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Convoy SL 78
Convoy SL 78 was the 78th of the numbered series of World War II SL convoys of merchant ships from Sierra Leone to Liverpool. Ships carrying commodities bound to the British Isles from South America, Africa, and the Indian Ocean traveled independently to Freetown to be convoyed for the last leg of their voyage. Twenty-five merchant ships departed Freetown on 18 June 1941. U-boat U-boats were naval submarines operated by Germany, particularly in the First and Second World Wars. Although at times they were efficient fleet weapons against enemy naval warships, they were most effectively used in an economic warfare role ...s sank eight ships before the convoy reached Liverpool on 12 July.Blair, pp.302&303 Ships in the Convoy Allied merchant ships A total of 26 merchant vessels joined the convoy, either in Sierra Leone or later in the voyage. Convoy escorts A series of armed military ships escorted the convoy at various times during its journey. References Bibliograp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flower-class Corvette
The Flower-class corvetteGardiner and Chesneau 1980, p. 62. (also referred to as the ''Gladiolus'' class after the lead ship) was a British class of 294 corvettes used during World War II by the Allied navies particularly as anti-submarine convoy escorts in the Battle of the Atlantic. Royal Navy ships of this class were named after flowers. Most served during World War II with the Royal Navy (RN) and Royal Canadian Navy (RCN). Several ships built largely in Canada were transferred from the RN to the United States Navy (USN) under the lend-lease programme, seeing service in both navies. Some corvettes transferred to the USN were crewed by the US Coast Guard. The vessels serving with the US Navy were known as ''Temptress-'' and ''Action''-class patrol gunboats. Other Flower-class corvettes served with the Free French Naval Forces, the Royal Netherlands Navy, the Royal Norwegian Navy, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Hellenic Navy, the Royal New Zealand Navy, the Royal Yugos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish NavySmith, Charles Edgar: ''A short history of naval and marine engineering.'' Babcock & Wilcox, ltd. at the University Press, 1937, page 263 as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War. Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unattended o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
V And W-class Destroyer
The V and W class was an amalgam of six similar classes of destroyer built for the Royal Navy under the 9th, 10th, 13th and 14th of fourteen War Emergency Programmes during the First World War and generally treated as one class. For their time they were among the most powerful and advanced ships of their type in the world, and set the trend for future British designs. They arrived in time to see service in the First World War. During the interwar period these ships formed the backbone of the Royal Navy's destroyer flotillas until gradually replaced by new construction; by the mid-1930s most had been displaced to the reserve fleet. Most ships survived to make an extensive contribution to the Second World War effort, in the vital role of convoy escort, freeing up more modern ships for fleet action. History The V and W class were the ultimate evolution of British destroyer design in the First World War, embodying the improvements of their predecessors as well as new technol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heavy Cruiser
The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in caliber, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The heavy cruiser is part of a lineage of ship design from 1915 through the early 1950s, although the term "heavy cruiser" only came into formal use in 1930. The heavy cruiser's immediate precursors were the light cruiser designs of the 1900s and 1910s, rather than the armored cruisers of the years before 1905. When the armored cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, an intermediate ship type between this and the light cruiser was found to be needed—one larger and more powerful than the light cruisers of a potential enemy but not as large and expensive as the battlecruiser so as to be built in sufficient numbers to protect merchant ships and serve in a number of combat theaters. Wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fighter Catapult Ship
Fighter catapult ships also known as Catapult Armed Ships were an attempt by the Royal Navy to provide air cover at sea. Five ships were acquired and commissioned as Naval vessels early in the Second World War, and these were used to accompany convoys. The concept was extended to merchant ships which were also equipped with rocket assisted launch systems and known as Catapult Aircraft Merchantmen ( CAM ships). Both classes could launch a disposable fighter (usually a Hawker Hurricane) to fight off a threat, with the pilot expected to be rescued after either ditching the aircraft or bailing out close to the launching ship. The ships There were five fighter catapult ships, collectively known as the ''Pegasus'' class. Two, ''Patia'' and ''Springbank'', were lost during the war. They were each equipped with a single Fairey Fulmar or "Hurricat" (an adapted Hawker Hurricane Mk.1A). See also * List of ships of the Second World War * List of aircraft carriers of the Second World War * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Ark Royal (1914)
HMS ''Ark Royal'' was the first ship designed and built as a seaplane carrier. She was purchased by the Royal Navy in 1914 shortly after her keel had been laid and the ship was only in frames; this allowed the ship's design to be modified almost totally to accommodate seaplanes. During the First World War, ''Ark Royal'' participated in the Gallipoli Campaign in early 1915, with her aircraft conducting aerial reconnaissance and observation missions. Her aircraft later supported British troops on the Macedonian Front in 1916, before she returned to the Dardanelles to act as a depot ship for all the seaplanes operating in the area. In January 1918, several of her aircraft unsuccessfully attacked the German battlecruiser when she sortied from the Dardanelles to attack Allied ships in the area. The ship left the area later in the year to support seaplanes conducting anti-submarine patrols over the southern Aegean Sea. After the end of the war, ''Ark Royal'' mostly served as an ai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armed Merchant Cruiser
An armed merchantman is a merchant ship equipped with guns, usually for defensive purposes, either by design or after the fact. In the days of sail, piracy and privateers, many merchantmen would be routinely armed, especially those engaging in long distance and high value trade. In more modern times, auxiliary cruisers were used offensively as merchant raiders to disrupt trade chiefly during both World War I and World War II, particularly by Germany. While armed merchantmen are clearly inferior to purpose-built warships, sometimes they have scored successes in combat against them. Examples include East Indiamen mimicking ships of the line and chasing off regular French warships in the Battle of Pulo Aura in 1804, and the sinking the Australian light cruiser in their battle in 1941, although ''Kormoran'' was also destroyed and had to be scuttled. Pre-20th century East Indiamen of various European countries were heavily armed for their long journeys to the Far East. In part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sloop-of-war
In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term ''sloop-of-war'' encompassed all the unrated combat vessels, including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialised functions. In World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy reused the term "sloop" for specialised convoy-defence vessels, including the of World War I and the highly successful of World War II, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability. They performed similar duties to the American destroyer escort class ships, and also performed similar duties to the smaller corvettes of the Royal Navy. Rigging A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Convoy Commodore
Convoy commodore also known as commodore, convoys was the title of a civilian put in charge of the good order of the merchant ships in the British convoys used during World War II. Usually the convoy commodore was a retired naval officer or a senior merchant captain drawn from the Royal Naval Reserve. He was aboard one of the merchant ships. The convoy commodore was distinguished from the commander of the convoy's escort, always a naval officer. Description Convoy commodores were based at HMS ''Eaglet'', the Royal Navy's shore establishment at Liverpool. Commodores had a peripatetic role, sailing with each convoy as assigned in a suitable ship. This ship would be the convoy flagship, but remained under the command of its master, the commodore and his team merely taking passage. The commodores were accompanied by a small team of ratings, usually a yeoman and two or three signalers; these teams would stay together and work with the same commodore throughout the campaign, allowin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SS Uhenfels
SS ''Uhenfels'' was a German-built heavy-lift ship that was launched in 1931 for DDG Hansa. She was captured by the Royal Navy in 1939, two months after the start of the Second World War. The UK Ministry of Shipping renamed her ''Empire Ability'' and contracted Elder Dempster Lines to operate her. In 1941 a German U-boat sank her by torpedo. Building Deschimag built ''Lichtenfels'' at its "Weser" yard in Bremen. She was launched in January 1931 and completed in March. She was the last of four heavy-lift sister ships that Deschimag built for DDG Hansa. The others were and ''Freienfels'' launched in 1929 and ''Geierfels'' launched in 1930. She carried heavy cargo such as railway locomotives. ''Uhenfels'' was built with a Maierform bow with a convex profile, which was meant to improve both her speed and her handling. She had a three-cylinder triple-expansion engine plus a Bauer-Wach low-pressure exhaust steam turbine. Exhaust steam from the low-pressure cylinder of the triple-expan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter De Neumann
Captain Bernard Peter de Neumann GM (18 September 1917 – 16 September 1972) was a British Merchant Navy officer and convicted pirate (by the French Vichy Government). De Neumann's action-packed seagoing career included being sunk twice in the space of one month, being charged and convicted of piracy by the Vichy French, and being known as "The Man From Timbuctoo". World War II De Neumann displayed exemplary courage during the Second World War being awarded both the George Medal and the Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea for removing a 250 kilogram bomb from deep in the engine-room of SS ''Tewkesbury'' and dropping it over his ship's side during a Luftwaffe attack off Aberdeen on 1 March 1941. SS ''Tewkesbury'' was torpedoed and sunk by gunfire from ''U-69'' on 21 May 1941. All of the crew survived and escaped in two boats; de Neumann's lifeboat was picked up by the American freighter SS ''Exhibitor''. He was later transferred to HMS ''Cilicia''. (SS ''Tewkesburys othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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