1926 HMS CORNWALL Cornwall belonged to the seven- ship Kent class of heavy cruisers, which were the first cruisers to be built for the Royal Navy after the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and abided by the limits agreed there.
THE HEAVY TREATY CRUISERS
The Washington Treaty limited cruisers to 10,000 tons standard displacement and 8in (203mm) guns. Those armed with guns of that calibre were known as heavy cruisers, while those carrying 6in (152mm) guns were called light cruisers. Two of the Kents Australia and Canberra were built for the Royal Australian Navy, and the class was fairly typical of the heavy cruisers that the British built for their own and the Dominiot navies. They were right up to the treaty limit in terms of displacement and main armament, and they also mounted four 4in (102mm) anti-aircraft (AA) guns, four 3pdr saluting guns, four 2pdr pom-poms and eight 21in (533mm) torpedo tubes, though the mix of secondary weapons was to change later. Cornwalls displacement (as launched) was 9870 tons standard and 13,540 tons deep load. She had a complement of 685.
CORNWALL GOES TO WAR
HMS Cornwall was laid down at Devonport Dockyard in October 1924, launched on 11 March 1926 and entered service on 8 May 1928. She underwent a major modernisation in 1934-35, which improved her AA defences considerably. She exchanged her existing heavy AA guns for eight more flexible Mk XVII guns of the same calibre and her four twin pom-poms for two octuples. She was also given armour around the machinery and boiler spaces (previously her protection had been limited to her magazines) and the capacity to carry, launch and recover three aircraft. A hangar to protect them was located alongside the catapult amidships, abaft the third funnel. The saluting guns, by now redundant, were removed early on in the war. Cornwall was sunk, along with the rather newer but very similar HMS Dorchester, by carrier-based aircraft in the Indian Ocean on 5 April 1 942 during the Japanese raids on Ceylon (Sri Lanka). She went to the bottom in 12 minutes. The previous May she herself had sunk the German auxiliary cruiser/minelayer Pinguin, an 8in shell exploding in the German ships mine magazine and blowing her to pieces.
TECHNICAL DATA
Type: Heavy cruiser
Machinery: 4-shaft Parsons geared turbines delivering 80,000shp
Dimensions (overall): 192.5m (632ff); beam, 20.83m (68.3ft}
Draught 6.25m (20.5ft) mean
