USS Swallow (AM-65) 1944
USS Swallow (AM-65) was an Auk-class minesweeper built for the United States Navy during World War II. The ship was the second U.S. Navy ship named after the swallow. Swallow earned two battle stars for World War II service. She was sunk by a kamikaze aircraft off Okinawa on 22 April 1945. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 2 June 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Swallow_(AM-65)
Tasmanian debut: Hawkei vehicles touchdown in Hobart
07 MARCH 2024 By: Robert Dougherty
Australian Army soldiers Lance Corporal Selina Schlimmer and Corporal Ash Werner drive the lead Hawkei light protected mobility vehicle across the Tasman Bridge from Hobart Airport to Derwent Barracks on Friday, 23 February 2024. Photo: Corporal Michael Currie
Four new Australian Army Hawkei light protected mobility vehicles have touched down at Hobart Airport as the first Hawkei vehicles delivered to Tasmania.
A Royal Australian Air Force C-17A Globemaster III aircraft from RAAF Base Amberley in Queensland delivered the vehicles to Hobart Airport in Tasmania on Friday, 23 February.
The vehicles were welcomed by Australian Army personnel from 12th/40 Battalion, Royal Tasmania Regiment, and other 4th Brigade units. Officials at the event included Commander of 2nd Australian Division Major General David Thomae and Commander of 4th Brigade Brigadier Michelle Campbell.
The vehicles have since travelled across the Tasman Bridge to the Australian Army’s Derwent Barracks in Glenorchy.
The Hawkei protected mobility vehicle – designed and built in Bendigo, Victoria, by Thales Australia, a subsidiary of the French defence company Thales Group – provides survivability, mobility, useability, payload, sustainability, and communications for the Australian Defence Force.
HMS Orion was a Leander-class light cruiser which served with distinction in the Royal Navy during World War II. She received 13 battle honours, a record only exceeded by HMS Warspite and matched by two others.
Orion was built by Devonport Dockyard (Plymouth, U.K), Vickers-Armstrong (Newcastle-on-Tyne, UK).
Orion was commissioned on 18 January 1934, for service with the Home Fleet but she was transferred to the America and West Indies Station, based at the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island, in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, in 1937 where she was with the 8th Cruiser Squadron. She arrived at Bermuda on the 3rd of September, 1937. Around 19:15 on the 21st of September, while exercising off Bermuda, Orion was ordered, in response to a request from the United States Consul for assistance, to make its way towards the position of the sail training ship USS Annapolis, four hundred miles from Bermuda at 35 degrees North and 54 degrees West. Cadet Robert Hugh Quinn, aboard Annapolis, required an immediate operation for appendicitis and the 7 knot speed of Annapolis would not enable it to reach Bermuda in time. The two ships were in sight of each other by 0858 on the 22nd of September. After Captain Hines of the Annapolis came aboard to meet with the captain of Orion, HRG Kinahan, Orion set off for Bermuda by 1038 with the American cadet, entering through the Narrows channel at night and arriving at the dockyard at 0246 on the 23rd of September, from where Quinn was delivered to the Royal Naval Hospital. On the 27th of October, 1937, the Flag of the America and West Indies Station was transferred to Orion when HMS York was sent to Trinidad due to civil unrest there, leaving the Commander-in-Chief at Admiralty House, Bermuda. Orion remained temporary flagship until HMS York returned on the 21st of November, 1937. On the 15th of November, the ocean liner MV Reina del Pacifico, which operated between Liverpool and Valparaíso, Chile, via Bermuda, the West Indies and the Panama Canal, stopped at Bermuda on its way to Chile with the body of former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald who had died aboard on the 9 November. MacDonald’s body was transferred to the navy for return to Plymouth. All of the cruisers of the station were away from Bermuda at that moment except for Orion and HMS Apollo. As Apollo was undergoing a refit at the dockyard, it would have fallen to Orion to deliver MacDonald’s body, but as flagship she could not leave the station. Apollo was consequently hurried through her refit instead. Orion was tasked with the memorial service for MacDonald, whose body was taken aboard the Royal Navy tug Sandboy once the Reina del Pacifico was in Bermudian waters and landed on Front Street in the City of Hamilton along with the dockyard Chaplain, the Orion’s Chaplain, an Honour Guard, sentries and coffin bearers. MacDonald’s coffin was borne on a gun carriage to the Church of England‘s Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, in a procession that included the ship’s company of Orion and a detachment of the Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), serving in the Bermuda Garrison and based at Prospect Camp. At the cathedral, Arthur Browne, the Bishop of Bermuda, conducted the memorial service, which was followed by a lying in state. The following day, the procession was repeated back to the Sandboy which bore MacDonald’s body to Apollo at the dockyard, which departed Bermuda for Plymouth at 1100, also carrying MacDonald’s daughter, Miss Sheila MacDonald.[4][5] Orion conveyed the ashes of Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada, back to England in February 1940.
In June 1940 she was transferred to the Mediterranean, where she was with the 7th Cruiser Squadron as John Tovey‘s flagship. She took part in the bombardment of Bardia, and the Battle of Calabria in July 1940. Late in that month, she sank the small Greek freighter Ermioni which was ferrying supplies to the Italian-held Dodecanese islands.[6] During the rest of 1940 she escorted Malta convoys and transported troops to Greece. In the early part of 1941 she was in the Crete and Aegean areas and was also at the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941.
In the course of an attack on a German convoy headed for Crete on 22 May, she was damaged in a duel with its escort, the Italian torpedo boat Lupo. On 29 May 1941, during the evacuation of Crete, she was bombed and badly damaged while transporting 1900 evacuated troops.[7] Around 360 people died, of whom 100 were soldiers. After extensive damage control had been undertaken she limped to Alexandria at 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph), providing a spectacular sight in the harbour with the mast wedged into the ship’s funnel and significant battle damage. On 29 June Orion sailed for passage to Simonstown, South Africa via Aden for temporary repairs and then sent to the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California for major repairs.[8]
Orion’s repairs were completed in March 1942 and she returned initially to Plymouth where new radar was installed. During mid 1942, she was widely employed, in home waters and on convoy escort duties to Africa and the Indian Ocean.[8]
Orion returned to the Mediterranean in October 1942. This time she was with the 15th Cruiser Squadron. She was involved in convoy escort duties and supported the army in the invasion of Sicily. She spent most of the rest of the war around the Mediterranean. James Gornall the former English first-class cricketer, promoted to Captain in 1941 was placed in command of her in 1943. She also took part in the Normandy Landings in June 1944, where she fired the first shell.
Corfu Channel Incident[edit]
Orion was involved in the Corfu Channel Incident in 1946, a conflict between Britain and Albania involving the navigation of British ships in the channel between the Greek island of Corfu and the Albanian coast.
Fate
Orion ended service in 1947, was sold for scrap to Arnott Young (Dalmuir, Scotland) on 19 July 1949 and was scrapped in August 1949
Russian Warships Enter the Red Sea
(Bloomberg) —
Russian warships from the Pacific Fleet have crossed the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and entered the Red Sea, the state-run Tass news agency said, venturing into a maritime region plagued by Houthi attacks and crowded with naval vessels.
The detachment included the missile cruiser Varyag and frigate Marshal Shaposhnikov, Tass reported Thursday, citing the Russian Pacific Fleet’s press service, which said the ships were carrying out “assigned tasks within the framework of the long-range sea campaign.” The ultimate destination of the ships was unclear from the report, as was the reason Russia sent vessels to the area.
For months, the Yemen-based Houthis have carried out a series of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea in retaliation for Israel’s military actions in Gaza, forcing many ships to redirect their journeys. The group told China and Russia earlier this month that their ships can sail through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden without being attacked. In exchange, the two countries may provide political support to the Houthis in bodies such as the United Nations Security Council, according to several people with knowledge of the militant group’s discussions.
The Houthis, an Islamist group, say they’re targeting ships linked to Israel, the US and UK. Yet, they appear to have mis-identified some vessels. Missiles exploded near a ship hauling Russian oil near Yemen in late January. It happened days after a spokesman for the Houthis told a Russian newspaper that Russian and Chinese merchant ships needn’t fear attacks.
The Houthis also fired a missile at Chinese-owned oil tanker Huang Pu on Saturday, US Central Command said, highlighting continued risks to shipping in the seas off Yemen despite the agreement.
Since the attacks started, most Western shipping firms have avoided the strait and are instead going around southern Africa. However, US and UK warships in the Red Sea have been hitting Houthi targets in Yemen for weeks in an attempt to deter the militant group from attacks on merchant vessels, while Iran, which supports the Houthis, has a spy ship just outside the Red Sea. A French ship is also nearby.
Earlier this month, Iran, Russia and China held joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry. Both the Varyag and Marshal Shaposhnikov took part in the drills, which Russia said were meant to practice “safety in maritime economic activities,” including liberating ships hijacked by pirates.
Russia has also sought a naval base on the Red Sea in Sudan, though a civil conflict in that country may put back those plans.
© 2024 Bloomberg L.P.
USS WEST VIRGINIA(BB-48), 1920’S – photos of bombing of Pearl Harbor
Photograph taken from a Japanese plane during the torpedo attack on ships moored on both sides of Ford Island. View looks about east, with the supply depot, submarine base and fuel tank farm in the right center distance. A torpedo has just hit USS West Virginia on the far side of Ford Island (center). Other battleships moored nearby are (from left): Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee (inboard of West Virginia), Oklahoma (torpedoed and listing) alongside Maryland, and California. On the near side of Ford Island, to the left, are light cruisers Detroit and Raleigh, target and training ship Utah and seaplane tender Tangier. Raleigh and Utah have been torpedoed, and Utah is listing sharply to port. Japanese planes are visible in the right center (over Ford Island) and over the Navy Yard at right. Japanese writing in the lower right states that the photograph was reproduced by authorization of the Navy Ministry. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.
More details
Japanese reconnaissance photo showing Battleship Row; West Virginia is leaking fuel from torpedo hit
USS West Virginia (BB-48) was the fourth dreadnought battleship of the Colorado class, though because Washington was cancelled, she was the third and final member of the class to be completed. The Colorado class proved to be the culmination of the standard-type battleship series built for the United States Navy in the 1910s and 1920s; the ships were essentially repeats of the earlier Tennessee design, but with a significantly more powerful main battery of eight 16-inch (406 mm) guns in twin-gun turrets. West Virginia was built between her keel laying in 1920 and her commissioning into the Navy in 1923. The ship spent the 1920s and 1930s conducting routine training exercises, including the typically-annual Fleet Problems, which provided invaluable experience for the coming war in the Pacific.
West Virginia was moored on Battleship Row on the morning of 7 December 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II. Badly damaged by torpedoes, the ship sank in the shallow water but was later refloated and extensively rebuilt over the course of 1943 and into mid-1944. She returned to service in time for the Philippines Campaign, where she led the American line of battle at the Battle of Surigao Strait on the night of 24–25 October. There, she was one of the few American battleships to use her radar to acquire a target in the darkness, allowing her to engage a Japanese squadron in what was the final action between battleships in naval history.
After Surigao Strait, the ship remained in the Philippines to support troops fighting during the Battle of Leyte in 1944 and then supported the invasion of Lingayen Gulf in early 1945. The ship also took part in the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa later that year, providing extensive fire support to the ground forces invading those islands. During the latter operation, she was hit by a kamikaze that did little damage. Following the surrender of Japan, West Virginia took part in the initial occupation and thereafter participated in Operation Magic Carpet, carrying soldiers and sailors from Hawaii to the mainland United States before being deactivated in 1946. She was decommissioned in 1947 and assigned to the Pacific Reserve Fleet, where she remained until 1959 when she was sold to ship breakers and dismantled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_West_Virginia_(BB-48)
