World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseDevonshire was a County-class heavy cruiser of the London-subclass. Between commissioning and 1932, she served with the 1st Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean Sea; in Jul 1929, she suffered a serious gun turret explosion during firing practice in the Aegean Sea where 17 men were killed and 3 were seriously wounded. Between 1932 and 1933, she served off China. For the remainder of the 1930s until the outbreak of the European War, she served in the Mediterranean Sea. She served off the coast of Spain during the Spanish Civil War; at the end of that conflict, the surrender of the island of Minorca was signed aboard her, and she was used to evacuate some Spanish Republicans. At the start of WW2, she served under John H. D. Cunningham in the Norwegian Campaign, evacuating King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav, other members of the Norwegian royal family, government ministers, and Norway's gold reserve from Tromsø to Britain on 7 Jun 1940. On the return trip, Devonshire received the distress signal of carrier Glorious, which was under overwhelming German naval attack; under order to keep strict radio silence on this important transport mission, Cunningham chose to ignore the distress call. He safely delivered the important passengers and cargo to Britain, but Glorious and her two screening destroyers were sunk with the loss of 1,519 men. In Aug 1940, she participated in Operation Menace which planned to land 6,670 British and Free French soldiers at Dakar, Western Africa; the operation turned out to be a failure as local Vichy-French forces put on a fierce resistance. On 2 Nov 1940, she captured a Vichy-French convoy off the Cape of Good Hope. Until Oct 1941, she served in the Atlantic Ocean, hunting down the German raider Kormoran in the South Atlantic and patrolling the North Atlantic off Norway and Russia. On 21 Nov 1941, under the command of Captain R. D. Oliver, she sank the famed German merchant raider Atlantis, killing seven German sailors. In May 1942, she participated in the Madagascar Campaign, and remained in the Indian Ocean until May 1943. In Mar 1944, she returned to Britain to join the Home Fleet, then served off Norway until the end of the war; during this time, she escorted British aircraft carriers during the aerial attack on the German battleship Tirpitz. Immediately after WW2, Devonshire visited Norway and Denmark. She spent the latter half of 1945 and the first months of 1946 as a transport. She was converted to a training ship in 1947, visiting ports in Northern Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Caribbean Sea until 1953. In Jun 1953, she was present during Queen Elizabeth II's coronation naval review. She was sold for scrap on 16 Jun 1954. She was broken up by A. J. Cashmore on 12 Dec 1954 at Newport, Wales, United Kingdom.

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Devonshire Operational Timeline

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6.  David Stubblebine says:
22 Dec 2018 04:39:18 PM

Pete (above):
The MV Devonshire (not HMS Devonshire) was a purpose-built troop ship built in Liverpool and completed in 1939. She was renamed the Devonia in 1962 and sold for scrap in 1967. During the mid-1950s, she was under charter to the Sea Transport Division of the Ministry of Transport, so this would seem to fit. See https://www.derbysulzers.com/shipdevonshire.html