HMS Barham (1914)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Career

Ordered:
Laid down:	24 February 1913
Launched:	31 October 1914
Commissioned:	19 October 1915
Fate:	Sunk 25 November 1941
General characteristics (original configuration)
Displacement:	29,150t standard; 33,000t full load
Length:	643 ft 3 in (196 m)
Beam:	104 ft (31.7 m)
Draught:	33 ft (10 m)
Propulsion:	24 Babcock & Wilcox 3-drum boilers, 4 parsons geared turbines, 4 shafts
Speed:	25 kt (when commissioned)
Range:	8,600 nm at 12.5 kt
Complement:	1,124–1,184
Armament:	8-15 in (381 mm) (4 × 2), 14-6 in (152 mm), 2-12 pdr, 4-21 in (533 mm) TT
Armour:	6–13in (152–330 mm) midships belt, 2.5–5in (64–127 mm) deck, 13 in (330 mm)turret face, 11 in (279 mm) conning tower sides

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Barham.

1 Background
2 World War I
3 Between the wars
4 World War II
- 4.1 Sinking
- 4.2 Aftermath
5 External links

[edit] Background

HMS Barham was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the Royal Navy named after Admiral Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, built at the John Brown shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1914.

[edit] World War I

In World War I, she collided with her sister-ship Warspite in 1915. In 1916, she was Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas's flagship of the 5th Battle Squadron temporarily attached to Admiral David Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet at the battle of Jutland, where she received five hits and fired 337 shells.

During the 1926 general strike she and HMS Ramillies was sent to the River Mersey to land food supplies.

[edit] Between the wars

She was less extensively modified between the wars than her sisters. Among her captains was Percy Noble.

[edit] World War II

In World War II she operated in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. She was damaged by a German submarine torpedo in December 1939, while at sea north of the British Isles.

Barham in the Mediterranean

In September 1940, she took part in Operation Menace, a British naval attack on Dakar, Senegal prior to a landing by the Free French. Barham engaged the French battleship Richelieu. On September 25, the Richelieu hit Barham with a 15 inch (381 mm) shell. The French submarine Bévéziers hit the battleship Resolution with a torpedo the same day. Operation Menace was abandoned. Barham then joined Force H at Gibraltar, taking part in several Malta Convoys.

At the end of 1940, Barham joined the Mediterranean Fleet, taking part in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and receiving bomb damage off Crete in May.

[edit] Sinking

HMS Barham explodes as her 15 inch magazine ignites, 25 November 1941

On 25 November 1941, while steaming to cover an attack on Italian convoys, Barham was hit by three torpedoes from the German submarine U-331, commanded by Lieutenant Hans-Dietrich von Tiesenhausen. As she rolled over to port, her magazines exploded and the ship quickly sank with the loss of over two thirds of her crew.

[edit] Aftermath

The British Admiralty was immediately notified of the sinking on November 25, 1941. However, within a few hours they also learned that the German High Command did not know the Barham had been sunk.

Realizing an opportunity to mislead the Germans, and to protect British morale, the Admiralty censored all news of Barham’s sinking and the loss of 861 British seamen.

After a delay of several weeks, the War Office decided to notify the next of kin of Barham’s dead, but they added a special request for secrecy. The notification letters included a warning not to discuss the loss of the ship with anyone but close relatives, stating it was "most essential that information of the event which led to the loss of your husband's life should not find its way to the enemy until such time as it is announced officially..."

By late January 1942, the German High Command had realized Barham had been lost. The British Admiralty informed the press on January 27, 1942 and explained the rationale for withholding the news.

There is an interesting footnote to this story; At a seance in Portsmouth in late November 1941, Helen Duncan, a Spiritualist medium from Edinburgh, Scotland, announced that she had contacted a dead sailor who had told her that his ship, HMS Barham, had recently been sunk. Helen Duncan was not arrested in the aftermath of the Barham incident but later, when superstitious intelligence officers learned of the event, they feared that Duncan might reveal plans for the D-Day landings. She was convicted under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735 and sentenced to 9 months in prison.

Film of the sinking has been reused many times in documentaries and in at least one film, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (where it was shown as an American destroyer)