BYMS 2255
British Yard Mine Sweeper
BRITISH YARD MINE SWEEPERS
BYMS’s were built in the United States and transferred the Royal Navy under the Lend-lease Programme. “British Yard Mine Sweepers” are so called because they were built to the same design as the US Navy’s “Yard Mine Sweepers”.
Crews for the BYMS’s would sail to the United States, often on the Queen Mary, which could sail unescorted because of her greater speed, to collect their vessel. They would then have the formidable task of sailing their small vessel back across the Atlantic Ocean, often in winter.
MINE SWEEPING FLOTILLA: 169th MSF: 2050, 2064, 2152, 2154, 2255, 2277, 2278, 2284.
Based at: Dover.
Built by: Weaver Shipyard, Orange, Texas, USA.
Laid down: 30 May 1942.
Launched: 22 May 1943.
Handed over to Royal Navy: 30 November 1943.
Sank by mine: 5 October 1944.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Wooden hull. Length, 130 feet. Beam, 25 feet 6 inches. Depth, 12 feet I inch. Draft, 8 foot 10.5 inches. Displacement 207-215 tons.
Engine: Two 800 bhp General Motors diesel engines.
Speed: 14.6 knots. 10 knots while sweeping. (Eight knots with double Oropesa sweeps)
Range: 2,500 at ten knots.
Compliment: 3 officers and 27 men.
Armament: One 3-inch HA/LA gun and two Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns.
BYMS’s were fitted with a drum on the stern with LL (double L) cables for sweeping magnetic mines, an acustic hammer on the bow for sweeping acustic mines and Oropesa floats for sweeping tethered mines.
All YMS and BYMS were built to the same design, the only variation was in the number of exhaust stacks. Minesweepers 1 to 134 had two sacks, 135 to 480 had one stack, 466 to 479 had no stacks.
OFFICERS ON THE NAVY LIST, June 1944.
Not on Navy Lists.
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MOVEMENTS.
30 November 1943, completed.
22 Feb 1944, Charleston, South Carolina, United States.
26 Feb to 3 March 1944, Bermuda.
12 to 16 March 1944, Horta, Azores.
21 March, 1944, Falmouth.
5 October 1944: Detonated a mine and sunk off Boulogne, France. There was no casualty.