094

With a sole officer– Lt. Ernest L. Jones– in command, and a crew consisting of three chiefs and 49 men, our proud little tug sailed from Mare Island on 25 March 1921…

And was never seen again.

While the steamship Senator found what is believed to be an empty and waterlogged lifeboat from the Conestoga some 650 miles from Mexico, no other wreckage ever turned up.

Across the Pacific, mariners placed a weather eye on the horizon and burned oil and coal through the night looking for the unaccounted for ship for weeks.

Our Navy, the Standard Publication of the U.S. Navy, Volume 15, June 1921

One particular piece of naval lore came from USS R-14 (SS-91), a cranky diesel submarine who left out of Pearl on 2 May with several surface vessels to search for the missing tug.

From the Submarine Force Museum:

“By 12 May,” writes LCDR Robert Douglas, “she was dead in the water…and had been that way since late afternoon of the previous day, when the diesel engines had stopped. At about the same time, the radio transmitter had failed (not an uncommon occurrence then), so the boat was also without communications to shore.” The culprit was soon found: large amounts of seawater mixed in with the fuel. Try as they might, “they could neither prevent the contamination nor purify enough oil to run the engines for more than a few minutes.” Plus, there was only enough charge in the batteries to power one of the boat’s two motors for about 100 miles, not enough to get them home.

So, the R14 used sails, and limped along until 0530 on 15 May, when Hilo came into view.

(SS-91) Under full sail in May 1921. While searching for the missing USS Conestoga (AT-54) southeast of Hawaii, the R-14 lost her power plant. As repairs were unsuccessful, her crew rigged a jury sail, made of canvas battery deck covers, to the periscope, and sailed her to Hilo. She arrived there on 15 May 1921, after five days under sail. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 52858

Seen in the photo above are the jury-rigged sails used to bring R-14 back to port. The mainsail rigged from the radio mast is the top sail in the photograph, and the mizzen [third sail] made of eight blankets is also visible. LCDR Douglas is at top left, without a hat.

After the extensive search by all available assets, Conestoga was declared lost with all her crew, 30 June 1921 and stricken from the Naval List, consigned to the deep as part of Poseidon’s ever-growing armada.

From what I can tell, there is no marker or monument to her.

As for her sister, Genesee spent the summer of 1921 with the Asiatic fleet at Chefoo, China, and returned to Cavite 19 September. Subsequently she operated as a tug, a ferry, and a target tow in the Philippines until she was scuttled at Corregidor 5 May 1942 to avoid capture, earning one battle star for her World War II service the absolute hardest way possible.

Specs:

SS Conestoga drawing published in the August 1904 issue of the journal Marine Engineering via Navsource/ Courtesy Shipscribe.com. Note the auxiliary sailing rig

Displacement: 420 long tons (430 t)
Length: 170 ft. (52 m)
Beam: 29 ft. (8.8 m)
Draft: 15 ft. (4.6 m)
Speed: 13 kn (15 mph; 24 km/h)
Complement: 56
Armament: 2 × 3 in (76 mm) guns, 2 machine guns (1917-19) later reduced to a single 3/50.
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: March 2, 2016 Fritz and the short career of an Italian battlewagon

Photo colorized by irootoko_jr 

Here we see the Littorio-class battleship (corazzata) Roma, the pride of the WWII Regia Marina and last flagship of Admiral Carlo Bergamini. While her 15 months of service to Mussolini’s Italy was uneventful, she ended her days with a bang.

Although the modern Italian Navy saw little service in the first few decades of the 20th Century– primarily being used in an uneventful blockade of the Austro-Hungarian fleet in World War I and a few skirmishes with the Turks before that– the admirals in Rome had a twinge of panic in the 1930s when the French laid down new, fast battleships for service in the Med.

To augment the Regia Marina’s four modernized Conte di Cavour (29,000-ton/10×12.6-inch guns) and Andrea Doria-class (25,000-ton/13×12-inch guns) World War I battleships, four new fast battleships of the Littorio-class (Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Roma, and Impero) were envisioned with the first laid down in 1934.

These ships, which if you squint and look at them from a distance look a lot like the U.S. North Carolina-class battleships which followed just after, were beautiful, modern vessels.

With a full load displacement pushing 50,000-tons, they carried nine 381 mm/50 (15″) Model 1934 guns in three triple turrets guided by distinctive “Wedding Cake” Fire Control Directors and were  capable of firing a 1,951-pound AP shell to a maximum range of a staggering 46,807 yards– and keeping it up at 1.3 rounds per minute.

Her 381 mm (15.0 in)/50 cal guns were tested to nearly 50,000 yards in experiments on land.

While the Littorios were reasonably fast, capable of 30 knots, they achieved this by using thin armor (just 11 inches in belt and much less on deck) which put them at risk against other large battleships (or significant aircraft-dropped ordnance) though below the waterline they used the innovative Pugliese torpedo defense system, a 40mm armored bulkhead blister outer hull over a 15-inch liquid-filled void. Although the Pugliese wasn’t ideal, the Soviets copied it for their last battleship class and the Littorios survived no less than four serious torpedo attacks during World War II (though air attack is another story).

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

The hero of our sad tale, Roma, was the third and last of the class to be completed (Impero was canceled, her unfinished hulk ultimately sunk as a target). Laid down 18 September 1938 at Cantieri Riuniti dell’Adriatico in Trieste, when WWII came less than a year later, work slowed on Roma and she was only completed on 14 June 1942.

Photo colorized by irootoko_jr

Roma upon commissioning

Gunnery trials

Upon completion

Roma was beautiful on the inside too it would seem – rather lavish officer’s quarters.

Arriving at Taranto on 21 August, she was assigned to the Ninth Naval Division, though with the general lack of fuel experienced in all of the Axis countries by that stage of the war, she rarely went to sea.

In November, with the Americans landing in North Africa in Operation Torch, all three Littoros were moved from Taranto to Naples to lay low. The Americans quickly found them, however, and after air attacks Roma and her two sisters were moved to La Spezia where, for the next several months, they endured near-weekly air attacks that left all of the ships bruised and battered though unbroken.

Soon after commissioning she was given a distinctive camo pattern

In all, over a 15-month period, Roma spent a grand total of just 130 hours underway under her own steam.

Her deck fore and aft had red and white diagonal stripes

As Rommel was defeated in North Africa and the Allies began landing on Sicily in July 1943 during Operation Husky, the Italian fleet at La Spezia consisting of the three Littoro sisters, a few cruisers and eight destroyers was put under the command of Admiral Carlo Bergamini, who chose Roma as his flag. An old-school surface warfare officer, Bergamini had picked up a silver medal in 1918 during the Great War while the gunnery officer of the cruiser Pisa, and commanded the Italian battleship division from the deck of Vittorio Veneto during the Battle of Cape Spartivent– which was about the closest thing to an Italian victory over the Royal Navy during WWII.

Then in September, the Allies began Operation Avalanche, the invasion of Italy proper. This led Bergamini, under orders from the new Italian government who sought an armistice with the Allies, to take his fleet across to La Maddalena in Sardinia where King Victor Emmanuel III was setting up new digs, thus keeping the flower out of navy out of German hands.

The only thing was, the Germans weren’t a fan of that plan, as the Allies jumped the gun and announced the secret Italian armistice on the radio in Algeria on 8 Sept.

Battleship Roma, date unknown

Slipping out in the predawn hours of 9 Sept, Bergamini’s fleet, joined by three cruisers from Genoa, made for Sardinia and just after dawn saw Allied planes observing their movements– but not attacking. Then, around 1340 that day came the news the Germans had seized La Maddalena, leaving Bergamini in a pickle as he cruised through the narrow Strait of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia.

Over the next two hours, six German Do 217K-2 medium bombers from III. Gruppe of KG 100 (III/KG 100) were seen by lookouts, each carrying what appeared to be a single large bomb. At 1530, these bombers climbed and hurled one of these oddball new bombs– that seemed to maneuver in flight– at the battleship Italia (Littorio), exploding just off her stern, damaging her rudder.

Then at 1545 a second bomber dropped a 3,450-pound, armor piercing, radio-controlled, glide bomb, which the Luftwaffe called Fritz-X, right down Roma‘s gullet.

Depiction of the Dornier Do-217 Fritz X attack on Italian battleship Roma. The glide bomb had a flare in its tail to allow the bombardier to guide it to its target from up-to 5km away

“End of the Roma 1943” by Paul Wright. Note the very distinctive markings on deck. However, the flare on the Fritz-X seems a little too rocket-like as the bomb was unpowered.

The Italian battleship Roma listing after being hit by German Fritz X radio-controlled bombs launched by Do 217s, Sept. 9, 1943. Italian Navy photo

Eight minutes later, another Fritz struck the already crippled ship, leading to a magazine explosion that killed the vast majority of her crew– including Bergamini.

Explosion aboard Roma, Strait of Bonifacio

Capsized, she broke in two and sank by 1615. In all, two Admirals, 86 Officers and 1264 sailors were taken down to the seafloor with the stricken flagship who had less than 3,000 miles on her hull.

The rest of the fleet carried on and eventually made Malta where they were interred under British guns for the duration of the war, later moving to Alexandria where they remained until 1947. While Roma’s sisters, Italia/Littorio and Vittorio Veneto were on paper given to the U.S. and Britain respectively as war prizes, this was largely to keep them out of Soviet hands and both were scrapped at La Spezia in the early 1950s.

On Fritz, KG 100 continued to use these amazingly destructive weapons– the first effective smart bombs and precursors to current anti-ship missiles– in attacks on the cruisers USS Savannah, USS Philadelphia, HMS Uganda and the British battleship HMS Warspite, though without sinking them. Within months, the Allies figured out Fritz could be foiled by attacking his radio waves and by the Normandy invasion had issued some of the first electronic countermeasures to the fleet to jam the German wunderweapon.

German aerial picture of the KG100 attack on Warsprite

As for Roma, her wreck was discovered in 2012, found at a depth of 1,000 meters around 25 km off Sardinia’s coast. It is preserved as a war grave.

An Italian Navy picture of a AAA gun on the Roma, found at a depth of 1,000 meters around 25 km off Sardinia’s coast.

Bergamini in death was promoted to the rank of Ammiraglio d’Armata and two frigates, one in 1960 and another in 2013, have been named in his honor, the latest of which had top of the line air defenses against anti-shipping missiles.

Italy’s first FREMM class frigate, Carlo Bergamini (F590)

Specs:

Image by Shipbucket

Displacement: Full load: 45,485 long tons (46,215 t)
Length: 240.7 m (790 ft.)
Beam: 32.9 m (108 ft.)
Draft: 9.6 m (31 ft.)
Installed power:
8 × Yarrow boilers
128,000 shp (95,000 kW)
Propulsion: 4 × steam turbines, 4 × shafts
Speed: 30 kn (56 km/h; 35 mph)
Complement: 1,920
Armament:
3 × 3 381 mm (15.0 in)/50 cal guns
4 × 3 152 mm (6.0 in)/55 cal guns
4 × 1 120 mm (4.7 in)/40 guns for illumination
12 × 1 90 mm (3.5 in)/50 anti-aircraft guns
20 × 37 mm (1.5 in)/54 guns (8 × 2; 4 × 1)
10 × 2 20 mm (0.79 in)/65 guns
Armor:
Main belt: 350 mm (14 in)
Deck: 162 mm (6.4 in)
Turrets: 350 mm
Conning tower: 260 mm (10 in)
Aircraft carried: 3 aircraft (IMAM Ro.43 or Reggiane Re.2000)
Aviation facilities: 1 stern catapult
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: March 9, 2016 Blooming flowers for Agerholm

Here we see the beautiful water column blossom caused by a 20-kiloton warhead going off just 2.5 miles away from the ship that fired it, the hero of our story, the FRAM’d Gearing-class destroyer USS Agerholm (DD-826). You can note her ASROC launcher amidships deployed with one cell pointed in the general direction of said atomic water dome.

In July 1942 the U.S. Navy, fighting Hitler’s U-boat horde in the Atlantic and Tojo’s Combined Fleet in the Pacific was losing ships faster than any admiral ever feared in his worst nightmare. With that in mind, the Navy needed a lot of destroyers. While the Fletcher and Sumner classes were being built en mass, the go-ahead for some 156 new and improved Sumners— stretched some 14 feet to allow for more fuel and thus longer legs to get to those far off battlegrounds– was given. These hardy 3,500 ton/390-foot long tin cans, the Gearing-class, were soon being laid down in nine different yards across the country.

Designed to carry three twin 5 inch/38 cal mounts, two dozen 40mm and 20mm AAA guns, depth charge racks and projectors for sub busting, and an impressive battery of 10 21-inch torpedo tubes capable of blowing the bottom out of a battleship provided they could get close enough, they were well armed. Fast at over 36 knots, they could race into and away from danger when needed.

The subject of today’s tale was named after Private First Class Harold C. Agerholm, USMCR, MOH.

Harold C. Agerholm

As noted by the NHC, this 19-year-old PFC was a man among men.

His second combat operation began in mid-June 1944, when he landed on Saipan, in the Marianas. On 7 July 1944, when Japanese forces counter-attacked and captured a neighboring position, Agerholm immediately volunteered to help evacuate the wounded. For three hours, he made repeated trips under heavy rifle and mortar fire, single-handedly evacuating approximately 45 causalities. Rushing to help what he thought were other wounded Marines, he was mortally wounded by a Japanese sniper. For his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity,” he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Harold C. Agerholm is buried at Mount Cemetery, Racine, Wisconsin.

While ordered during the thick of the fighting, the ship named after our hero Marine wasn’t laid down until 10 September 1945 at Bath Iron Works in Maine– a full week after VJ Day. Christened by Agerholm’s grieving mother, she was commissioned 20 June 1946. Just four of her class were commissioned after her, and 58 were canceled in the inevitable post-war draw down.

Stationed in the Pacific, Agerholm would accomplish a very respectable 21 WestPac deployments over the next 32 years of active duty under 27 skippers, never once passing to the reserves like many other period surface combatants.

Note her amidship torpedo tubes and all three 5-iinch DP mounts

She earned four battlestars for Korea for which she was forward deployed inside that warzone almost every day between 15 Mar 1951 and 31 Mar 1954 with brief pauses to take on more 5-inch shells, chow and fuel. She plucked the pilot of a F4U-4 Corsair of VMF-312 from the USS Bataan, Marine 1LT Darrell Smith, from the drink in May 1951; plastered Wonsan and various Nork/Chicom troops with her guns when needed, and basically made herself useful throughout the conflict.

In 1961 she was given a Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) program upgrade, which consisted of a general overhaul of the 15 year old ship, getting new sensors, swapping out her surface torpedo tubes for an amidships ASROC launcher, trading her depth charges for triple Mark 32 torpedo tubes for Mark 44 torpedoes, and landing her aft 5-inch mount for a mini-helicopter deck for an OH-50 DASH drone.

USS Agerholm Description: (DD-826) Underway on 18 April 1961, after her FRAM I conversion. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, from the collections of the Naval History and Heritage Command. Catalog #: NH 107129. Contrast this with the overhead image above showing her WWII configuration.

Then came Swordfish.

Operation Dominic was a series of 36 nuclear explosions carried out by the U.S. at Christmas Island about 400 miles southwest of southern California during the Spring of 1962. One of these three dozen tests, Swordfish, involved Agerholm launching a nuclear-armed ASROC device into a well-instrumented test area. The 160-pound rocket was outfitted with a W-44 nuclear warhead with a 10-20 Kt yield range and it is believed it went closer to the high end.

Aiming at a target raft 4,348 yards away, the rocket missed its sub-surface zero point by 20 yards and exploded 40 seconds later at a depth of 650 feet in water that was 17,140 feet deep.

However, 20 yards really doesn’t matter that much in nuclear weapons.

Dominic Swordfish spray dome dispersing further

Swordfish was the only full-service test of a nuclear-tipped ASROC missile and some 120 cameras caught the explosion from all angles.

“The spray dome from the detonation was 3000 feet across, and rose to 2100 feet in 16 seconds. The detonation left a huge circle of foam-covered radioactive water. Within two days it had broken up into small patches and spread out for 5 to 8 miles”

This video was declassified in 1997 and shows multiple views of the Swordfish shot, and show just how friggen close Agerholm was.

After her brush with Atomic history, Agerholm fell back into her normal WestPac cruise schedule, taking midshipmen on summer cruises while showing the flag.

Via Navsource/ Richard Miller, BMCS, USNR (Ret.)

Then came Vietnam and from August 1964 to April 1975 she was extensively involved there. She spent time as a plane guard for numerous carriers in the million-sortie war on Yankee Station.

USS Intrepid CVS-11 refueling the Agerholm July 1967 off Vietnam. Image by Larry Backus via Navsource

In 1966 while on Yankee Station, Agerholm undertook frequent near-shore naval gunfire support missions and, on 7 May, helped extract PCF42, which was under close fire just 800 yards offshore of Binh Dinh Province, recovering the patrol boat’s forward turret gunner who was hit on the flak jacket by small arms fire. She also came to the aid of USS Forrestal during her terrible 29 July 1967 chain reaction fire.

Gunfire Mission in Vietnam 1969 – by Ltjg Richard Crowe via ussagerholm.org

Agerholm got in lots of gunnery time against Mr. Charles and finished her Southeast Asia experience with eight more battlestars. Scoring another first, on 8 May 1968, she fired the first Rocket Assisted Projectile from her 5-inch guns, cruising near the briefly recommissioned battleship USS New Jersey, who was using her own novel RAPs to reach well inshore.

Dressed for visit Auckland, New Zealand, 1977. This is our destroyer in the peaceful twilight of her life. Via Shipspotting

Agerholm‘s last action was in assisting with the military evacuation by air of Phnom Penh, Cambodia in the final days of the conflict.

USS Enterprise (CVN-65) departs San Diego, California, 8 April 1978, on her 9th WestPac deployment and is passing Agerholm, returning from her 21st and final WestPac deployment. Photo via Navsource

The days of WWII-era destroyers in the Navy by that time were numbered as the new Spruance-class was coming on line. Therefore, on the grizzled veteran with a dozen battlestars on her bridge wing was decommissioned on 1 December 1978 and her name struck from the Naval List that same day, sparing her the indignity of carrying it into red lead row.

She was expended in a SINKEX just over three years later

U.S. Navy UGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile hits (and sinks) the target ship USS Agerholm (DD-826), off Point Mugu, California, on 18 July 1982. The Tomahawk was launched from a distance of ca. 320 km from the nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Guitarro (SSN-665). U.S. Defense imagery photos VIRIN: DN-SC-83-06574 and DN-SC-83-06575.

Her wreck is known

Today she is remembered by a vibrant veterans association.

Of her massive armada of 98 Gearing-class sisterships, 10 survive above water in one form or another including three largely inactive hulls in the navies of Mexico and Taiwan. The others are museum ships overseas with the exception of USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD-850) in Fall River, Massachusetts; and USS Orleck (DD-886) in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Please visit these vital floating maritime relics.

One enduring link to the past for Agerholm is VMFA-312, the squadron whose Corsair pilot she saved back in 1951, which is still on active duty. The “Checkerboards” now fly F/A-18s out of MCAS Beaufort. The pilot, two-time DFC winner Darrell Smith, has lived a long life.

Specs:

WWII Gearing layout. Contrast this with her FRAM look as shown frequently above

Displacement: 2,616 tons standard; 3,460 tons full load
Length: 390.5 ft. (119.0 m)
Beam: 40.9 ft. (12.5 m)
Draft: 14.3 ft. (4.4 m)
Propulsion: 2 shaft; General Electric steam turbines; 4 boilers; 60,000 shp
Speed: 36.8 knots (68.2 km/h)
Range: 4,500 nmi (8,300 km; 5,200 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement: 336 as designed
Armament:
As built:
3 × twin 5 in (127 mm)/38 cal guns
12 × 40 mm Bofors AA guns (2 × 4 & 2 × 2)
11 × 20 mm Oerlikon cannons
2 × depth charge racks
6 × K-gun depth charge throwers
10 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
By Korea
6 × 5 in (127 mm)/38 cal guns (in 3 × 2 Mk 38 DP mounts)
6 × 3 in (76 mm)/50 cal guns (2 × 2, 2 × 1)
2 × Hedgehog ASW weapons
1 × depth charge rack
6 × K-gun depth charge throwers
After FRAM
4 × 5 in (127 mm)/38 cal guns (127 mm) (in 2 × 2 Mk 38 DP mounts)
1 × ASROC 8-cell launcher
2 × triple Mark 32 torpedo tubes for Mark 44 torpedoes
1 × Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH)
Variable Depth Sonar (VDS)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday: March 16, 2016, the Tale of the Photogenic Tyrant

All photos except where mentioned are from the IWM collection

Here we see the forward view from the conning tower of the British T (Triton)-class diesel electric submarine HMS Tribune (N76) of HMs Royal Navy running along the surface in Scottish waters, 1942. Though modern and relatively low mileage, this 275-foot fleet boat only served for a decade, but she will live on for eternity.

With the World War I era boats getting long in the tooth, the Admiralty commissioned twelve 275-foot Odin-class, six 289-foot Parthian-class, six 287-foot Rainbow-class, 62 much smaller 202-foot S-class, three huge and rather experimental 345-foot River-class and six 289-foot Grampus-class submarines in the 1920s and 30s. With lessons learned from these 95~ diesel boats, it seemed the brass liked the 275-foot range as a sweet spot for general sub size and pushed ahead with 53 new T-class boats to replace the 1920s era O, P and R class submersibles mentioned above.

HMS TRIBUNE in Scottish waters, possibly at Campbeltown

These sea monsters, designed in 1935, had an impressive armament of 10 torpedo tubes (6 bow, 4 aft) which was considered devastating at the time, room for 16 torpedoes, and mounted a QF 4-incher on deck. A crew of 48 manned the 1,500-ton smoke boat and twin diesel/electric engines/motors could drive them at nearly 16 knots on the surface and 9 when submerged. They weren’t flashy compared to the German, U.S. and Japanese fleet boats of the day, but they could sail 8,000 nautical miles and could operate at a 300 foot depth with no problem.

The hero of our tale, HMS Tribune, was the sixth and thus far last ship of the fleet to carry that name since 1796. Laid down 3 March 1937 at Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Greenock on the River Clyde in Scotland, she was commissioned into the fleet on 17 October 1939– just six weeks after the start of World War II.

While still working up Tribune may have brushed into U-21 thought neither ship exchanged fire.

Over the next three and a half years she would complete an impressive 18 war patrols, though cranky engines proved her undoing. Many of Tribune’s patrols were quiet, with nothing but neutral ships spotted. Covered in great detail over at Uboat.net (go read it!), she had a series of 15 skippers over this period, typically reserve lieutenants. She spent extensive time off the coast of Norway and in the Kattegat while operating from Rosyth but just couldn’t make the hits when needed.

Tribune made unsuccessful torpedo attacks on the German armed merchant cruiser Schiff 33 / Pinguin off Standlandet, Norway; U-56 in the Hebrides; U-138 with 5 torpedoes about 10 nautical miles South-West of Ile de Groix; the German tanker Karibisches Meer in the Bay of Biscay; and finally sighted the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper and light cruiser Köln leaving the Gimsostrommen and steering towards Hval Fjord in Sept. 1942 but was unable to attack.

During 1942, Admiralty photographers who captured a number of images that endure in the IWM today toured her at Scapa Flow.

HMS TRIBUNE lying alongside the submarine depot ship HMS FORTH at Holy Loch, Scotland at dawn

Second Coxswain of HMS TRIBUNE, Petty Officer Hedley Charles Woodley, at his diving station on the forward hydroplanes

A signaller with an Aldis lamp on board HMS TRIBUNE.

Lieutenant Commander G D A Gregory at the periscope of HMS TRIBUNE

Stokers playing cards on board HMS TRIBUNE.

Asdic rating, Leading Seaman Walker, on the bridge of HMS TRIBUNE keeping a watch out with a torpedo nightsight

Lt Bulkeley in the wardroom

Then came the Crown Film Unit who, with a barebones cast and director Jack Lee, cameraman Bill Chaston and cinematographer Jonah Jones with a few WRENs in-tow, filmed the Ministry of Information film “Close Quarters” aboard the vessel.

In the 75-minute film, she was referred to as HMS Tyrant and, while most of the scenes were fleshed out by a full production crew at Pinewood Studio in a superb full-sized model of the submarine, footage of the boat underway and her spaces were retained.

Actor operating a high pressure valve on board HMS TRIBUNE during the making of the film ‘Close Quarters

Note the greatly enhanced Jolly Roger of HMS Tyrant!

Transferring to Gibraltar in November 1942, Tribune began patrols in the Med with about the same success she had off Norway. Although she caught some depth charges from a RAF Wellington by mistake, and more from an Italian patrol boat, she did come in handy by landing SOE agents in Corsica in January 1943 and carried out close recon of the Copaiba Bay shoreline from just 1,000 yards or so offshore.

On 10 Jan 1943, Tribune finally drew blood by pumping torpedoes into the Nazi-flagged French merchant Dalny (6672 GRT, built 1914) 15 nautical miles from San Remo, Italy, which had to be beached in order to prevent sinking.

She followed this up later with damaging the German tanker Präsident Herrenschmidt (9103 GRT, built 1932) about five nautical miles South-West of San Lucido, Italy, in March.

Crew of the TRIBUNE pose around their Jolly Roger 6 June 1943 Portsmouth note the dagger for the Corsican commando landings

With her engines untrustworthy, Tribune was sent back to Portsmouth in April 1943 and spent the rest of the war as a training boat. Placed in reserve in June 1945 even before the war ended in the Pacific, she was transferred to Falmouth in November 1945 then sold to be broken up for scrap July 1947.

As such, Tribune was luckier than many of her sisterships, of whom 16 were destroyed, largely by mines and in scraps with Italian and German subs in the Med. After the war, some were modernized similar to the same program as the USN did with the GUPPY boats, but the last of these, HMS Tabard (P342), was discarded by 1974.

The stills and movie reels taken of Tribune will continue as a tribute to the class and HMs submarines as a whole during the war.

Specs:

Image via Shipbucket

Displacement:
1,290 tons surfaced
1,560 tons submerged
Length: 276 ft. 6 in (84.28 m)
Beam: 25 ft. 6 in (7.77 m)
Draught:
12 ft. 9 in (3.89 m) forward
14 ft. 7 in (4.45 m) aft
Propulsion:
Two shafts
Twin diesel engines, 2,500 hp (1.86 MW) each
Twin electric motors 1,450 hp (1.08 MW) each
Speed:
15.5 kn (28.7 km/h; 17.8 mph) surfaced
9 kn (17 km/h; 10 mph) submerged
Range: 8,000 nmi (9,200 mi; 15,000 km) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph) surfaced with 131 tons of fuel[1]
Complement: 48
Armament:
6 bow torpedo tubes
4 external torpedo tubes
16 torpedoes
QF 4 inch (100 mm) deck gun

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

In 1959 this chap by the name of Christopher Cockerell working for Saunders-Roe on the Isle of Wight came up with the first working and practical hovercraft, the “Saunders-Roe Nautical 1” (SR.N1), using an Alvis Leonides radial piston engine that drove a lift fan, and used ducted air from the fan for propulsion, producing a neat three-person craft that was capable of crossing the Channel at 35 knots.

This led to the 65-foot SR.N2 in 1961, which could make 73 knots (that’s seventy-three) and carry 48 passengers.

1963 brought the SR.N3 which was designed for military use and mounted a quartet of Bristol-Siddeley Gnome gas turbines, which enabled it to make 70 knots. The prototype didn’t work out too well but set the stage for what was to come.

SR. N3 Loading Royal Marines at Cowes for the Inter-Service Hovercraft Unit trials.

Saunders-Roe and Vickers Supermarine merged to become the British Hovercraft Corporation (BHC) in 1966, and their fourth hovercraft, SR.N4, was a mammoth design that eventually topped out at 185-feet long. While the RN theorized using these as mine countermeasures craft, these vessels, of which six were eventually built, were used as passenger ferries as last as 2000.

Then came the primary subject of our tale, the SR.N5 military model of which 14 were built, half by BHC in the UK and the other half Bell in the U.S..

Navy patrol air cushion vehicle glides over the waters of Cau Hai Bay near Hue, South Vietnam hovercraft

These 39-foot hovercraft were beamy, at 22 feet wide, and tall at almost 17 feet with the skirt inflated. Powered by a single 900hp Rolls-Royce Gnome turbine for both lift and propulsion, they could make 70 knots and carried enough jet fuel for about 3-4 hours of patrol. They could carry 16 troops.

The hovercraft were flown more than they were sailed

Of the 7 British built vessels, one each were bought by the Sultanate of Brunei and the Canadian Coast Guard, the Brits kept four for the RNAS and the last UK boat went into commercial use. Of the 7 Bell hovercraft (designated SK-5s by that company and equipped with a GE engine), three were bought by the U.S. Navy as Patrol Air Cushion Vehicle (PACV, “Pac Vees”) and three by the U.S Army as Air-Cushion Vehicles (ACV) while the last U.S. boat was bought by San Francisco and Oakland Helicopter Airlines to use as a high speed ferry around the Bay Area.

Navy PACV, dig the mouth

In U.S. military service in Vietnam, these hovercraft picked up .50 cal and 7.62mm machine guns, a modicum of armor and sandbags to protect their four-man crews (thought they could get by with just two crewmen), and by 1966 were hot and heavy in South East Asia as part of Task Force 116 for the Navy craft while the Army’s boats followed the next year as the catchy Air Cushion Vehicle Test Unit, (Armor Platoon Air Cushioned) 39th Cavalry Platoon of 24 men.

Navy PACV3. Note the sandbagged fighting position atop the house

Operating on the Mekong Delta, Cat Lo, and other hot spots, these half-dozen craft were soon dubbed Quai Vat (Monsters) by Mr. Charles as they raced around the swamps dropping off ARVN troops, Nung mercenaries and U.S. forces in hard-to-reach mudbogs. They were loud as hell (ever been around an LCAC?) but they were effective and, with the turbine shut down and the skirt on a relatively dry spot in the middle of the marsh, they were instant fighting positions.

By early 1968, the Army was even looking at (neat report here) making entire platoons of these craft, armed with 106mm recoilless rifles, Tow or Shillelagh missiles and FFAR rockets much like the helicopter gunships of the day.

Army ACV

Army ACV. They weren’t as wild as the Navy’s PACVs

That Loach is really hugging (and looks like it is having a hard time keeping up)

Then came the epic six-day battle in the Plain of Reeds.

While conducting a combat operation in July 1968 in support of a South Vietnamese CIDG (Civilian Irregular Defense Force) unit and US infantry advisors, the Army SK5s were engaged in a 7-hour continuous fight with enemy forces.

During the reconnaissance sweep, the SK5 boats inspected over 60 houses along the waterline and discovered over 25 bunkers within the area.

After destroying the bunkers with their supporting infantry, the two hovercraft came under enemy fire. Both craft returned fire, but were unable to press the attack since the CIDG forces were unwilling to dismount into a potential ambush.

After disengaging, both ACVs repositioned to another area and were once again taken under fire. Both vessels returned fire and when the infantry inspected the area they discovered several killed enemy soldiers.

All was good until one of the Army craft, ACV #901, was destroyed on 9 Jan 1970. ACV #902 was destroyed in August 1970. The final Army unit, #903 was returned stateside.

The three Navy PACVs were likewise brought back CONUS and transferred to the Coast Guard in 1971.

Behold, the Coast Guard’s hovercraft fleet!

They actually look snazzy in hi-viz livery. Above is CG-38102, formerly PACV1.

Numbered CG-38101, 38102 and 38103, one (103) was lost in an accident while the first two were transferred to the US Army Mobility Equipment Research and Development Center on 25 April 1975, making the Army the only U.S. military hovercraft owner until the Navy took possession of the first 87-foot long Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) vessels in 1986.

Of the British hovercraft, the original SR.N1 is held by the Science Museum at Wroughton, the only SR.N2 was broken up in the 1970s, SR.N3 was used for target practice, 4 of the 6 SR.N4 ferries were broken up and the two left are currently at the Hovercraft Museum in Lee-on-the-Solent but are facing imminent destruction.

Of the SR.N5s, one U.S Army boat, ACV 903, was returned to the states and is on display at the Transportation Museum in Ft. Eustis, VA. The sole remaining Navy PACV is at the Bellingham International Maritime Museum in Washington.

The last Navy PACV. Image via Flickr

As for the British Hovercraft Corporation, moving past the SR.N5s they built the 58-foot SR.N6 in large numbers in the 1960s, being their most successful model of all with at least 54 completed. Popular in commercial use as a 58-passenger ferry, a military version capable of carrying a platoon was used by the Canadian Coast Guard, Italian Navy, Egyptian Navy, Iraqi Navy, Iranian Navy and the Saudi Arabian Frontier Force. The Shah liked them so much he ordered a half dozen larger 78-foot BH.7 hovercraft in the early 1970s while the CCG bought three of BHC’s last hovercraft, the 90 passenger AP1-88 boats before the company folded in 1984.

But we do have 91 U.S.-built LCACs today…

A landing craft air cushion leaves the well deck aboard the USS Iwo Jima in the Persian Gulf, Sept. 21, 2006

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday March 23, 2016: A stormy tale of colonial standoff gone wrong

Courtesy of the Rev. William D. Henderson, 1967. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.Catalog #: NH 64694

Here we see the Kansas-class (later Adams-class) wooden-hulled screw gunboat USS Nipsic in Limon Bay, Panama, during the Darien Expedition of 1870. We say (later) because, though on the Navy List from 1863-1913 in one form or another, the Nipsic was actually two vessels.

Laid down 24 December 1862 by the Portsmouth Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine, the 129-foot sail-rigged steamer was commissioned just nine months later on 2 September 1863 at the height of the Civil War. Rushed to the blockade of Charleston, she arrived by Thanksgiving and spent the next 18 months in Southern waters, capturing the blockade-runner Julia in 1864.

Lithograph of USS Nipsic, Kansas class screw steam gunboat. Catalog #: 2014.72. Naval History & Heritage Command. She and sistership Yantic were kept around after the war and refitted with a third mast.

After the end of the war, unlike most vessels acquired during the conflict by the Navy, she continued in active service, chopping to the South Atlantic Squadron where she served off the coast of Brazil and in the West Indies for eight years, being rebuilt at the Washington Navy Yard in 1869 during this time.

At the Washington Navy Yard, District of Columbia. The Yard’s western shiphouse is in the background. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 45212

Once rebuilt, she carried the Darien Expedition to the Isthmus of Darien (Panama) led by Cmdr. Thomas Oliver Selfridge. The purpose of the expedition was to determine a canal route and a collection of photographs taken by Timothy O’Sullivan is in the Library of Congress.

Darien Selfridge Survey. The First Reconnoitering Expedition, upon its return from the Isthmus of Darien Survey, No. 1 Commander Selfridge. No. 2. Captain Houston, USMC. No. 3. Lieutenant Goodrell, No. 4. Lieutenant Commander Schulze, No. 5 P.A. Surgeon Simonds, No. 6 P.A. Paymaster Loomis, No. 7 Lieutenant Jasper, No. 8 Mr. Sullivan Asst C.S. , No. 9 Lieutenant Allen, USMC: NH 123343

Upon return, Nipsic was kept around for a bit and laid up in 1873 at Portsmouth next to her Civil War sister USS Kansas (who was sold for scrap in 1883). The Navy had already stricken the remainder of the Kansas-class vessels (USS Maumee, USS Nyack, USS Pequot, USS Saco) and was working on disposing of them. Only USS Yantic was still in service– rebuilt in a “great repair” and kept around until 1930 as a training vessel and hulk.

What’s a great repair?

Well the Navy, lacking funds for new ship construction, traded a number of condemned vessels in the 1870s to shipbuilders to break up and either recycle or sell the salvaged materials for new ships that carried names of vessels already on the Naval List. However, ship specific items such as bells, wheels, furnishings and other objects were transferred to retain the ruse.

That’s how, on 11 October 1879, after a six-year “lay-up” in Portsmouth, a new iron-hulled 179-foot Adams-class third rate gunboat, still USS Nipsic, emerged from the Washington Navy Yard, to be “recommissioned.”

The Adams-class vessels were barque-rigged/steam-powered vessels that could make 11 knots when needed and mounted a modern armament of a single 11-inch gun, a quartet of 9-inchers, and a 60-pound Parrott. Nipsic‘s new sisterships, all new construction, carried historic USN ship names (Adams, Enterprise, Essex, and Alliance) and were designed to show the flag in far-off parts of the world, soon making their presence felt across the globe.

Adams, Nipsic’s new sistership. Note how much this ship differs from the above.

Nipsic was soon sailing, serving on European station before rounding the Horn and heading into the Pacific with her complement of Sailors and Marines.

USS Nipsic ship’s Marines drilling on deck, circa the 1880s. Their rifles are of the trap-door Springfield type. Photographed by Bradley & Rulofson, San Francisco, California. Note hammocks lashed and stowed in the hammock rails, details of standing rigging, fancy railings over hatches, capstain, and lookout with telescope standing on the bulwark. Donation of Rear Admiral Ammen Farenholt, USN (MC), November 1931. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 44709

One of the far-off ports alluded to above was the nation archipelago of Samoa, which was locked in a three-way fight with the U.S., Germany and Great Britain all vying to take over.

Becoming station ship at Apia, Samoa, Nipsic was in the harbor on the night of 15-16 March 1889, during a violent hurricane that wrecked two German (the 1,040-ton gunboat SMS Adler and the 760-ton gunboat SMS Eber) and two U.S. Navy warships (the majestic Pacific Squadron flagship, the 3,900-ton frigate USS Trenton, and the USS Vandalia, a 2,033-ton sloop). You see, instead of setting course for open water to weather the storm at sea, neither the Germans nor the Americans wanted to leave the harbor alone to the other for fear of shenanigans.

While Nipsic and the German 2,424-ton corvette SMS Olga survived the storm, but both were driven ashore and seriously damaged. The only British man of war in the port at the time, HMS Calliope, who bravely put to sea to the cheers of the stricken vessels and survived the tempest.

The destruction in the harbor was staggering, with the warships bouncing off each other in the hurricane’s unrelenting tidal surge proving too much.

The Nipsic beached, wrecks of Trenton & Vandalia astern. Artwork by Rear Admiral Lewis A. Kimberly, contained in his personal journal of the Apia Hurricane. It shows the southeastern part of Apia Harbor after the storm’s end. USS Nipsic is in the foreground and USS Vandalia is sunk at right, with USS Trenton wrecked alongside her. Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation. Donation of Miss Elsie S. Kimberly, January 1958. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 42125

Gunboat Adler overturned on the reef, on the western side of Apia Harbor, Upolu, Samoa, soon after the storm. Note her battered hull, well for hoisting propeller, rescue buoy mounted on her stern, and decorative windows painted on her quarters. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 42286

View from the wrecked USS Trenton, with USS Vandalia sunk alongside. Taken in Apia Harbor, Upolu, Samoa, during the salvage of the ships’ armament and equipment. Lines between Vandalia’s foremast and Trenton’s deck were used to save men clinging to Vandalia’s rigging during the storm. Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation. Collection of Admiral Richard H. Jackson, 1965. NHHC Photograph Collection: NH 97996.

Samoan Hurricane of 15-16 March 1889. Crewmembers of USS Vandalia at their camp at Apia, Upolu, Samoa, shortly after their ship was wrecked in the storm. Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation. Donation of Lt. H.E. La Mertha, 1934. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 97917.

Jury rudder being made for use in the ship’s voyage to Hawaii to receive repairs for damage received during the 15-16 March 1889 hurricane. Probably taken at Apia, Upolu, Samoa, circa April-May 1889. The men present are (from left to right) the blacksmith’s helper, blacksmith and carpenter’s mate who built the rudder as designed and supervised by Rear Admiral Lewis A. Kimberly, USN. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 63405

Jury Rudder for the Nipsic. 22 feet-long, with Bollards filled with grape shot for weights. Made at Apia, it worked satisfactorily on a voyage of over 3000 miles from Pango-Pango to Fanning Island and Honolulu called by the sailors The ‘Admiral’s Fiddle’ Artwork by Rear Admiral Lewis A. Kimberly, contained in his personal journal of the Apia Hurricane, photographed against the text of one of the journal’s pages. Courtesy of the Naval Historical Foundation. Donation of Miss Elsie S. Kimberly, January 1958. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.
Catalog #: NH 42128

When pulled out of the water in Honolulu, what the screw looked like was unbelievable

Ship’s propeller, showing damage received during the 15-16 March 1889 hurricane at Apia, Samoa. Not only was the propeller bent beyond repair, but also the rudder and rudderpost were torn away, as were the keel and deadwood below the propeller. Photographed in dry-dock at Honolulu, Hawaii, after Nipsic had arrived from Samoa, circa August 1889. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 63082

Repaired to some extent, Nipsic remained in Hawaiian waters until she could make the trip to California, where she was decommissioned and disarmed in 1890. Her machinery was removed and her only value was as a barge.

Even as such, she lived on for another quarter century, with a large roof built over her amidships area, as a barracks and prison hulk at Puget Sound Naval Station, Bremerton, Washington.

At the Puget Sound Naval Station, Bremerton, Washington, 5 October 1897, while serving as a barracks ship. Off Nipsic’s stern is the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey ship Hassler, a 350-ton steamer built at Camden, New Jersey, in 1872. Donation of Rear Admiral Ammen Farenholt, USN(MC). U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 44602

Photographed in 1898, while serving as a barracks ship at the Puget Sound Naval Station, Bremerton, Washington. Collection of Naval Cadet Cyrus R. Miller. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 44603

In February 1913, she was sold for her value as scrap, which at the time was $15,000; and used as an unpowered timber barge, but was burned for salvage just two years later.

Of her second set of sisters, Adams served as a training ship to the New Jersey Naval Militia in WWI and was sold in 1920; Enterprise did the same for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy for decades before meeting the same fate as Adams in 1909; Essex was the training ship for first the Ohio then the Minnesota Naval Militia before being burned like Nipsic in 1930; and Alliance, after service which included fighting Colombian privateers in the 1880s, was hulked and kind of lost to history.

It seems in the end, that out of the Kansas and Adams-class gunboats, only Nipsic is memorialized.

Samoan Hurricane of 15-16 March 1889. Memorial tablet in the Chapel at the Mare Island Navy Yard, Calif., dedicated to the memory of officers and men of USS Trenton, USS Vandalia, and USS Nipsic who lost their lives in the storm. NHHC Photograph Collection, NH 1897.

The damaged propeller of the Nipsic is on display at the Vallejo, California waterfront, across the channel from Mare Island while the tablet above is still in a place of honor today at St. Peter’s Chapel, the oldest naval chapel in the United States, maintained as part of the Mare Island Historic Park Foundation.

Good Evening From Vallejo | by Eric Dugan via Flickr

In addition, her Civil War-era 100-pound parrotts is on display at the Iowa State Capitol Complex.

She has also been remembered in a stamp issued by the Samoan government.

To date, Nipsic is the only ship to carry that name on the Naval List.

Specs:
(Kansas class, 1862-1879)
Displacement: 625 tons
Length: 129 ft. 6 in (39.47 m)
Beam: 29 ft. (8.8 m)
Draught: 10 ft. 6 in (3.20 m)
Propulsion: steam engine, screw propelled
Speed: 12 knots
Complement: 108
Armament:
one 100-pounder rifle (currently preserved in Iowa)
two 12-pounder rifles
two 20-pounder Dahlgren rifles
two 9” Dahlgren smoothbores

(As Adams-class, 1879-1913)
Displacement: 1,375 long tons (1,397 t)
Length: 185 ft. (56 m)
Beam: 35 ft. (11 m)
Draft: 14 ft. 3 in (4.34 m)
Propulsion: Steam engine, screw
Sail plan: Barque-rigged
Speed: 11 knots
Complement: 190
Armament: (Removed 1890)
1 × 11 in (280 mm) gun
4 × 9 in (230 mm) guns
1 × 60-pounder Parrott rifle
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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Modern painting of the USS Conestoga (AT 54) on its final voyage pounding through large waves during a gale off Southeast Farallon Island in March 1921. Credit: Artist Danijel Frka © Russ Matthews Col.

Past Warship Wednesday alumni, the 1904-era civilian designed and built, ocean-going steel-hulled tugboat, USS Conestoga (AT-54), veteran of the Great War and mystery of the high seas since her disappearance en route to Pearl Harbor from San Francisco in March 1921, has been found.

In 2009, a NOAA survey near the Farallon Islands off San Francisco turned up a previously uncharted shipwreck in 189-foot-deep water that was investigated in 2014. By last October, with the help of an archaeologist from the Navy and, the identity was confirmed. The Navy and NOAA went public with the announcement on Wednesday after spending the last six months tracking down survivors of the lost crewmen and notifying them first.

Investigators came to the conclusion that the vessel likely sank in a storm three miles off Southeast Farallon Island just a day after she left port. The orientation of the ship suggests she was trying to make it to the shelter of the islands but was swamped in the gale.

“After nearly a century of ambiguity and a profound sense of loss, the Conestoga‘s disappearance no longer is a mystery,” said Manson Brown, deputy NOAA administrator. “We hope that this discovery brings the families of its lost crew some measure of closure and we look forward to working with the Navy to protect this historic shipwreck and honor the crew who paid the ultimate price for their service to the country.”

For more information, visit NOAA.

Smithsonian.com also has an excellent article on the discovery and effort to contact the survivors. (Hattip, Awp101, on that one.)

Rest in Peace, Fair Winds and Following Seas.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday March 30, 2016: Of Mines and Khartoum

IWM Q 38999

Here we see the Royal Navy Devonshire-class armored cruiser HMS Hampshire during her brief life. Although a warship in the RN during the toughest period of the Great War at sea, Hampshire is remembered more for whom she carried rather than where she fought.

The Devonshires were a six-pack of mixed armament (4×7.5-inch; 6×6-inch) cruisers that were popular around the 1900s. These 11,000-ton ships were designed to act independent of the main battle fleet and could cruise worldwide and protect sea-lanes from enemy surface raiders, or in turn become a surface raider themselves.

The concept was invalidated in the Russo-Japanese War, when Russian armored cruisers failed to make much impact on the extensive Japanese maru fleet, while they were sent to the bottom wholesale in warship v. warship ops. In turn, the armored cruiser concept was replaced by the more traditional all-big-gun fast heavy cruiser, and their flawed cousin the battlecruiser, both of which reigned for sometime through WWII.

Still, the Devonshires, though obsolete almost as soon as they were commissioned, gave yeoman service while they were around.

The subject of our tale, Hampshire, was laid down at Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, 1 September 1902. She was the fourth such warship to carry that name on the fleet list, dating back to a 46-gun ship built in 1653 for Cromwell’s Commonwealth.

Ironically, Hampshire was completed 15 July 1905, just six weeks after the Battle of Tsushima that largely invalidated her existence. Her cost, £833,817.

After cutting her teeth with the 1st Cruiser Squadron of the Channel Fleet for a few years as a shiny new warship for HM, Hampshire had her hull scraped and boilers reworked before being transferred to Hong Kong to sit the China Station in 1912.

1912, note the awnings for service in the tropics.

There, she waved the flag while keeping an eye on the German armored cruisers of Adm. Maximilian von Spee’s East Asia Squadron, preparing for Der Tag.

IWM Q 38999

When the balloon went up, Hampshire sortied for the German colony of Yap to destroy the wireless station there, on the way sinking the German collier SS Elspeth just seven days after the England joined the war. The lack of coal for Spee’s ships would be an albatross that ultimately ended his squadron. (Note: Hampshire’s sister, HMS Carnarvon, was present at the Battle of the Falkands and got licks in on both Spee’s SMS Gneisenau and Scharnhorst).

While in the Pacific, Hampshire just barely missed an opportunity to sink the much smaller cruiser SMS Emden (4200-tons; 10x105mm guns), however she did carry that stricken raider’s skipper, Kvtkpn. Karl von Müller, to POW camp in England while escorting an ANZAC troop convoy through the Indian Ocean and Red Sea to Egypt.

At Malta

Arriving back in home waters in January 1915, Hampshire landed Müller, who was sent on to captivity at the University of Nottingham, then joined the Grand Fleet.

Fighting at Jutland with the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, her 7.5-inchers tried but failed to hit any German ships during that epic surface battle. Likewise, Hampshire herself came away unscathed.

In July, she was chosen to carry Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, PC, “Baron Kitchener of Khartoum” to Imperial Russia via the White Sea. Kitchener and his staff were to help revitalize the Tsar’s war machine; after all, he was literally the face of the mighty BEF, which had swollen from a small volunteer force of just six infantry divisions to a modern army capable of holding the Kaiser in place on the Western Front.

Lord Kitchener aboard HMS Iron Duke at Scapa Flow, about one hour before he sailed on Hampshire. This is believed to be the last image of the legendary soldier.

Leaving Scapa Flow for Archangelsk, Hampshire and her two destroyer escorts ran afoul of a minefield laid by U-75 in May.

There, on 5 June off the mainland of Orkney between Brough of Birsay and Marwick Head, Hampshire struck a single mine and was holed, sinking rapidly in just 15 minutes by the bow, taking 737 members of her crew and passengers to the bottom with her. Only 12 crewmen survived and made it to shore.

Able Seaman (Signalman) William George Waterman Tyneside Z/4464. Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, one of the 737 men lost on HMS Hampshire. IWM image

One other purported survivor, Boer spy Frederick “Fritz” Joubert Duquesne, known to history as “The man who killed Kitchener” claimed to have guided a German U-boat to sink the HMS Hampshire via torpedo from shore, though nothing supports that claim.

Duquesne

Attaching himself to Kitchener’s staff, he claimed to have escaped Hampshire alone to be picked up by a waiting U-boat. But anyway…

The news of Kitchener’s loss, coming after the carnage of the Somme, was a blow to the Allied war effort.

The Wreck of the Hampshire by Geoffrey Stephen Allfree, IWM ART 5252

Further, without a shot in the arm, the Tsar’s army largely walked away from the war the next year, though not even the hero of Khartoum would likely have change that.

Remnants of Hampshire are considered relics in the IWM collection.

Fragment of boat belonging to HMS HAMPSHIRE in IWM collection

Royal Navy cap tally found among the effects of Midshipman E E Fellowes. Image via IWM

Fragment of a pinnace, or ship’s boat, from the wreckage of the armoured cruiser HMS Hampshire, washed up in Hoy Sound, June 1916. Image via IWM

Located in 180 feet of water, a small gun, some other minor wreckage, and one of her props were illegally salvaged in 1983 but have been recovered and preserved in museums.

HMS Hampshire gun at Marwick Head

As for her sisters, the five other Devonshires were luckier, with the exception of HMS Argyll, which wrecked on the Bell Rock, 28 October 1915. The four surviving ships were paid off soon after the war and sold for scrap.

Hampshire‘s name, though currently not in use, was bestowed to a County-class guided missile destroyer (D06) in 1963 and scrapped in 1979 after just 16 years service as part of the Labour Government’s severe defense cuts pre-Thatcher.

A memorial, planned by the Orkney Heritage Society is trying to raise £200,000 to more extensively commemorate the ship.

Image via Orkney Heritage Society

Some 737 names will be inscribed in panels on the wall, which will arc around the tower, with a separate panel for the staff of Lord Kitchener – and another one bearing the names of nine men killed on the drifter Laurel Crown, which was blown up in June 1916 while trying to clear the minefield.

Specs:

Displacement: 10,850 long tons (11,020 t) (normal)
Length: 473 ft. 6 in (144.3 m) (o/a)
Beam: 68 ft. 6 in (20.9 m)
Draught: 24 ft. (7.3 m)
Installed power:
21,000 ihp (16,000 kW)
17 Yarrow boilers; 6 cylindrical boilers
Propulsion:
2 × Shafts
2 × 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines
Speed: 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph)
Complement: 610
Armament:
4 × single BL 7.5-inch (191 mm) Mk I guns
6 × single BL 6-inch (152 mm) Mk VII guns
2 × single 12-pounder (3-inch, 76 mm) 8 cwt guns
18 × single QF 3-pounder (47 mm) Hotchkiss guns
2 × single 18-inch (45 cm) torpedo tubes
Armour:
Belt: 2–6 in (51–152 mm)
Decks: .75–2 in (19–51 mm)
Barbettes: 6 in (152 mm)
Turrets: 5 in (130 mm)
Conning tower: 12 in (305 mm)
Bulkheads: 5 in (127 mm)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, and the like that produced them.

Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of RV Pitchforth

Roland Vivian Pitchforth was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire on 25 April 1895. Studying at the Wakefield School of Art and Leeds College, his formal art education was interrupted by the Great War when Pitchforth volunteered for Wakefield’s own 106th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery.

After seeing the elephant on the Western Front, from which he always carried a hearing loss, he soon became an art instructor himself, teaching at the Clapham School of Art, St Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art in the 1920s and 1930s while producing very British watercolors.

Floods circa 1935 Roland Vivian Pitchforth, From the Tate

View of Harbour – Folkestone circa 1920 Roland Vivian Pitchforth 1895-1982 Bequeathed by the artist 1983. In the Tate collection.

When the Second World War came, the still spry 43-year-old partially deaf art teacher volunteered once more and became an official war artist for the Ministry of Information, and then later for the Admiralty, under the aegis of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee as a temporary captain in the Royal Marines

In the early months of his appointment, he painted coastal boats and seaplanes in action and traveled on convoys to the Azores and Gibraltar, often seeing combat first hand while armed with only a sketchbook.

3 Kingfisher seaplanes stand in an aerodrome consisting of corrugated metal hangars painted with camouflage patterns Pitchforth, Roland Vivian

Seafox heading down a slipway, surrounded by sailors. Ahead, a second plane is already in the water

Protection Pits for Dispersed Aircraft, Lee-on-Solent, note the landbased float-less Kingfisher in the foreground and the Swordfish in the back

Grey-colored Swordfish sitting on a runway, facing away from the artist Pitchforth, Roland Vivian note the contrasting shadows

Hurricane Test Pilots, Henlow

Activities begin as soon as the mist blows out to Sea, 1942. In the foreground, a Short Sunderland prepares for take-off on a calm sea. To the right there is a dense wall of pink-colored mist, and further out to sea there are three large ships. This is one of the more artistic war paintings I have seen.

HMS Brecon escorting an Aircraft carrier from Algiers. Brecon (L76) was a 1,900-ton Hunt-class destroyer of the Royal Navy that was present at almost every major amphibious landing in the Med and took part in the sinking of the German submarines U-450 and U-407.

A Parachute-landing 1940

Motor Gun-boats going on Operations 1943 note the calm turquoise sea

Night Exercises in Plymouth Sound

Motor Gun-boats in a Night Action

HM Submarine Torbay in Dry Dock at Plymouth, 1942. A T-class sub, Torbay, (N79) had the misfortune of being involved in two incidents regarded by many as war crimes when her skipper was accused of ordering his crew to fire on Axis troops as they swam in the water during Med ops.

HMS Eskimo and other Destroyers Fitting Out at Durban. Note how the bollard frames the work and if you didn’t know better, would think is the subject. Eskimo (F75) was a Tribal-class destroyer that was a bruiser. She fought in Norway (losing her bow at Narvik), the Mediterranean (being blown apart by German dive-bombers), the English Channel and in Burma. She chalked up U-971.

He also covered the war effort at home and the Blitz firsthand when he wasn’t white-knuckling destroyers at sea.

The bomb damaged House of Commons in Westminster after an air raid, 1941

View inside a bombed telephone exchange, filled with piles of wires and rubble 1941

Post office building 1941

The City Temple Church, London, EC4

Snack Time in a Factory 1941

Towards the end of the war, Pitchforth spent most of 1944 in the Med and was sent out to the Far East, witnessing the end-game of the Burma campaign.

Convoy leaving Gibraltar 1944

Loading an English Carrier and the French Cruiser ‘Gloire’ at Algiers. This watercolor is particularly interesting for its depiction of ‘dazzle’ painting, a technique designed to disguise the hulls of ships and render them less visible as targets. On 18 September 1940, Gloire’was intercepted by the British and brought to port in Casablanca where she was neutralized and worked with the Allies the rest of the war. Notably, she remained in service into 1958, spending most of her post-WWII life in Indochine waters.

He made numerous watercolors of Colombo Harbor in Ceylon before joining the combined amphibious and airborne attack on Rangoon with the commandos during which he improvised a scheme for painting camouflage on the amphibious landing craft to minimize the threat of airborne attack.

First British Troops in Rangoon 1945. Note the landing craft

Picking up a severe lung infection in Burma, he was invalided out in South Africa and remained there until able to travel again in 1948, returning to London.

Cruiser HMS Enterprise at Simonstown, South Africa: Christmas 1945. Enterprise (D52) was an obsolete 7500-ton WWI-era Emerald-class light cruiser that carried Ethiopian King Haile Selassie into exile in 1937. Brought out of retirement during WWII she was used for escort duties and naval gunfire support, firing over 9,000 rounds on D-Day alone. Ironically, the old behemoth even sank a German torpedo boat with a torpedo, which is the ultimate in irony. When Pitchforth ran across her, she was in the last days of her service, helping return British troops from Asia and Africa before being broken up. Pitchford was in South Africa at this time recovering from his own war aliments. In many ways when he painted this work, Pitchforth and Enterprise were the same.

Now in his 50s and a veteran of both World Wars, Pitchforth returned to teaching for another 20 years, and was made a Senior at the Royal Academy and a member of the Royal Watercolour Society.

He passed in 1982 at age 87.

The Imperial War Museum has 90~ pieces of his art online, many in high rez, while other works are in the MoD collection the GAC, indexed through Art UK and at the Tate in Liverpool.

An extensive bio is here.

Thank you for your work, sir.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday April 6, 2016: The evolutionary link of Casablanca

Naval Aviation Museum Accession Number 1996.488.013.011.

Here we see the unique aircraft carrier, the first of its kind produced from the keel up for the U.S. Navy, USS Ranger (CV-4) as she lies at anchor in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 1939.

Although one of just seven carriers in the fleet when World War II broke out, her service was far different from the other six flattops who slugged it out with the Japanese from the Coral Sea to Tokyo Bay.

While the Navy’s “covered wagon” USS Langley (CV-1) was converted from a collier in 1922, and the follow-on Lexington and Saratoga were converted from incomplete battlecruisers in 1927, Ranger was the first carrier for the fleet designed from the onset to be one.

As exemplified from this infographic from the Navy Historical Command, Ranger was a key link in the evolutionary chain.

2550×3300 click to big up

Larger than the Langley and smaller than the Lexingtons, the 769-foot one-off ship could make 29 knots, cruise for 10,000 nautical miles at half that, had three elevators, and carry as many as 86 aircraft as designed. Importantly, she also carried a relatively heavy AAA armament for her day (40 .50-cal machine guns). Best of all, at just 17,000-tons she sipped at the allowable tonnage under the Washington Naval Treaty.

Designed in the late 1920s, Ranger was ordered in 1930 from Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co in Virginia and laid down 26 September 1931.

There were over a half-dozen prior Rangers in the Navy dating back to John Paul Jones’ 18-gun sloop built in 1777.

In a rare case of extreme overlap, two different Rangers were active on the Navy List in WWI (SP-237 and SP-369) while two different Lexington-class battlecruisers (irony!) of the same era were at one time or another to carry the moniker.

Commissioned 4 June 1934, the subject of our tale had a very clean look to her, though was very different from John Paul Jones’ vessel.

At Norfolk Naval base, Virginia, on 7 June 1934 just three days after joining the fleet, she would land her first plane in two weeks. Photographed from a USAAC plane. Description: NHHC Catalog #: NH 93546

First landing on the USS Ranger. Lt Cmdr. A. C. Davis, pilot, H. E. Wallace, ACMM, passenger. June 21, 1934

One of the reasons a 17,000-ton ship could carry over 80 aircraft was due to a unique outrigger system that allowed deck parking with a minimum of space. (No folding wings back then).

Ranger embarked the brand-new Air Group Four consisting of VT-4, VB-4, and VF-4, stood up specifically for the ship. She soon set off for the Pacific and spent almost the entire prewar period in those warm waters.

Well, not always warm…

In early 1936 Ranger and her aircrew, which included Coast Guard aviators at the time, conducted the first-ever carrier cold weather test trials in Alaska waters, proving the concept.

View taken 6 February 1936 showing members of the “Cold weather Test Detachment” that had been embarked for special operations in Alaskan Waters. (The Detachment had been formed 25 November 1935, and was disbanded 25 February 1936) NHHC Catalog #: 80-CF-8005-3

Then followed more normal peacetime service.

All of the the Navy’s flattops, front to back, the carriers Ranger (CV-4), Lexington (CV-2), and Saratoga (CV-3) pictured at anchor off Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. 4 August 1936. Langley by this time was being converted to a seaplane tender and Yorktown CV-5, would not commission until 30 September 1937. Also, the Ranger, front, is deceptively large due to perspective. Lex and Sara went well over 40,000 tons

The aircraft carrier Ranger (CV-4) lies at anchor near Hawaii in 1937. Naval Aviation Museum Accession Number 1996.488.013.005

The USS Ranger (CV-4) is moored at North Island, California with aircraft on her deck. 03/14/1938. Naval Aviation Museum Accession Number 1996.488.013.010.

USS Ranger CV-4 off Honolulu, Hawaii during Fleet Problem XIX, 8 April 1938

Underway at sea during the latter 1930s. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. NHC Catalog #: 80-G-428440

However, with the war drums beating in far-off Europe, and the new Yorktown-class carriers taking her place in the Pac, Ranger chopped to the Atlantic Fleet in 1939. Once the war popped off, she began armed Neutrality Patrol operations in the North Atlantic.

The USS Ranger (CV-4) lies at anchor with aircraft neatly aligned on her deck. 1940. Naval Aviation Museum Accession Number 1996.488.013.013.

Flight deck operations, 19 November 1941, showing Vought SB2U “Vindicators” of VS-41 and VS-42 getting ready for a patrol flight, and a Grumman F4F-3 “Wildcat” of VF-41 (right). Note marking schemes in use on planes, white codes, crew of plane in foreground in cold weather gear. Description: NHC Catalog #: 80-G-391590

After Pear Harbor, she was one of the first ships to pick up a borderline experimental RCA CXAM-1 radar, able to detect single aircraft at 50 miles and to detect large ships at 14 miles. Conducting sea patrols in the Atlantic, she also ferried Army P-40 Warhawks to Africa for transshipment to the American Volunteer Group Flying Tigers fighting the Japanese in the Far East.

Loading 50-caliber machine gun of Army P40-F aboard the USS Ranger while in route to North Africa. January 17, 1943. In all she would ship 215 P-40s and 70 P-38s to Africa in four separate trips for the Army between April 1942 and April 1944

Douglas SBD Dauntless scout bomber Goes around for another landing attempt, after being waved off by the Landing Signal Officer on USS Ranger (CV-4), circa June 1942. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. NHHC Catalog #: 80-G-K-741

Aircraft carrier USS Ranger CV-4 making a tight turn to port, 1942.

Underway in Hampton Roads, Virginia, 18 August 1942. Note partially lowered after elevator and flight deck identification letters R N G R still visible just ahead of the ramp. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. NHC Catalog #: 80-G-10786

Setting sail for North Africa, she was the center of the Allied air fleet covering the Torch Landings in November 1942, accompanied by four new Sangamon-class escort carriers (which were technically heavier than Ranger at over 22,000-tons, though with a much smaller flight deck and hangar).

North Africa Operation, November 1942 – testing machine guns of Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat fighters aboard USS Ranger (CV 4), while en route from the U.S. to North African waters, circa early November 1942. Note the special markings used during this operation, with a yellow ring painted around the national insignia on aircraft fuselages. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. Catalog #: 80-G-30362

A Grumman F4F-4 Wildcat fighter taking off from USS Ranger (CV-4) to attack targets ashore during the invasion of Morocco, circa 8 November 1942. Note: Army observation planes in the left middle distance; Loudspeakers and distinctive CXAM radar antenna on Ranger’s mast. Her group at the time consisted of 72 operational planes (1 CRAG, 17 VS-41, 26 VF-9, and 28 VF-41) Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. NHC Catalog #: 80-G-30244

Conducting almost 500 combat sorties in 72 hours, Ranger‘s aircraft destroyed at least 28 Vichy French planes on the ground in strikes on the Rabat and Rabat-Sale aerodromes, wiped out over 100 military vehicles, strafed four French destroyers at Casablanca, plastered the Richelieu-class battleship Jean Bart, bombed the destroyer Albatross, and severely damaged the Duguay-class light cruiser Primauguet.

The French battleship Jean Bart, photographed by USN Photographers Mate Third Class Bill Wade from an airplane of the USS Ranger, Nov 8 1942

Ranger lost 16 planes in the Torch operation and cost the lives of ten airmen.

Her next solid combat was in a raid in occupied Norwegian waters in 1943. Attacking the Bodo roadstead, SBD dive-bombers escorted by Wildcats sank four steamers and logged hits on the 8,000-ton freighter LaPlata and a 10,000-ton oiler.

Aircraft attack on enemy shipping, Bodo Harbor, Norway, showing direct hit amidships on 5000 GT M/V, 4 October 1943. NHC Catalog #: NH 84270

Aircraft attack on enemy shipping, Bodo Harbor, Norway, showing SAAR under attack, 4 October 1943. NHHC Catalog #: NH 84271

With newer, faster, better armored, and larger fleet carriers joining the fleet, Ranger had by 1944 become more than just somewhat obsolescent and was converted to a training carrier.

An aerial view of the USS Ranger (CV-4) as she lies at anchor with crewmembers lining her deck. 1944. Note the 40mm mount on her bow. Naval Aviation Museum Accession Number 1996.488.013.024

She picked up a camo scheme, landed her old 5″/25s and puny .50 cals, replaced them with 40mm and 20mm AAA guns, had catapults installed, and got to the business of qualifying naval aviators.

Photographed from a Naval Air Station, Hampton Roads, Virginia, aircraft on 6 July 1944. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. NHC Catalog #: 80-G-236719

Sailing for the Pacific, she arrived in Hawaiian waters in August 1944 and quickly began carrier qualification cruises, concentrating on Navy and Marine night fighter squadrons, securing 35,784 landings by the end of the war.

View from a Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat as it approaches the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CV-4) in 1944-45, when Ranger was used as a training carrier.

Totally obsolete in a fleet of new Essex-class vessels, she was used in Pensacola for a while then was decommissioned at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard on 18 October 1946. She won two battlestars for her wartime service.

Ranger was sold for $259,000 in scrap metal pricing on 31 January 1947 and subsequently broken up.

She minted brass on an unparalleled scale, with all ten of her skippers between 4 June 1934 and 1 May 1946 going on to become admirals including ADM. John Sidney (“Mac”) McCain Sr. His grandson is the current senator from Arizona.

Ranger had lots of “onlys” in the fact that she was the only pre-war US carrier to have never engaged Japanese forces in battle (even Langley was sunk by the Combined Fleet), the only U.S. carrier to perform flight operations above the Arctic Circle (during Operation Leader off the coast of Norway) during WWII, the only carrier not to receive a Unit Citation for her performance in Operation Torch (the four escort carriers which accomplished less all received one), the only carrier whose airgroup used green painted tail assemblies, and was the first U.S. fleet carrier to be scrapped.

Her bell is preserved in Pensacola, the cradle of Naval Aviation, and her builder’s plate is at the Hampton Roads Naval Museum.

Ship’s Bell, on display outside of the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida. Photos taken on 13 June 2008. Via Navsource.

The Forrestal-class supercarrier (CV-61) of the same name ordered in 1954 and sold for scrap in 2014 maintained her legacy.

A vibrant veteran’s group, which celebrates the armada of past Rangers, is very active.

Specs:

Displacement: 14,576 tons standard; 17,577 tons full load
Dimensions (wl): 730′ x 80′ x 22′ 4.875″ (full load)
Dimensions (max.): 769′ x 109.5′
Armor: 2″ (sides and bulkheads)-1″ (top) over steering gear
Power plant: 6 boilers; steam turbines; 2 shafts; 53,500 shp
Speed: 29.25 knots
Endurance (design): 10,000 nautical miles @ 15 knots
Armament: 8 single 5″/25 gun mounts; 40 .50-cal machine guns (1934)
24 40 mm (6x quad mounts); 46 20mm single mounts (1943)
Aircraft: 86
Aviation facilities: 3 elevators; no catapult
Crew: 2,148 (ship’s company + air wing) (1941 figure)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday April 13, 2016 Champagne on ice via Corbeta

Here we see the steam corbeta/canonera (corvette/gunboat) ARA Uruguay of the Armada de la República Argentina as she appeared in 1903, fresh from her Antarctic adventures. This plucky steel-hulled barque served some 34 years in the fleet and another 108-ish in various other roles (not a misprint).

In the 1870s, Argentine President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was a fan of a big Navy and wanted one bad. Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of yards in the Latin American country that could cough modern steam warships up so he turned to Laird/Cammel brothers in Birkinhead outside of Liverpool and quickly ordered what became known as “Sarmiento’s Squadron” of four mortar ships (Constitution, Bermejo, Pilcomayo, Republic), two Ericcson-type monitors (Los Andes and El Plata) and two gunboats with a draft shallow enough to go upriver (Parana and Uruguay). It is the final ship mentioned that is our subject.

Mounting a quartet of 7-inch breech loading guns mounted on then-novel iron Vavasseur pivot mountings, one forward, one aft of it, one on each side towards the bow; the 152-foot long Uruguay was well armed for her size.

A 31mm iron hull sheathed in teak and then in zinc plates, she had three watertight bulkheads. Her 82-foot mainmast helped keep 15 sails aloft totaling 612 m2, capable of up to 11 knots in a stiff wind and calm sea. For when the wind did not blow, Uruguay had two boilers and a horizontal reciprocating engine that generated 475 hp that could push her folding prop hard enough to creep about at 6 knots. She carried 97 tons of coal, enough to carry her 1,500 miles on steam alone.

Completed in 1874, Uruguay sailed from Liverpool to Argentina and was promptly involved in “el Motín de los Gabanes” — the “Mutiny of the Overcoats” involving students from the new Naval Academy. Then came an expedition to help crush the rebel Lopez Jordan the next year. She sailed up the Uruguay River, taking the 1st Infantry Regiment with her to aid in this task.

In her all white livery that she boasted as a gunboat

In 1880 she swapped out her legacy cannon for a single QF 150mm Armstrong-Elwich mount and two 90mm guns of the same make.

Uruguay later sailed to establish Argentina’s sovereignty over Patagonia, helped escort a scientific mission to observe Venus from the Southernmost shores of the nation, and rescued the crews of the lost French barque Esperance de Bordeaux and the whaler Batista.

Off Patagonia

After serving as a quarantine ship in Los Pozos, she sailed for England in 1884 for a two-year overall which led to several port calls in Europe and South America on the return voyage to show off the spick and span gunboat.

After a spell as a station ship at Montevideo, where the ambassador often used her as a floating embassy, she performed more rescues (the British ship Caisson, three unnamed whalers off Puerto Deseado, and picking up castaways at Bahia Blanca) while conducting off and on patrols of the Uruguay, Parana and de la Plata rivers.

By 1893, Uruguay updated her armament again for a pair of 120mm Armstrongs and in 1900 picked up four new 76mm popguns as tensions with Chile were escalating.

At roughly the same time, the Organizing Committee of the International Antarctic Expedition approved no less than four different groups to head very far south.

-Robert Scott’s Discovery. This expedition included a young Ernest Shackleton.
-Erich Dagobert von Drygalski’s Gauss, which discovered Kaiser Wilhelm II Land for Germany
-William Bruce’s Scottish expedition aboard the Scotia (go figure)
-Otto Nordenskjöld’s Swedish group on the Antartic, which included at least one Norwegian, her skipper

With this in mind, the Argentinians kinda figured the South Pole-bound explorers from may run into some problems and the Uruguay was strengthened (8 bulkheads) at Arsenal de Marina de Dársena Norte, most of her armament was landed, her rig lowered and she was provisioned for a year’s journey with a crew of just 27 men (down from 104).

Corvette Uruguay sails towards the Antarctic

Her aged steam plant was replaced with two locomotive boilers and a 1850 shp triple-expansion steam engine from the wrecked Yarrow-built torpedo boat destroyer Santa Fe (doubling her speed) while her magazine was filled with high explosives to be used to help blast through polar ice if needed.

Based on the RN’s Havoc-class TBDs, Yarrow built four sleek greyhounds for Argentina in 1896: “Corrientes” “Misiones” “Entre Ríos” and “Santa Fe”. The last of which was wrecked on a sandbar in 1897– but half of her machinery went on to power Uruguay for another two decades

The new ice-strengthened rescue ship, under Lt. Julian Irizar with the unlikely joint assistance of Lt. Alberto Boonen Chamaler of the Chilean Navy, was ready to help support the expeditions and soon sailed to look for the lost Swedish group.

1903 rescue mission officers

Stranded on Paulet Island and Snow Hill Island, which is closer to South America than any other part of the Antarctic continent, after their ship was crushed in the ice, Uruguay located and brought back all the surviving members of the Nordenskjold party in October 1903.

Rescuing the Swedish expedition

The return trip was not easy for the corvette, having to dodge icebergs and some storms, but a huge crowd welcomed her when she returned to Argentina on Dec. 23 with the feared lost explorers.

She would soon return to the frozen continent, supporting Jean-Baptiste August Étienne Charcot’s French Antarctic Expedition in 1904.

‘Champagne on Ice’ The story of a famous but forgotten 1904 photograph, the third French mission to Antarctica, as supported by ARA Uruguay

From there, she was transferred to perform research and survey tasks (with the Hidrografía Naval), continuing to be listed as a warship for the next few years, though was disarmed.

She had an amazing 40 skippers in a non-stop string from Lt Col. Marina Erasmo Obligado on 08 Aug 1874 to Capt. Jorge Yalour who left her deck on 2 Dec 1908.

However, the Armada was not done with Uruguay, using her with the occasional civvy crew to make regular trips each year to relieve and resupply the Argentine-manned Orcadas polar research station in the South Orkneys while continuing her work in coastal survey, updating nautical charts. Orcadas importantly was the first permanently inhabited base in the Antarctic and remains staffed today.

She also visited South Georgia Island (now very much a part of the British Falkland Islands territory) repeatedly during this time, to resupply the Argentine government’s meteorological station located at Norwegian sea captain Carl Anton Larsen’s Grytviken whaling station used by his Compañía Argentina de Pesca (Argentine Fishing Company). *More on this later.

Larsen, in another link to the Uruguay, was the Norwegian alluded to on Nordenskjöld’s doomed 1903 expedition.

After a quarter-century poking around the ice, on 11 June 1926, Uruguay was decommissioned then stricken that November, though she remained tied up at the shipyard at Rio Santiago for another two decades as an ammunition barge until at least 1945.

As for her sistership ARA Parana, that craft remained in service as a warship like Uruguary until 1900, then was disarmed, renamed Piedrabuena, and used as a naval transport until as late as 1926.

Uruguay durante una visita a la ciudad de La Paz, ER

Saved from the breakers, her hulk was patched back together and in 1955 was officially restored to the Naval List by Presidential decree, designated as a museum ship after lengthy restoration in 1964.

In June 1967, she was declared a National Historic Landmark and in 1972 was transferred to the port area of Buenos Aires, where she remains today moored near the frigate ARA Presidente Sarmiento at the Museum of Sea and Navigation.

When the Argentine Association of Classic Sailboats (Asociación Argentina de Veleros Clásicos) was founded in 1984, she was issued the designation of Hull #01 by the group and serves as the association’s figurative flagship, being the starting point for the annual Buenos Aires to Río de Janiero sail race.

They even have the ship’s mascot preserved

Here is a good short walk-through video of how she appeared in 2011

She is also remembered in a series of stamps issued over the years by the Argentine government.

For more information on this ship in Spanish, visit Histarmar and CiberNautica.

*As an interesting side note, the anchorage at the South Georgia whaling station frequented by the Uruguay took a weird twist in March 1982 when a handful of Argentine commandos dressed as civilians, brought from the Corbeta Uruguay base on windswept Thule Island (yes, named after our ship when established by the Argies in 1976) were landed at nearby Leith Harbor there in a precursor to the Falkland Islands War which would kick off just a week later.

Leith Harbor, March 25, 1982, Lieutenant Commander Alfredo Astiz at the head of the Buzos Tácticos Marine commandos photographed by Serge Briez. Astiz was known as El Ángel Rubio de la Muerte (The Blond Angel of Death) and the group infiltrated the island dressed as civilians, then switched to uniforms and rose the Argentine flag. Within a week, the Falkland Islands War was on.

As an ultimate result of that war, the Argentinians ended their occupation of Thule, which is claimed by the Brits, though Corbeta Uruguay base is still listed on the maps.

Speaking of forgotten islands in the Antarctic, monuments to ARA Uruguay endure on Snow Island (where she saved Nordenskjöld) and others, celebrating her work in the frozen south.

Specs:

Drawing Diego Carre CORBETA URUGUAY

Displacement: 550 metric tons (540 long tons) as built. 750 after 1903
Length: 152.1 ft.
Beam: 25.0 ft.
Draft: 11 ft.
Propulsion: Steam, 1-shaft, 3-cylinder compound engine, 475 ihp, 2 cylindrical boilers, replaced 1900-01
Sail plan: Barque
Speed:
Cruising: 6 kn
Maximum: 11 kn
Range: 1,500 nmi
Armament:
Original: four Vavasseur mounted 7-inch guns (bow, stern, port, and starboard)
1880: two 90 mm and one 150 mm Armstrong guns
1893: two 120 mm
1900: two 120mm, four 76mm (120mm’s removed in 1903)
1908: Disarmed
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday April 20, 2016: The Slugger of the Nevada Test Site

NHHC Catalog #: 80-G-466457

Here we see the Northampton-class heavy cruiser USS Louisville (CL/CA-28) at the Naval Fleet Review in New York Harbor on 31 May 1934. If you will, please note USS Lexington (CV-2) in the background. The sparkly new “Treaty cruiser” found herself in the thick of a very unsportsmanlike naval war just seven years after this peaceful scene.

When the U.S. wrapped up World War I, they stopped making large cruisers for over a decade, coasting on the legacy vessels commissioned during and prior to that Great War. Then in 1928 came the top-heavy but very modern two-ship 11,500-ton (full load) Pensacola (CA-24) class cruisers with their armament of 10 decent 8″/55 (20.3 cm) Mark 9 guns (the same pieces carried on Lexington shown above).

Mark 9 turrets and guns intended for USS Louisville CA-28 under construction at the Washington Navy Yard via navweaps

However, with the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty, the need was seen to trim back on the P-Cola design and the next six resulting 9,200-ton Northampton‘s, with just 9 of the 8″/55s and a trimmed back armor scheme were ordered after.

The subject of our study, CA-28, was laid down at Puget Sound Naval Yard, Bremerton, Washington on Independence Day 1928, just a little over a year before the Stock Market Crash brought the Roaring 20s to a sudden halt. As such, she was the third ship on the Naval List to carry the name, with the first being a City-class ironclad during the Civil War and the second a WWI troopship.

USS LOUISVILLE (CA-28) Gift of Admiral H.G. Bowen, 6/68 Catalog #: NH 65629

Louisville‘s armor was so thin, in fact, that she was originally classified as a light cruiser when commissioned 15 January 1931 (CL-28) but due to the nature of her armament was reclassified as a heavy a few months later.

She had a happy peacetime life, conducting training cruises for mids, visiting foreign ports throughout the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific.

Louisville 1934

USS Louisville saluting during Memorial Day ceremonies at New York City, May 1934

Photographed during the early 1930s. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 51903

USS LOUISVILLE (CA-28) Caption: Photograph autographed June 1967 by Admiral Thomas C. Hart, USN (Ret). He used the LOUISVILLE as his flagship from 18 July 1934 to 1 April 1935 while serving as Commander, Cruiser Division 6 Scouting Force. Description: Catalog #: NH 51432

Northampton-class sister USS Chicago (CA-29) leads CruDiv5 into the Caribbean, Canal Zone, on 4 May 1934, fleet problem 15. Following are USS Louisville (CA-28), USS Portland (CA-33), and USS Indianapolis (CA-35)

At Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1940. Note ship has 3-inch/50 caliber antiaircraft guns. Description: Courtesy of Donald Robertson Catalog #: NH 92256.

Her world started getting rough when the next World War broke out in 1939 and she started picking up new armament and getting ready for service in the Navy of the world’s largest armed neutral. This included running to South Africa and picking up a load of His Majesty’s gold to bring to the states. She arrived at 22 Jan 1941 at New York with $148,342.212.55 in British gold brought from Simonstown to be deposited in American banks.

When Pearl Harbor changed that whole neutrality thing, she was in waters off Borneo but luckily missed bumping into the Japanese fleet and joined TF 119 for a few pinprick carrier raids before sailing to the West Coast to have her armament changed wholesale.

View taken 10 November 1942, at Mare Island, California. Circles indicate alterations. Boat davits for a 26″ motor whaleboat; bridge alterations; 20mm guns added to no. 2 turret. Note style of bow “28.” Description: Catalog #: 19-N-36771

Off the Mare Island Navy Yard, 11 November 1942. Description: Catalog #: 19-N-36765

Once made ready for the new war without treaty obligations, she sailed north for the Arctic region, where she took the fight to the Japanese occupation forces in the Aleutian Islands. She plastered both Attu and Kiska with her big 8-inchers and safeguarded convoys in the Northern Pac.

Steams out of Kulak Bay, Adak, Aleutian Islands, bound for operations against Attu, 25 April 1943. The photograph looks toward Sweepers Cove. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. 80-G-72060

View of bombardment in a fog, Aleutians. Probably taken during Attu Operation, May 1943. Description: Catalog #: NH 92379

USS Louisville (CA 28) operating in the Bering Sea during May 1943. She is followed by USS San Francisco (CA 38).

Shells Attu, 11 May 1943. View of forward 8″ guns in action. Description: Catalog #: NH 92382

Next came service as the flag of Rear Admiral J. B. Oldendorf and a string of naval gunfire support in the Marshal Islands

Kwajalein invasion, January-February 1944 Caption: Namur Island under heavy bombardment, just prior to the initial landings, 1 February 1944. Blockhouse in lower center has just received a direct hit from an 8″ gun of USS LOUISVILLE, one of whose planes took this photo. Description: Catalog #: 80-G-218802

Then came the Marianas, the Palaus and on to the Philippines, where things got out of hand. As part of the Battle of Surigao Strait, Louisville helped to sink the Japanese battleship Fusō and, along with USS Denver (CL-58) and USS Portland (CA-33) rain fire on the Japanese “Treaty cruiser” Mogami.

Moving on to support operations off Luzon, Louisville was hit by two Yokosuka D4Y Suisei kamikazes in the Lingayen Gulf, 6 January 1945.

USS Louisville (CA 28) is hit by a Kamikaze in Lingayen Gulf, Philippine Islands, 6 January 1945. Photographed from USS Salamaua (CVE 96)

While she was able to remain operable, the damage inflicted by the twin hits killed a Marine and 42 Sailors including RADM. Theodore E. Chandler. She shipped for Mare Island for repairs.

View of wrecked 40mm quad mount and other kamikaze damage by the bridge received January 1945 in Lingayen Gulf. Taken at Mare Island, 7 February 1945. Description: Catalog #: NH 92367

Off the Mare Island Navy Yard, 7 April 1945. Note: anchors; NEPANET (YTB-189) at left. Description: Catalog #: 19-N-83899

Rushing back to the fleet, she joined TF 54 off Okinawa and was soon in the gunline pumping shells into the Emperor’s positions.

USS LOUISVILLE (CA-28) off the Southern coast of Okinawa, 30 May 1945. She was hit by a kamikaze a few days later. LCI-1090 is alongside. Description: Catalog #: 80-G-K-5827

Another kamikaze hit on 5 June did less damage than the ones just five months before but she left for Mare Island again a week later for more repairs. Repairs complete, she sailed for Japan again in August but saw no more action before the end of the conflict. Finishing some post-war occupation and repatriation duties, Louisville was decommissioned on 17 June 1946 in Philadelphia.

She earned 13 battlestars for her service.

After floating in the mothballs fleet for 13 years, she was sold on 14 September 1959 to the Marlene Blouse Corporation of New York for her value in scrap.

In a way, she was much luckier than several of her sisters were. Class leader Northampton was sunk in the Battle of Tassafaronga, 30 November 1942 just a few months after Houston (CA-30) went down in the trap that was the Sunda Strait.

Battle of Sunda Strait, 28 February – 1 March 1942. Painting by John Hamilton depicting Louisville’s sister, USS Houston (CA 30), in her final action with Japanese forces

Likewise, sister Chicago (CA-29) was lost in Battle of Rennell Island in 1943.

Of the two survivors besides our hero, USS Augusta (CA-31) spent her war in the Atlantic and Med, being sold for scrap just weeks before Louisville while USS Chester (CA-27) had already been disposed of in the summer of 1959– leaving Lucky Louie as the last of her class on the Naval List

Her bell is preserved at the Naval Support Center in Louisville while her name endures with USS Louisville (SSN-724), a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine commissioned in 1986 and homeported at Pearl Harbor.

However, there is another piece of the old cruiser that is quietly sitting in the high desert, having continued its military service well into the 1950s.

You see one of her Mark 9 turrets, sans guns, was sent to the Nevada Test Site and used there for several years.

From local media:

The turret’s purpose, in the days when nuclear tests were conducted on towers aboveground, was to cut costs by eliminating multiple stations for measuring the gamma ray output of nuclear explosions detonated at different sites.

The late Bill McMaster of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory saw a way to create a single station that could turn and point its detectors at many sites. He had a surplus Navy gun turret shipped in from Mare Island Shipyard in the Bay Area.

The turret was installed as if aboard ship and fitted with a lead-lined barrel that could be aimed precisely at the top of a 500-foot tower a thousand or more yards away where the burst of gamma rays from a nuclear detonation would indicate its explosive yield.

The turret was used to diagnose three tests in 1957, all part of Operation Plumbbob. Soon after that, the turret was retired, as the U.S. and Soviet Union entered into agreements that led to an end to testing in the atmosphere.

There are no plans to move the old turret, which will likely remain as a quiet reminder of the old cruiser for decades to come.

Specs:

Displacement: 9,050 long tons (9,200 t) (standard)
Length: 600 ft. 3 in (182.96 m) oa
569 ft (173 m) pp
Beam: 66 ft. 1 in (20.14 m)
Draft: 16 ft. 4 in (4.98 m) (mean)
23 ft. (7.0 m) (max)
Installed power:
8 × White-Forster boilers
107,000 shp (80,000 kW)
Propulsion:
4 × Parsons reduction steam turbines, Curtis cruising gears
4 × screws
Speed: 32.7 kn (37.6 mph; 60.6 km/h)
Range: 10,000 nmi (12,000 mi; 19,000 km) at 15 kn (17 mph; 28 km/h)
Capacity: 1,500 short tons (1,400 t) fuel oil
Complement: 90 officers 601 enlisted
Armament: (As built)
9 × 8 in (203 mm)/55 caliber guns (3×3)
4 × 5 in (127 mm)/25 caliber anti-aircraft guns
2 × 3-pounder 47 mm (1.9 in) saluting guns
6 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
(1945)
9 × 8 in (203 mm)/55 caliber guns (3×3)
8 × 5 in (127 mm)/25 caliber anti-aircraft guns
2 × 3-pounder 47 mm (1.9 in) saluting guns
6 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
7 × quad 40 mm (1.6 in) Bofors guns
28 × 20 mm (0.79 in) Oerlikon cannons
Armor:
Belt: 3–3 3⁄4 in (76–95 mm)
Deck: 1–2 in (25–51 mm)
Barbettes: 1 1⁄2 in (38 mm)
Turrets: 3⁄4–2 1⁄2 in (19–64 mm)
Conning Tower: 1 1⁄4 in (32 mm)
Aircraft carried: 4 × floatplanes
Aviation facilities: 2 × Amidship catapults
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday April 27, 2016: The flattop who saw Dragoon and Dracula, among others

IWM image, colorized by Royston

Here we see the Smiter-class escort carrier HMS Khedive (D62) of the Royal Navy with Supermarine Seafire L.IIIs of RNAS 808 Squadron on the deck as she enters the Grand Harbour of Valletta in Malta. July 1944. Built in Seattle, she went on to put in hard work in several theaters for the King before getting back to her merchant roots.

With both Great Britain and the U.S. running desperately short of flattops in the first half of World War II, and large, fast fleet carriers taking a while to crank out, a subspecies of light and “escort” carriers, the first created from the hulls of cruisers, the second from the hulls of merchant freighters, were produced in large numbers to put a few aircraft over every convoy and beach in the Atlantic and Pacific.

Of the more than 122 escort carriers produced in the U.S. for use by her and her Allies, some 45 were of the Bogue-class. Based on the Maritime Commission’s Type C3-S-A1 cargo ship hull, these were built in short order at Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation, Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, and by the Western Pipe and Steel Company of San Francisco.

Some 496-feet overall with a 439 foot flight deck, these 16,200-ton ships could make a respectable 18 knots which negated their use in fleet operations, but allowed them to more than keep up with convoys of troop ships and war supplies. Capable of self-defense with four twin Bofors and up to 35 20mm Oerlikons for AAA as well as a pair of 4-inch/50s for defense against small boats, they could carry as many as 28 aircraft in composite air wings. The ship carried two elevator, arresting gear and a catapult.

Most of the Bogue-class went right over to the Royal Navy via Lend-Lease, where they were known as the Ameer, Attacker, Ruler, or Smiter-class in turn, depending on their arrangement. This includes the hero of our tale.

Laid down at Sea-Tac 22 September 1942 as USS Cordova (AVG-39), she was commissioned 25 August 1943 into the Royal Navy as HMS Khedive (D62). As a latter Bogue/Smiter-class vessel, her armament concentrated more on 40mm guns, carrying eight twin Bofors rather than four as in earlier runs of the class, while trimming the 20mms down to just 20 single mounts and swapping out the 4″/50s for two 5″/51s.

Undated photo of HMS Khedive (D62) underway at Greenock, Scotland, Captain H.J. Haynes RN in command. Source: Imperial War Museum Admiralty Official Collection by Beadell, S.J. (Lt), Photo No. © IWM(A 22596).

After conversion at HM Canadian Dockyard Esquimalt, she embarked 12 Avengers and 10 Corsairs for the voyage through the Panama Canal to the UK where she received further conversion for use as an assault carrier at HM Dockyard Rosyth. While working up she suffered a collision with the 1,224-ton coaster SS Stuart Queen that sent her back for repairs.

Assigned to Task Group 88.1 with four of her sisterships for the upcoming invasion of Southern France (Operation Dragoon), she embarked 26 Seafires of 808 Naval Air Squadron and sailed for Malta in July 1944.

During the landings, her mini air wing carried out 201 sorties in just a week, conducting air attacks on shore targets and reconnaissance flights as well as providing Combat Air Patrols over landing area.

A Seafire III, bombed up ready for action, taking off from the KHEDIVE. IWM A 25493

Scene from HMS PURSUER of other assault carriers in the force which took part in the landings in the south of France on the 15 August 1944. Leading are HMS ATTACKER and HMS KHEDIVE. Three Grumman Wildcats can be seen parked on the edge of PURSUER’s flight deck. IWM A 25184

Following Dragoon, she was reassigned to the British Aegean Force but again was involved in a crack up with a merchie, the 7,200-ton SS Ocean Messenger, though it didn’t stop the baby flattop from carrying out air attacks on shipping and shore targets in Crete, Scarpanto and Rhodes in Operation Outing throughout September.

Shipping back for the UK as the Med was winding down; she was repaired and refitted in London before swapping out her Seafires for Hellcats, still flown by 808 Squadron. She sailed in 1945 for the East Indies Fleet, arriving at Trincomalee in February with a battalion of the Kings African Rifles shipping aboard.

West African troops playing deck hockey with ratings on board HMS Khedive en route to Burma, April 1945.

April found her with Force 63 taking the fight to the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies where she conducted air operations that included photo-reconnaissance flights over Penang, Port Swettenham, Sumatra and Port Dickson, CAPs over the fleet (her air wing fought off a swarm of 10 Oscars on 11 April, scratching two of the Emperor’s aircraft for no loss of her own) and dropping bombs and .50 cal on enemy ships and positions throughout the archipelago.

The KHEDIVE’s flight deck control officer (in white wearing Mae West) drops his flag to signal that the leading Hellcat (of 808 Sqdn) be launched into the air by catapult. Taken during a sortie against the Japanese off Sumatra. IWM A 29079

The French battleship RICHELIEU steaming in company as the KHEDIVE’s flight deck control officer (wearing Mae West) gives taxiing instructions to a Naval Hellcat pilot when guiding a fighter into position on the catapult. IWM A 29078

She also had a few SAR aircraft aboard for plucking out those lost at sea.

Here is a Supermarine Walrus amphibious aircraft takes off from HMS KHEDIVE in the Far East to rescue the crew of a ditched bomber spotted in their dinghy 30 miles away. The white patches on the wings of the aircraft are recognition panels designed to prevent friendly fire incidents. IWM A 29251

Besides her Commonwealth aircrew of Brits, Canadians, Kiwis and Aussies, 808 had at least one Royal Netherlands Navy pilot, Lieut Willem Van Den Bosch in front of his Hellcat fighter, May 1945– note the shorts. IWM A 28944

May came reassignment to Force 61 and plastering the Andaman Islands then back to Force 63 to operate against airfields in Sumatra and shipping in Malacca Straits, going on to cover the landings in Malaya as the war wound down.

This led to the reoccupation of Rangoon in Operation Dracula in May, where 808 Squadron were in the air as the Jack was brought up the flagpole once more. For this, she operated as a forward staging base for Auster spotting planes flown by the Royal Artillery.

No tailhooks mean you have to stop these grasshoppers by hand! The handling party nearing the Army Auster as it runs up the flight deck on Khedive, Operation Dracula. IWM A 28833.

Speaking of tailhooks…”Too high go round again!” The Batsman is waving his bat to indicate to the pilot of this Hellcat fighter with rocket racks that he is too high to make a safe landing on Khedive. This shot shows plainly the way the arrester hook hangs down in a position to engage the arrester wires stretched athwartships. A 29038

Hellcat II, JW872, 808 Squadron, HMS Khedive Malay Coast, June 1945 © Scott Fraser via Fleet Air Arm Archive. Note the Invasion stripe on her fuselage, cowling, tail and wings.

Khedive was part of the triumphant British Fleet that arrived at Singapore on 10 September to receive the Japanese surrender there under the overall command of Lord Mountbatten.

Codenamed Operation Tiderace, she kept a close eye on the Japanese destroyer Kamikaze, the busted up cruisers Myōkō and Takao, and two ex-German U-boats taken up by the Japanese service as I-501 and I-502. Seven loaned jeep carriers provided the entire British air cover available for the operation, which would have been hard-pressed against the estimated 175 Japanese aircraft still found in semi-working order ashore (though short on gas and pilots) if they decided to fight it out.

Admiral Mountbatten presides over the surrender ceremony at Singapore. General Itagaki signs the Instrument of Surrender

Surrendered Japanese cruiser Myōkō moored at Seletar alongside submarines I-501 and I-502

A piece of borrowed kit from the U.S., Khedive was back in British Home Waters by Christmas 1945 and, after stripping away any RN-owned gear and landing her Hellcats, she arrived at Norfolk 26 January 1946 with a skeleton crew and was turned back over to the U.S. Navy.

The Navy, flush with carriers as it was, had no use for one more and in January 1947 the Maritime Administration sold her, sans carrier deck, sensors and armament, to the Gulf Shipbuilding Corp. of Mobile for a song. They quickly resold her hull to the Dutch shipping conglomerate Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland (SMN) who converted her back to a dry cargo ship configuration with 22 derricks and five holds capable of hauling 799,000 cu.ft of grain or a similar quantity of bales.

Ah, those sleek jeep carrier lines…

Sailing as SS Rempang (call sign PGZZ) from the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines to the U.S. West Coast and back as part of the Silver Java-Pacific Line, she could carry 13 first class passengers in five staterooms as well as a mixture of cargo.

By 1955, she was under charter to VNS, operating in European waters, and then in 1968 was sold to Italy’s Atlas cargo lines who operated her as the SS Daphne with a Panamanian flag.

This was short-lived as the aging freighter was passed on in 1970 to the Comoran Africa Line (Compagnie Maritime de L’Afrique Noire S.A) operating from the Ivory Coast on tramp runs for another few years

In January 1976, the former aircraft carrier was sold to Hierros Ardes, Gandia in Spain for her value in scrap.

As Khedive, she was the only ship to have used that name with Royal Navy, and earned four Battle Honours for her WWII service. As far as her 44 sisterships, from what I can tell she was the last hull still afloat when she went to the breakers, with her final sister, USS Breton (CVE-23), stricken for disposal on 6 August 1972, sold for scrap, and was shortly dismantled.

Khedive‘s wartime fighter squadron, 808, was equipped with Hawker Sea Furies for operations from HMAS Sydney off Korea and was then disbanded in 1958.

Reformed in 2011, 808 is part of the Royal Australian Navy flying newly-delivered NHI MRH-90 Taipan helicopters.

Members of 808 Squadron bow their heads for the Naval Prayer, during the commissioning of 808 Squadron held at HMAS Albatross, 2013.

Specs:

Displacement: 16,620 tons (full)
Length: 495 ft. 7 in (151.05 m)
flight deck: 439 ft. (134 m)
Beam: 69 ft. 6 in (21.18 m)
flight deck: 70 ft. (21 m)
Draught: 26 ft. (7.9 m)
Propulsion:
2 × Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company Inc., Milwaukee geared steam turbines, 8,500 shp (6.3 MW)
2 × boilers
1 × shaft
Speed: 18 knots (33 km/h)
Complement: 890 including airwing
Armament: (Ruler class)
2 × 5 in (127 mm) guns
8 × twin 40 mm Bofors
20 × single 20 mm Oerlikons
Aircraft carried 18-24

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday May 5, 2016: The original Wahunsenacawh

NHC Catalog #: NH 48103 (click to big up)

Here we see the U.S. Navy’s Susquehanna-class sidewheel steam frigate USS Powhatan photographed during or just after the Civil War. She gave some 35-years of hard service and had the likes of Commodore Perry and Adm. Porter hoist their flag from her at one time or another.

In an effort to modernize the sail-powered fleet of the 1840s, the Navy built two 229-foot Mississippi-class 2nd rate paddle frigates followed later by seven 265-foot Franklin/Merrimack-class 1st rate steam screw frigates in the 1850s.

Sandwiched between these two classes were the USS Susquehanna and her near-sister Powhatan. Although both used the same steam plant designed by Chas Haswell, Engineer in Chief of the Navy, and overall layout, they were built at two different Naval Yards with class leader laid down at New York while Powhatan‘s construction began at Norfolk on 6 August 1847. This led to slight differences between the two ships in both dimensions and armament.

Powhatan was the first Navy ship named in honor of 16th century Native American Chief Wahunsenacawh, whose name was held by the English in Virginia to be “Powhatan” and is best remembered as the father of Pocahontas.

Our paddle frigate was some 253-feet in length and used dual side-mounted paddlewheels (with 23×10 foot buckets on each radial) driven by twin engines to make 11-knots when all four of her copper boilers were lit. A three-masted auxiliary sailing rig could carry her at less to conserve coal. She was heavily armed compared to other navy’s frigates, with a single 11-inch and 10 9-inch Dahlgrens as well as some smaller mounts, a Marine detachment and small arms for her nearly 300-man crew.

Commissioned 2 September 1852, she soon sailed for the far-off East India Squadron where she served as Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s flagship for his 8-vessel task force on his epic second visit to Japan.

Commodore Perry’s second fleet. Left to right, Susquehanna, Saratoga, Saint Mary’s, Supply, Plymouth, Perry, Mississippi, Princeton-View from the vessels composing the Japanese squadron.

While in the Far East, she escorted the first Japanese ambassador and his staff to the West Coast, fought Chinese pirates off Kowloon alongside the British, and generally waved the flag all over the Pacific.

In a Chinese port, 1859. From a painting made in China, 1859. Artist may be Edward Trenchard, Babylon, New York. Description: Catalog #: NH 42663

Undated image of USS Powhatan in Hawaii, 1860. Courtesy Asian Art Museum. via Navsource

When the Civil War erupted, Powhatan was back in U.S. waters under the command of one Lt. David Dixon Porter. As the Southern states dropped out of the Union, the chain of Army forts securing their seacoast and interior went with them, abandoned to their fate by U.S. forces.

A few notably remained occupied including Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and Fort Pickens controlling the entrance to Pensacola.

Well old Bill Seward, Army Capt. Montgomery Meigs– an Army engineer reporting to President Abraham Lincoln directly– and Porter coughed up an idea to resupply Pickens on the low-low, escorting troops under Col. Harvey Brown of the 5th Artillery Regiment and supplies from New York on the steamer Illinois.

Without the augmentation and Brown’s leadership, the fort would have fallen. With them, it remained a vital Union base in the Gulf of Mexico from which the New Orleans and later Mobile campaigns could not have been launched.

Photo #: NH 59114 Relief of Fort Pickens, Santa Rosa Island, Fla., by the United States Fleet, April 17th 1861 Line engraving published in The Soldier in Our Civil War, Volume I, depicting the scene off Pensacola as USS Powhatan landed Federal troops to reinforce Fort Pickens on 17 April 1861. Features identified in text immediately below the image are (left to right): USS Powhatan, USS Wyandotte, Fort McRae, Entrance to Harbor, Fort Pickens, Encampment of Confederates, Lighthouse, Steamer Illinois, and Navy Foundry. (Click to big up)

Porter of course went on to become only the second U.S. Navy officer ever to attain the rank of admiral, after his adoptive brother David G. Farragut

Powhatan then made good use of her speed provided by her 2x 31-foot paddlewheels to run down the rebel steamers Dick Keys and Lewis and pursue the raider CSS Sumter throughout the West Indies before joining the blockade of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi, retaking the schooner Abby Bradford on 15 August.

Photo #: NH 59568 Rebel Steamboats Overhauled by United States Men-of-War in the Gulf. Line engraving published in Harper’s Weekly, 1861 depicting the capture of the Confederate steamers Dick Keys and Lewis by USS Powhatan and USS Brooklyn, off Mobile, Alabama, on 7 May 1861.

Photographed during or after the Civil War. Description: Catalog #: NH 48102

Transferring to the blockade off Charleston in 1863, she captured the blockade-runners Major E. Willis on 19 April and C. Routereau on 16 May before another tour in the West Indies and taking part in the capture of Fort Fisher.

Following the end of the War, she was dispatched back to her original Far East duties, arriving 22 June 1866 in San Francisco, serving as flagship of the South Pacific Squadron through 1869.

At the New York Navy Yard, after the Civil War. Photograph by Hatton, 15 City Hall Sq., New York City. Description: Courtesy of A. A. Hoehling, 1989. Catalog #: NH 96669

Aging and following a refit in New York, she joined the Home Squadron by 1870 and spent the next two decades conducting cruises of the Caribbean and North Atlantic, often being tapped as a Squadron flagship.

These were the salad days of her life and a series of images from this period give a window into the life of Uncle’s bluejackets in the 1870s and 80s.

Marines at quarters by the after battery, circa 1870-89. Note Civil War era uniforms, Springfields and bayonets. Also note the “P” on her whaleboats. Catalog #: NH 86046

The Powhatan Pirates! Ship’s baseball club poses by the bridge during the 1870s or 1880s. Note breech of 9″ Dahlgren gun at left. Catalog #: NH 86051

Second battalion seamen in formation by the after battery of 9″ guns circa 1870-89. Note the hammock bedrolls stacked in the background– sucked for you if it rained or you had heavy seas. Notably, Powhatan landed her Marines and a large number of volunteer sailors to help capture Fort Fisher during the war– armed with pistols and cutlasses. Catalog #: NH 86050

Ship’s coal passers 1870-89, note pig iron ballast at right. Description: Catalog #: NH 86053

Bayonet exercise on board, 1870-89. Each ship of the period was expected to be able to land up to a third of their crew to fight ashore as light infantry. Description: Catalog #: NH 86055

However, things were not always quiet in the peacetime Navy.

Powhatan Rides out a cyclone off Cape Hatteras, 13-14 April 1877. Print by G.T. Douglass. Copyright 1877 by E.H. Hart, New York. Description: Catalog #: NH 86042

Three of her crew earned rare peacetime Medals of Honor in the 1870s: Landsman George W. Cutter, Coxswain William Anderson and Seaman Joseph B. Noil.

Noil, a Canadian by birth who signed up during the Civil War, recently came to light for his action off Norfolk 26 December 1872.

As noted by Capt. Peirce Crosby, commander of the Powhatan:

On yesterday morning the boatswain, I .C.[sic] Walton, fell overboard from the forecastle, and was saved from drowning by Joseph B. Noil, seaman, who was below on the berth deck at the time of the accident, and hearing the cry ‘man overboard,’ ran on deck, took the end of a rope, went overboard, under the bow, and caught Mr. Walton, who was then in the water, and held him until he was hauled into the boat sent to his rescue. The weather was bitter cold, and had been sleeting, and it was blowing a gale from the northwest at the time. Mr. Walton, when brought on board, was almost insensible, and would have perished but for the noble conduct of Noil, as he was sinking at the time he was rescued.

Noil, promoted to *Captain of the Hold, was presented the MOH in 1873. However, when the hero passed away at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington D.C. in 1882, he was buried in the hospital cemetery with a misspelled headstone and no mention of his service.

(*in the old sailing Navy, then as now you had Chiefs who were responsible for various departments, for instance: captain of the forecastle, captain of the afterguard, captain of the hold, captain of the maintop, captain of the foretop, et. al. That of Captain of the Hold was the senior seaman rating attached to the provision party vested with responsibility for stowage and care of the holds. Later known up to 2009 as the Storekeeper (SK) rating, is today the Logistics Specialist (LS) whose still uses the old rate’s crossed-keys badge)

This was corrected in a graveside ceremony last week attended by Noil’s family, Chief of Navy Reserve Vice Adm. Robin Braun and Canadian Defense Attaché Rear Adm. William Truelove, CMM.

“Your shipmate is not simply someone who happens to serve with you,” Braun said. “He or she is someone who you know that you can trust and count on to stand by you in good times and bad and who will forever have your back.

“So, by […] rededicating his headstone, we are not only correcting a wrong, we are highlighting and reinforcing the eternal bond which exists between Shipmates-past, present, and those yet to come. And, although I-or any of us-did not know him, we are his Shipmates-and, 134 years after he passed, we have his back.”

As for Noil’s vessel, Powhatan was decommissioned, 2 June 1886 and sold to Burrdette Pond of Meriden, CT., where she was scrapped in August 1887.

Both Admiral Farragut and Porter were remembered on a postal stamp along with their closely associated flagships– including Powhatan, though screw-driven Hartford is the only ship pictured.

Powhatan‘s sister Susquehanna was laid up in 1868 until she was sold for scrapping on 27 September 1883 to E. Stannard of New York City.

Since then, no less than four ships have carried the name Powhatan on the Navy List; one a World War I troopship and the other three all tugs of various kinds, the last of which, USNS Powhatan (T-ATF-166), was transferred in 2008 to Turkey where she continues to serve as TCG Inebolu.

Specs:

Pen and ink drawing by Samuel Ward Stanton. Catalog #: NH 65479

Displacement 3,980 t.
Length 253′ 8″ deck
Beam 45′
Draft 18′ 6″
Propulsion: 2 Steam engines, 4 boilers, 1,172 hp, side paddlewheels
Speed 11kts
Complement 289
Armament:

One 11″ Dahlgren smooth bores
Ten 9-inch Dahlgrens
five 12-pdrs

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

ALEXANDRIA, VA- MAY 7: The former USS Barry, once a Navy destroyer, is towed down the Potomac River on its way to a ship graveyard at the former Navy base in Philadelphia. (Amanda Voisard/For the Washington Post)

After some 30 years of service as a museum ship, the only one directly maintained by the Navy, the Forrest Sherman-class destroyer USS Barry (DD-933) is “on her way to her husband.”

Commissioning on 7 September 1956, Barry held the line in the Cold War including service in the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam (earning two battlestars in the latter) and has been a fixture at the Washington Navy Yard since 1983 when she was decommissioned.

Slated to be scrapped due to the advent of a new bridge that would lock her in to her current berth forever, she was closed to the public for the last time in a ceremony on 17 Oct 2015.

She was pulled away from Pier 2 on 7 May and is traveling south on the Potomac River to Chesapeake Bay. Then Barry will tack north, the length of the Chesapeake, to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. After exiting the C&D, the tow will proceed up the Delaware River to Philadelphia, where she will be broken.

U.S. Navy’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving oversaw the dismantling of her masts and affixing the tow, the Navy’s last investment in the old girl, now just shy of her 60th year of service in one form or another to the nation.

“With the arrival this week of the 400-ton crane, the team rigged the primary and emergency tow bridles on the bow of the ship and we removed masts to reduce the ship’s air draft as part of final preparations,” said Jim Ruth, SUPSALV towing subject-matter expert, in a statement from Naval Sea Systems Command.

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday May 11, 2016: The Slothy Siberian Heavyweight

Here we see crew of the Maxim Gorky (Kirov)-class “medium” cruiser Kalinin enjoying a peaceful moonlight and spotlit violin serenade in 1955. Though some 10,000~ tons when completed and with an impressive armament that sounded great on paper, she was a mixmaster of parts from all over the world and the People never really got their rubles’ worth out of her.

Under Tsar Alexander III and later Nicholas II, the Imperial Russian Navy sought to move up from being like the 11th or 12th most powerful ocean going armada to about the 5th or 6th. This led to a huge program to build modern cruisers and battleships, amassing the world’s most numerous submarine fleet, and designing some very nice destroyers both built at home and on contract abroad. The only thing was that the Russo-Japanese War was a world-class setback, and so was the Great War and the subsequent Russian Civil War. By 1923, the once powerful fleet had either atrophied, exiled, been cannibalized, or rested on the ocean floor.

Stalin pushed to get at least some decent first class warships abroad (including almost buying one of Hitler’s pocket battleships before settling the German cruiser Lützow and some 15-inch gun turret plans instead) and consulting with the Italians on some cruiser and battlewagon designs in the 1930s that would be made back in the Worker’s Paradise.

One of the more successful of these endeavors was obtaining the plans for the 8,800-ton Condottieri-class light cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoli, herself a subtype of that class. Armed with 8×6 inch and 8×3.9 inch guns, Montecuccoli was a nautical Ferrari, capable of some 37+ knots. Of course, her belt was paper thin at just 2.4-inches, meaning if she got in a scrap with something larger than a destroyer, she had some bad spaghetti on her hands.

The modification worked out by the Soviets’ Neskoe Design Bureau on the Italian boat led to the Kirov (Project 26) type cruisers, which weighed in at a chunkier 9,400-tons though with a thinner 2-inch belt. The weight went into upping the armament and giving the Red cruiser 9 impressive 180 mm/57 (7.1″) B-1-P Pattern 1931 guns in three triple mounts along with another 9 100mm DP guns plus torpedoes, mines, machine guns and the will of Karl Marx.

These were 60 caliber guns..for reference the 16″ Mark 7s on the Iowa class had barrels just 50 calibers long

This main battery, used first on the rehashed and incomplete Svetlana-class light cruiser Krasnyi Kavkaz and designed by the Italian firm of Ansaldo, were capable of firing six rounds per minute, per tube, allowing the Project 26 cruisers to rocket out 54 shells– each some 215 lbs. in weight– to 40,000 yards in 60 seconds. (More on this later).

Their large size, coupled with their armament, made them very potent when compared to other “light cruisers” of the 1930s. Nevertheless, they were nowhere near the sluggers that heavy cruisers– which typically mounted 8-inch guns and up—were. This led to these oddball garlic and borscht combos termed by some as “medium cruisers.”

Six were ordered, laid down two each in the Baltic and Black sea and the final pair in the Pacific Ocean, all begun between 1935 and 1939.

The hero of our story, Kalinin, was late in the design process and officially a Project 26bis2 ship, with slight modifications (no catapults fitted, eight single 76.2 mm 34-K anti-aircraft guns rather than the 6x100mm secondary battery of her sisters though this was later changed to 85mm Army mounts, experimental Mars-72 sonar system, armor belt upped to 2.8-inches, etc.)

Kalinin was laid down at Amur Shipbuilding Plant, Komsomolsk-on-Amur on 26 August 1938 and her components, which included parts obtained from Germany, Britain and Italy, were shipped across Europe some 6,000 miles and 7 time zones by rail on the Trans-Siberian to be installed. Built during the war, she also received lend-lease sensors from the Allies including ASDIC-132 sonar, British Type 291 and U.S. SG air search and Type 282 FC radars.

However, Kalinin, named for some old school Bolshevik guy who somehow managed to keep his head during the Great Purges, never got to use her systems in combat.

Completed in 1943, she was going to transfer to the Soviet Northern Fleet in Murmansk to help keep a lookout for the German surface raiders harassing convoys ending there, but that fell through due to a poor showing on her trials.

1944 with camo scheme

Kalinin remained out of commission until December 1944, inactive in Vladivostok alongside her even less complete sister Kaganovich, though neither were used against the Japanese in Stalin’s brief 24-day war in the Pacific in August 1945.

This was a marked difference from her sisters Kirov and Maxim Gorky in the Baltic; and Voroshilov and Molotov in the Black Sea, all of whom had ample opportunity to mix it up with the Germans and Italians (oh the irony) during the Siege of Leningrad and the Crimean Campaigns, respectively.

During the conflict it was found out that the prestigious 180mm guns installed on this class were hamstrung in actual use because the turrets were too cramped, dropping their theoretical rate of fire by some 67 percent. Doh! They should’ve called Mussolini and complained…

After the war, Kalinin became something of Stalin’s Love Boat in the Pacific, sailing far and wide and entertaining visiting dignitaries.

Note the triple torpedo tubes as the glorious People’s mariners get their flex on

She was the flagship of the Pacific fleet under Vice-Admiral Yuri Panteleyev from 1947-53.

Twin 37mm AAAs look a lot like 40mm Bofors, yeah?

That red star…

Note the fire control radars are not trained forward

This is the same perspective as the first image in the post– note the huge spotlight

With a staggering 30 brand new 16,000-ton 12x152mm gunned Sverdlov (Project 68bis) class cruisers being built, Kalinin was laid up 1 May 1956 after just over a decade of use.

1958

Disarmed the next year, she was used as a receiving ship for a bit until being sold for scrap 12 April 1963. Even so, she outlived her redheaded stepsister Kaganovich who was scrapped three years earlier. The last of her kind, class leader Kirov, was used as pier side training ship for some time, which gave her an extension on her life until 1974.

Some of Kalinin and Kaganovich‘s guns were remounted in railway units that the Soviets kept active in Siberia into the 1970s and 80s. With that being said it wouldn’t surprise me that one of those 180mm guns is rusting away on some forgotten railway siding near a birch forest ala Dr Zhivago.

The most visible remnant of these ships still around is an intact forward turret from Kirov, moved to Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, as a memorial in 1977.

Kalinin’s name was reissued to a massive 28,000-ton Kirov-class battlecruiser in 1983 that was later renamed Admiral Nakhimov after the wall came down, as the old Communist’s name finally fell out of favor.

Specs:

Displacement:
8,400 tonnes (8,267 long tons) (standard)
10,040 tonnes (9,881 long tons) (full load)
Length: 191.2 m (627 ft. 4 in)
Beam: 17.66 m (57 ft. 11 in)
Draught: 6.3 m (20 ft. 8 in) (full load)
Installed power: 126,900 shp (94,600 kW)
Propulsion:
2 shafts, TB-7 geared turbines
6 Yarrow-Normand oil-fired boilers
Speed: 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) (on trials)
Endurance: 5,590 nmi (10,350 km; 6,430 mi) at 17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph)
Complement: 812
Sensors and processing systems: ASDIC-132 and Mars-72 sonars
Armament:
3 × 3 – 180 mm (7.1 in) B-1-P guns
8 × 1 – 85 mm (3.3 in) 90-K dual-purpose guns (after 1947)
6 × 1 – 45 mm (1.8 in) 21-K AA guns
10 × 2 – 37 mm (1.5 in) 70-K
6 × 1 – 12.7 mm (0.50 in) AA machine guns
2 × 3 – 533 mm (21.0 in) torpedo tubes
100–106 mines
50 depth charges
Armor:
Waterline belt: 70 mm (2.8 in)
Deck: 50 mm (2.0 in) each
Turrets: 70 mm (2.8 in)
Barbettes: 70 mm (2.8 in)
Conning tower: 150 mm (5.9 in)

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

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The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday May 18, 2016: Spanish gunboats a-go-go

NHC NH 45328

Here we see the General Concha-class cañonero (gunboat) Elcano shortly after she became the USS Elcano (PG-38) because of the activities of one Commodore Dewey. She would go on to serve 44 hard years in total.

Laid down 3 March 1882 by Carraca Arsenal, Cadiz, Spain, Elcano was a small warship, at just 157’11” between perpendiculars (165′ oal), and tipping the scales at just 620-tons with a full load. Slow, she could only make 11-ish knots. However, what she could do was float in just 10 feet of water and carry two 120mm low angle guns, a single 90mm, four Nordenfelt QFs and two Whitehead torpedo tubes around the shallow coastal littoral of the Philippines where the Spanish were having issues with the locals that often involved gunplay.

120mm 25cal Hontoria M1879 (left) in Spanish service. Elcano mounted two of these guns. Note the opulent wheelhouse.

Sisters, designed for colonial service, included the General Concha, Magallanes, and General Lezo, they were officially and maybe over ambitiously listed as “Crucero no protegido de 3ª clase” or 3rd class protected cruisers.

Class leader, Cañonero de la Armada Española General Concha, 1897

Described as “pot-bellied,” Elcano had a quaint Victorian era ram bow and carried a mixed sailing rig for those times when coal, never plentiful in the PI, was scarce. She was commissioned into the Armada Española in 1884, arriving in Manila late that year. Like most of the 18 or so Spanish ships in the region (to include sister General Lezo), she was commanded by Spanish officers and manned by Filipino crews.

Cañonero español Elcano at commissioning. The Spanish liked dark hulls

Her peacetime service was quiet, spending more than a dozen years puttering around the archipelago, waving her flag and showing off her guns. Then came the Spanish-American War.

Just five days after a state of war between the U.S. and Spain existed, on April 26, El Cano came across the U.S.-flagged bark Saranac—under Captain Bartaby—carrying 1,640 short tons (1,490 t) of coal from Newcastle, New South Wales, to Iloilo, in the Philippines for Admiral Dewey’s fleet and captured same with a shot across the bow.

You see the good Capt. Bartaby, sailing in the days without wireless and being at sea for a week had missed the announcement of hostilities and said into Iloilo harbor to the surprise of El Cano’s skipper, who dutifully placed the ship under arrest. Bartaby was able to cheat a Spanish prize court by producing convenient papers that Saranac had been sold for a nominal sum to an English subject just days before her capture, though she had sailed into a Spanish harbor with the Red White and Blue flying. We see what you did there, Bartaby, good show.

Dewey lamented this loss of good Australian coal, which was hard to find in the Asiatic Squadron’s limited stomping grounds after the Brits kicked them out of Hong Kong. Incidentally, the Saranac was the only U.S. ship captured during the war compared with 56 Spanish vessels taken by Yankee surface raiders.

Speaking of which…

The rest of Elcano‘s very short war was uneventful save for being captured during the Battle of Manila Bay 1 May 1898 along with the rest of the Spanish Pacific Squadron under Admiral Patricio Montojo after Dewey battered his way into the harbor.

ELCANO at Cavite Navy Yard, Philippine Island. Note the extensive awnings. Description: Courtesy of D. M. MC Pherson, Corte Madena, California. 1967 Catalog #: NH 54354

Her three sisters all had more final run-ins. General Concha fought at San Juan, Puerto Rico and narrowly escaped capture only to wreck herself on a reef off Morocco in 1913. General Lezo was ruined by a magazine explosion and sank just after Manila Bay. Magallanes, escaping destruction in Cuba, was discarded after sinking at her dock in 1903.

As for Elcano, her Spanish/Filipino crew was quickly paroled ashore at Cavite, and she languished there for six months under guard until being officially taken over by the U.S. Navy on 8 November.

USS ELCANO (PG-38) at Cavite Navy Yard, Philippine Island circa 1900, before being refitted for the U.S. Navy. Note she has been white-washed and her awning shown above in Spanish service deleted. You can also make out her starboard torped tube door just above the waterline. Description: Courtesy of LCDR John E. Lewis, 1945. Catalog #: NH 54353

Refitted for use to include swapping out her Spanish armament for American 4″/40cals (and plugging her 14-inch bow tubes), she was commissioned as USS Elcano (Gunboat No. 38) on 20 November 1902– because the Navy had a special task for the shallow water warship.

You see, once the U.S. moved into the PI, they used a series of captured and still-floating near-flat bottomed former Spanish gunboats (USS Elcano, Villalobos, Quiros, Pampanga and Callao) to protect American interests in Chinese waters. These boats, immortalized in the book and film the Sand Pebbles, were known as the Yangtze Patrol (COMYANGPAT), after the huge river system they commonly haunted. The first modern patrol, started in 1903, was with the five Spaniards while two more gunboats, USS Palos and Monocacy, built at Mare Island in California in 1913, would later be shipped across the Pacific to join them while USS Isabel (PY-10) would join the gang in 1921.

Elcano was based at Shanghai from February 1903, her mission to protect American citizens and property, and promote friendly relations with the Chinese– sometime promoting the hell out of them when it was needed. She kept this up until 20 October 1907 when she was sent back to Cavite for a three-year refit.

During this time, she served as a tender to 1st Submarine Division, Asiatic Torpedo Fleet, with the small subs of the day having their crews live aboard the much larger (dry-docked) gunboat.

USS Shark (Submarine # 8) In the Dewey Drydock, Olongapo Naval Station, Philippines, circa 1910. The gunboat Elcano is also in the drydock, in the right background. Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1978. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 86963

Recommissioned 5 December 1910, Elcano took up station at Amony in China, and resumed the monotony of river cruises in China’s decidedly strife-ridden countryside that included bar fights with British gunboat crews, welcoming visiting warlords with an open hand (and a cocked 1911 under the table), sending naval parties ashore to rescue random Westerners caught in riots and unrest, besting other USN ships’ baseball teams to the amusement of the locals, and just generally enjoying the regional color (though libo groups were ordered to always go ashore in uniform and with canteens).

In August 1911, Elcano and the rest of the patrol boats were joined by the cruisers USS New Orleans and Germany’s SMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in Hankow for the unrest that came along with the anti-monarchist putsch that ended the Manchu dynasty.

There, Elcano participated in an impromptu naval review along with other arriving vessels from Austro-Hungary, Japan, France, Russia and a six-ship task force dispatched by the British. The ceremony’s true purpose: keep an eye on the nearly one dozen semi-modern Chinese warships in the harbor to make sure a repeat of the Boxer Rebellion didn’t spark. During this period, Elcano‘s men joined others in the International Brigade, sending 30 bluejackets with their Colt machine guns in tow to help guard the Japanese consulate. They were relieved ashore later in the year by a company of the British Yorkshire Light Infantry and a half-regiment of Siberian Cossacks shipped in for the task.

While on the Yangtze River Patrol, circa 1917. Description: Courtesy of Arthur B. Furnas, Corte Madera, California, 1969. Catalog #: NH 69694

During the Christmas season, circa December 1917, while in the Philippines. Note the Christmas tree on the bow and the other decorations aboard the ship.  She would keep up this tradition for years. Description: Courtesy of Arthur B. Furnas, Corte Madera, California, 1969 Catalog #: NH 69697

Elcano would get a short break from Chinese waters when the U.S. entered WWI, being recalled to Manila Bay to serve as a harbor gunboat, patrolling around Corregidor from April 1917-Nov. 1918, just in case a German somehow popped up. Then, it was back to the Yangpat.

Meanwhile in China, as the putsch of 1911 turned into open revolution and then Civil War, Elcano and her compatriots in the Yangpat were ever more involved in fights ashore, landing troops in Nanking in 1916 along with other nations during riots there, in Chungking in 1918 to protect lives during a political crisis, and again in March 1920 at Kiukiang (now Jiujiang on the southern shores of the Yangtze), where Elcano‘s sailors acted alone, and then at Ichang where she landed a company of Marines for the task and remained as station ship and floating headquarters until September 1922.

Some of the ships of the U.S. Navy’s Yangtze River Patrol at Hangchow during the 1920s, with several local junks and sampans also present. U.S. Navy ships are (from left to right): USS Isabel (PY-10); USS Villalobos (PG-42); and USS Elcano (PG-38). Courtesy of Donald M. McPherson, 1969. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog #: NH 67127

Chinese general visiting Elcano. The commanding officer of Elcano is seen waiting to greet him at the top of the gangway, Ichang, China, circa 1920’s. Also note how they have to walk right into the muzzle of the 4-incher when coming aboard– very subtle. Look up: Gunboat diplomacy. Catalog #: NH 68976

Ship’s baseball team going ashore, in China, during the early 1920s. Courtesy of Frederick Cornman, Valois, New York, 1971. Catalog #: NH 77142

Rare today is a bluejacket who was a member of the Noble and Exclusive Order of the Brotherhood of Mighty River Rats of the Yangtze c.1903-1941. Photo via The Real Sand Pebbles.

These two letters from Elcano sailors from the 1920 volume of Our Navy, the Standard Publication of the U.S. Navy. Note the mention of the ship’s baseball team, hooch at $1.20 a quart, and the retelling of how 60 bluejackets cleared the streets of Kiukiang by bayonet point:

During this service, Elcano proved a foundry for future naval leaders. Stars rained upon her deck, as no less than six of her former skippers went on to become admirals including Mississippian later Vice Adm. Aaron Stanton “Tip” Merrill, who picked up the Navy Cross at the Battle of Blackett Strait in 1943 by smashing the Japanese destroyers Murasame and Minegumo without a single casualty.

Airing her sails in Chinese waters during the 1920s. She was undoubtedly one of the last warships with canvas in the fleet. Courtesy of Mr. Donald M. McPherson, Corte Madera, California, 1972. Catalog #: NH 75577

In dry dock at Shanghai, China, circa early 1920’s note the 4″/.40 caliber gun (lower) and the 3-pounder (above) Courtesy of Mr. Donald M. McPherson, Corte Madera, California, 1969 Catalog #: NH 68978

In dry dock, at Shanghai, China, during the early 1920s. Note stern 4″/40 gun. Courtesy of Frederick Cornman, Valois, New York, 1971. Catalog #: NH 77143

Between 1923-25, armed landing teams from Elcano went ashore and stayed ashore almost a half-dozen times in two extended periods in Shanghai during unrest and street fights between rival factions.

Armed guard from Elcano, photographed in Chinese waters, during the early 1920s. Note Lewis machine guns. Courtesy of Frederick Cornman, Valois, New York, 1971. Catalog #: NH 77144

In March 1927, Elcano along with the destroyers USS William P. Preston, USS Noa, and the RN’s HMS Emerald took a “mob of undisciplined Nationalist soldiers” under intense naval gunfire outside of Nanking when the American Consul General John C. Davis and 166 others were besieged at the Standard Oil compound on Socony Hill.

It would be Elcano‘s last whiff of cordite.

By 1926, the seven veteran river gunboats were all worn out and the navy went shopping for replacements. With dollars always short in the Navy budget, it just made sense to build these new boats in China, to save construction and shipping costs. These new ships consisted of two large 500-ton, 210-foot gunboats (USS Luzon and Mindanao); two medium-sized 450-ton, 191-foot boats (USS Oahu and Panay) and two small 350-ton, 159-foot boats (USS Guam and Tutuila).

Once the new gunboats started construction, the five old Yangtze Patrol ships’ days were numbered. In November 1927, Elcano became a barracks ship in Shanghai for the newly arriving crews of the PCUs and by 30 June 1928, she was decommissioned after some 14 years of service to Spain and another three decades to Uncle Sam.

At Ichang China. Note trees on mastheads. Courtesy of Lt. Commander Merrill, USN, 1927. Catalog #: NH 54352

Elcano was stripped of all useful material, some of which went to help equip the new Yangpat boats, then towed off the coast and disposed of in a Sinkex by gunfire on 4 October 1928. Two of her former companions in arms suffered the same fate. Villalobos (PG-42), model for Richard McKenna’s San Pebbles, was likewise sunk by naval gunfire 9 October 1928, and joined by the ex-Spanish then-USS Pampanga (PG-39) on 21 November. The days of Dewey’s prizes had come and gone, with the Navy getting a good 30 years out of this final batch.

Of the other Spanish armada vessels pressed into U.S. Navy service, Quiros (PG-40) was previously sunk as a target in 1923, and Callo (YFB-11) was sold at Manila the same year where she remained in use as a civilian ferry for some time.

The website, Sand Pebbles.com, keeps the memory of the Yangpat and her vessels alive while scrapbooks and uniforms are preserved in the hands of private collectors.

However, in Nanjing, on an unidentified monument there, is a series of Navy graffiti left by those Yankee river rats, if you look closely, you can just make out USS Elcano under USS Chattanooga.

They were there.

Group of Elcano crewmembers visit a joss house, in China, during the early 1920s. Courtesy of Frederick Cornman, Valois, New York, 1971. Catalog #: NH 77147

Specs:

Displacement: 620 long tons (630 t)
Length: 165 ft. 6 in (50.44 m)
Beam: 26 ft. (7.9 m)
Draft: 10 ft. (3.0 m)
Installed power: 1,200 ihp (890 kW)
Propulsion:
2 × vertical compound steam engines
2 × single-ended Scotch boilers
2 × screws
Rig: Schooner
Speed: 11 kn (13 mph; 20 km/h)
Complement:
Spanish Navy: 115
U.S. Navy: 99-103
Armament:
As commissioned:
2×1 120mm/25cal Hontoria M1879
1x 90/25 Hontoria M1879
4×1 25/42 Nordenfelt
2x 356mm TT (bow)
1902:
4×1 4″/40
4×1 3pdr (37mm) guns
2x Colt machine guns
1x 3-inch Field gun for landing party along with Lewis guns and rifles, handguns and cutlasses

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has it place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!