ROBIN BROOKS

Born 1943

Marine Paintings exclusively

at BLACK DOG STUDIOS

Exeter

One of the most celebrated British warships of the Second World War, thanks to her heroic role in the fight with the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee off the mouth of the River Plate in 1939.

A Unique Ship

HMS Exeter - she was in a class of her own - was essentially very similar to the York, launched the previous year, but with her beam increased marginally, and with her twin funnels set vertically. She was the last heavy cruiser (that is, with 8in (203mm) guns) ever constructed for the Royal Navy, though a 'stretched' version, 25 feet longer overall, and with a fourth turret, was designed but never laid down. HMS Exeter was built at Devonport Dockyard; laid down on 1 August 1928, she was launched on 18 July 1929 and commissioned on 23 July 1931. She was sunk in the Java Sea on 1 March, 1942.

The Armament of the Exeter

The ship's main armament was her six 8in (203mm) Mk VIII guns, the same as those fitted to all the other British heavy cruisers of the between-the-wars period, but in mounts which limited them to a maximum elevation of 50 degrees and with a range of 27,000 yards (13.3nm; 24.7km). Her prime anti-aircraft defences were four 4in (102mm) guns in high-aspect mounts; twin 2pdr pom-poms with which she was fitted on construction were removed in 1933. After the Graf Spee fight her secondary battery was replaced by eight 4in (102mm) guns, and two 8-barrelled pom-poms were added. She mounted six torpedo tubes in two banks of three.

Technical Data

Type:

Heavy Cruiser

Machinery:

4-shaft geared turbines producing a total of 80,000 shp

Dimensions (overall):

Length: 174.25m (575ft); beam, 17.7m (58ft)

Displacement:

8400t standard; 10,500t deep load

Draught:

6.2m (20.25ft)

Complement:

630

HMS Exeter in Combat

HMS Exeter met the Admiral Graf Spee at 0620 on 13 December 1939; within 20 minutes she was so badly damaged by direct hits from a total of seven 11in (280mm) shells that she was effectively out of action, with none of her own main armament able to fire. She was to be out of the war for over a year. By early 1942 she was in the Far East. At around 1600 on 27 February, in company with four other cruisers and 11 destroyers, she met a Japanese force in the Java Sea, and in the course of a running fight, was hit in the after boilerroom by an 8in (203mm) shell, which slowed her to half her normal maximum speed. Two days later, trying to run through the Sunda Strait, she ran into a much superior Japanese force - the four heavy cruisers of the Nachi class. Now it was the turn of her forward boiler room: hit there, she was dead in the water. Her captain gave the order to abandon ship and scuttled her, but as she began to settle she was torpedoed by a Japanese destroyer and sank almost immediately.

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