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May 04, 2005
Of shoes and ships ....
In my commentary on the contribution of the Colonial Armed Forces to the Empire effort of the World Wars, I mentioned the unusual class of ships called "Monitors". The term is taken from the famous Eriksen design for the US Navy in the Civil War, and denotes a ship designed for close inshore support for the army. They came in various sizes and they served in a wide range of theatres - although the largest of these had originally been designed and built at the behest of Admiral "Jackie" Fisher and the then First Lord of Admiralty, one Winston Churchill. Their original intention for using these was to launch an assault on German bases in the Baltic, one theatre they never actually served in!
The 1916-completed HMS Erebus, which served in both the First and the Second World Wars.
Smaller versions were built between 1913 and 1919 which carried either a pair of 6 inch guns or a single 9.2 inch mounting. These smaller ships drew around 6 feet of water and 17 were built for service. Two of the earlier builds, and somewhat larger although still shallow drafted at 6 feet - HM Monitors Mersey and Severn - sailed around the Cape of Good Hope from the UK to the Rufiji River estuary where they were used to destroy the German light cruiser SMS Konigsburg in 1915. They were more heavily armed with 3 6 inch guns and 2 4.7 inch howitzers, having been originally designed and built for Brazil. These two ships remained at Simonstown after this feat and were still there in 1945, being sold for scrap sometime in the 1950's. The third in the class was the Humber. and she remained in "home" waters. In all, around 18 of the smaller "M" class were built, and one is still on display in Southampton.
HMS Abercrombie, which, with her sisters Raglan, Roberts, and two of the Lord Clive Class fought at the Dardanelles.
In an altogether different league were the next class, the Lord Clive Class consisting of eight ships all carrying a pair of 12 inch guns in a single battleship turret and with 4 6 inch gun mountings and a pair of 3 inch for air defence. These were all completed in 1915 and saw service mainly in the Belgian coastal theatre. Three, the Lord Clive, General Wolfe and the Prince Eugene carried a single 18 inch gun in a fixed mounting trained to Starboard above the Quarterdeck.
This group were followed down the launchways by the next class, the Abercrombie, Havelock, Raglan, and Roberts. These carried a pair of 14 inch guns in a single battleship turret forward with 4 6 inch mountings and two 3 inch AA guns. Again all were completed and entered service in 1915, three sailing straight out to the Dardanelles and the ANZAC beaches to replace the battleships and lend support to the troops ashore.
Two more, larger and slightly better armed and armoured, followed in 1915. These were the Marshall Ney Class comprising the name ship and the Marshall Soult. Both carried a pair of 15 inch guns in a single turret mounted on a raised barbette, with 8 4 inch guns and 3 3 inch AA. Their armour belt was increased from the 1.5 inch decks of the earlier ships to a whopping 6 inches on the belt (over engines and magazines) 13 inches on the turret face to 4 inches elsewhere on the turret, 6 inches on the conning tower, and 5 inches on the main deck.
The final class of the "big" monitors were the Erebus Class which was completed in 1916. Erebus and Terror carried a pair of 15 inch guns in the same arrangement as the Marshall Ney Class, 8 4 inch, 2 3 inch and four 12 pounder quick firing AA. Their armour went even further than the Marshall Ney's and they had extended "bulges" which increased their beam considerably for anti-torpedo protection. They were also the fastest - at 14 knots - of all the previous classes, most of which could manage 7 knots at a fast waddle! At 8,000 tons they were 2,000 tons heavier than the Marshall Neys and 3,000 more than the Lord Clives and the Abercrombies.
With the length of a large destroyer and a strange superstructure arrangement these ships looked fairly nondescript from afar, unless you noticed the fact that they had the same beam as a battleship - and the forward "superstructure" was actually a large pair of guns! This did give rise to the occassional mistake by enemy gunners who discovered too late that they had taken a very dangerous foe too lightly!
By 1939 only the Erebus and Terror remained in service, both being used for gunnery training. They were hastily refitted and sent to bolster the Mediterranean fleet, where they did sterling duty running supplies along the coast to garrisons at Tobruk and other "cut off" posts during the early stages of the desert war. At Tobruk they would enter the port at night and in darkness, offload supplies and take on the wounded, then return to Alexandria and repeat the run the following day. In between they gave the Italian Army and later the Afrika Korps plenty of headaches. Their 15 inch guns could do, and did, a lot of damage to unsuspecting enemy concentrations.
It was on a return run from Tobruk shortly before it finally fell, that HMS Terror, loaded with wounded and having fired off most of her ammunition against earlier air attacks, succumbed to an attack by dive bombers from the Luftwaffe's Desert Air Flotte. She did, however, have one last moment of glory as she stopped a major assault dead in its tracks as she left Tobruk - backwards because wrecks in the harbour made it impossible to turn her - when she laid down a very accurate ten minute barrage on the German positions with her 15 inch guns.
Her sister, Erebus, survived the war, also having had a moment of glory when escorting a convoy to Malta from Alexandria when some Italian heavy cruisers got a very bloody nose when they ran into her massive firepower. She went on to support the landings at Sicily, Anzio, and then the landings in Southern France. She ended her days at Bikini Atoll as one of the "ghost fleet" destroyed by the H-bomb. A sad end for a hard-working ship.
A final pair of monitors were built between 1939 and 1942, named HMS Roberts and HMS Abercrombie. With a pair of 15 inch guns and a modernised set of 4 inch mountings, a large selection of AA weapons and a very modern design of hull, they served at Sicily, Anzio, and then D-Day. After the war they were used as Accomodation Ships or as Gunnery Training ships. Sold eventually for scrap, they were then hired back and kept for another ten years on lease as Accommodation Ships at Chatham and Portsmouth, before finally succumbing to the breakers in the early 1970's, the last of a line of strange but useful ships.
Posted by The Gray Monk at May 4, 2005 10:17 AM