Tiger-class cruiser

The Tiger-class cruisers developed from the Minotaur-class[note 1] light cruisers, laid down in 1942–3, but production of the 1942 Design Light Fleet Carriers was given priority and the Minotaur design was viewed as obsolete by 1944 – the extra weight required by war requirements for radar, electronics and anti-aircraft armament exceeding the structural strength and deep-water stability limits. The design also lacked the speed and size for action in the Pacific and Arctic. Even the Town-class and County-class cruisers had inadequate speed against German warships in the Battle of the North Cape in December 1943, or the extra armour to protect added wiring and electronics. Accordingly, only the first HMS Superb, was completed, largely fitted out to the earlier Minotaur specifications of HMS Swiftsure and Minotaur. Minotaur, and the 1943 Crown Colony-class ship HMS Uganda were given to Canada in April 1944. Churchill strongly supported and approved a similar plan to transfer two incomplete Tiger cruisers to Australia[1]

Australia's war cabinet had approved new construction of a cruiser and destroyer for 6.5 million pounds on 4 April 1944, partly to replace the sunk HMAS Sydney and seriously damaged HMAS Hobart. At Chequers on 18–21 May 1944 the Australian prime minister John Curtin agreed if an acceptable option of the transfer of new RN units, despite Royal Australian Air Force opposition and support for local shipyards building warships, and provided Royal Australian Navy (RAN) crew was available for HMS Defence and Blake as renamed RAN cruisers[2] by October 1945, they would operate as escorts for British carrier groups in the Pacific war against Japan which was expected to continue to the end of 1946. The RAN ships would be re-armed with twin 5.25-inch gun turrets[3] or triple 5.25-inch turrets; a 1942 design option for NZ and RAN cruisers.[4] [5]

The RAN strongly supported the purchase but General MacArthur, the supreme allied commander of the war in the Pacific, advised that Australia in reality depended on the US Navy and should prioritise air defence of its own land bases, not small carriers and cruisers. The Australian government feared they were being sold unwanted pups and preferred to build locally. However, in February 1945, the Australian government and its Defence Committee accepted the two-Tiger offer. The British Treasury would not gift the cruisers to Australia as they had done so for the Royal Canadian Navy and on 11 April 1945 the UK Exchequer demanded 9 million pounds for the later Lion and Blake.[6]

In mid-1945 the UK faced ruination from Lend-Lease payments, which led in September 1945 to the cancellation of the second batch of 25 Mk 37 Type 275 DP directors from the US for the Tigers. The UK wanted payment for the two Tigers or equivalent writing-off of RN repair bills in Australian dockyards. The RN had sufficient cruisers of quality and insufficient skilled naval ratings to man them and construction had been suspended by late 1944 after Defence was launched in September 1944.

Immediately post-war, sufficient work was done that Tiger and Blake could be launched, albeit in a lesser state of completion. In June 1945 the Australian government rejected the purchase of Defence and Blake; it had insufficient manpower for the cruisers in addition to new carriers and destroyers. As the Tigers were nowhere near commissioning, the RAN were offered the transfer of two cruisers, one Town and one Colony-class while the Tigers were completed; this was rejected as the two RAN County-class heavy cruisers were deemed to be good to 1950.[7][8]

In 1944–45 it had been hoped that the new large Battle-class and Daring-class destroyers would be developed as substitutes for cruisers in many roles, but the First Sea Lord, Andrew Cunningham, realised that the UK budget could not support increasing the destroyer's size from 2,800 to 3,500 tons required for a three-turret ship with adequate AA and A/S fire control. With the Neptune-class scrapped, the suspended ships were the only cruiser hull option viable past 1965 and worth considering for rearmament. By 1946, nine Mk 24 turrets were 75–80% percent complete with three further turrets partially complete for either the Tiger or Neptune-class cruisers. These turrets were a more advanced version of the wartime Mk 23 triple 6-inch. The new Mk 24 6-inch mounts were interim electric turrets with remote power-control and power-worked breech. The heavier Mk 24 offered a dual purpose gun with just 60-degree elevation.[note 2]

The Tiger design had a broader 64 ft (20 m) beam from HMS Superb on which to accommodate the larger turrets. But it was preferred to complete Superb with the older Mk 23 turrets in 1945, a 64 ft beam 'Swiftsure'. The 1942 Tiger design was redesigned with better protection and internal division to take advantage of a three turret design with four 40 mm "Stabilized tachymetric anti-aircraft gun" (STAAG) for close defence with Type 262 radar, AIO, and more pumps and generators. However, by early 1944 it was obvious the turret weight, crewing, and electrical requirements of the Tiger design required a larger design. By March 1944 Defence and Blake were all but signed off for transfer to the RAN to be completed as 5.25-inch gun cruisers.[9] British production of 5.25 turrets was slow and little work was done on the cruisers other than to launch Defence in September 1944.[9][10][11][12] The fact that they were years from commissioning guaranteed Australia rejected the deal.

Another two Tiger-class cruisers were cancelled. HMS Hawke was laid down in July 1943, and HMS Bellerophon possibly had a keel laid down. Work on all the cruisers other than Superb effectively stopped after mid-1944. It appears that the 1942 programme Hawke and Bellerophon were destroyed in 1944 and reordered as improved Belfast- and Neptune- class cruisers in February 1944 and February 1945. Janes Fighting Ships 1944–45, states that Hawke was laid down in August 1944[13] as a Tiger. The naval authorities of the time and through the Cold War hold that the Neptune class were very much under construction, the main and secondary twin 4.5-inch turrets, boilers and machinery for the first three ships ordered and being built in advance of the hull construction, as it was planned to get the first two Lion-class battleships underway.[14] At the end of the war it was thought Bellphorons hull was already under construction at Newcastle, but HMS Hawke (2) an Improved Belfast with 76m beam or the first Neptune was almost ready to launch in Portsmouth dockyard[15]

The more advanced of the two ships, HMS Hawke, was broken up in 1947, a controversial decision as although she was still on the slip in the Portsmouth dockyard her boilers and machinery were complete and her new 6-inch guns nearly so.[16]

The whole class, which was constructed within a tight, cramped, and near impossible to modernise citadel, was nearly superseded by the completely redesigned N2 8500-ton 1944 cruiser, within the same 555 ft × 64 ft (169 m × 20 m) box of the Colony/Minotaur design, which was approved by the Admiralty Board on 16 July 1943.[17][18] The design had four twin automatic 5.25-inch guns, better range, internal space and subdivision and economical 48,000 hp machinery for 28 knots (52 km/h). Twenty four of twenty-five leading RN admirals and the Sea Lords favoured the N2 and preferred the lighter DP 5.25 turrets; the incoming new First Sea Lord Andrew Cunningham disagreed believing 6-inch guns were essential. By 1944 the 5.25 RP10 was an improved surface and DP weapon, compared with the 1942 Mediterranean operations.[note 3] Development of two new prototype automatic 5.25-inch twin turrets continued at Vickers till 1948.[19]

Larger cruisers had been seen necessary to carry a conventional cruiser gun armament with modern systems since 1944 but never seemed realistic projects affordable in post war conditions. The Neptune-class design was abandoned in 1946 and replaced by a 15,000-ton Minotaur class design. The completed Minotaur design of 1951 with 5x2, twin 6-inch and 4 twin 3-inch/70. was considered by the Attlee cabinet under the expanded 1951 Korean war programme but was far too large and expensive.

In 1948 the Royal Navy had proposed in "Ships of The Future Navy" to replace 23 cruisers and 58 fleet destroyers with 50 light cruisers with Cruiser/Destroyers - four 5-inch guns, torpedoes, anti-submarine mortar and "good radar" on 4–5,000 tons displacement built to destroyer standards.Moore[20] The Admiralty offered the government two such proposals in 1951: a new broad beam Bellona class with 4 twin Mk 6 4.5 and an enlarged version of US Mitscher- and Forrest Sherman-class destroyers with British machinery and sensors with 3 single US 5-inch/54 and two twin US 3-inch/50.

However, the second Churchill government elected in 1951 favoured the RAF and reduced the naval budget. With the RN priority being anti-submarine frigates, restart of work on the Tiger cruisers was delayed by three years (as was any further cruiser reconstructions) to 1954. Reconstructing the 5,500-ton Bellona-class cruiser, HMS Royalist, which had powerful and reliable guns for high level AA engagement seemed less risky than adopting the still troublesome USN 5/54[21] or the planned British 5-inch gun. In some ways it was the powerful light gunship that 'cruiser destroyers' were meant to be but, over-equipped with guns and radar processing, leaving the crew little space and comfort. Post-war Britain saw itself as an air missile consumer and economic needs were better met by using the big shipyard slips which could have built large cruisers for building fast ocean passenger liners.[22]

Plans to build the 15,000-ton 1947 Minotaurs had been suspended by 1949.[23] Designs in the mid-1950s as guided missile cruisers were opposed by DG Ships, "other voices within the Admiralty" and finally Earl Mountbatten (who became First Sea Lord in 1955). At the point of cancellation the GW96A design was 18,000 tons. Moore[24]

The decision not to complete the new Tigers in the late 1940s was due to the desire to reassess cruiser design; furthermore, the provision of effective anti-aircraft (AA) fire-control to engage jet aircraft was beyond UK industrial capability in the first post-war decade.[25] Consequently, higher priority was given to the battleship HMS Vanguard, the Battle-class destroyer, and to the new aircraft carriers Eagle and Ark Royal for allocation of the 26 US-supplied medium-range anti-aircraft Mk 37/275 directors (delivered through Lend-Lease in 1944/5)[26] The US supplied version of Type 275 High Altitude/Low Altitude DCT were stabilised and tracked multiple air targets of Mach 1.5+, the US directors were light years superior to fragile UK versions, of Type 275, the only medium range AA fire control until 1955, which could barely distinguish transonic targets at Mach 0.8.[27] The 1947–49 period saw a peace dividend, and frigate construction became the priority in the Korean War.[28]

By 1949 two alternative fits for the Tigers had been drawn up: one as pure anti-aircraft cruisers with six twin mountings of the new 3-inch 70 calibre design, and one with QF 6-inch Mark N5 guns in two twin Mark 26 automatic mountings and three twin 3-inch/70s. In historical terms, this represented a light armament, and similar US weapons introduced on USS Worcester had experienced considerable problems with jamming and had performed below expectation, being largely prototypes for 8-inch/55[29] A third lower-cost option of fitting two Mk 24 turrets in 'A' and 'B' positions and two to four Daring class's semi-automatic Mk 6 twin 4.5-in 'X' and 'Y' and on the flanks was considered during the Korean War.[30] However the mix of Mk 24 triples and Mk 6 4.5-inch mounts required a crew of crew of 900+[31] But like the Colony-class in the 1950s, only 1, A 6-inch turret, would have been manned and as with proposed, 1951 Bellona Mk 2, the main armament was the four twin Mk 6 4.5 turrets for AA defence, but the RN 4.5-inch was not a good postwar AA weapon.[32] The six Mk 24 turrets and not even, finished or tested.[note 4] However, much of the original DC wiring used by the Mk 24 turrets had been stripped from the Tigers in 1948; there was a strong desire that the new cruisers should have AC power, not DC or dual.[35]

There was great doubt of the merits of completing the Tigers, given that Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" turboprop and Tupolev Tu-16 "Badger" jet bombers flew faster and higher than anticipated just as the Mikoyan MiG-15 fighter demonstrated in the Korean War from 1950, which added to the argument for missile equipped-ships for anti-aircraft defence. The Sverdlov class 6.9-inch armour and speed and range also outclassed the two turret Tigers. Even six-inch bombardment was increasingly unacceptable to the Royal Navy after Korea and was allowed only on the first day of Operation Musketeer after strong political opposition. The RN staff were completely divided over the development of new AA guns larger than 4-inch post war including Charles Lillicrap, the Director of Naval Construction, in 1946 who saw the new 3-inch/70 as eliminating the need for the new Mk 26 DP and advocating suspending cruiser design (due to irrevocable divisions within the RN over future gun development) as much as lack of finance. [36] That and the fact the new twin 3-inch/70 and twin Mk 26 6-inch were six years from being tested led to both Tigers and Minotaurs being suspended in 1947, and slowed work on the new six-inch and proposed new 5-inch guns. The proven Mk 23 seemed more than adequate for GFS and its efficiency was improved in the 1950s.[note 5]

While the 1945 names finally selected for the Tiger class, Lion, Tiger, Hawke and Blake, suggest strong Admiralty support for the class, many of the leading RN naval architects favored scrapping them all in 1947. The Director of Naval Construction (DNC) informed the Acting Chief of Naval Staff that the Tigers were nearly structurally complete, making substantial modernization or adding real aircraft direction capability impossible[37] and the later war priority of heavy 6-inch turrets and close-range AA weaponry to counter the Japanese air threat meant they were the least suitable Royal Navy cruiser class for modernization. Unlike the Colony class, the Minotaur class could only be rearmed with three medium main turrets due to weight and internal-volume restrictions,[38] whereas all the other cruiser types could be refitted with four modern medium turrets on the centreline. A decision to approve rearming the Tigers with fully automatic Mk 26s was made in late 1954. Of the suspended Minotaurs, Bellerophon was completed as Tiger becoming the lead ship of the new Tiger class, Blake was completed under her own name,[note 6] and Defence was completed as Lion.

In 1954 construction of the three ships resumed using a revised design mounting new automatic 6-inch and 3-inch guns. It had been intended to fit a tertiary battery of three or four twin 40mm guns to counter head-on air attack over the bow, with ac STAAG Mk 2 and then twin L70s under the bridge wings, but the house abandoned both in 1959 and the dated twin L60/MRS8 new on Hermes and Belfast in 1959 was viewed as obsolescent.

Completing the cruisers was a controversial decision, reflecting exaggerated concern about Soviet Sverdlov cruiser construction, described as "chilling" by the director plans.[39] The threat of the new Sverdlov-class cruisers was to be countered by the Blackburn Buccaneer strike aircraft, the Tigers lacking the speed, range, armament and armour required and cruisers in number being seen as too expensive and as an outdated solution.[40] Immediately post-war, the carrier and cruiser might have been complementary in the old cruiser role of defence of and attack on trade,[41] but by 1954 trade protection was better provided by large carriers and by small and intermediate light fleet carriers operating the Hawker Sea Hawk and de Havilland Sea Venom fighters. For Australia by HMAS Melbourne with Sea Venom fighters[42] and by the Canadian HMCS Bonaventure with McDonnell F2H Banshee fighters and 4X2 3-inch AA provided, as a priority for this role. Hercules, completed for India as Vikrant and equipped with Sea Hawks and French Bréguet 1050 Alizé turboprop a/s strike planes, demonstrated its Sea Hawks in the classic attack-on-trade role to effect in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.

The November 1954 cabinet meeting that decided the fate of the Royal Navy took six hours. Churchill was determined to limit the defence budget and the Royal Navy with a view to developing nuclear weapons and the less-vulnerable land-based airpower of the RAF.[43] Two alternative cruiser designs were considered, with 60,000 shp COSAG propulsion foreshadowing the County-class destroyers, a 10,000 ton design, with three 6-inch twin and 4 twin 40mm, secondly an 8000-ton cruiser, a Mod N2, with six 5-inch (3x2) and ten 40mm. Performance of a new twin 5-inch (a large twin 5/56) firing 'light' 58 lb (26 kg) shells, in a Dido-size 95-ton turret, offered less than the French cruiser De Grasse twin 127 mm (5 inch) using US ammunition or the Dutch 4-inch. The RN twin 5-inch in A and B positions was reconsidered and rejected in 1955 for the "Medium Seaslug cruiser" due to expectations of eight years to develop and as missiles were expected to be the 1960s. Dual development of the twin 5-inch and Seaslug was unaffordable. At the same time the Sea Lords rejected the proposal for a flotilla of fast escorts (4,500 ton Darings with three 4.5-inch turrets) as unbalanced and under-armed; they wanted missiles on future warships.[44] The actual weight of these proposals varied, depending on speed and on light armour of 225 to 500 tons.[45]

However the cheaper legacy Tigers were approved in 1954, the Royal Navy estimating completion in three years for £6 million compared with 5 years and £12m for a new cruiser.[46] The new automatic twin 6-inch and twin 3-inch DP guns designed for larger cruisers like the Minotaur were approved for production for the Tigers and for other warships, but no other RN design would ever fit them. The modernised Tigers were an interim measure with the expectation that guided missile equipped ships were "at least ten years away"[46][47] "increasingly floating bull's-eyes".[48] Old cruisers could be reconstructed as more useful than frigates to impress the provinces and colonies. The events of 1956 of a long-delayed and bungled Suez operation revealed that even a Conservative cabinet would not use six-inch cruiser guns in artillery support, let alone on a city like Alexandria. The visit of Soviet leaders to Britain in May 1956 on the Sverdlov-class cruiser Ordzhonikidze saw Nikita Khrushchev cut off his cruiser-building programme - the Sverdlov was an obsolescent relic,[49] only good for state visits and target hulks - in favour of new missile-destroyers.

The 1957 Defence White Paper under Duncan Sandys on the future of the British armed forces proposed to reduce the active cruiser fleet[50] the Tigers and Swiftsure and Superb [note 7] would enter service as interim anti-aircraft ships, until the County-class destroyers were commissioned. The older Towns Belfast and Liverpool were larger and more effective than other WWII legacy cruiser and in the early 1950s, stillborn designs fitting them with three of the new Mk 26 turrets were prepared. But by 1953 – 15 years after commissioning – they were too old for real modernisation.[51] By 1954, time meant that only the Tigers' and Swiftsures rebuild could be contemplated. With missiles and consumer demand, replacing guns and refitted gun cruisers were mothballed, and by 1960 consideration was being given to fitting HMS Blake and its half-sister Swiftsure with Sea Slug missiles.

As gun cruisers, Tiger served for eight years, Lion for five years, and Blake for two years. By 1961 it w the new USN guided AA missiles, nb Terrier had failed dismally in test before JFK on Memorial Day 1961,[52] London and that the new Sea Slug armament of the County-class was possibly even less impressive on test in Australia at Woomera. But it was too late, the RN cruiser fleet had been reduced to HMS Belfast and Bermuda and the three flawed Tigers. The new Mk 26 Twin 6-inch gun proved the overweight anachronism which its critics claimed. The Tigers' main armament almost always jammed within 30 seconds of opening fire,[53] and the Tigers were very different from the rest of the RN fleet, causing logistics and supply issues and increasing costs,[54] the RN mainly being deployed in SE Asia and Middle East waters in the 1960s. These issues and the "unfashionable" heavy guns condemned the class, In contrast, HMS Belfast, in reserve in 1965, had fired its 6-inch guns for days while supporting the Battle of Inchon during the Korean War in 1950.[55]

A modest refit would have allowed the WWII-era Newfoundland, Ceylon and Belfast to run until 1966. Worse the three Tiger cruisers, while virtually identical, externally, were three unique ships electrically, and only Tiger saw significant service in gun configuration. Blake was essentially an experimental cruiser with very fast all-electric turrets to engage Mach 2.5 air targets with RP 55 degrees/second, training and elevation, in reserve in 1963 for lack of 85 technical staff including 31 electricians.[56][57] At the same time the new County, Leander and Tribal class – all with significant manpower requirements – were commissioning.[56] Lion after eight years in Gareloch had deteriorated before reconstruction as a Tiger[58] and had to be withdrawn from operations "East of Suez" in 1963 due to boiler, mechanical and gun-jamming problems. HMNZS Royalist, with many RN crew, was reactivated as a surface escort for carrier groups in Southeast Asia in 1964 to deter the threat of the Indonesian Sverdlov; and in a brief tour in 1965 to support the amphibious carriers with AD and GFS potential, but by 1966 Royalist, like Blake and Lion, was unsustainable in the year of maximum danger in the confrontation with Indonesia. The large RN Darings were refitted with MRS3 fire-control in 1961–65 to provide a substitute for the failed Tiger cruisers (the final RAN Daring upgrade in 68–71 to Vampire and Vendetta with new Dutch Radar and Fire Control and Operations room, delivered a Daring-cruiser) to counter the Sverdlovs and Indonesian destroyers. The Darings' three main turrets gave them an advantage over the Tigers two turrets, guaranteeing at least one was available. The AD modernised Battles, and the County-class destroyers also substituted for the Tigers in ground support and fleet-escort roles.