With thanks to Don Kindell & the late Lt-Cdr Geoff Mason RN, Rtd . by Don Kindell, from the work of the late Lt-Cdr Arnold Hague RNR. As of 2022 this is not a comprehensive list, but most major operations that Axis and Allied combatants engaged in are included, and also operations that involved neutral nation states. The Aronda, Egra, Karoa, Letitia, Llangibby Castle and Nieuw Holland and the entire convoy escort then proceeded to Taranto where they arrived early in the morning of 22 August 1943. During World War II, the U. One of the many factors in the Allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic during WWII was the development of small aircraft carriers, termed escort carriers. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. T HE SECOND PHASE of the U-boat war was marked by a complete change in enemy tactics. 000 Allied Commanders of WWII, from the US Navy, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy, The Polish Navy and others. S. PQ 17 was the code name for an Allied Arctic convoy during the Second World War. HMS fencer was a lend-lease Attacker class escort carrier. Yet amidst the bloody chaos of that deadly crossing, which saw 16 merchant ships sunk by German U-boats over a three-day period, with another four damaged, there was one minor victory for the Allies: the Royal. This article appears in: Late Fall 2012. Between July 1943 and 22 April 1944, Buckley operated along the eastern seaboard as training ship for prospective officers and nucleus crews of other destroyer escorts. Tampa, Comanche, and Escanaba were escorting small convoy SG-19 when 5252 ton United States Army transport Dorcester was torpedoed by U-456. Convoy PQ 14 was an Arctic convoy sent from Britain by the Western Allies to aid the Soviet Union during the Second World War. With thanks to Don Kindell & the late Lt-Cdr Geoff Mason RN, Rtd. 42 ships. J. In late March, another severe storm raked the Barents Sea, scattering Convoy PQ-13 and its escorts and giving the Germans an opportunity to attack. Convoy Battles of World War II occurred when convoys of warships protected cargo ships assembled for mutual defense and were attacked by submarines, surface ships and/or aircraft. 1 ships and 4. Powell (1918-1942), who was killed in action, aboard the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco off Guadalcanal on 12 November 1942. In 1945 the United States Navy stood at the height of its power. At the end of the war almost every ship produced a “war history. Japan's sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales by air attack off Malaya in late 1941,. 000 Allied Warships and over 11. The transport AMRA joined off Aden. One" convoy) was a Japanese convoy of World War II. Mark R. S. At first, German attacks demolished Allied convoys, but in May 1941 when Germany's battleship Bismarck was lost, the Allies extended their convoy operations, routing them away from danger. Employed as a troopship postwar. The composition of the convoy was the same in which it had arrived at Freetown. 300, which sailed for the UK via New York on 17 July 1944, with 167 merchant ships. Soon, two convoys a week were sailing from Halifax. HMS ORION - Leander-class Light Cruiserincluding Convoy Escort Movements. Convoy PQ-17 would sail into one of the greatest disasters and controversies of World War II. From the spring of 1940, RCN destroyers also participated in operations off the French coast. As the war neared its end, HMCS Sackville was stripped of its armaments and turned into a maintenance vessel. In the Pacific Theater of World War II, Japanese merchant ships rarely traveled in convoys. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. Ungainly, slow, and lacking armor, the escort carriers of the American and British navies were the versatile, unsung workhorses of the second half of World War II. Naval Life and Customs by Lt-Cdr John Irving RN, a gem of a book. Photograph Naval History and Heritage Command. and were redeployed to other theaters late in the spring. The escort carrier, designed originally to give aerial protection to convoys against submarines and enemy planes, was adapted to the urgent need of the amphibious forces for close air support at the landing beaches. Convoy, vessels sailing under the protection of an armed escort. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. They were considered a suitable deterrent to the 11" armed German ships; during Operation Berlin Scharnhorst and Gneisenau declined action with a convoy escorted by Ramillies and another with the slightly older but more modernized Malaya. Halsey, the U. In order to reduce the slaughter, the Admiralty immediately extended the westward escort limits, and during a five-week period late in 1940, the convoys were unmolested. SL 140 was composed of merchant ships. 000 Allied Warships and over 11. NAVY LISTS - 1939-40 Monthly, 1940-44 Bimonthly, 1944-45 Quarterly (external site, PDF downloads) Royal Navy at Beginning and End of World War 2. A parallel series of slow convoys, the SC series, was run for ships unable to cruise at 8 kt, while ships able to cruise at faster than 13 kt sailed independently until the 14-knot CU convoys were organised late in 1943. Over the course of the war, Coast Guard-manned warships sank 11 U-boats. This section includes over 21. the convoy escorts could be attacked and eliminated, leaving the merchant ships defenceless. Operation FB (29 October – 9 November 1942) took place as part of the Arctic Convoys of the Second World War. Navy built more than 1,000 destroyer escorts, ships whose primary duty was to escort supply convoys across the world’s oceans to insure that their precious cargo of food, fuel, war material, and personnel got to their destinations safely. A secondary advantage is the reduction in number of. 1 × 81 mm (3. A: This is a trickier question than it may at first appear. Of these, 145 were lost in convoy, 54 were stragglers and 12 were losses out of convoy. The Navy’s postwar plan , as told in a 1946 testimony by Adm. By 25 June, the Allies had been defeated in Western Europe and Scandinavia. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. Most were in the North Atlantic from 1939 to 1943 and involved attacks by U-boat wolfpacks. CVEs—the jeep carriers as they were nicknamed—were either conversions of civilian merchant ships or new. 1. With only 12 fighters in his attack group, the. Actually no, just pointing out, to the thread topic, that a submarine would have been far more dangerous to a 1945 carrier than a 1945 battleship. The convoy commodore was Captain AJ Baxter in Baron Yarborough, and the convoy was protected by an understrength escort group. Once outside the U-boat danger area near the British coast, the convoys dispersed, as the smaller escorts were defenceless against the German surface raiders operating far out in the Atlantic. At last, the most interesting carriers built in Britain specifically in the context of convoy escort were the MAC, or Merchant Aircraft Carriers. Convoy WS 5BX, now made up of the troopship Aquitania (British, 44786 GRT, built 1914) and Empress of Japan, departed Bombay for Singapore on 5 March escorted by HMS Enterprise. A. Rexor Posts: 295 Joined: Wed May 04, 2005 2:41 pm Location: The Oort Cloud. This occurred because the German battleship, Tirpitz. London: Cassell & Company, 1964. Returned to USN 31 Oct 1946, stricken for disposal 22 Jan 1947. This convoy was made up of the US troopships (carrying British troops !!!); Wakefield (24289 GRT, built 1931), Mount Vernon (24289 GRT, built 1932), West Point (26454 GRT, built 1940),. S. Royal Canadian Navy - WWII, Ships, History: When the Second World War broke out, the RCN, yet again, was the first Canadian military force into action, and it formed the mainstay of the Canadian effort for the first two years of the war. This section includes over 21. The service also undertook new missions of shore patrol, marine safety, and convoy escort duty and played a vital role in naval aviation, troop transport operations and overseas. These warships displaced around 1,000 tons and were typically armed with one-to-three guns of three-to-five. 000 Allied Commanders of WWII, from the US Navy, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy, The Polish Navy. On the first day of 1942, Gilbert Roberts, a 41-year-old retired British naval officer turned game designer, arrived at. The German destroyers sunk one straggler from QP 8, the Russian MV Izhora, at 1630 / 7th, approximate position 72o 35' N, 10o 30'E, but were ahead of. Formation [ edit ] Escort Group B6 was one of seven British escort groups which served with the Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF), which provided convoy protection in the most dangerous. Completed in January 1938. The destroyer escort was not nearly as expensive as the. Escorts for HX Convoys. 12 Sep 1942The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. During World War I and World War II, the practice was revived to protect Allied and neutral merchant shipping against German surface raiders and submarines. It was led by Captain Gilbert Roberts and was principally staffed by officers and ratings from the Women's Royal Naval Service. S. The convoy was located by German forces on 1 July, after which it was shadowed continuously and attacked. Early River class units were available for the turning point convoy battles of the winter of 1942-43. 20(Estimated time of arrival splitting point: 15:00Z Sept. Fleet’s commander, Aircraft, Battle Force, sent a letter to Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Most of the destroyers remained on frontline service until late 1943, when they were gradually replaced by more modern warships. 000 Allied Commanders of WWII, from the US Navy, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy, The Polish Navy. 063. ports (mainly New York and Hampton Roads) by anti-submarine vessels. S. Served as an escort for Russia convoys late in the war; took part in strike on German shipping in Norway 5/1945. 000 Allied Commanders of WWII, from the US Navy, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy, The Polish Navy. It was one of the numbered SQ convoys from S ydney to Q uebec. Convoy ONS 5 consists of 43 ships bound from Liverpool to Halifax, Nova Scotia. S. HMCS Battleford was a Flower-class corvette of the Royal Canadian Navy launched on 15 April 1940 and commissioned on 31 July 1941 during the Second World War. As soon as Germany declared war on the United States (Dec. Entering British home waters they turned over the convoy to the danger zone escort. P. U-BOAT OFFENSIVE. Now each convoy with an escort carrier had its own attack aircraft immediately available. Yet despite its importance, the Navy sought to divest itself of the convoy escort mission almost immediately after the war. torpedoes is well known, but the Navy’s reluctant adoption of the German U-boat tactics against convoys is not often studied. The escort destroyer HMS Haydon (Lt. The Key Role of the Convoys. Powell (DE/DER-213), a Buckley-class destroyer escort of the United States Navy, was named in honor of Gunner's Mate William T. Late 1940–1941. Fleet’s commander, Aircraft, Battle Force, sent a letter to Chief of Naval Operations Harold R. Navy deployed an improvised weapon in the Battle of the Atlantic in March 1943—the auxiliary, or escort, carrier. Affects escorts assigned to convoy routes and fleets with convoy escort technology. Part One. Fifteen ships arrived safely. The arrival of the first convoy carrying the soldiers and Marines of the American Expeditionary Force at Saint-Nazaire, France, on 26 June 1917 surprised the world and provided much-needed encouragement to the allies. The service even manned the Big Horn (AO-45), a heavily armed tanker “Q-ship,” designed to lure U-boats before unmasking her hidden guns and attacking the. Many of our units have been in contact with enemy submarines and planes and. Twenty days out of their home port of Lorient in German-occupied France, the crewmen of U-123 were ready for the attack. Naval tanker British Lady. US Navy in the Atlantic and the Pacific. (Sydney C. Hardy, the convoy escort commander in HMS Cairo first knew of the presence of the enemy through the report of a Beaufighter which was on it’s way to patrol above the convoy and which at 0620 hours reported two cruisers and four destroyers to be 15 nautical miles on the port beam of the convoy. From the initial close escort of convoy PQ 14,. For six days the ships battled heavy seas. The thread above has quite a lot of detail on British and French submarines acting as convoy escorts in 1939 and 1940. The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign [11] [12] in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. On 28 Apr 1943 by U-650. CONVOY ESCORT MOVEMENTS of ROYAL & DOMINION NAVY WARSHIPS, including ALLIED NAVY VESSELS under RN Command. followed, and by April 1942 four more joined The low period of convoy traffic was reached in January 1945 when the average size of all regularly scheduled convoys fell to only 3. During the conference, Masters were given an opportunity to ask questions on matters not clearly understood. RN Eastern Fleet/Force 61/East Indies Fleet (21st Aircraft Carrier Squadron) based at Trincomalee as of 7 July 1945: RN Escort for Russian Convoys JW65 and RA65 (15–30 March 1945) Operation SCOTTISH. Rommel had reached El Alamein. Navy Escort Carrier the Liscome Bay. The Type C escort ships (丙型海防艦, Hei-gata kaibōkan) were a class of escort ships in the service of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Australia Station and Australian defences A Bathurst-class corvette. Convoy Escort Movements. G74 1974. USS Underhill (DE-682) was a Buckley -class destroyer escort of the United States Navy during World War II. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. S. were no more grievous than during the battles of late 1942 and early 1943. In late December 1943, Vice Admiral Robert Burnett was at Murmansk in Soviet Russia on board HMS Belfast, having escorted the recently arrived Arctic Convoy, JW55A. 6 escorts per convoy. 5 from Freetown, escorted by the armed merchant cruiser CILICIA to overtake the convoy and join at sea. In the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and the Arctic, they shepherded convoys, hunted submarines, supported amphibious landings, and ferried men and planes. As in previous years, it was originally intended to order a complete flotilla comprising eight destroyers—plus a flotilla leader as the ninth unit—in each year. John's primary, and most important responsibility was the supply and maintenance of the trans-Atlantic escorts that facilitated the vital convoys feeding the Allied war effort. Originally, convoys of merchant ships were formed as a protection against pirates. Direct route, Moji to Shanghai — Convoy operations abandoned January 1944; escorts transferred to JapanFormosa run. Casualties by Name. Navy had to relearn elementary facts about anti-submarine warfare during World War II. S. S. 000 Allied Commanders of WWII, from the US Navy, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy, The. Following a tumultuous eastbound Atlantic crossing as part of the escort group for Convoy HX-170, she was detached to take in tow the Navy storeship Yukon (AF-9), which was disabled 600 miles southeast of Iceland. 000 Allied Warships and over 11. and during a five-week period late in 1940, the convoys were unmolested. Today, after two world wars and a century of witnessing military operations around the world, Americans might take. 000 Allied Warships and over 11. At 0918 one of the Martlets posted a U-boat 22 miles from the convoy and the escorts set off in pursuit of U-131, which altered course to evade the charging escorts, but ran into HMS Pentstemon. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the threat. early sailings every 5th merged OA/OB convoy became an OG convoy at sea - later OG convoys sailed from Liverpool ON: Liverpool to Halifax Harbour: 26 July 1941 27 May 1945 307 replaced OB convoys for North American destinations - alternate convoys included slower ships until the ONS convoys started ONS: Liverpool to Halifax Harbour: 15 March 1943 Ideally, a convoy of 60 merchant ships would have an escort of at least 2 destroyers and 4 corvettes, a ratio of 1 escort for every 10 merchant vessels. German submarine U-175 was a Type IXC U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine built for service during World War II. After commissioning in April 1943, she took part in anti-submarine warfare exercises off Lough Foyle and started her first convoy escort missions. I checked with several naval history experts, and the consensus is that convoy escort vessels raised a black flag when they had contact with or were engaged in tracking and/or attacking a U-boat. Early in the afternoon of 23 October the convoy was back off Augusta. There would be several more meetings during which the two leaders would forge an alliance that would ultimately lead to victory). 000 Allied Commanders of WWII, from the US Navy, Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy, The Polish Navy. In late 1942, the Allies had taken the offensive against Germany but the dispatch of supplies to the USSR by convoy via the. Japanese destroyers were generally deficient in antisubmarine weaponry compared to their Allied counterparts, and the Japanese navy did not develop an inexpensive convoy escort like the Allies' destroyer escort/frigate until it was too late. Early in the afternoon U-657 was driven off and depth charged but she escaped without damage. The ship was modernised and refitted before the outbreak of WW2 and she re-entered service with six twin 4” mountings controlled by two gunnery directors for AA defence. S. March 23, 2021.