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HMS Bradford City
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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar greatHMS Bradford City
The SS Bradford City was built by Ropner & Sons of Stockton-on-Tees and was registered on the 12th of February 1910. She worked the coal out and grain home Atlantic trade routes. On the 8th of August 1913 her homeport was changed to Bideford in Devon. In the autumn of 1915 the Bradford City was requisitioned by the Royal Navy to be converted into a Q-ship and fitted with two four-inch guns, a 2˝-pounder gun and a maxim machine gun. Looking like an innocent merchant ship a Q-ship hoped to entice a U-boat to the surface whereupon the guns would be uncovered and the crew would hope to sink the submarine before it could dive. The First World War saw the emergence of the submarine as a major weapon of war. With the German surface fleet being confined to harbour by the might of the Royal Navy, the only effective response the German’s had was its submarines – or U-boats as they were commonly known. The U-boats would often surface to sink a merchant ship by gunfire, rather than waste a precious torpedo. The Royal Navy responded by fitting out merchant vessels with hidden guns. They became known as Q-ships and during the early years of the war they accounted for a third of the U-boats sunk.
As a Q-ship HMS Bradford City operated out of Gibraltar patrolling the Mediterranean. On 16th August 1917 the Bradford City was on patrol in the Straits of Messina between Italy and Sicily. Eight miles off San Remo she was torpedoed by the Austro-Hungarian submarine U28. Though the ship sank quickly, all the crew were picked up unharmed by a French fishing boat.
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Dec 2011
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List of those who served on HMS Bradford City during The Great War
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