Sinking of HMS Hermes

On 31 October 1914 the German submarine U-27, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Bernd Wegener, torpedoed the British ship Hermes in the Strait of Dover, a dozen or so kilometres from Calais. She was the first ship adapted to carry aircraft to be lost by the British fleet.

Hermes was an old cruiser, launched at the end of the 19th century. In 1913 she was converted into the Royal Navy’s first experimental seaplane carrier. A launching platform was fitted on the bow, and canvas hangars and a crane for lifting aircraft out of the water were installed on deck. The ship could carry three seaplanes. During the fleet’s summer manoeuvres in 1913 the trials went promisingly. They also showed that reconnaissance aircraft needed wireless sets if their observations were to be of use.

After the outbreak of war, on 31 August 1914, the ship was recommissioned. She did not operate as an aircraft carrier, however, but as a transport and supply base for the Royal Naval Air Service, the air arm of the British navy. She ferried aircraft and equipment across the Channel to France. On 30 October she delivered seaplanes to Dunkirk. The next morning she set out on the return voyage, but was soon ordered back because a German submarine had been sighted in the area.

Although Hermes was zigzagging at 13 knots, U-27 managed to close to a few hundred metres and hit her with a torpedo. The ship sank in shallow water in the strait. Most of the crew, including the captain, Charles Lambe, were picked up by the steamer Invicta and destroyers. Some of the survivors were helped to stay afloat by the tin cans for aviation petrol that the ship was carrying. Depending on the source, 21 or 22 men were killed.

It was another victory for German submarines that month, after the sinking of the cruiser Hawke in the North Sea. For Wegener it was his second success in two weeks. On 18 October U-27 had sunk the British submarine E3 off the Dutch coast. It was the first time in history that a submarine had been sunk by another submarine. Wegener was killed on 19 August 1915, when the British Q-ship Baralong sank U-27.