Skip to content

Cruiser –

Aircraft from HMAS SYDNEY over NZ cruiser HMNZS BELLONA, Feb.-Mar. 1951 – ADFS.

  1. Another view of the Commonwealth Jubilee Exercises off the coast of Tasmania in Feb.-March 1951. Here we see a flight of 10 aircraft – seven Hawker Sea Furies and three Fairey Fireflies from HMAS SYDN EY over the 5,950-7,200 ton New Zealand Modified Dido Class cruiser HMNZS BELLONA.

In a way this is a physical manifestation of postwar New Zealand naval policy, in that the RNZN Dido Class anti-aircraft cruisers were obtained by loan and acquisition after WWII specifically to operate with Australian aircraft carriers, making a strong combined regional force.

Again, these were the exercises during which, on Feb. 26, 1951, a practice rocket [or rockets, we’re not sure] fired by a Sea Fury from SYDNEY struck the quarterdeck of HMNZS BELLONA, fortunately without major damage or casualties.

BELLONA was towing a target astern, but as we have previously reported, a little facetiously, the Sea Fury pilot, Lt Peter Seed – a New Zealander, like many in the RAN’s FAA squadrons then – had insisted before an enquiry that he had not pressed the rocket firing button, and the plane’s rockets had streaked off independently, and inadvertently.

Noone quite accepted that at the time, although it was clearly as accident. It was only later, during SYDNEY’S tour of duty in Korea that it was discovered that powerful low frequency radio transmissions from the carrier had the capacity to spontaneously ignite the under-wing rockets on her aircraft aloft. Indeed it was found to be a problem on other carriers also, and arming procedures for the ordnance had to be changed.

Subsequently, in somewhat different circumstances, it was a spontaneous under-wing rocket firing from an an electrical surge that caused the huge deck fire on the U.S. super carrier USS FORRESTAL in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 27, 1967. The consequences in that case were truly tragic, with 134 men killed and 161 injured, as explosions and fire spread among fuel and bomb-laden aircraft on the giant carrier’s crowded flight deck. Details of that incident are here.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

By the way, we had a wonderful Allan C. Green portrait of HMNZS BELLONA at Entry NO. 5317, here:

www.flickr.com/photos/41311545@N05/6524159025/

This photo: ADF Serials website, RAN aircraft section, with permission. With a magnificent collection of photographs and aircraft log and tracing information, you can find the ADF Serials website here:

www.adf-serials.com/

HMS Diomede was a Danae class cruiser of the Royal Navy. Constructed at Vickers Armstrong, Barrow, she was constructed too late to take part in World War I and was consequently completed at the Royal Dockyard, Portsmouth.

  • by
Capturefile: D:\glass neg raws\Allen C. Green Series\box 88\CC001681.061937.Capture.tifCaptureSN: CC001681.061937Software: Capture One PRO for Windows

Between the wars, she served on the China Station, Pacific waters, East Indies Waters and from 1936 onwards, in reserve. In World War II she performed four years of arduous war duty, during which time she captured the German blockade runner Idarwald. Between 22 July 1942 and 24 September 1943 she was converted to a training ship at Rosyth Dockyard. In 1945 she was placed in reserve and scrapped a year later.
Early career
Upon commissioning Diomede joined the 5th Light Cruiser Squadron on the China Station in 1922. In 1925 she was transferred to the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy at Devonport where she served until 1935, apart from a refit in 1929-1930. In 1931 she rendered assistance to the town of Napier, New Zealand after the devastating Hawkes Bay earthquake, supplying medical personnel, equipment, guards and firemen, along with her sister ship Dunedin. Afterwards Diomede escorted the beach-damaged HMS Veronica to Auckland. The Executive officer at the time (1930-1933) was Commander, later Admiral Victor Crutchley, who was to later become entwined with the Pacific Campaign of World War II.
Upon the notification that the two cruisers of the New Zealand Division were to be replaced by Leander class cruisers, in 1935 Diomede started her voyage home to Britain to be paid off into the reserve. En route the Abyssinian Crisis broke out and she was diverted to the 4th Light Cruiser Squadron, part of the East Indies Fleet based at Aden for possible action against the Italians. Upon relief by HMS Achilles on 31 March 1936 she was paid off and spent the next three years in the reserve fleet or as a troop ship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Diomede_(D92)

HMS Dunedin was a Danae-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy/NZ Div of RN, pennant number D93.

  • by

HMS DUNEDIN (1919) at Lyttelton, 4 Nov 1937 

New Zealand Division of the Royal NavyHMS Dunedin and HMS Diomede in Wellington, 1928HMS Dunedin – http://www.hmsdunedin.co.uk/new_zealand.htmHMS Diomede – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Diomede_(D92)http://atojs.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/atojs?a=d&d=AJHR1929-I.2.3.2.5&e=——-10–1——0–

She was launched from the yards of Armstrong Whitworth, Newcastle-on-Tyne on 19 November 1918 and commissioned on 13 September 1919. She has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Dunedin (named after the capital of Scotland, generally Anglicised as Edinburgh).

Service history[edit]

In October 1920 she, with the other three British vessels, was sent to assure protection of the unloading of munitions intended for Poland, at Danzig.

In 1931 she provided assistance to the town of Napier, New Zealand, after the strong Hawkes Bay earthquake, in a task force with the sloop Veronica and the cruiser Diomede.

Second World War[edit]

Early in the Second World War, Dunedin was involved in the hunt for the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau after the sinking of the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi.

In early 1940 Dunedin was operating in the Caribbean Sea, and there she intercepted the German merchant ship Heidelberg west of the Windward Passage. Heidelberg‘s crew scuttled the ship before Dunedin could take her. A few days later, Dunedin, in company with the Canadian destroyer Assiniboine, intercepted and captured the German merchant ship Hannover near Jamaica. Hannover later became the first British escort carrier, Audacity. Between July and November, Dunedin, together with the cruiser Trinidad, maintained a blockade off Martinique, in part to bottle up three French warships, including the aircraft carrier Béarn.

On 15 June 1941, Dunedin captured the German tanker Lothringen and gathered some highly classified Enigma cipher machines that she carried. The Royal Navy reused Lothringen as the fleet oiler Empire Salvage. Dunedin went on to capture three Vichy French vessels, Ville de Rouen off Natal, the merchant ship Ville de Tamatave east of the Saint Paul’s Rocks, and finally, D’Entrecasteaux.

Dunedin was part of the escort of Convoy WS 5A when it was attacked by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper.on 25 December 1940. The attack was repulsed by other ships of the escort, without losses to the convoy.[1]

Dunedin was still steaming in the Central Atlantic Ocean, just east of the St. Paul’s Rocks, north east of Recife, Brazil, when on 24 November 1941, at 1526 hours, two torpedoes from the German submarine U-124 sank her. Only four officers and 63 men survived out of Dunedin‘s crew of 486 officers and men.