12 NAVY NEWS, FEBRUARY 2011 652


Jewel purpose C


URRENTLY enjoying a spot of training with those nice folk at FOST is the newest warship in the Fleet’s inventory, HMS Diamond.


2011 is the year when the


Type 45 destroyers come of age. Daring will deploy for the fi rst time, Dauntless will be ready to deploy by the year’s end, and Diamond, the third ship in the £6bn programme, won’t be far behind her. D34 begins and ends the year in the hands of the Flag Officer Sea Training (the second ‘session’ is for Operational Sea Training). Between those bookends, there are the ship’s final sea trials, her formal handing over to the Commander-in-Chief Fleet (the ‘in-service date’), commissioning (in May) and the inaugural visit to one of her affiliated cities, Aberdeen (this month); she’s also bound with Coventry, although getting 8,000 tonnes of Pusser’s grey there might prove tricky. Other relations to foster for the 190 or so Diamonds this year include the Worshipful Companies of Makers of Playing Cards (who also enjoy strong ties with submarine HMS Turbulent) and Barber-Surgeons – forerunners of today’s naval medical branch, who’ve been going to sea since 1512...


...which pre-dates the first HMS Diamond by about seven decades.


The lineage begins with a


Dartmouth cutter which served under Drake and helped defeat the Spanish Armada – the very fi rst Naval battle honour awarded. The second Diamond was built for Oliver Cromwell and served under the Commonwealth and later the King in the wars of the late 17th Century before she was captured by the French in 1693. The third, fourth and fi fth


Diamonds were fi fth-rate frigates which served for most of the 18th Century. No.3 distinguished herself in the Caribbean, No.4 took part in the controversial Battle of Toulon, and No.5 fought in the American Wars of Independence. The sixth Diamond was around


for fewer than two years; an armed merchant brig, she was hired by the Navy from 1793-94. Diamond No.7 served through


the bulk of the Napoleonic Wars, helping to all but eliminate coastal traffi c off the Normandy coast and even sneaking into Brest (the French Navy’s counterpart of Plymouth or Portsmouth), before being broken up in 1812. Her successor spent eight years incomplete because Europe was at peace. When fi nally fi nished, she served for only three years before being destroyed by an accidental fi re in Portsmouth Harbour. Now to the Far East and the


brief career of Diamond No.9, a four-gun schooner hired in 1832 to chase down Malay pirates. The fi nal Diamond powered by


sail served in the Mediterranean and was dispatched to the Black Sea during the Crimean War. She eventually became a training ship and was renamed Joseph Straker. The fi rst ironclad Diamond


(No.11, if you’ve lost count) was an 1874 corvette which spent almost her entire 15-year career in the Far East and Australia. Into the 20th Century and a Gem-class cruiser; she spent the bulk of the Great War attached to the Grand Fleet in home waters before being dispatched to the Mediterranean in the fi nal months as a base ship for motor boats. For four years (1915-19) there


● The tug Bustler accompanies Diamond out of Portsmouth on the destroyer’s fi rst trials under the White Ensign


Picture: LA(Phot) Kyle Heller, FRPU East


was also HMS Diamond II, a trawler commissioned by the Navy to tackle the U-boat menace. The most recent Diamond to see action was No.14, a 1932 Defender-class destroyer which was heavily engaged in the Mediterranean when war came. She was lost to German dive- bombers while evacuating troops from Greece in April 1941 in company with HMS Wryneck at the cost of more than 900 lives.


line was the fi fteenth Diamond, a 1952 D-class destroyer – hailed in their day as revolutionary warships. She ended her days as a training vessel for engineers in Portsmouth Harbour before being broken up in 1981. That’s not quite the end of the Diamond story, however, for there’s the unusual tale of ‘HMS Diamond Rock’ – which began life as the French sloop Diamant.


The penultimate ship in this long


She was captured by the British and pressed into service as a supply vessel for a garrison on Diamond Rock off Martinique in 1804-05. The small fort on the outcrop earned the nickname HMS Diamond Rock (although it was never commissioned as such) while the supply boat, renamed Fort Diamond, was retaken by the French after just three months in RN service. The fort itself held out for another year.


Armada ......................... 1588 Kentish Knock ............. 1652 Portland ....................... 1653 Scheveningen .............. 1653 Lowestoft ..................... 1665 Four Days’ Battle ......... 1666 Orfordness ................... 1666 Solebay ........................ 1672 Schooneveld ................ 1673 Texel ............................. 1673 Crimea .....................1854-55 Spartivento .................. 1940 Mediterranean ............. 1940 Malta Convoys ............. 1941 Greece .......................... 1941


Class: Type 45 destroyer Pennant number: D34 Motto: Honor clarissima gemma (honour is the brightest jewel) Builder: BAE Systems Laid down: February 25 2005 Launched: November 27 2007 Commissioned: May 2011 Displacement: 8,000 tons Length: 500ft (152m) Beam: 70ft (21.2m) Draught: 24ft (7.4m) Speed: in excess of 30 knots Complement: 190 (can accommodate up to 235) Propulsion: 2 x Rolls Royce WR21 gas


turbine-driven alternators; 2 x Wartsila diesel generators;


2 x Alstom electric propulsion motors


Armament: Sea Viper anti- air missile system featuring Aster15 and Aster30 missiles held in SYLVER launcher; 1 x 4.5in Mk8 main gun; 2 x 30mm guns; Surface Ship Torpedo Defence system


Helicopter: 1 x Lynx or 1 x Merlin


HEROES OF THE ROYAL NAVY No.82 – Sir Winston Spencer Churchill


The location: Whitehall, London. The occasion: the final chapter in the rich story of Sir Winston Churchill, the last commoner to receive a state funeral. A 142-strong detail of sailors hauls the heavy lead-lined coffin of the Former Naval Person on a gun carriage, flanked by Royal Air Force personnel and Guardsmen in this rare colour image of the occasion from the photographic archive of the Imperial War Museum. For three days the wartime


THE date: Saturday January 30, 1965.


premier’s body had lain in state in Westminster Hall; more than 320,000 people filed past it to pay their last respects.


Sir Winston’s health had been failing for several years; a frail figure had defiantly given his trademark V for victory sign at the window of his London home as crowds gathered to celebrate his 90th birthday in November 1964.


By January 1965, the spark of life was almost extinguished. On the tenth he suffered a stroke and spent the remaining 14 days of his life in a coma. Prayers were offered. Harold Wilson and the Archbishop of Canterbury cancelled public engagements. For several days Britain was in limbo. The news brought the country to a standstill. But it was not unexpected. Shortly after ascending the throne, the young Queen made it clear that when Churchill died he was to receive a funeral “on a scale befitting his position in history”. What followed were a dozen years of planning – the last draft of the elaborate arrangements was completed just two months before Sir Winston died – for an operation unofficially codenamed Operation Hope Not.


And so when the inevitable but unwanted day of the funeral finally came, everything was arranged to the minute. Ten monarchs and heads of state and representatives from more than 100 nations attended proceedings which reached their


photographic


climax at St Paul’s Cathedral, Chief of Defence Staff and former First Sea Lord Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten was among the pallbearers. Three thousand mourners filled St Paul’s. Millions more watched proceedings on television; the BBC had 40 cameras covering the progress of the cortège, the service, the launch carrying the coffin the short distance up the Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier and transfer to train from Waterloo for burial in Oxfordshire. We could – and believe some people have done so – devote a book or two to the wartime premier, or even his leadership of the Royal Navy in two global conflagrations. Churchill’s Naval record is patchy. He advocated risky campaigns – the Dardanelles and Norway – which proved to be disastrous, both for the Navy and the nation.


But what was never in doubt was his passion for the Senior Service, “Britain’s sure shield”. He helped drag the Admiralty into the 20th Century, nurtured the fledgling naval air arm (learning to fly in the process), advocated the 15in gun and oil over coal as the fuel of choice for the Fleet. A generation later, when appointed First Lord of the Admiralty – the political figure responsible for the Navy – for the second time the legendary signal ‘Winston is back’ flashed around the Fleet.


He found the Senior Service in 1939 to be “the finest tempered instrument of naval war in the world”. In turn, Navy News’ editor of the


day, Lt H R Berridge, eulogised that the Royal Navy had as much trust in its former leader as he had in it. The Fleet would, he said, “always remember him. He takes his place with all the other naval heroes – Nelson, Blake, Collingwood, Drake, Rodney, and so many others.” ■ THIS photograph (RAF-T 5119) – and 9,999,999 others from a century of war and peace – can be viewed or purchased at www. iwmcollections.org.uk, by emailing photos@IWM.org.uk, or by phoning 0207 416 5333.


Facts and figures


Battle Honours


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44