12 NAVY NEWS, OCTOBER 2009
643
Billion pound brain
THIS is what £1bn buys
you these days.
You could buy 1,000 Bugatti
Veyrons (if there were that many).
You could buy 16 Eurofighter
Class: Type 45 destroyer
Typhoons.
Pennant number: D32
You could buy a dozen Cristiano
Motto: Splendide audax
Ronaldos. (brilliantly daring)
Or you could buy one HMS Builder: BAE Systems,
Daring. Scotstoun/Vosper Thornycroft,
In fact we bought six, but it’s
Portsmouth
the lead ship of the Type 45 class
Laid down: March 28, 2003
which has grabbed most of the
Launched: February 1, 2006
attention.
Commissioned: July 23, 2009
She’s officially been in Royal
Displacement: 8,000 tons
Navy hands since the end of last
Length: 500ft (152m)
Beam: 70ft (21.2m)
year, she was commissioned in the
Draught: 24ft (7.4m)
summer, but it won’t be until some
Speed: in excess of 30 knots
time in 2010 that HMS Daring is
Complement: 190 (can
finally declared operational – and accommodate up to 235)
ready to deploy. Propulsion: 2 x Rolls Royce
The reason why it takes so long WR21 gas
es
from launch (February 2006) to
turbine-driven alternators;
operational status is the great leap
2 x Wartsila diesel
forward.
generators;
Roughly 80 per cent of the kit
2 x Alstom electric propulsion
inside Daring – from the Sampson
motors
radar inside the ‘spinning egg’
Armament: Sea Viper anti-
air missile system featuring
atop the main mast to the electric
Aster15 and Aster30 missiles
propulsion system in the engine
held in SYLVER launcher;
room – is new to the RN.
1 x 4.5in Mk8 main gun;
But it’s not just new technology 2 x 30mm guns;
which sets the ship apart from her Surface Ship Torpedo Defence
predecessors, but new thinking. system
Aside from the rather spacious
Helicopter: 1 x Lynx or
accommodation (four and six-
1 x Merlin
berth cabins are the ‘worst’ of
Facts and figur
the personal spaces aboard) and
individual, instead of communal,
which have covered warship seats 80,000 people (e.g. Gosport) and in the spring when she undergoes vessel which served for 19 years. and served in the Med, including
heads and showers – making each
for decades. there’s enough electrical cabling Operational Sea Training for the The name was resurrected in Suez in 1956. She spent much
one unisex – there are numerous
Apart from Daring’s general to circle the M25 three times (350 first time. 1932 with a D-class destroyer. She of the 1960s in reserve, but was
empty compartments. facts and figures, here’s a few miles).
She’s already acquired plenty was sunk by the legendary U-boat reactivated later in the decade,
With an eye to the future, the Top Trump-style statistics to The destroyer has spent almost of affiliates, notably the city of ace Otto Kretschmer with all but taking part in the mopping up
Navy left space for technology wow (or possibly bore) guests a her entire career in the water Birmingham and the island of five of her hands 50 miles east of following the Torrey Canyon
which might be needed over the dinner parties. The long-range undergoing tests and trials either Guernsey. John O’Groats in February 1940. tanker disaster.
ship’s 40-year lifespan, rather than multi-function radar can pick up at sea or alongside. Despite her name Daring The most recent bearer of the After a year’s deployment to
having to shoehorn new kit in as aircraft – or missiles – up to 250 More follow this autumn, possesses not a single battle name is probably the most famous. the Far East (although much of
it does with ships designed in the miles away (roughly Portsmouth- including further tests on her Sea honour from her previous six D05 was one of eight Daring-class her time was actually spent on the
70s, 80s and 90s. Brussels) and track up to 1,000 Viper missile system (no firings, incarnations. destroyers which served the RN Beira Patrol), Daring was returned
Not everything about Daring is targets. sadly) and a spell with the Flag The lineage begins in 1804 from the 1950s until the 1970s. to the Reserve Fleet at the end of
new, however. The wardroom is Her power plants could supply Officer Sea Training. with a 12-gun brig. The destroyer The ship which gave the class 1968 and broken up at Blyth in
‘blessed’ with the chintz patterns enough electricity for a town of FOST will welcome Daring back ancestry starts in 1893 with a its name joined the Fleet in 1952 1971.
photographic
HEROES OF THE ROYAL NAVY No.66
Lt Antony Fasson and AB Colin
Grazier GC, Tommy Brown GM
THE sea lanes between Port Said and Haifa Fasson smashed his way into Heidtmann’s
offered rich pickings for the German wolves. personal cabinets and retrieved a haul of secret
Here was a lifeline of the Empire, the gateway documents, which Brown carried up the ladder
to Suez. and passed to shipmates who’d rowed rather
Yet in his month-long patrol, Kapitänleutnant than swum across to U559.
Hans Heidtmann had found few targets. With the documents secured, Fasson and
Heidtmann was one of the intake of the 1934 Grazier turned their attention to some of the
class of officers, the fabled ‘Crew 34’. Of the 291 boat’s instrumentation – despite the fact that
cadets who entered the naval college that year, water was swilling around U559 and rising
one third would command a U-boat – and one in rapidly.
six would die in charge of a submarine. It was clear the boat was sinking. From the
Crew 34 would spawn aces – Schnee, Topp, top of the conning tower, Brown hollered: “You
Endrass – as well as many stolid, capable, had better come up!” Fasson and Grazier tried
if unspectacular U-boat commanders. Hans to climb up but were beaten back by the inrush
Heidtmann belonged to the latter. of water. Brown jumped into the Med and was
In ten patrols in command of U559, Heidtmann picked up by Petard’s whaler.
had accounted for just half a dozen vessels, It was nearly a month before the codebooks
including the sloop HMAS Parramatta. the trio had saved from U559 reached Bletchley
Patrol number ten had brought just a single Park – and several weeks after that before the
‘kill’, the 200-tonne sailing ship Bringhi, driven cryptoanalysts were able to break the U-boat
on to a reef outside Alexandria. cipher, Shark. As a result, sinkings of shipping
As befitted the importance of Suez, the great halved in January and February 1943.
canal and its approaches were heavily guarded Two months later, Hans Heidtmann belatedly
by British forces, among them His Majesty’s received the German equivalent of the VC, the
Ship Petard. Knight’s Cross, for his war service; his masters in
Shortly after mid-day on October 30 1942, the Berlin were unaware of his failure to destroy the
destroyer arrived at 31˚47’N, 33˚24’E where that crucial codebooks entrusted
morning a Sunderland flying boat had picked up to his possession.
a suspected U-boat on radar. Antony Fasson and Colin nd Colin
Four warships joined Petard on the hunt Grazier were both awarwarded
for the boat. For ten hours they harried the the George Cross and s and
submarine with ASDIC – sonar as we now know Tommy Brown the George George
it – and depth charges, nearly 300 in all. Medal. Like his shipmates, mates,
Petard was the crux of this concerted effort, he never received his
driven by her CO Lt Cdr Mark Thornton, a man decoration, dying in a in a
with a singular ambition: he wanted a U-boat. house fire in early 1945.45.
Not a sunken one, mind you. Thornton wanted All three have a far far
to capture one. more personal memorial rial
Shortly before 11pm on October 30, Thornton in Tamworth, Grazier’er’s
had his chance as Hans Heidtmann brought hometown.
his crippled boat to the surface. There she was Six decades after theirter their
damaged further by nearly 200 rounds from sacrifice, three anchors with ors with
Petard’s upper deck guns. an entwined chain wern were
THIS month’s delve into the archives of the Imperial War Museum leads us to the Suez campaign of As the U-boat men abandoned the submarine erected in the town
1956. Hawker Sea Hawk FGA 6 pilots of 897 Naval Air Squadron are debriefed by the intelligence offi cer and jumped into the Mediterranean, Thornton centre. On the
aboard HMS Eagle after returning from preliminary air strikes against Egyptian targets. On November ordered his sailors to jump over the side and Sunday nearest
1, Fleet Air Arm Wyvern, Sea Hawks and Sea Venoms from Eagle and Bulwark, supplemented by RAF swim aboard U559. October 30, locals
aircraft, bombed Egyptian airfi elds and had gained total air superiority by the end of the following day. Three men responded: XO Lt Antony Fasson, celebrate ‘Grazier
This prepared the way for the joint British and French landings on Novermber 6. (MH 23489) AB Colin Grazier, and 15-year-old NAAFI canteen Day’ and toast
■ THIS photograph – and 9,999,999 others from a century of war and peace – can be viewed or assistant Tommy Brown (he’d lied about his age their hero with a pint of t of
purchased at www.iwmcollections.org.uk, by emailing photos@IWM.org.uk, or by phoning 0207 416 to join up). Grazier ale.
5333.
012_NN_Oct.indd 1 21/9/09 08:57:17
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