| Career (UK) | |
|---|---|
| Name: | HMS Barham |
| Builder: | John Brown & Company, Clydebank |
| Yard number: | 424 |
| Laid down: | 24 February 1913 |
| Launched: | 31 October 1914 |
| Commissioned: | 19 October 1915 |
| Fate: | Sunk by U-331 on 25 November 1941 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Queen Elizabeth-class battleship |
| Displacement: | 29,150 tons (standard) 33,000 tons (full load) |
| Length: | 643 ft 3 in (196.06 m) |
| Beam: | 104 ft (32 m) |
| Draught: | 33 ft (10 m) |
| Propulsion: | 24 Babcock & Wilcox 3-drum boilers, 4 parsons geared turbines, 4 shafts |
| Speed: | 25 knots (46 km/h) (when commissioned) |
| Range: | 8,600 nautical miles (15,900 km) at 12.5 knots (23.2 km/h) |
| Complement: | 1,124–1,184 |
| Armament: |
As built: 1916 : 2 6-inch guns removed from forecastle deck |
| Armour: | 6–13in (152–330 mm) midships belt 2.5–5in (64–127 mm) deck 13 in (330 mm)turret face 11 in (279 mm) conning tower sides |
HMS Barham (pennant number 04) was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the Royal Navy named after Admiral Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, built at the John Brown shipyards in Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1914. She was sunk during the Second World War on 25 November 1941 by the German submarine U-331.
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In the First World War, she collided with her sister-ship HMS Warspite in 1915. In 1916, she was Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas's flagship of the 5th Battle Squadron temporarily attached to Admiral David Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet at the Battle of Jutland, where she received five hits and fired 337 shells.
During the 1926 general strike she and HMS Ramillies were sent to the River Mersey to land food supplies. She was less extensively modified between the wars than her sister ships. Among her captains was Percy Noble.
In the Second World War she operated in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. She was damaged by a German submarine torpedo in December 1939, while at sea north of the British Isles.
In September 1940, she took part in Operation Menace, a British naval attack on Dakar, Senegal prior to a landing by the Free French. Barham engaged the French battleship Richelieu. On 25 September, the Richelieu was reported as having hit Barham with a 380 mm shell. The French submarine Bévéziers hit the battleship HMS Resolution with a torpedo the same day. Operation Menace was abandoned. Barham then joined Force H at Gibraltar, taking part in several Malta Convoys.
At the end of 1940, Barham joined the Mediterranean Fleet, taking part in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and receiving bomb damage off Crete in May.
On 21 April 1941, under the command of Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Barham along with battleships Warspite and Valiant as well as the cruiser Gloucester and various destroyers, attacked Tripoli harbour.[1]
On 25 November 1941 at 4.25pm, while steaming to cover an attack on Italian convoys with the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant and an escort of eight destroyers, Barham was hit by three torpedoes from the German submarine U-331, commanded by Lieutenant Hans-Dietrich von Tiesenhausen. The torpedoes were fired from a range of only 750 yards providing no time for evasive action, and struck so closely together as to throw up a single massive water column. As she rolled over to port, her magazines exploded and the ship quickly sank with the loss of 862 crewmen. The explosion was caught on camera by Gaumont News cameraman John Turner, who was on the deck of the nearby HMS Valiant.
The British Admiralty was immediately notified of the sinking on 25 November 1941. Within a few hours they also learned that the German High Command did not know the Barham had been sunk. Tiesenhausen had not reported the sinking, as he had been forced to dive to evade the escorting ships before Barham exploded, and only heard the detonation of the torpedo.[2] He could not be sure whether he had sunk Barham, or if she had merely been damaged and left the scene before he resurfaced.[2] It was not until the Admiralty's admission on 27 January 1942 that Barham had been sunk and described the circumstances, that Tiesenhausen was able to confirm that he had sunk his target.[2] He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross that day.[2]
In an effort to conceal the sinking from the Germans, and to protect British morale, the Admiralty censored all news of Barham’s destruction and the loss of 862 British seamen.
After a delay of several weeks, the War Office decided to notify the next of kin of Barham’s dead, but they added a special request for secrecy. The notification letters included a warning not to discuss the loss of the ship with anyone but close relatives, stating it was "most essential that information of the event which led to the loss of your husband's life should not find its way to the enemy until such time as it is announced officially..."
By late January 1942, the German High Command had realized Barham had been lost. The British Admiralty informed the press on 27 January 1942 and explained the rationale for withholding the news.
A Royal Navy Court of Enquiry into the sinking ascribed the ship's final magazine explosion to the detonation en masse of 4-inch anti-aircraft ammunition stored in wing passages adjacent to the main magazines, which would have detonated the contents of the main magazines. Experience of prolonged air attacks in earlier operations had shown that the stowage capacity of the AA magazines was inadequate, hence extra ammunition was shipped in any convenient void spaces.
The sinking of Barham was captured on film. In consideration of public morale and in order to protect the families who had lost loved ones, the Admiralty decided to keep the film secret until the end of hostilities in 1945.
The film of the sinking has been reused many times as stock footage in documentaries and in the films Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (where it was shown as an American destroyer), Task Force (as a Japanese carrier), The Guns of Navarone and The Battle of Okinawa (where it stands in for the Yamato), it has also feature in the music video for the Red Hot Chili Peppers cover - Higher Ground.
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