User:SirDixie:eu/testing4
Contents
HMAS Perth, 1939
Construction
- Builder: Portsmouth Naval Dockyard;
Portsmouth, England, United Kingdom - Laid down: 26 June 1933
- Launched: 27 July 1934
- Commissioned: 15 June 1936
Specifications
- 6,980 tons displacement, standard
- 171.37m length
- 17.27m beam
- 5.64m draft
Machinery
- 4 boilers, 4 turbines
Performance
- 32.5 knots at 72,000 shaft horsepower
- 7,180nm at 12 knots
Armor
- Main belt: 101.6mm
- Magazines: 25.4-88.9mm
- Decks: 25.4mm, 31.75mm over machinery spaces
- Turrets: 25.4mm
Armament
Main
- Eight (4x2) 152mm guns
Secondary
- Four (4x1) 102mm guns
Anti-aircraft
- Twelve (3x4) 12.7mm guns
Torpedoes
- Eight (2x4) 533mm torpedo tubes
History
Design
HMAS Perth was designed and constructed as a modified Leander-class light cruiser. The original design was intended to fulfill the desire for a cruiser armed with 152mm to serve with fleets. Perth was fitted with the same armament used on the Leander class. The primary difference between Perth and her older sister ships was the adoption of segmented machinery spaces. This allowed for the ship to continue operating should one engine room become inoperable. The main belt armor was subsequently lengthened to protect her larger machinery spaces and the beam of the ship was increased slightly to improve her stability. Two funnels were installed instead of a single funnel due to the split machinery spaces. This limited the space available on deck and prevented a seaplane catapult from being mounted when the ship was first being fitted out. She later received a shortened catapult for use with the Supermarine Seagull.
Perth herself did not undergo many refits or modifications throughout her career. As completed, her 102mm guns were fitted in single mountings but this was changed to double mounts before she was transferred to the Royal Australian Navy. She also received several small caliber anti-aircraft guns.
Though she saw service mostly in the Royal Australian Navy, Perth was built in the United Kingdom and commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Amphion. Her name was later changed when she was transferred to Australia.
Service
Perth joined the Royal Navy in July 1936, and served her entire inter-war period in the North and South Atlantic. Three years after her commissioning, in July 1939, she was sold to the Royal Australian Navy, becoming HMAS Perth. Her first wartime station became the West Indies, and she operated in the Caribbean until March 1940, when she began convoy escort duties in the Indian Ocean. Redeployed to the Mediterranean in late 1940, Perth operated in support of the Malta convoys, where she received minor damage.
Early 1941 saw Perth engaged in operations in the Aegean Sea, where she escorted convoys bringing reinforcements to Greece. Perth also participated in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March. Beginning in April 1941, Perth continued to support convoys to and from Greece, this time as part of the evacuations. Remaining as part of the naval presence in the Aegean and central Mediterranean, Perth suffered significant damage from an air attack while engaged in support of Allied forces during the Battle of Crete. She received temporary repairs, then began operations in support of Allied troops in Vichy Syria before being replaced by HMAS Hobart in July 1941, sailing for Australia and an extensive refit.
Perth put to sea again in late November 1941, just in time for the Japanese entry into the war. Assigned to the ABDA command, Perth joined the combined Allied naval forces in attempting to disrupt Japanese landings in the Dutch East Indies. Perth was present for the Battle of the Java Sea in late February 1942, and along with USS Houston, managed to survive that defeat. HMAS Perth and USS Houston were attempting to make port at Tjilatjap, Sumatra, and from there escape to Australia when, on 28 February, they sailed into a Japanese landing force, the presence of which Allied intelligence was unaware.
In the resulting Battle of the Sunda Strait, USS Houston and HMAS Perth, both low on ammunition, attempted to fight their way through the strait while simultaneously firing on the escorts of the invasion force. The action was confused with both Houston and Perth being sunk, though not before indirectly causing the loss of several transports to Japanese friendly fire in what may well have been the largest sustained torpedo attack of the war.
HMAS Perth’s bell was retrieved from her wreck by an Indonesian diving team in 1974 and subsequently presented to the Australian Government by the Indonesian Government. It now forms part of a commemorative display in the World War II gallery at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia.
