C-Type Cruisers (CL 1915-1922)

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The C type cruisers actually comprised 5 different classes with a total of 32 ships.
Caroline Class (6 ships)
Cambrian Class (6 ships)
Centaur Class (6 ships)
Caledon class (4 ships)
Ceres Class (10 ships)



The classes followed each other with slight improvements between classes but not enough to slow down production. Differences in armament started with the Carolines with their single 6" fore and aft and single 4" down each broadside, almost clones of the preceding Arethusa class, through to the five 6" inline mountings of the Ceres class. The 4,000 ton cruiser design evolved into ships that were thought good enough to be used everywhere in the Second World War as much as they had in the First.


The Carolines:



For its time, the Caroline held the building record of just 11 months. The Cleopatra and Comus were the headline acts for WW1 with the Cleopatra ramming and sinking the destroyer G.194 and the Comus catching and sinking the raider Greif.

By the end of the war the Carolines had the aft 4" replaced with a third 6" and the 4" beside the bridge were replaced with single 2pd AA quick firing guns. The armoured conning tower was removed and the fore 6" mounting moved backwards to help with seakeeping, the pole mast replaced with a tripod  similar to the Arethusa class. By 1930 the single 3" was removed and replaced with another 2pd AA gun. The last four low angle 4" were replaced with single 4" AA guns.



The Carolines, like the other early C-Types, had a hard war. Being the newest cruisers available at the crux of the sea war in 1915-16, meant they were the van of the fleet as the lead scouts, and leading the Fleets destroyer squadrons. Always doing things at maximum revs. Once 1930 had come and gone the Carolines were reduced in service as the modern Light Cruisers of the Leander and Town types came into service. Postings to far away squadrons and long patrol duties were to be their lot.



Carysfort was Flagship of the Far East Squadron based on Hong Kong with the Cordelia when the Japanese attacked all over the Pacific. Both ships escaped Hong Kong and were ordered first to Singapore and then to Australia carrying all the bullion from the Hong Kong banks and picking up the same from Singapore. Both ships came under air attack in the narrows between the Philippines and Vietnam, but their routing had meant that the ships were passing through the narrows as much in darkness as possible, so by the time a second strike could have been organised, it was dark, and the ships were hundreds of miles further south after daybreak. From Singapore the ships passed through the Sunda Strait, to Darwin, where the bullion was offloaded and sent by rail to be stored in Canberra. The ships were ordered back to Singapore with rare spares and supplies for the aircraft operating in Malaya. Both ships were under air attack with the rest of the ships in Singapore and received near miss and shrapnel damage. Both ships were filled with woman and children from base personnel and sailed with two destroyers as escort. All ships leaving Singapore were being heavily attacked by Japanese air units, but the Naval units were less prone to damage having heavy AA armaments with which to fight back. From Darwin the Carysfort, Cordelia, Viceroy, and Viscount were sent to join the ABDA squadron based on Surabaya, Java. The four ships had barely reached Surabaya and were in the process of refuelling when the news of the decimation of the ABDA squadron was received. The ships were sent west to find and help the survivors back to Surabaya. Perth, Houston and Exeter are too big to go through the straits to the east and are sent west to try to escape through the Sunda Strait. None make it through, all are sunk. The four ships are joined with the destroyers Express and Excalibur, with Commodore Langsford in command, and are ordered to head east for the Lombok Strait. The Japanese have had time to land troops on Lombok but not on Bali which is still Japanese free. The Japanese have a force of two cruisers and four destroyers guarding the strait and supporting the troops on Lombok. But those Japanese ships also have to guard the strait between Lombok and Sumbawa, the Alas strait. The Nagara and two destroyers are on high alert during the hours of darkness, and each ship takes turns to light up its searchlights to illuminate the waters of the strait. The six Royal Navy ships can see this happening but are not aware of the composition of the enemy forces. The Commodore ordered his ships into single file and increased speed to 25 knots, there was only one way out and the RN ships needed to be far south of the strait when daylight found them again as the Japanese aircraft would be looking for them once they got through the strait. Lights stream from port but the RN ships are just outside the coverage. All the RN crews are in readiness with guns and torpedoes pointed outboard. They all know that in about ten minutes they will be fighting for their lives, adrenaline levels are high. Lights start to flare to starboard and before the full beam strikes the two RN cruisers open fire with all guns that will bear. Within minutes all nine ships are firing at each other, all launch torpedoes, searchlights show up all the ships in sharp silhouettes, the Japanese destroyer the cruisers opened fire on burst into flames as the 6" shells burst on or around it. That was the only piece of good fortune the British squadron had. The Allied navies were still in the process of learning just how deadly the Japanese 24" Long Lance torpedo was. The Japanese had launched torpedoes as soon as their searchlights had lit up the British line. Following my leader the squadron started exploding, Cordelia took two hits, turning out of the line, heeling over and sinking. Viscount and Viceroy took a torpedo each, but that was enough for them, Viscount broke in half with one end sinking straight away and the other end washing ashore. Viceroy rolled to starboard, all power lost and continued firing at the Japanese ships as the other two destroyers passed, accelerating to catch up to the Commodore. Half the British ships sunk at one salvo, not a bad return. The remaining two Japanese ships did not chase after the remaining ships as their first priority was still to guard the strait. So ended the Battle of Lombok Strait. Another success to the Japanese. Commodore Langsfords after action report on the Japanese Long Lance torpedo helped the Allied forces think of ways to negate its advantages.

Carysfort spent the rest of its war escorting convoys in the Indian Ocean, its period of excitement was over.
 

The Cambrians:



The Cambrians followed many of the Carolines features but differed in things like only having two funnels (carried forward on all the following C & D types), and just as importantly the last half of the class introduced geared turbines to the Royal Navy cruiser lines. The armament still featured the mixed 6" and 4" guns, but the Cambrians had three 6" for its original armament and thus less low angle 4".



By the end of WW1 the armoured conning tower had been removed and the bridge enlarged and the fore 6" moved backwards which aided seakeeping. A director for the 6" was added to the top of the foretop. The single 4" had been removed and replaced with 3" and 2pd AA guns, the 3" later being replaced with a quad 2pd AA mounting. Like the Arethusa and Caroline Class ships, the Cambrian class ships were very much second rate cruisers by the opening of World War Two. The only thing that saved them from the breakers yards during the mid 1930's was the abrogation of the Naval Treaties by Japan and the rearmament of the Germanic States. Cruisers on the open sea lanes along which Britains lifeblood of supplies flowed were an absolute necessity and these ships were exceptionally useful.



The central 6" was replaced with a twin 4" to enhance the AA battery in 1940. Two of the class were sent to the Eastern Mediterranean from their posts in the Indian Ocean, and were heavily engaged in that theater of war. Calliope and Champion were both lost on this duty, Calliope being bombed during the retreat from Crete with hundreds of survivors aboard, while the Champion was torpedoed by MAS boats off the coast of Cyrenaica while trying to run supplies into beleaguered Tobruk. Cambrian was lost, torpedoed by a U-Boat, escorting tankers out of the West Indies on the Antigua to St Johns route to join more heavily guarded convoys across the North Atlantic. Constance was heavily damaged, while returning from the Norwegian campaign, in action against two German destroyers, and was considered unrepairable. The hulk was eventually expended as part of the Mullberry artificial harbour as part of D-Day.
 

The Centaurs:



The Centaur class were two ships originally ordered for Turkey and taken over by the RN on the outbreak of war. The Australis Navy built four of the class to a slightly different layout but same dimensions and armament.


The Centaur class were the RN's first 'superimposed' cruisers with the four 6" mountings disposed two each fore and aft. All of the class were fitted with geared turbines and only two shafts. Completed at the end of 1916 for the RN pair and 1917-18 for the RAN ships, they had fairly quiets wars. The two non-standard Centaur class were sold on to the Southern African Navy in the early 1920's. This put them in line for full refurbishment to anti-aircraft ships, something for which the earlier cruisers were never contemplated. The single 6" guns were swapped out one-for-one for twin 4". The center 4" gun is replaced with a quad 2pd AA mounting while the broadside 4" beside the fore funnel were replaced first with quad 0.5" machine guns then twin 20mm mountings. the single 2pd AA guns were kept till the single and 20mm Oerlikons were available. One set of torpedoes was removed to offset the additional radar added.


The two southern African Navy Centaurs were tied to escorting the aircraft carrier Kwazulu for most of their war. All the Battles around the Falkands Islands the Nairobi and Rorkes Drift covered the Kwazulu along with the other ships of the Southern African Fleet.
 

The Caledons:



The Caledons were the 'Admiralty' versions of the previous Turkish Centaur type. The RN designers had acknowledged that the Armstrong Whitworth design for the Centaur was a vast improvement on the current Admiralty design of the Caroline/Cambrian types. The major change was the complete replacement of low angle 4" with an all 6" gunned main armament and two 3" as the AA armament. Torpedo armament remained the same with four twin mountings.


These ships were actually converted prior to the Centaur type as the Royal Navy geared up for what it saw as Germanic States rearmament. Even the oldest ships would be required to be available to assist the war effort.


The Caledon classes armament placement was experimented with, in Caledon the quad 2pd mounting was placed in the 'B' position, while Cassandra had the 2pd in 'X' position, Calypso had the 2pd mounting in the more usual 'Q' position.
 

The Ceres Class:

The last of the C type were the ten ships of the Ceres class. Problems with seakeeping with the early C's led to the abandonment of the armoured conning tower and the fore 6" mounting being moved back toward the bridge superstructure. This did alleviate some of the problem but the ships were still a trifle wet forward. The Caledon hull was taken and fitted with trawler type bows to help give some extra buoyancy forward.



The ten units of the class were built between 1917 and 1922. They had very quiet wars as the sea war was virtually at an end by 1917, with only the U-boats providing a thorn in the side of the British. The ships were some of the cream of the cruiser squadrons at wars end till the end of the 1920's. Once new construction started appearing the C type units went to more second class duties. 1934-35 proved the make or break for the older cruisers still active in the Commonwealth Fleets, and these ships were saved by the Japanese not ratifying the last Naval treaty of 1930. The Ceres type being the most modern were looked at for conversion to anti-aircraft ships before the earlier classes. Six of the ships had had various conversion work, almost none being the same. Anything between eight and ten single 4" AA being fitted. Once 1934 and the advent of the 4" twin MkXVI mounting came about, then the last four had a uniform armament similar to the three Caledons. These differences in armament and layouts led to quite different superstructure layouts as well. Most had their sets of torpedoes removed during their conversion processes.

The next four drawings are all original 'real life' conversions of C class cruisers drawn by Novice 6-7 years ago. A lot of the parts have been updated/redrawn since then but the drawings are still of good quality and I have not tried to improve them as they do provide a good indication of the diversity of the different armaments fitted to the 'C's.








 

 
Lastly are the C class drawings that various people have done for both real and alternate universe purposes.











 

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