Velos I (destroyer)

After a short and “strange” Greek-Turkish war of 1897, attempts were made to reorganize the Armed Forces. The main exponent of this trend was Theotokis, Georgios . Theotokis became the PM of Greece on 12/08/1905 and formed a government, where Konstantin Trikupis became the Minister of the Sea. One of the first actions of the new minister was a huge, for Greece, order of 8 destroyers. Initially, it was planned to place an order for all 8 destroyers at the Yarrow shipyard in London, which was then a pioneer in the construction of destroyers. The fact that the order was divided into two parts and the construction of 4 destroyers, with characteristics similar to English ( such as Thiell ), was placed at the German shipyard AG Vulcan Stettin, some Greek researchers explain not so much with previous orders of the fleet this shipyards, as much as the intervention of the commander of the armed forces, Crown Prince Constantine , who did not leave the brother of his wife Sophia , German Kaiser Wilhelm II out of the deal ^[2] .

The construction of a series of 4 destroyers ( of the Niki class ) was carried out in the period 1905-1906. The ship received the name Velos (Greek. Βέλος - arrow). Other class ships received the names Aspis , Dox, and Nicky .

Balkan Wars

December 3/16, 1912, Velos, in the Greek fleet, led by the flagship battleship Averof , under the command of Admiral Kunturiiotis , took part in the Greek victory over the Turkish fleet at Elli . Velos did not take part in the subsequent Greek victory over the Turkish fleet at Lemnos , since it patrolled between the islands of Chios and Psar ^[3] together with Tiella , Doksa and Logkhi (destroyer) ^[4] .

On January 24 ( February 5 ), 1913 , a few days after the victory of the Greek fleet at Lemnos, Lieutenant Mutusis, Mikhail and midshipman Moraitinis, Aristidis , who were in Mudros, Lemnos island were ordered to conduct aerial reconnaissance over the Dardanelles, in order to detect the location of the retreating and hiding there is the Turkish fleet. For this purpose, a seaplane was used, based on the converted Farman MF.7 biplane. Mutusis - Moraitinis discovered the Turkish fleet in the area of ​​the Nara base and, before leaving the Daradanelles, dropped 4 bombs on the Turkish fleet, although without serious damage to the Turks ^[5] During the return flight, the seaplane crew made a forced splashdown in the Aegean, due to problems with a motor, but was picked up and towed by the Velos destroyer located nearby ^[6] . This flight is recognized as the first flight in the history of aviation-fleet cooperation and marked the birth of the world's first naval aviation ^{[5] [7]} .

World War I

In October 1916, the ship was confiscated by the Entente , due to the initial neutrality of Greece and was transferred to the French. A destroyer flying the French flag and with a French crew was used in anti-submarine patrols between southern France and Corsica. After Greece entered the war in July 1917, the ship was returned to the Greek fleet in 1918. In October 1918, together with the Allied fleet, the ship passed through the Dardanelles . Under the command of P. Voulgaris, "Velos" became the first ship of the Greek fleet to enter Constantinople . From February to June 1919, the ship was on the Black Sea, supporting the white movement during the Entente intervention and participating in the evacuation of the Greek population of southern Russia. During the Asia Minor campaign of the Greek army of 1919-1922, the destroyer was involved in the blockade of the coast of Anatolia. At the end of the war, repair and modernization of the ship were deemed inappropriate. Velos was withdrawn from the fleet in 1926 and sold for scrap.

• Velos (destroyer) type Fletcher. Joined the fleet. Today turned into a museum as a symbol of the participation of the fleet in the anti-dictatorial struggle and the struggle for democracy