A total of seven cruisers served with the RAN during World War II, all designed and built in Great Britain. These were the "Chatham" class light cruiser HMAS Adelaide, the "County" class cruisers Australia, (flagship) and Canberra, the "Amphion" Class cruisers Sydney, Perth, Hobart and the "County" Class cruiser Shropshire, transferred from Britain in 1943 as replacement for war losses Sydney, Perth, and Canberra.
County Class
Amphion Class
Birmingham Class
Specifications
Dimensions - length 630 feet o/a, beam 68.25 feet, draft 16.25 feet. 9,750 tons (standard), 13, 450 war load. Performance - 31.5 knots at 80,000 shp. Armament - 4 twin 8-inch guns, 4 single (later increased to 4 twin) 4 inch high angle AA guns, 2 quadruple 2-pounder AA guns, 2 quadruple 0.5 inch AA machine guns (later replaced with 20mm Oerlikon guns), 8 21-inch torpedo tubes (also one aircraft in the "London" types). Protection - armour belt 25 mm, deck 35 mm, magazines 76 mm maximum, other armour 38 mm maximum. Complement - 700.
The "Counties" were British-built "treaty" cruisers. These were ships built right up to the limit (8" guns and 10,000 tons displacement) set by 1920's Naval treaties. To be built within the limits, some sacrifice had to be made and the Counties had relatively thinly armoured sides, which attracted fierce criticism at the time. Nonetheless, their heavy guns gave them a powerful punch, and they gained popularity as roomy ships which rode well even in wild weather. Although the enemies of 1939 ignored treaties and built bigger 8" cruisers, such as the German "Hipper" Class, war service demonstrated that the argument over armour had been irrelevant. Of the three "Counties" (including HMAS Canberra) lost to enemy action, none were sunk by gunfire, and the experience of HMAS Australia was to show that the "Counties" stood up well to air attack. There were several sub-groups of the "County" class; RAN ships belonged to the "Kent" type and the "London" type.
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HMAS Australia ("Kent" type), flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, commissioned for war service in August 1939. During 1940 she joined the British Home Fleet during the operations off the Norwegian coast that spring. Later that year she went to the west coast of Africa, seeing action against Vichy French forces off Dakar. In March 1941 she returned to Australia. She was Flagship of an Australian-American cruiser group (TF 44, eventually becoming TF 74, Rear Admiral Victor Crutchley, VC). This group saw action at Coral Sea and Guadalcanal (May and August 1942), and carried out numerous bombardments during 1943. Australia may have been the target of the first recorded deliberate kamikaze attack (21st October 1944). After repairs she was in action at Lingayen Gulf (January 1945), where she was struck four times by kamikaze aircraft. Australia ended war service under repair in the UK.
HMAS Canberra
HMAS Canberra ("Kent" type) spent her entire war career in Australian waters and the Indian Ocean on patrol and escort duties. She was a unit within Task Force 44 which was heavily defeated by the Japanese at Savo Island (9th August 1942). Radar on picket ships failed to give warning of the Japanese approach, and the squadron was caught by surprise in the dark. Canberra was struck by at least two Japanese "Long Lance" torpedoes - the hardest-hitting in the world at that time - and 24 8-inch shells fired at the very close range of around 5,000 metres. The damage rendered her inactive, but still afloat. However, inspection the following day revealed that she was beyond economical repair. She was given the "coup de grace" by American torpedo.
HMAS Shropshire ("London" type) was commissioned into the Royal Navy under that name in 1929, but did not join the RAN until April 1943 as a replacement for Canberra. Prior to Australian service she had steamed many miles escorting convoys and bombarding the enemy in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. She spent most of the rest of the war as part of Task Force 74 (the Australian cruiser squadron operating effectively as part of the US Navy in and around New Guinea, New Britain and the Phillipines). As part of the Leyte Gulf invasion fleet she took part in the battle of Surigao strait (25th August 1944). She served at Lingayen Gulf in January 1945, and in support of Australian invasions of Brunei and Balikpapan in June and July. She was in the Phillipines for the Japanese surrender there. By the close of her service in 1947 Shropshire had steamed over half a million miles - more even than her sister, Australia.
Specifications-
Dimensions - length 562.25 feet o/a, beam 56.75 feet, draft 15.75 feet. Displacement approximately 7,000 tons standard, 9,000 tons war load. Performance - 32.5 knots at 72,000 SHP. Armament - 4 twin 6-inch guns, 4 single (later 4 twin) 4-inch AA guns, 3 quadruple 0.5-inch AA machine guns (later replaced with 20mm Oerlikons), 2 quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes, 1 aircraft. Protection - armour belt 102mm, magazines 60 mm maximum, deck and other armour 38 mm - 32 mm. Complement - 570.
By the mid-1930s, British naval thinking had come to the view that smaller ships carrying the newer 6" guns, with a higher rate of fire and improved armour penetration, were a match for 8" cruisers like the Kent class. Thus they began to build many different types of smaller cruiser. One successful type was the "Leander" Class (which included the famous Ajax and Achilles, two of the ships which hunted down the German pocket battleship Graf Spee in 1939). The Amphions were an adaptation of the "Leanders", and all three of the class served with the RAN. The adaptations made them look like a completely different class; the "Amphions" had two funnels to the "Leanders" one, and superstructure was substantially altered. But the similarities between the two were deeper than the differences; Achilles and Leander both served with the New Zealand Navy, often alongside Australian ships in the Mediterranean and the Pacific.
Sydney spent the first months of the war in Australian waters, and arrived in the Red Sea/Mediterranean area in May 1940. She spent much time thereafter on escort and general duties and in little scraps with the Italian navy; most significantly the first general action against Italian fleet (off Calabria, 9th July 1940) and the battle with the Italian cruisers Giovanni Delle Banda Nere and Bartolomeo Colleoni (off Cape Spada, 19th July 1940), in which Bartolomeo Colleoni was sunk and Giovanni Delle Banda Nere damaged, without Sydney suffering more than a single inconsequential hit. In January 1941 she returned to Australian waters where she spent the rest of her career. On 19th November, Sydney encountered the German disguised raider Kormoran. In the fight which followed Kormoran effectively ambushed Sydney at point blank range, causing severe damage and fires. Kormoran herself was wrecked, but Sydney was last seen, listing and on fire, heading slowly over the skyline. Some time after the fight she sank with all hands. The precise cause of her loss has never been definitely established. Because she was still apparently under control when last seen by Kormoran's survivors, some people have theorised that she was finished off by a lurking German - or even Japanese - submarine.
HMAS Perth
Perth began World War II in the Caribbean Sea on escort and general duties. These took her through the Panama canal and back. More escort work followed her return to Australian waters in January 1940. In November that year she went to the Mediterranean. Here she spent more time on general duties and occasional clashes with the Italian navy, including the Battle of Cape Matapan (28th/29th March 1941). She was dive-bombed (30th May 1941) during the evacuation of Crete. Repairs, more general work then return to Australia followed in July/August. A refit kept her in harbour until November, when Captain Hector Waller, DSO and Bar, former commander of the famous "Scrap-iron flotilla", assumed command.
In January 1942 Perth was sent to the Java Sea to help defend the region against the Japanese. In the disastrous battle of the Java Sea (27th-28th Feb), only Perth and an American cruiser, USS Houston, escaped from a combined Anglo-Australian-Dutch-American fleet of fourteen ships. Perth's survival was brief. On the following night (28th Feb/1st March) she and Houston ran into a Japanese invasion force while trying to withdraw through the Sunda Strait. Perth was torpedoed four times, and "Hec" Waller was killed along with half his ship's complement; the remainder spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prison camp.
Hobart operated in the Indian Ocean until August 1941. During this time she was distinguished in the evacuation of Berbera, British Somaliland in the face of the advancing Italian invaders. During these interesting times, Hobart's Walrus aircraft bombed and strafed ground targets, some of her crew built jetties and acted as shore-masters, and others worked an anti-tank gun! General duties in the Mediterranean followed until transfer to the Far East, where Hobart arrived in January 42. Here she was heavily bombed at Tandjong Priok in Java (which delayed her and thus saved her from the disaster in the Java Sea). She saw further action in the Coral sea (May 1942) and Guadalcanal (August 1942). She was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Coral Sea (20th July 1943), and repairs kept her out of action until April 1945. Then she went to support Australian landings at Tarakan, Wewak, and Brunei until the war ended.
Specifications
Dimensions - length 462.75 feet o/a, beam 50 feet, draft 16 feet. 5,440 tons (normal) 6,160 tons (full load). Performance - 25.5 knots at 25,000 SHP. Armament - 8 single 6-inch guns, 3 single 4-inch AA guns, 2 21-inch torpedo tubes. Protection - full length belt 51 mm, deck 10mm - 38 mm. Complement - 480.
This class was a near-repeat of the slightly earlier and more numerous "Chatham" class. They were the culmination of a very successful line of cruisers developed during and immediately after the Great War. HMAS Adelaide, built at the Cockatoo dockyard in Sydney and launched in 1918, was completed only in 1922. She was the only cruiser of this class to serve with the RAN during World War II; her near-sisters Melbourne and Sydney (both "Chathams") had already been scrapped. Adelaide spent some years prior to World War II on reserve, recommissioning on 1st September 1939 for War service. In September 1940 she sailed to the French colony of Noumea. The Vichy government of the colony was leaning towards Germany and Japan, making this Pacific island a strategic threat; but Vichy was officially neutral and not to be attacked lightly. Adelaide gave great assistance in the overthrow of this government and the establishment of a De Gaullist one - all without firing a shot, to the great credit of her captain, Captain H A Showers.
The rest of her war service was taken up with patrolling and convoy escorts, during one of which (28th November 1942) she sank the German blockade runner Ramses. Her normal routine continued until 26th February 1945, when she was retired from sea service. After a brief stint as tender to a shore depot in Sydney, the old ship went to the breakers yard in 1949.