Java Sea - Battles

.42-2-27 Battle of the Java Sea - WW2 > .

The Battle of the Java Sea was a decisive naval battle of the Pacific campaign of WW2.

Allied navies suffered a disastrous defeat (2 light cruisers sunk, 3 destroyers sunk, 1 heavy cruiser damaged, 2,300 sailors killed) by the Imperial Japanese Navy, on 27 February 1942, and in secondary actions over successive days. The American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) Strike Force commander— Dutch Rear-Admiral Karel Doorman—was killed. The aftermath of the battle included several smaller actions around Java, including the smaller but also significant Battle of Sunda Strait. These defeats led to Japanese occupation of the entire Dutch East Indies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Java_Sea .

Airplane tender USS Langley (CV-1/AV-3) - scuttled.

The oiler USS Pecos, and destroyer USS Edsall, carrying Langley survivors, were subsequently sunk by Japanese.

Battles of the Java Sea, Sunda Strait, Bali Strait

The Eastern Strike Force, consisted of two heavy cruisers (HMS Exeter sunk 42-3-1 and USS Houston), three light cruisers (Doorman's flagship HNLMS De Ruyter, HNLMS Java, HMAS Perth), and nine destroyers (HMS Electra, HMS Encounter, HMS Jupiter, HNLMS Kortenaer, HNLMS Witte de With, USS Alden, USS John D. Edwards, USS John D. Ford, and USS Paul Jones).

The Japanese task force protecting the convoy, commanded by Rear-Admiral Takeo Takagi, consisted of two heavy (Nachi and Haguro) and two light cruisers (Naka and Jintsū) and 14 destroyers (Yūdachi, Samidare, Murasame, Harusame, Minegumo, Asagumo, Yukikaze, Tokitsukaze, Amatsukaze, Hatsukaze, Yamakaze, Kawakaze, Sazanami, and Ushio) including the 4th Destroyer Squadron under the command of Rear Admiral Shoji Nishimura. 

The Japanese heavy cruisers were much more powerful, armed with ten 8-inch (203 mm) guns each, and superb torpedoes. By comparison, Exeter was armed only with six 8-inch guns and only six of Houston's nine 8-inch guns remained operable after her aft turret had been knocked out in an earlier air attack.

40-11-5 Jervis Bay

.Sinking of HMS Jervis Bay - Wartime Farm > .

HMS Jervis Bay was a British liner later converted into an armed merchant cruiser, pennant F40. She was launched in 1922, and sunk on 5 November 1940 by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer.

After her acquisition and commissioning, Jervis Bay was initially assigned to the South Atlantic station before becoming a convoy escort in May 1940, based at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Bermuda. Given brief repairs at Halifax, Nova Scotia, she became the sole escort for the 37 merchant ships of Convoy HX 84 from Bermuda and Halifax, Nova Scotia to Britain (the Jervis Bay had escorted a convoy from Bermuda which had merged at sea with a convoy from Halifax, as was the practice; a single large convoy being relatively easier to protect than two smaller ones due to the decreased ratio of the circumference of a circle as its area is increased).

When the convoy encountered the German warship Admiral Scheer about 755 nautical miles (1,398 km) south-southwest of Reykjavík, the Captain of Jervis Bay, Edward Fegen, ordered the convoy to scatter, and set his own ship on a course towards the German warship to draw its fire. Jervis Bay was hopelessly outgunned and outranged by the 28 cm (11 inch) guns of the German ship, but it attacked the larger ship with its guns, firing more to distract the German ship from the merchantmen than with hopes of doing any damage. Although the German's shells ravaged the Jervis Bay, and Fegen was wounded and many crew killed, Fegen and the surviving crew fought on until their ship was sunk. Captain Fegen and many of the crew went down with the ship.

Sixty-eight survivors of Jervis Bay's crew of 254 were picked up by the neutral Swedish ship Stureholm (three later died of their wounds). Guy Byam was one of the survivors of the sinking; he was later killed while covering an air raid over Germany for the BBC.

Captain Fegen was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross as a result of this action.

40-6-17 RMS Lancastria

RMS Lancastria sinking of St Nazaire, June 17, 1940 .

RMS Lancastria was a British ocean liner requisitioned by the UK Government during World War II. She was sunk on 17 June 1940 during Operation Ariel. Having received an emergency order to evacuate British nationals and troops in excess of its capacity of 1,300 passengers, modern estimates range between 3,000 and 5,800 fatalities—the largest single-ship loss of life in British maritime history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lancastria#Sinking

Troopship sinkings:
SS Oronsay was a British ocean liner and World War II troopship. She was sunk by an Italian submarine on 9 October 1942.

Troopships that survived:

Post-war RMS Cameronia was used to transport people emigrating to Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Cameronia_(1920) .

1915-5-7 Lusitania Sinking

1915-5-7 Lusitania Sinking - time > .

1915-5-7 U-20 Sinking of RMS Lusitania - Oceanliner > .

Incredible Career of RMS Lusitania - Oceanliner > .

The sinking of the Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania occurred on Friday, 7 May 1915 during WW1, as Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom which had implemented a naval blockade of Germany.

When Lusitania was built, her construction and operating expenses were subsidized by the British government, with the provision that she could be converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser if need be. At the outbreak of WW1, the British Admiralty considered her for requisition as an armed merchant cruiser, and she was put on the official list of AMCs.

The Admiralty then canceled their earlier decision and decided not to use her as an AMC after all; large liners such as Lusitania consumed enormous quantities of coal (910 tons/day, or 37.6 tons/hour) and became a serious drain on the Admiralty's fuel reserves, so express liners were deemed inappropriate for the role when smaller cruisers would do. They were also very distinctive; so smaller liners were used as transports instead. Lusitania remained on the official AMC list and was listed as an auxiliary cruiser in the 1914 edition of Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships, along with Mauretania.
The ship was identified and torpedoed by the German U-boat U-20 and sank in 18 minutes, and also took on a heavy starboard list. The vessel went down 11 miles (18 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland, killing 1,198 and leaving 761 survivors. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany, contributed to the American entry into World War I and became an iconic symbol in military recruiting campaigns of why the war was being fought.

By early 1915, a new threat to British shipping began to materialise: U-boats (submarines). At first, the Germans used them only to attack naval vessels, and they achieved only occasional—but sometimes spectacular—successes. U-boats then began to attack merchant vessels at times, although almost always in accordance with the old cruiser rules. Desperate to gain an advantage on the Atlantic, the German government decided to step up its submarine campaign. On 4 February 1915, Germany declared the seas around the British Isles a war zone: from 18 February, Allied ships in the area would be sunk without warning. This was not wholly unrestricted submarine warfare, since efforts would be taken to avoid sinking neutral ships.

Lusitania fell victim to torpedo attack relatively early in the First World War, before tactics for evading submarines were properly implemented or understood. The contemporary investigations in both the United Kingdom and the United States into the precise causes of the ship's loss were obstructed by the needs of wartime secrecy and a propaganda campaign to ensure all blame fell upon Germany. Argument over whether the ship was a legitimate military target raged back and forth throughout the war as both sides made misleading claims about the ship. At the time she was sunk, she was carrying over 4 million rounds of small-arms ammunition (.303 caliber), almost 5,000 shrapnel shell casings (for a total of some 50 tons), and 3,240 brass percussion fuses, in addition to 1,266 passengers and a crew of 696. Several attempts have been made over the years since the sinking to dive to the wreck seeking information about precisely how the ship sank, and argument continues to the present day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_RMS_Lusitania .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_sunk_by_submarines_by_death_toll .

2022-4-14 Moskva

22-4-15 Why The Sinking Of Russia's 'Moskova' Battleship Matters - MSNBC > .

23-9-10 Battle for Black Sea. R-U: Geopolitics, Grain, Naval Drones > .

23-4-13 Happy Neptune Day (April 13) - [Anniversary of Moskva Sinking] > .

23-1-5 How Ukraine Changed the Power Balance in the Black Sea - K&G > .

22-12-4 Humor: Krumblin Presents: The Little Warship (Under the Sea) - UA > .

22-5-28 Sinking of Cruiser Moskva: History, Importance, Consequences - K&G > .

Moskva Cruiser: What You Need To Know - H I Sutton - Covert Shores > .

2o22-2-24+ Special Invasive Operation - Fyrd Færeld >> .

Чорне море - Black Sea Front - αλλο >> .

Moskva (Москва, lit. 'Moscow'), formerly Slava (Слава, lit. 'Glory'), was a guided missile cruiser of the Russian Navy. The ship was the lead ship of the Project 1164 Atlant class and was named after the city of Moscow. She was the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and helped lead the naval assault during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. With a crew of 510, she was the most powerful surface vessel in the region. The cruiser had previously been deployed in several military conflicts, including in Georgia (2008), Crimea (2014), and Syria (2015).

She sank on 14 April 2022 in the Black Sea. Ukrainian officials and the US Defense Department said Ukraine attacked the cruiser with two anti-ship cruise missiles. The Russian Ministry of Defence said a fire caused a munitions explosion. The Russian Navy attempted to tow the damaged ship toward Sevastopol but she sank before reaching port. Moskva is the largest warship to be sunk in combat since World War II.

Ukraine war: Dramatic images appear to show sinking Russian warship Moskva .

22-10-29 Zinking? ..