HMS Norfolk was a County-class cruiser heavy cruiser of the Royal Navy; along with her sister ship HMS Dorsetshire (40) she was part of a planned four-ship subclass. She served throughout the Second World War, where she was involved in the sinking of the German Navy's battleships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst.

Construction

She was laid down in July 1927 at Govan by Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd and launched on 12 December 1928. She was commissioned on 30 April 1930.

Service history

Inter-war period

In September 1931, the crew of the Norfolk were part of a mutiny that later became known as the Invergordon Mutiny. The ship later served with the Home Fleet until 1932 and was then Flagship of the 8th Cruiser Squadron on the America and West Indies Station, based at the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, between 1932 and 1934. Ships based at Bermuda spent much of the year cruising around the Americas individually or in small groups, while being available to respond to states of emergency (including hurricane relief and protecting British interests during civil wars such as the Cristero War in Mexico) anywhere in the region. The entire squadron would exercise at Bermuda. Norfolk left Bermuda, and the station, on Wednesday, 21 November, 1934, for England, in storm conditions. From 1935 to 1939, Norfolk served with the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, before coming home to refit in 1939, being still in dockyard hands when war was declared.

Second World War

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Norfolk was part of the 18th Cruiser Squadron of the Home Fleet, and was involved in the chase for the German battleships GERMAN BATTLESHIP Gneisenau and GERMAN BATTLESHIP Scharnhorst. She was soon receiving numerous repairs for damage that she had received, not to mention vital modifications to the ship. Her first repairs were carried out in Belfast, after damage from a near-miss by a torpedo from GS U-47 (1938), the submarine responsible for sinking the battleship HMS Royal Oak (08) at Scapa Flow. Shortly afterward, bomb damage that she had received from an air raid by eighteen sixteen Junkers Ju 88 of Kampfgeschwader 30 and Heinkel He 11 of Kampfgeschwader 26 at Scapa Flow on 16 March 1940 forced her into yet another repair, this time on the Clyde. After these repairs had been completed Norfolk proceeded to a shipyard on the River Tyne for a new addition to her equipment – a radar set. In December 1940, Norfolk was ordered to the South Atlantic on trade protection duties. Operating out of Freetown as part of Force K she participated in the hunt for the pocket battleship GERMAN CRUISER Admiral Scheer. On 18 January 1941 Norfolk, under the command of Capt. Phillips, acting upon a report from the AMC Arawa seeing in the far distance the gunflashes of the German auxiliary cruiser GERMAN AUXILIARY CRUISER Kormoran sinking the tanker British Union, joined in the search for the German raider together with her sister ship HMS Devonshire (39). In February, she escorted Atlantic troop convoys, but by May she had returned to Icelandic waters. On 21 May Norfolk was patrolling in the Denmark Strait against possible German raiders. When the British received news of an impeding attempt of the German battleship GERMAN BATTLESHIP Bismarck and heavy cruiser GERMAN CRUISER Prinz Eugen to breakout into the Atlantic, the Denmark Strait patrol was reinforced with Norfolk 's sister ship HMS Suffolk (55), which was refuelling at Iceland. In the evening of 23 May the two cruisers were patrolling 15 miles apart when Suffolk spotted the two German ships. Suffolk could hide in the mist but when Norfolk made contact with the German ships she was spotted as well and Bismarck fired fire salvoes at her before she too could escape in the mist. Norfolk and Suffolk continued to shadow Bismarck and Prinz Eugen with their radar and sent regularly contact reports, in order to guide a British force consisting of the battleship HMS Prince of Wales (53), the battlecruiser HMS Hood (51) and six destroyers under the command of admiral Lancelot Holland to the scene. At midnight Bismarck suddenly reversed course and tried to chase the cruisers away. It took the cruisers three hours to regain contact and as a result, Holland sent his destroyers away on a search for the German ships and when contact was finally made he had to approach the German ships slower on a converging course rather than the planned head-on approach. In the ensuing Battle of the Denmark Strait Hood was sunk and both Bismarck and Prince Of Wales were damaged. Norfolk later joined the battleships HMS Rodney (29) and HMS King George V (41) and her sister Dorsetshire as part of the force that finally sank Bismarck in the German ship's final battle. From September onward, she was employed as an escort for the arduous Arctic Convoys. Norfolk was part of the cruiser covering force of Convoy JW 55B when it engaged Scharnhorst, on 26 December 1943. She scored three hits on the German ship, and received several 11-in shell hits (all passing through the thin-skinned ship without exploding) in return, before she withdrew; Scharnhorst was later caught and sunk by the battleship HMS Duke of York (17) and her escorting cruisers and destroyers. She sustained damage (especially to X-turret and barbette) in that confrontation, and she was subsequently repaired/refitted (losing X-turret in favour of additional AA guns) on the Tyne, which prevented her from being involved in the historic D-day landings. Norfolk was the flagship of Vice Admiral Rhoderick McGrigor off North Norway during Operation Judgement, an attack by the Fleet Air Arm on a U-boat base which destroyed two ships and GS U-711 on 4 May 1945, in the last air-raid of the war in Europe. When the war came to a close, Norfolk left Plymouth for a much needed refit at Malta, after transporting the Norwegian Royal family back to Oslo after their five-year exile in London. This was followed by service in the East Indies as the flagship of the Commander-in-Chief, East Indies.

Post-war

In 1949, Norfolk returned to Britain and was placed in Reserve. She was sold to BISCO for scrapping on 3 January 1950. On 14 February 1950, she proceeded to Newport, arriving on 19 February, to be broken up after 22 years of service, in which she gained the Norfolk lineage the majority of her battle honours, including her last.

Battle honours

Footnotes