The British Cruiser That Fired 18,000 Rounds In A Single Campaign

Описание: Eighteen thousand shells. One light cruiser. Nineteen months of continuous amphibious war.
From the beaches of Sicily in July 1943 to the snow squalls of the Norwegian Sea in January 1945, HMS Mauritius fired more rounds in support of Allied landings than almost any British cruiser of her class. Twelve six-inch guns. Four triple turrets. A sustained rate of seventy-two rounds per minute on the target area when her magazines were running hot.
She was a Fiji-class cruiser, built to the eight-thousand-ton limit of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. Her critics called her a compromise — thirty-six feet shorter than the Town class, armour belt slashed from four and a half inches to three and a half, turret glacis halved from four inches to two. Undergunned, said the doubters. Underarmoured. A diplomatic yardstick dressed up as a warship.
They were measuring the wrong ship.
From Operation Husky at Sicily, to the week-long bombardment at Salerno under Fritz-X guided bomb attack, to the rotational fire support at Anzio that broke every German counter-attack before it reached the beach, to her role as flagship of Bombarding Force D off Sword Beach on D-Day, to the night action at Audierne Bay that annihilated a German convoy, to her final surface duel against destroyer Z31 off Norway — Mauritius did what her designers intended and more.
This video tells the full story of the treaty-compromise light cruiser who proved that shell weight is not the same as weight of fire, and who ended the war as the most heavily engaged bombardment cruiser of the Royal Navy.
#HMSMauritius #RoyalNavy #WorldWar2 #DDay #BritishWarships
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Chapters:
00:00 The Record
01:15 The London Treaty Problem
03:20 Sir Stanley Goodall's Compromise
05:45 Specifications and Armament
08:30 From Scapa Flow to the Mediterranean
10:15 Sicily, Salerno, Anzio
12:45 D-Day and Sword Beach
14:30 Audierne Bay and Z31
16:00 British Six-Inch vs American Eight-Inch
18:15 The Vindication
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Sources and further reading:
Friedman, Norman. British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After. Seaforth, 2010.
Raven, Alan and Roberts, John. British Cruisers of World War Two. Arms and Armour Press, 1980.
Brown, D.K. Nelson to Vanguard: Warship Design and Development 1923 to 1945. Chatham, 2000.
Roskill, S.W. The War at Sea, Volumes II and III. HMSO.
Leach, Henry. Endure No Makeshifts: Some Naval Recollections. Leo Cooper, 1993.
Rommel, Erwin. The Rommel Papers, edited by B.H. Liddell Hart. Collins, 1953.
Admiralty Battle Summaries No. 37 (Sicily), 38 (Salerno), 39 (Anzio), 40 (Neptune).
The National Archives, Kew — ADM 53 ship's logs and ADM 199 Reports of Proceedings for HMS Mauritius, 1943 to 1945.
Imperial War Museums photographic collection — HMS Mauritius.
NavWeaps — BL 6-inch/50 Mk XXIII reference page.
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Disclaimer: This video is intended for educational and historical purposes. All archival imagery is used under fair use or public domain provisions. Where possible, sources have been credited in the description above.