Massie's 'Castles of Steel' recounts the offbeat story of Churchill's idea in late 1914 of disguising merchant ships as battleships and battlecruisers to fool the Germans. Some 14 liners and other vessels were fitted with dummy turrets, funnels and other supersructure made of wood to sail as fake battle squadrons, while the real ships were elsewhere. The scheme masterminded by gunnery whiz Percy Scott cost a million pounds, diverted labour and crews and was totally ineffective. The fake squadron was too slow to keep station with the Grand Fleet, and the ships were all different sizes and would have fooled no-one. The fake battlecruiser Tiger was sunk by a U-boat near the Dardanelles with a single torpedo in 1915 with the loss of four lives, but the Germans knew about the ruse quite early on. The ships were eventually re-converted and used for other purposes.

Found it a fascinating tale and wondering if anyone had any more details, especially pictures

cheers Martin B

There is a full chapter devoted to "The Dummy Fleet" in "Gallant Gentlemen" by E. Keble Chatterton [first published 1931]. It includes a table of details of the ships used, & there are photos of the S.S. Meirion before & after her conversion into "H.M.S. Tiger".
If you search Abebooks etc., you will find a copy quite easily for just a few pounds.

David.

Some details here, Martin: http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/dumm...pital_ships.htm

Good old WSC. War winning weezes were just popping into his head all the time.

Yeah,Tom.
I'm really starting to wonder if Winnie is goint to become Ch*****ll in say 100 years to some.
He's my hero for the WW2 stuff but he did make some whopping bloopers.
Sort of reverse Q ships?What was the point of that?
Dave.

Thanks for your contributions. Interesting to see that one modelled for Audacious, from about the time when it was sunk, and two were scuttled as blockships on January 1, 1916, Oruba at Mudros, so presumable Michigan too.

cheers Martin B

In "Dardanelles - A Midshipman's Diary" by HM Denham, he records seeing two dummy capital ships on 6 March 1915, which he thought at first were TIGER and INDOMITABLE but he thought their freeboard was a bit high - otherwise good decoys. "We learnt later that the former ship was apparently the PRINZESSIN CECILIE (Norddeutsche Lloyd) captured as a prize."

He goes on to state: "These dummy warships, decribed in a subsequent signal as 'special service ships Nos 11 and 14', were merchant ships cleverly disguised by the Belfast shipyards to deceive the enemy into reporting them as British battle-cruisers. Later, we learnt that the intention was to delude the Germans into thinking we were depleting the Grand Fleet in orer to provide more warships to back up the Dardanelles expedition, or possibly to discourage Germany's battle-cruiser GOEBEN from making a sortie from Constantinople."

"One of these ships was later sunk by a U-boat whose captain must have been astonished to see the surviving crew clinging to the floating wooden turrets, when the ship sank beneath the waves. But one vessel, ORION, survived to be sunk by us later to form a much-needed shelter at our advance base, Kephalo, on the island of Imbros."

A picture of ORION from Denham's book:-

Any hope of secrecy was rather spoiled by the New York Times, who reported their construction in some detail in December 1914.


Regards,

   Ralph

Some details:

SSV 1 St Vincent (on SS City of Oxford) Dummy BS, became Kite baloon ship 17/7/15
SSV 2 Collingwood (on SS Michigan) Dummy BS, expended as blockship at Mudros 1/1/16
SSV 3 Iron Duke (on SS Montezuma) Dummy BS, became oiler Abadol 7/7/15
SSV 4 King George V (on SS Ruthenia) Dummy BS, became water carrier 1/16, later oiler
SSV 5 Centurion (on SS Tyrolia) Dummy BS, became oiler Saxol 6/16
SSV 6 Orion (on SS Oruba) Dummy BS, expended as blockship at Kephalo Bay 1/1/16
SSV 7 Marlborough (on SS Mount Royal) Dummy BS, became oiler Rangol 10/7/16
SSV 8 Audacious (on SS Montcalm) Dummy BS, became oiler
SSV 9 Ajax (on Kronprinzessen Cecile = Princess 1915) Dummy BS, Detained vessel, became AMC 9/1/16
SSV 10 Vanguard (on SS Perthshire) Dummy BS, became water carrier 4/9/15, later oiler
SSV 11 Queen Mary (on SS Cevic) Dummy BCS, became oiler Bayol
SSV 12 Indomitable (on SS Manipur) Dummy BCS, became repair ship Sandhurst 1915
SSV 13 Invincible (on SS Patrician) Dummy BCS, became oiler Teakol 1915
SSV 14 Tiger (on SS Merion) Dummy BCS, sunk by UB 8 off Strati Island, Aegean Sea on 29/5/15

Best wishes
David

Thanks for the additional pictures and list, but puzzled by the Kronprinzessin Cecile, which Denham says was a captured Norddeutscher Lloyd liner. Googling this name does turn up a Norddeutscher Lloyd ship, but all accounts say she was interned by the Americans after turning back to New York on the outbreak of war, and then officially seized and converted into a US troopship in 1917. Could she have been 'loaned' to the British in the meantime, or is there some confusion on the name?

cheers Martin B

Hi Martin,

Somewhat confusingly there were two liners named Kronprinzessin Cecilie.  The Norddeutscher Lloyd ship, as you mentioned, was interned in the US.  The other was a Hamburg-Amerika liner seized by the British at Falmouth in August 1914.

Regards, Ralph

Martin, according to the London Gazette of 29 August 1914, the KRONPRINZESSIN CECILE of 8,684 tons was seized in London.

Best wishes
David

Just reviving this old thread after a quick search. I have just read in "The Phantom Fleet" by A Cecil Hampshire (1960 reprinted 1977) that the work to convert all these ships was undertaken in Harland & Wolff, Belfast. I was wondering if anyone has any more information/detail about this. Apparently 2000 shipwrights and other skilled craftsmen worked night and day from early November 1914 to make this happen, the work being completed by the end of Feb 1915. No mean achievement, least of all during early WWI, especially as the work to convert could not have been easy. According to the book some innovative methods of construction were used. The reason for selecting Belfast, wait for it, was "security." Obviously with shipbuilding in Belfast long gone this would make a very interesting local story. Yet another example of Belfast's very wide and varied "hidden" history from the Great War. Given this was top secret at the time I don't really hold up much hope of getting anything in the local newspapers.

Any info or pictures would be much appreciated.

Regards, Tommy.

Seems to me that the relevant authorities would have been far better off devoting their time, energy and materials to build proper
ships, fully capable instead of mad cap schemes which probably didn't achieve anything.
David

There's a fine line between genius and madness.

Good point Tom,

Where were the Army's armoured cars in 1914, when Samson and the RNAS's were fighting alongside the BEF?
Where were the RFC at Gallipoli? Kitchener at the WO would not allow one plane, but the RNAS were there
Where were the Army's armoured trains while those of the Navy were in Flanders?
The Navy's balloon ship 'Manica' was already active in the Aegean helping at Gallipoli, when the Army's first balloon section set off for Ypres
The Navy held a test mobilization in July 1914 and at its end, did not stand down. When 4th August arrived Battenberg told the King
"We have the drawn sword in our hand."

If only the other departments of state had been so well prepared for war as the Admiralty was under WSC!

Ah, but the Navy had Samson in 1914 and the Army didn't get Delilah until late 1916*...

(* Tank D13 'Delilah', which, coincidentally, was commanded at High Wood by a Lt Sampson.)

It seems the Royal Navy missed its chance to blunt the propaganda defeat they faced after Jutland: they should have claimed they'd lost several units of their dummy fleet in action against the German HSF which had completely fallen for the ruse.

tone

That they got the tank at all was also thanks to the Landship Committee convened by WSC. Under his guidence the RNAS launched long range bombing raids and put out the contracts for a multi engined heavy bomber; they also launched the first (sea plane) carrier raid. The adoption of oil fueled capital ships not only altered naval warfare, but also Britain's entire geo-stategical situation.

I agree, the proposed 6th Queen Elizabeth would have come in handy. Churchill's decision cut back on capital programmes was detrimental to the Navy. Otoh, the work that yards did at this tiime (such as the conversion of the seaplane carriers) under his direction did some good.

Of course his dummy and camouflage ideas really came to fruition in WW2. The idea of dummy capital ships was a standard ruse de guerre in previous wars, but in WWI the idea was obsolete.

In WW2 dummy tanks, planes and landing craft (amongst other things) persuaded the Germans that D-Day was really going to be in the Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy; Even after it happened.

Who knows what this dummy fleet might have led to.

As Napoleon said, "The man who hasn't made a mistake, has never made anything" (and this may not have been a mistake).