laststandonzombieisland

Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger 

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday 9 September 2026: We were in action a Tremendous Amount of Times

Note the Admiralty disruptive camouflage scheme. U.S. National Archives Identifier 148727974, Local Identifier 19-SB-7M-1

Above we see HM’s Arethusa-class light cruiser Aurora (12) at sea, circa July 1942, likely while working up after repair at Liverpool with ships of the Home Fleet.

While she received national fame for her work in the Mediterranean during WWII and some 85 years ago this week would pummel a German training cruiser to the bottom off Norway, Aurora went on to a strange second, and later third, career.

The Arethusas

In the early 1930s, the Royal Navy had a perfect class of light cruisers, for the period: the eight-ship Leanders. Some 7,200 tons (standard) and armed with eight 6″/50 BL Mark XXIIIs in four twin turrets, balanced two forward and two rear, they also had two quad torpedo tubes, carried two seaplanes, could make 32.5 knots on 72,000shp, and roam some 5,700nm at 13. They proved capable, with two, HMS Achilles and Ajax, being famous for helping run down Graf Spee in 1939.

HMS Leander (British Cruiser, 1931). Note her distinctive single fat stack and balanced four-turret/eight gun layout. NH 59841

As Worth noted on the Arethusas, “having built a successful light cruiser [in the Leanders] the British decided to try something weaker.”

The Arethusas were designed to provide a light-Leander alternative to use up “spare” light cruiser tonnage allowed under the London and Washington Naval Treaties. Hence, weight was everything, with extensive use of welding rather than riveting and the employment of aluminum-covered plywood for internal partitions such as cabin bulkheads.

HMNB Portsmouth Dockyard blueprint Arethusa Class Light Cruiser HMS Aurora December 4 1937

Using a hull some 50 feet shorter (506 feet oal, compared to the Leander’s 555), the 4th (X) turret and its guns disappeared from the design, and there were two fewer torpedo tubes due to a beam six feet narrower.

Using four Admiralty 3-drum oil-fired boilers instead of six, the plant could make 64,000hp instead of 72,000, but, when steaming at an economical 12 knots, could make 12,000nm on full bunkers, making her an ideal “trade route cruiser.”

The main armament was six (just 6) 6″/50 (15.2 cm) BL Mark XXIIIs in three twin-gun turrets forward, with 60-degree elevation, two (A and B) forward and one (Y) aft.

A good view of HMS Aurora’s rear 6″/50 Mk13 “Y” turret. Sunday 8 October 1944. Sunday service on the quarterdeck of the Aurora conducted by the Rev J Palmer. It was held within sight of enemy-occupied Greek islands. Lt. DC Oulds, IWM (A 26017)

The 6″/50 Mk13 was a good gun, used by the Brits and their Commonwealth fleets on the Leander, Perth, Arethusa, Southampton (“Town”), Edinburgh (“Modified Town”), Fiji (“Colony”), Ceylon (“Improved Colony”) and Swiftsure cruiser classes throughout the 1930s and 40s. Able to fire 6-8 rounds per minute per gun, they had a range to 25,480 yards, and their CPBC shell was able to penetrate three inches of armor out to 12,500. Magazine stowage was 100 rounds per gun.

The designed secondary battery was similarly light, with just four QF 4″/45 single Mk V AA guns in open mounts, four decidedly obsolete 47mm (3-pounder) Hotchkiss Mk 1s, and two .50 cal quad mounts.

As expected for a 1930s cruiser, they carried a torpedo battery (six 21-inch tubes in two triple mounts, one on each side of the bow). A single catapult was available to carry a Hawker Osprey floatplane (later a Walrus). Compare this to similar American and Japanese cruisers that could carry as many as five aircraft, and even the Leanders could carry two.

Hawker Osprey being catted from the Leander-class HMS Neptune, in 1934

Overall, these ships were very lightly armed, even for a 1930s design. The 6-gun Arethusas can be compared to the very non-treaty Japanese 15-gun Mogamis, which were completed at the same time, while the 12-gun British Town and 15-gun U.S. Brooklyn classes were designed only slightly later.

Still, it was thought this was more than adequate to serve as a counter-commerce raiding picket against German auxiliary cruisers to (economically) protect far-flung trade routes.

The same can be said for armor. Some of the thinnest “peace” cruisers were the American Omaha-class, which carried just 570 tons of plate (largely in a 3-inch machinery belt), updated significantly to the Brooklyns, which had 1,798 tons over a 5-inch main belt and 6-inch turret faces.

The Arethusas had just 2.25 inches of belt over their vital machinery spaces (frames 71-154 of 168), an inch on the precious three turrets, a one-inch armored deck over the fire rooms, and 1-3 inches of box protection over the magazines (three inches on the longitudinal and transverse bulkheads with two-inch crowns). The only armored part of the superstructure was the fire control box atop the wheelhouse, not the conning tower or weather bridge. This gave the Arethusas a scant 520 tons of armor. Compare this to the 837 tons of armor on the slightly larger Leander class with a 3-inch machinery belt and 3.5 over the magazines, 1,100 tons of the Town class which had a 4.5-inch belt, and the commanding 2,061 tons of armor on the Mogamis. Some 1930s light cruisers are much lighter than others.

However, unlike the preceding single-funnel/single room Leanders, the Arethusas were designed to use two funnels and extra spacing of the boiler and engine rooms in two units en echelon for redundancy in the event of damage and flooding.

Jane’s 1938 on the class. Note the meager armor plan.

Four ships of the class were ordered from four different yards to speed up construction: HMS Arethusa (Chatham Royal Dockyard), Galatea (Scotts, Greenock), Penelope (Harland & Wolff, Belfast) and Aurora (Portsmouth Royal Dockyard), the first accepted into service in May 1935 and the last in November 1937, with costs per vessel running about £1.25 million (compared to £1.48m for the larger Leanders). Two others planned, the future HMS Minotaur and Polyphemus, were instead ordered as the improved 11,500-ton/12-gun Town-class light cruisers HMS Newcastle and Southampton.

This all brings us to…

Meet Aurora

Our subject is the ninth to carry the name for the RN for the ancient Roman goddess of the dawn, first used in 1758 for the prize 36-gun fifth rate, formerly the French Abenakise.

The immediately preceding eighth HMS Aurora was a 3,500-ton Devonport-built light cruiser (C1) commissioned in September 1914 that famously took part in the sinking of the German raider SMS Meteor before she was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy in 1920 and was broken up in 1927.

HMCS Aurora Patriot Patrician Esquimalt 1921 E-6546-2

These past vessels left our subject with five battle honors (St. Lucia 1778, Minorca 1798, Guadeloupe 1810, China 1900, and Dogger Bank 1915) even before she was commissioned.

This new cruiser was ordered from HM Dockyard Portsmouth under the 1934 Programme on 1 March 1935, two days after Hitler ordered the reinstatement of the air force, the Luftwaffe, in violation of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.

Our subject was laid down on 23 July 1935, just weeks after Hitler announced conscription to the Wehrmacht, another Versailles violation.

The future HMS Aurora (12) was launched on 20 August 1936 by no less a figure than Lady Fisher (nee Cecilia Warre-Cornish), the wife of ADM Sir William Wordsworth Fisher, GCB, GCVO, who commanded the battleship HMS St Vincent at Jutland and, at the time of Aurora’s construction, was the CiC of HMNB Portsmouth.

She was commissioned on 12 November 1937, Capt. Henry D. Pridham-Wippell, RN, in command, with her construction costs cited as £1,252,915. Passing out of Britannia in September 1901 as a cadet, Pridham-Wippell survived the mining loss of HMS Audacious in 1914 and went on to command the destroyer HMS Tribune during the Great War. He had come to Aurora after command of the light cruiser HMS Cairo and as Commodore of the Home Fleet Destroyer Flotillas.

Aurora photo by Stephen Cribb, Southsea

Our ship was completed to a slightly different design than her three sisters. While they all had aviation facilities, Aurora did not, as that area was used for a headquarters space and commodore’s cabin to allow her use as a flagship for destroyers of the Home Fleet. It was probably for the best, as the class proved cramped for aircraft use, especially when space was needed for more AAA guns, and her three sisters all hung up their catapults by July 1941.

Speaking of AAA, while the original design of the class called for four QF 4″/45 single Mk V AA guns in open mounts as a secondary battery, only Arethusa and Galatea were completed with those guns. Penelope and Aurora were completed with four twin 4″/45 QF Mk XVI mounts, a very decent new gun that entered service only in 1936 and became a staple across RN battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. Arethusa and Galatea were later retrofitted with them during WWII.

Aurora was later adopted during a Warship Week National Savings campaign by the civil community of the city of Bradford in West Yorkshire.

The Mayor of Bradford Visits HMS Aurora. Liverpool, 10 June 1942. The Mayor being shown around the ship by Capt W C Agnew, Commanding Officer. Photo by LT Harold W. Tomlin, IWM A 12070

Her motto was Post Tenebras Lux (After darkness, light).

Entering a tense pre-war period, Aurora deployed with the Home Fleet on exercises to the Mediterranean in January-March 1938, followed by a cruise to the Baltic that summer, followed by another Med exercise period in January-March 1939.

Arethusa-class light cruiser Aurora at pre-war fleet review with Blackburn Shark overhead

War!

In June 1939, with Czechoslovakia erased from the map of Europe and Italy occupying Albania, the Admiralty saw the writing on the war and Aurora was sent to her war station at Scapa Flow while her three sisters were at Gibraltar with the 3rd Cruiser Squadron, Mediterranean Fleet.

All but Penelope had landed their obsolete 47mm Hotchkiss guns, with plans to mount something better left hanging.

Enter this Luftwaffe identification chart with the Arethusa class at the top right, showing the class with 8 4″45 Mk16 (102mm) and two quad .50 cal Vickers, an AAA suite that Aurora, Penelope, and Galatea began the war with.

When the war kicked off in September 1939, Aurora was in Scapa as part of the 18th Cruiser Squadron, Home Fleet, as Flagship for Rear Admiral (Destroyers), RADM R.H.C. Halifax, RN. Her skipper at the time was Capt. Gervase Boswell Middleton, RN, an old charger who would finish the war in command of the battleship HMS Ramillies.

HMS Aurora, British Cruiser, Arethusa Class, off Liverpool early in her wartime career. IWM (A 8158)

Taking to sea immediately following the announcement of the state of war between his majesty’s government and Germany, Aurora’s first action was Operation SK, an anti-shipping patrol towards Norway, followed by a rescue mission to help guide the struggling submarine HMS Spearfish from the approaches of the Skagerrak back to Rosyth on the surface despite German air attacks.

At the end of October, she sailed with a cruiser-battleship force including HMS Hood, Nelson, and Rodney to bring home 12 stranded British merchant ships from Norwegian waters via Convoy Narvik 1. Aurora was transferred to the 2nd Cruiser Squadron by the end of the month.

She also rode shotgun on Outbound North Convoys ON 002/1, ON 015/1, and ON 022/1 from Scotland to Norway.

On 23 November 1939, Aurora, with a group of seven hastily assembled destroyers, set out looking to intercept the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau after they sank the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi in the North Atlantic. Luckily for Aurora, both German battlecruisers returned to Wilhelmshaven safely on the 27th.

Just after New Year’s 1940, Aurora went on the hunt for the 6,400-ton German blockade runner Trautenfels, reported off Norway, but again was foiled. It was about this time that a new skipper moved in, Capt. Louis Henry Keppel Hamilton DSO, RN, who had earned his DSO in 1915 while on the Niger River flotilla fighting the Germans in West Africa.

While in Rosyth for boiler cleaning and a hull scraping in February, some of Aurora’s ratings were loaned to the destroyers HMS Cossack and Maori for use in boarding parties while searching for the German tanker Altmark, Graf Spee’s tender and floating prison ship.

The Norway Campaign

By March, her three Arethusa-class sisters were transferred from the Med to join Aurora in the 2nd Cruiser Squadron, the first time all four were in squadron service together.

Their first large mission together was Operation DU, a shipping sweep off Norway and into the German Bight, March 21-23, 1940, which only bagged two small vessels, not a great result for four cruisers and eight destroyers.

She was then a staple of the Norway campaign from the beginning, standing by to rescue 199 survivors from the He 111-sunk Tribal-class destroyer HMS Gurkha (F20) on 9 April, with the latter only losing 16 to the sea.

Just two days later, she escorted Convoy NP 1 from the Clyde to Vaagsfjord, Norway, then began patrol to intercept enemy convoys.

On 18 April and 22 April, she bombarded the Germans at Rombaksfjord with her 6-inch guns. By the 24th, she joined the gunline near HMS Warspite off German-occupied Narvik to help liberate the town, later bombarding Axis positions again on 1 May and 3 May, the latter alongside the battleship HMS Resolution. In between, Aurora and Galeta covered the Allied evacuation from Molde.

During the Norway operation, Aurora served as flagship of Admiral Sir Edward “Teddy” Evans (later Lord Mountevans), a noted polar explorer who had been recalled from the retired list for the campaign.

German Luftwaffe bombers damaged Aurora off Narvik around 1640 on 7 May, a hit which temporarily jammed her two forward turrets (A and B) and killed seven Royal Marines who were serving as gun crews.

• BECK, Robert, Marine, P/X 3610
• HUGHES, George H, Corporal, PO/X 1033
• SAYER, Frank, Marine, PO/K 3778
• TARGETT, William H, Marine, PO/22132
• TINKLER, Walter, Marine, PO/21560
• TOLFREE, Edward G, Marine, PO/20882
• WALKER, Leslie, Marine, PO/X 2628

After repairs while still on station, on 13 May, she helped cover French Foreign Legion troops in a bright (0100 but with the midnight sun shining) overnight landing in Bjervik, north of Narvik, then turned her guns to the Germans once again. The city fell later that day.

Battle of the Barges

Aurora was then sent to Portsmouth for repairs, which lasted until early July. During this yard period, she added to quad 40mm 2pdr QF Mk VIII AAA mounts as well as a 20mm Unrotated Projectile (UP) Mark I AA rocket projector on her quarterdeck.

HMS Aurora, British Cruiser, Arethusa Class, circa November 1940. Note she is “clean” with no radar fits. The UP mounting on the quarterdeck and the quadruple 2pdr mountings (visible here) were fitted during her repairs in May/June 1940, but there’s no sign of the Type 290  (radar) and Type 284 RDF fitted in April/May 1941. NHHC 80-G-70075

Leaving Portsmouth in July 1940, after the Fall of France, the repaired Aurora was assigned to Humber Force for anti-invasion duties, ready for Mr. Hitler and his gang to attempt Operation Sea Lion, which never came. Throughout July and August she conducted regular patrols out of Immingham, typically escorted by two destroyers.

At the end of August, she covered minelaying operations (Operation CBX 5) by the 20th Destroyer Flotilla off occupied France.

In early September, accompanied by the destroyers HMS Venetia, Hambledon, and Holderness, she sortied across the Channel from Sheerness to bombard German invasion craft from Le Touquet north to Boulogne harbor, which they plastered on the night of the 8th without reciprocal damage. Meanwhile, the destroyers HMS Beagle, Bulldog, Atherstone, Berkeley, and Fernie swept south from Boulogne to Cape Antifer.

Striking alongside some 130 roving RAF Blenheims and Wellingtons, this “battle of the barges” resulted in the damage or sinking of some 214 of the 1,918 German invasion barges and 21 of 170 troop transports in the French Channel ports, resulting in a 19 September order to disperse the assembled craft, ending the immediate threat of Sea Lion.

The Northern part of the North Atlantic

On 1 October 1940, Aurora picked up a new skipper, Capt. William Gladstone Agnew, RN. A regular who shipped out to fight the Kaiser as a 15-year-old mid on the battleship HMS Glory and was on Royal Oak at Jutland, he came to Aurora’s captain’s cabin after commanding the armed merchant cruiser HMS Cofu for the first year of the war. Her previous skipper, who had commanded her during the Norwegian campaign and the battle of the barges, Louis Keppel Hamilton, was kicked upstairs as a rear admiral commanding the 1st Cruiser Squadron, earning his second DSO and the Norwegian War Cross before finishing the war as Flag Officer, Malta.

With the invasion threat abated, Aurora deployed to the Northern Patrol for the next six months to attempt to intercept German commerce raiders and supply ships, as well as to cover 1st Minelaying Squadron operations off Iceland (Operation SN1), Norway (Operation DZ), and in the Northern Barrage (Operations SN68A, SN69, SN4, SN7B and SN8).

It was during this time that she clocked in on the Rubble Convoy, a sortie over 22-25 January 1941 that saw the light cruiser HMS Naiad join Aurora to meet five blacked-out Norwegian merchant vessels sailing covertly from Sweden to Kirkwall, Orkney, and pass them on to a larger escort group following behind. The fastest of the five Norwegians (Elizabeth Bakke) made it to Scotland independently while Aurora and Naiad made contact with the other four (John Bakke, Tai Shan, Taurus, and Ranja) and handed them over to the escort group, narrowly missing Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, which were prowling in the Kattegat. Between the five merchant ships, they carried 25,000 tons of specialized steel products and ball bearings essential for the Allied war effort.

In late February, Aurora was attached to the important Canadian troop transport Convoy TC 9, inbound from Halifax with 6,000 troops and tons of supplies.

Over two weeks in May 1941, Aurora and the 2nd Cruiser Squadron were given a reprieve from their convoy and mine warfare duties to join the rest of the RN in the North Atlantic to help get the Bismarck, joining the task force alongside the carrier HMS Victorious. Aurora was of special use to the pursuit as she was trialing the new Type 290 air-surface warning radar, one of the very few such sets in British service at the time.

May 1941. HMS Aurora, escorting the carrier HMS Victorious in a dash to get within striking distance of Bismarck. Looks fun! IWM (A 9797)

On the 24th/25th of May, the Victorious got within 100 miles of Bismarck and was able to launch nine Swordfish to attack the big German, which soon broke contact. Over the next day, the 2nd Cruiser Squadron spread out, looking for Bismarck the old-fashioned way. While they missed the final surface action, HMS Kenya and Aurora caught up to the German tanker Belchen (6367 GRT, former Norwegian Sysla) off Greenland and sank the vessel via gunfire on the morning of 3 June.

Her excitement ended; Aurora resumed covering the 1st Minelaying Squadron for SN66 and SN70B in June, sowing fields as large as 900 mines at a time.

July and August saw Aurora involved first in a raid on (Operation FB) and then the evacuation of (Operation Gauntlet) of the Norwegian territory of Spitsbergen. They were both shoestring ops, with Aurora sailing with the Fiji-class light cruiser Nigeria, three destroyers (one Polish), two armed whalers, and a tanker.

On FB, they landed a Free Norwegian Navy lieutenant, Ragnvald Andreassen Tamber, to take over the weather station in Spitsbergen, destroyed the weather station on Bear Island and took aboard its operators, and took away the Norwegian merchant vessel Dagny I.

On Gauntlet, joined by the carrier HMS Argus and troopship Empress of Canada, the latter carrying 645 Canadian and Free Norwegian troops of Force 111, they destroyed the mining facilities and coal, embarked the Soviet miners on the archipelago, and sailed off with three Norwegian colliers (Ingerto, Munin, and Nandi) formerly in German service, bringing the latter to Iceland. Also evacuated were LT Tamber, 800 Norwegian civilians, and 196 French POWs who had been working on the islands.

August 1941: Sappers of the 3rd Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers, Force 111, burning 450,000 tons of coal piles during Operation Gauntlet while the wireless stations on the islands at Barentsburg, Longyearbyen, Kap Linné and Grønfjord, which had been beaming meteorological reports to Germany since June 1940, were destroyed, an important victory in the “weather war.” Photograph by war correspondent Ross Munro.

On board HMS Aurora during Spitsbergen Raid, by Walter Louis Frederick Tennyson d’Eyncourt, IWM (H 13637)

HMS Aurora in Advent Bay during Spitsbergen Raid, by Walter Louis Frederick Tennyson d’Eyncourt, IWM (H 13675)

On the way back from Operation Gauntlet, Nigeria and Aurora took a close patrol of Norwegian waters on 6 September and found a German convoy off Porsanger, near the Cape Nordkinn, consisting of the 1,900-ton artillerieschulschiff (artillery school ship) Bremse and two troopships. The outgunned Bremse went down fighting, taking 160 men with her, enabling the troopships to run into the fjords.

Artillerieschulboot Bremse (Artillery training sloop) via M. Dieterle & Sohn, Kiel 1935

In a quick refit, Aurora landed her two quad 50s for six 20mm Oerlikon singles.

Force K runs amok

Then, in October, Aurora was nominated for service in the Mediterranean and, with her sister Penelope (which had just picked up Types 281, 284, and 285 radars at refit), sailed to join the 15th Cruiser Squadron based at Alexandria. Before leaving Home waters, she broke out the flag of A/Admiral Jack Tovey, KCB, DSO, RN, C-in-C Home Fleet, to take the admiral and his staff from Seidisfiord, Iceland, to Scapa Flow.

October 1941, HMS Aurora leaving harbor as seen from the battleship HMS Malaya. Note the UP launcher on the fantail IWM (A 5699)

HMS Arethusa light cruiser, 1941 image. Note the UP launcher on the fantail

Operating out of Malta with Agnew as flag captain, the radar-equipped Aurora and Penelope, joined by the destroyers HMS Lance and Lively, were dubbed Force “K” and sent out on several interdiction patrols, aimed at intercepting Italian convoys heading back and forth to Libya. After a few fruitless overnight sorties, Force K ran right into Italian Convoy Beta (Duisburg) out of Naples/Messina headed for Tripoli.

Escorted by six Italian destroyers (Maestrale, Euro, Fulmine, Grecale, Libeccio and Oriani), the convoy had seven Axis merchants filled with troops and supplies: the Italian tankers Conte di Misurata (5014 GRT) and Minatitlan (7599 GRT), the German freighters Duisburg (7389 GRT) and San Marco (3113 GRT), and the Italian steamers Maria (6339 GRT), Rina Corrado (5180 GRT), and Sagitta (5153 GRT).

Alerted to the convoy by decoded Enigma intelligence on 7 November and a sighting from a 69 Squadron RAF Maryland bomber on the morning of the 8th, Force K picked it up on the night of the 8th.

Using the down moon and keeping speeds to just 20 knots to minimize bow waves, the cruisers opened fire 135nm east of Calabria at 5,200 yards just after midnight on the morning of 9 November, and it was over in just 45 minutes.

When the smoke cleared, and the two British destroyers and cruisers broke away to head back to Malta, eluding a stronger Italian distant cover force of two 8-inch gunned heavy cruisers (Trento and Trieste) and four destroyers, they left all seven Axis merchant ships as well as the destroyer Fulmine sunk or sinking. Three other destroyers were damaged. Aurora fired fully half her main battery magazine, 279 6-inch shells (246 from A and B and 33 from Y) in 62 broadsides, with 30 of them registering hits, along with 73 rounds of 4-inch. Penelope managed 260 6-inch and another 200 4-inch.

The convoy had been carrying 17,000 tons of fuel, 389 vehicles, and 34,000 tons of munitions, all vital to the Axis forces in Cyrenaica. Besides the 141 crewmembers lost, 145 Italian and 78 German soldiers also went down with the ships.

Talk about a brutal, yet textbook, one-sided surface action, with the target annihilated. A perfect surface action group night attack of the sort historians only characterize the Japanese as being able to pull off at this stage of the war.

Reportedly, the Italians dubbed Aurora the Argento Fantasma (Silver Phantom) after this encounter.

November 1941. Captain W G Agnew, CB, RN (in center) with his officers and ship’s company on board HMS Aurora. IWM (A 6291)

Just three weeks later, Force K shifted to the Ionian Sea and ambushed a second, smaller convoy 100nm west of Crete on the early morning of 24 November, sinking the German transports Maritza (2910 GRT) and Procida (1842 GRT) in a surface action and damaging the two Italian torpedo boats escorting them. The hunter-killer group then sank the Italian auxiliary cruiser Adriatico (1976 GRT) on the 30th, followed by the big Italian tanker Iridio Mantovani (10540 GRT) and her escorting destroyer, Alvise da Mosto, the next day some 75nm NE of Tripoli.

On 17 December, Force K was part of the larger fleet action now known as the First Battle of Sirte in the Gulf of Sidra, where six British light cruisers and 16 destroyers fought a swirling long-range artillery duel with four Italian battleships accompanied by five cruisers and 19 destroyers protecting Convoy M42. The next day, a deep-water (600-foot bottom) Italian minefield caught the destroyer HMS Kandahar, our Aurora, Penelope, and the cruiser HMS Neptune, with Neptune and Kandahar sinking while Aurora and Penelope managed to limp back to Malta.

So endeth the short story of the legendary Force K.

Back to the Med with a new scheme

Aurora was patched up at Malta before returning home for repairs at Liverpool from 5 April to 7 July 1942, dodging  Italian air attacks when south of Sardinia, while Penelope was repaired at Malta by January 1942.

Her repairs and refit included a camouflage scheme, new tripod masts, a new Type 281 air warning radar (landing her Type 290 experimental set that dated back to the Bismarck chase), as well as new Types 284 and 285 fire-control radars for main 6-inch and 4-inch AA armament, the latter augmented by three more Oerlikons to give her a total of nine. Her Oerlikon singles would be replaced by doubles before the end of the war.

While in Liverpool, the Brazilian Ambassador to London called on our cruiser shortly before that Latin American country came into the war on the Allied side. The country had suffered attacks on over 30 merchant ships by U-boats and was tired of it, eventually sending a 25,000-man expeditionary force to Europe, which served with distinction on the Italian front. Its Navy also clocked in, and three of its warships were lost during the conflict.

The Brazilian Ambassador to Great Britain, Dr. Mignel Carcano, visits a newly camouflaged HMS Aurora at Liverpool. 10 June 1942. Note her RM detachment on bow, complete with fixed bayonet Enfields, and the turret top AAA tub. By Harold William John Tomlin, IWM (A 10020)

After workups with the Home Fleet in August 1942, she once again protected her old friends of the 1st Minelaying Squadron to lay SN73, then rode shotgun on the slow Winston Special convoy WS22, sailing to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in September, where she remained for six weeks on station.

Sailing to Gibraltar on 22 October, Aurora joined the cruiser HMS Charybdis to escort the carrier HMS Furious to Malta on an aircraft delivery run, Operation Train.

Once back in the Med, she joined the Torch Landings, deployed to the Central Task Force to cover X Beach at El Mrairia close to Cape Figalo, and the attack on Oran harbor.

November 1942. The cruiser HMS Aurora, escorting some of the Torch Landings transports to North Africa, almost surely Convoy KMF O1, of which she escorted the transports HMS Princess Beatrix, Queen Emma, Benalbenach, Mark Twain, Mary Slessor and Walt Whitman to X Beach where they landed elements of the U.S. 1st Armored and 6th Infantry divisions. Photo by Lt JE Russell, IWM (A 12640)

Aurora, backed up by the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Calpe, notably engaged two Vichy French destroyers off Oran on 8 November– the Bourrasque-class Tornade and Tramontane— leaving them beached, then took out the Aigle-class destroyer Épervier and another Bourrasque, Typhon, with the light cruiser HMS Jamaica the next day.

By the end of November, Aurora was made part of another cruiser-destroyer hunter group, Force Q, under RADM Cecil Halliday Jepson Harcourt, RN, late of the 10th Cruiser Squadron. Working out of Bone (Annaba), Tunisia, with the Dido-class light cruisers HMS Sirius and Argonaut along with the greyhounds HMS Quiberon and Quentin, they were soon on the stalk for Axis convoys. While Sirius and Argonaut were larger and more heavily armed, Aurora was chosen as Harcourt’s flagship, the admiral moving into the latter’s cramped commodore’s cabin, a space that had been unoccupied since taking Jack Tovey home from Iceland the year prior.

On the night of 1/2 December, Force Q slammed into Tunisia-bound Italian Convoy H near the Skerki Bank in the Strait of Sicily. Comprised of German transport KT-1 (850 GRT), and the Italian Aventino (3,794 GRT), Puccini (2,422 GRT) and Aspromonte (976 GRT), the ships were carrying 1,766 troops, 698 tons of munitions, four tanks, 32 other vehicles and 12 artillery pieces to Libya and were escorted by the destroyers Nicoloso da Recco, Camicia Nera, and Folgore, along with the torpedo boats Clio and Procione.

Much like the death of Convoy Beta in August, Convoy H didn’t stand a chance.

In a two-hour, very one-sided artillery duel, with the RN having the benefit of radar and the Italians not, the Brits sank 7,800 tons of Axis shipping loaded with vital supplies during the one-sided engagement, sending 1,527 Italian and German troops to the bottom and receiving nothing other than minor splinter damage in return. Further, of the five Italian escorts, the destroyer Folgore was sunk, the Nicoloso da Recco was left so damaged she needed to be towed home, and the TB Procione was seriously damaged. The action soured the Italians on convoy ops, preventing Kesselring from evacuating any of his trapped forces from Tunisia.

A remarkable night action photograph: The sinking of the Tunisia-bound Axis convoy, December 1 and 2, 1942, by His Majesty’s Ships Aurora, Sirius, Argonaut, Quiberon, and Quentin. A ship of the convoy, already on fire, being engaged by a British cruiser. By Lt. C. H. Parnall, IWM (A 13233)

HMS Aurora flying the flag of Rear Admiral C H J Harcourt, CBE, shortly after her successful night action with an enemy convoy bound for Tunisia, December 1942. By Lt. CH Parnall,  IWM (A 13443)

HMS Aurora enters Bone Harbor, 13 December 1942. LT CH Parnall, IWM (A 13813)

HMAS Quiberon, HMS Aurora and HMS Bermuda in Algiers, December 1942

RADM Harcourt remained aboard Aurora, as head of Force Q, along with the Leander-class light cruiser HMS Scylla, the destroyer HMS Quality and the DEs Lamerton and Wheatland.

They escorted the troopship Convoy KMF 5 through the Western Med to Algiers in December and remained a force in being at Bone for the first half of 1943. Agnew received a DSO in April 1943 for his escapades with Force K, followed by a CVO in July.

The humble little cruiser even hosted General Eisenhower and Admiral Cunningham 7-9 June 1943 to observe the bombardment of Pantellaria. Aurora later circled back to Pantellaria for the capture of the island two days later (Operation Corkscrew), this time without her brass aboard.

Just after Corkscrew was wrapped up, Aurora called at Tripoli to pick up one “General Lyon” and staff for a quick one-day inspection tour of Malta. Escorted by the destroyers HMS Eskimo, Jervis, Nubian and Lookout, the little convoy sped 200 miles overnight to sail majestically into Valletta’s Grand Harbour on the morning of 20 June 1943, flying the Royal Standard and General Lyon, in actuality King George VI, dressed in spotless naval whites, hand at the salute, at attention on a specially-constructed wooden platform atop Aurora’s B turret. A daring port call indeed, considering Axis airfields were only 60 miles to the North of the island fortress. After spending the day on the island, the first visit by a Sovereign to Malta since 1911, George left on Aurora at 2200 that night for the return trip to North Africa.

King George VI saluting the George Cross Island of Malta, 20 June 1943, via the Royal Trust.

By July, with Agnew serving as Commodore of a cruiser-destroyer group (the new Force Q) made up of Aurora and her old Force K sister Penelope along with the tin cans HMS Inglefield and Offa, escorted Convoy KMF 18B, which was en route to Sicily for Operation Husky.

At 0115 on 10 July, kicking off Husky, Force Q was sent on a diversionary mission to bombard Catania, on the east coast of Sicily, with Aurora plastering the central railway station, Penelope the power station, and the destroyers the Bacino di Ponente water basin. The group then spent the rest of the month supporting the landings and patrolling the Straits of Messina.

August saw an expanded Force Q, with Agnew still in command from Aurora with Penelope, Dido, Sirius, and the destroyers HMS Jervis, Paladin, and Pathfinder. Sailing from Bizerta on 9 August, they embarked on Operation Annoyance, a weeklong plan to bombard Castellammare di Stabia outside Naples and push towards Paola, then sweep the Tyrrhenian Sea. In Aurora’s fashion, the group sank at least two German Siebel ferries (Siebelgefäß) landing craft used for traffic between Sicily and the Italian mainland during the return leg to Palermo.

Then, as Italy dropped out of the war, the group took part in Operation Slapstick, supporting the landing of Allied forces at Taranto on 9 September, and taking the surrendering Italian battle fleet into custody at Malta. Aurora carried elements of the British 1st Airborne Division to Taranto.

The cruiser HMS Aurora, 9 and 10 September 1943, from on board HMS Howe as Force “Z” arrived at Taranto. IWM (A 21018)

Then came the Avalanche Landings in Italy proper, with Aurora covering the beachhead area at Salerno 11-14 September alongside the monitor HMS Erebus, the cruisers HMS Mauritius, Orion, USS Boise, Philadelphia, and Savannah, as well as eight destroyers. Aurora delivered 51 rounds of 6-inch against German positions and narrowly evaded German Fritz KG 100-launched glide bombs which hit Savannah and just missed Philadelphia.

October 1943 saw Aurora, Dido, Penelope, and Sirius dispatched to the Aegean with Agnew as Commodore and three destroyers as escort to join the Levant Station. This was short-lived as Aurora and Dido collided on the night of the 5th, sending the latter to the yard for seven weeks while Aurora remained on station, damaged but still capable enough to resume station after a couple of days of patchwork at Alexandria.

She covered the landings on Leros, and carried out joint bombardment of Cos harbor with Sirius on October 17th while under German air attacks, then bombarded Rhodes with the Free Greek destroyer Miaoulis the next day, surviving further German attacks while transiting the Scarpanto Straits.

Then, while escorting a convoy to Leros near Kastelorizo (Castelorizo) in the Aegean on the 30th, was hit at 1623 by a 1,000-pound bomb dropped from a German Ju88 that landed between the after funnel and the 4-inch gun deck. Casualties were 47 killed and 30 wounded. Among those killed were CDR Charles Janson Smith, a regular who had been torpedo officer on HMS Exeter, where he earned a DSC fighting Graf Spee.

• ADAMS, Ernest, Marine, PO/X 113231, killed
• ALLBROOK, Herbert, Marine, PO/X 103084, killed
• ALLEN, Alfred E, Leading Seaman, P/J 72172, killed
• AUSTIN, George, Marine, PO/X 2678, killed
• BATEMAN, John T, Able Seaman, D/JX 255264, killed
• BEARDSMORE, Joseph, Able Seaman, P/JX 325504, killed
• BLANN, Phillip G, Able Seaman, P/J 101167, killed
• BOTTOMLEY, Ronald A, Act/Leading Seaman, P/JX 162559, killed
• BUCHANAN, Henry, Able Seaman, RNVR, P/CD/X 2911, killed
• BULMER, Arthur C R, Able Seaman, P/J 62980, killed
• CHARTER, Sydney, Able Seaman, P/SSX 22510, killed
• DENFORD, Frank V, Able Seaman, P/KX 99832, killed
• DERRICK, John V, Marine, PO/X 3264, killed
• ELDRIDGE, Raymond H, Able Seaman, P/JX 381355, DOW 31 October
• FALSAY, Thomas, Able Seaman, RNVR, P/CD/X 2328, killed
• GALE, George E, Ordinary Seaman, P/JX 565625, killed
• GAVIN, Leslie, Able Seaman, P/JX 329939, killed
• GEDDES, James, Able Seaman, P/JX 362597, killed
• GILLIES, Neil M, Ordinary Seaman, D/SSX 35845, killed
• GORDON, Thomas, Ordnance Artificer 4c, P/MX 59183, killed
• GRANTON, William, Able Seaman, P/SSX 29933, killed
• GREENALL, Henry R, Able Seaman, P/JX 325526, killed
• GUNN, Hugh G B, Able Seaman, RNVR, P/ESD/X 1409, killed
• GWYNNE, Alexander, Able Seaman, P/JX 159817, killed
• HEFTI, John L, Ty/Act/Petty Officer, C/SSX 21238, killed
• HIBBERT, William H, Ordinary Seaman, D/JX 349089, killed
• HOLLINSHEAD, Jack, Able Seaman, P/SSX 24384, killed
• HUDSON, Victor, Marine, PO/X 4002, killed
• JEFFREYS, Arthur G, Able Seaman, P/JX 183305, killed
• LITTLE, Robert L V, Lieutenant, MPK
• PROUSE, Joseph W, Able Seaman, P/JX 394339, killed
• RATCLIFFE, John, Act/Ordnance Artificer 4c, P/MX 78620, killed
• REPTON, Ronald, Able Seaman, P/JX 362053, killed
• ROBERTSON, Robert, Able Seaman, D/SSX 33998, killed
• SHEPHERD, Francis J, Able Seaman, P/JX 326530, killed
• SIMPSON, Alfred R, Seaman, RNPS, LT/JX 205504, killed
• SMITH, Charles J, Commander, MPK
• STEVENS, Geoffrey H, Commissioned Gunner, MPK
• SULLIVAN, John, Ordinary Seaman, D/JX 563609, killed
• THOMPSON, George, Able Seaman, P/JX 273793, killed
• WALL, Emanuel, Seaman, RNR, P/X 18166 A, killed
• WATERMAN, Clive S, Act/Leading Seaman, P/JX 160786, killed
• WHITE, Richard C, Petty Officer, P/J 106427, killed
• WHYTE, James D, Able Seaman, RNVR, P/CD/X 2832, killed
• WILLIAMS, Norman, Marine, PO/X 108919, killed
• WILSON, Bernard, Able Seaman, P/JX 171004, killed
• YEEND, Samuel E, Able Seaman, P/JX 324511, killed
• YOUNG, Albert J, Able Seaman, P/JX 182537, killed

Her second bombing of the war, coupled with damage received from the Dido collision earlier that month, sent Aurora to the yard for an extended period, this time to the newly available Italian facilities at Taranto, where she would spend five months.

Improvements included doubling her 20mm guns and, with a full fifth of her crew killed or injured, her roster saw a huge turnover. Among those who left the ship was Capt. Agnew, who was ironically sent to command the recently repaired HMS Dido in November, where he would earn a Bar to his DSO. Taking Agnew’s place once Aurora was out of the yard was Capt. Geoffrey Barnard, who had earned a DSO himself at the Battle of Cape Matapan in 1941.

Aurora, with Barnard, was headed to one more Mediterranean maelstrom.

Dragoon and the endgame

At Taranto from November 1943 well into April 1944, Aurora was deployed with the 15th Cruiser Squadron, Mediterranean Fleet, operating out of Malta by 30 May. She was soon part of the last great amphibious operation of the theatre– the Dragoon Landings to liberate southern France.

Aurora, a renowned NGFS ship, was assigned to what was initially TF 84.7, a joint Allied fire support group (Support Force Alpha) built around the battleship HMS Ramillies, six cruisers including one French and one American, and six destroyers including four American.

Sailing from Malta on 11 August, by the 15th she was in action in the Alpha and later Sitka Areas against German batteries defending the occupied French naval bastion of Toulon, with FAA Seafire fighters flying from nearby RN escort carriers (HMS Attacker, Emperor, Khedive, Searcher, and Pursuer) acting as aerial spotters.

One of the toughest nuts to crack during the Dragoon landings was K-21, an emplaced twin 13.4″/45 M1912 gun turret from the stricken French battleship Provence on the fortified crest of the headland on Cap Cépet, not far from the village and naval arsenal at Saint-Mandrier-Sur-Mer, overlooking the approaches to Toulon.

Operating in CTF86 under U.S. tactical command, Aurora joined the cruisers USS Quincy, Philadelphia, and FS Montcalm while the old Free French battlewagon Lorraine lent her own 13.4-inch guns to the battle line, deliberately placing herself between the German guns and the smaller ships to shield them, a service also performed by Pearl Harbor veteran USS Nevada. The destroyers USS Eberle, Kendrick, Ericsson, and HMS Lookout stood by to generate smoke screens, engage batteries “whenever opportunity offered,” and help call in shot corrections. Aurora also got shot corrections via the floatplanes of the American cruisers.

All in all, Aurora fired 1,118 6-inch shells and 186 of 4-inch shells across 31 fire missions across just her five days (20-25 August) on station with TF86 during Dragoon. Keep in mind that her magazines were designed to hold 600 rounds of 6-inch, and when she was released on the 25th, she only had 20 percent of her magazines remaining, giving you an idea of the amount of munitions that had to be cross-decked during this week.

CTF86 was sad to see her go.

By early September, with the coastal batteries neutralized and the Allies rushing inland, Aurora was shifted east to RADM Troubridge’s British Aegean Force, or “A” Force, to sweep the Germans from Crete and the Dodecanese Islands. Built around the same five RN escort carriers recycled from Dragoon, Aurora joined the cruisers HMS Royalist and Black Prince along with 11 destroyers, the latter including a Pole and a Greek.

For her part in this effort, Aurora, with the destroyer HMS Terpsichore as escort, on 18 September carried out a harassing bombardment of radio and radar stations on Milos with the assistance of air spotting. The next night, Aurora pounded Candia harbor and Heraklion airfield. After a trip to Alexandria to replenish her magazines, Aurora was back on 1 October to bombard Calato airfield, followed by Maleme airfield on the night of 2/3 October.

October 1944. Making fast the pipeline from HMS Hunter to the cruiser Aurora during Force “A” operations in the Aegean. Lt. DC Oulds IWM (A 26007)

HMS Aurora approaching HMS Hunter (ex-USS Block Island) for refueling. The ships were part of Force “A” during October 1944 in the Aegean Sea; Notice the sailor signaling semaphore in the foreground. Lt. DC Oulds

October 1944. Force “A” operations in the Aegean. From near to far: The escort carrier Hunter, the cruiser Royalist, the carrier Searcher, and the cruiser Colombo are seen from the Aurora, with her guns overhead in the foreground. Lt. DC Oulds, IWM (A 25998)

October 1944, the cruiser Aurora bombarding the airfield of Maleme in Crete at night. During Force “A” operations in the Aegean. Lt. DC Oulds, IWM (A 26001)

Same as above, IWM (A 26002)

Mid-October saw her as part of Force 120 for Operation Manna, which attacked enemy railway setups on Kos and helped troops land on islands like Mytilene and Piscopi.

By December, she was bombarding shipping at Rhodes to prevent it from being used by the Germans to escape the islands.

Moving into 1945, the war in the Med was slowing, and the fleet was used more for occupation and mopping up than large-scale operations.

HMS Aurora, Malta, late in her career. Note the difference in camo scheme

By 6 May 1945, Aurora was present at the surrender of Genoa, one of the last Axis-held ports in the Med. VE Day would hit two days later.

After a stint at Trieste, which at the time was the center of an east-west crisis, one of the first subtle engagements in the Cold War, Aurora was sent to HM Dockyard, Malta, for refit with an eye to continued service in the Pacific against the Japanese. She was still when VJ Day hit.

During World War II, HMS Aurora steamed a total of 201,688 miles and fired 9,163 rounds of 6-inch shells in anger.

Aurora well-earned eight battle honors for her service in WWII (Bismarck 1941, Mediterranean 1941–43, Malta Convoys 1941, North Africa 1942–43, Sicily 1943, Salerno 1943, Aegean 1943–44, and South France 1944) which, when added to the five she carried over from previous ships, gave her 13, a proud record.

To Chaing

Her refit at Malta finished in October 1945; Aurora was suddenly surplus to the Admiralty’s needs in a post-war Royal Navy.

She was virtually alone in her class, with her dependable sister Penelope sunk by U-boat in February 1944 off Anzio, joining sister Galatea, which had been sent to the bottom by the same cause off Alexandria in December 1941. Class leader Arethusa had been very banged up during the war indeed, and, while she was repaired, was placed in reserve in 1945 shortly after VJ Day, with a plan to sell her to the Norwegians (which fell through).

Arethusa in particular survived a hit that should have sent her to the bottom. In 1942, an Italian torpedo below B turret blew a 53 by 35 feet hole in her side. The ship caught fire from A turret back to the bridge and flooded to the waterline for 100 feet back from the bow, but survived. In the end, the Norwegians never picked her up, and she was instead scrapped in 1950.

At the end of WWII, the Brits had no shortage of top-notch and very good light cruisers, all of them newer, larger, much better armed and armored, not to mention more modern, than Aurora. These included five Tigers/Swiftsure (8,000t, 9×6″), two Ugandas (8,000t, 9×6″), six Fijis (8,000t, 9 or 12×6″), 11 Didos (7,400t, 8 or 10 x5.25″), Belfast (10,000t, 12×6″), and five Southhamptons (9,400t, 9×6″)– some 30 very decent CLs, not even counting older hulls like the four surviving Leanders (7,200t, 6 or 8×6″).

With the plan, at the time, to sell three of four remaining Leanders to India (they in fact only received one, Achilles), it was decided in November 1945 that Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Nationalist Chinese, locked in a life-or-death struggle with the Chicoms, could benefit from a loan (not sale) of the old “Silver Phantom.”

The Chinese at the time considered Aurora compensation for six Chinese Maritime Customs Service launches that had been impressed by the Royal Navy at Hong Kong in December 1941 and promptly lost with the colony.

The Chinese Navy of late 1945 had inherited several former IJN vessels in its ports or nearby as reparations– the largest ROCS Dan Yang (DD-12), formerly the legendary Yukikaze, a Kagerō-class fleet destroyer. To flesh out these ships and the few pre-1931 vessels still around under the KMT cog, the country received a number of surplus ships from Allied fleets. These included a dozen landing ships, useful along the long coastline, a few Cannon-class destroyer escorts, some corvettes, and, the crown jewel, our HMS Aurora.

The Chinese had a long history operating cruisers, going back to the Zhiyuan of the old Beiyang Fleet in the 1880s. Just before WWII in 1937, the fleet had 10 in commission: the heavy cruiser Hai Yung (4,300-ton, 8-inch guns, British-built, 1898), the German-built 3,000-tonners Hai Yung, Hai Shen and Hai Chou; the fast 2,500-ton Ning Ha and Ping Hai, the old Ta Tong and Tze Chiang, the small Yat Sen, and the 1,900-ton training cruiser Tung Chi. However, all were either sunk or captured (or both) by the Japanese.

On 17 April 1946, Aurora was paid off at Portsmouth, and the dockyard removed any sensitive materials while giving the cruiser a “light” overhaul.

Her Nationalist Chinese crew left Shanghai under Capt. Deng Zhaoxiang, late of the Guizhou Tongzi Naval Academy, on 9 November 1946, headed to England. Zhaoxiang, 43, had been to the country in the 1930s, having graduated from Greenwich and the British Naval Torpedo School.

Arriving at Portsmouth on 13 December 1946, Zhaoxiang and his 300-strong crew slowly moved into their country’s new warship and worked up alongside the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Mendip (which became the Chinese ROCS Lin Fu on 21 January 1948), with the cruiser only transferring officially on 19 May 1948.

Aurora as the Chinese cruiser Chongqing, complete with red, white and blue KMT “cog” flag

Named ROCS Chongqing (Chungking) after the wartime capital city of Nationalist China, the cruiser and Mendip/Lin Fu left Portsmouth with an RN seven-man liaison team aboard on 26 May 1948, headed for “home.”

Completing the 10,000-mile shakedown at Hong Kong on 28 July, the ship was given the final once-over by the RN dockyard there, and the British liaison team said their goodbyes when Chongqing and Lin Fu left for Tianjin (Tientsin), arriving on 20 August, where their skeleton crew was rounded out and brought to wartime strength.

Chiang Kai-shek himself personally called on the cruiser, the flagship of the ROCN, on 5-6 October 1948.

Things soon got squirrelly, with Mao’s Soviet-backed Reds rapidly gaining the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War.

This pushed Chongqing into the fight, with her guns being used against Communist Northeast Field Army positions at Xihaikou, Dahongyingzi, and Gaoqiao starting on 9 October with three ROCN gunboats in support. This continued the rest of the month as the task force covered the evacuation of the Nationalist 52nd Army from the Liao River.

She is probably the only ship in history to have fired at upwards of 50 ships at sea, ranging from Greenland to the Levant, and have bombarded shore targets in Norway, Greece, Italy, France and China.

Under a Red Banner

With the Nationalists slowly losing control of the mainland and withdrawing towards the coast and Formosa (Taiwan), by 17 February 1949, Chongqing was at Wusongkou, the strategic key at the confluence of the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers, and had received orders to sortie up the Yangtze to stop the Reds from crossing the river.

With one thing leading to another and the crew radicalized, with even the skipper Zhaoxiang and most of his officers going over to the mutineers, instead of sailing upriver to stop Mao’s boys, the cruiser raised the red flag, stopped answering the radio, and sailed out of the Yangtze River estuary heading 500 miles north to Communist-held Yantai at 0545 on 25 February. She had 574 committed members of the revolution aboard.

Arriving at Yantai on the morning of 26th February, the Nationalists gave the ship and its mutinous crew a few days to change their mind before sending a squadron of B-24M bombers (138 had been transferred under Lend-Lease) hunting for the ship starting on 3 March.

Shifting the cruiser at night to Huludao in an attempt to hide the 6,600-ton cruiser, Aurora’s luck ran out by 18-19 March, and she had been hit numerous times and capsized, although the PLAN stresses she was actually scuttled.

Aurora/Chongqing remained on the bottom of Huludao harbor until May 1951, when she was raised with Soviet Navy help and towed to the Sino-Soviet Shipyard in Dalian for repairs, which would continue through the autumn of 1955, when the Russians left.

It was during this time that many of the ship’s waterlogged instruments and sensors were removed and sent back to Russia for study,

She was toured by at least seven current and future Chinese leaders– including He Long, Zhou Enlai (July 1, 1951), Zhu De (September 1953), Peng Dehuai, Ye Jianying, and Liu Shaoqi (accompanied by Deng Xiaoping, autumn 1955)– adding them to the various fleet admirals, kings and Generalissimos who had walked her decks.

While it was deemed she was too badly damaged after spending 26 months submerged to ever sail and fight again, she was publicly added to the PLAN naval rolls under a series of shifting names and remained a cruiser, at least on paper, until at least October 1959.

The PLAN, which at the time had only 25,000 men, used the third-hand salvaged cruiser as its pier-side flagship throughout the late 1950s, leading about a dozen ex-Japanese escorts and gunboats. Interestingly, they also had the ex-Canadian corvette HMCS Bowmanville (K493), a dozen U.S. LSTs, another dozen LSMs, and several circa 1920s-30s “Sand Pebbles” style river gunboats such as the old USS Tutuila and USS Wake; the French Balny, the Italian Ermanno Carlotto, Portuguese Macau, and the HMS Falcon, Sandpiper, and Gannet; most of which had passed through Japanese and KMT hands over the decades.

The 1961 Jane’s noted, “The old light cruiser Pei Ching (ex-Huang Ha, ex-Victory, ex-Chungking, ex-H.M.S. Aurora) is now a mere hulk.”

Her place was planned to be filled in the Chinese battle line by the Russian Project 26bis2 (Kirov-class) medium cruiser Kaganovich/Petropavlovsk (9 x 7.1″/60-inch guns, 8,800 tons).

This transfer, of course, fell through due to the Sino-Soviet split, and Kaganovich, in poor condition in Vladivostok, was converted into a floating barracks, then later sold for scrap.

That left Aurora as *Communist China’s final cruiser until the 13,000-ton Type 055 CGs started coming online in 2020.

*(The very small 1,300-ton scout cruiser Yat Sen had been captured by the Japanese after scuttling at Jiangyin Fortress in 1937, raised and used as the training cruiser Atada, then repatriated to the KMT in 1945. She managed to skip out to Taiwan in 1949 and remained a ROCN asset until 1959, still listed as a cruiser despite her corvette size.)

Her saga as a hulk

By 1959, the floating remnants of what used to be Aurora were being slowly disassembled by the Shanghai Salvage Bureau.

Her weapons and anything of interest not already looted by the Russians while she was at Dalian were removed and sent to Tsinghua University and the Harbin Military Engineering Academy for use in teaching and study.

Her main engine assembly was sold for 320,000 yuan to the Shanghai Office of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Electric Power.

Her four boilers were sold for a total of 72,000 yuan and went to four different end-users: the Tianjin Supply and Marketing Cooperative, the Production Materials Management Division of the Hubei Provincial Department of Commerce, and the Industrial Department of Jiyuan County, Henan Province, respectively.

The Navy eventually transferred the Chongqing’s hull to the Shanghai Marine Transport Bureau under the aegis of the Ministry of Communications for use as a floating barracks. She then served as the on-sea dormitory ship for the Tianjin Maritime Rescue and Salvage Bureau in the 1980s, and finally for the Bohai Oil Company, when what was left of the old girl afloat was recycled by the early 1990s.

While it seems most of her armament faded into history, at least one set of 4″/45 Mk XVIs was sent to the campus of the Navy Mechanical School in Dalian (now the Department of Naval Politics at the PLA Dalian Naval Academy). Another set was installed on Dongshan Hill at the Dalian Hutan Amusement Park, now Laohutan Ocean Park, where it remains in poor material condition.

Her Chinese nameplates and bell are on display in the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution in Beijing, classified as National First-Class Cultural Relics.

Epilogue

Besides her extensive relics all over China, Aurora survives in maritime art.

Arethusa-class light cruiser HMS Aurora by Charles E Turner IWM ART 15083

Chongqing art, with KMT flag

Aurora had seven skippers in her brief (12 November 1937 to May 1946) commissioned time in the Royal Navy, spanning less than a decade. Of these, six became admirals. These included her first skipper (the future ADM Sir Henry Daniel Pridham-Wippell, C.B., C.V.O., K.C.B, who led a formation of four light cruisers and three destroyers at the Battle of Cape Matapan); VADM William Gladstone Agnew, KCVO, DSO with Bar, who commanded Aurora during her most trying service from October 1940 through November 1943 and ended the war as head of the gunnery school at HMS Excellent; and VADM Geoffrey Barnard, C.B.E., DSO, who was skipper for the last two years of the war including the Dragoon Landings. Barnard was the last to pass, in 1974 at age 72, and had finished his career in 1958 as President of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

Pridham-Wippell, Agnew, and Barnard were all Aurora skippers minted during the Great War who went on to a well-earned vice-admiral rank or higher. Of note, Agnew and Barnard both picked up DSOs on Aurora during the war.

Another, more recognizable, name related to Aurora was that of thespian Kenneth Moore, who took a break from his acting career to serve in the RNR during the war, seeing action on our cruiser as well as the carrier Victorious. Ironically, Moore later went on to play Capt. Shepherd, the fictional central protagonist, in 1960’s Sink the Bismarck! 

The IWM has several oral history interviews online with members of her crew, including her junior gunnery officer, Sub-Lt. Nigel Matthews, who remembered “we were in action a tremendous amount of time,” seeing service on the Spitsbergen operation, including the sinking of the Bismarck and Bremse, as well as three seamen who served on her in 1944-45, including Dragoon and Force A.

The Admiralty recycled the cruiser’s name for a 10th Aurora, a £4.65 million Leander-class frigate (F10) built at John Brown & Company in the early 1960s that held the line in the Cold War, traded rammings with the Icelanders in the Cod Wars, and served in the Far East with the old 7th Squadron as well as on the Armilla Patrol. Decommissioned in 1987, she was scrapped in 1990, leaving the RN without an Aurora for the past four decades, a shame.

Aerial view of Leander-class frigate HMS Aurora (F10), with Wasp helicopters overhead during the Cold War, IWM (HU 129741).

The Chinese also recycled the name, honoring the courageous mutineers who hoisted the Red Banner and left Chiang with a case of heartburn. The Type 051 destroyer Chongqing (133) was on active duty from 1982 until 2014 and is preserved as a floating museum at the Tianjin Binhai Theme Park, opposite the former Soviet aircraft carrier Kiev. Tickets cost 220 yuan.

The Type 051 destroyer Chongqing (133) at Tianjin Binhai Theme Park on 23 September 2018, via Wiki Commons.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

If you like this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO, has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships, you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!