Tag Archives: atlantic charter

May 25, 2020 · 00:55

Operation Rheinübung and the Sinking of the Mighty Hood

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Artist rendition of the Loss of the HMS Hood

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am still working on my article on the Bismarck Class battleships which is the first of a series on the late Treaty and Post Treaty battleship. However, the research has been time consuming and Massive amounts of technical data on Bismarck and her contemporaries is making this a much more technologically wonk type of article than I expected. I am continuing to work on it, even though I had hoped to publish it before I went on to the history of Operation Rheinübung, the deployment of Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen against British convoys in the hopes that they would sink and destroy a lot of ships and return to home safely as the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had during Operation Berlin which sank 22 ships between February and March 1941, an operation commanded by Admiral Günther Lütjens who commander the Bismarck task force.

The Bismarck and Prinz Eugen set sail for Operation Rheinübung on 18 May 1941 over the protests of Lütjens’s protest to delay the operation until Scharnhorst could be repaired d Tirpitz was fully operational. However, this was not possible until early July, and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder had his own agenda. Of the participants in the operation, only he knew that Hitler had planned to attack the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. That invasion, Operation Barbarossa gave the Kriegsmarine just a small supporting role compared to the Heer, Luftwaffe, and even the SS. So Raeder ordered Lütjens into action in order to score a success that would enable him to continue to argue the need for more battleships and surface forces. Reader instructed Lütjens to not reveal the planned operation to anyone, including Hitler, which Lütjens obeyed when Hitler visited Bismarck on 5 May without Raeder being present. Concerning the operation itself Raeder’s orders to Lütjens stressed that “The primary target in this operation is the enemy’s merchant shipping; enemy warships will be engaged only when that objective makes it necessary and it can be done without excessive risk.”

On 20 May the German ships were sighted numerous Swedish and Norwegian fishing boats, and by a scout plane from the Swedish Cruiser Gotland which reported their position to the Swedish Admiralty. This information was leaked to the British Naval Attaché and relayed to the British Admiralty: “Kattegat, today 20 May. At 1500, two large warships, escorted by three destroyers, five ships and ten or twelve planes, passed Marstrand to the northeast. 2058/20.”

They were also sighted by a Norwegian agent who sent a report of their presence. On 21 May the two ships arrived in Grimstadfjiord near Bergen in order to allow Prinz Eugen to refuel, however Lütjens elected not to top off Bismarck’s fuel tanks, which would prove to be a fatal mistake.

May 21st was a day where the skies were perfectly clear, and alerted to their presence of the German Force, the Royal Air Force sent reconnaissance aircraft to confirm that they were really on the move. At 1315 hours a Spitfire equipped with onboard high altitude cameras spotted the German Force and returned to Scotland where their photos were sent to the Admiralty. As a result the Royal Navy ultimately mobilized six battleships, three battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, sixteen cruisers, thirty-three destroyers and eight submarines to find and kill the German ships and to protect the 11 convoys currently at sea or preparing to sail. It was the largest deployment of the Royal Navy for a single operation to that point in the war.

Since the daylight prevented an unobserved departure, Admiral Lütjens decided to depart under cover of darkness for his breakout into the North Atlantic. Likewise, Admiral John Tovey, commander of the Home Fleet began his deployment to find and sink the Bismarck. Not knowing which route the Bismarck would use to break out, Tovey sent the pride of the Royal Navy, the “Mighty” HMS Hood and the brand new King George V Class battleship HMS Prince of Wales and four destroyers to join the heavy cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk under the command of Rear Admiral Frederick Wake Walker to Guard the Denmark Strait, which  Lütjens had used earlier in the year with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and sent the modern and powerful light cruisers Manchester and Birmingham to patrol the area southeast of Iceland. In addition he kept several light cruisers on station between the Faroe and Orkney Island Gap in case the Germans attempted a straight run through the British blockade.

Early on 22 May Tovey departed Scapa Flow with King George V, the new carrier HMS Victorious, and their escorts, which would soon be joined by the battlecruiser HMS Repulse. which was already at sea. The older battleships HMS Rodney, HMS Ramillies, and HMS Revenge were also at sea escorting convoys, from which they would be detached to seek out the Bismarck. Finally, Force H comprised of the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, battlecruiser HMS Renown, the light cruiser HMS Sheffield and their escorting destroyers, under the command of Rear Admiral James Somerville, based at Gibraltar, were alerted for possible deployment to the North Atlantic, even though their primary mission was to counter the Italians in the Mediterranean.

The 22nd of May was uneventful as each side sailed into the reaches of the North Atlantic, as was most of the 23rd as Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were able to use foul weather conditions to avoid British patrol aircraft, but but about 2000 hours they were detected by the radar of HMS Suffolk. Bismarck sighted and engaged Suffolk and Norfolk which returned fire and ducked into a fog bank as Suffolk continued to shadow Bismarck using her radar and continuing to send reports to Admiral Holland on Hood. However during the exchange Bismarck’s forward radar was damaged by the concussion of her main battery and Lütjens had Prinz Eugen take the lead. For the remainder of the night the ships continued to move through the Denmark Strait. Knowing his Force had been detected and surprise had been lost Lütjens could have reversed course and returned to Norway to await the availability of Scharnhorst and Tirpitz and a more favorable time to break out, but he continued on to a destiny that would result in the loss of the world’s two largest battleships in one of the most dramatic naval campaigns in history.

The first of the great ships lost would be the “Mighty Hood”, which was sunk by the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen during a very short and shocking engagement on the morning of 24 May. The news was broken to most of the world by American journalist Edward R. Murrow who in his radio broadcast reported:

“This is London, Ed Murrow reporting. This island, which is no stranger to bad tiding, received news today that HMS Hood largest warship in the British fleet and pride of the British navy, has been sunk by the German battleship Bismarck. From the Hood’s compliment of 1500 men, there were three survivors.”

The news of the sinking of the great ship stunned the world, and it is a tragic anniversary is something that I always mark. I first read about this battle in C.S Forrester’s little book Hunting the Bismarck when I was in 4th grade. That book was used as the screenplay for the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck.

This essay is in honor of the gallant HMS Hood and her crew.  It is fitting for Memorial Day weekend although the HMS Hood and her killer, the German battleship Bismarck were not American. Both were great ships manned by gallant crews and the loss of both ships was tragic, especially from the aspect of the great loss of human life. I do hope and pray that we never forget the sacrifice of these men and all others who have gone down to the sea in great ships.

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HMS Hood at Malta

There are some warships and naval engagements which assume legendary proportions.  The Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941 between the two largest battleships in commission at the time, the pride of the British Royal Navy the HMS Hood and the German behemoth Bismarck is legendary as are those two mighty ships.  The battle came at a critical time as the Britain stood alone against the seemingly invincible German Blitzkrieg.

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Hood in San Francisco on 1920s goodwill tour

Britain had been driven from Western Europe and Britain was being bombed regularly by Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe. In the Balkans a British expeditionary force that had been sent to Greece had been defeated and it’s survivors withdrawn as Germans assaulted and conquered Crete with airborne forces, albeit with such heavy losses that Hitler forbade any more large airborne operations. In the Western Desert of North Africa, the Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had driven off a British counter-offensive on the Libyan-Egyptian frontier and were laying siege to Tobruk.  In the Atlantic German U-Boats sank 66 Allied Merchant Ships of over 375,000 tons and the Royal Navy would lose 25 warships not including the Hood to surface action or U-Boats in the Atlantic alone. But before Hood the British had lost the aircraft carriers Glorious and Courageous and the battleship Royal Oak. 

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The Hood was the pride of the Royal Navy and was world famous due to her inter-war international presence and goodwill visits. She displaced 47,430 tons full load and she was armed with eight 15” guns in four twin turrets.  Designed as a battle cruiser she was less heavily armored than contemporary battleships and had weak vertical protection from plunging shellfire. Her armored upper deck and armored deck had a combined 83mm of armor. This was a fault which was known but never rectified between the wars and when the war came the Royal Navy could ill-afford to take her out of service for the necessary improvements to her protection system.  She was fast with a designed speed of 31 knots which been reduced to 28 knots by 1939 as a result of modifications which increased her displacement.   This was further reduced by the wear and tear on her propulsion plant to 26.5 knots by 1940.

Hood was designed before the battle of Jutland (May 1916) where the weaknesses in the armor protection of British Battlecruisers was exposed as three, the HMS Invincible, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Indefatigable were destroyed by plunging fire which exploded their magazines.  Though her design was modified during construction she still was vulnerable to plunging fire. She was scheduled for a major refit which would have included significant improvement in armor protection in 1941, but the war prevented Hood from receiving anything more than improvements to her anti-aircraft batteries.

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Hood (nearly hidden by falling shells) in action at Mers-El-Kebir

During the war Hood was engaged in patrol and search operations against German raiders in the North Atlantic and in June 1940 joined Force “H” in the Mediterranean.  As Flagship of Force “H” she took part in the sinking of French Fleet Units including the Battleship Bretagne at Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940 following the French surrender to the Germans and remained in operation searching for the German Pocket Battleship Admiral Scheer and the Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper until she was withdrawn for a brief refit in January 1941.

Following another brief refit in mid-March, Hood was underway from mid-March searching for the German raiders Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and also false report of Bismarck breaking out into the Atlantic in April 1941. She returned to Scapa Flow on 6 May 1941.

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Bismarck

When the British discovered that Bismarck had entered the Atlantic, Hood the flagship of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, was dispatched to find and sink her with the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales.  The battleships were to join the Heavy Cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk at the entrance to the Denmark Strait.  When the cruisers discovered Bismarck along with her consort the Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen the two British battleships steamed into naval history.

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Bismarck was slightly larger than Hood and mounted the same main armament but that was about all the two ships had in common. If the battle was a battle between heavyweight prize fighters Hood was the valiant but crippled champion and Bismarck the young and overpowering challenger.  Bismarck was slightly faster than the limping Hood and was one of the most well protected ships ever built.  Her gunnery officers and the men that manned her deadly 15” guns were like previous generations of German sailors, gunnery experts, working with some of the finest naval guns ever made.

Schlachtschiff Bismarck, Seegefecht

Bismarck firing on Hood

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The German ships were shadowed at a distance by the Norfolk and Suffolk. The German task force under the command of Admiral Gunther Lütjens emerged from the strait and were sighted by the British at 0537.  Knowing his ships weakness in regard to plunging fire Admiral Holland desired to steer a direct course at the German ships in order to close the range quickly in order to narrow the range and prevent being hit by the same kind of plunging fire that doomed the British battle cruisers at Jutland.

However, events dictated otherwise and the British were forced to close the range much more slowly than Admiral Holland desired, and exposed both Hood and Prince of Wales to German plunging fire for a longer period of time.  As such Holland then turned and tried to close the German ships faster. The result was that his gunnery was degraded by wind and spray coming over the bows of his ships compounded by his inability to bring his after turrets to bear on the German ships.

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Hood, photographed from Prince of Wales moments before being hit and sunk by Bismarck

At 0553 Holland ordered his ships to open fire. Unfortunately, he dis so without the benefit of Suffolk and Norfolk being in position to engage the Prinz Eugen.  Due to the similar appearance of the German ships Hood initially concentrated her fire on Prinz Eugen assuming her to be the Bismarck while Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.

During the initial exchange of fire Prince of Wales drew first blood by hitting Bismarck three times with her 14″ guns. One hit damaged Bismarck’s seaplane catapult. A second did minor damage to machinery spaces, and a third which passed throughBismarck’s bow near the waterline and severed the fuel lines from her forward fuel tanks to her engines. The third hit would prove the might German Leviathan’s undoing.

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Prinz Eugen

Both German ships opened fire at 0555 and concentred their fires on the Hood.  Prinz Eugen immediately hit Hood with at least one 8” shell which set a large fire among the ready to use 4”ammunition stored in lockers near the mainmast. The hit started a large fire which Hood’s damage control teams raced to contain.  At 0600, Admiral Holland ordered his ships to turn to port in order to bring the rear turrets of his battleships into the fight.

As the squadron executed the turn Hood was straddled by a salvo from Bismarck and observers on Prince of Wales observed an explosion between “X” turret and the mainmast of Hood. The hit set off the 4″ magazine and the resultant explosion consumed the Hood causing her bow to jut sharply out of the water before sinking beneath the waves in under 3 minutes time. Witnesses on both sides of the engagement were stunned by the sudden and violent end of the Hood.

With Hood now destroyed the Germans rapidly shifted their fire to the Prince of Wales, crippling the battleship and knocking her out of the action.  Bismarck was now in a perfect position to finish off Prince of Wales but she did not do so. Against the advice of Bismarck’s Captain Ernst Lindemann, Admiral Lütjens refused to follow up his advantage to sink the crippled British battleship and instead broke off the action.

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Hood blows up. Drawing by the Captain of HMS Prince of Wales J.C. Leach

Only three crewmen for Hood, Petty Officer Ted Briggs, Seaman Bob Tilburn and Midshipman Bill Dundas survived the cataclysm out of a total of 1415 souls embarked. They were rescued 4 hours later nearly dead of hypothermia. They stayed awake by singing  “Roll out the Barrel” until they were rescued by the destroyer HMS Electra.

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Briggs who died in 2008 recounted the sinking:

“Then she started listing to starboard. She righted herself, and started going over to port. When she had gone over by about 40 degrees we realised she was not coming back…” Briggs was sucked under the water “I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle – I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years.” (The Daily Telegraph 5 October 2008)

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Ted Briggs

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Bob Tilburn

The Admiralty reported the loss of the Hood later in the day saying Hood “received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up.”  The official report of the sinking released later in the year said:

“That the sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck’s 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood’s 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them all to explode and wreck the after part of the ship. The probability is that the 4-inch magazines exploded first.”

The commission’s findings have been challenged by a number of naval historians and there are several theories of how the magazines might have exploded. However, all theories point to a massive magazine explosion which may not have be caused by a plunging round but from a hit which detonated the unprotected 4” magazines or a hit from Bismarck that struck below Hood’s waterline and exploded in a magazine.

For forty years the Hood’s wreckage lay undiscovered. Her wreck was located in 2001 lying across two debris fields. The post mortem examination revealed that Hood’s after magazines had exploded.  Hood’s resting place is designated as a War Grave by Britain and protected site under the Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986.

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Bismarck sinking

Bismarck and her crew did not long survive her victory.  When close to refuge in the French port of Brest on May 26th the great ship was crippled by a lucky aerial torpedo hit from a Fairley Swordfish bomber flying from the HMS Ark Royal. 

The hit damaged Bismarck’s rudders and forced her to steer a course towards the approaching British fleet. Throughout the night Bismarck fought off attacks by British and Polish destroyers on the morning of May 27th 1941, after absorbing massive damage from the HMS King George V, HMS Rodney and several cruisers including HMS Dorsetshire, he plucky and persistent Norfolk and several destroyers, Bismarck was scuttled by her crew. When she went down she took with her all but 115 souls of her crew of over 2200 which included the Fleet Staff of Admiral Lütjens.

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HMS Prince of Wales

A few months later, Prince of Wales would take Winston Churchill to Argentia Bay Newfoundland to meet with Franklin Roosevelt. At the conference that took place in August 1941, the Atlantic Charter was drafted. With the increased threat of Japanese expansion Prince of Wales reported to the Far East where she was sunk along with the Battlecruiser HMS Repulse on 9 December 1941 by a force of land based Japanese aircraft.  The Prinz Eugen was the only heavy ship of the German Navy to survive the war and was taken as a prize by the US Navy when the war ended. She was used as a target during the Able and Baker nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, but did not sink. She was too radioactive to be repaired and her hulk was towed to Kwajalein Atoll where she capsized and sank on 22 December 1946. Her wreck is still visible.

The loss of the Hood traumatized the people of Britain and the Royal Navy; she had been the symbol of British Naval power for over 20 years and people around the world were likewise stunned at her demise. The sinking of the Hood and the loss of her crew was a tragedy which all sailors assigned to large and prestigious ships and the nations that they sail for need to keep in mind.

No matter how mighty any ship may be, every ship has an Achilles heel and no ship is unsinkable, and human beings bear the brunt of such tragedies.  Of the over 3600 officers and crew of the Hood and the Bismarck only 118 survived.

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I will continue to remember the gallant Hood, her brave crew, especially my very distant relative Midshipman Bill Dundas who I never met.  He left the Royal Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in about 1960, and was killed in a car wreck in 1965. According to the Hood Association website he was troubled by the sinking for the rest of his life.  I think that I could understand as I am still troubled by my far less traumatic experience of war in Iraq.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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May 14, 2020 · 03:00

The King George V Class Battleships: The Imperfect yet Important British Bulwarks of WII

HMS King George V

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I am still on my holiday from writing about the novel Coronavirus 19 and President Trump and his Administration’s incompetent response to it. It is a response that has already claimed 85,000 American lives. But, I won’t go any farther tonight on that. Instead I am going back to my series on the battleships designed and built by the British, French, Germans, Italians, and Americans from after the Battleship Holiday mandated by the Washington Naval Treaty, and the restrictions of the London Naval Treaty. The Germans were not signatories to these treaties as they were already under the much more severe provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, until the Hitler regime began to clandestinely violate it in 1934, and publicly in 1935. The British signed at bilateral naval accord with Germany in June of 1935, which the Germans renounced in 1938 in order to build a fleet of battleships that Hitler believed would allow him to achieve naval parity or superiority over the British.

This is the fourth in a series of five articles on the battleships built under the provision of the Washington and London Naval Treaty limitations in the 1930s. I am not including the ships which were already in service or completed in the immediate aftermath of the Washington Treaty which required the British to scrap 23, the Americans 30, and Japanese 17 Battleships or Battlecruisers to comply with the treaty. Some were allowed to be converted to Aircraft Carriers, and some demilitarized to serve as training or target ships.

This series looks at the modern battleships built by the future World War II combatants between 1932 and 1939. This article covers the British Royal Navy King George V Class. The previous articles dealt with the German Scharnhorst Class, the Italian Vittorio Veneto Class, the American North Carolina Class, and the Frech Dunkerque and Richelieu Classes. The final article will be about the American South Dakota Class. The German Bismarck, Japanese Yamato, British Vanguard and American Iowa classes will be covered in a subsequent series.

Since there is much disagreement about which of the ships that I have written about I may try to do a comparison to determine which was the best of these classes in the categories, of armament, speed and range, armor protection, reliably, and performance in combat. One has to remember that these were the first battleships built by their respective navies since the First World War, each was built under the constraints imposed by the naval treaties, and their influenced by the developments of potential opponents and the changing world situation. In some cases sacrifices were made on each design due to expediency and the need to get them to the fleet.

HMS King George V in 1941

The last class of Royal Navy Battleships was the Nelson Class of two ships, HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney. They were a compromise design based on N3 Class of battleships which had to be cancelled due to the Washington Treaty. The Nelson’s have been described as a “chopped off” N3 which used the 16” guns of the also cancelled G3 Battlecruisers. The design sacrificed speed for protection and firepower. Their protection was good, as was their armament, but their propulsion plants were a constant source of trouble. By the late 1920s the Royal Navy’s battle force was comprised of the two Nelson’s, the fast Battlecruisers Hood, Renown and Repulse and the 10 ships of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge Classes all designed before the First World War.

King George V Class Quad Turret being built

The Royal Navy began planning for a new class of battleships in 1928. But these plans were shelved with the signing of the London Naval Treaty which continued the “building holiday” on capital ship construction as well as the size and armament of capital ships until 1937.  Because of the pacifist movement of the 1920, the Great Depression, and the desire of the British government to abide by international treaties in spite of the violations of those treaties, nothing was done until 1937.

With the realization that its battle force was dated, and the knowledge that other nations had laid down new classes of battleships the Royal Navy recommenced planning in 1935.  The Navy planned to build to the maximum of the 35,000 displacement limitation and placed a great measure of emphasis on armor and protection. Early designs emphasized ships with heavy firepower and protection at the expense of speed, like the American Colorado Class, the cancelled South Dakota Class, and early designs for new battleships of similar design by the U.S. Navy in the early 1930s.

Numerous Designs were proposed. Eventually the new class of battleships were designed to achieve a 28 knot speed which made them faster than all existing British battleships, although slower than the Battlecruisers. The planners had alternative designs to use 14”, 15” or 16” guns with the Navy favoring the 15” models which had equipped all of their other ships with the exception of the Nelson’s. However the Admiralty to use 14” as the government was endeavoring to negotiate with other powers to impose a 14” limitation on armament for new battleships, and the Admiralty estimated that a move to arm the ships with 15” or 16” guns could delay the completion of the ships by a year or more.

during the second London Treaty of 1935, the Americans and French agreed to the limit their size and armament of their ships, however neither the Japanese nor Italians followed suite, and as a result all new battleships of other powers had larger guns than the King George V Class. The Italians opting for 15” Guns on the Vittorio Veneto Class, the French and Americans invoking the escalator clause of the treaty. The French opted to arm the Richelieu Class with 15” guns, while the Americans chose to arm the North Carolina, South Dakota and the Iowa Classes with 16” guns. The Japanese Opted for 18” guns for their Yamato Class, which also displaced nearly twice as much as the treaty allowed. The Germans who were not a signatory built their Scharnhorst Class with 11” Guns although, those were an expedient as they were planned to be armed with 15” guns. The Germans also equipped the Bismarck Class with 15” guns.

The Royal Navy attempted to rectify this by placing more guns on the ships than those of other navies. They wanted to mount twelve 14” guns mounted in Three quadruple turrets, but this was impossible on the 35,000 platform without compromising protection, speed, or stability.  Thus the Admiralty compromised on 10 guns mounted in 2 quadruple and 1 twin turret.

ONI Drawing of King George Class

The ships displaced a full load displacement of 42,237 tons in 1942. This increased to 44,460 tons by  1944. The were 745 feet long had a beam of 103 feet, a top speed of 28 knots with a cruising range of 5,400 nautical miles at 18 knots. Their relatively poor endurance limited their operations in the Pacific and even nearly caused King George V to have to abandon the chase of the Bismarck in May 1941. The compromise in displacement also limited the amount of fuel they could carry.

The main batteries of the ships proved problematic in combat. The quadruple turret design caused most of the ships problems. This was demonstrated in the engagement of the Prince of Wales against the Bismarck as well as the King George V in its duel with the same German behemoth when A turret became disabled and completely out of action for 30 minutes and half of the main battery being out of action for most of the engagement for mechanical reasons.  The Duke of York achieved excellent results against the Scharnhorst at the Battle of North Cape, but even in that engagement the main battery of Duke of York was only able to be in action 70% of the time due to the guns  jamming, or being inoperablere for various periods of time.  One of the other drawbacks of the design was that in order to replace a gun due to wear and tear, that the turret itself had to be dismantled in order to remove and replace the guns. Most other navies had planned for the replacement of guns without such such massive work.

The main secondary armament of 5.25” dual purpose guns in twin mounts suffered from poor rate of fire and slow traverse, both of which were well below their designed standards, and definitely inferior to the American 5” 38 dual purpose twin mounts and their Mark 38 fire direction radar.

The mounting of the armament was designed to provide protection against turret explosions which could potentially detonate the ship’s magazines.  The main side and underwater protection scheme was sound and protected the ships well in combat, and might have been the best of the ships built in there era. The vertical protection was also sound as was the protection afforded to the turret barbets and placement of the magazines to shield them from plunging fire.

Only the Prince of Wales was lost due to enemy action. Initially it was thought that she was hit by 6 aerial torpedoes and two 500 pound bombs. Her main armor and underwater anti-Torpedo defenses around her fully armored casemate would have protected her from major damage, but only one of the torpedoes hit that belt. However three torpedoes hit her in areas without such protection, forward and aft of the casemate. Later examination of her wreck revealed that the culprit was a torpedo which detonated in a propeller shaft outside of the armored belt which caused uncontrolled flooding when she was attacked by Japanese aircraft on 8 December 1941. No matter how well protected, no ship is completely proof against the damage of bombs, torpedoes, or now missiles.

HMS Anson conducting gunnery exercises

The propulsion systems of the class developed problems after 1942 when fuel oil quality was decreased because of the need for aviation gas.  The new mixtures which were of  higher viscosity and contained more water than the boilers could effectively bur. This increased maintenance costs and decreased efficiency. To compensate the Admiralty designed new higher pressure fuel sprayers and burners which returned the boilers to full efficiency, and which should be used on the later HMS Vanguard. 

The lead ship of the class the King George V was laid down on 1 January 1937, and  launched on 21 February 1939. She was commissioned on 11 December 1940.  As the flagship of the Home Fleet she took part in the unsuccessful search for the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during their early 1941 convoy raiding operation. Later during the hunt for the Battleship  Bismarck in May 1941 during which she earned lasting fame in helping to sink that ship, despite failures in her main battery which silenced half or her main guns.

She took part in the Murmansk convoy protection as well as Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily before sailing to the Far East for operations against the Japanese. She finished the war with the British Pacific Fleet and was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.  She returned as flagship of Home Fleet until she was decommissioned in 1949. She was subsequently sold for scrap in 1957.

Prince of Wales pulling into Singapore

The second ship of the class the Prince of Wales laid down on 1 January 1937, launched on 3 May 1939 and commissioned 19 January 1941 although she was not officially completed until March 1941. Her initial operation came in May 1941 when she sailed with the HMS Hood to intercept the Bismarck. When she sailed she still had shipyard technicians aboard.  Damaged in the action she did score an important hit on Bismarck which cut a fuel line making her forward tanks inaccessible and causing her to make her run for Brest which she did not complete. Another hit damaged Bismarck’ aircraft catapult and a third disabled an electric dynamo. During the engagement she took heavy damage, and suffered malfunctions to her main battery, and withdrew from the action. The question still remains to this day why Admiral Lütjens aboard Bismarck did not decided to finish Prince of Wales off and sailed back the way she came after destroying two of the Royal Navy’s most powerful ships. Repaired and returned to service she could have sailed with her sister ship Tirpitz, maybe in a coordinated operation with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau that could have cost the Royal Navy much more in power and prestige.

Church Service on Prince of Wales at Argentia Bay with Churchill and Roosevelt in attendance

Following her badly needed repairs. Prince of Wales carried Winston Churchill to the Argentia Bay, Newfoundland, where in secret he met with Franklin D. Roosevelt and together drafted the Atlantic Charter. In late 1941 she accompanied the HMS Repulse to Singapore to bolster the British presence in the Far East. Under the command of Admiral Tom Phillips the ships sailed to attack Japanese invasion convoys, but without air cover was sunk by Japanese aircraft which struck her with 4 torpedoes and a bomb, the key hit being a lucky hit on her propeller shaft which caused flooding that caused a loss of power to pumps and anti-aircraft defenses. Repulse was also sunk in the engagement. Their sortie was doomed by an admiral who did not understand the importance of air power, and who had left the carrier sent to assist them, HMS Hermès behind. Poor communication between the land based fighters, Royal Austrian Air Force Brewster Buffaloes which would have been outnumbered and outclassed by Japanese aircraft and the task force destroyed nonetheless.

Prince of Wales sinking and being abandoned

The third ship the Duke of York was laid down 5 May 1937, and launched on 28 February 1940. She was commissioned 4 November 1941. She provided convoy escort for the Lend Lease convoys to the Soviet Union. On December 25th 1943 she and her accompanying cruisers and destroyers sank the  Scharnhorst on 26 December 1943 during the Battle of North Cape. Like King George V and Prince of Wales she also suffered from mechanical failures oof the guns of her main battery. She was transferred to the Pacific in 1944 and served at Okinawa.  She was present  at the Japanese surrender at Singapore. She was decommissioned in 1949 and scrapped in 1957.

Duke of York

The fourth ship of the class the HMS Howe was laid down on 1 June 1937, and launched on 9 April 1940. She was commissioned on 29 August 1942.  She served with the Home Fleet and in the Mediterranean until she was transferred to the Pacific in August 1944. She was stuck and damaged by a Kamikaze in May 1945. Howe was sent for refit at Durban South Africa. She was still in refit when the war ended. She returned home and was placed in reserve in 1950 and scrapped in 1958.

HMS Howe

The last of the class the Anson was laid down 20 July 1937, and launched 24 February 1940. She was commissioned on 22 June 1942. She operated in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic and was sent to the Pacific in 1945 where she  accepted the surrender of the Japanese Forces at Hong Kong. She returned to Britain and was decommissioned in 1951 and scrapped in 1957.

HMS Anson

For the most part the ships of the King George V Class had rather unremarkable careers for The most part with the exception of the Prince of Wales and King George V in the hunt for the Bismarck and the Duke of York sinking the Scharnhorst. They had a number of technical problems which limited their operations in the war, However, they and their brave crews deserve to be remembered as helping to hold the line against the Axis in the early years of the war and sank two of the four German Battleships lost during the war.  This alone was as remarkable achievement as of their contemporaries, for only the USS Washington, and the heavily modernized battleships sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor, the USS West Virginia, USS California, and USS Tennessee sank enemy battleships in combat.

The King George V Class suffered serious design flaws, but in the case of their armored casemate and protection from enemy shellfire the were superior to most. Unfortunately, the true measure of their their success and design were never proven. Duke of York sank an overmatched and outnumbered Scharnhorst after her Admiral took too long to remove his ship from danger. Likewise, Prince of Wales was lucky to survive her encounter with Bismarck, and King George V, greatly assisted by HMS Rodney, and a host of cruisers and destroyers backed up by Force H sank Bismarck, which due to a torpedo hit from a Swordfish torpedo bomber from HMS Ark Royal was limited in speed and out of control.

It would have been interesting to see how they would have performed against the Vittorio Veneto Class, the Japanese Nagato, Kongo, or Yamato Class ships, or even the Scharnhorst or Bismarck in an undamaged state. I think they could have easily defeated the Kongo class, but Nagato, and Yamato would have been a different matter.

HMS Duke of York Being Scrapped 

Regardless, I think the King George V Class was a solid design, sadly limited by treaty limitations and the hopes of their government that potential enemies would do the same. Sadly, the Royal Navy even attempted to combine their heavy main battery armament and protection with guided missile and radar developments being made at the same time could have served as command ships of NATO task forces until the 1970s or 1980s. None were over 20 years old when they were sent to the breakers.

Their limitations notwithstanding, they performed excellently in the Second World War. It is sad that none survive today.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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May 24, 2019 · 19:33

The Tragedy Of the “Mighty Hood” at 78 Years

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Artist rendition of the Loss of the HMS Hood

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Seventy-eight years ago today the HMS Hood, the  “Mighty Hood” was sunk by the German Battleship Bismarck. It was an event that began a tragic and legendary week in Naval history. The news was broken to most of the world by American journalist Edward R. Murrow who in his radio broadcast reported:

“This is London, Ed Murrow reporting. This island, which is no stranger to bad tiding, received news today that HMS Hood largest warship in the British fleet and pride of the British navy, has been sunk by the German battleship Bismarck. From the Hood’s compliment of 1500 men, there were three survivors.”

The news of the sinking of the great ship stunned the world, and it is a tragic anniversary that I always mark. I first read about this battle in C.S Forrester’s little book Hunting the Bismarck when I was in 4th grade. That book was used as the screenplay for the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck.

This essay is in honor of the gallant HMS Hood and her crew.  It is fitting although the HMS Hood and her killer, the German battleship Bismarck were not American. Both were great ships manned by gallant crews and the loss of both ships was tragic, especially from the aspect of the great loss of human life. I do hope and pray that we never forget the sacrifice of these men and all others who have gone down to the sea in great ships.

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HMS Hood entering Valetta Harbor, Malta

There are some warships and naval engagements which assume legendary proportions.  The Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941 between the two largest battleships in commission at the time, the pride of the British Royal Navy the HMS Hood and the German behemoth Bismarck is legendary as are those two mighty ships.  The battle came at a critical time as the Britain stood alone against the seemingly invincible German Blitzkrieg.

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Hood in San Francisco on 1920s goodwill tour

Britain had been driven from Western Europe and was being bombed regularly by Herman Goering’s Luftwaffe while a British expeditionary force that had been sent to Greece had been defeated and the Germans were assaulting Crete with airborne forces.  In the Western Desert the Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had driven off a British counter-offensive on the Libyan-Egyptian frontier and were laying siege to Tobruk and in the Atlantic German U-Boats sank 66 Allied Merchant Ships of over 375,000 tons and the Royal Navy would lose 25 warships not including the Hood.

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The Hood was the pride of the Royal Navy and was world famous due to her inter-war international presence and goodwill visits.  Displacing 47,430 tons full load she was armed with eight 15” guns in four twin turrets.  Designed as a battle cruiser she was less heavily armored than contemporary battleships and had very weak vertical protection from plunging shellfire.  This was a fault which was known but never rectified between the wars, and when the war came the Royal Navy could ill-afford to take her out of service for the necessary improvements to her protection system.  She was fast with a designed speed of 31 knots which been reduced to 28 knots by 1939 as a result of modifications which increased her displacement.   This was further reduced by the wear and tear on her propulsion plant to 26.5 knots by 1940.

Hood was designed before the battle of Jutland (May 1916) where the weaknesses in the armor protection of British Battlecruisers was exposed as three, the HMS Invincible, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Indefatigable were destroyed by plunging fire which exploded their magazines.  Though her design was modified during construction she still was vulnerable to plunging fire. She was scheduled for a major refit which would have included significant improvement in armor protection in 1941, but the war prevented Hood from receiving anything more than improvements to her anti-aircraft batteries.

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Hood (nearly hidden by falling shells) in action at Mers-El-Kebir

During the war Hood was engaged in patrol and search operations against German raiders in the North Atlantic and in June 1940 joined Force “H” in the Mediterranean.  As Flagship of Force “H” she took part in the sinking of French Fleet Units including the Battleship Bregtange  at Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940 following the French surrender to the Germans and remained in operation searching for the German Pocket Battleship Admiral Scheer and the Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper until she was withdrawn for a brief refit in January 1941.

Following another brief refit in mid-March, Hood was underway from mid-March searching for the German raiders Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and also false report of Bismarck breaking out into the Atlantic in April 1941. She returned to Scapa Flow on 6 May 1941.

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The German Leviathan, Bismarck

When the British discovered that Bismarck had entered the Atlantic, Hood the flagship of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, was dispatched to find and sink her with the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales.  The battleships were to join the Heavy Cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk at the entrance to the Denmark Strait.  When the cruisers discovered Bismarck along with her consort the Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen the two British battleships steamed into naval history.

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Bismarck was slightly larger than Hood and mounted the same main armament but that was about all the two ships had in common. If the battle was a battle between heavyweight prize fighters Hood was the valiant but crippled champion and Bismarck the young and overpowering challenger.  Bismarck was slightly faster than the limping Hood and was one of the most well protected ships ever built.  Her gunnery officers and the men that manned her deadly 15” guns, like previous generations of German sailors, were gunnery experts, working with some of the finest naval guns ever made.

<img src="https://padresteve.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/bundesarchiv_bild_146-1984-055-13_schlachtschiff_bismarck_seegefecht1.jpg?w=500&h=324&quot; class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14605" data-attachment-id="14605" data-permalink="https://padresteve.com/2014/05/24/remembering-the-mighty-hood-and-the-battle-of-the-denmark-strait/schlachtschiff-bismarck-seegefecht-3/&quot; data-orig-file="https://padresteve.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/bundesarchiv_bild_146-1984-055-13_schlachtschiff_bismarck_seegefecht1.jpg&quot; data-orig-size="500,324" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"Bundesarchiv","camera":"","caption":"Seegefecht des Schlachtschiffes \"Bismarck\" unter Island.\nNunmehr richtet Schlachtschiff Bismarck seine ganze Feuerkraft auf das sich zur\u00fcckziehende Schlachtschiff \"Prince of Wales\".\nProp.Kp.:MPA Nord Film-Nr. 100\/27\nBildberichter: Lagemann\nWilhelmshaven; Herausgabedatum: Juni 1941","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"Schlachtschiff Bismarck, Seegefecht"}" data-image-title="Schlachtschiff Bismarck, Seegefecht" data-image-description="

Seegefecht des Schlachtschiffes “Bismarck” unter Island.
Nunmehr richtet Schlachtschiff Bismarck seine ganze Feuerkraft auf das sich zurückziehende Schlachtschiff “Prince of Wales”.
Prop.Kp.:MPA Nord Film-Nr. 100/27
Bildberichter: Lagemann
Wilhelmshaven; Herausgabedatum: Juni 1941

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Bismarck firing on Hood, Picture taken from Prinz Eugen

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The German ships were shadowed at a distance by the County Class heavy cruisers  Norfolk and Suffolk. The German task force under the command of Admiral Gunther Lütjens emerged from the strait and were sighted by the British at 0537.  Knowing his ships weakness in regard to plunging fire Admiral Holland desired to steer a direct course at the German ships in order to close the range quickly in order to narrow the range and prevent being hit by the same kind of plunging fire that doomed the British battle cruisers at Jutland.

However, events dictated otherwise and the British were forced to close the range much more slowly than Admiral Holland desired, this exposed both Hood and Prince of Wales to German plunging fire for a longer period of time.  Because of this Holland then turned and tried to close the German ships faster. The result was that his gunnery was degraded by wind and spray coming over the bows of his ships compounded by his inability to bring his after turrets to bear on the German ships.

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Hood, photographed from Prince of Wales just before being sunk by Bismarck

At 0553 Holland ordered his ships to open fire. Unfortunately, he dis so without the benefit of Suffolk and Norfolk being in position to engage the Prinz Eugen.  Due to the similar appearance of the German ships Hood initially concentrated her fire on Prinz Eugen assuming her to be the Bismarck while Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.

During the initial exchange of fire Prince of Wales drew first blood by hitting Bismarck three times with her 14″ guns. One hit damaged Bismarck’s seaplane catapult. A second did minor damage to machinery spaces, and a third which passed throughBismarck’s bow near the waterline and severed the fuel lines from her forward fuel tanks to her engines. The third hit would prove the mighty German Leviathan’s undoing.

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Prinz Eugen

Both German ships opened fire at 0555 and concentred their fires on the Hood.  Prinz Eugen immediately hit Hood with at least one 8” shell which set a large fire among the ready to use 4”ammunition stored in lockers near the mainmast. The hit started a large fire which Hood’s damage control teams raced to contain.  At 0600, Admiral Holland ordered his ships to turn to port in order to bring the rear turrets of his battleships into the fight.

As the squadron executed the turn Hood was straddled by a salvo from Bismarck and observers on Prince of Wales observed an explosion between “X” turret and the mainmast of Hood. The hit set off the 4″ magazine and the resultant explosion consumed the Hood causing her bow to jut sharply out of the water before sinking beneath the waves in under 3 minutes time. Witnesses on both sides of the engagement were stunned by the sudden and violent end of the Hood. 

With Hood now destroyed the Germans rapidly shifted their fire to the Prince of Wales, crippling the battleship and knocking her out of the action.  Bismarck was now in a perfect position to finish off Prince of Wales but she did not do so. Against the advice of Bismarck’s Captain Ernst Lindemann, Admiral Lütjens refused to follow up his advantage to sink the crippled British battleship and instead broke off the action.

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Hood blows up. Drawing by the Captain of HMS Prince of Wales J.C. Leach

Only three crewmen for Hood, Petty Officer Ted Briggs, Seaman Bob Tilburn and Midshipman Bill Dundas survived the cataclysm out of a total of 1415 souls embarked. They were rescued 4 hours later nearly dead of hypothermia. They stayed awake by singing  “Roll out the Barrel” until they were rescued by the destroyer HMS Electra.

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Briggs who died in 2008 recounted the sinking:

“Then she started listing to starboard. She righted herself, and started going over to port. When she had gone over by about 40 degrees we realised she was not coming back…” Briggs was sucked under the water “I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle – I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years.” (The Daily Telegraph 5 October 2008)

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Ted Briggs

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Bob Tilburn

The Admiralty reported the loss of the Hood later in the day saying Hood “received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up.”  The official report of the sinking released later in the year said:

“That the sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck’s 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood’s 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them all to explode and wreck the after part of the ship. The probability is that the 4-inch magazines exploded first.”

The commission’s findings have been challenged by a number of naval historians and there are several theories of how the magazines might have exploded. However, all theories point to a massive magazine explosion which may not have be caused by a plunging round but from a hit which detonated the unprotected 4” magazines or a hit from Bismarck that struck below Hood’s waterline and exploded in a magazine.

For forty years the Hood’s wreckage lay undiscovered. Her wreck was located in 2001 lying across two debris fields. The post mortem examination revealed that Hood’s after magazines had exploded.  Hood’s resting place is designated as a War Grave by Britain and protected site under the Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986.

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Bismarck sinking

Bismarck and her crew did not long survive her victory.  When close to refuge in the French port of Brest on May 26th the great ship was crippled by a lucky aerial torpedo hit from a Fairley Swordfish bomber flying from the HMS Ark Royal. 

The hit damaged Bismarck’s rudders and forced her to steer a course towards the approaching British fleet. Throughout the night Bismarck fought off attacks by British and Polish destroyers on the morning of May 27th 1941, after absorbing massive damage from the HMS King George V, HMS Rodney and several cruisers including HMS Dorsetshire, he plucky and persistent Norfolk and several destroyers, Bismarck was scuttled by her crew. When she went down she took with her all but 115 souls of her crew of over 2200 which included the Fleet Staff of Admiral Lütjens.

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HMS Prince of Wales

A few months later, Prince of Wales would take Winston Churchill to Argentia Bay Newfoundland to meet with Franklin Roosevelt. At the conference that took place in August 1941, the Atlantic Charter was drafted. With the increased threat of Japanese expansion Prince of Wales reported to the Far East where she was sunk along with the Battlecruiser HMS Repulse on 9 December 1941 by a force of land based Japanese aircraft.  The Prinz Eugen was the only heavy ship of the German Navy to survive the war and was taken as a prize by the US Navy when the war ended. She was used as a target during the Able and Baker nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, but did not sink. She was too radioactive to be repaired and her hulk was towed to Kwajalein Atoll where she capsized and sank on 22 December 1946. Her wreck is still visible.

The loss of the Hood traumatized the people of Britain and the Royal Navy; she had been the symbol of British Naval power for over 20 years and people around the world were likewise stunned at her demise. The sinking of the Hood and the loss of her crew was a tragedy which all sailors assigned to large and prestigious ships and the nations that they sail for need to keep in mind.

No matter how mighty any ship may be, every ship has an Achilles heel and no ship is unsinkable, and human beings bear the brunt of such tragedies.  Of the over 3600 officers and crew of the Hood and the Bismarck only 118 survived.

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I will continue to remember the gallant Hood, her brave crew, especially my very distant relative Midshipman Bill Dundas who I never met.  He left the Royal Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in about 1960, and was killed in a car wreck in 1965. According to the Hood Association website he was troubled by the sinking for the rest of his life.  I think that I could understand as I am still troubled by my far less traumatic experience of war in Iraq.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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April 1, 2019 · 23:57

We Could Use a Man (or Woman) Like Franklin Roosevelt Again

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

If I had to place myself on the political spectrum it would be in the area occupied by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I am definitely a liberal, I can no longer claim to be a conservative by any means of the imagination, but as a historian I am very careful in embracing the extremes of left, or right wing populism, the very things which are driving much of the political division in our country. In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt was wise enough to state:

“Say that civilization is a tree which, as it grows, continually produces rot and dead wood. The radical says: “Cut it down.” The conservative says: “Don’t touch it.” The liberal compromises: “Let’s prune, so that we lose neither the old trunk nor the new branches.” This campaign is waged to teach the country to march upon its appointed course, the way of change, in an orderly march, avoiding alike the revolution of radicalism and the revolution of conservatism.”

Of course there were quite a few conservatives and progressives of his time who loathes and attempted to obstruct, hamper, or defeat Roosevelt’s New Deal. But what many didn’t understand was that Roosevelt was willing to risk failure so long as he learned from it and succeeded in the end.

As Historian John Meacham wrote:

“Disappointed liberals lobbied the president to move more quickly on social and economic issues. “You’ll never be a good politician,” FDR once told Eleanor, who frequently presented such pleas to her husband. “You are too impatient.” At a White House meeting, Roosevelt parried a questioner with a lesson in practical politics. Lincoln, Roosevelt said, “was a sad man because he couldn’t get it all at once. And nobody can. Maybe you would make a much better President than I have. Maybe you will, someday. If you ever sit here, you will learn that you cannot, just by shouting from the housetops, get what you want all the time.” He sometimes turned to sports to make his point. “I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat,” Roosevelt remarked. “What I seek is the highest possible batting average.”

Likewise, Meacham noted:

“He argued that leadership, even his own, was imperfect. A wise public, Roosevelt believed, would give a well-meaning, forward-leaning president the benefit of the doubt. “The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation,” Roosevelt said in 1932. “It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something…. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely.”

The situation confronting Roosevelt is little different than we face today. There are political forces on the extreme left and right that have little regard for what has been accomplished in the American experiment, and who as Roosevelt noted either want to cut it down completely, or change nothing, as if two and a half-centuries have not passed. As Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

Meacham noted of Roosevelt:

“Sustained by this view of progress, Roosevelt urged the nation onward. “We shall strive for perfection,” Roosevelt said. “We shall not achieve it immediately—but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes—but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principle…. Our Constitution of 1787 was not a perfect instrument; it is not perfect yet. But it provided a firm base upon which all manner of men, of all races and colors and creeds, could build our solid structure of democracy.”

Abraham Lincoln understood this when in the Gettysburg Address he noted:

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Roosevelt understood, just as Lincoln did that our system, form, and institutions were under attack from many sides, thus we all must take increased devotion… that this nation, under, God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from thee earth.”

I am going to stop for now. I am about two-thirds of the way through Meacham’s book and about 1/3 of the way through Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times, which looks at the lives, failures, and ultimate successes of the leadership styles of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Baines Johnson.

It seams that now regardless of what party or ideology we espouse, we want absolute doctrinal purity. Certainly that was not what our founders thought, nor men like Franklin Roosevelt. Our Republic can be destroyed by the radicalism of the Right and Left, but also the complacency of the Center, which by ignoring the the crisis engulfing the country only make the crisis worse. Hannah Arendt noted:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

I am a liberal, a progressive, and a Democrat, but I am as much as of a realist as Franklin Roosevelt. Our Union is imperfect, but just because it is so it should not be cut down and destroyed, nor ignored and uncultivated by progress. The grafting of new branches onto the old stock is not a travesty, or a threat. It is the ideal that motivated the Founders was not that they were achieving perfection in the moment, but that they were planting ideals that would ultimately be universal. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Such thoughts are now part of the Constitutions of other countries and the United Nations. If we want to look into the imaginary future they are included as part of the Constitution of the United Federation of Planets.

We live in a nation whose past is far from perfect, a nation that has deviated from its foundational principles all too many times, that being said, Franklin Roosevelt, understood this as fact. He did not try to mythologize our past. He sought the best from that ancient trunk and grafted on, as Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt before him, as well as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson did after him, ideas that expanded liberty for all, without which the radicals of the right or left fail to appreciate.

Roosevelt spoke during his nomination speech at the 1932 Democratic Party Convention:

“Wild radicalism has made few converts, and the greatest tribute that I can pay to my countrymen is that in these days of crushing want there persists an orderly and hopeful spirit on the part of the millions of our people who have suffered so much,” Roosevelt said. “To fail to offer them a new chance is not only to betray their hopes but to misunderstand their patience.

The forces of progress, Roosevelt believed, were not to cower or to lash out, but to engage. “To meet by reaction that danger of radicalism is to invite disaster,” he said. “Reaction is no barrier to the radical. It is a challenge, a provocation. The way to meet that danger is to offer a workable program of reconstruction, and the party to offer it is the party with clean hands.

He then introduced a crucial phrase: “I pledge you, I pledge myself,” FDR said, “to a New Deal for the American people.” The crisis was existential. “His impulse,” Winston Churchill wrote of FDR in the mid-1930s, “is one which makes toward the fuller life of the masses of the people in every land, and which, as it glows the brighter, may well eclipse both the lurid flames of German Nordic self-assertion and the baleful unnatural lights which are diffused from Soviet Russia.”

That is how I view the situation today. As far as it goes, those who consider themselves to be Democratic Socialists are little more than Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F Kennedy, or Lyndon Baines Johnson Democrats. They believe in the New Deal, Civil Rights, and the Great Society. They also believe in the realities of science and Climate Change and seek answers that work with our economic and scientific realities, like their predecessors they believe in the instruments of the future. In the past it was fossile fuels and nuclear power; now it is wind power, and solar energy, combined with the cleanest and most efficient forms of past energy. None of those ideas are radical, they are progressive, economically sound, job producing, and environmentally friendly policies that could help reverse the scourge of global warming, sea rise, and climate change.

Likewise, Franklin Roosevelt realized the dangers of Stalinist Communism and Hitlerian Fascism, which he saw as a threat to the United States in the 1930s, but in the short term he realized that the Nazi threat was the greatest threat, and allied with Britain, the Soviet Union, Free France, and China to defeat Germany first, Japan next, and then deal with the Soviet Union using the full power of the nation; Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic to achieve the overthrow of the Soviet Union. That did not happen until 1990, but when it did a plethora of Soviet dominated regimes fell in Eastern Europe. Since that time the Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations have surrendered many of those gains and allowed a New expansionist, Soviet Union, albeit without the Soviet Name to be reestablished in Russia under Vladimir Putin.

I won’t go into the other overseas threats, but he would recognize the danger of President Trump’s “America First” policy which is little different from the America Firsters of his era. He looked forward, they looked back. He looked at a world that might overwhelm the United States, the threats of Naziism, Fascism, and Stalinist Communism, and in spite of resistance from his own party and the Republican isolationists who adopted the America First ideology of men like Charles Lindberg which would have surrendered all of Europe, including Great Britain to the Nazis because it was nothing more than an intra-racial struggle and not one against inferior races. Even after Hitler overran Poland and Western Europe Lindberg argued:

“for leaving the Old World to its own devices. “Now that war has broken out again, we in America have a decision to make on which the destiny of our nation depends,” Lindbergh said, adding: “In making our decision, this point should be clear: these wars in Europe are not wars in which our civilization is defending itself against some Asiatic intruder. There is no Genghis Khan or Xerxes marching against our Western nations. This is not a question of banding together to defend the White race against foreign invasion. This is simply one more of those age-old quarrels within our own family of nations.”

Roosevelt knew that was nonsense. He worked patiently with congress on both sides of the aisle, building his case in spite of resistance until Hitler attacked Poland, and overran most of Western Europe, Roosevelt’s policy ideas were ratified into policy. When Japan attacked at Pearl Harbor and Hitler declared war on the United States he was able to act.

Roosevelt brought the country together. He helped to maintain at disparate alliance between Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. It was courageous, as Meacham noted:

” A man of courage, Churchill appreciated it when he detected courage in others, and he had seen it, intimately, in Franklin Roosevelt. “It was a marvel that he bore up against it through all the many years of tumult and storm,” Churchill said of FDR’s paralysis. “Not one man in ten millions, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy. Not one in ten millions would have tried, not one in a generation would have succeeded, not only in entering this sphere, not only in acting vehemently in it, but in becoming indisputable master of the scene.”

We need a leader like Franklin Roosevelt now. Personally, I am not sure if any of the challengers to Donald Trump has the gravitas, courage, or determination to go where Roosevelt went. He was willing to risk failure, admit it and try again. I don’t know if our political culture, at least the political culture of the Democratic Party would allow it. The Republicans don’t seem to care as is obvious by their continued support of Donald Trump, and his policies which are nothing short of Lindberg’s America First campaign, Hitler’s racial politics, and American Jim Crow laws.

Roosevelt began the domestic and international policies that Donald Trump fights against on a daily basis. I don’t know what Democratic candidate that will be, but it has to someone has to fully embrace the Roosevelt legacy and push it to the future. As Roosevelt showed this has to me more than about sound bites; it has to be about truth, integrity, and the willingness to engage with and even at times compromise with domestic political rivals in order to preserve the Republic against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But none of the Democratic Party candidates have yet to show me that they have the moral, or physical courage of Roosevelt who battled polio which deprived him of much of his mobility and physical abilities when he was 39 years old. Maybe if Senator Tammy Duckworth would enter the race I might see a candidate with that kind of courage. If she would enter the race, win the nomination, and the presidency, she would be the first female, combat vet and wounded warrior to serve as president.

I would like that very much.

But, until tomorrow we have what we have.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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May 24, 2018 · 00:01

The Death of the Pride of the Royal Navy: The Sinking of HMS Hood

hms-hood-sinking11Artist rendition of the Loss of the HMS Hood

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Seventy-seven years ago today the “Mighty Hood” was sunk by the German Battleship Bismarck. The news was broken to most of the world by American journalist Edward R. Murrow who in his radio broadcast reported:

“This is London, Ed Murrow reporting. This island, which is no stranger to bad tiding, received news today that HMS Hood largest warship in the British fleet and pride of the British navy, has been sunk by the German battleship Bismarck. From the Hood’s compliment of 1500 men, there were three survivors.”

The news of the sinking of the great ship stunned the world, and it is a tragic anniversary that I always mark. I first read about this battle in C.S Forrester’s little book Hunting the Bismarck when I was in 4th grade. That book was used as the screenplay for the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck.

This essay is in honor of the gallant HMS Hood and her crew.  It is fitting although the HMS Hood and her killer, the German battleship Bismarck were not American. Both were great ships manned by gallant crews and the loss of both ships was tragic, especially from the aspect of the great loss of human life. I do hope and pray that we never forget the sacrifice of these men and all others who have gone down to the sea in great ships.

hood-malta1HMS Hood at Malta

There are some warships and naval engagements which assume legendary proportions.  The Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941 between the two largest battleships in commission at the time, the pride of the British Royal Navy the HMS Hood and the German behemoth Bismarck is legendary as are those two mighty ships.  The battle came at a critical time as the Britain stood alone against the seemingly invincible German Blitzkrieg.

hood-at-san-francisco1Hood in San Francisco on 1920s goodwill tour

Britain had been driven from Western Europe and was being bombed regularly by Herman Goering’s Luftwaffe while a British expeditionary force that had been sent to Greece had been defeated and the Germans were assaulting Crete with airborne forces.  In the Western Desert the Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had driven off a British counter-offensive on the Libyan-Egyptian frontier and were laying siege to Tobruk and in the Atlantic German U-Boats sank 66 Allied Merchant Ships of over 375,000 tons and the Royal Navy would lose 25 warships not including the Hood.

hms_hood_march_17_19241

The Hood was the pride of the Royal Navy and was world famous due to her inter-war international presence and goodwill visits.  Displacing 47,430 tons full load she was armed with eight 15” guns in four twin turrets.  Designed as a battle cruiser she was less heavily armored than contemporary battleships and had very weak vertical protection from plunging shellfire.  This was a fault which was known but never rectified between the wars and when the war came the Royal Navy could ill-afford to take her out of service for the necessary improvements to her protection system.  She was fast with a designed speed of 31 knots which been reduced to 28 knots by 1939 as a result of modifications which increased her displacement.   This was further reduced by the wear and tear on her propulsion plant to 26.5 knots by 1940.

Hood was designed before the battle of Jutland (May 1916) where the weaknesses in the armor protection of British Battlecruisers was exposed as three, the HMS Invincible, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Indefatigable were destroyed by plunging fire which exploded their magazines.  Though her design was modified during construction she still was vulnerable to plunging fire. She was scheduled for a major refit which would have included significant improvement in armor protection in 1941, but the war prevented Hood from receiving anything more than improvements to her anti-aircraft batteries.

Combat1lgHood (nearly hidden by falling shells) in action at Mers-El-Kebir

During the war Hood was engaged in patrol and search operations against German raiders in the North Atlantic and in June 1940 joined Force “H” in the Mediterranean.  As Flagship of Force “H” she took part in the sinking of French Fleet Units including the Battleship Bretagne at Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940 following the French surrender to the Germans and remained in operation searching for the German Pocket Battleship Admiral Scheer and the Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper until she was withdrawn for a brief refit in January 1941.

Following another brief refit in mid-March, Hood was underway from mid-March searching for the German raiders Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and also false report of Bismarck breaking out into the Atlantic in April 1941. She returned to Scapa Flow on 6 May 1941.

bismarck1Bismarck

When the British discovered that Bismarck had entered the Atlantic, Hood the flagship of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, was dispatched to find and sink her with the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales.  The battleships were to join the Heavy Cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk at the entrance to the Denmark Strait.  When the cruisers discovered Bismarck along with her consort the Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen the two British battleships steamed into naval history.

flagshippg213

Bismarck was slightly larger than Hood and mounted the same main armament but that was about all the two ships had in common. If the battle was a battle between heavyweight prize fighters Hood was the valiant but crippled champion and Bismarck the young and overpowering challenger.  Bismarck was slightly faster than the limping Hood and was one of the most well protected ships ever built.  Her gunnery officers and the men that manned her deadly 15” guns were like previous generations of German sailors, gunnery experts, working with some of the finest naval guns ever made.

Schlachtschiff Bismarck, Seegefecht

Bismarck firing on Hood

gallbismdenmarkstrait11

The German ships were shadowed at a distance by the Norfolk and Suffolk. The German task force under the command of Admiral Gunther Lütjens emerged from the strait and were sighted by the British at 0537.  Knowing his ships weakness in regard to plunging fire Admiral Holland desired to steer a direct course at the German ships in order to close the range quickly in order to narrow the range and prevent being hit by the same kind of plunging fire that doomed the British battle cruisers at Jutland.

However, events dictated otherwise and the British were forced to close the range much more slowly than Admiral Holland desired, and exposed both Hood and Prince of Wales to German plunging fire for a longer period of time.  As such Holland then turned and tried to close the German ships faster. The result was that his gunnery was degraded by wind and spray coming over the bows of his ships compounded by his inability to bring his after turrets to bear on the German ships.

hood0231Hood, photographed from Prince of Wales moments before being hit and sunk by Bismarck

At 0553 Holland ordered his ships to open fire. Unfortunately, he dis so without the benefit of Suffolk and Norfolk being in position to engage the Prinz Eugen.  Due to the similar appearance of the German ships Hood initially concentrated her fire on Prinz Eugen assuming her to be the Bismarck while Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.

During the initial exchange of fire Prince of Wales drew first blood by hitting Bismarck three times with her 14″ guns. One hit damaged Bismarck’s seaplane catapult. A second did minor damage to machinery spaces, and a third which passed throughBismarck’s bow near the waterline and severed the fuel lines from her forward fuel tanks to her engines. The third hit would prove the might German Leviathan’s undoing.

prinzeugen-21Prinz Eugen

Both German ships opened fire at 0555 and concentred their fires on the Hood.  Prinz Eugen immediately hit Hood with at least one 8” shell which set a large fire among the ready to use 4”ammunition stored in lockers near the mainmast. The hit started a large fire which Hood’s damage control teams raced to contain.  At 0600, Admiral Holland ordered his ships to turn to port in order to bring the rear turrets of his battleships into the fight.

As the squadron executed the turn Hood was straddled by a salvo from Bismarck and observers on Prince of Wales observed an explosion between “X” turret and the mainmast of Hood. The hit set off the 4″ magazine and the resultant explosion consumed the Hood causing her bow to jut sharply out of the water before sinking beneath the waves in under 3 minutes time. Witnesses on both sides of the engagement were stunned by the sudden and violent end of the Hood.

With Hood now destroyed the Germans rapidly shifted their fire to the Prince of Wales, crippling the battleship and knocking her out of the action.  Bismarck was now in a perfect position to finish off Prince of Wales but she did not do so. Against the advice of Bismarck’s Captain Ernst Lindemann, Admiral Lütjens refused to follow up his advantage to sink the crippled British battleship and instead broke off the action.

hood_explosion_sketch1Hood blows up. Drawing by the Captain of HMS Prince of Wales J.C. Leach

Only three crewmen for Hood, Petty Officer Ted Briggs, Seaman Bob Tilburn and Midshipman Bill Dundas survived the cataclysm out of a total of 1415 souls embarked. They were rescued 4 hours later nearly dead of hypothermia. They stayed awake by singing  “Roll out the Barrel” until they were rescued by the destroyer HMS Electra.

hood_blowup1

Briggs who died in 2008 recounted the sinking:

“Then she started listing to starboard. She righted herself, and started going over to port. When she had gone over by about 40 degrees we realised she was not coming back…” Briggs was sucked under the water “I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle – I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years.” (The Daily Telegraph 5 October 2008)

briggs1Ted Briggs

tilburn4111Bob Tilburn

The Admiralty reported the loss of the Hood later in the day saying Hood “received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up.”  The official report of the sinking released later in the year said:

“That the sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck’s 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood’s 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them all to explode and wreck the after part of the ship. The probability is that the 4-inch magazines exploded first.”

The commission’s findings have been challenged by a number of naval historians and there are several theories of how the magazines might have exploded. However, all theories point to a massive magazine explosion which may not have be caused by a plunging round but from a hit which detonated the unprotected 4” magazines or a hit from Bismarck that struck below Hood’s waterline and exploded in a magazine.

For forty years the Hood’s wreckage lay undiscovered. Her wreck was located in 2001 lying across two debris fields. The post mortem examination revealed that Hood’s after magazines had exploded.  Hood’s resting place is designated as a War Grave by Britain and protected site under the Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986.

bismarck-sinking1Bismarck sinking

Bismarck and her crew did not long survive her victory.  When close to refuge in the French port of Brest on May 26th the great ship was crippled by a lucky aerial torpedo hit from a Fairley Swordfish bomber flying from the HMS Ark Royal. 

The hit damaged Bismarck’s rudders and forced her to steer a course towards the approaching British fleet. Throughout the night Bismarck fought off attacks by British and Polish destroyers on the morning of May 27th 1941, after absorbing massive damage from the HMS King George V, HMS Rodney and several cruisers including HMS Dorsetshire, he plucky and persistent Norfolk and several destroyers, Bismarck was scuttled by her crew. When she went down she took with her all but 115 souls of her crew of over 2200 which included the Fleet Staff of Admiral Lütjens.

hms-prince-of-wales1HMS Prince of Wales

A few months later, Prince of Wales would take Winston Churchill to Argentia Bay Newfoundland to meet with Franklin Roosevelt. At the conference that took place in August 1941, the Atlantic Charter was drafted. With the increased threat of Japanese expansion Prince of Wales reported to the Far East where she was sunk along with the Battlecruiser HMS Repulse on 9 December 1941 by a force of land based Japanese aircraft.  The Prinz Eugen was the only heavy ship of the German Navy to survive the war and was taken as a prize by the US Navy when the war ended. She was used as a target during the Able and Baker nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, but did not sink. She was too radioactive to be repaired and her hulk was towed to Kwajalein Atoll where she capsized and sank on 22 December 1946. Her wreck is still visible.

The loss of the Hood traumatized the people of Britain and the Royal Navy; she had been the symbol of British Naval power for over 20 years and people around the world were likewise stunned at her demise. The sinking of the Hood and the loss of her crew was a tragedy which all sailors assigned to large and prestigious ships and the nations that they sail for need to keep in mind.

No matter how mighty any ship may be, every ship has an Achilles heel and no ship is unsinkable, and human beings bear the brunt of such tragedies.  Of the over 3600 officers and crew of the Hood and the Bismarck only 118 survived.

dundasw1

I will continue to remember the gallant Hood, her brave crew, especially my very distant relative Midshipman Bill Dundas who I never met.  He left the Royal Navy with the rank of Lieutenant Commander in about 1960, and was killed in a car wreck in 1965. According to the Hood Association website he was troubled by the sinking for the rest of his life.  I think that I could understand as I am still troubled by my far less traumatic experience of war in Iraq.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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May 24, 2014 · 00:02

Remembering the “Mighty Hood” and the Battle of the Denmark Strait

hms-hood-sinking11Artist rendition of the Loss of the HMS Hood

Seventy-three years ago today the “Mighty Hood” was sunk by the German Battleship Bismarck. It is an anniversary that I always mark. I first read about this battle in C.S Forrester’s little book Hunting the Bismarck which was used as the screenplay for the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck. This essay is in honor of the gallant HMS Hood and her crew.  It is fitting although the HMS Hood and her killer, the German battleship Bismarck were American. Both were great ships manned by gallant crews and the loss of both ships was tragic, especially from the aspect of the great loss of human life. May we never forget the sacrifice of these men and all others who have gone down to the sea in great ships.

hood-malta1HMS Hood at Malta

There are some warships and naval engagements which assume legendary proportions.  The Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941 between the two largest battleships in commission at the time, the pride of the British Royal Navy the HMS Hood and the German behemoth Bismarck is legendary as are those two mighty ships.  The battle came at a critical time as the Britain stood alone against the seemingly invincible German Blitzkrieg.

hood-at-san-francisco1Hood in San Francisco on 1920s goodwill tour

Britain had been driven from Western Europe and was being bombed regularly by Herman Goering’s Luftwaffe while a British expeditionary force that had been sent to Greece had been defeated and the Germans were assaulting Crete with airborne forces.  In the Western Desert the Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had driven off a British counter-offensive on the Libyan-Egyptian frontier and were laying siege to Tobruk and in the Atlantic German U-Boats sank 66 Allied Merchant Ships of over 375,000 tons and the Royal Navy would lose 25 warships not including the Hood.

hms_hood_march_17_19241

The Hood was the pride of the Royal Navy and was world famous due to her inter-war international presence and goodwill visits.  Displacing 47,430 tons full load she was armed with eight 15” guns in four twin turrets.  Designed as a battle cruiser she was less heavily armored than contemporary battleships and had very weak vertical protection from plunging shellfire.  This was a fault which was known but never rectified between the wars and when the war came the Royal Navy could ill-afford to take her out of service for the necessary improvements to her protection system.  She was fast with a designed speed of 31 knots which been reduced to 28 knots by 1939 as a result of modifications which increased her displacement.   This was further reduced by the wear and tear on her propulsion plant to 26.5 knots by 1940.

Hood was designed before the battle of Jutland (May 1916) where the weaknesses in the armor protection of British Battlecruisers was exposed as three, the HMS Invincible, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Indefatigable were destroyed by plunging fire which exploded their magazines.  Though her design was modified during construction she still was vulnerable to plunging fire. She was scheduled for a major refit which would have included significant improvement in armor protection in 1941 but the war prevented the Hood from receiving anything more than improvements to her anti-aircraft batteries.

Combat1lgHood (nearly hidden by falling shells) in action at Mers-El-Kebir

During the war Hood was engaged in patrol and search operations against German raiders in the North Atlantic and in June 1940 joined Force “H” in the Mediterranean.  As Flagship of Force “H” she took part in the sinking of French Fleet Units including the Battleship Bretagne at Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940 following the French surrender to the Germans and remained in operation searching for the German Pocket Battleship Admiral Scheer and Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper until she was withdrawn for a brief refit in January 1941. Following another brief refit in mid-March, Hood was underway from mid-March searching for the German raiders Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and a false report of Bismarck breaking out into the Atlantic in April 1941. She returned to Scapa Flow on 6 May 1941.

bismarck1Bismarck

When the British discovered that Bismarck had entered the Atlantic, Hood as the flagship of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland was dispatched with the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales to join the Heavy Cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk at the entrance to the Denmark Strait.  When the cruisers discovered Bismarck along with her consort the Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen the two British battleships steamed into naval history.

flagshippg213

Bismarck was slightly larger than Hood and mounted the same main armament but that was about all the two ships had in common. If the battle was a battle between heavyweight prize fighters Hood was the valiant but crippled champion and Bismarck the young and overpowering challenger.  Bismarck was slightly faster than the limping Hood and was one of the most well protected ships ever built.  Her gunnery officers and the men that manned those deadly 15” guns were like previous generations of German sailors’ gunnery experts working some of the finest naval guns ever made.

Schlachtschiff Bismarck, SeegefechtBismarck firing on Hood

gallbismdenmarkstrait11

The German ships shadowed at a distance by the Norfolk and Suffolk German task force under the command of Admiral Gunther Lütjens emerged from the strait and was sighted by the British at 0537.  Knowing his ship’s weakness in regard to plunging fire Admiral Holland desired to steer a direct course at the German ships in order to close the range quickly. Events dictated otherwise and the British were forced to close the range much more slowly and exposing Hood and Prince of Wales to German plunging fire for a longer period of time.  Holland turned to close faster with the result that his gunnery was degraded by wind and spray coming over the bows of his ships and the inability to fire his after turrets.

hood0231Hood from Prince of Wales moments before being hit and sunk

At 0553 Holland ordered his ships to open fire without the benefit of Suffolk and Norfolk being in position to engage the Prinz Eugen.  The Hood initially concentrated her fire on Prinz Eugen assuming her to be the Bismarck while Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.  Prince of Wales drew first blood striking Bismarck three times. One which damaged her seaplane catapult, a second which did minor damage to machinery spaces and a third which passed through the bow near the waterline which severed fuel lines from her forward fuel tanks.

prinzeugen-21Prinz Eugen

Both German ships opened fire at 0555 concentrating on the Hood.  Prinz Eugen immediately hit Hood with at least one 8” shell which set a large fire among the ready to use 4”ammunition stored in lockers near the mainmast. The hit started a large fire which Hood’s damage control teams raced to contain.  At 0600 Holland ordered his ships to turn to port in order to bring his rear turrets into the fight. As the squadron executed the turn Hood was straddled by a salvo from Bismarck and observers on Prince of Wales observed an explosion between “X” turret and the mainmast which consumed the Hood causing her bow to jut sharply out of the water before sinking beneath the waves in under 3 minutes time. Witnesses on both sides of the engagement were stunned by the sudden and violent end of the Hood and the Germans rapidly shifted fire to the Prince of Wales knocking her out of the action.  Against the advice of Bismarck’s Captain Ernst Lindemann, Lütjens did not follow up his advantage to sink the crippled British ship.

hood_explosion_sketch1Hood blows up. Drawing by the Captain of HMS Prince of Wales J.C. Leach

Only three crewmen Petty Officer Ted Briggs, Seaman Bob Tilburn and Midshipman Bill Dundas survived the sinking of Hood out of a total of 1415 souls embarked. They were rescued 4 hours later nearly dead of hypothermia staying awake by sinking “Roll out the Barrel” by the destroyer HMS Electra.

hood_blowup1

Briggs who died in 2008 recounted the sinking:

“Then she started listing to starboard. She righted herself, and started going over to port. When she had gone over by about 40 degrees we realised she was not coming back…” Briggs was sucked under the water “I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle – I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years.” (The Daily Telegraph 5 October 2008)

briggs1Ted Briggs

tilburn4111Bob Tilburn

The Admiralty reported the loss of the Hood later in the day saying Hood “received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up.”  The official report of the sinking released later in the year said:

“That the sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck’s 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood’s 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them all to explode and wreck the after part of the ship. The probability is that the 4-inch magazines exploded first.”

The commission’s findings have been challenged by a number of naval historians and there are several theories of how the magazines might have exploded but all point to a massive magazine explosion but probably not due to a plunging round but from another hit which detonated the unprotected 4” magazines or a hit from Bismarck below Hood’s waterline which stuck a magazine.  Hood’s wreckage was located in 2001 lying across two debris fields and the examination revealed that the after magazines had exploded.  The site is designated as a War Grave by Britain and protected site under the Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986.

bismarck-sinking1Bismarck sinking

Bismarck and her crew did not long survive her victory being crippled by a lucky aerial torpedo hit from a Fairley Swordfish bomber flying from the HMS Ark Royal on 26 May and being scuttled by her crew after absorbing massive damage from the HMS King George V, HMS Rodney and several cruisers including HMS Dorsetshire the plucky and persistent Norfolk and several destroyers. When she went down she took with her all but 115 souls of her crew of over 2200 which included the Fleet Staff of Admiral Lütjens.

hms-prince-of-wales1HMS Prince of Wales

Prince of Wales would take Winston Churchill to Argentia Bay Newfoundland to meet with Franklin Roosevelt from 9-12 August 1941 where the Atlantic Charter was drafted. She reported to the Far East where she was sunk along with the Battlecruiser HMS Repulse on 9 December 1941 by a force of land based Japanese aircraft.  The Prinz Eugen was the only heavy ship of the German Navy to survive the war and was taken by the US Navy at the end of the war. She was expended as a target during the Able and Baker nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll.  Too radioactive to be repaired she was towed to Kwajalein Atoll where she capsized and sank on 22 December 1946. Her wreck is still visible.

The loss of the Hood traumatized the people of Britain and the Royal Navy; she had been the symbol of British Naval power for over 20 years and people around the world were likewise stunned at her demise. The sinking of the Hood and the loss of her crew was a tragedy which all sailors assigned to large and prestigious ships and the nations that they sail for need to keep in mind.

No matter how mighty any ship may be, every ship has an Achilles heel and no ship is unsinkable.  Of the over 3600 officers and crew of the Hood and the Bismarck only 118 survived.

dundasw1

I will remember the Hood, her gallant crew especially my very distant relative Midshipman Bill Dundas who I never met.  He left the Royal Navy about 1960 and was killed in a car wreck in 1965.  According to the Hood Association website he was troubled by the sinking for the rest of his life.  One can understand.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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May 24, 2011 · 12:24

The Death of the Mighty Hood: The Battle of the Denmark Strait 24 May 1941

HMS Hood arrives in Malta

Seventy years ago today the “Mighty Hood” was sunk by the German Battleship Bismarck. This essay is in honor of that gallant ship and crew.  May we never forget the sacrifice of these men and all others who have gone down to the sea in ships.

There are some warships and naval engagements which assume legendary proportions.  The Battle of the Denmark Strait on 24 May 1941 between the two largest battleships in commission at the time, the pride of the British Royal Navy the HMS Hood and the German behemoth Bismarck is legendary as are those two mighty ships.  The battle came at a critical time as the Britain stood alone against the seemingly invincible German Blitzkrieg.  Britain had been driven from Western Europe and was being bombed regularly by Herman Goering’s Luftwaffe while a British expeditionary force that had been sent to Greece had been defeated and the Germans were assaulting Crete with airborne forces.  In the Western Desert the Afrika Korps under Field Marshall Erwin Rommel had driven off a British counter-offensive on the Libyan-Egyptian frontier and were laying siege to Tobruk and in the Atlantic German U-Boats sank 66 Allied Merchant Ships of over 375,000 tons and the Royal Navy would lose 25 warships not including the Hood.

The “Mighty Hood” at San Francisco in the 1920s

The Hood was the pride of the Royal Navy and was world famous due to her inter-war international presence and goodwill visits.  Displacing 47,430 tons full load she was armed with eight 15” guns in four twin turrets.  Designed as a battle cruiser she was less heavily armored than contemporary battleships and had very weak vertical protection from plunging shellfire.  This was a fault which was known but never rectified between the wars and when the war came the Royal Navy could ill-afford to take her out of service for the necessary improvements to her protection system.  She was fast with a designed speed of 31 knots which been reduced to 28 knots by 1939 as a result of modifications which increased her displacement.   This was further reduced by the wear and tear on her propulsion plant to 26.5 knots by 1940.

Hood in September 1924

Hood was designed before the battle of Jutland (May 1916) where the weaknesses in the armor protection of British Battlecruisers was exposed as three, the HMS Invincible, HMS Queen Mary and HMS Indefatigable were destroyed by plunging fire which exploded their magazines.  Though her design was modified during construction she still was vulnerable to plunging fire. She was scheduled for a major refit which would have included significant improvement in armor protection in 1941 but the war prevented the Hood from receiving anything more than improvements to her anti-aircraft batteries.

The Killer the German Battleship Bismarck

During the war Hood was engaged in patrol and search operations against German raiders in the North Atlantic and in June 1940 joined Force “H” in the Mediterranean.  As Flagship of Force “H” she took part in the sinking of French Fleet Units including the Battleship Bretagne at Mers-El-Kebir on 3 July 1940 following the French surrender to the Germans and remained in operation searching for the German Pocket Battleship Admiral Scheer and Heavy Cruiser Admiral Hipper until she withdrawn for a brief refit in January 1941. Following a brief refit in mid-March Hood was underway from mid-March searching for the German raiders Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and a false report of Bismarck breaking out into the Atlantic in April 1941. She returned to Scapa Flow on 6 May 1941.

Bismarck Firing at Hood

When the British discovered that Bismarck had entered the Atlantic Hood as the flagship of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland was dispatched with the newly commissioned battleship HMS Prince of Wales to join the Heavy Cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk at the entrance to the Denmark Strait.  When the cruisers discovered Bismarck along with her consort the Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen the two British Battleships steamed into naval history.

The last photo of Hood taken from HMS Prince of Wales

Bismarck was slightly larger than Hood and mounted the same main armament but that was about all the two ships had in common. If the battle was a battle between heavyweight prize fighters Hood was the valiant but crippled champion and Bismarck the young and overpowering challenger.  Bismarck was slightly faster than the limping Hood and was one of the most well protected ships ever built.  Her gunnery officers and the men that manned those deadly 15” guns were like previous generations of German sailors’ gunnery experts working some of the finest naval guns ever made.

Hood Blows up, picture taken from Prinz Eugen

The German ships shadowed at a distance by the Norfolk and Suffolk German task force under the command of Admiral Gunther Lütjens emerged from the strait and was sighted by the British at 0537.  Knowing his ship’s weakness in regard to plunging fire Admiral Holland desired to steer a direct course at the German ships in order to close the range quickly. Events dictated otherwise and the British were forced to close the range much more slowly and exposing Hood and Prince of Wales to German plunging fire for a longer period of time.  Holland turned to close faster with the result that his gunnery was degraded by wind and spray coming over the bows of his ships and the inability to fire his after turrets.

At 0553 Holland ordered his ships to open fire without the benefit of Suffolk and Norfolk being in position to engage the Prinz Eugen.  Hood initially concentrated her fire on Prinz Eugen assuming her to be the Bismarck while Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.  Prince of Wales drew first blood striking Bismarck three times. One which damaged her seaplane catapult, a second which did minor damage to machinery spaces and a third which passed through the bow near the waterline which severed fuel lines from her forward fuel tanks.

The Heavy Cruiser Prinz Eugen. Mistaken for Bismarck bu Hood she scored the first hits on Hood

Both German ships opened fire at 0555 concentrating on Hood.  Prinz Eugen immediately hit Hood with at least one 8” shell which set a large fire among the ready to use 4”ammunition stored in lockers near the mainmast. The hit started a large fire which Hood’s damage control teams raced to contain.  At 0600 Holland ordered his ships to turn to port in order to bring his rear turrets into the fight. As the squadron executed the turn Hood was straddled by a salvo from Bismarck and observers on Prince of Wales observed an explosion between “X” turret and the mainmast which consumed the Hood causing her bow to jut sharply out of the water before sinking beneath the waves in under 3 minutes time. Witnesses on both sides of the engagement were stunned by the sudden and violent end of the Hood and the Germans rapidly shifted fire to the Prince of Wales knocking her out of the action.  Against the advice of Bismarck’s Captain Ernst Lindemann, Lütjens did not follow up his advantage to sink the crippled British ship.

Petty Officer Ted Briggs

Only three crewmen Petty Officer Ted Briggs, Seaman Bob Tilburn and Midshipman Bill Dundas survived the sinking of Hood out of a total of 1415 souls embarked. They were rescued 4 hours later nearly dead of hypothermia staying awake by sinking “Roll out the Barrel” by the destroyer HMS Electra.  Briggs who died in 2008 recounted the sinking:

“Then she started listing to starboard. She righted herself, and started going over to port. When she had gone over by about 40 degrees we realised she was not coming back…” Briggs was sucked under the water “I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle – I was ready to meet my God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden surge beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I turned, and 50 yards away I could see the bows of the Hood vertical in the sea. It was the most frightening aspect of my ordeal, and a vision which was to recur terrifyingly in nightmares for the next 40 years.” (The Daily Telegraph 5 October 2008)

Seaman Tilburn


Artist rendition of Hood’s destruction

The Admiralty reported her loss later in the day saying Hood “received an unlucky hit in a magazine and blew up.  The official report of the sinking released later in the year said:

“That the sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck’s 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood’s 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them all to explode and wreck the after part of the ship. The probability is that the 4-inch magazines exploded first.”

The commission’s findings have been challenged by a number of naval historians and there are several theories of how the magazines might have exploded but all point to a massive magazine explosion but probably not due to a plunging round but from another hit which detonated the unprotected 4” magazines or a hit from Bismarck below Hood’s waterline which stuck a magazine.  Hood’s wreckage was located in 2001 lying across two debris fields and the examination revealed that the after magazines had exploded.  The site is designated as a War Grave by Britain and protected site under the Protection of Military Remains Act of 1986.

Revenge: Bismarck being pounded into a wreck by British Battleships

Bismarck did not long survive her victory being crippled by a lucky aerial torpedo hit from a Fairley Swordfish bomber flying from the HMS Ark Royal on 26 May and being scuttled by her crew after absorbing massive damage from the HMS King George V, HMS Rodney and several cruisers including HMS Dorsetshire the plucky HMS Norfolk and several destroyers. When she went down she took with her all but 115 souls of her crew of over 2200 which included the Fleet Staff of Admiral Lütjens.

HMS Prince of Wales

Prince of Wales would take Winston Churchill to Argentia Bay Newfoundland to meet with Franklin Roosevelt from 9-12 August 1941 where the Atlantic Charter was drafted. She reported to the Far East where she was sunk along with the Battlecruiser HMS Repulse on 9 December 1941 by a force of land based Japanese aircraft.  The Prinz Eugen was the only heavy ship of the German Navy to survive the war and was taken by the US Navy at the end of the war. She was expended as a target during the Able and Baker nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll.  Too radioactive to be repaired she was towed to Kwajalein Atoll where she capsized and sank on 22 December 1946. Her wreck is still visible.

Midshipman William Dundas, one of three surivors

The loss of the Hood traumatized the people of Britain and the Royal Navy; she had been the symbol of British Naval power for over 20 years and people around the world were likewise stunned at her demise. The sinking of the Hood and her crew was a tragedy which all sailors assigned to large and prestigious ships and the nations that they sail for need to keep in mind. No matter how mighty the ships all have an Achilles heel and none are unsinkable.  Of the over 3600 officers and crew of the Hood and the Bismarck only 118 survived.  I will remember the Hood, her gallant crew especially my very distant relative Midshipman Bill Dundas who I never met.  He left the Royal Navy about 1960 and was killed in a car wreck in 1965.  According to the Hood Association website he was troubled by the sinking for the rest of his life.  One can understand.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 19, 2011 · 00:45

British Bulwarks: The King George V Class Battleships

HMS King George V

This is the third in a series of five articles on the battleships built under the provision of the Washington and London Naval Treaty limitations in the 1930s. I am not including the ships which were completed in the immediate aftermath of the Washington Treaty limitations. This series looks at the modern battleships that the World War II combatants would produce in the 1930s which saw service in the war. This article covers the British Royal Navy King George V Class battleships. Part one covered the Italian Vittorio Veneto class entitled The Pride of the Regina Marina: The Vittorio Veneto Class Battleships. Part two French Firepower Forward: The unrealized potential of the Dunkerque and Richelieu Class Battleships covered the French Dunkerque class and Richelieu class Battleships. Part Four the American North Carolina and South Dakota Classes. I have already published the final part which covers the German Scharnhorst Class entitled Power and Beauty the Battle Cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau . The German Bismarck, Japanese Yamato, British Vanguard and American Iowa Classes will be covered in a subsequent series.

HMS King George V in 1941

In the wake of the First World War the major naval powers entered into an agreement restricting the construction of capital ships and limiting the numbers that treaty signatories were allowed to keep. As a result numerous ships were scrapped or disposed of and the majority of planned ships were either cancelled while building or never laid down. In some cases to comply with treaty restrictions ships such as the Royal Navy’s Nelson Class which was a compromise design which sacrificed speed for protection and firepower.  By the late 1920s the Royal Navy’s battle force was comprised of the Nelson’s, the fast Battlecruisers Hood, Renown and Repulse and 10 ships of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes all designed before the First World War.

King George V Class Quad Turret being built

The Royal Navy began planning for a new class of battleships in 1928 but the plans were shelved with the signing of the London Naval Treaty which continued the “building holiday” on capital ship construction as well as size and armaments until 1937.  With the realization that its battle force was becoming dated as other nations laid down new classes of battleships the Royal Navy recommenced planning in 1935.  The Navy planned to build to the maximum of the 35,000 displacement limitation and placed a great measure of emphasis on armor and protection. The ships were designed to achieve a 28 knot speed which made them faster than all British battleships although slower than the Battlecruisers. The planners had alternative designs to use 14”, 15” or 16” guns with the Navy favoring the 15” models which had equipped all of their other ships with the exception of the Nelson’s. However the Admiralty to use 14” as the government was endeavoring to negotiate with other powers to impose a 14” limitation on armament for new battleships.  While the Americans and French agreed to the limit neither the Japanese nor Italians followed suit and as a result all new battleships of other powers had larger guns than the King George V Class ships with the French and Italians opting for 15”on the Vittorio Veneto Class, the Americans 16” on the North Carolina, South Dakota and Iowa Classes and the Japanese 18” guns for their Yamato Class. The Germans who were not a signatory built their Scharnhorst Class with 11” although they were planned as 15” ships and would equip the Bismarck Class with 15” guns.  The Royal Navy attempted to rectify this by placing more guns on the ships than those of other navies but the planned armament of twelve 14” guns mounted in quadruple turrets but this was impossible on the 35,000 platform without compromising protection or speed.  Thus the Admiralty compromised on 10 guns mounted in 2 quadruple and 1 twin turret.

ONI Drawing of King George Class

The ships displaced a full load displacement of 42,237 tons in 1942 which had increased to 44,460 tons in  1944. The were 745 feet long had a beam of 103 feet, a top speed of 28 knots with a cruising range of 5,400 nautical miles at 18 knots. Their relatively poor endurance limited their operations in the Pacific and even nearly caused King George V to have to abandon the chase of the Bismarck in May 1941.

The main batteries of the ships proved problematic in combat with the quadruple turret design causing all the ships problems. This was demonstrated in the engagement of the Prince of Wales against the Bismarck as well as the King George V in its duel with the German behemoth when A turret became disabled and completely out of action for 30 minutes and half of the main battery being out of action for most of the engagement for mechanical reasons.  The Duke of York achieved excellent results against the Scharnhorst but even in that engagement the main battery was only able to be in action 70% of the time.  One of the other drawbacks of the design was that in order to replace a gun due to wear that the turret itself had to be dismantled in order to remove and replace the guns.

The main secondary armament of 5.25” dual purpose guns in twin mounts suffered from poor rate of fire and slow traverse well below their designed standards.

The mounting of the armament was designed to provide protection against turret explosions which could potentially detonate the ship’s magazines.  The main side and underwater protection scheme was sound and protected the ships well in combat.  The vertical protection was also sound as was the protection afforded to the turret barbets and placement of the magazines to shield them from plunging fire.  Only the Prince of Wales was lost due to enemy action had later examination of her wreck revealed that the culprit was a torpedo which detonated in a propeller shaft outside of the armored belt which caused uncontrolled flooding when she was attacked by Japanese aircraft on 8 December 1941.

HMS Anson conducting gunnery exercises

The propulsion systems developed problems after 1942 when fuel oil quality was decreased because of the need for aviation gas.  The new mixtures which were higher viscosity and contained more water than the boilers could effectively burn increased maintenance costs and decreased efficiency. To compensate the Admiralty designed new higher pressure fuel sprayers and burners which returned the boilers to full efficiency.

The lead ship of the class the King George V was laid down on 1 January 1937, launched on 21 February 1939 and commissioned on 11 December 1940.  As the flagship of the Home Fleet she took part in the unsuccessful search for the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and in the hunt for the Bismarck in which she earned lasting fame in helping to sink that ship.  She took part in the Murmansk convoy protection as well as Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily before sailing to the Far East for operations against the Japanese. She finished the war with the British Pacific Fleet and was present at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay.  She returned as flagship of Home Fleet until she was decommissioned in 1949. She was subsequently sold for scrap in 1957.

Prince of Wales pulling into Singapore

The second ship the Prince of Wales laid down on 1 January 1937, launched on 3 May 1939 and commissioned 19 January 1941 although she was not officially completed until March 1941. Her initial operation came in May 1941 when she sailed with the HMS Hood to intercept the Bismarck. When she sailed she still had shipyard technicians aboard.  Damaged in the action she did score an important hit on Bismarck which cut a fuel line making her forward tanks inaccessible and causing her to make her run for Brest which she did not complete. Another hit damaged her aircraft catapult and a third an electric dynamo.

Church Service on Prince of Wales at Argentia Bay with Churchill and Roosevelt in attendance

Following repairs she carried Winston Churchill to the Argentia Bay Newfoundland where he met with Franklin D. Roosevelt and together drafted the Atlantic Charter. She accompanied the HMS Repulse to Singapore to bolster the British presence in the Far East but without air cover was sunk by Japanese aircraft which struck her with 4 torpedoes and a bomb, the key hit being a lucky hit on her propeller shaft which caused flooding that caused a loss of power to pumps and anti-aircraft defenses.

Prince of Wales sinking and being abandoned

The third ship the Duke of York was laid down 5 May 1937, launched on 28 February 1940 and commissioned 4 November 1941. She provided convoy escort for the Lend Lease convoys to the Soviet Union as well the sinking of the Scharnhorst on 26 December 1943 during the Battle of North Cape. She was transferred to the Pacific in 1944 and served at Okinawa.  She was decommissioned in 1949 and scrapped in 1957.

Duke of York

The fourth ship of the class the Howe was laid down on 1 June 1937, launched 9 April 1940 and commissioned on 29 August 1942.  She served with the Home Fleet and in the Mediterranean until she was transferred to the Pacific in August 1944. She was stuck by a Kamikaze in May 1945 and Howe was sent for refit at Durban South Africa. She was still in refit when the war ended. She returned home and was placed in reserve in 1950 and scrapped in 1958.

HMS Howe

The last of the class the Anson was laid down 20 July 1937, launched 24 February 1940 and commissioned on 22 June 1942. She operated in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic and was sent to the Pacific in 1945 where she accepted the surrender of the Japanese Forces at Hong Kong. She returned to Britain and was decommissioned in 1941 and scrapped in 1957.

HMS Anson

The ships had rather unremarkable careers for the most part with the exception of the Prince of Wales and King George V in the hunt for the Bismarck and the Duke of York sinking the Scharnhorst. They had a number of technical problems which limited their operations in the war. However they and their brave crews deserve to be remembered as helping to hold the line against the Axis in the early years of the war and sank two of the four German Battleships lost during the war.  This alone was as remarkable achievement as of their contemporaries only the USS Washington sank an enemy battleship in combat.

 

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February 26, 2010 · 23:59

The Oldest Ladies…Battleships USS Arkansas, New York and Texas

USS Arkansas 1919

Note: This is the second of my series on US Battleships of World War Two. The First was the essay The Battleships of Pearl Harbor and I will follow this with essays on the New Mexico class, the North Carolina class, the South Dakota class and the Iowa Class. I have published other series on US Aircraft Carriers, the Treaty Cruisers, the Alaska Class Battle Cruisers and the German Battle Bruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

Arkansas Passing through the Kiel Canal on Midshipman Training Cruise June 6th 1937

When the United States entered the Second World War the average age of its battleship fleet was over years, an age that if the new North Carolina and Washington were omitted would have been well over 23 years old.  Two former battleships, the Utah and Wyoming had been demilitarized and were serving as gunnery training ships. The oldest of these ships, the Arkansas, the second ship of the Wyoming class was commissioned well before the First World War and was typical of ships built in that era comparable to the Italian battleships Conti de Cavour, Giulio Caesar.  The Two ships of the New York Class were improved Wyoming’s with a heavier main battery and better protection and were comparable to the Japanese Fuso class and British Royal Sovereign class ships.

Arkansas 1944

The oldest and also the smallest battleship in service in 1941 was the USS Arkansas. Displacing 26,000 tons and sporting a main battery of twelve 12”/50 guns in twin turrets she was launched on 14 January 1911 and commissioned on 17 September 1912 she first saw service in the Mexican crisis of 1914 and served with the British Home Fleet following the entry of the United States into the war. Between the wars Arkansas severed in both the Atlantic and Pacific and was modernized in 1925 receiving oil fired boilers to replace her coal fired plant. During the inter-war years she was engaged as were most battleships of the era in training exercises, midshipman and Naval Reserve cruises, goodwill visits and in the case of Arkansas work with the Fleet Marine force as it began to develop its amphibious doctrine.

Operation Crossroad, Baker Test note Arkansas standing on end on right side of blast

When war came to Europe in 1939 Arkansas was serving with the Atlantic Fleet and conducted training operations and neutrality patrols.  In April 1941 she escorted the first convoy of Marines to Iceland and following that sailed to Argentia Newfoundland where President Franklin D. Roosevelt was meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill concluding the Atlantic Charter.  Following Pearl Harbor she would primarily serve as a convoy escort and midshipman training vessel until June 6th 1944 where she provided naval gunfire support at Omaha Beach and subsequent support to land operations in Normandy. In August she took part in the invasion of southern France, Operation Anvil before returning the US for repairs and modifications before sailing to the Pacific.  The elderly ship then took part in the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa again providing naval gunfire support to Marines and soldiers ashore. She also was introduced to the Kamikaze at Okinawa.   When the war ended she carried returning troops home in “Operation Magic Carpet” and in 1946 she was earmarked for her last mission, Operation Crossroads, the first of the Bikini atomic bomb tests where she was sunk during test Baker on July 25th 1946.   She was anchored very close to the underwater blast and was violently sucked up into the blast where she can be seen standing on end it the picture below.

New York 1932 leading the Battle Line

The New York and her sister Texas were the first US Navy battleships armed with 14” guns.  The ships displaced 27,000 tons and mounted ten 14”/45 guns in twin turrets. Launched 30 October 1912 and commissioned April 15th 1914 the New York deployed with the Atlantic battle ship squadrons to Mexico during the crisis at Vera Cruz.  Like Arkansas she joined the American battleship squadron serving with the British Home Fleet in 1917 and served in convoy escort and deterrence missions until the end of the war.  Between the wars New York undertook various training missions and modernizations and was the sole US ship at the 1937 Grand Naval Review for the coronation of King George VI of England.

New York in 1944 departing for the Pacific

As war drew near New York remained engaged in training missions and took part in neutrality patrols and convoy escort missions in the Atlantic.  Following the outbreak of hostilities she would continue these missions and take part in Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in November 1942. She continued the vital convoy escort mission until she was withdrawn for service as a gunnery training ship for sailors being assigned to battleships and destroyer escorts.  In November 1944 she was sent to the Pacific where in February 1945 she provided naval gunfire support to the Marines at Iwo Jima. During pre-invasion bombardment she fired more rounds that any of the ships present.

New York at Iwo Jima

Her next action came at Okinawa where she provided 76 straight days of support to Marines and soldiers ashore while fending off kamikaze attacks and taking one minor hit.  She had her guns replaced at Pearl Harbor in preparation for the planned invasion of Japan.  After the cessation of hostilities New York took part in Operation Magic Carpet and took part in Fleet Week in New York.

New York receiving anti-radiation wash down after Baker. She has survived the blast in good condition

New York was then assigned to be a target ship in Operation Crossroads where she survived both Test Able and Test Baker.  Towed back to Pearl Harbor for extensive study she was finally expended as a target on July 8th 1948 by the Navy 40 miles off Oahu taking the punishment of a number of ships before sinking after 8 hours under fire.

Texas in 1919 note the Battle “E” on her funnel

The Texas was launched on May 18th 1912 and commissioned on March 12th 1914 and within two months was in action with the Atlantic Fleet off Mexico without the benefit of the normal shakedown cruise.

During World War One Texas joined Battleship Division 9 serving alongside the British Home Fleet at Scapa Flow.  In this capacity she took part in convoy escort missions and operations in the North Sea including one where the Home Fleet nearly met the German High Seas Fleet in action.

Texas firing her main battery 1927 after her modernization

Between the wars Texas served on both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets and received a major overhaul in 1925.  Like other ships she engaged in training exercises, midshipman and Naval Reserve training cruises and operations with the Fleet Marine Force.  With the outbreak of hostilities in Europe Texas joined the neutrality patrol.  When the US entered the war Texas served as a convoy escort and participated in Operation Torch.  Her convoy escort duties remained unchanged until she took part in Operation Overlord, the invasion of France and provided gunfire support to Rangers at Point du Hoc and soldiers on Omaha Beach. Closing to within 3000 yards of the beach Texas guns provided direct support to troops on the beach and interdiction fire on German troop concentrations further inland. She continued this following D-Day and while engaged in a duel with heavy German guns near Cherbourg was struck by two 280mm (11.2 inch) shells, one of which struck her on the navigation bridge killing the helmsman and wounding nearly everyone else.   She then sailed into the Mediterranean where she again supported troops ashore lending her weight to the invasion of south France. With that mission completed Texas returned to New York for repairs and to have her main battery guns replaced.

Texas under German Fire off Cherbourg

Reassigned to the Pacific Texas would support the invasion of Iwo Jima and Okinawa where she would remain in action for almost two months.  She finished the war in the Philippines and like so many other ships took part in Operation Magic Carpet. She arrived at Norfolk on February 13th 1946 to prepare for inactivation, but unlike so many other ships was spared the ignominious fate of the scrap yard or that of the New York and Arkansas. She was towed to Texas to serve as a permanent memorial at the San Jacinto battlefield and decommissioned there on April 21st 1948.  She was dry-docked and received a major overhaul in from 1988-90 which restored her to her 1945 appearance and in which major structural repairs were made. Continual restoration is conducted on the ship and there are plans for another major overhaul.  She is the last surviving “Dreadnaught” battleship in the world, a singular example of the great ships that once dominated the seas.

Texas at San Jacinto, the last of the Dreadnaughts

Though obsolete the Arkansas, New York and Texas rendered commendable service throughout the war and took part in some of the key invasions of the war. Their guns inflicted considerable damage on Vichy French, German and Japanese forces in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific.  New York and Arkansas trained thousands of sailors for service aboard other ships.  They performed admirably and their availability to do the less glamorous missions of naval gunfire support, convoy escort and training sailors for the fleet enabled other ships to be available for other missions.  They and the proud Sailors and Marines who served aboard them should never be forgotten.

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