Sunk by Her Own Torpedo: the Tragic End of HMS Trinidad
The Story of a Lonely, Ill-Fated Cruiser in the Arctic Ocean
To shepherd the transport convoys bound for Murmansk, the Royal Navy deployed escorts in the freezing Arctic Ocean—armed trawlers, destroyers, and also light cruisers, because only the latter could effectively stand up to German destroyers. In waters lashed by constant storms and closely watched by the Kriegsmarine, clashes were rare, usually brief, and never ended as hoped.
If the origins of the County-class cruisers lay in the constraints of the Washington Naval Treaty, those of the Fiji class were directly linked to the Second London Naval Treaty of 1937. That agreement imposed a maximum displacement of 8,000 tons for cruisers, forcing the Royal Navy to halt production of the Southampton series (Town class) and design a new class of light cruisers soon known as the Crown Colony class. In reality, their plans were simplified derivatives of the Southamptons: they retained the triple 6-inch (152.4 mm) turret (twelve guns in four turrets) on a smaller hull—very similar in outline, though with a distinctive transom stern. To remain within the 8,000-ton limit, the designers opted for extensive welding and a sharp reduction in armour, both vertical and horizontal. The secondary battery was limited to four twin 4-inch (101.6 mm) mountings.
Torpedo tubes and rapid-fire quadruple 40 mm “pom-pom” mountings were only installed once war had begun, when Britain decided it would no longer abide by the treaty clauses. This hurried addition was not ideal: the fire-control system was not modified, and the after main turrets were not slaved to any dedicated director. HMS Trinidad was one of five ships ordered in December 1937; six more would follow in 1939. The first eight units of the Crown Colony class (eleven ships in all) formed the Fiji group (named after the first cruiser commissioned), while the last three belonged to the Ceylon group1.
They call me Trinidad
HMS Trinidad’s operational life was brief—seven months of active service—but exceptionally eventful. It began on 1 December 1937, when London placed a contract for a light cruiser with HM Dockyard at Devonport. She was the first Crown Colony-class ship ordered from a Royal Dockyard, though she was quickly followed by four more vessels, each built by a different yard, all named after British Crown Colonies.
Laid down the following April, Trinidad would be the last of this first batch to be commissioned, in October 1941. Why the delay? Because the cruiser took a bomb on her quarterdeck during a Luftwaffe raid on the Plymouth dockyard in April 1941, damage severe enough to require transfer to Rosyth for repairs. That extra time in dock allowed technicians to fit two new radars: one for main- and secondary-battery fire control, the other for air warning.
The addition of “pom-poms” and torpedo tubes naturally pushed the ship well beyond the treaty displacement, and Trinidad’s fighting displacement rose to around 10,000 tons. Her speed does not seem to have suffered, but her stability—already delicate—became problematic: so much weaponry and equipment was packed onto such a compact hull that the superstructure was dangerously top-heavy. Several Fiji-class captains faced the same issue and typically mitigated it by keeping fuel tanks full as ballast, or even landing an anti-aircraft gun or other instruments deemed non-essential.
After a month’s work-up with the 10th Cruiser Squadron, the Trinidad and her crew were assigned in January 1942 to escort Murmansk convoys. In the Arctic winter—the ideal season for slipping merchantmen to the USSR as discreetly as possible—conditions were brutal for sailors, but Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine units had a far lower chance of intercepting them.
The first convoy of 1942, PQ-8, was to bring eight heavily laden freighters into the Barents Sea. The Trinidad covered them with two destroyers. Sailing from Iceland, the escorts joined the convoy on the 11th; the passage was uneventful until the 16th, when one freighter was damaged by a U-boat torpedo. The next day, one of the destroyers, HMS Matabele, fell victim to the U-454 just a few miles from Murmansk. Mortally torpedoed, she went down with almost her entire crew—only two survived. The cruiser could do nothing and reached the Soviet base safely the same day.
A week later the Trinidad sailed again to escort the return convoy, QP-6, which arrived without notable incident in early February. She then returned to Greenock, and on the 11th put to sea for the waters between the Faroes and Iceland, ordered to deter any breakout attempt by German raiders into the North Atlantic. At month’s end, she escorted a group of minelayers; in early March, she cruised off Jan Mayen with HMS Liverpool to search for the Tirpitz during a sortie. The search found nothing, but did allow a temporary reinforcement of convoy QP-8, which had lost a merchantman. Finally, from 11 to 13 March, she was once more deployed to the Arctic with several destroyers to hunt the Tirpitz, reported north of Trondheim after her aborted sortie—Operation “Sportpalast”—against PQ-12 and QP-8.
In short, up to this point the Trinidad had lived the typical, not especially rewarding operational routine of a Royal Navy light cruiser in early 1942: a steady tempo of convoy escort and area patrols, with little or no action—understandably, since German forces in the Arctic were still thin on the ground. It took March and the failure of “Sportpalast” for the German posture to change. And it would not remain quiet for long…
HMS Trinidad — Technical Data
Crown Colony (Fiji group) light cruiser
Laid down: 21 April 1938
Launched: 21 March 1940
Commissioned: 14 October 1941
Lost: 15 May 1942
Standard Displacement : 8,666 t
Full load Displacement : 10,617 t
Overall length: 169.31 m
Beam (waterline): 18.90 m
Draught: 6.04 m
Machinery: 4 Admiralty boilers; 4 Parsons turbines
Output: 72,500 shp
Max fuel oil: 1,700 t
Speed: 32.25 knots
Range: 6,520 nautical miles at 13 knots
Armament: 4 triple 152.4 mm turrets; 4 twin 101.6 mm mountings; 2 quadruple 40 mm “pom-pom” mountings; 2 single 20 mm Oerlikons; 2 triple 533 mm torpedo-tube mountings
Aviation: 1 catapult; 2 Supermarine Walrus seaplanes
Complement: 733 officers and sailors
Convoy PQ-13
From January 1942 onward, the Kriegsmarine gradually concentrated in Norway two destroyer flotillas, motor torpedo boats, the battleships Tirpitz, Scheer and Lützow, and the heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. In addition, twenty U-boats were assigned to the “north Scotland–Iceland” patrol area, with the March mission of halting Allied imports to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. Hitler also demanded that Göring provide long-range reconnaissance aircraft, dive-bombers, and torpedo bombers. The latter would take time to arrive, and it was only at the end of May that Luftflotte 5’s concentration in the region was complete.
This strategic shift, under way from March, boded ill for the Arctic convoys—especially as their tempo had been accelerated at Soviet request. Between 21 March and 21 May, no fewer than eight convoys, totalling 163 merchant ships, were due to make the passage.
Knowing the German order of battle in the area, the Royal Navy planned heavy protection for the first of these convoys, PQ-13. Its nineteen merchantmen would be guarded by a close escort of one destroyer, two armed trawlers, and three minesweepers. At distance, a Home Fleet force under Vice-Admiral Curteis would cover the operation with two battleships, a battlecruiser, an aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and an eleven-destroyer screen—primarily to fall upon the Tirpitz should she attempt to intercept PQ-13. Between PQ-13 and Curteis’s force, a closer support group would also cruise, able to reinforce the convoy rapidly in case of attack by lighter German units. To accompany the destroyers HMS Fury and Eclipse in that role, the Admiralty assigned HMS Trinidad.
PQ-13 sailed from Reykjavik on 20 March and was joined three days later by its support force, which had departed from Seydisfjordur in Iceland. PQ-13 was expected to cross paths in the Barents Sea with QP-9, which had left Murmansk on the 21st with nineteen empty freighters. From the 23rd onward, QP-9 was battered by a violent storm—one major reason why none of the U-boat attacks encountered en route succeeded.
PQ-13 enjoyed four days of clear weather before becoming the plaything of atrocious conditions. “The waves rose like enormous mountains of water, 20 to 25 metres high,” recalled Ronald Adds, one of Fury’s sailors. “Then there was the cold. Freezing spray turned to ice as soon as it hit the superstructure, decks, and guardrails. […] At times there was so much ice—up to 7.5 cm thick in places—that there was a danger of capsizing.”
That was exactly the fate of the Sulla, one of the minesweepers, which vanished suddenly with all hands on 24 March halfway between Jan Mayen and the Norwegian coast. The gale was so fierce that in three days it scattered the convoy over 150 nautical miles. Curteis’s heavy units fought so hard to stay within reach of PQ-13 that they were now short of fuel—yet unable to refuel at sea. They had to return to Iceland to bunker on the 27th, leaving the convoy’s protection to the smaller escorts and to the cruisers Nigeria and Trinidad, which tried as best they could to gather the stragglers south-west of Bear Island.
It was in this sector that a German reconnaissance aircraft from 2./KüFlGr 406 finally sighted several ships and alerted Marine-Gruppenkommando Nord2. Orders were immediately issued to the six U-boats of the “Ziethen” wolfpack (one of which had in fact just been destroyed by QP-9) to form a barrier line off the North Cape. The next morning, the submarines maintained contact, and KG 30 dispatched Junkers Ju 88s. The weather had improved, and the aircraft quickly found several ships; during the afternoon they sank two and damaged a third.
At around 10:00 on 28 March, a Blohm & Voss BV 138 flying boat sighted the Trinidad and transmitted her position to bombers taking off from Banak (Finland). The cruiser came under attack two hours later and had to repel several air strikes through the afternoon, finally slipping away under cover of a snow squall. The situation for the scattered escorts was chaotic, all the more so as the weather deteriorated again…
When “the Arctic admiral” Hubert Schmundt received confirmation on the morning of the 28th that a convoy was entering the Barents Sea in scattered order, his first thought was to order the Tirpitz and the available heavy cruisers to put to sea. But he quickly faced reality: based at Trondheim, they were roughly 850 nautical miles from PQ-13 and would arrive too late and/or short of fuel.
Unwilling to let such an opportunity pass, he instead ordered the Zerstörer-Gruppe Arktis—the 8th Destroyer Flotilla (Kapitän zur See Pönitz), based at Kirkenes, only 60 nautical miles west of Kola Bay—to sail. It was the best option: these modern, powerful Type 1936A destroyers should be able to intercept the merchantmen easily, and they were strong enough to defeat armed trawlers, minesweepers, and British destroyers—and even the Trinidad herself if they attacked in force, with their five 15 cm guns.
The Zerstörer Attack
16:00: Operation “Cerberus” was launched on the afternoon of 28 March. The destroyers Z-24, Z-25, and Z-26 weighed anchor. Pönitz embarked in the Z-26, commanded by Ritter von Berger, and headed north at high speed. With neither radar nor regularly updated enemy positions, the three destroyers formed a line to sweep a three-mile front—a meagre width explained by atrocious visibility as night fell.
22:45: The Germans came upon the lifeboats of the Empire Ranger, one of the freighters sunk that morning. They rescued 61 survivors who were taken aboard the Z-24.
00:00: Shortly after midnight, the Z-26 sighted an isolated freighter, the Bateau, and sent her to the bottom with two torpedoes. Thirty-seven men died; seven survivors were picked up by the Z-25.
06:45: On the morning of the 29th, after a U-boat had reported a few hours earlier that it had sighted eight heavily escorted merchant ships, the Trinidad was 80 nautical miles farther east with the destroyer Fury, trying to round up four additional stragglers. She was making 20 knots due east—straight into a snow squall that happened to conceal the three German destroyers approaching from the opposite direction at 17 knots.
08:43: Trinidad’s radar operator detected three ships closing rapidly, still 6.5 nautical miles away. Captain Saunders was not especially surprised: during the night, the naval intelligence officer in Murmansk had radioed that a Soviet submarine had seen three destroyers heading toward the convoy. Saunders sounded action stations and alerted the Fury.
08:49: Still in line ahead, the German destroyers emerged innocently from the murk in front of the British. The Trinidad turned to starboard to bring her guns to bear and opened well-aimed fire on the Z-26 in the centre of the formation, now about 2,500 metres away. A 6-inch salvo struck the Zerstörer abaft her funnel. Fires broke out on the superstructure. Von Berger replied quickly: two 15 cm shells hit the cruiser just under Y turret, above the waterline. But the Z-26, badly damaged, could not endure the incoming fire; von Berger turned hard to starboard and fled into the first snow squall available. HMS Trinidad shifted fire to the Z-24, but both German destroyers soon followed their leader into the pea soup fog, not before launching a fan of seven torpedoes to cover their withdrawal. To avoid them, the cruiser turned to starboard and lost contact. Following in her wake, HMS Fury had not taken part in the brief fight. The Trinidad had shipped some water but nothing irreversible, and Saunders set off in pursuit of the German destroyers—entering an area of heavy storm. With the Z-24 and Z-25 fleeing at full power, the British cruiser chose instead to concentrate on the Z-26: farther away but slower, because of her damage.
09:22: Tracked by radar and struggling with serious fires, the destroyer was caught within thirty minutes. Visual contact was confirmed at two nautical miles, and the Trinidad opened fire after taking station to starboard of her target. With all guns bearing—especially the port-side 4-inch mountings, very effective at that range—the cruiser hammered the Z-26 with repeated salvos. The Zerstörer tried to evade by zigzagging, but in vain: within minutes her three after guns were destroyed and her bridge shattered. She ceased replying to Trinidad’s fire. The cruiser closed to less than 1,500 metres and followed a parallel course to administer the coup de grâce with torpedoes. The port triple mount was brought to bear, but ice had jammed the mechanisms; when the firing order was given, only one torpedo left its tube. Unfortunately, it would have been better had it remained frozen in place: after running less than 200 metres submerged, it broached and—before the horrified eyes of the crew—described a sharp arc back toward its launcher like a boomerang. Unflappable to the end, Saunders, who had followed its track through binoculars, turned to his executive officer: “You know, it looks remarkably like one of ours.” HMS Trinidad could do nothing. The torpedo struck amidships. The explosion tore a 12 by 6 metre hole in the hull, destroyed the forward boiler rooms, and killed 32 men. The cruiser—apparently the first in history to be struck by one of her own torpedoes—took a heavy port list (17 degrees), and her speed fell to 8 knots. Saunders broke off the action at once, allowing the destroyer to vanish into the mist.
10:00: The fight had brought the cruiser closer to the main body of what remained of PQ-13. While HMS Eclipse went after the Z-263, the Trinidad, under Fury’s protection, rejoined the other escorts at low speed. The crew worked frantically on essential repairs. Saunders soon headed for Kola Bay. The list was reduced, but speed did not exceed 14 knots before dropping to 2 knots when seawater entered the boilers. It was only at 12:30 on 30 March that the ship reached Murmansk.
A Russian Interlude
HMS Trinidad would remain immobilised for a full month, in a Soviet port subjected daily to Luftwaffe bombing. For the crew, rest was limited—especially as the cruiser had to be made seaworthy. The fact that the explosion had indeed been caused by one of her own torpedoes was confirmed when the detonator was found near one of the boilers…
Soviet resources were insufficient for major dockyard work, and Saunders had to order steel plates from the United Kingdom to patch his ship’s hull. As early as 8 April, the cruiser Edinburgh left Scapa Flow to escort PQ-14 with the necessary material, delivered on the 19th. In the meantime, the bodies of the 32 men killed were committed to the sea by the minesweeper HMS Niger, to the sound of two bugles playing The Last Post. Emergency repairs lasted until 2 May—when the crew learned of Edinburgh’s loss only a few dozen miles from Murmansk. The Germans had at last avenged the Z-264.
Until 13 May, Saunders prepared for the return voyage intended to take the cruiser back to Scapa Flow for proper repairs. The passage could only be made at reduced speed: Murmansk dockyard workers had performed near miracles by bolting the steel plates to lengths of railway track used as bracing, but only two of the four boilers were operational. Rear-Admiral Bonham-Carter, commanding the 18th Cruiser Squadron, hoisted his flag in the Trinidad and embarked several dozen survivors from the Edinburgh.
Trinidad Is Still My Name
The cruiser sailed on 13 May with four destroyers—HMS Foresight, Forester, Somali and Matchless. The lesson of HMS Edinburgh—which had attempted to run alone for discretion—had clearly been learned. Nevertheless, the small force had limitations: several escorts had taken damage in recent days, and the Trinidad could not make more than 20 knots. They were meant to rendezvous with a covering force (four cruisers) west of Bear Island, then with a Home Fleet force screened by thirteen destroyers. The Soviets also promised air cover over the first 200 nautical miles.
From the 14th onward, while the Trinidad was still only 100 nautical miles from the coast, two reconnaissance aircraft were seen in the distance. The absence of Soviet aircraft was obvious. An hour later, two U-boats were sighted: one to the north-west, between the force and the pack ice; the other shadowing the British ships. Neither took risks; they were there only to maintain contact and wait for the Luftwaffe to strike.
It did not take long. Very quickly the ships came under incessant attacks by formations approaching from every direction. The torpedo bombers of I./KG 26 failed to score a hit, but in a dive-bombing attack—helped by the sheer number of assailants—one Ju 88 from III./KG 30 managed to place at least one bomb near the cruiser. The bomb(s) detonated close to the section of hull weakened by the earlier torpedo damage, and major fires broke out at once. The situation deteriorated so fast that Bonham-Carter ordered abandonment. HMS Foresight and Matchless came alongside to embark first the Edinburgh survivors, then Trinidad’s crew. The Matchless was then ordered to administer the coup de grâce. She fired two torpedoes into the burning wreck, which soon disappeared bow-first into the icy waters off the North Cape. HMS Trinidad ceased to exist.
The fatal raid killed 63 sailors, including 20 from the Edinburgh. Rear-Admiral Bonham-Carter, for his part, saw the cruiser’s destruction as the continuation of a grim run: as an escort commander, this was the fifth ship he had lost. In May 1942, the Royal Navy had lost two light cruisers in the same waters—proof, if any were needed, that in the Arctic Ocean the situation was worsening. The ordeal of convoys PQ-16 and PQ-17 would make that painfully clear in June and July.
On the same subject, we recommend :
an oral compilation entitled ‘Great Naval Battles of the Second World War-The Story of HMS Trinidad’;
Which differs from its predecessor by its different armament and fire control system.
Command in charge of operations in the Baltic Sea, German Bay, Norwegian Sea and Danish Sea. Among others, Admiral Nordmeer, responsible for the operational deployment of naval and submarine forces north of Norway, is subordinate to it.
Overtaken, the destroyer was shelled again and, this time, immobilized. But the destroyers of PQ-13 had to withdraw when the Z-24 and Z-25 reappeared. The latter were only able to rescue 96 survivors (and U-376 five), with 240 others disappearing into the icy waters with their ship.
… but at the cost of the Z-7 Hermann Schoemann!
What a life for the seamen on those ships… Thanks, very informative, even if a sad story.