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HMCS Micmac (R10)
Encyclopedia
HMCS Micmac, pennants R10 and 214, was one of 27 Tribal class
Tribal class destroyer (1936)
The Tribal class, or Afridi class, were a class of destroyers built for the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Australian Navy that saw service in World War II...
destroyer
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. Destroyers, originally called torpedo-boat destroyers in 1892, evolved from...
s completed for the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
(RN), the Royal Australian Navy
Royal Australian Navy
The Royal Australian Navy is the naval branch of the Australian Defence Force. Following the Federation of Australia in 1901, the ships and resources of the separate colonial navies were integrated into a national force: the Commonwealth Naval Forces...
(RAN), and the Royal Canadian Navy
Royal Canadian Navy
The history of the Royal Canadian Navy goes back to 1910, when the naval force was created as the Naval Service of Canada and renamed a year later by King George V. The Royal Canadian Navy is one of the three environmental commands of the Canadian Forces...
(RCN) laid down before and during the Second World War. Constructed by Halifax Shipyards, she was the first of four built in Canada and one of eight commissioned into the RCN, where she spent her entire service life. Ordered in early 1941 she did not commission until late 1945, after the end of hostilities.
Micmac's construction was overlong, taking 57 months from the date of order to the date of commission. In comparison Micmac's Australian built sister, HMAS Warramunga
HMAS Warramunga (I44)
HMAS Warramunga was a Tribal class destroyer of the Royal Australian Navy . Built during World War II, the destroyer entered service in late 1942...
—ordered by the RAN in September 1939, laid down on 10 February 1940, launched on 7 February 1942, and commissioned on 23 November 1942—took but 29 months. The twenty British built Tribals built for the RN (16) and RCN (4) averaged 26 months from the date of order to the date of commission. Micmacs delay mainly was due to economic and political issues that permeated the entire Canadian Destroyer Project.
Economically, Canada's overall limited industrial capacity was a major factor.
Tribal hull construction
Strength of ships
The strength of ships is a topic of key interest to naval architects and shipbuilders. Ships which are built too strong are heavy, slow, and cost extra money to build and operate since they weigh more, whilst ships which are built too weakly suffer from minor hull damage and in some extreme cases...
required a high-strength specialty steel that was not made in Canada or available for purchase from the United States. Steel which Great Britain, overtaxed by the growing demands of a general European war, could not provide and that Canadian mills were slow to produce.
The hulls of low performance corvettes
Flower class corvette
The Flower-class corvette was a class of 267 corvettes used during World War II, specifically with the Allied navies as anti-submarine convoy escorts during the Battle of the Atlantic...
and frigates
River class frigate
The River class frigate was a class of 151 frigates launched between 1941 and 1944 for use as anti-submarine convoy escorts in the North Atlantic....
, designed to merchant ship standards and powered by triple expansion engines, could be built from the mild steel readily available from Canadian sources. However, high performance warships, like destroyers, require hulls built as light as practical to obtain the maximum speed possible from the available power plant whilst still carrying a useful armament. A strong yet light weight hull requires high-strength steel and such speciality steel
HSLA steel
High-strength low-alloy steel is a type of alloy steel that provides better mechanical properties or greater resistance to corrosion than carbon steel. HSLA steels vary from other steels in that they are not made to meet a specific chemical composition but rather to specific mechanical properties...
of the exact specification required for a Tribal hull simply was not to be had from North American sources when Micmac was ordered.
The propulsion plant required for a Tribal was also unavailable from Britain. And the Canadian order for Micmac's machinery was a first in class effort for the designated manufacturer. Turbine engines of the size and complexity required by the Tribals never before had been built in Canada. Further, at the time Micmac's engines were ordered, the primary contractor, John Inglis and Company
John Inglis and Company
John Inglis and Company was a Canadian firm which made weapons for the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth military forces during the World War II era, then became a major appliance company....
, was itself in considerable administrative difficulty arising from the increased demands of wartime procurement. The serious impact of this situation may be grasped when one considers that, despite taking an inordinate 32 months from laying down to launch, Micmac nonetheless lay alongside for another full year awaiting the delivery of her machinery before her fitting out could commence.
Even when all the requisite materials and technical facilities are readily available building a high performance warship is a complex undertaking that all too often strains the capabilities of experienced shipbuilders. And Canada had few such enterprises to begin with. As events proved, the shipyard selected for construction of the Tribals was both undersized and ill equipped for the task.
Seventy years later the City of Halifax
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...
remains distant from the major industrial centres of Canada and possesses but a modest population and an even more modest industrial capacity. In the 1940s the technical facilities and skilled labour force available to Halifax Shipyards were extremely limited, while other demands of the war effort competed for even the little that was available. Added to all these issues was the remarkable fact that Halifax Shipyards had never before constructed any ship that even approached the complexity of a modern destroyer. In fact, when it was given the order for Micmac, Halifax Shipyards had built hardly any ships at all, evidenced by Micmac's yard number: hull #12. In any case, the shipyard was already working at capacity handling repair work for the Atlantic convoy ships damaged in transit. That Halifax, between 1940 and 1945, was perhaps the busiest and most congested port in the world simply made a difficult situation impossible.
The other aspect involved both public and service politics.
It is significant that the selection of Halifax Shipyards over the infinitely better equipped, better staffed, and more experienced Vickers yards in Montreal, was made by Canada's Minister of Defence for Naval Services, Angus L. Macdonald. MacDonald was both a Nova Scotia native and a former Premier
Premier
Premier is a title for the head of government in some countries and states.-Examples by country:In many nations, "premier" is used interchangeably with "prime minister"...
of that province, an office he would re-occupy after the war's end.
Then, the selection of the extremely advanced Tribal design for domestic construction was specifically that of the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral P.W. Nelles
Percy W. Nelles
Percy Walker Nelles, CB was a flag officer in the Royal Canadian Navy and the Chief of the Naval Staff from 1934 to 1944. He oversaw the massive wartime expansion of the RCN and the transformation of Canada into a major player in the Battle of the Atlantic. During his tenure U-boats raided the...
. His choice seems to have been driven more by organizational than material considerations.
It must be recalled the RCN was only established in 1910 and then primarily as a ploy by Laurier's
Wilfrid Laurier
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, GCMG, PC, KC, baptized Henri-Charles-Wilfrid Laurier was the seventh Prime Minister of Canada from 11 July 1896 to 6 October 1911....
Liberal administration to avoid paying for British Dreadnoughts. Following World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
the RCN was progressively reduced until by 1922 its very survival as an independent service was placed at risk. This experience haunted the Naval Staff and it is unsurprising that many senior naval officers were determined to forestall any possible re-occurrence at the end of this war.
Nelles' evident design was to employ the funding opportunities afforded by the war to set up the post war RCN as a major, and permanent, part of Canada's defence strategy. Obtaining the necessary infrastructure to support a 'big ship' fleet and the technical know-how to do so in the vicinity of the Navy's home port of Halifax was crucial to that endeavour. That the construction of a modern destroyer required the very infrastructure desired could not have been absent from the deliberations of the Naval Staff.
Thus, it appeared to some, both in and out of the RCN, that while obtaining the means to build a destroyer was claimed vital for the war effort, actual construction of a destroyer evidently was somewhat less so.
Nevertheless, a destroyer eventually did emerge from the chaos of wartime construction and politics. After many difficulties, and the passage of much more time, Micmac finally commissioned on 18 September 1945, captained by Lieutenant Commander R.L. Hennessy, DSC
Distinguished Service Cross (United Kingdom)
The Distinguished Service Cross is the third level military decoration awarded to officers, and other ranks, of the British Armed Forces, Royal Fleet Auxiliary and British Merchant Navy and formerly also to officers of other Commonwealth countries.The DSC, which may be awarded posthumously, is...
, RCN. Although the war she was intended for had ended the previous May, Micmac was nonetheless the very first destroyer ever constructed in Canada. At an estimated cost of $8,500,000.00 CAD, roughly four times what it cost the RN to build a Tribal, she was also the single most expensive piece of military or naval equipment produced in Canada up to that time.
Commissioned into a rapidly shrinking navy and built for a form of naval war that could never again occur, Micmac was already obsolescent. In fact, the four Tribal destroyers belonging to the RN that had managed to survive World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
were themselves paid off to disposal at the war's end and all were scrapped by 1949. While Canada demobilized and dozens of other HMC Ships paid off into reserve or to disposal, Micmac's crew completed her workups and the ship entered into the routine existence of a peacetime navy with an horizon empty of any potential enemy.
In March 1947, Micmac received a new commanding officer, LCdr. J. C. Littler, RCN, (Cdr. from 1-7-47) and entered a yard period at HMC Dockyard Halifax to refit and upgrade her automatic weapons. Early in the morning of 16 July 1947, Micmac embarked a number of civilian contractors and proceeded to sea from Halifax to conduct full power trials off Sambro Head. Shortly after the trials completed, just before 13:00 hrs, HMCS Micmac was in collision with the Victory ship
Victory ship
The Victory ship was a type of cargo ship produced in large numbers by North American shipyards during World War II to replace shipping losses caused by German submarines...
SS Yarmouth County (ex Fort Astoria).
Although damage to the Yarmouth County was slight and none of her crew were injured, Micmac suffered 15 injured and five dead. Five more crewmen, together with a civilian dock worker, were also lost at sea and presumed dead. Micmac's upper works, forward of the bridge, were extensively damaged. 'A' mount together with its guns was completely destroyed. Moreover, she lost 40' of bow, her hull was badly deformed on the port side, and her keel was broken just under 'B' mount. So badly damaged was the vessel that initially she was considered a constructive total loss.
Notwithstanding her extensive damage, it was decided to take Micmac in hand for reconstruction as a Destroyer Escort
Destroyer escort
A destroyer escort is the classification for a smaller, lightly armed warship designed to be used to escort convoys of merchant marine ships, primarily of the United States Merchant Marine in World War II. It is employed primarily for anti-submarine warfare, but also provides some protection...
along with her six surviving sisters. After extensive, albeit temporary, repairs and partial conversion, Micmac recommissioned on 16 November 1949, LCdr. F. C. Frewer, RCN, commanding.
Micmac's repairs did not extend to her broken keel however. Thus her forward hull could not withstand the deck thrust produced by the recoil of the four 4"/45 HA guns planned for her DDE conversion. In consequence Micmac was instead fitted with a single Squid Mk IV
Squid (weapon)
Squid was a British World War II ship-mounted anti-submarine weapon. It consisted of a three-barrelled mortar which launched depth charges. It replaced the Hedgehog system, and was in turn replaced by the Limbo system....
triple barrel ASW mortar in the 'A' mount position and a single 40mm Bofors quad mount in the 'B' mount position. All her 4.7" guns were removed and a twin 4"/45 HA mount was shipped in Y position. This configuration gave Micmac a distinctive, if decidedly odd looking, profile.
On 30 November 1951 Micmac paid off to complete her conversion to the new DDE Tribal configuration. During this conversion her broken keel was finally made good and the forward armament returned to a conventional arrangement of four 4"/45 HA guns in two twin mounts. Micmac recommissioned as DDE 214 on 14 August 1953, Cdr. G. M. Wadds, RCN, commanding, but did not complete workups until September of the following year.
Because of her hull damage and prolonged refit Micmac was not considered for operations in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. As she was completed too late to see service in WWII and was unavailable for deployment at the time of the Korean War, Micmac has the distinction of being the only one of the 27 members of her class never to fire a shot in anger. Instead, her service years were spent as a training ship and sometime guard ship to the aircraft carrier .
In common with the rest of her class, Micmac did not age well. Originally designed to counter enlarged French, German, and Italian inter-war destroyer classes—therefore intended primarily for service in the relatively sheltered waters of the Mediterranean and North Seas—the remarkably heavy armament and very high speed of the Tribal class were purchased at the cost of extremely light hull construction. Their transverse strength design coupled with light hull plating lacked longitudinal stability and proved far too flexible and weak in North Atlantic service. In the absence of longitudinal strength members the increased strength of high tensile steel plate could not entirely compensate for a simple lack of mass. Consequently, ships of this class were particularly susceptible to structural damage when operating at speed. They also frequently suffered machinery casualties due to hull flexure in heavy seas.
Hull cracks, leaks, structural failures and turbine damage were a commonplace in Tribals even when they were new. Successive ShipAlts which addressed these issues with stiffener plates, frames, stringers, braces and even turbine blade redesign had limited success. Likely it was this consideration which influenced the RN's decision to dispose of their four surviving Tribal destroyers before 1950 even though none of those ships were then more than 12 years old.
As the years passed all of Canada's Tribals, both British and Canadian built, developed more frequent and more extensive structural defects necessitating increasingly long yard time for repairs and restrictions on their employment. Eventually, the growing cost of their maintenance and their demands on the Navy's restricted manpower no longer could be justified by their decreased capabilities. Thus, in late 1963 the RCN decided to retire the entire class. Micmac paid off to disposal in March 1964 along with her sisters. She was sold and in 1965 went to the ship breakers at Faslane, Scotland.
The original Micmac's ship's bell is installed on the mast of HMCS Acadia
CSTC HMCS Acadia
Cadet Summer Training Centre HMCS Acadia is a Royal Canadian Sea Cadets summer training centre in Cornwallis Park, Nova Scotia. In November 1945, HMCS Acadia was decommissioned from Royal Canadian Navy service and the vessel returned to civilian operations with the Canadian Hydrographic Service...
in Cornwallis, NS
Cornwallis Park, Nova Scotia
Cornwallis Park is the name of a Canadian rural community in Annapolis County, Nova Scotia.- History :The community is located on the western edge of Clementsport and immediately east of Deep Brook....
. HMCS Acadia
HMCS Acadia
Several Canadian naval units have been named HMCS Acadia.* CSS Acadia is Canada's most historic oceanographic and hydrographic survey and research vessel. She was commissioned into naval service as HMCS Acadia during both World War I and World War II, while serving with her civilian name before...
being the name of the gunnery training ship assigned to HMCS Cornwallis from 1944 to the end of hostilities. By strange coincidence immediately prior to her assignment to Cornwallis HMCS Acadia had been commanded by the same LCdr. Littler who captained Micmac at the time of her collision.
In the 1970s the name HMCS Micmac was allocated to the Sea Cadet
Royal Canadian Sea Cadets
Royal Canadian Sea Cadets is a Canadian national youth program sponsored by the Canadian Forces and the civilian Navy League of Canada. Administered by the Canadian Forces, the program is funded through the Department of National Defence with the civilian partner providing support in the local...
Summer Training Centre located on the lower section of CFB Shearwater
CFB Shearwater
Canadian Forces Base Shearwater , commonly referred to as CFB Shearwater, was a Canadian Forces Base located in Shearwater, Nova Scotia on the eastern shore of Halifax Harbour in the Halifax Regional Municipality....
. Also, of the five General Training divisions at HMCS Acadia, one is named Micmac. All of the RCN Tribal class ship's names have at various times been assigned to training divisions of officer cadets at the former Royal Roads Military College
Royal Roads Military College
Royal Roads Military College was a Canadian military college located in Hatley Park, Colwood, British Columbia near Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The facility is currently being used as the campus for Royal Roads University, a public university that offers applied and professional academic...
.
One Canadian Tribal class destroyer, the British built HMCS Haida, survives as a museum ship
Museum ship
A museum ship, or sometimes memorial ship, is a ship that has been preserved and converted into a museum open to the public, for educational or memorial purposes...
docked in Hamilton
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
.