Type: Heavy Cruiser
Class: Dorsetshire
Pennant: 40
Built By: Portsmouth Dockyard
Cammell Laird Shipyard Birkenhead
Laid down: 21 September 1927
Launched: 29 January 1929
Commissioned: 30 September 1930
Lost: 5 April 1942
Service
After commissioning Dorsetshire was the flagship of the 2nd Cruiser Squadron Atlantic Home Fleet, and then between 1933 and 1935 was on the Africa station. After a refit in 1936 she joined the 5th Cruiser Squadron on the China station and was in that area when war broke out in 1939.
In October 1939 when German surface raiders appeared on the oceans, Dorsetshire was despatched with Cornwall and Hermes to form Force I to hunt down the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee which was finally cornered at Montevideo on the River Plate in December 1939. During the early part of 1940, Dorsetshire carried out trade protection duties in the South Atlantic searching for Axis blockade-runners. In February she intercepted the German Wakama off Rio and the German crew scuttled the ship.
At the end of May 1940 the cruiser arrived at Plymouth and then sailed for Freetown employed to protect convoys between Sierra Leone and Great Britain. In May 1941 she was diverted to hunt for the battleship Bismarck that had broken out into the North Atlantic. This search culminated in her shelling and torpedoing the crippled battleship and administering the coup de gras. During the encounter with Bismarck the Dorsetshire expended 254 shells and 3 torpedoes.
In July 1941 HMS Dorsetshire was in Newcastle upon Tyne undergoing a small
refit, after which she sailed to Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, to Glasgow on the
Clyde and finally to her new station in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where she would
be based whilst on trade protection duties escorting convoys down the West African
coast.
Whilst on these duties Dorsetshire encountered the German raider supply ship,
Python west of St. Helena in December 1941. The German crew scuttled their ship
but one of the U boats, UA that had been moored to the Python when they were
found, quickly dived and fired five torpedoes at the Dorsetshire – luckily
they all missed!
When Japan entered the conflict, Dorsetshire joined the Eastern Fleet based
in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and whilst undergoing a refit in April 1942, mainly
to add anti-aircraft armament, they were ordered to re-join the main fleet under
Vice Admiral James Summerville who was refuelling at Addu Atoll in the Maldive
islands.
The British had been warned that a Japanese battle fleet was approaching Ceylon
from the Bay of Bengal to the east. (Historians refer to this incursion as the
Indian Ocean Raid). The Dorsetshire left Colombo in Ceylon at 2200hrs on the
evening of the 4th of April 1942 together with the Cruiser HMS Cornwall. They
travelled at maximum speed south and west of Ceylon to reach their planned rendezvous
in the Maldives at 1600hrs the next day, Easter Sunday.
Unfortunately, Naval intelligence had drastically underestimated the range of the enemy aircraft and a Japanese spotter plane from the approaching carrier force found both Dorsetshire and Cornwall steaming towards the Maldives. Fifty-three Japanese Val bombers attacked the two British ships in groups of three, diving with the sun behind them to make themselves a difficult target. Both ships were sunk in a very short time, and from a total complement of 1,546 officers and men 1,122 were rescued after they had been in the water for 30 hours.
The Cruiser HMS Enterprise and the British destroyers HMS Paladin and HMS Panther found the crews in the water after almost giving up the search, as the area had already been covered without finding anything and darkness was not far off. The Captain was told the search was complete but he insisted the search was to continue and when asked in which direction he answered, “The direction we are already going in is as good as any”. Shortly after the search resumed, the last rays of the sun reflected on a biscuit tin nailed to an oar being held aloft by the wretched survivors. The lookouts saw these reflections and the survivors from the Dorsetshire and Cornwall, five miles away, were found.
Today HMS Dorsetshire lies at the bottom of the Indian Ocean at position 01.54N,
77.45E, which is approximately 500 miles SSW of Sri Lanka.