 The newly transferred HMS Campbeltown (right) alongside her sister HMS Castleton |
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Class and type: | Wickes class destroyer |
| Name: | USS Buchanan |
| Builder: | Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, USA |
| Laid down: | 29 June 1918 |
| Launched: | 2 January 1919 |
| Commissioned: | 20 January 1919 |
| Decommissioned: | In reserve from 1939 |
| Fate: | Transferred to the Royal Navy on 3 September 1940 |
| Career |  |
| Class and type: | Town class destroyer |
| Name: | HMS Campbeltown |
| Commissioned: | 9 September 1940 |
| Fate: | Expended on 28 March 1942 in a special operation against the docks at Saint Nazaire |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 1,260 tons |
| Length: | 314 ft 4 in (95.81 m) |
| Beam: | 30 ft 6 in (9.30 m) |
| Draught: | 9 ft (2.7 m) (light), 12 ft (3.7 m) (full load) |
| Propulsion: | Four Normand Return-flame Boilers Brown-Curtis single reduction geared turbines 30,000 shp two shafts. |
| Speed: | 35.5 knots (66 km/h) designed, 39.7 knots (74 km/h) (trials-1919) |
| Complement: | 158 |
| Armament: |
(as built)
|
| Honours and awards: | ATLANTIC 1941-42 ST NAZAIRE 1942 |
| Notes: | Badge: On a Field White, within an annulet Blue charged in base with a mullet White a sprig of myrtle proper. |
HMS Campbeltown was a Town class destroyer of the Royal Navy during the Second World War. She was originally an American destroyer, the USS Buchanan, but like many other obsolete US Navy destroyers, she was transferred to the Royal Navy in 1940 as part of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. Campbeltown became one of the most famous of these ships when she was used in the St. Nazaire Raid in 1942.
Contents |
As USS Buchanan
USS Buchanan was a Wickes class destroyer, ordered from the Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine, and laid down on 29 June 1918. She was launched on 2 January 1919 and commissioned into the Navy on 20 January of that year. She had an unremarkable career, and had been placed into the reserve by 1939. She then became one of 50 destroyers transferred to the Royal Navy in 1940 after the finalisation of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement. She was transferred on 3 September 1940 and commissioned on 9 September at Halifax, Canada.
As HMS Campbeltown
Having been formally commissioned she took passage from Halifax to Plymouth, travelling via St. Johns, Newfoundland, she arrived at Devonport Dockyard on 29 September and was taken in hand for modifications to fit her for service with the Royal Navy. The refits lasted throughout October, and on completion of the final harbour trials on 1 November she was nominated to join the 17th Flotilla operating in the Western Approaches. The next, whilst she was carrying out sea trials, she collided with the SS Risoy and sustained damage, but continued on to Liverpool. She arrived safely and underwent repairs from 7 November. On their completion on 24 November, Campbeltown continued on to join the flotilla. She began deploying with the flotilla in early December, but on 3 December she collided with the SS Comus and had to put into port for repairs. The repairs lasted until late March, and involved the shortening of the fourth funnel.
On completion of the work on 28 March Campbeltown was transferred on loan to the Royal Netherlands Navy, and she joined the 7th Escort Group, and deployed with them throughout April and May. There was at this time a proposal to rename her Middleburg, but this was not agreed upon, as it would have been contrary to the naming agreed with the US Navy on her original transfer. She underwent further repairs throughout June, and resumed convoy defence with the group in July through to August. She was then nominated to be returned to the Royal Navy in September, but remaining with the 7th Escort Group. She spent September working up with her Royal Navy crew and rejoined the group in October, where she covered convoys travelling between the UK and West Africa. On 15 September she picked up the survivors of the Norwegian motor tanker Vinga, which had been damaged in an enemy air attack. She carried out escort duties throughout November and into December, before taking passage to Devonport to undergo repairs.
The St Nazaire Raid
She began these repairs in January. During this time she was selected for a special operation and was withdrawn from regular service for modifications. She was to be used in Operation Chariot, a planned assault operation on the docks at Saint Nazaire. In 1942, the German battleship Tirpitz anchored at Trondheim in Norway was considered to present a grave threat to Atlantic convoys. However, should the ship enter the Atlantic then the Louis Joubert drydock that had originally been built for the liner SS Normandie in the German-occupied port of Saint-Nazaire, France was a vital target. It was the only dry dock in German hands on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe that was large enough to hold her.[1] It was decided that if this drydock could be put out of action, then any offensive sortie by the Tirpitz into the Atlantic could be much more dangerous for her, and probably not worth the risk.[2]
Operation Chariot was a plan to ram an explosive-laden warship into the dock gates. Accompanying her would be a number of small boats carrying British Commandos, who would destroy the dock's pumping and winding machinery and other infrastructure. The troops would then be evacuated by the small boats before the explosives in the ship detonated. A particular difficulty was that the dock was located several miles up the estuary of the Loire River. As an obsolescent destroyer, HMS Campbeltown was considered to be expendable, and she was selected to be the ram-ship. She spent February undergoing modifications. These included removing her third and fourth funnels, and having the remaining two funnels raked, to simulate the structure & appearance of a German Möwe class destroyer. A 12-pounder gun was installed forward and eight 20mm Oerlikon guns were installed on the upper deck. Some extra armour was provided to protect the bridge structure and unnecessary stores and equipment were removed in order to lighten the destroyer.
An explosive charge consisting of 24 Mark VII depth charges containing a total of 4.5 tons of explosive was fitted into steel tanks installed just behind the steel pillar that supported her most forward gun mount. The charges were to be detonated by multiple eight-hour time pencils connected together by cordtex, set before steaming out and cemented in to prevent any interference with the detonation.[3] HMS Campbeltown steamed from Devonport to Falmouth, Cornwall on 25 March to join the other ships that would take part in the operation. The crew, which would be evacuated with the commandos, was reduced to 75 men, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Stephen "Sam" Beattie
A flotilla of 21 vessels – the Campbeltown, sixteen 65-ton Fairmile B motor launches, one motor torpedo boat, and a Fairmile C motor gun boat acting as the troops' headquarters left Falmouth at 2 p.m. on 26 March 1942, escorted for most of the crossing to France by two Hunt-class escort destroyers.[1] Apart from a brief clash with a U-boat, U-593, whose captain misreported the task force's course and composition, the ships reached France unmolested. One motor launch suffered mechanical problems and had to return to England.
The preliminary air raid carried out through heavy cloud by 35 Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys and 25 Vickers Wellingtons was much smaller than originally planned and was ineffective, merely alerting the defenders that something unusual was happening. Nevertheless, by flashing genuine German recognition signals, the force approached to within less than a mile of the harbour before being fired upon. Campbeltown, as the largest target, drew most of the fire.
At 01:34 on 28 March 1942 Campbeltown rammed the dock gate 4 minutes later than planned. The Commandos and ship's crew came ashore under heavy German fire, and set about demolishing the dock machinery. 169 of the raiders were killed (64 commandos and 105 sailors) out of the 611 men in the attacking force. Of the survivors, 215 were captured and 222 were evacuated by the surviving small craft. A further five evaded capture and travelled overland through France to Spain and then to Gibraltar.[4]
The charges in the Campbeltown exploded the next day, 28 March, an hour and a half after the latest time that the British had expected them to detonate. Although the ship had been searched by the Germans, the explosives had not been detected. The explosion killed around 250 German soldiers and French civilians, and demolished both the front half of the destroyer and the 160-ton caisson of the drydock, with the rush of water into the drydock washing the remains of the ship into it. The St. Nazaire drydock was rendered unusable for the rest of the war, and was not repaired until 1947.[5]
The delayed-action torpedoes fired by the motor torpedo boat into the outer lock gate to the submarine basin detonated, as planned, on the night of 30 March. This later explosion led to panic with German forces firing on French civilians and on each other. Sixteen French civilians were killed and around thirty wounded. Later, 1,500 civilians were arrested and interned in a camp at Savenay, and most of their houses were demolished, even though they had had nothing to do with the raid.[6] Lt. Commander Beattie, who was taken prisoner, received the Victoria Cross for his valour, and in 1947 received the French Légion d'honneur.[7] His Victoria Cross was one of five that were awarded to participants in the raid, along with 80 other military decorations.
Legacy
The ship's bell of HMS Campbeltown was given to the town of Campbelltown, Pennsylvania, as a gesture of appreciation towards the United States for the lend-lease program. This ship's bell was later lent by the town to the current HMS Campbeltown, a Type 22 frigate, when she was commissioned in 1989, and the bell will remain on the frigate as long as she is in service with the Royal Navy.[8]
The 1952 film The Gift Horse was loosely based on the story of HMS Campbeltown.[9]
Footnotes
- ^ a b "The Chariot Story". St Nazaire Society. http://www.stnazairesociety.org/Sections/chariotstory.html. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ Winston Churchill. The Second World War - Volume IV The Hinge of Fate. Penguin Books. p. 106. ISBN 0-14-008614-5.
- ^ "Explosive Charges". St Nazaire Society. http://www.stnazairesociety.org/Sections/explosives.html. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ "HMS Campbeltown Commemorates the Raid on St Nazaire 28 March 1942". UK Ministry of Defence. http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.631. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ "St. Nazaire, Raid on, (Operation Chariot), Part Two (28 March 1942)". Military History Encyclopedia on the Web. http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_stnazaire2.html. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ "The French view of Operation Chariot". St Nazaire Society. http://www.stnazairesociety.org/Archives/frenchview.html. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ "Royal Navy (RN) Officers 1939-1945". World War II Unit Histories and Officers. http://www.unithistories.com/officers/RN_officersB.html. Retrieved 2007-03-24.
- ^ "HMS Campbeltown". UK Ministry of Defence. http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/nav.1563. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
- ^ IMDB
References
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Category:HMS Campbeltown |
- Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham. ISBN 9781861762818. OCLC 67375475.
- "HMS CAMPBELTOWN - ex-US Destroyer". Geoff Mason's ship histories. http://www.naval-history.net/xGM-Chrono-11US-Campbeltown.htm. Retrieved 2008-04-03.
- "HMS Campbeltown Commemorates the Raid on St Nazaire 28 March 1942". UK Ministry of Defence. http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.631. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
- ""The Greatest Raid of All" and other Wartime Memories of the Royal Navy". WW2 People's War (BBC). http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/42/a4211542.shtml. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
- "HMS Campbeltown (I 42)". Uboat.net. http://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/4291.html. Retrieved 2008-04-03.
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