Background

A class of almost forgotten WW I gunboats of the Royal Navy were involved again and again in operations along the Libyan coast, starting with bombarding Sidi Barrani at the start of Operation COMPASS, O’Connor’s offensive in 1940. At least one of them, HMS Aphis, was involved in Operation CRUSADER over a year later, e.g. when she joined Australian destroyers in bombarding Axis positions at Sollum and Halfaya, and possibly during bombardments of the coastal road from Derna to Tobruk. Her companion HMS Gnat had been involved in bombardment action against the Axis forces in October, but had been torpedoed by U-79 on 21 October with her bow shot away.  She was never repaired. 

HMS Ladybird had been bombed and sunk in shallow water in Tobruk harbour on 12 May 41, and continued to serve as an AA platform, so I guess one can say she was involved as well. You can see HMS Ladybird in a very interesting movie from around 1943 at this link, together with some good shots of Italian San Giorgio.

The Insect Gunboats

The Insect classes’ main armament were 6″ guns, and they had a very distinctive look with their twin funnels arranged abreast, instead of in line, a bit like Mississipi steamers, as can be seen in the picture of HMS Cockchafer below. Although it is likely that by World War 2 most of them had been rebuilt, and lost the twin funnels, as can be seen on the picture of HMS Aphis below.  They were very small vessels of only 625 tons displacement, smaller than e.g. the Italian escort torpedo boats of the Spica class, or a German Type VII submarine, and they were designed to operate on what amounts to no more than a wet meadow, or a larger river such as the Danube. There is a stupendous movie at this link, showing an Insect class gunboat undertaking a bombardment while operating on the Tigris river in modern Iraq in 1918.

I like the fact that the class naming makes a lot of sense – the boats were tiny, but packed a big sting (an article on modern ship naming can be found at this link – it features Insect-class HMS Cockchafer, which may have been involved in CRUSADER).

HMS Cockchafer underway, probably WW2

HMS Aphis, probably WW2

 
The Insect Class river gunboat HMS GNAT on the China Station during the summer of 1922. (IWM Q 93287)
 

History

While HMS Cockchafer had been involved in incidents of high political drama, in China in 1924 and again in 1926, and in Iraq in 1941, when the regent escaped the insurgency on her, the service these ships saw in the Med was more mundane, but not less dangerous.

HMS Gnat, Cricket and Ladybird were all lost in 1941 – the former torpedoed and beached, Cricket bombed and near-missed while on a Tobruk convoy in June 1941 off Mersa Matruh, and declared a constructive loss after towing into Alexandria, and the latter bombed and sunk in May, dive-bombed and sunk in shallow water in Tobruk harbour, where she then continued to serve as an AA platform.  Lt. A.O. McGinlay of 7 RTR in Tobruk (see this older post) was an eyewitness to the loss of HMS Ladybird, and commented on the extraordinary heroism of the sailors manning her anti-air armament, who continued firing throughout the attack and after she had settled.  She continued to serve as an AA platform in the harbour, presumably until it was lost in 1942.

HMS Aphis, Scarab, Cockchafer continued service in the Mediterranean until the end of war, with HMS Cockchafer maybe being reduced to depot duties from 1944 onwards.

HMS Gnat was beached off Alexandria and became an AA defense installation, while Cricket seems to have gone on to Cyprus to serve as target ship for air crew training.

Shore Bombardment

I came across an entry in the German daily report for 13 January 1942, the day lower Sollum was lost, stating that the naval forces supporting the attack by 2nd South African division included a battleship.  This is of course not possible (although the Axis forces could not know this), since there was no operational battleship left in the eastern Mediterrenean after the sinking of HMS Barham on 25 November by U-331 (commanded by Freiherr von Friesenhausen) and the disabling of the older battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant in Alexandria harbour by Italian frogmen of Decima MAS on 19 December.    

According to this site, none of the heavy gun monitors of the Royal Navy was available in the eastern Mediterrenean at the time either, HMS Terror having been sunk in February of 1941.  So that raises the question of who bombarded Sollum/Halfaya that night (on 31 December it was apparently HMS Ajax together with a group of Australian and British destroyers). The likely answer is HMS Aphis. For 8 January, Enrico Cernuschi in a recent article claims that she bombarded the harbour and sank a small German assault boat (Pionierlandungsboot).

Following CRUSADER, the survivors continued to serve, with at least one still active during the invasion of Sicily (see at 2:10 minutes in the movie at this link)

Further Reading

I have found a website about this lesser unknown class of ships, originally built to serve on the Danube, but ending up in China, Archangelsk and all places inbetween.  Fortunately enough there is a good bit of information on them available, e.g. this site, focussing on the China service of the fleet:

http://www.hmsfalcon.com/index.htm#Aphis

Technical information on these small  gunboats can be found on Wikipedia (use with care):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_class_gunboat