HMS
Barham (pennant numberIn the modern Royal Navy, and other navies of Europe and the Commonwealth, ships are identified by pennant numbers...
04) was a Queen Elizabeth-class
The Queen Elizabeth-class battleships were a class of five super-dreadnoughts of the Royal Navy. The lead ship was named in honour of Elizabeth I of England...
battleshipA battleship is a large, heavily armored warship with a main battery consisting of the largest caliber of guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers or destroyers. There are currently no battleships in service....
of the
Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
named after Admiral
Charles Middleton, 1st Baron BarhamCharles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham PC was a British naval officer and politician.Middleton was born in Leith, Midlothian, Scotland, the son of Robert Middleton, a customs collector of Bo'ness, Linlithgowshire, and Helen, daughter of Charles Dundas.-Naval career:Middleton entered the Royal Navy in...
, built at the John Brown shipyards in
ClydebankClydebank is a town in West Dunbartonshire, in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. Situated on the north bank of the River Clyde, Clydebank borders Dumbarton, the town with which it was combined to form West Dunbartonshire, as well as the town of Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire, and the Yoker and...
,
ScotlandScotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, and launched in 1914.
Service
In
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, she collided with her sister-ship in 1915. In 1916, she was Admiral
Hugh Evan-ThomasVice Admiral Sir Hugh Evan-Thomas GCB, KCMG, MVO was a British Royal Navy officer.During World War I he commanded the 5th Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet, flying his flag in HMS Barham, and fought at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916.-Background:Evan-Thomas' family came from...
's flagship of the
5th Battle SquadronThe British 5th Battle Squadron was a squadron consisting of Battleships. The 5th Battle Squadron was initially part of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet. During World War I the Home Fleet was renamed the Grand Fleet.- August 1914 :...
temporarily attached to Admiral
David BeattyAdmiral of the Fleet David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO was an admiral in the Royal Navy. Achieving career success at an early age, he commanded the British battlecruisers at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, a tactically indecisive engagement after which his aggressive approach was...
's Battlecruiser Fleet at the
Battle of JutlandThe Battle of Jutland ; informally known by participants as Der Tag , was the largest naval battle of World War I, and the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war...
, where she received five hits and fired 337 shells.
During the 1926 general strike she and were sent to the
River MerseyThe River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....
to land food supplies. She was less extensively modified between the wars than her sister ships. Among her captains was
Percy NobleAdmiral Sir Percy Lockhart Harnam Noble, GBE, KCB, CVO was a British Naval Officer who rose to the rank of Admiral and was the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy’s Western Approaches Command for two crucial years during the Second World War.Born on 16 January 1880, he joined the Royal Navy on 15...
.
In
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
she operated in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. She was damaged by a German submarine
torpedoThe modern torpedo is a self-propelled explosive projectile weapon, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater toward a target, and designed to detonate on contact or in proximity to a target...
in December 1939, while at sea north of the British Isles.
In September 1940, she took part in Operation Menace, a British naval attack on
DakarDakar is the capital city of Senegal, located on the Cape Verde Peninsula, on the country's Atlantic coast. It is Senegal's largest city. Its position, on the western edge of Africa , is an advantageous departure point for trans-Atlantic and European trade; this fact aided its growth into a major...
,
SenegalSenegal , officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south, and it also encircles The Gambia on its three sides,...
prior to a landing by the Free French. Barham
engaged the French battleship . On 25 September, the Richelieu
hit Barham
with a 380 mm shell. The French submarine Bévéziers
The Bévéziers was a 1500-tonne submarine of the French navy named in honour of the Bataille de Bévéziers.The Bévéziers was based in the Caraibes. At the beginning of the Second World War she sailed to England before joining French West Africa...
hit the battleship with a torpedo the same day. Operation Menace was abandoned. Barham
then joined Force HForce H was a British naval task force during World War II. It was formed in 1940 to replace French naval power in the western Mediterranean that had been removed by the French armistice with Nazi Germany....
at GibraltarGibraltar is a self-governing British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula and Europe at the entrance of the Mediterranean overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. The territory covers and shares a land border with Spain to the north...
, taking part in several Malta ConvoysThe Malta Convoys were a series of Allied supply convoys to sustain the besieged island of Malta during the Mediterranean Theatre of World War II...
.
At the end of 1940, Barham
joined the Mediterranean Fleet, taking part in the Battle of Cape MatapanThe Battle of Cape Matapan was a World War II naval battle fought from March 27 to March 29, 1941. The cape is on the southwest coast of Greece's Peloponnesian peninsula...
in March 1941 and receiving bomb damage off Crete in May.
On 21 April, 1941, under the command of Admiral CunninghamAdmiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, KT, GCB, OM, DSO , older brother of General Sir Alan Cunningham, was a British admiral of the Second World War....
, Barham
along with battleships Warspite
and Valiant
HMS Valiant was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the Royal Navy. She was laid down at the Fairfield shipyards, Govan on 31 January 1913 and launched on 4 November 1914. She was completed in February 1916.- World War I :...
as well as the cruiser Gloucester
and various destroyers, attacked TripoliTripoli is the largest and capital city of Libya.Tripoli has a population of 1.69 million...
harbour.
Sinking
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
Unterseeboot 331 was a Type VII-C U-boat of the German Kriegsmarine in World War II. She was commissioned on 31 March 1941 by Hans-Dietrich von Tiesenhausen.-Career:...
, commanded by Lieutenant
Hans-Dietrich von TiesenhausenCommander Hans-Dietrich Freiherr von Tiesenhausen was a Baltic German Kapitänleutnant with the Kriegsmarine during World War II. He sailed with the U 23 and U 331...
. The torpedoes were fired from a range of only 750 yards providing no time for evasive action, and struck so closely together as to throw up a single massive water column. As she rolled over to port, her magazines exploded and the ship quickly sank with the loss of over two thirds of her crew.
Aftermath
The British Admiralty was immediately notified of the sinking on 25 November 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 27 January 1942 and explained the rationale for withholding the news.
At a seance in Portsmouth in late November 1941, Helen DuncanHelen Duncan was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735.-Early life:...
, a Spiritualist medium from Callander, ScotlandCallander is a burgh in the region of Stirling, Scotland, on the River Teith. The town is located in the former County of Perthshire, and is a popular tourist stop to and from the Highlands....
, announced that she had contacted a dead sailor who had told her that his ship, HMS Barham
, had recently been sunk. Duncan was not arrested in the aftermath of the Barham
incident, but in 1944 was arrested during a seance and convicted under the Witchcraft Act 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 SaucersEarth vs. the Flying Saucers is an American black and white science fiction film, directed by Fred F. Sears and was released in 1956. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It was ostensibly suggested by the non-fiction work Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald Keyhoe...
(where it was shown as an American destroyerIn 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, short-range but powerful attackers .Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels without the endurance...
), in the film Task ForceTask Force is a military film made in Black and White and Color about the development of U.S. aircraft carriers from the USS Langley to the USS Franklin . The film stars Gary Cooper, Jane Wyatt, Walter Brennan, Wayne Morris, Julie London, and Jack Holt.-Plot:Depicted as a 1917 graduate of the...
(as a Japanese carrier), and in The Battle of Okinawa (film)
(where it stands in for the IJN Yamato).
A subsequent Royal Navy Court of Enquiry ascribed the ship's final magazine explosion to the detonation en masse of 4-inch anti-aircraft ammunition stored in wing passages adjacent to the main magazines, which would have detonated the contents of the main magazines. Experience of prolonged air attacks in earlier operations had shown that the stowage capacity of the AA magazines was inadequate, hence extra ammunition was shipped in any convenient void spaces.
External links