naval affairs

NAC News – Edition 423

NAC News – Edition 423

Your weekly national and international naval news for the week of August 20th, 2021

Edition – 423  “[The situation in Afghanistan] is bleak, worse than most expected this quickly…The danger is that the momentum of the Taliban’s offensive will overwhelm the Afghan government and the defense of Kabul will collapse.”  10 August 2021, Bruce Riedel, The Washington Post (Editor – what a difference a week makes)

Fellow Members: Rod Hughes, Editor NAC News rhughes@shaw.ca

(Comments welcome to help improve this service).

Links to keep in touch with the NAC and RCN can be found at the bottom of this email

NOTICES

  • NEW – NAVY BIKE RIDE – The NAC Team continues to make a significant contribution to this year’s Ride.   As of 14 August, our 10 riders had completed 366 rides with a total of 8487 kilometres.  Despite this level of effort and commitment, we have fallen very short of our fund-raising goal of $5000 to support the RCN Benevolent Fund and the Support Our Troops charities.  We ask that NAC members consider donating to the NAC team at https://raceroster.com/events/2021/36550/navy-bike-ride-2021/pledge/team/306032
  • There are only 10 days left in this year’s ride and your support would be greatly appreciated. Our sincere thanks for those who have already supported this effort.
  • Editor – The deadline for submissions to the Canadian Naval Review essay competition is Wednesday 30 September.  There’s still lots of time to write about a relevant topic.
  • 19-20 October 2021 – Arctic Workshop/Conference – Halifax.  NAC and the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at StFX, in partnership with the RCN, will host a two-day workshop in Halifax tentatively scheduled for 19-20 October.  The theme will be “Arctic Maritime Partnerships – Options and Opportunities for Cooperation in the North American Arctic”.  More details on this activity will be forthcoming later in the summer.
  • Canadian Naval Memorial Trust (CNMT) Friends.  In 2005, Trustee Ray Soucie organized a group to attend commemorative ceremonies of the Battle of the Atlantic in Londonderry/Derry, Northern Ireland (NI).  The pilgrimage was well received by both the CNMT and the Londonderry Branch of the Royal Naval Association (RNA) members.  COVID-19 interrupted our trip in 2020 but now is the time to start thinking about BOA 2022 in Ireland.  The RNA hosts have adjusted their programme so that we can attend our home ceremony, earlier in May.  If you are interested in attending, please give Pat a call at 902-462-3089 or send an email at patjessup@ns.sympatico.ca
  • The recently launched Hire a Veteran LinkedIn group is for Veterans and CAF members preparing to release, who are seeking career opportunities directly with employers.  Public service and private sector organizations have begun posting jobs to the group, looking specifically for employees with the types of skills gained through military service.  Join the group and stay tuned for regular postings. Veterans and military members looking for new careers can also create a LinkedIn personal account and follow the Veterans Affairs Canada LinkedIn page for information about webinars, career fairs and other opportunities to connect with employers.

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THIS WEEK’S SIGNIFICANT ARTICLES

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CANADA

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USA & AMERICAS

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INDO-PACIFIC

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EUROPE

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MIDDLE EAST

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GLOBAL INTERESTS

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SCUTTLEBUTT

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SIGNIFICANT RCN DATES – AUGUST (Busy month!)

(If you see any omissions or errors, please inform me, and any more modern significant dates are also welcomed.  The list draws primarily from the Directory of History and Heritage’s comprehensive “Significant Dates in Canadian Military History”, the now defunct “Canada Channel”, “Legion Magazine”, historical website “The Second World War – A Day by Day Account”, and Roger Litwiller’s excellent web site, encyclopedic guidance from Fraser McKee, and anywhere else I can find credible information)

  • 1 August 1910 HMCS Rainbow is commissioned at Portsmouth, England, as the first warship in the RCN.
  • 1 August 1959 The RCN is presented with Queens Colours by Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II in Halifax.
  • 4 August 1914 War is declared between Great Britain and Germany.  Canada is automatically at war with Germany as well.
  • 5 August 1914 Two submarines, later designated CC-1 and CC-2, are purchased for the RCN by the Premier of British Columbia in Seattle, Washington.
  • 5 August 1944 HMCS Iroquois commanded by Cdr James C. Hibbard, DSC, RCN, with HMCS Haida commanded by Cdr Harry G. DeWolf, DSO, RCN, and other allied forces, sank German minesweepers M-263 and M-486.
  • 6 August 1942  RCN destroyer HMCS Assiniboine commanded by A/LCDR John H. Stubbs, RCN, pursues and rams German submarine U-210 in the fog, finally sinking her with a 4.7 inch shell.  North Atlantic.
  • 7 August 1975 Pierre Trudeau announces that Canada will seek agreement to set up 370 km (200-mile) economic coastal zone.
  • 8 August 1813  US Commodore Isaac Chauncey’s ships Hamilton and Scourge capsize in minutes in a heavy gale off Forty Mile Creek on Lake Ontario, and 53 sailors drown; the ships were putting on extra sail to escape British Captain James Yeo’s fleet, and sank from a shift in weight of the guns; largest loss of life suffered by the United States Navy in the war. Yeo did not see the disaster happen, and did not press his advantage.
  • 8 August 1944  German U-boat U-667 torpedoes and sinks RCN Flower Class corvette HMCS Regina off Trevose Head, Cornwall, UK; thirty of her ship’s company are lost.
  • 9 August 1945 Temporary Lt (RCNVR) Robert Hampton Gray VC, DSC was shot down and killed in a dive-bombing raid at Onagawa Wan as he attacked and sank a Japanese destroyer; serving with the Royal Navy as a Corsair pilot aboard HMS Formidable Gray he was one of the last Canadian known to have died In World War II; he was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. In 1989, in Sakiyami Park, Japan, Gray became the first member of the Allied Forces honoured by the Japanese with a memorial.
  • 9 August 1941 HMC Ships Assiniboine and Restigouche escort HMS Prince of Wales, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill aboard, into Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.
  • 10 August 1813  Sir James Yeo’s forces capture American schooners USS Julia and USS Growler in an engagement near Twelve Mile Creek on Lake Ontario; the British rename the schooners Confiance and Hamilton and will use them as troop transports until Isaac Chauncey recaptures them near False Ducks Islands on 5 October. New York State.
  • 10 August 1941  US President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill have their second meeting at Placentia, on a British warship; four days later they will issue the Atlantic Charter setting forth eight goals for the world; a document that will serve as the basis for the United Nations Charter. Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.
  • 10 August 1990  Canada to send three ships and 800 sailors to the Persian Gulf as part of multinational force to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.
  • 11 August 1954 HMCS Venture is commissioned in Esquimalt, British Columbia, as a naval cadet training establishment.
  • 12 August 1814  Royal Navy Capt Alexander Hobbs, commanding 70 seamen and marines, attacks three U.S. armed schooners supporting Major General Jacob Brown’s Fort Erie campaign; masquerading as American supply boats, the British board and seize USS Somers and USS Ohio while USS Porcupine escapes; the vessels are renamed Huron and Sauk; last naval engagement on Lake Erie in the war.
  • 12 August 1917 HMCS Shearwater and submarines CC-1 and CC-2 are the first Canadian warships to pass through the Panama Canal.
  • 12 August 2010  HMCS Winnipeg intercepts a Thai ship, the MV Sun Sea carrying Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, off the coast of British Columbia. BC.
  • 13 August 1813 British schooner HMS Nancy discovered and trapped by a US squadron at the Nottawasaga River; Capt Lt Miller Worsley of the Royal Navy, warned of a close American presence, had the Nancy towed two miles up the river, where he built a blockhouse armed with two 24-pounder carronades and a 6-pounder gun from the schooner; his force consisted of 21 sailors, 23 Ojibwa and 9 French-Canadian voyageurs; the following day, 14 August, some American wood-cutting parties discovered the schooner’s hiding place, and Worsley was forced to scuttle the ship. Wasaga Beach, Ontario.
  • 13 August 2010  The MV Sun Sea, carrying 490 Tamil migrants from Sri Lanka, is towed to the docks at CFB Esquimalt; the Thai cargo ship was intercepted off Vancouver Island on 12 August; the Tamils are moved to detention centres in the Vancouver area to await processing of their refugee claims.
  • 14 August 1944 HMCS Iroquois commanded by CDR James C. Hibbard, DSC, RCN during a mixed melee ran German minesweeper M-385 aground.
  • 14 August 1945 Japan offers its unconditional surrender.
  • 14 August1946 11 Naval Reserve Air Squadrons authorized to be formed.  Not all were ever established.
  • 14 Aug 2008 Leading Seaman Robert Teodor Binder MB, of Mississauga was a member of the Canadian Forces Naval Reserve who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Bravery on 26 November 2010.  The citation to his award notes that on the night of 14 August 2008, at the age of nineteen, he and two others repeatedly dove and performed CPR in order to rescue the occupants of a sinking car.
  • 15 August 1827  Royal Navy Captain John Franklin lands at the entrance of the Rideau Canal, on his return down the Ottawa River from the Arctic, welcomed by Colonel By, he is escorted up to Barracks Hill (what is now Parliament Hill), then the encampment of the 71st Regiment. The following day, 16 August, he will lay the foundation stone of the Ottawa Locks being built by Thomas Mackay. A reporter from the Montreal Herald witnessed the event: “I have this evening to communicate to you one of the most important events that ever occurred in the Canadas — an event which will doubtless form an era in the history of this country for ages to come. It was no less than the depositing of the first stone of the locks of the Rideau Canal… to the tap of MacKay’s trowel young Capt. Franklin put the one-and-one-quarter ton stone to bed while the garrison band played and loud “huzzas” went up from the excavation in a strange and wild setting.”
  • 15 August 1940 Convoy SC1 sailed.  SC series of convoys were introduced to provide a system of protection for slow merchant ships (7.5 knots minimum, often not achieved) which had previously been sailing independently, with disastrous consequences.  Sydney, Cape Breton, was chosen as the western terminus to help ease congestion on the port of Halifax.  During the winters of 41 and 42 the SC convoys were shifted to Halifax, due to ice in Sydney harbour and its approaches.  In Aug 42, when the terminus for the HX series of convoys was shifted to New York City, the SC convoys were moved to Halifax, with an interval originating from New York between Sep 42 and Mar 43.  Of the 177 SC convoys, only three failed to reach their destination.  SC52 lost 4 of its 34 ships to U-boats in Oct 41 and with the prospects for continued heavy opposition, was returned to Sydney by a tortuous circumnavigation of Newfoundland.  SC62 and 63 were scattered by bad weather in Jan 42 and completed their voyages as independently routed ships.  In all, only 29 of the 177 SC convoys were attacked, mainly made possible by signals intelligence and evasive routing, and only 145 ships were lost from the total of 6,806 (2.1%).  This number is somewhat misleading as many ‘stragglers’ were sunk when they dropped out of convoy that were not counted against convoy losses.  Likewise, a few ‘rompers’, ships that detached from the convoy to move ahead independently, were lost, and not counted.
  • 15 August 1944 HMC Ships Prince David and Prince Henry participate in the Allied landing in southern France, codenamed Operation Dragoon.
  • 16 August 1940 LCdr Henry “Harry” George Dewolf, RCN, was posted ashore to NSHQ, Ottawa as the Director of Plans and Secretary to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, after a tour of duty as the Commanding Officer of HMCS St Laurent since
  • 16 August 1956 HMCS Assiniboine is commissioned into the RCN as the second of the new St. Laurent class of destroyer escorts.  She was the first to be converted to a DDH reaching the fleet in 1963.
  • 16 August 2011 Government announces that the name “Air Command” is being changed to the air force’s original historic name: Royal Canadian Air Force, and the name of Maritime Command to RCN to better reflect Canada’s military heritage and align Canada with other key Commonwealth countries whose military units use the royal designation.
  • 17 August 1809  Construction of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s Monument begins; at the top of Jacques Cartier Square. Montréal, Québec
  • 17 August 17, 1940 Mackenzie King meets Franklin D. Roosevelt for two-day conference at Ogdensburg to discuss North American Defence; will sign Ogdensburg Agreement on August 18 the parties will discuss modifying cash and carry principle for delivery of arms from US factories to Canadian forces; on August 18, the parties will agree to set up a Canadian-American Permanent Joint Board of Defence, composed of senior officials from both countries.
  • 17 August 17, 1943  The first Quebec Conference (codenamed “QUADRANT”) – Mackenzie King hosts Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the sixth Anglo-American War Conference, held at the Citadelle and in the Chateau Frontenac hotel; ends August 24, 1943; plans developed for Overlord, the 1944 landings in France; Churchill and Roosevelt also secretly signed the Quebec Agreement to share nuclear technology.
  • 18 August 1833  Steamship Royal William leaves Pictou NS; will arrive in Gravesend September 11; the first vessel to cross the Atlantic under steam power.
  • 18 August 1944 HMC Ships Ottawa II commanded by Cdr James D. Prentice, DSO, RCN, HMCS Kootenay commanded by A/LCdr William H. Wilson, RCN, and HMCS Chaudière commanded by A/LCdr C. Patrick Nixon, RCN sank the German submarine U-621 while on patrol in the Bay of Biscay.
  • 18 August 2005  HMCS Fredericton (FFH 337) deployed to the Canadian Arctic to prohibit illegal fishing and to reassert sovereignty in the North.
  • 19 August 1914  World War I – Canada officially declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 20 August 1942 HMC Ships Prince Robert, Prince Henry, Prince David, Dawson and Vancouver leave Esquimalt, British Columbia, to commence operations in the Bering Sea.
  • 20 August 1944 HMC Ships Ottawa commanded by CDR James D. Prentice, DSO, RCN, HMCS Kootenay commanded by A/LCDR William H. Wilson, RCN, and HMCS Chaudière commanded by A/LCdr C. Patrick Nixon, RCN sank the German submarine U-984 while on patrol in the English Channel – their second combined victory in three days.
  • 21 August 1872  Chebucto Head Lighthouse starts operations, Halifax, Nova Scotia
  • 21 August 1940 The Permanent Joint Board of Defence is established to co-ordinate Canadian and American activities relating to the defence of North America.
  • 21 August 1944 HMCS Alberni is torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-480 in the English Channel.  59 of her ship’s company are lost.
  • 22 August 1711 The RN expedition against Quebec is wrecked on reefs north of Anticosti island.
  • 22 August 1944 HMS Nabob, a British aircraft carrier but with a RCN crew, is torpedoed off Norway and severely damaged.
  • 23 August 1953 HMCS Caribou is commissioned as a Naval Reserve Division in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland.
  • 24 August 1949  North Atlantic Treaty goes into effect, with the parties agreeing that an armed attack against one country would be considered ‘an attack against them all.’ NATO created by Canada, the US and 10 European countries.
  • 24 August 1957  Military – Wind class icebreaker HMCS Labrador under RCN Capt O.C.S. “Long Robbie” Robertson the first deep draught vessel to navigate Bellot Strait; will become the first ship to circumnavigate North America in a single voyage; transferred to the Department of Transport on 22 November 1957, and re-designated the Canadian Government Ship (CGS) Labrador; later CCGS Labrador.
  • 24 August 1969  US oil tanker Manhattan leaves Chester on trial voyage through Northwest Passage; helped by Canadian Coast Guard ice-breaker CCGS John A. Macdonald, the Manhattan will reach Sachs Harbour, NWT, on September 15.
  • 24 August 1990 HMC Ships Athabaskan, Protecteur, and Terra Nova with 934 personnel sail from Halifax to participate in the United Nations to participate in the blockade of Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait three weeks earlier, Operation Friction.
  • 26 August 1939 World War II – The British Admiralty transmits the single word ‘funnel’ – the agreed-upon signal transfers control of Canadian merchant ships from the owners to the RCN.
  • 26 August 1940 US President Franklin D Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister W. L. MacKenzie King signed the Ogdensburg Agreement calling for a permanent board for the defence of Canada and the US 8-days ago and The Permanent Joint Board on defence holds its first meeting in Ottawa, Ontario.
  • 27 August 1942 The Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service is established.
  • 27 August 1944 Actions by Flying Officer Roderick Gray of the RCAF over the Atlantic Ocean earn him the George Cross. (Posthumous).
  • 28 August 1942 HMCS Oakville commanded by LCDR Clarence A. King,  DSC,  RCNR during convey escort duties and working with a USN PBY sank the German submarine U-94 in the Caribbean Sea by depth-charges and three rammings.
  • 28 August 1992  RCN sends destroyer HMCS Gatineau to monitor UN embargo against Yugoslavia; moves to NATO standing force in Mediterranean.
  • 29 August 1911 The prefix “”Royal”” is granted to the Canadian Navy by the King.
  • 29 August 1917  Robert Borden’s Military Service Act gets Royal Assent; all male British subjects up to 45 years of age liable for conscription; with certain exceptions. Ottawa, Ontario
  • 30 August 1943 HMCS ATHABASKAN (Destroyer) is commissioned at Newcastle on the Tyne, England.
  • 30 August 2003 HMCS Haida (G63), Canada’s most famous warship and the last remaining Tribal Class in the world, is moved to the Hamilton waterfront by Parks Canada; on the 60th anniversary of her commissioning into the RCN.
  • 31 August 1694 – Royal Navy vessel William and Mary attacks seven French warships at Ferryland, Newfoundland.
  • 31 August 1939 HMC Ships Fraser and St. Laurent leave Vancouver for Halifax to take up war stations in the North Atlantic Ocean.
  • 31 August 1942 German U boats sink 108 merchant ships this month, with a loss of 544,000 tons. Atlantic Ocean.
  • 31 August 1942 HMCS Morden sinks with depth charges U-756 440 miles WSW of Cape Farewell; the kill was originally credited to a USN Catalina.
  • 31 August 1945 HMCS PRINCE ROBERT entered Hong Kong where her commanding officer represents Canada at the surrender ceremonies of Japanese forces, and to liberate POWs.
  • 31 August 1946 The Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service is disbanded.
  • 31 August 1993  Fishery – Mulroney Government slaps a complete ban on cod fishing after stocks dwindle. A year earlier, Fisheries Minister John Crosbie ordered the $700 million northern cod fishery shut down for two years to conserve stocks; in total, 40,000 Atlantic Canadians lose their jobs, in the single largest mass layoff in Canadian history.  At its peak in the late 1960s, the northern cod fishery hauled in up to 800,000 tonnes a year.

 

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