Behind the photograph - HMS Barham

HMS Barham exploding

There is a common photograph and pathe news reel that is used by documentaries and history articles of an exploding warship and that is usually the sinking of HMS Barham from the Second World War or the Szent Istvan from the First World War.

The Barham was a Queen Elizabeth class super dreadnought and was launched at Clydebank on 13th December 1914 and commissioned on 19th October the following year. She would go on to serve at Jutland and served as part of the Grand fleet for the rest of the war. She would then survive the battleship cull of the post war years and face a refit. In the Second World War, Barham was recalled to the Home fleet in December 1939 and on the 12th she accidentally rammed and sank her escorting destroyer, Duchess, killing 124 men.

When part of a taskforce in the Atlantic she was struck by a torpedo fired by Fritz-Julius Lemp’s U-30 striking her between A & B turret and destroyer the anti-torpedo bulge which saw four men killed. With reduced speed caused by counterflooding she made her way back to Birkenhead for repairs.

She would later be involved in an attack on Vichy French Dakar before being sent to Admiral Cunningham’s force M, engaged in bombarding Bardia in March 1941 and played a vital role in the battle of Cap Matapan.

HMS Barham

By the 24th November 1941, as part of the 1st Battle Squadron stationed in the Mediterranean, Barham and her sisters Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were providing a distant escort for the 7th and 15th Cruiser Squadrons who were looking for Italian convoys to attack incase they ran into larger Italian naval units.

Unknown to the British force the U-331 was prowling the waters off the Egyptian coast having dropped off members of the Lehrregiment Brandenburg on a sabotage mission Oberleutnant zur See Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen’s men detected the engine noise of the battleships and they moved to intercept and by the afternoon they were on reciprocal courses and at 16:00 the U-boat’s men went to action stations.

Twenty minutes later the destroyer escort ASDIC operators detected an object around 1000 yards away but it was considered to be too large to be a U-boat and so was disregarded. Midshipman Cox of Barhami would later suggest that the reason that the destroyers did not report the sighting was that as the U-boat approached at 7 knots and the British were moving at 17 knots (for a total closing speed of 24 knots) the ASDIC picked up a larger shadow than was there.

von Tiesenhausen

Von Tiesenhausen took position watching the battleships coming towards his position and waited until the destroyer screen had passed and then the Queen Elizabeth. H e sighted the second in line, Barham, and ordered the four bow torpedoes fired at a range of 410 yards. With the U-boat being near the surface, the bow wave from Valiant and the sudden weight loss from the nose caused the conning ower to breach the surface within pom-pom range and the guns immediately fired upon it.

In the Air Defence Post Midshipman David Cox was on lookout;

I saw him a green submarine, didn’t surface completely but the coning tower and part of his upper deck came up and he went down again very quickly!

Von Tiesenhausen ordered a crash dive and the U-boat went down to 869 feet (her safety maximum depth was 490 feet!) before stabilising before escaping the area before the destroyers could react. Unknowing if he had struck the target the U-boat returned to port, arriving on the 3rd December.

With the proximity of the U-boat there was not time for evasive action and Barham was hit squarely amidships with three of the four torpedoes causing a huge water column and a lot of water to flow into the opened hull. The battleship quickly rolled to port and laid on her side.

We set sail on the 24th of November. We were on our way to Tripoli to intercept some troopships which were taking supplies and troops to Rommel in the desert. I had the fore noon watch and I was up on the upper deck having a chat and a smoke. I was only in my underwear and I went down below to the Mess deck to have a cup of tea. When I was down there I was sat having a chat with a chap in the next mess to me when all of a sudden there was a terrific bang and all of the lights went out.

The Chap turned to me and said “That’s no bloody hatch”…

George Elliot.

A mass of men started clambering from the depths of the battleship to reach the surface and to find lifebelts. George Elliot recalled that:

I kept my lifebelt in a little canvas bag that I had made,,, when I went to get my lifebelt which was hung over a frame… it was gone and I couldn’t find it… Eventually I found a lifebelt and I grabbed it because the ship had started to slew over.

I always made a plan for my escape route in the event of an emergency. So I went up into the gun battery which was the deck above the mess deck, to go up a ladder to go up onto the upper deck.

There were people from all directions trying to get up this blinken ladder and I knew I couldn’t get through the crowd. Along past the galley there was a ladder which led to the SDO flat… and that was my route I had in my mind and I went up this ladder.

Men crowded onto the side of the hull as she started to settle and awaited the destroyers to get closer for a rescue. The U-boat had disappeared and it all seemed somewhat safer now:

When I got up onto the upper deck the Gunnery officer was there and he was trying to free Carley rafts but the ropes were all (tangled) and I never had a knife and I was in my underwear so I left him to it and went over to the Starboard side where the ship was listing to port. I slid down onto the sponson where the six inch guns came out of the side and then from there down to the waterline. Where I was in my pants and my singlet all my buttocks were all as if a nutmeg scraper had been over it (from the barnacles).

This life belt, I managed to get the loop over my head and tie the thing around my waist when the ship exploded. George Elliott

David Cox was still standing in the ADP when the torpedo struck:

...she began to roll to port and it was clear that she was mortally wounded and as the roll increased the ratings in the ADP were sent down the ladder down to the upper deck so they could go over the side of the ship and get into the water. There wasn’t time for me to do that and I stayed where I was… put on my lifejacket… blew this up… put it around my waist and waited. The next thing that happened, the ship must have been on her side as tons of water flooded into the ADP and washed me out.

The 4 inch magazine exploded and it is believed to have been caused by a fire which caused a chain reaction explosion of the main magazine tearing the ship and all of those on the hull apart in a huge explosion.

The explosion took me into the water and I went down and down and down and eventually I suppose the air and the lifebelt and the water above and below had equalised and brought me up to the surface and that was the worst part of the actual sinking, the bodies in the water, the cries for help and God knows what else.

One was like a small article, thrown about all over the place and I went through the rigging and luckily didn’t get caught up. After what seemed an age, too long for me to hold my breath, I swallowed salt water and oil and suddenly popped up onto the surface. Much to my surprise!

There were other heads popping up, we were all covered with oil so you just saw two eyes and a mouth. - Midshipman David Cox.

The water was thankfully quite warm despite the oil slick which covered the survivors struggling in the water but they only had to wait for about half an hour before they were saved.

The Hotspur had come in picking up survivors though she was stood some way off. She had a Carley raft away with a line attached to her and survivors were dragged into this Carly raft and winched back to the ship. - George Elliott

In all 862 men were killed in moments including Captain Geoffrey Cooke. HMS Hotspur managed to rescue 337 survivors including Vice Admiral Henry Prindham-Wippell and the Nizam another 150.

The Admiralty was horrified and immediately ordered secrecy of the sinking, the Pathe news reel that was recorded from Valiant was censored and even when the next of kin were informed a month later, they were asked to keep it secret. The loss was only revealed on 27th January 1942. On this announcement the Kriegsmarine awarded von Tiesenhausen with the Knight’s cross for the sinking.

If you want to see the newsreel of the explosion;