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HMS Dianella

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HMS Dianella (corvette). 25 January 1943, Royal Albert Dock. A14029.jpg
25 January 1943, Royal Albert Dock
History
RN EnsignUnited Kingdom
NameHMS Dianella
Ordered25 July 1939
BuilderJohn Lewis & Sons Ltd, Torry, Aberdeen
Laid down8 Dec 1939
Launched3 December 1940
Commissioned6 January 1941
Decommissionedmid-1945
IdentificationPennant number: K07
FateSold for scrap 1947
General characteristics
Class and typeFlower-class corvette
Displacement925 long tons
Length205 ft (62 m) o/a
Beam33 ft (10 m)
Draught11 ft 6 in (3.51 m)
Propulsion
  • 1 × 4-cycle triple-expansion reciprocating steam engine
  • 2 × fire tube Scotch boilers
  • Single shaft
  • 2,750 ihp (2,050 kW)
Speed16 kn (30 km/h)
Range3,500 nmi (6,500 km) at 12 kn (22 km/h)
Complement85
Sensors and
processing systems
  • 1 × SW1C or 2C radar
  • 1 × Type 123A or Type 127DV sonar
Armament
Service record
Operations:

HMS Dianella was a Flower-class corvette of the Royal Navy. She served during the Second World War.

The Flower-class corvettes were designed as a cheap and simple multi-role warship capable of being built in the multitude of small civilian shipyards not usually accustomed to building to naval standards. John Lewis, & Sons Ltd, Torry, Aberdeen was such a company that constructed coasters, drifters and cargo vessels.[1] During the Second World War, John Lewis & Sons built more than thirty vessels, including small warships. minesweeper trawlers and patrol vessels; six of these were Flower-class corvettes.[2]

She had been launched with the name HMS Daffodil and, unusually, this was changed to HMS Dianella on 26 October 1940 prior to commissioning.

She sailed from Aberdeen in January 1941 for Tobermory, to work-up before being sent to join a group on ocean escort of convoys. After a few weeks working-up the ship and the crew, Admiral Stephenson would the personally inspect each escort and put the Captain and crew through a stiff test before releasing them for operational service.[3] Anti-submarine trial exercises were conducted on 11 February.

Discover more about HMS Dianella related topics

Flower-class corvette

Flower-class corvette

The Flower-class corvette was a British class of 294 corvettes used during World War II by the Allied navies particularly as anti-submarine convoy escorts in the Battle of the Atlantic. Royal Navy ships of this class were named after flowers.

Corvette

Corvette

A corvette is a small warship. It is traditionally the smallest class of vessel considered to be a proper warship. The warship class above the corvette is that of the frigate, while the class below was historically that of the sloop-of-war.

Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service.

World War II

World War II

World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. Many participants threw their economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind this total war, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war.

Torry

Torry

Torry is an area within the city of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Aberdeen

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas, and has a 2020 population estimate of 198,590 for the city of Aberdeen, and 227,560 for the local council area making it the United Kingdom's 39th most populous built-up area. The city is 93 mi (150 km) northeast of Edinburgh and 398 mi (641 km) north of London, and is the northernmost major city in the United Kingdom. Aberdeen has a long, sandy coastline and features an oceanic climate, with cool summers and mild, rainy winters.

Tobermory, Mull

Tobermory, Mull

Tobermory is the capital of, and until 1973 the only burgh on, the Isle of Mull in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. It is located on the east coast of Mishnish, the most northerly part of the island, near the northern entrance of the Sound of Mull. The village was founded as a fishing port in 1788; its layout was based on the designs of Dumfriesshire engineer Thomas Telford. It has a current population of about 1,000.

Gilbert Stephenson

Gilbert Stephenson

Vice Admiral Sir Gilbert Owen Stephenson, was a senior officer in the Royal Navy, a pioneer of anti-submarine techniques in the First World War, and most famous as an important naval training commandant during the Second World War.

Service history

Battle of the Atlantic

From February until July 1941 she was escorting convoys to and from Liverpool to Gibraltar and Freetown. A major action with other groups was between 19 July – 1 August 1941 with Convoy ON 69 defending 26 merchant ships from 8 U-boats and 2 Italian submarines.

In mid-1941 Western Approaches Command had formed 8 escort groups.[4] The 1st Escort Group consisted of six destroyers and four Flower-class corvettes.[5]

In February and March 1942 the original eight escort groups were reorganized into the Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF).

Corvettes of B7 Group moored in Londonderry. Alisma, Dianella, Sunflower & Kingcup. The white areas are where the official censor has painted out security sensitive material
Corvettes of B7 Group moored in Londonderry. Alisma, Dianella, Sunflower & Kingcup. The white areas are where the official censor has painted out security sensitive material

Dianella was part of Escort Group B7, one of seven such British naval groups which served with the Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF). It provided convoy protection in the most dangerous midsection of the North Atlantic route.[6] B7's first convoys, in the spring of 1942, were uneventful.

Arctic convoy

In June 1942 she sailed with the ill-fated Convoy PQ 17 which departed from Reykjavik, Iceland bound for northern Russia. The ship came under sustained attack from U-boats and aircraft first contact with the enemy occurred on 1 July 1942. The admiralty had knowledge of German heavy surface units had been deployed from Trondheim (battleship Tirpitz, heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper) and Narvik (pocket battleships Lützow, Admiral Scheer) but had not been detected at sea. Close cover force, which was no match for the German heavy ships, was ordered to withdraw to the west and the convoy was ordered to scatter and proceed individually to Russian ports for fear of imminent attack. During a week of daylight U-boat and aircraft attacks, convoy PQ 17 lost 24 of its 35 merchant ships.[7]

Battle of the Mediterranean

On her return Daniella was assigned, with the Arctic corvettes Lotus, Poppy and Starwort, to escort duties in the Mediterranean, initially in support of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa between 8–16 November 1942. These four corvettes served together for the remainder of the war at sea. In July 1943 the escort group were supporting Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, and this continued until the end of October.

Arctic convoys

The weather was the enemy
The weather was the enemy

From November 1943 until March 1944 would probably be the most challenging war service for the Daniella - the Arctic in winter.

Loch Ewe was used as an assembly point for the Arctic Convoys during the war. Ships from the British, American and other ports gathered here before sailing to Murmansk from September 1942 following the disaster of Convoy PQ 17 in order to confuse German intelligence. Kola Bay or Murmansk Fjord is a 57-km-long fjord of the Barents Sea; the ports of Murmansk and Polyarny, the main base of Russia's Northern Fleet, flank the sides of the bay.

Normandy 1944

In April she was transferred to the English Channel with Escort Group 105 in support of Operation Neptune, the landing operations in Normandy. Between 4 and 6 June 1944 Escort Group 105 (HMS Wanderer, HMS Tavy, HMS Dianella and HMS Geranium) and the Royal Canadian Navy corvettes Summerside, Woodstock and Regina escorted Convoy EBM2, composed of 30 American supply ships and five others, from the Clyde to the Western Task Force unloading area off Omaha Beach, arriving on D-day plus one.

The North Atlantic

From September 1944 until June 1945 Dianella escorted fourteen convoys between Liverpool and New York.

Summary

In the course of the war HMS Dianella had escorted seventy two convoys from the North Cape, the northernmost point of Europe (71°10′21″N) to Freetown on the west coast of Africa (8°29′4″N) and west to New York (73°56′38″W).

Discover more about Service history related topics

Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in North West England. With a population of 486,100 in 2021, it is located within the county of Merseyside and is the principal city of the wider Liverpool City Region. Its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.24 million.

Gibraltar

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory and city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. It has an area of 6.7 km2 (2.6 sq mi) and is bordered to the north by Spain. The landscape is dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar, at the foot of which is a densely populated town area, home to over 32,000 people, primarily Gibraltarians.

Freetown

Freetown

Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and political centre, as it is the seat of the Government of Sierra Leone. The population of Freetown was 1,055,964 at the 2015 census.

Italian submarines of World War II

Italian submarines of World War II

The Italian submarine fleet of World War II was the largest in the world at the time, with 116 submarines. It saw action during the Second World War, serving mainly in the Mediterranean. During the conflict 88 submarines, some two-thirds of its total strength, were lost.

Mid-Ocean Escort Force

Mid-Ocean Escort Force

Mid-Ocean Escort Force (MOEF) referred to the organisation of anti-submarine escorts for World War II trade convoys between Canada and Newfoundland, and the British Isles. The allocation of United States, British, and Canadian escorts to these convoys reflected preferences of the United States upon their declaration of war, and the organisation persisted through the winter of 1942–43 despite withdrawal of United States ships from the escort groups. By the summer of 1943, United States Atlantic escorts were focused on the faster CU convoys and the UG convoys between Chesapeake Bay and the Mediterranean Sea; and only British and Canadian escorts remained on the HX, SC and ON convoys.

Escort Group B7

Escort Group B7

Escort Group B7 was a British formation of the Royal Navy which saw action during the Second World War; principally in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Convoy PQ 17

Convoy PQ 17

PQ 17 was the code name for an Allied Arctic convoy during the Second World War. On 27 June 1942, the ships sailed from Hvalfjörður, Iceland, for the port of Arkhangelsk in the Soviet Union. The convoy was located by German forces on 1 July, after which it was shadowed continuously and attacked. The First Sea Lord Admiral Dudley Pound, acting on information that German surface units, including the German battleship Tirpitz, were moving to intercept, ordered the covering force built around the Allied battleships HMS Duke of York and the USS Washington away from the convoy and told the convoy to scatter. Because of vacillation by Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the Tirpitz raid never materialised. The convoy was the first large joint Anglo-American naval operation under British command; in Churchill's view this encouraged a more careful approach to fleet movements.

Trondheim

Trondheim

Trondheim, historically Kaupangen, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. As of 2020, it had a population of 205,332, was the third most populous municipality in Norway, and was the fourth largest urban area. Trondheim lies on the south shore of Trondheim Fjord at the mouth of the River Nidelva. Among the major technology-oriented institutions headquartered in Trondheim are the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the Foundation for Scientific and Industrial Research (SINTEF), and St. Olavs University Hospital.

German cruiser Admiral Hipper

German cruiser Admiral Hipper

Admiral Hipper was the lead ship of the Admiral Hipper class of heavy cruisers which served with Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. The ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1935 and launched February 1937; Admiral Hipper entered service shortly before the outbreak of war, in April 1939. The ship was named after Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of the German battlecruiser squadron during the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and later commander-in-chief of the German High Seas Fleet. She was armed with a main battery of eight 20.3 cm (8.0 in) guns and, although nominally under the 10,000-long-ton (10,000 t) limit set by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, actually displaced over 16,000 long tons (16,000 t).

Operation Torch

Operation Torch

Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to engage in the fight against Nazi Germany on a limited scale. It was the first mass involvement of US troops in the European–North African Theatre, and saw the first major airborne assault carried out by the United States.

Convoy JW 54B

Convoy JW 54B

Convoy JW 54B was an Arctic convoy sent from Great Britain by the Western Allies to aid the Soviet Union during World War II. It sailed in late November 1943, reaching the Soviet northern ports at the end of the month. All ships arrived safely.

Arkhangelsk

Arkhangelsk

Arkhangelsk, also known in English as Archangel and Archangelsk, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina near its mouth into the White Sea. The city spreads for over 40 kilometres (25 mi) along the banks of the river and numerous islands of its delta. Arkhangelsk was the chief seaport of medieval and early modern Russia until 1703, when it was replaced by the newly-founded Saint Petersburg.

Fate

She was sold to J. Lee in early 1947, and arrived for scrapping at Portaferry, Northern Ireland, on 24 June 1947.

Source: "HMS Dianella", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2022, December 19th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dianella.

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Further Reading

HMS Loch Insh (K433)

HMS Bluebell (K80)

Convoy PQ 13

HMS Bryony (K192)

HMS Britomart (J22)

HMS Mahratta (G23)

SS Empire Baffin

Arctic naval operations of World War II

HMS Walker (D27)

HMS Whitehall

Convoy QP 14

HMS Alisma (K185)

HMS Sunflower (K41)
References
  1. ^ "Aberdeen Built Ships".
  2. ^ HMS Cyclamen (K83), HMS Dianella (K07), HMS Dahlia (K59), HMS Myosotis (K65), HMS Narcissus (K74), HMS Sundew (K57)
  3. ^ "The Terror of Tobermory".
  4. ^ Elliott 1977, p. 59.
  5. ^ HMS Alisma (K185), HMS Dianella (K07), HMS Kingcup (K33) & HMS Sunflower (K41)
  6. ^ Helgason, Guðmundur. "HMS Alisma (K 185)". Uboat.net.
  7. ^ "HMS Dianella (K 07) of the Royal Navy - British Corvette of the Flower class - Allied Warships of WWII - uboat.net". uboat.net.
Sources
  • Elliott, Peter (1977). Allied Escort Ships of World War II. ISBN 0-356-08401-9.
  • Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475.
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