When was hmas sydney built

After the devastating Royal Navy losses at the Battle of Coronel only eight days earlier off the coast of Chile, this Australian naval victory was received with jubilation. In May she sailed for the Mediterranean to join the Royal Navy. Here she would be engaged in multiple battles as the Axis forces, with air superiority, ensured every sailing was fraught with danger.

At dawn the next day the destroyers were attacked by two powerful Italian cruisers. Fleeing southwards the British destroyers were in dire straits as they neared Cape Spada off the north-western coast of Crete, before Sydney opened fire at ten miles range. Stunned, the Italians were soon hit by well-aimed salvos and attempted to escape behind a smokescreen. The Giovanni Delle Bande Nere managed to get away but the second cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni was clearly in trouble, having been repeatedly hit.

The Royal Navy destroyers were ordered in to finish her off with torpedoes and pick up any survivors. At home the news of her victory was equally well-received. But the celebrations were short-lived and soon she returned to her normal duties of patrolling, convoy escorts and shore bombardments, both in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

In January things would change as she was ordered home to Australia. On 9 February she berthed at Circular Quay, Sydney and was met by many thousands of well-wishers.

Now that she was posted to Australia Station, Fremantle, her duties saw her on patrols and convoy escort work in the Indian, Southern and Pacific Oceans. Sydney was then expected back at Fremantle on 20 November. It was not to be. As is now known, the German commerce raider Kormoran , disguised as the Dutch merchant ship Straat Malakka , had been operating for several months in the Indian Ocean. Over the next hour Sydney signalled with searchlight and flags, slowly drawing closer.

At the two vessels were only a mile apart, dangerously close and the Kormoran could no longer keep up the subterfuge. The battle raged for half an hour with Sydney burning furiously and the Kormoran sustaining critical damage. The two ships drifted apart and those on Kormoran last saw Sydney at disappearing to the south-south-east. On 22 June, France signed an armistice with Germany, the terms of which called for French Naval units deployed abroad to return to France where they would be demobilized under the supervision of the Axis forces.

As feared, the balance of sea power had indeed shifted and the British Government resolved that under no circumstances should the French Fleet be permitted to fall into the hands of the enemy. It was a matter which was eventually settled by extreme measures on one hand, and considered diplomacy on the other.

There the French Admiral in command was given an ultimatum. He could order his ships to sail to Britain or to the United States where they would be interned; demilitarize them in situ, or face annihilation by units of the Royal Navy.

Tragically, with no positive response forthcoming, the majority of the fleet was neutralized with force. In Alexandria, where Sydney was berthed, the situation was similarly tense, with many French naval units present in the harbour and now under the guns of the Commonwealth warships. There, Admiral Cunningham insisted on negotiating with his French counterpart, Vice Admiral Godfroy, who up until the signing of the armistice had been operating alongside the Allied warships.

Through his diplomacy tragedy was averted when Godfroy agreed to demilitarize his ships, keep them in port and reduce their crews to 30 percent. It was with great relief that Sydney 's menacing guns were trained back to the more benign fore and aft position. Throughout June Sydney participated in numerous patrols and also took part in a major shore bombardment of Bardia later in the month.

During this bombardment Sydney 's amphibian Seagull aircraft was launched to assist in coordinating the cruiser's fire. They put up a spirited defence in the lumbering amphibian before the aggressors broke off their attack leaving the Seagull full of holes and barely airworthy. Price was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his courageous performance and credited his crew's survival to the slow speed of his aircraft. On 28 June Sydney was involved in the pursuit of three enemy destroyers detected by aerial reconnaissance which were engaged at long range.

One of them, the Espero , was crippled by Sydney and Collins was ordered to finish her off and pick up any survivors. As he approached the stricken Italian vessel it opened fire with guns and torpedoes in a last brave act of defiance.

Sydney 's response was swift and final with her 6-inch guns soon reducing the destroyer to a burning wreck. The Espero then healed over and sank. Captain Collins immediately ordered his boats away and the next two hours were spent rescuing survivors in the gathering darkness. When it became too dangerous for Sydney to remain in the area any longer, Collins instructed that one of his boats was to be fully provisioned and left behind to ensure that any survivors they had missed were given a sporting chance of survival.

Those recovered by Sydney 's crew were well cared for, to the extent that when it came time for them to disembark in Alexandria, many requested that they remain onboard as Sydney 's prisoners rather than go to a Prisoner of War camp. On 30 June the Seventh Cruiser Squadron came under several aerial attacks from Italian bombers during its return passage to Alexandria.

This was to be the first of many that Sydney would emerge from unscathed, and in the weeks that followed she earned the reputation as a 'lucky ship'. Later, in July, during a particularly virulent attack, Admiral Cunningham observed that Sydney completely disappeared in a line of towering pillars of spray as high as church steeples.

When she emerged I signaled: 'Are you all right? The fleet next sailed from Alexandria late in the evening of 7 July and the following day came under intense air attack from the Italian air force. During one of these raids the cruiser HMS Gloucester was hit by a bomb which killed her captain and seventeen others.

Later that evening a reconnaissance aircraft reported sighting two enemy battleships steering south about a hundred miles north-west of Benghazi. These capital ships were supported by six cruisers and seven destroyers and were later observed to alter course to the north. Cunningham immediately determined to maneuver his force between the enemy fleet and their base at Taranto to try and cut them off and bring them into action.

The following day planes from the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle relocated the Italian ships and Cunningham's fleet closed them rapidly. At approximately HMS Neptune , part of the vanguard of cruisers which included Sydney , reported sighting four Italian cruisers, and shortly afterwards the entire enemy fleet came into view, consisting of two battleships, twelve cruisers and numerous destroyers.

The vanguard, greatly outnumbered, quickly found itself in action when the Italian heavy cruisers opened fire on them at Cunningham, in HMS Warspite , soon came to the assistance of the beleaguered cruisers and the battleship's fire forced the enemy to retire under the cover of smoke, after which there was a lull in the action.

By then, the battleships HMS Malaya and Royal Sovereign were approaching the scene of action as were the British destroyers which were concentrating for an attack.

Shortly before , at a range of roughly thirteen miles, Warspite opened fire on the two enemy battleships and succeeded in straddling them. Moments later the Italian flagship, Guilio Cesare , was hit by a inch shell from Warspite causing the Italians to turn away under a dense screen of smoke.

Meanwhile, the Allied cruisers had rejoined the action and were attempting to close the enemy destroyers. By , however, the engagement was all but over, and while it did not culminate in the much anticipated full scale Fleet action, Sydney had again been in the thick of it and survived unscathed with no casualties and only a few of her signal halyards shot away.

During the action she expended over rounds of her 6-inch ammunition and by the time she returned to Alexandria she had expended her entire outfit of 4-inch anti-aircraft ammunition beating off air attacks. These attacks came as the Battle Fleet chased the Italians to within twenty-five miles of the coast of Calabria before breaking off the pursuit and altering course for a position south of Malta.

The Fleet continued to be harassed from the air as it made its way back to Alexandria where it arrived on 13 July. There Sydney docked briefly for hull maintenance and to take on ammunition before her next patrol. Back in Australia, Sydney 's exploits in the Mediterranean were followed with fervor and within weeks she was to make headlines that would see her become a household name. Nicolson was to intercept any Italian shipping attempting passage to or from the Dodecanese and also carry out an anti-submarine sweep from east to west along the north coast of the island of Crete.

Collins, realizing that Nicolson's westward sweep might expose him to enemy attack in the restricted waters of the Aegean, adjusted his course and speed so that he was better placed to provide support if required. In pre-radar days, dawn was often the most dangerous time of day and on 19 July this was to prove to be the case when Nicolson, at the western end of his sweep, sighted two enemy Condottieri Class cruisers which soon opened fire on his destroyers.

With little choice other than to turn and run, and not knowing that Sydney and Havock were closing his position, Nicolson made an enemy contact report and began a speedy retiring action towards what he believed to be a far distant Sydney.

Collins, hundreds of miles closer than anyone realised, prepared his ship for action but maintained strict communications silence so as not to alert the enemy to his presence. At the two Italian cruisers were sighted and eight minutes later, with tension mounting, Sydney hoisted her battle ensigns and opened fire at a range of approximately ten miles.

Both the enemy and the fleeing British destroyers were taken by surprise at the sudden appearance of Sydney and before long hits were registered on one of the enemy cruisers, the Giovanni Delle Bande Nere.

By then Nicolson's destroyers were in wireless contact with Sydney and the two groups joined forces north of Cape Spada. Sydney had scored hits on both enemy cruisers and it became apparent to Collins that they were attempting to retreat towards the Antikythera Channel under cover of smoke. The enemy gunfire become sporadic at that point of the action and one of the cruisers, later identified as the Bartolomeo Colleoni , was seen to be on fire and losing headway, before coming to a complete stop.

Two of Nicolson's destroyers, Hyperion and Ilex , were subsequently ordered to finish her off and pick up survivors. They were later relieved by Havock which remained in the area until she came under the threat of enemy air attack.

In all some Italians, including her Captain, were rescued by the destroyers. At , by which time Sydney was low on ammunition and coming within range of Italian bomber aircraft, Collins broke off the pursuit.

Martin Manaranche is based in Brittany, France. Martin conducted an internship at the French Navy's Ecole Navale in Brest and is therefore particularly fond of naval defense issues.

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