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HMS Belfast

Coordinates: 51°30′23.98″N 0°04′52.50″W / 51.5066611°N 0.0812500°W / 51.5066611; -0.0812500
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HMS Belfast at her London berth, painted in dazzle camouflage
History
Royal Navy EnsignUK
NameHMS Belfast
BuilderHarland and Wolff shipyard, Belfast
Laid down10 December 1936
Launched17 March 1938
Commissioned5 August 1939
Decommissioned24 August 1963
StatusMuseum ship since 21 October 1971
General characteristics
Displacement11,553 tons
Length613 ft 6 in (186.99 m) overall
Beam69 ft (21 m)
Draught19 ft 9 in (6.02 m)
Propulsionlist error: <br /> list (help)
Four Admiralty oil-fired 3-drum boilers
four Parsons single reduction geared steam turbines driving four shafts at 80,000 shaft horsepower
Speed32 knots (59 km/h)
Complement750 - 850 (as flagship)
Armamentlist error: <br /> list (help)
(1959) Twelve (4 × 3) 6 inch Mk XXIII
eight (4 × 2) QF 4-inch (101.6 mm) Mk XVI HA/LA
twelve (6 × 2) Bofors AA
Armourlist error: <br /> list (help)
4.5 inches (114 mm)
deck 3 inches (76 mm)
Aircraft carriedTwo Supermarine Walrus aircraft (Removed in the latter part of WWII)
NotesPennant number C35

HMS Belfast is one of the two ships forming the final sub-class of the Royal Navy's Town-class cruisers, the other being HMS Edinburgh. Belfast is now a museum ship in London.

Early history

The Town class cruisers were constrained to less than 10,000 tons by the Washington Naval Treaty. The original design included quadruple 6-inch gun mountings, but, due to problems with construction, improved versions of the triple mountings fitted to the earlier ships of the class were fitted instead. These were lighter than those planned, and the weight saved was used to improve the ship's armour and anti-aircraft defences.

Belfast was launched on St Patrick's Day in 1938 at Harland and Wolff Shipyard in Belfast by Anne Chamberlain, the wife of the then Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. The budgeted overall cost of the ship was £2,141,514, of which £75,000 was for the guns and £66,500 for aircraft. She was commissioned in August 1939 under the command of Captain G A Scott DSO and assigned to the 18th Cruiser Squadron.

Second World War

At the start of the Second World War the 18th Cruiser Squadron was part of the British effort to impose a naval blockade on Germany. As part of this squadron, Belfast intercepted the German liner Cap Norte on 9 October 1939 as the liner was trying to return to Germany disguised as a neutral ship.

At around 1:00 a.m. on 21 November 1939 she was seriously damaged as she left the Firth of Forth, with twenty-one men injured, by a magnetic mine laid on 4 November by the German submarine U-21 under the command of Kapitänleutnant Fritz Frauenheim[1]. The mine broke the keel and wrecked the hull and machinery to such an extent that repairs at Devonport took nearly three years.

She returned to service in the Home Fleet in November 1942 under the command of Captain Frederick Parham. Improvements had been made to the ship during repairs, notably bulged amidships to improve her longitudinal strength and stability, and fitting the latest radar and fire control; her displacement had risen from 11,175 to 11,553 tons, making her Britain's heaviest cruiser.

She was made flagship of the 10th Cruiser Squadron, under Rear-Admiral Robert Burnett, in which capacity she provided cover for Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. On 26 December 1943, in what became the Battle of North Cape, the cruiser squadron, consisting of Norfolk, Belfast and Sheffield, encountered the German Gneisenau class battlecruiser Scharnhorst, and with the battleship HMS Duke of York subsequently sank her.

Belfast was part of the escort force in Operation Tungsten in March 1944, a large carrier-launched airstrike against the Tirpitz, at that stage the last surviving German heavy warship, moored at Altafjord in northern Norway. Tirpitz was hit by fifteen bombs and severely damaged, but not destroyed.

HMS Belfast's 4 inch guns bombarding German positions in Normandy at night

In June 1944 she took part in the bombardment of enemy positions at the beginning of Operation Neptune, the landing phase of the D-Day landings, as flagship of bombardment Force E. Part of the Eastern Naval Task Force, with responsibility for supporting the British and Canadian assaults on Gold and Juno beaches, Belfast was one of the first ships to fire on German positions at 5:30 a.m. on 6 June 1944.

Belfast was almost continuously in action for the next five weeks, firing thousands of rounds from her 6– and 4–inch batteries in support of troops until the battlefront moved out of range inland. Her final salvo in the European war was fired on 8 July during Operation Charnwood, the battle to capture Caen, when she engaged German positions together with the battleship HMS Rodney and the monitor HMS Roberts.

Two days later she returned to Devonport for a short refit for service in the Far East, and joined Operation Zipper, which was intended to expel the Japanese from Malaya but turned into a relief operation following the Japanese surrender.

During the last days of the war in Europe she was spotted in the North Sea by a German submarine without noticing the enemy vessel. The German commander decided not to fire, as the war was almost over.[citation needed]

Post-war

Belfast served in the Korean War, supporting United Nations land forces by naval bombardment. In July 1952 she was hit by a Communist battery, killing one man and wounding four.

HMS Belfast firing a salvo from her six inch guns against enemy troop concentrations on the west coast of Korea

Belfast was modernized between January 1956 and May 1959. During this refit all the AA guns (4 inch and 40 mm) were removed and replaced by more modern weapons of the same calibre. All the gunnery control equipment and radars fitted during wartime were also replaced. Finally the original bridge was rebuilt and enclosed to face the new constraints of NBC warfare and the original raked tripod masts were replaced by lattice masts. These alterations were very similar to the bridge structure and masting fitted on the new Tiger class cruisers.

Between 1959-62 the ship operated in the Far East on exercises and "showed the flag". In December 1961 she provided the British guard of honour at Dar-es-Salaam during the Tanganyika independence ceremony.

The ship left Singapore on 26 March 1962 for the UK where she made a final visit to Belfast and after an exercise in Mediterranean was paid off on 24 August 1963. Following a campaign led by Rear-Admiral Sir Morgan Morgan-Giles DSO OBE CM, a former captain of the ship, she was brought to London to become a museum ship and was first opened to the public on Trafalgar Day, 21 October 1971.

The ship is currently painted in a camouflage scheme officially known as Admiralty Disruptive Camouflage Type 25. In the real timeline, HMS Belfast carried that paint scheme from November 1942 to July 1944. The anachronism is augmented by the fact that HMS Belfast in 1942-1944 had a distinctly different appearance from today, her silhouette and equipment having been vastly modified during her extended refit from January 1956 to May 1959.

During 2007 the ship was visited by 256,556 paying visitors a fall of 5% on 2006.[2]

References

  1. ^ Uboat.net
  2. ^ "Visits made in 2007". Association of Leading Visitor Attractions. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
  3. ^ It's Called A Heart Interview
  4. ^ People Are People
  • The Cruiser Belfast / Ross Watton (2003) ISBN 0851779565

The Ballad of HMS Belfast by Ciaran Carson

Wikimedia Commons has media related to HMS Belfast (C35).

51°30′23.98″N 0°04′52.50″W / 51.5066611°N 0.0812500°W / 51.5066611; -0.0812500

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