Pangbourne class minesweeper

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The Pangbourne Class minesweepers were built around 1917-1919 and were classed as 'Fleet Minesweepers', that is ships intended to clear open water. An unknown number between 24 and 30 are known to have been commissioned, but details are hard to find. They were all named after middle-sized British towns.

Displacement was 'around' 700 tons and they were forced-draught coal burners, that is they burned pulverised coal in an artificially augmented airstream. One consequence of this was that they produced a lot of smoke, so much so that they were more usually referred to as 'Smokey Joes'. Another was that if they were fed anything other than the Welsh Steam Coal they were designed for then the fuel consumption was enormous - one ship was bunkered with soft brown Natal coal and burnt 20 tons in a single day.

Most of them spent the period from 1919 to 1939 in mothballs in obscure corners of dockyards around the world, with Malta and Singapore having most of them.

They had twin screws and a very shallow draught (8 feet, 2.43 metres). Armament was one 4 inch forward and a 12-pounder aft plus two twin machine guns.

They were equipped for sweeping with Oropesa floats only, that is for moored mines.

Several (Sutton, Kellett, Pangbourne, Ross and Lydd) took part in the evacuation at Dunkirk, and most saw service in the Mediterranean war.

The 5th Minesweeping Flotilla, comprising the Pangbourne-class minesweepers Pangourne, Ross, Lydd, Kellet and Albury as well as the newer Halcyon-class Gossamer and Leda sailed from North Shields for Harwich late on 26 May 1940, reaching Harwich nearly 24 hours later. After coaling, the flotilla sailed for Dunkirk in the afternoon of 28 May, and was off the beach by about 2130 hours the same day. At least 2 ships from the Flotilla (Ross and Lydd) were detailed to collect troops from the harbour mole. Ross alone took on board 353 men and 1 dog on this first night. The ships of the flotilla made a further 3 trips to Dunkirk in the following days, working at battle-stations virtually round the clock and returning to Margate for the last time from Dunkirk on Saturday, 1 June 1940.

Some sources refer to them as the Hunt class, but this does not seem to correspond with the names.

Known ship names

Aberdare
Abingdon
Albury
Bagshot
Derby
Dundalk
Dunoon
Elgin
Fermoy
Fitzroy
Huntley
Kellett
Lydd
Pangbourne
Ross
Selkirk
Stoke
Sutton
Widnes

History

Widnes was sunk during the evacuation of Crete. Fermoy, Huntly and Stoke were sunk by dive-bombers during the early months of 1941. Abingdon was damaged beyond repair by dive bombers in April 1942 (at Malta) Dunoon and Dundalk were sunk by mines off East Anglia in 1940/41

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