Thiaria: Other People's ships

Hello again!

The Admiral-class heavy cruisers of the RN

Great Britain more or less invented the heavy cruiser, but when everyone else started churning them out in quantity, they first tried to outlaw them by the LNTs of 1930 and 1936, then limit their size to 8.500 tons, leading by example by building seven small six-gun ships between 1928 and 1935. Nobody cared; by 1939, practically every major navy except the Italians was busy building large numbers of heavy cruisers, most of them handsomely exceeding the 10.000-ton limit. As soon as the war started and all treaties lapsed, the admiralty gave up all restraint and ordered a design for an optimal 8-inch gun cruiser without any compromises. The resulting design was finished in May 1940 and looked convincing; with no details about the US Baltimore class yet known, they were the largest and most powerful cruisers worldwide. Britain just had suffered a painful reverse against Thiaria, and a few weeks later, France collapsed and Italy entered the war; quite obviously, the cruisers were needed as soon as possible and there was no time for refining the design. Four units were laid down in October 1940, February 1941 and May 1942 (last two). British and commonwealth heavy cruiser losses were very heavy during the first three years of the war, and suspending construction was never considered. Originally, the names Effingham, Benbow, Blake and Hawke were assigned; in 1941, Effingham and Benbow were renamed Cornwallis and Albemarle, respectively, and in 1942, Blake was renamed Raleigh, no reasons given. Although the ships enjoyed high priority, their size and complexity nevertheless resulted in a building time of 45 months for the first and 51 months for the second ship. The other two went ahead even more slowly and were eventually suspended late in 1944 when it was obvious that the war would be won without them.

HMS Cornwallis was commissioned in July 1944, the only one of her class to be finished to the original design and the last British cruiser with airplanes on board.
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Her first assignment was to the South Atlantic after working up, where she arrived just in time to accept Thiaria's surrender. She then escorted a squadron of co-belligerent Thiarian ships to the Pacific in March 1945, which took part in the battles around the Marianas; Cornwallis herself stiffened the Australian fleet operating against Truk. When the island was finally conquered in May, the Australians - including the small battleship HMAS Australia ans two light cruisers plus HMS Albemarle - destroyed the japanese heavy cruiser Myoko, which had been damaged in the large US attack of February and failed to escape. In August 1945, HMS Cornwallis was joined by her recently finished sister HMS Albemarle, as Great Britain began to build up its Eastern Fleet for the final offensive against Japan. HMS Albemarle was finished minus her aviation facilities, but with four additional 102mm guns and four additional quad pompoms.
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They were operating against Japanese forces in Burma and Thailand during the great naval battle of the Leyte Gulf in October; an engagement with Kokoan ships in November resulted in the loss of Australia's much-traveled old battlecruiser HMS Tiger and slight damage to HMS Cornwallis. Both cruisers then took part in a major engagement in March 1946, where they avenged Tiger's loss and inflicted heavy casualties upon a combined Japanese-Kokoan fleet. This defeat partly triggered a popular revolt against the Japanese in Koko which eventually led to Koko changing sides. Later in 1946, the British Eastern Fleet took part in the operations around Okinawa, where HMS Albemarle shot down 14 japanese planes in as many days; Cornwallis with her weaker flak battery was hit by a B5N kamikaze with a 1000kg bomb and heavily damaged. While Albemarle was present in Tokyo Bay for Japan's surrender, Cornwallis had to return for repairs. When HMS Cornwallis was repaired, she was also reconstructed along Albemarle's lines, receiving four more 102mm guns and 36 40mm Bofors guns in lieu of her Pompoms; she became one of the first British cruisers with lattice masts.
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The refit took some time and was suspended for two years for economic reasons; she needed till 1951 to be operational again. Albemarle was retained as she was for the time being. Both ships were the core of Britain's postwar cruiser fleet, their sheer size making them virtually the only ones suitable for fitting all the radar, electronics and command/control facilities needed for contemporary warfare. Both took part in the Suez campaign, shelling Egyptian positions. As the RN was very content with these spacious and comfortable ships, whose heavy guns made them particularly valuable in amphibious operations, work on their suspended sisters resumed in 1955. HMS Hawke and HMS Raleigh eventually emerged in 1959 with a totally new superstructure (aft funnel moved forward to create space for the new aft superstructure) and the latest radar and electronics fit; their entire flak was replaced by four fully automatic 76mm twins (a fifth was planned aft, but the design did not allow sufficient space for the necessarily very large magazines of these very fast firing guns). Upon their completion, HMS Belfast and all remaining Colony-class cruisers except two (Defence and Minotaur) were decommissioned. In 1962, HMS Hawke had the distinction of becoming the last warship of destroyer size and above to sink a similarly sized ship with her heavy guns; the victim was the Indonesian Sverdlov-class cruiser Irian during the undeclared war between Indonesia and Britain over Sarawak.
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With Hawke and Raleigh in service, Cornwallis and Albemarle could be thoroughly modernized. The Seaslug SAM had become operational in 1960, and the decision was made to sacrifice the aft turret in order to mount one launcher with two fire control radars on each ship. The rest of the superstructure was rebuilt along the same lines as on Hawke and Raleigh, and four quad seacat launchers for close air defence were added for good measure. This refit brought the design to the limit of its weight and stability reserves, but as the British had always been restrictive on these matters, they were still much better seaboats than the American missile cruiser refits. Both re-commissioned in 1963 and 1964 and were assigned to Britain's carrier battlegroups as AAW escorts.
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As Britain's carrier force kept being downgraded, Hawke and Raleigh were proposed for a refit to ASW command cruisers, sacrificing the aft turret for a helicopter landing deck and hangar for six Wessex helicopters. The refit was done between 1967 and 1970 on both ships; they also received four quad Seacat launchers to stiffen their self-defence capabilities.
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By the mid-seventies, Cornwallis and Albemarle were showing signs of age; the former was decommissioned in 1978 to provide spare parts for her sister, which received modernized radars and electronics in 1981, just in time for the Falklands campaign. There her Seaslug missiles performed very poorly, highlighting her general obsolescence; only one of the ten Argentine aircraft she shot at was actually hit. After the war, Albemarle was placed in reserve and eventually stricken in 1985. She was the only member of her class that was retained as a memorial; she is on display alongside HMS Warrior at Portsmouth since 1988.
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Hawke and Raleigh were in better shape, but the latter missed the Falklands campaign as she was docked for an electronics upgrade at that time. After the war, Hawke went in reserve, but Raleigh remained active till 1990. Both were axed after the end of the cold war and scrapped in India in 1993-1994.
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These are my first cold war era ships; of Radars and Electronics, I have only the most rudimentary idea. Any feedback is welcome.

Greetings
GD

Shipbucket

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