HMS Norfolk

Norfolk was laid down at Govan by the Fairfield Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. in July 1927, launched on 12 December 1928 and commissioned on 30 April 1930, the lead ship of a two-ship subclass of which only she and Dorsetshire were built. She displaced 9,925 long tons standard, inside the Washington Treaty's cruiser limit, and up to 13,450 at full load. Four Parsons turbines fed by eight oil-fired water-tube boilers gave 80,000 shp and 32.25 knots, with a cruising radius of 12,370 nautical miles at 12 knots. She carried 710 officers and men.

Her main battery was eight 8-inch guns in four twin turrets, with four twin 4-inch dual-purpose guns and two quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes. The County class bought that armament and speed by giving up protection: she was built with no belt armour at all, and a 3.5-inch belt was added only before the war. Her sides and barbettes were an inch of plating, the lower deck 1.4 to 1.5 inches, the turrets 1.5 to 2 inches, and only the magazines received 2.5 inches on the sides.

The war reshaped her five times over, in refits in 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and a long one through most of 1944, each adding what anti-aircraft guns and radar were available. Her 1939 light armament of two octuple 2-pounders and two quadruple half-inch Vickers had become, by 1945, six quadruple 2-pounders, nine single Bofors and eleven twin 20 mm mountings. To carry the weight of the guns and aerials, her X turret was landed in 1944.

In July 1931 she and Devonshire became the first British warships to visit Kiel; that September her crew took part in the Invergordon Mutiny. She was flagship of the 8th Cruiser Squadron on the America and West Indies Station at Bermuda from 1932 to 1934, then served with the Commander-in-Chief East Indies from 1935 until she came home to refit in 1939, and was still in dockyard hands when war was declared.

By November she was on the Northern Patrol, watching the Denmark Strait for German raiders and blockade runners. On 23 November Scharnhorst and Gneisenau attacked the patrol between Iceland and the Faroes and sank the armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi; Norfolk joined the chase, but the two battleships ran clear at high speed in bad weather. The German command had laid a submarine trap east of Shetland, and on 28 November U-35 sighted her and alerted U-47 under Gunther Prien. The weather allowed Prien one torpedo, which missed. He reported a hit, and German propaganda claimed the cruiser sunk.

On 16 March 1940 eighteen Ju 88s of Kampfgeschwader 30 and sixteen He 111s of Kampfgeschwader 26 raided Scapa Flow. Norfolk took a bomb on the quarterdeck that blew a hole in the hull and flooded the aft shell magazines, and spent three months under repair, after which she went to a yard on the Tyne to be fitted with radar. In November, when Admiral Scheer broke into the Atlantic and destroyed five ships of Convoy HX 84, she was sent north from Freetown with Berwick and the carrier Formidable to block a run for occupied France.

On the evening of 23 May 1941 Norfolk, wearing the flag of Rear Admiral Frederic Wake-Walker, was patrolling the Denmark Strait fifteen nautical miles from her sister Suffolk when Suffolk sighted Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Suffolk slipped into the mist; Norfolk, making contact, was seen, and Bismarck fired five salvoes at her before she too got away. The two cruisers then shadowed by radar and sent the contact reports that brought Hood, Prince of Wales and six destroyers under Admiral Holland to the scene, though Holland's plan made no use of the cruisers and they were too far off to join the action in which Hood was lost.

The shadowing went on with the damaged Prince of Wales in company. On the night of 24 May nine Swordfish from Victorious came in, found Bismarck at 23:30 and took a heading from Norfolk, scoring a single hit that made little difference. Norfolk was trailing on the port side with a fixed radar rather than a rotating one, so she could hold contact only on one leg of the zigzag the ships were steering against U-boats. When Bismarck turned to starboard at 03:06 on 25 May and came round behind her pursuers, the manoeuvre was seen too late and contact was lost.

Wake-Walker had judged the German ship was making for a French port, and when air reconnaissance found her on the morning of 26 May heading for Brest, Norfolk was one of the few ships with fuel enough to resume the chase. She made contact at 07:53 on 27 May and withdrew to await the battleships. The action opened at 08:47 and she joined at 08:54, firing from 22,000 yards, and at 08:59 hit Bismarck's foretop and knocked out her central fire control. She fired four torpedoes at 16,000 yards, all of which missed, and 527 8-inch shells in all, carrying out flank marking for Rodney and King George V.

From October 1941 she worked the Arctic run, escorting the six merchant ships of Convoy PQ 2 to Arkhangelsk with the destroyers Icarus and Eclipse and bringing the empty QP 2 home in November. She covered PQ 14 and QP 10 from the vicinity of Bear Island, sailed to cover the damaged cruiser Trinidad's passage home in May 1942 only for German bombers to sink her first, and was close cruiser escort for PQ 16, PQ 17 and PQ 18. She was with PQ 17 when Dudley Pound recalled the escorts and scattered the convoy, and 23 of its 35 ships were lost.

In November 1943, with the convoys resumed, Donitz told Hitler that the Kriegsmarine would attack and destroy the next one. Bruce Fraser set a trap: the 10th Cruiser Squadron, Belfast, Sheffield and Norfolk, would hold Scharnhorst off and shadow her while he stayed out of sight with Duke of York. Sheffield sighted the German ship at 09:21 on 26 December 1943 and Norfolk opened fire at 09:30, putting two of six salvoes into her and disabling her aft radar. Scharnhorst broke away at high speed.

The cruisers could not follow, but placed themselves on the far side of the convoy where she tried again three hours later. Sheffield's radar found her at twelve miles at 12:10; in the second engagement Scharnhorst shifted target and hit Norfolk twice, putting X turret out of action and killing six men with a hit that burst below the main deck amidships. Norfolk and then Sheffield fell behind with engine trouble, leaving Belfast to hold contact and guide Duke of York in. Norfolk was back in action by 17:00, and Scharnhorst was sunk by 19:45.

After a long refit she raided Norwegian coastal shipping near Egersund on 11 January 1945 with the cruiser Bellona and four destroyers, sinking two freighters and the escorting minesweeper M 273. She was flagship of Vice Admiral Rhoderick McGrigor off northern Norway for Operation Judgement on 4 May 1945, a Fleet Air Arm strike on a U-boat base that destroyed two ships and U-711 in the last air raid of the European war. On 7 June she carried the Norwegian royal family home to Oslo after five years of exile. She was flagship at Batavia from January 1946, returned to Britain in 1949, and was sold for scrap on 3 January 1950.