HMS DIANTHUS Flower Class Corvette

HMS DIANTHUS

Flower Class Corvettes The ‘ShipCraft’ series provides in-depth information about building and modifying model kits of famous warship types. Lavishly illustrated, each book takes the modeller through a brief history of the subject class, highlighting differences between sister-ships and changes in their appearance over their careers. This includes paint schemes and camouflage, featuring colour profiles and highly-detailed line drawings and scale plans. The modelling section reviews the strengths and weaknesses of available kits, lists commercial accessory sets for super-detailing of the ships, and provides hints on modifying and improving the basic kit. This is followed by an extensive photographic gallery of selected high-quality models in a variety of scales, and the book concludes with a section on research references - books, monographs, large-scale plans and relevant websites.This volume includes all the features of the regular series but the extent has been doubled to include far more detailed drawings of a class of ship that was built in huge numbers and in many variations. Mainstay of the Atlantic battle against the U-boats, Flower class corvettes were used by the British, Canadian, French and US Navies.

 

Tax Disc style ships crest

HMS DIANTHUS Car Window Sticker

For anyone interested they would make a nice present to be shown on your car and help keep the name and memory of this famous old Flower class Corvette built at the Leith Shipyards of Henry Robb Ltd in Scotland and launched in 1940

 

 

 

 

 

For more info contact the website and we shall put you in touch with the supplier.

 

Please note that the supply or make of these stickers has nothing to do with the website we just happen to think they may be of interest so showing them here on the Blog.

 

 

D-Day 70 years on.

June 6^th 1944 – The D-Day Landings

 

 

Operation Neptune

Was the code name given to the naval group’s task on this momentous day in 1944. As the remaining survivors of this epic day gather in the U.K. and over in France we salute them.

Operation Neptune

 

The protection of NEPTUNE from enemy counter action was essential to the success of the operation. Allied forces were most vulnerable to enemy counter action when they were embarked and at sea. Some 6,900 allied vessels, carrying approximately nine army divisions with full combat equipment, were at sea at one time. These ships were formed into around 75 convoys and groups, passing along narrow coastal lanes, moving across the channel through the narrow mine-swept channels of the allotted areas for the convoys or crowded into the congested confines of the assault area.

You will find many more books and information on this day and so many more at our Maritime Library at Ships and the Sea

Had the enemy not been deterred by a comprehensive program of defence capability in the form of escort ships and of course command of the air, this enormous armada would have presented to enemy air and naval forces a very profitable target.

The largest assembly of Ships and amphibious forces ever seen were to retake Europe from the clutches of the Nazi.

Operation Neptune Long-awaited, the Normandy landings were the largest amphibious operation in history. Success was achieved by the advent of specialised landing craft, first seen in the landings in North Africa, heavy naval firepower and the creatiojn of two artificial harbours, each the size of the port of Dover, and an underwater pipeline. Operation Neptune: The Prelude to D-Day tells the story of this incredible feat using eye-witness accounts of the landings and the breaching of Hitler's famed 'Atlantic Wall'. David Wragg explores the earlier Allied and Axis experiences with amphibious operations and the planning for Neptune and Overlord. Revealing the naval support neede once the armies were ashore and before continental ports could be captured and cleared of mines, with operations such as minesweeping off the Normandy coast which led to one of the worst 'friendly fire' incidents of the war. The is the must-read book to understand what made D-Day possible.

And of course along with the many ships involved where some that were built at the Leith Shipyards of Henry Robb Ltd.

Without the amazing job done by the mine-sweepers there could have been no landing and one of the lead ships was the minesweeper HMS SIDMOUTH Ship No 310 built at the Leith Shipyards of Henry Robb Ltd, yet another of the small ship Navy.

 

The ships crest of HMS SIDMOUTH a Bangor Class Minesweeper built at Leith

Ships such as HMS PINK Ship No 318 amongst many as this battle did not just last for one day but stretched out for something like 6 weeks before the establishment of forces in Normandy had the capability to make the break out of the Normandy region on the roads that lead into the heart of Germany.

HMS PINK the final Flower Class Corvette built at the Leith Shipyards of Henry Robb Ltd
as Ship No 318

Damaged by U988 27th-29th July 1944 and was regarded as a constuctive total loss. The Uboat was sunk 2 days later

Damaged by U988 27th-29th July 1944 and was regarded as a constuctive total loss.
The Uboat was sunk 2 days later

Not only warships but also some of the Bustler Class tugs were involved with the gigantic task of towing the huge mulberry harbours over the channel and into position to enable the supply of the ground forces, along with the massive drums that carried the oil pipeline to the French Coast.

The Bustler Class Tugs such as BUSTLER and SAMSONIA seen here after the war had there part to play in the invasion plans to re-take Europe in 1944

 

Operation Overlord
Operation Overlord, the Allied codename for the invasion of Normandy, involved more than 150,000 men and 6,939 ships.  It consisted of American, British, Canadian, Polish, and Free French Armies under command of General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force (the choice of Eisenhower was officially made by President Roosevelt in December 1943, and agreed upon by the British).

The Deputy Supreme Commander of the invasion was British Air Chief Marshal Arthur W. Tedder, who had been the commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranean.  While British Admiral Bertram H. Ramsay, was appointed naval commander.  He had conducted the evacuation at Dunkirk and also planned the Torch landing in North Africa.  British Air Chief Marshal Trafford L. Leigh-Mallory was appointed as commander of the air forces.

Bernard Montgomery was chosen as the ground forces' commander. 

H.M.S. PINK

Ship No 318

Flower Class Corvette

Another of the gallant ships of” the little navy”, that were to provide all kinds of duty during World War II.

They had to deal with all types of weather and the constant danger of enemy surface and under water vessels along with bombing attacks and mines.

Not the most sea keeping of vessels in fact they were said to role on wet grass, but the brave men who sailed on them, gave their all and some more! They served, fighting to help in the battles raging the seven seas of the world.

H.M.S. Pink was one of many such ships, and she was launched from the yard on 16th February 1942. One month after her sister H.M.S. Lotus

She was a standard 849 tons and had a length overall of 190 feet with a beam of 33 feet, and draught of 17 feet and 6 inches.

H.M.S. Pink was badly damaged during the invasion of Normandy, when she was torpedoed by U988 27th-29th July 1944 and was regarded as a constructive total loss. The U-boat 988 was sunk 2 days later.
 

H.M.S. LOTUS

Ship No 317

Flower Class Corvette
Another of the gallant ships of” the little navy”, that were to provide all kinds of duty during World War II.

They had to deal with all type’s of weather and the constant danger of enemy surface and under water vessels along with bombing attacks and mines.
Not the most sea keeping of vessels in fact they were said to role on wet grass, but the brave men who sailed on them, gave their all and some more! They served fighting to help in the battles raging the seven seas of the world.
H.M.S. LOTUS was one of many such ships, and she was launched from the yard on 16th January 1942
She was a standard 849 tons and had a length overall of 190 feet with a beam of 33 feet, and draught of 17 feet and 6 inches.
Her exploits during World War II would fill a book and indeed she was credited with sinking two U-Boats, one while working in tandem with another Royal Navy ship.

H.M.S. Lotus, under ice.

HMS Lotus (K130) was a Flower-class corvette that served in the Royal Navy. She was built by Henry Robb Limited, of Leith, Scotland and launched on 16 January 1942. Originally named HMS PHLOX, she was renamed in April 1942 after the previous HMS Lotus was transferred to the Free French Navy. She was commissioned in May 1942.

Made famous in the book "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Montserrat and the highly-recommended film starring Jack Hawkins, their role in the Battle of the Atlantic was legendary. "They rolled on wet grass", "Can see down your funnel. Your boiler was alight ......" They sank U-boats and were sunk themselves in innumerable convoy battles.

http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsAtlanticBattles2.htm

For more on her story at this great site for Navel History.

H.M.S. POLYANTHUS

Ship No 309

H.M.S.Polyanthus

Flower Class Corvette.

She was ordered on 25th July 1939

Her keel was laid on 19th March 1940 and she was launched from the yard on the 30th of November 1940, after successful sea trials she was commissioned on 24th April 1941.

She had a length overall of 190 feet with a beam of 33 feet and draught of 17 feet and 6 inches. At 811 tons, another of the many unsung small ships that worked tirelessly during World War II. A Sister ship to H.M.S. Dianthus, she was to give sterling service in the protection of Convoy’s crossing the North Atlantic, helping to keep Britain supplied in her darkest times.

On 21 September 1943 the German U-952 fired a torpedo at an escort of the convoy ON-202 and heard after three minutes a detonation, followed by sinking noises. HMS Polyanthus (Lt. J.G. Aitken, RNR) was hit and sank immediately at position 57.00N, 31.10W. The British frigate HMS Itchen picked up one survivor, but he died when the frigate was torpedoed and sunk two days later by U-666.

(H.M.S. Polyanthus was the only warship sank by U-952 out of 14 ships sent to the bottom by the Hamburg built U-952, which was sunk by U.S. bombs in harbour at Toulon in August 1944)

(H.M.S. Itchen was unlucky in the fact that she was the only ship to be sunk by the U-666, which in turn was sunk herself in early 1944 with the loss of all hands.)