Royal Navy

NORTH-ATLANTIC

Here is HMS Snowberry in her role as a submarine chaser and convoy escort to see in 1942.
This small corvettes of the Flower-class, original built as whale hunters, where very sea able ships,
but also much uneasy in the waves of the Atlantic. However here the weather is calm and in the range of England...

Snowberry

...there is a Wellington bomber to protect the ships additional against submarine attacks.
(Please, see also Coastal Command)

The HMS AUBRETIA is a Flower class corvette,which was involved in this appearance
with applying of U-11O at the 3rd of March 1941( "Ultra"break-trought ).

Another type of convoy escorts were the old US destroyers, which were delivered to the Royal Navy
by the lend-lease agreement. HMS Broadway is such a "Fourstacker", which is shown here in its western-approach
camouflage scheme, running with high speed for dropping depth charges. The so called WA-scheme (Please, see also Snowberry)
was developed in 1941 specially for the waters west of Ireland and was used up to destroyer size very frequently.

Broadway

The Hunt-class destroyer HMS Middleton has located a German submarine and reported the position to
a Handley Page Halifax of the Coastal Command. Together Royal Navy and Coastal Command try to defeat
the German submarine in teamwork (Please, see also Coastal Command).

16.03.1941: The German submarine U-99 has surfaced after it was damaged by depth charges and is steered on by HMS Walker.
The sub attacked, together with others, the convoy HX112.The destroyers of this convoy succeeded in sinking
the most successful U-Boats of the German Navy: U-47,U-100 and U-99. Only few of the crews survived this.
The luckiest crew was that of U-99 with the captain, Commander Kretschmer which including him,
was saved by HMS Walker(Commander Macintyre). HMS Walker is a V & W-class destroyer, built in 1917
and like her numerous sister ships, as a veteran, mainly used for submarine hunting and convoy-escort.

This is HMS Glowworm laying along sides of a Z-type standard tanker due to oiling in early 1940.
At the 08.04.1940, during the Norwegian-campaign, she was unexpectedly faced with the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper,
while she tried to close up to her own ships. In the instantly starting unequal fight
the smaller destroyer must be defeated, but acted very brave until her end. Before sinking, HMS Glowworm
rammed the Hipper, from 150 men only 40 could be saved by the cruiser.

Glohworm