12 NAVY NEWS, MAY 2010

648

Picture: LA(Phot) Si Ethell, FRPU North

Turbo-

boosted Turbs

A

BOUT to emerge from an overhaul following her exertions in 2009, hunter-killer HMS Turbulent is gearing up for her fi nal year or so of a career spanning three decades.

patrol on behalf of her nation last year,

Twice ‘Turbs’ was sent out on interspersed with a

couple of port visits (Lisbon and Bergen).

Since then the engineers,

electricians and boffins have been swarming over the T-class boat in her home in Devonport, upgrading and overhauling her systems.

And while they were busy, so too her ship’s company who’ve spent a lot of time on simulators, learning to use the new kit which was being installed in the boat (such as the computer chart system WECDIS),

as well as

keeping old skills ‘ticking over’. There’s also been fire-fighting and damage-control training, some leadership activities with the Royal Marines (courtesy of a “hoofing” visit to the assault course at CTCRM in Lympstone), and enough adventurous training and sport to make Turbulent the fittest Devonport unit (in the words of her CO Cdr Ryan Ramsey). Time in base port has

allowed the deeps to catch up with their affiliates: the people of Warrington, the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards, Oxford URNU, and Sea Cadet units TS Obdurate and Turbulent. The boat’s sponsor, Lady Cassidi, who launched the second of the nation’s Trafalgar- class boats back in 1982, attended ceremonial divisions as part of the boat’s rededication ceremony in January. She also presented the ‘man of the boat’

trophy to the

submariner who contributed most to life on board in the past 12 months: CPO(WEA) ‘Dutchy’ Holland.

Fund-raising activities have been focused on the Children’s

Hospice South-West which runs homes in Bristol and Barnstaple and is building a third near St Austell at a cost of £5m. Fans of Plymouth Raiders, the city’s basketball team, donated £340 to the cause when Turbulent rattled tins and buckets at a home game, while this month the submariners will be sponsored when they hit the city’s streets for the half- marathon. As for Turbulent herself, once the maintenance ends this summer she’ll conduct trials before Operational Sea Training and ultimately deployment towards the tail end of the year. The present Turbulent – due to decommission in 2011 – is the fifth warship to carry the name; all but one of her predecessors met an unfortunate end. The first Turbulent was a brig captured by the Danes in 1808. Numbers two and four were both lost in action. Turbulent No.2, a Talisman-class destroyer, was sunk just three weeks into her active service, blown apart by the German battleship Westfalen in the night action at Jutland. The fourth Turbulent is undoubtedly the most famous. In a career lasting only a year, she dispatched some 90,000 tons of enemy shipping in the Med under the command of the legendary Cdr ‘Tubby’ Linton. She was depth-charged on more than 250 occasions, but it’s thought a mine finally destroyed her off Sardinia. Nothing was ever heard of Turbulent after March 11 1943; her wreck has never been found. As for number three, she was one of more than 60 ships built by the Admiralty to meet the challenges imposed by the Great War. She wasn’t launched until six months after the war’s end

Jutland ......................... 1916 Mediterranean ............. 1942

Class: Trafalgar-class Fleet submarine

Laid down: May 8 1980 Launched: December 1 1982

Pennant number: S87

Motto: absit nomen – May

turbulence be absent Builder: Vickers, Barrow-in- Furness

Commissioned: April 28 1984

Displacement: 4,740 tons (surfaced), 5,200 tons (submerged) Length: 280ft (85m) Beam: 32ft (10m) Draught: 31ft (9.5m) Speed: c.32 knots

Complement: 130

Propulsion: 1 x Rolls Royce PWR nuclear reactor; 2 x GEC turbines; 2 x WH Allen turbo generators; 2 x Paxman diesel alternators Armament: Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles; Spearfish torpedoes, Sub Harpoon anti-ship missiles fired from five torpedo tubes

and was paid off in the mid-30s as part of a deal which saw RMS Majestic converted into HMS Caledonia.

HEROES OF THE ROYAL NAVY No. 73 – Capt Frederic John Walker DSO

THIS is the moment of the kill.

Late afternoon, Saturday February 19 1944, some 700 miles west of Land’s End.

more than ten hours by some 200

Wasserbomben.

the First Lord of the Admiralty, A V Alexander.

The men of HMS Starling carry out ‘Operation Plaster’, unleashing a succession of depth charges. The quarry is U264, pounded for

Inside the submarine water sloshed around the crew’s ankles. Equipment broke away from her pressure hull. A fire broke out in the engine room. Her commander, Kapitänleutnant Hartwig Looks, gave the only order he could: surface. His action saved the lives of all 52 men on board. They scrambled out of their crippled boat and into the Atlantic. The Matrosen – matelots – found two British warships circling U264: Starling and Woodpecker, two of the five vessels in the 2nd Support Group.

2SG were U-boat killers par excellence. The force began 1944 with seven kills to their name. But the patrol which began in Liverpool on January 29 – to the tinny sound of A-Hunting We Will Go from Starling’s loudspeakers – was U-boat destruction at its apotheosis. In a three-week killing spree six boats fell victim to the depth charges of His Majesty’s Ships Starling, Magpie, Wild Goose, Woodpecker and Kite:

January 31: U592

February 9: U762, U734, U238 February 11: U424 February 19: U264

photographic

With the exception of U264, every boat went down with all hands. Seven days after the final kill, the ships – minus Woodpecker, lost after U764 blew her stern off – sailed up the Mersey in line formation, where they were welcomed by thousands of people, two bands, cheering Wrens, Admiral Max Horton and

greatest cruises, the greatest cruise perhaps, ever undertaken in this war by an escort group”. The architect of this triumph was one Capt Frederic John ‘Johnny’ Walker (pictured below), a man who destroyed more U-boats than any other – at least 14, perhaps 20. Walker had spent much of the

inter-war years specialising in anti- submarine warfare.

But it was late 1941 before the Admiralty saw fit to allow the then 45-year-old to put his knowledge into practice.

December of that year escorting convoy HG76 from Gibraltar to the UK.

Walker’s aggressive tactics, among them U567 commanded by ace Kapitänleutnant Engelbert Endraß. It was the formation of the 2nd Support Group in the summer of 1943 which cemented Walker’s reputation, however. Two factors were key: the creation

of dedicated hunting groups, rather than U-boat escorts, and what Walker called the ‘creeping’ attack. One ship would direct another in for the kill, dropping a succession of depth charges at nine-second intervals. The method gave the foe no warning – and no escape. By the spring of 1944, this was

Four U-boats fell victim to He did so with aplomb in The latter hailed “one of the

at the former. He hated the press accolades, the tag of hero. “Please don’t call me the ‘ace U-boat killer’,” he pleaded during one public engagement. “That formidable character is a thousand British Jack Tars.” But after poring over German

records and interviewing the former foe, the Admiralty historians declared five years later: “Capt Walker, more than any other, won the Battle of the Atlantic.

“No tribute could be too high for the work he carried out.” ■ THESE photographs (A 21992 and A 21312) – 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.

a proven method of U-boat killing. It was to Walker that the Allies turned to safeguard the Normandy invasion fleet from U-boat attack. The German submarines did not penetrate his shield.

The one victim of Normandy, however, was Walker. He died from a stroke on July 7 1944 caused by months of overwork and exhaustion.

A very public funeral in Liverpool and burial at sea followed, although Walker would probably have baulked

Facts and figures

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