HMS Barham 🇬🇧

Design

The HMS Barham was a battleship for the British Royal Navy and was commissioned in 1915 as a Queen Elizabeth class battleship. She weighed 33,110 tons!, and could carry 951 crew minus troop transport. She had 4 twin 15-inch (381 mm) guns that had a range of 18 km, she also had launch platforms for reconnaissance aircraft that was installed in 1918. She had also many other Mounted A-A guns (Anti Aircraft guns), and fourteen smaller BL 6-inch Mk XII naval guns. She also had submerged torpedo tubes on each side.

First World War

The HMS Barham would participate in the First World War as she would be deployed to the Grand fleet that was stationed at Scapa Flow. She played a big role in the battle for Jutland, where she damaged the SMS Moltke so badly that it was abandoned. She took many hits in the battle, after the battle she was under repair until 5 July 1916. She sailed out again on the 18 of august to stop a German fleet form bombing the city of Sunderland where her fleet turned north after entering a minefield, the Germans on the other hand turned south to attack a “small” task force of some cruisers and destroyers, the Germans later turned home after finding out the task force in the south wasn’t so small giving the Brits a victory!👏. (If you struggled to understand that, then your not alone me too had a hard time to understand that “battle”)

After the War

After the war the Barham was appointed as flagship of the 1st Battle squadron in 1928. A year later in 1929 the ship was transferred to the 2nd Battle squadron in November, later in the mid 1930’s the Barham visited Trondheim in Norway and fired her cannons to celebrate Princess Ragnhild’s birthday on the 9th of June. In 1931-34 the Barham went under a refit with mostly minor changes unlike the other Queen Elizabeth class ships that got changes in machinery and the Superstructure. After this refit the Barham was transferred into the Mediterranean fleet to support the British troops in Palestine that was fighting an Arab revolt. Shortly after she was assigned to Gibraltar after the Spanish civil war broke out in July 1936.

World War Two

The Barham also served in word war two where she was assigned to the Home fleet that was stationed in the Mediterranean, she would leave Alexandria on the 1st of December 1939 to join her fleet. Later on the 12th during heavy fog the Barham rammed her escort ship HMS Dutchess, the Dutchess then capsized and sunk killing 136 crew members onboard. Later on the 28th of December the Barham was hit by a torpedo killing 4 men onboard and flooding compartments on her Port side, giving her a 7˚ list to port. To counter this fuel was transferred to the starboard side of the Barham reducing the list. She would be out of service till april 1940 because of repairs.

Sinking

On the 24th of November 1941 the Barham along with nine other ships was sailing in the Mediterranean searching for Italian convoys, the morning after the German submarine U-331 detected the engine noises from the ships and drove to intercept. At 16:00 the captain of the u-boat ordered battle stations, eighteen minutes later the ASDIC operator on the HMS Jervis detected the submarine, but lost contact quickly after. Now the Barham was in the submarine’s sight… At 16:25 the captain of U-331 fired four torpedoes at Barham, then crash dived to 265m below the surface. Three out of the four torpedoes hit the Barham right in the middle of the ship, the ship started to capsize quickly. John Turner on a ship just next to the Barham grabbed his camera and filmed the ship in its final moments but then…..

The ammunition magazine inside of the ship had caught fire, and the shells exploded sending dead men and metal flying into the air. And all of those black dots on the ship? Yeah those were real people, rushing to the side of the ship as fast as they could…

Aftermath

In total 862 crewmen lost their lives in the sinking, the loss was so horrifying that the newspaper was forced to not say a thing about the sinking until the war’s end as it would demoralise the British population. The Naval office sent out letters to close family members and told about the loss of their loved ones but specifically asked for them to not tell about it to anybody outside of the family. The 450 men that survived the tragedy have a bad memory from the Barham with few ever speaking about it…

Thanks for reading!