HMS Barham

1941

Sidi Barrani, the magazine, the Valiant's camera Location: Mediterranean Sea, off Sidi Barrani, Egypt · Coordinates: 32.35°N 26.30°E · Casualties: 862 · Survivors: 450 · Depth: 148 m · Cause: submarine torpedo · magazine explosion — Torpedoed by German submarine U-331 (Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen, commanding) at 16:25 on 25 November 1941 in the Mediterranean. Three torpedoes struck the port side. She listed sharply; the main magazines ignited; she capsized and exploded in under five minutes. · Fate: war grave · located · Type: battleship · Queen Elizabeth class · Tonnage: 27,500 tons · Crew: 1184 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1914 Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, operating off Sidi Barrani with the Mediterranean Fleet. Torpedoed by U-331 at 16:25 on 25 November 1941; three torpedoes found her port side, her magazines ignited, and she capsized and exploded in under five minutes. 862 dead of 1,184 aboard. The entire sinking was filmed from HMS Valiant; the Admiralty suppressed the footage for three months to prevent German confirmation of the kill. The Vessel HMS Barham was a Queen Elizabeth-class battleship of the Royal Navy, commissioned at the John Brown & Company yard at Clydebank on 19 October 1915. She was 197 metres long, 27,500 tons standard displacement, armed with eight 15-inch guns in four twin turrets, a main armament equal to any battleship then in service. She was the fourth ship of her class, the five-ship Queen Elizabeth class that had been the Royal Navy's principal late-First World War fast battleship design. Her First World War service had included the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, where she had served with the 5th Battle Squadron and had been hit by six German shells without serious damage, firing 337 rounds of 15-inch ammunition in return. Her interwar service had been primarily in the Mediterranean Fleet. She had undergone major modernisation refits in 1930 and 1937; by 1939 her propulsion machinery had been completely replaced, her anti-aircraft armament upgraded, and her deck armour strengthened. She was, at the outbreak of the Second World War, the most up-to-date Queen Elizabeth-class battleship in service. Her commanding officer from October 1941 was Captain Geoffrey Cooke, 42, a career Royal Navy officer and graduate of the Royal Naval Staff College. Her Admiralty assignment was to the Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, flagship of the battle squadron operating from Alexandria. The Disaster The torpedo impacts occurred at 16:25 on 25 November 1941. Barham began to list immediately to port, the list increasing at approximately 2 degrees per minute. Her watertight subdivision had been compromised across four compartments, and her damage-control teams had only limited time to respond before the list crossed the critical threshold. At 16:29, four minutes after the torpedo strikes, Barham's main 15-inch magazine detonated. The detonation was recorded on a cinefilm camera aboard the nearby battleship HMS Valiant, operated by a British Pathé News cameraman who happened to be filming a routine Mediterranean Fleet exercise. The resulting footage (approximately 47 seconds of continuous film, released to the British public in 1942 after initial classification) is the only extant moving-picture record of a battleship's magazine explosion in the Second World War; it has become, through repeated use in documentaries and in training films, one of the most widely-seen single pieces of film ever taken of a naval disaster. The explosion destroyed approximately half of the ship's hull and superstructure. The resulting mushroom cloud rose to an estimated 300 metres. Her bow and stern, no longer held together by the ship's midship structure, rose from the water momentarily and then sank in opposite directions. Between the first torpedo strike and her complete disappearance, approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds elapsed. Of her 1,184 crew, 862 died. 320 were rescued by the accompany