HMS Devonshire (39): The Cruiser That Hunted Down the Raider Atlantis

Built at Devonport

HMS Devonshire was built at Devonport Dockyard, her keel laid on 16 March 1926, launched on 22 October 1927, and completed on 18 March 1929, a County-class heavy cruiser of the London sub-class, displacing 9,850 long tons standard, capable of 32.35 knots, and carrying eight 8-inch guns in four twin turrets alongside a substantial anti-aircraft and torpedo armament, with a crew of 784 officers and men.

Evacuating the King of Norway

HMS Devonshire served with the Mediterranean Fleet before transferring to the Home Fleet, and took part in the Norwegian Campaign between April and June 1940. On 7 June that year, she evacuated King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav, and members of the Norwegian government, carrying 461 passengers to safety as Norway fell to German invasion, a genuinely significant piece of naval diplomacy carried out under considerable time pressure and real danger.

HMS Devonshire took part in the ill-fated Operation Menace against Dakar in September 1940, an attempt to seize the strategically important French West African port from Vichy French control, though the operation ultimately failed and HMS Devonshire herself fired some 200 shells from her main guns without scoring a single hit against French ships obscured by smoke screens, a frustrating experience even by the standards of a genuinely difficult and poorly executed operation.

Sinking the Atlantis

HMS Devonshire's finest hour came on 22 November 1941, when she sank the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis north of Ascension Island. Atlantis had been one of the most successful and elusive German commerce raiders of the entire war, sinking and capturing a substantial tonnage of Allied shipping across multiple oceans over more than a year and a half of disguised raiding before HMS Devonshire finally caught up with her, a genuinely significant victory against a ship that had eluded Allied hunters for so long. Earlier that same month, on 2 November 1941, HMS Devonshire had also helped capture a Vichy French convoy bound for French Indochina.

Escort Duty Across Three Oceans

HMS Devonshire escorted aircraft carriers raiding Norway and Finland in July 1941, and provided cover for the first Soviet convoy under Operation Dervish that August, part of the earliest efforts to establish the Arctic convoy route that would later become so famous, and so dangerous. She supported Operation Ironclad, the invasion of Madagascar, in April 1942, and escorted convoys across the Indian Ocean through 1942 and 1943, before undergoing an extensive refit between May 1943 and March 1944. HMS Devonshire went on to escort carrier operations against Norwegian targets between July 1944 and May 1945, escorted the surrendered German cruisers Prinz Eugen and Nürnberg back to the United Kingdom in May 1945, and transported troops to and from Australia between June and December that year.

A Cadet Training Ship

HMS Devonshire was converted to a cadet training ship in 1947, taking part in the coronation Fleet Review of June 1953, before being sold for scrap on 16 June 1954 and broken up by John Cashmore Ltd at Newport, Wales, arriving there on 12 December that year, closing out a career that had carried her from rescuing a king to hunting down one of the most successful commerce raiders the Kriegsmarine ever put to sea.