kookaburra
23-05-2009, 09:06
The Modified Grimsby Class WW11 sloops: HMASs Yarra, Swan, Parramatta and Warrego
1060 tons standard, 1500 tons full load.
When one thinks about this quartet, it seems the mind just sticks at the first ship - HMAS Yarra - and the rest are largely overlooked. I think it's an injustice to the others, all of whom played roles above their weight in WW11, but perhaps it's inevitable
Yarra's final action, steaming at the Japanese heavy cruisers Atago, Maya and Takao, and four destroyers, in an heroic but futile attempt to protect her little convoy on March 4, 1942 [same day as the 'friendly fire' losses on minesweeper HMAS Tambar, described on 'RAN Ship Of The Day, Post #112] was a classic self-sacrificing action, which deserves to rank with the AMC HMS Jervis Bay against the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer .
HMAS Yarra was the subject or a Herakles thread, here:
http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=844
Prior to her final action Yarra had already established an outstanding record in the Red Sea, off East Africa, in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and at the fall of Singapore. At Khorramshahr in August, 1941, she sank the Persian sloop Babr, captured two gunboats - crew members previously having reconnoitred the town in Arab dress - and she later doused fires on the burning Italian merchant ship Hilda and additionally took her, along with the gunboats, as prizes, taken to (now) Pakistan.
HMAS Yarra's sinking was accompanied by great loss of life, only 13 of her 151 men eventually surviving - as was loss of HMAS Parramatta, torpedoed by the U-boat 559 off Tobruk a little over three months earlier, on November 27, 1941.
Struck amidships, one of Parramatta's magazines exploded, and she rolled over and sank within minutes, taking 137 of her 160 crew, including her CO, Acting Commander Jefferson Walker.
Parramatta, too, had established an outstandinjg record in the Med and the Red Sea. Her action off Tobruk on June 24, 1941, in defending the petrol-carrier Pass of Balmaha from waves of German dive bombers [48 at at first, over 100 before she got in] , at at the same time rescuing survivors from sister sloop HMS Auckland, sunk early in the action, was another set-piece in gallantry.
Jefferson Walker was to be posthumously awarded the DSC after Parramatta's loss, and he and his ship were the subject of a fine wartime book by Paul and Frances Margaret McGuire, The Price of Admiralty (Oxford University Press, 1944).
Beyond that, I think it is the surviving pair whose substantial contributions in the Pacific campaigns have been largely overlooked, or overshadowed by larger events.
Apart from Yarra, which retained her original three unshielded single four-inch guns to the end, the armament fit of the other three was changed, all three receiving two twin four-inch mounts that gave them a heavier main armament than the River Class frigates then coming into service (with two single four-inch guns), and they got additional AA bofors.
I'll split this up to tell a little more of Swan and Warrego in the next post.
BTW, note the swimmer in the dry dock in the first pic here of HMAS Warrego...
and, last pic, terribly familiar from every article ever published about HMAS Yarra, but must be represented in a thread like this. It's a better image than the page-rippled version I posted some time ago on the Herakles thread.
1060 tons standard, 1500 tons full load.
When one thinks about this quartet, it seems the mind just sticks at the first ship - HMAS Yarra - and the rest are largely overlooked. I think it's an injustice to the others, all of whom played roles above their weight in WW11, but perhaps it's inevitable
Yarra's final action, steaming at the Japanese heavy cruisers Atago, Maya and Takao, and four destroyers, in an heroic but futile attempt to protect her little convoy on March 4, 1942 [same day as the 'friendly fire' losses on minesweeper HMAS Tambar, described on 'RAN Ship Of The Day, Post #112] was a classic self-sacrificing action, which deserves to rank with the AMC HMS Jervis Bay against the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer .
HMAS Yarra was the subject or a Herakles thread, here:
http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/showthread.php?t=844
Prior to her final action Yarra had already established an outstanding record in the Red Sea, off East Africa, in the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and at the fall of Singapore. At Khorramshahr in August, 1941, she sank the Persian sloop Babr, captured two gunboats - crew members previously having reconnoitred the town in Arab dress - and she later doused fires on the burning Italian merchant ship Hilda and additionally took her, along with the gunboats, as prizes, taken to (now) Pakistan.
HMAS Yarra's sinking was accompanied by great loss of life, only 13 of her 151 men eventually surviving - as was loss of HMAS Parramatta, torpedoed by the U-boat 559 off Tobruk a little over three months earlier, on November 27, 1941.
Struck amidships, one of Parramatta's magazines exploded, and she rolled over and sank within minutes, taking 137 of her 160 crew, including her CO, Acting Commander Jefferson Walker.
Parramatta, too, had established an outstandinjg record in the Med and the Red Sea. Her action off Tobruk on June 24, 1941, in defending the petrol-carrier Pass of Balmaha from waves of German dive bombers [48 at at first, over 100 before she got in] , at at the same time rescuing survivors from sister sloop HMS Auckland, sunk early in the action, was another set-piece in gallantry.
Jefferson Walker was to be posthumously awarded the DSC after Parramatta's loss, and he and his ship were the subject of a fine wartime book by Paul and Frances Margaret McGuire, The Price of Admiralty (Oxford University Press, 1944).
Beyond that, I think it is the surviving pair whose substantial contributions in the Pacific campaigns have been largely overlooked, or overshadowed by larger events.
Apart from Yarra, which retained her original three unshielded single four-inch guns to the end, the armament fit of the other three was changed, all three receiving two twin four-inch mounts that gave them a heavier main armament than the River Class frigates then coming into service (with two single four-inch guns), and they got additional AA bofors.
I'll split this up to tell a little more of Swan and Warrego in the next post.
BTW, note the swimmer in the dry dock in the first pic here of HMAS Warrego...
and, last pic, terribly familiar from every article ever published about HMAS Yarra, but must be represented in a thread like this. It's a better image than the page-rippled version I posted some time ago on the Herakles thread.