HMS Black Prince (81): From Sinking German Torpedo Boats to Bombarding Japan

A Cruiser Built for Global War

HMS Black Prince was built by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, her keel laid on 2 November 1939, launched on 27 August 1942, and completed on 20 November 1943. A Dido-class cruiser displacing 7,200 tons at full load, she carried eight 5.25-inch dual-purpose guns alongside anti-aircraft weapons and torpedo tubes, generating 62,000 horsepower from her Admiralty boilers, a well-rounded, versatile cruiser that would go on to serve in virtually every major theatre of the war.

Sinking a German Torpedo Boat off Normandy

After early service on Arctic convoys, HMS Black Prince relocated south for European operations, and on the night of 25 to 26 April 1944 engaged a force of German torpedo boats, sinking T29 outright and damaging both T24 and T27, a sharp and successful night action ahead of the coming invasion. On D-Day itself, HMS Black Prince served with Task Force 125 supporting the landings at Utah Beach, engaging the German battery at Morsalines, before going on to support Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, and subsequent operations in the Aegean, including bombarding the airfield at Maleme in Crete.

To the Pacific, and the War's Final Shots

HMS Black Prince transited the Suez Canal in November 1944 and joined operations against Japanese installations in Sumatra and Malaya, before serving with the British Pacific Fleet off Okinawa and taking part in the final bombardments of mainland Japan itself, bringing her wartime service to a genuinely fitting close at the very heart of the conflict's endgame. She helped reoccupy Hong Kong in September 1945, restoring British administration to the colony after years of Japanese occupation.

A New Flag, and a Mutiny

HMS Black Prince was transferred to the Royal New Zealand Navy on 25 May 1946, becoming HMNZS Black Prince. A planned modernisation in 1947 was cancelled following a series of mutinies that April, a genuinely serious disciplinary crisis within the postwar New Zealand naval service that disrupted plans across the fleet. She was eventually reactivated between 1952 and 1953 with a modified armament and took part in Elizabeth II's Coronation Fleet Review in 1953, a considerably calmer chapter after the earlier upheaval.

A Long Wait for the Scrapyard

HMS Black Prince was decommissioned in August 1955, and following the 1957 Defence White Paper's decision to retire the Dido-class cruisers altogether, she served out her final years as an accommodation vessel and a source of spare parts for her sister ships. She was sold for scrap in March 1962 and towed from Auckland on 5 April that year, arriving at Osaka on 2 May, closing out a career that had taken her from sinking German torpedo boats off Normandy to the final bombardments of Japan and finally into New Zealand's own turbulent postwar naval history.