Evil Jester! may i ask of you to apply your talents for the game name 'K103 ALBERNI please. Art you post is great. i have included a brief story about this ww2 ship hence the name.
She escorted convoys to Iceland, participating in the desperate fight around Convoy SC-42 in September, when fifteen merchantmen were sunk and U-501 was destroyed by CHAMBLY and MOOSE JAW. ALBERNI was then based on Londonderry, and made a name for herself during 1942 by rescuing over 145 torpedoed merchant seamen on two occasions. She was assigned to escorting convoys in support of North African landings between Britain, Gibraltar and North African Ports. She was present with the Mediterranean convoys when VILLE DE QUEBEC and REGINA obtained their submarine kills but, as with U 501, did not have the chance for direct participation and credit. Reports did give ALBERNI a " Probably damaged" verdict after an attack in 1941. Returning to Canada in March 1943, she served in the Western Local and in the Gulf Escort Force in the St. Lawrence. Time was taken for a modest and partial refit. In April 1944 she was one of seventeen RCN corvettes sent to the UK in support of Operation Neptune, the landings at Normandy. In June and July she escorted a miscellaneous collection of landing craft and ships, barges, tugs and floating piers for Mulberry and merchant ships between Southampton Water and the Beaches.
On 26 July she shot down a German Junkers 88 that had attacked her at almost sea level. ALBERNI opened fire with her starboard Oerlikons and he after pom-pom as the plane tore toward her. The Junkers climbed and banked to clear ALBERNI and her port Oerlikons scored direct hits at close range. The enemy burst into flames and exploded in the sea 100 yards off ALBERNI'S port bow with no survivors. On 28 July she narrowly missed an aircraft-laid mine, then a depth charge laid over an asdic contact set off another mine 200 yards off ALBERNI'S starboard beam without significant damage. It was an exciting time.
After brief maintenance at Southampton, ALBERNI was ordered to relieve HMCS DRUMHELLER on patrol for U-boats to the eastward of the swept channel leading to the Normandy beaches. At 11:45 on 21 August 1944 she was streaming south at fourteen knots in fair weather with a NNE wind of five knots but State Four seas for the rendezvous, sweeping by 'asdic' (early form of sonar used to detect submarines) eighty-degrees on either bow, radar operating. "Hands to Dinner" had just been piped. Four minutes later, with no asdic warning whatsoever, she was hit by a torpedo on her port side just aft of the engine room. In less than 10 seconds she was awash from the funnel aft, listing to port and sinking fast. In another twenty seconds she was gone, sinking stern first. Most of the off-watch hands were trapped in their mess decks, and only one stoker escaped from the engine and boiler rooms.
The U-boat that had destroyed ALBERNI with an acoustic torpedo was not identified at the time. In fact it was suspected that ALBERNI might have been mined, as seven anti-submarine craft hunted through the area the next day and found nothing. Post-war review of German records indicate she was the first victim, of several ships in the area of U-480 (OL Hans Jachim Forster) of the IX U-Flottille, operating out of Brest, France. Less than twenty-eight hours later Forster sank the RN Algerine's minesweeper LOYALTY in almost exactly the same location with nineteen killed. She and her flotilla had been sweeping the area for suspected mines, partly as a result of ALBERNI 'S still unverified sinking. LOYALTY had fouled her sweep with another Algernine's, dropped back to recover her gear in hazy weather and was catching up with Forster hit her in the stern with a GNAT. Fortunately that day the minesweeper took twenty minutes to sink, although her CO was lost. The lack of detection of the U-Boat may have been, at least in part, due to its all-over Alberich rubber coating, designed to absorb asdic sound waves.
Over the next two days U-480 sank two more merchantmen in the area. After sinking another, also in the Channel the following February, Forster and U-480 were in their turn sunk by the RN frigates DUCKWORTH and ROWLEY on 24 February 1945.
This ship was part of the Normandy Landings and i think of the' DOD Strand' were as looking from the german side out over the sandy beaches the water could be a good location as the US soilders take on the beach head!, but this is a suggestion and please feel free to review and enjoy this breif moment in history, i am respecting of artists. tHX doug r. ps. my uncle was a seaman aboard and survied as the sudden list of the ship thru his lucky ass over into the water!
