Warship Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2022: Mines, Yes, but also U-Boats!

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2022: Mines, Yes, but also U-Boats!

Photograph FL 18955 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums

Here we see the Royal Navy Halcyon-class “sloop minesweeper” HMS Sharpshooter (N68/J68)in September 1938, at around the time Hitler sent troops into the Sudetenland and a year before he was to send them into Poland, sparking WWII. Not a very imposing ship, some 80 years ago this week she would single-handedly send a Jerry U-boat to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Based on the Grimsby-class sloops-of-war– a baker’s dozen 1,500-ton, 266-foot slow-moving (16 knots) sub chasers…