HMS Dorsetshire (1929)

HMS ''Dorsetshire'' (pennant number 40) was a heavy cruiser of the British Royal Navy, named after the English county, now usually known as Dorset. The ship was a member of the ''Norfolk'' sub-class, of which was the only other unit; the County class comprised a further eleven ships in two other sub-classes. ''Dorsetshire'' was built at the Portsmouth Dockyard; her keel was laid in September 1927, she was launched in January 1929, and was completed in September 1930. ''Dorsetshire'' was armed with a main battery of eight guns, and had a top speed of .

''Dorsetshire'' served initially in the Atlantic Fleet in the early 1930s, before moving to become the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, Africa in 1933, and then to the China Station in late 1935. She remained there until the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, when she was transferred to the South Atlantic. There, she reinforced the search for the German heavy cruiser . In late May 1941, ''Dorsetshire'' took part in the final engagement with the battleship ''Bismarck'', which ended when ''Dorsetshire'' was ordered to close and torpedo the crippled German battleship. She joined searches for the heavy cruiser in August and the auxiliary cruiser in November.

In March 1942, ''Dorsetshire'' was transferred to the Eastern Fleet to support British forces in the recently opened Pacific Theatre of the war. At the end of the month, the Japanese fast carrier task force—the ''Kido Butai''—launched the Indian Ocean raid. On 5 April, Japanese aircraft spotted ''Dorsetshire'' and her sister while en route to Colombo; a force of dive bombers then attacked the two ships and sank them. More than 1,100 men were rescued the next day, out of a combined crew of over 1,500.

Description

''Dorsetshire'' was at maximum long overall, and had a beam of and a draught of . She displaced at standard displacement, in compliance with the tonnage restriction of the Washington Naval Treaty, and up to at full load. ''Dorsetshire'' was propelled by four Parsons steam turbines that drove four screw propellers. Steam was provided by eight oil-fired 3-drum water-tube boilers. The turbines were rated at and produced a top speed of . The ship had a capacity of of fuel oil as built, which provided a cruising radius of at a speed of . She had a crew of 710 officers and enlisted men.

''Dorsetshire'' was armed with a main battery of eight BL Mk VIII 50-cal. guns in four twin turrets, in two superfiring pairs forward and aft. As built, the cruiser had a secondary battery that included four dual-purpose guns (DP) in single mounts. She also carried four QF 2-pounder anti-aircraft guns, also in single mounts. Her armament was rounded out by eight torpedo tubes mounted in two quadruple launchers.

Unlike most heavy cruisers, the County-class cruisers dispensed with traditional belt armour and used side plating to protect the hulls against shell fragments only. The ammunition magazines received of armour plate on the sides. The gun turrets and their supporting barbettes also received only 1 in splinter protection.

In 1931, ''Dorsetshire'' began to carry a seaplane; a catapult was installed the following year to allow her to launch the aircraft while underway. In 1937, her secondary battery was overhauled. Eight QF 4-inch Mk XVI DP guns in twin turrets replaced the single mounts, and the single 2-pounders were replaced with eight twin-mounts. During the Second World War, her anti-aircraft battery was strengthened by the addition of nine guns.

Service history

Pre-war

''Dorsetshire'' was laid down at the Portsmouth Dockyard on 21 September 1927 and was launched on 21 January 1929. After completing fitting-out work on 30 September 1930 she was commissioned into the Royal Navy. Upon commissioning, ''Dorsetshire'' became the flagship of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron. In 1931, she was part of the Atlantic Fleet during the Invergordon Mutiny. During the incident, some of her men initially refused to assemble for duty but after an hour and a half, the ship's officers had restored order and no further unrest troubled ''Dorsetshire'' during the mutiny. From 1933–1935, she served as the flagship for the Commander-in-Chief, Africa; she was replaced by . By September 1935, ''Dorsetshire'' was assigned to the China Station. From 1–4 February 1937, ''Dorsetshire'', the aircraft carrier and the cruiser participated in an exercise to test the defences of Singapore against a hypothetical Japanese attack.

Second World War

At the start of the Second World War in September 1939, ''Dorsetshire'' was still on the China Station. In October, ''Dorsetshire''—with other Royal Navy ships—was sent to South American waters in pursuit of the German heavy cruiser , which was attacking British merchant traffic in the area. ''Dorsetshire'' was assigned with her sister ship and the aircraft carrier . ''Dorsetshire'' had just arrived in Simonstown, South Africa, from Colombo on 9 December, with orders to proceed to Tristan da Cunha and then to Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands to relieve . After departing Simonstown, she received the order to join the hunt for ''Admiral Graf Spee''. She left South Africa on 13 December in company with the cruiser and was in transit on 17 December when the Germans scuttled ''Admiral Graf Spee'' following the Battle of the River Plate.

''Exeter'' had been badly damaged in the battle with ''Admiral Graf Spee'', and ''Dorsetshire'' escorted her back to Britain in January 1940, before returning to South American waters to search for German supply ships. On 11 February, her reconnaissance aircraft spotted the German supply freighter ''Wakama'' off the coast of Brazil, which was promptly scuttled by her crew. ''Dorsetshire'' arrived on the scene shortly thereafter, picked up ten officers and thirty-five crewmen and sank ''Wakama'' to prevent her from being a navigational hazard. The following month, the President of Panama, Augusto Samuel Boyd, sent a formal complaint to the British government protesting against ''Dorsetshire''s violation of the Pan-American Security Zone in the ''Wakama'' incident.

In May, ''Dorsetshire'' underwent a short refit in Simonstown, before returning to Britain for a more thorough overhaul. On 23 June, she set out from Freetown to watch the French battleship , which left Dakar for Casablanca two days later. While ''en route'', ''Dorsetshire'' rendezvoused with the aircraft carrier ''Hermes'' off Dakar. ''Richelieu'' was ordered to return to Dakar by Admiral François Darlan later that day and she arrived on 27 June. ''Dorsetshire'' continued to monitor the French Navy off Dakar and on 3 July, the French submarines and attempted to intercept her. ''Dorsetshire'' was able to evade their attacks through high-speed manoeuvres. On 5 July, ''Hermes'' and the Australian cruiser joined her there. On 7 July, the squadron was ordered to issue an ultimatum to the French fleet, to either surrender and be interned under British control or to scuttle their ships; the French refused, so a fast sloop was sent in to drop depth charges under the stern of ''Richelieu'' to disable her screws.

On 4 September, she was dry-docked at Durban and on the 20th she arrived back in Simonstown. She sailed for Sierra Leone the next day. Operating in the Indian Ocean, on 18 November she bombarded Zante in Italian Somaliland. On 18 December she departed to join the search for the heavy cruiser , which had recently sunk the British refrigerator ship ''Duquesa'' in the South Atlantic. The British were unsuccessful in their search and ''Admiral Scheer'' remained at large.

''Bismarck''

By May 1941, ''Dorsetshire'' had been assigned to Force H, along with the aircraft carrier , the battlecruiser , and the light cruiser . ''Dorsetshire'' was at that time commanded by Captain Benjamin Martin. Late in the month, the German battleship and heavy cruiser broke out into the North Atlantic to attack convoys sailing for Britain, and ''Dorsetshire'' was one of the ships deployed to hunt the German raiders. ''Dorsetshire'' had been escorting convoy SL74 from Sierra Leone to the UK on 26 May, when she received the order to leave the convoy and join the search for ''Bismarck''; she was some south of ''Bismarck''s location. ''Dorsetshire'' steamed at top speed, though heavy seas later in the night forced her to reduce to and later to . By 08:33, ''Dorsetshire'' encountered the destroyer , which had been engaging ''Bismarck'' throughout the night. The German battleship's gun flashes could be seen, only away, by 08:50.

Shortly thereafter, ''Dorsetshire'' took part in ''Bismarck''s last battle; after the battleships and neutralised ''Bismarck''s main battery early in the engagement, ''Dorsetshire'' and other warships—including her sister —closed in to join the attack. ''Dorsetshire'' opened fire at a range of , but poor visibility forced her to check her fire for lengthy periods. In the course of the engagement, she fired 254 shells from her main battery. In the final moments of the battle, she was ordered to move closer and torpedo ''Bismarck'' and fired three torpedoes, two of which hit the crippled battleship. The Germans had by this time detonated scuttling charges, which with the damage inflicted by the British, caused ''Bismarck'' to rapidly sink at 10:40.

''Dorsetshire'' and the destroyer then moved in to pick up survivors. Martin had ropes lowered down the sides of the ship so the men in the water could climb aboard. A reported U-boat sighting forced the two ships to break off the rescue effort. Historians Holger Herwig and David Bercuson state that only 110 men were rescued: 85 aboard ''Dorsetshire'' and 25 aboard ''Maori''. Historian Angus Konstam, however, writes that his research indicated a total of 116 saved, 86 on ''Dorsetshire'' (one of whom died), 25 on ''Maori'', 3 rescued by and a further 2 picked up by the German weather ship .

''Rodney'', ''King George V'' and the destroyers , and ''Cossack'' had meanwhile begun to steam north-west to return to Scapa Flow. After abandoning the rescue effort, ''Dorsetshire'' and ''Maori'' caught up with the rest of the fleet shortly after 12:00. Late that night, as the fleet steamed off Britain, ''Dorsetshire'' was detached to stop in the Tyne. She had suffered no casualties in the battle with ''Bismarck''.

Deployment to South Africa and the Indian Ocean

In late August, ''Dorsetshire'' participated in the search for the heavy cruiser . ''Dorsetshire'', ''Eagle'' and the light cruiser left Freetown on 29 August, though they were unable to locate the German raider. On 4 November, ''Dorsetshire'' and the auxiliary cruiser , were sent to investigate reports of a German surface raider in the South Atlantic but neither ship found anything. In November–December, WS-24, a convoy of 10 troop transport ships, steamed out from Halifax, Canada en route to Basra, Iraq. After arriving in Cape Town on 9 December, ''Dorsetshire'' took over the escort duties and the convoy was diverted to Bombay, where it arrived on 24 December.

''Dorsetshire'' was deployed in November, to join the search for the German commerce raider , that had been attacking Allied shipping off the coast of Africa. Admiral Algernon Willis formed Task Force 3, with ''Dorsetshire'' and to patrol likely refuelling locations for ''Atlantis''. On 1 December, ''Dorsetshire'' intercepted the German supply ship ''Python'', based on Ultra intelligence. The German ship was refuelling a pair of U-boats— and —in the South Atlantic. The U-boats dived while ''Python'' tried to flee. ''UA'' fired five torpedoes at ''Dorsetshire'' but all missed her due to her evasive manoeuvres. ''Dorsetshire'' fired a salvo to stop ''Python'' and the latter's crew abandoned the ship, after detonating scuttling charges. ''Dorsetshire'' left the Germans in their boats, since the U-boats still presented too much of a threat for the British to pick up the Germans.

Loss

In 1942, ''Dorsetshire'', under the command of Augustus Agar, was assigned to the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean. In March, ''Dorsetshire'' was assigned to Force A, which was commanded by Admiral James Somerville, with the battleship and the carriers and . Somerville received reports of an impending Japanese attack in the Indian Ocean—the Indian Ocean raid—and so he put his fleet to sea on 31 March. Having not encountered any hostile forces by 4 April, he withdrew to refuel. ''Dorsetshire'' and her sister ship ''Cornwall'' were sent to Colombo to replenish their fuel.

The next day, she and ''Cornwall'' were spotted by reconnaissance aircraft from the heavy cruiser . The two British cruisers were attacked by a force of 53 Aichi D3A2 "Val" dive bombers southwest of Ceylon. In the span of about eight minutes, ''Dorsetshire'' was hit by ten and bombs and several near misses; she sank stern first at about 13:50. One of the bombs detonated an ammunition magazine and contributed to her rapid sinking. ''Cornwall'' was hit eight times and sank bow first about ten minutes later. Between the two ships, 1,122 men out of a total of 1,546 were picked up by the cruiser and the destroyers and the next day.

Footnotes

References

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Further reading

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External links

Official History map of the loss of Dorsetshire

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dorsetshire (40)
Kent-class cruisers
County-class cruisers of the Royal Navy
Ships built in Portsmouth
1929 ships
World War II cruisers of the United Kingdom
World War II shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean
Maritime incidents in April 1942
Cruisers sunk by aircraft
Ships sunk by Japanese aircraft
Naval magazine explosions