Everything fits," said Mr Mearns, who sets out the case in his book The Shipwreck Hunter. The sonar contact matches the dimensions of the Athenia in all details, When she left Liverpool on 2 September, three-quarters of her passengers were women and children, A Punch magazine cartoon: No-one in Britain accepted the German explanation, The Athenia still draws interest because of the many stories associated with the sinking, Built in Glasgow: The city has an exhibition at the Riverside Museum, The five other wrecks David Mearns would like to investigate, At the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece. HMAS Sydney II and the HSK Kormoran Shipwreck Sites, Admiralty House, Garden and Fortifications, Royal Australian Naval Transmitting Station ACT, 81st. It is just over 49 years since H.M.S. During the next eighteen months or so, the 1st B.S. IWM FL1472. The ship had a range of 5,000 nautical miles (9,260km; 5,754mi) at a cruising speed of 12 knots (22.2km/h; 13.8mph). The translated detailed report of the attack by U-331 can be found at this link. 340, 346, 349, 354355, 358, Jones, pp. 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. flag changed on a number of occasions. While making the turn,[40] Barham was struck by two 30.5-centimetre shells beginning at 16:58, probably from the battlecruiser SMSDerfflinger. Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. Admiral Sir John Balchen was aboard HMS Victory during the ship's final tragic voyage in October 1744. In addition the torpedo-control tower aft was replaced by an air-defence position during that same refit. She was the flagship of the 1st Battle Squadron and of the Second in Command of the Mediterranean Fleet, 1941. He replied, 'it's gone'.". "It would be at such resolution that anyone could look for shipwrecks like the Athenia from their desk. The following day, 1 October, Rear-Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas, commander of the 5th Battle Squadron, hoisted his flag aboard his new flagship. The enemy struck at 4.25pm as Richard was on a tea break and talking with a friend. The . The Germans said he had ordered a British submarine to fire on the Athenia as part of a plot to force Washington's hand. "Can I go into a court of law and say, '100%, that's Athenia?' Richard worked as a shop floor foreman at Ratby Engineering, in Leicester, until 1982. [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. He first spotted the battleship Marlborough, flagship of the 6th Division of the 1st Battle Squadron and thought she was leading the Grand Fleet as it deployed from cruising formation into line ahead. Richard Laland is one of only two survivors from the doomed battleship HMS Barham still alive today. Duchess capsized and sank, with the loss of 124 of her crew. [54] Dalglish was relieved in his turn by Captain Percy Noble on 18 October 1922. The British captured the submarine and took possession of its Enigma cipher machine. What is more, the coordinates are very close to those sent out by the Athenia's radio officer in his distress call, and recorded in the logbooks of the vessels that came to the rescue. After the battle fleet left Alexandria all was uneventful, and during the early afternoon of 25th November, course was reversed, and the Force proceeded back towards Alex. 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. (Mute & Track Negs.) 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. Our C. in C. (Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham) ordered the 7th and 15th Cruiser Squadrons to sea to attempt to intercept and destroy these convoys. Richard will be reading the Royal British Legion epitaph, "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old", at Buckminster Road Baptist Church on Sunday, during the act of remembrance. She became the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet on 9 June until relieved by Warspite on 8 February 1938. He went on to serve as a gun range finder aboard HMS Nelson, involved in bombarding German defences in Normandy on D-Day. "I didn't know which way was up or down and thought that was it, I'm going to die I had given up and remember thinking, I hope it's quick.". Barham quickly capsized to port and was lying on her side when a massive magazine explosion occurred about four minutes after she was torpedoed and sank her. After Free French emissaries were either captured or driven off by the Vichy French, Cunningham ordered his ships to open fire. Tiesenhausen ordered all four bow torpedo tubes fired at a range of 375 metres (410yd) at 16:25. "I shot to the surface," he said. Evan-Thomas turned northeast at around 18:06 and then made a slow turn to the southeast once he spotted the Grand Fleet. A new beautiful success. 137144, 2-pounder (40mm (1.6in)) Mk VIII "pom-pom", https://www.navy.gov.au/media-room/publications/hm-ships-enemy-action-wwii, HMS Barham Explodes & Sinks: World War II (1941), List of dreadnought battleships of the Royal Navy, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=HMS_Barham_(04)&oldid=1131403965, World War I battleships of the United Kingdom, World War II battleships of the United Kingdom, Ships sunk by German submarines in World War II, World War II shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 5,000nmi (9,260km; 5,750mi) at 12 knots (22km/h; 14mph), This page was last edited on 4 January 2023, at 00:34. Merlin Burrows have found and pin-pointed the exact location of the wreck of HMS Barham - a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship built for the Royal Navy in February 1913. [101], Helen Duncan, considered the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act 1735, came to the attention of the authorities after claiming to have contacted the spirit of a sailor of Barham, at the time when the ship's sinking was being hidden from the general public. Shortly afterwards, she was deployed to Gibraltar for several months after the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in July. Of the 1,184 officers and men on board, 841 were killed. 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. Watching the footage again, filmed from Barham's sister ship, HMS Valiant, he said: "Everyone on the surface when the explosion happened died, including my friend who had jumped into the water. Strange, if you think the ship was destroyed in 1941! In the end, the TV idea was dropped, but Mr Mearns still hopes an expedition can be mounted by someone. [10], The turret roofs were reinforced to a thickness of 5 inches (127mm) and the armour added over the magazines after Jutland was replaced by 4 inches of Krupp non-cemented armour, the first British battleship to receive such. [63], Barham, the battlecruiser Repulse and the destroyers Fame, Icarus, Imogen, Isis and Nubian were on patrol off the Butt of Lewis to protect against a possible break-out into the Atlantic by German warships when they were spotted by the German submarineU-30, commanded by Fritz-Julius Lemp, on 28 December. One fragment ricocheted off the upper deck and through the side plating on the opposite side of the ship. "I was disorientated but reached out and felt the ship. "I saw one of my shipmates in the water and asked him, 'where's the ship?' 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. [8] Two years later, her anti-aircraft defences were upgraded when the original three-inch AA guns were replaced with a pair of QF four-inch (102mm) Mk V AA guns between November 1924 and January 1925 and another pair of four-inch AA guns were added from October to November later that year. 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 detonation blew a 7-by-7-foot (2.1 by 2.1m) hole in the main deck, sent fragments through the middle and lower decks and burned out the casemate for starboard No. The number of hits cannot be confirmed, but it is believed that she and Valiant made 23 or 24 hits between them, making them two of the most accurate warships in the British fleet. Nov 24, 2021. While covering the evacuation of Crete the following day, the ship was attacked by Junkers Ju 88 bombers from II./LG (Demonstration Wing) 1 and Heinkel He 111 bombers of II./KG (Bomber Wing) 26. VALIANT and WARSPITE in background. Another sweep began on 6 March, but had to be abandoned the following day as the weather grew too severe for the escorting destroyers. BARHAM, serving as Flag lieutenant to the 2nd in command of the Mediterranean Fleet (Vice Admiral Sir H.D. [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. "It was a shocking event," said Riverside curator Emily Malcolm. On 612 May, she covered the Alexandria-Malta convoy of Operation Tiger. [48], She was refitted at Cromarty between February and March 1917[47] and King George V inspected the ship on 22 June at Invergordon. At 17:45 he turned eastwards to take his position in front of the Grand Fleet and re-engage Hipper's ships. It was November 24 when the battleship and several other ships escorted by eight destroyers went to search for Italian convoys in the Central Mediterranean. 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. [4], Barham was completed with two fire-control directors fitted with 15-foot (4.6m) rangefinders. (Cdr. The video of HMS Barhams loss can seen here, in the context of the overall newsreel. Wikipedia. HMS Barham was a Queen Elizabeth -class battleship of the Royal Navy named after Admiral Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, built at the John Brown shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1914. Shortly after 4.00 pm I was on the Admirals Bridge. Pictures - Barham HMS (04) [+1941] - WRECK WRAK EPAVE WRACK PECIO EN home; wrecks. They hit Ltzow, Derfflinger and Seydlitz three times each between 17:19 and about 18:05. Website with searchable ship database about warships, passenger liners, merchant ships, photo galleries, technical details, stories, news and much more. The boat dived out of control after she broached, reaching an indicated depth of 265 metres (869ft), well below her design depth rating of 150 metres (490ft), before she stabilised without any damage. BARHAM was an old timer of the QUEEN ELIZABETH class, and a veteran of the Battle of Jutland. [52] Captain Robin Dalglish relieved Horne on 1 October 1920. She was sunk during the Second World War on 25 November 1941 by the German submarine U-331 . Hamilton. [78] The severe damage to Resolution caused Operation Menace to be abandoned and Barham had to tow her to Freetown for temporary repairs, before escorting a convoy to Gibraltar where she arrived on 15 October where her own damage was repaired. "Fearing the impact of the affair on American opinion, the Germans promoted an absurd conspiracy theory, claiming that Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had been responsible. The last shell passed all the way through the ship without detonating; it struck and dislodged a 100-millimetre (3.9in) armour plate on the waterline on the other side of the ship that caused also some flooding. 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. Multiple air strikes by Formidable's Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers damaged the battleship Vittorio Veneto and crippled the heavy cruiser Pola later that evening. Recently, there was a major problem with the sunken fleet tanker USS Mississinewa - huge amounts of oil were leaking from the wreck and required a major cleanup. The wrecks sites upside down on the sea floor. 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. Guy Morris), S.O.O./S.N.O. 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. During this refit, the aft superstructure was rebuilt and the torpedo-control tower and its rangefinder were removed, together with the aft set of torpedo tubes. Detailed report of the Mediterranean Fleet, 1941 an old timer of the Grand Fleet on 1 October 1920 who! Convoy of Operation Tiger she became the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet on 9 June until relieved by Warspite 8!, probably from the doomed battleship HMS Barham still alive today Pola later that.! '' he said capsized and sank, with the loss of 124 of her crew torpedo-control. To take his position in front of the Battle of Jutland was on a tea break and talking with friend... 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