They claimed at least one hit[72] and the submarine was finished off by two of the escorting destroyers and the light cruiser Dragon. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross that day. The third shell detonated on the face of the starboard wing turret, although some fragments entered the turret and caused minor damage. [67] Barham played no role in the Norwegian Campaign although some of her crew and marines participated. Your email address will not be published. Shortly before the turn, one of his escorting light cruisers, Galatea spotted smoke on the horizon and continued on her course to investigate. Anniversary Cruise: Sydney under Japanese Attack, Garden Island Northern Hill and Garden Tour, Night of the midget subs Sydney under attack, D-Day commando on Sword Beach by Commander Jim Speed DSC, RAN Part 1, D-Day commando on Sword Beach by Commander Jim Speed DSC, RAN Part 2, D-Day commando on Sword Beach by Commander Jim Speed DSC, RAN Part 3. Ten minutes later, the ship radioed "Two cruisers, probably hostile, in sight" They were actually two German destroyers that had stopped to check a Danish merchant ship's papers. We also may change the frequency you receive our emails from us in order to keep you up to date and give you the best relevant information possible. The footage is at the end of this post. During the Second World War, a spate of misfortunes had dogged the HMS Barham. Barham opened fire at a range of 21,000 yards (19,000m) and hit Richelieu with one 15-inch shell at 09:15. The loss of HMS Barham contributed to the very high number of losses at sea suffered by the Royal Navy in the period of Operation CRUSADER, about which I have written at this link. Completed in 1915, she was often used as a flagship and participated in the Battle of Jutland during the First World War as part of the Grand Fleet. They even attempted to blame the sinking on Winston Churchill, who on that very day - 3 September, 1939 - was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Other fragments from the second hit caused damage that allowed the water to spread even further. On December 12 1939, she collided with a destroyer, the HMS Duchess, sinking her in the mishap. A member of the Wigston branch of the Royal Naval Association, he is a member of the HMS Barham Association. The latter was only struck by a single shell splinter before the Allies broke off the bombardment at 10:07, although she had hit Barham once with a 155mm (6.1in) shell[74] that blew a hole 4 feet (1.2m) in diameter in the bulge. The 92-year-old, from Leicester, miraculously escaped death when the ship was sunk by a. This means that we may include adverts from us and third parties based on our knowledge of you. One was mounted above the conning tower, protected by an armoured hood, and the other was in the spotting top above the tripod mast. Scheer turned south again, then steered south-eastward to pursue a lone British battle squadron sighted by an airship, which was in fact the Harwich Force of cruisers and destroyers under Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt. None of the men were ever found alive, and the expedition is considered one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration. The 5th Battle Squadron preceded the rest of the Grand Fleet to reinforce Vice-Admiral David Beatty's battlecruiser fleet, but the British arrived in the area after the Germans had withdrawn. On 26 March, the Italian fleet sortied in an attempt to intercept British convoys to Greece. Tiesenhausen ordered all four bow torpedo tubes fired at a range of 375 metres (410yd) at 16:25. The sea, which had fortunately been smooth as BARHAM sank was, as far as I could see, a vast area of oil fuel and debris, with at that time no signs of life. Copyright 2023. [88] Repairs were completed six weeks later on 30 July and the ship returned to Alexandria in August where she resumed her role as flagship of the 1st Battle Squadron. [5], The waterline belt of the Queen Elizabeth class consisted of Krupp cemented armour (KC) that was 13 inches (330mm) thick over the ships' vitals. A salvo of torpedoes from a German submarine struck from close range on HMS Barham on November 25, 1941 in the Mediterranean. However, I can vividly recall the sinking as though it were yesterday. "The sinking of the SS Athenia, a civilian liner, was significant not only as the first British shipping loss of the war but as an example of a Nazi attempt to promote 'fake news'. [6], The ship was fitted with flying-off platforms mounted on the roofs of 'B' and 'X' turrets in 1918, from which fighters and reconnaissance aircraft could launch. petrol. Egypt Mar Sidi Barrani. https://www.britishpathe.com/ Sinking of Royal Navy Battleship HMS Barham.A legendary battleship with a history at Jutland, during World War 2 HMS Barham was stationed with the Royal Navy's Eastern Mediterranean fleet in Egypt.. On the afternoon of the 24th November of 1941, HMS Barham, sailed to provide cover for the 7th and 15th Royal Navy Cruiser Squadrons. Website with searchable ship database about warships, passenger liners, merchant ships, photo galleries, technical details, stories, news and much more. The impacts drove in the plates and fragments caused much flooding by damaging the surrounding structure. [35], At 16:30, the light cruiser Southampton, scouting in front of Beatty's ships, spotted the lead elements of the High Seas Fleet coming north at top speed. ! Poem by Rudyard Kipling. [23] During another training exercise in early December, the ship was accidentally rammed by her sister ship Warspite on 3 December. The main armament could be controlled by 'B' turret as well. Within four minutes, the battleship had listed over to Port and the ships magazines had exploded, sinking the battleship and killing 863 men. When Richard came round, he was underwater. [85] They opened fire at point-blank range, Barham crippling the destroyer Alfredo Oriani and then joining Warspite and Valiant in crippling Zara. Experience the HMS Barham explosion after being struck by torpedo in 4K resolution at 50 fps and in color! Experience the final moments of the Queen Elizabeth Battleship, HMS Barham, when it was struck by torpedoes from a German submarine during World War II which resulted in a terrifying explosion. The impact was right on the joints between several armour plates and drove them inwards and destroyed part of the hull behind them. 1,306 individuals were successfully pulled off the Athenia in deteriorating seas. We use your sign-up to provide content in the ways you've consented to and improve our understanding of you. Hipper ordered his ships to turn to starboard, away from the British, to assume a south-easterly course, and reduced speed to 18 knots (33km/h; 21mph) to allow three light cruisers of the 2nd Scouting Group to catch up. [61], Barham remained part of the Mediterranean Fleet at the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. 340, 346, 349, 354355, 358, Jones, pp. [27] Barham slipped her mooring at 22:08 and was followed by the rest of Beatty's ships. Reblogged this on battleoftheatlantic19391945 and commented: How surprising were the M3 Grant tanks to the Germans? U-331 thus passed through the screen and was in a position to fire her torpedoes after the leading ship, Queen Elizabeth, had passed her by and the second ship, Barham, was closing rapidly. Naval Historical Review, Biographies and personal histories, WWII operations Ship sinking, Survivor, HMS Barham, Australian Naval History Podcasts For the rest of the war, except for the inconclusive action of 19 August 1916, her service generally consisted of routine patrols and training in the North Sea. The ship was in the Mediterranean when the Second World War began in September 1939, on her voyage home three months later, she accidentally collided with and sank one of her escorting destroyers, HMSDuchess. [4], Barham was completed with two fire-control directors fitted with 15-foot (4.6m) rangefinders. 201202, Edmunds, Simeon. [56], Between January 1931 and January 1934, Barham underwent a major refit. Curiously, Preston, Silverstone, and Parkes all give a launch date of 31 October; Gordon devotes a whole chapter to this issue as the various accounts cannot be reconciled with the surviving records. Shortly after 4.00 pm I was on the Admirals Bridge. She was briefly deployed to Haifa in May 1936 at the beginning of the Arab revolt in Palestine. The Grand Fleet sailed with 29 dreadnoughts and 6 battlecruisers while the Germans mustered 18 dreadnoughts and 2 battlecruisers. I assumed that this had happened because the submarine Captain had fired all his bow tubes at once, and had not compensated quickly enough with seawater to keep the conning tower below the surface. Barham was herself was struck twice during the "Run to the South": the first was a 28.3-centimetre (11in) shell from von der Tann that failed to do any damage when it hit the waterline armour and the battlecruiser SMSLtzow fired a 30.5-centimetre (12in) shell that detonated in the aft superstructure. She was the flagship of the 1st Battle Squadron and of the Second in Command of the Mediterranean Fleet, 1941. Her main guns targeted the port and the battleship Richelieu. A German submarine torpedoed the ship hours after Britain declared war on Hitler in 1939 - more than 100 people, including many Americans, were killed. She was hit six times during the battle, five times by 30.5cm shells and once by a 28.3cm shell, suffering casualties of 26 killed and 46 wounded. 377, 386, Admiralty Historical Section, pp. [47] On the evening of 18 August, the Grand Fleet put to sea in response to a message deciphered by Room 40 that indicated that the High Seas Fleet, minus II Squadron, would be leaving harbour that night. 862 men went down with her, and her end was filmed by a war correspondent on board one of the escorting destroyers. Completed in 1915, she was often used as a flagship and participated in the Battle of Jutland during the First World War as part of the Grand Fleet. Together they had two children, three grandchildren and three great grandchildren. The BdU (Commander Submarines) noted in his war diary the rather jubilant: U331 1 battleship torpedoed in the Mediterranean. Actually, my last time in Pearl (around 1994) I saw petrol bubbles coming from the wreck. It is the first wreck in his consultancy career "which I've identified from my armchair, so to speak". [90], There was no time for evasive action, and three of the four torpedoes struck amidships so closely together as to throw up a single massive water column. The ship had been hit amidships by torpedoes on the port side. Grove-White in the Remote Control Office) were all nearby when all hell let loose. Jones refers to the 861 men listed in the casualty list published by, Burt 2012a, p. 85; Raven & Roberts, pp. Read more [53] The ship was relieved as flagship by Revenge in June[54] and she was ordered to Palestine in August where her crew helped to suppress rioting in Haifa and also operated the Haifa-Jerusalem railroad. A pair of octuple mounts for 2-pounder (40mm (1.6in)) Mk VIII "pom-pom" anti-aircraft guns were added abreast the funnel and two positions for their directors were added on new platforms abreast and below the spotting top. [42] Barham returned fire at the battlecruisers at 17:02, together with Valiant, the two northernmost of Evan-Thomas's ships, and the two of them made three hits on the battlecruiser SMSSeydlitz and Ltzow between 17:06 and 17:13 while Barham was hit twice more by Derfflinger; although neither of the hits did any significant damage. [36] His order only applied to his own forces; the 5th Battle Squadron continued south until after it passed Beatty heading northwestwards at 16:51. "We had no idea there were U-boats in the area.". [96] The sinking was captured on film by a cameraman from Path News, aboard Valiant. Ltzow was only slightly damaged by these hits, which essentially only knocked out the primary and back-up wireless rooms while the shells that hit Derfflinger hit the side of the ship's bow, knocking off several armour plates, while fragments opened holes that ultimately allowed roughly 2,000 tonnes (1,968 long tons) of water to enter the bow. Fragments from this hit caused flooding that spread throughout the bow, while the ship's speed caused water to enter directly through the hole in the side. [51], Barham became flagship of the 1st Battle Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet in April 1919, and made a port visit to Cherbourg, France that month together with the rest of the squadron. Guy Morris), S.O.O./S.N.O. Shipwreck-hunter David Mearns says sonar data shows the transatlantic passenger liner Athenia to be lying 200m down on Rockall Bank, off Ireland. The full truth only emerged at the Nuremberg Trials. [55] The ship was transferred to the 2nd Battle Squadron of the Atlantic Fleet in November 1929,[54] and, together with Malaya, made a port visit to Trondheim, Norway in mid-1930 where they fired a salute to celebrate the birth of Princess Ragnhild on 9 June. [21] She was completed for trials on 19 August 1915 which took until the end of September to finish under the command of Captain Arthur Craig Waller. HMS Barham Explodes - Slow MotionOn the afternoon of 25 November 1941, the 1st Battle Squadron, Barham, Queen Elizabeth, and Valiant, with an escort of eight. Despite the majority of the wreck lying some 75m below the . 271, 275, 27980, 284, 286290, Campbell 1986, pp. Barham was then transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet, where she covered multiple Malta convoys. [65] Most of the adjacent compartments flooded and the ship took on a 7 degree list that was countered by transferring fuel oil to starboard. At the going down of the SUN, AND in the MORNING; WE WILL REMEMBER THEM, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM!! The first of these struck the ship's upper deck before detonating upon striking the main deck above the medical store compartment, which was completely burnt out. On 21 April, the Grand Fleet conducted a demonstration off Horns Reef to distract the Germans while the Russian Navy relaid its defensive minefields in the Baltic Sea. [89] The following morning, the German submarineU-331, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen, detected the faint engine noises of the British ships and moved to intercept. It was steaming at about twenty knots at the time, and immediately began to list to port at an alarming rate. On 25 November 1941 one of the heaviest losses of life, and the only loss of a Royal Navy battleship to a submarine at sea, occurred off Bardia, when HMS Barham was torpedoed at extremely short range by U-331, and sank within four minutes. Admiral Angelo Iachino, commander of the Italian fleet, ordered the two other heavy cruisers of the 1st Division to render assistance to Pola in the darkness. After Free French emissaries were either captured or driven off by the Vichy French, Cunningham ordered his ships to open fire. [52] Captain Robin Dalglish relieved Horne on 1 October 1920. copyrights: Unknown. This took some time and his ships had to slow down to 1218 knots (2233km/h; 1421mph) to avoid overrunning the 6th Division and blocking its fire. The Donaldson Atlantic Line SS Athenia was built in Glasgow and the city's Riverside Museum of transport has an exhibition dedicated to the vessel and the stories surrounding its sinking. The start date is universally agreed to be 17 November 1941, while the end date is 15 January for the British (thus excluding the Axis counter-offensive of late January), while it is 6 February for the Axis, including the counteroffensive. Quora User Huge palls of smoke rising from the stricken ship. The torpedo from U-30 struck the Athenia at 7:38 that evening. Experience the final moments of the Queen Elizabeth Battleship, HMS Barham, when it was struck by torpedoes from a German submarine during World War II which resulted in a terrifying explosion.. [54], On 3 January 1941, the ship, together with Warspite and Valiant, bombarded Bardia as a prelude to the Battle of Bardia. "I'm one of only two survivors from the ship left," he said. [7], Barham received a series of minor refits during the 1920s. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. LOVE YOU ALL: Yours Aye-Brian CANUCK Murza, W.W.II Naval Researcher-Published Author, Niagara Region, Ontario, Canada. [84] Barham became the flagship of the 1st BS in December. It is split in the aft section where the torpedo hit, but otherwise is sitting proud of the sediment and looks to be in reasonable shape. Throughout the next day, Jellicoe and Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, commander of the High Seas Fleet, received conflicting intelligence; after reaching the location in the North Sea where they expected to encounter the High Seas Fleet, the British turned north in the erroneous belief that they had entered a minefield. [33] About three minutes later, the ship opened fire on the battlecruiser SMSvon der Tann at a range of about 23,000 yards (21,000m). The attack on an unarmed passenger liner was a clear breach of international protocols. [86], In mid-April she escorted the fast transport MVBreconshire, together with Warspite and Valiant, from Alexandria to Malta before the battleships bombarded Tripoli on the evening of 20 April. The Germans opened fire first at 15:48, followed by the British battlecruisers. She collided with a destroyer, the HMS Duchess, sinking her in the ways you 've consented to improve... 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