HMS Bryony (1940)

Construction

The order for the construction of the corvette was received on April 8, 1940 . The Bryony was laid on the slipway of the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast on November 16, 1940, and was launched on March 15, 1941 . During the construction of the "Brioni" was repeatedly subjected to air attacks by the Germans (at that time, the forces of the Luftwaffe actively bombarded large cities in the UK).

One of such air raids, which took place exactly one month after the corvette was launched, led to the fact that the unfinished "Brioni" sank after a direct hit by an air bomb. Most of the hull was flooded, almost all armor plates were washed away with water, and the upper deck was completely destroyed. However, the shipyard’s engineers and Admiralty officials, having examined the flooded ship, made their conclusion: the ship can be lifted from the bottom and rebuilt.

The restoration of the ship dragged on for more than a year. It was assumed that the design of the ship would include a forecastle , but after an airstrike and the subsequent raising of the ship from the bottom, the engineers changed the construction plan, removing the forecastle and including a tank as a superstructure, as well as adding a few mine trawls . June 4, 1942 rebuilt "Briony" was officially accepted into the Naval Forces of Great Britain. Thus, this corvette became unique in its kind: not a single Corvette type corvette was built longer than it, and its tank was specially extended (the tank was shorter for other corvettes).

Service

The first captain of the ship was Lieutenant Commander John Parker Stewart, who was appointed to this position on May 1, 1942 ^[1] , even before the ship was put into operation. “Bryony”, having left Belfast , first arrived in Tobermory to train the crew, and then relocated to the dock Gladstone (Liverpool), where he was based until June 1943. His first combat mission was to escort the Arctic convoy PQ-18 .

On September 1, 1942, the outfitting of ships in Loch Yves was completed, and the next day the convoy left the port along with cover ships. On September 12, the German reconnaissance aircraft FW-200 Condor , which carefully monitored the movement of the convoy , was detected by radar. The information received by the pilots was transferred to the commanders of German submarines, who began the hunt for PQ-18 ships. About seven submarines chased the convoy, but American anti-submarine Grumman Avenger aircraft prevented them from starting active hostilities. On September 14, active hostilities began: the U-457 submarine torpedoed the Ateltemplar tanker ( Eng. SS Atheltemplar ), and it had to be left at sea, since it was not possible to tow it even to Svalbard . The next wave of attacks occurred on September 19, when the convoy had already reached Dvinskaya Bay : 12 Ju-88 bombers attacked the convoy, one of them dropped bombs on the Brioni corvette, but the ship was not injured. Soon the convoy arrived in Arkhangelsk . Losses amounted to 13 merchant ships, while the Germans lost only three submarines and 22 aircraft during the persecution.

Soon, the Brioni returned to the UK and continued to serve as a coast guard, patrolling the North Sea. The corvette also participated in the protection of convoys along the Hampton Roads - Port Said, Port Said - Gibraltar routes and other convoys ^[3] . After the war ended, in October 1945, the ship was expelled from KVMS Great Britain ^[1] . Soon it was bought by Norway in 1947 ^[4] : this ship was retrained as a weather vessel and was named Polarfront II . In 1979, he was expelled from the Norwegian Navy and scrapped.

• Colledge, JJ; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8 .