Royal Navy — Cruiser class
Dido-class cruiser
Dido class
The class in numbers
- 16 Completed
- 5 Lost
- 11 Scrapped
Design and service
- Type
- Cruiser
- Navy
- Royal Navy
- Built
- 1937–1943
- In commission
- 1940–1980s
- Preceded by
- Arethusa-class cruiser
- Succeeded by
- Fiji-class cruiser
- Builders
- Alexander Stephens and Sons (1)
- Cammell Laird (3)
- Chatham Dockyard (1)
- Fairfield Shipbuilding (2)
- Harland and Wolff (1)
- Portsmouth Dockyard (1)
- Hawthorn Leslie (3)
- Scotts Shipbuilding (3)
- Vickers Armstrongs (1)
- Subclasses
- Dido, Bellona
Class specifications
Figures for the class as designed. Individual vessels varied, sometimes considerably — each vessel page carries its own configurations.
As built
- Displacement, standard
- 5,770 long tons (5,863 t)
- Displacement, full load
- 7,420 long tons (7,539 t)
- Length
- 156.06 m (512 ft) OA
- Speed
- 32.3 knots (59.7 km/h, 37.1 mph)
- Complement
- 487
- Main gun
- 133 mm (5.2 in)
- Armament
- Dido class as designed:
- 5 × twin 5.25 in guns
- 2 × quadruple 2-pdr (40 mm) AA guns
- 4 × twin 0.5 in AA machine guns
- 2 × triple 21 in torpedo tubes
- Bellona class as designed:
- 4 × twin 5.25 in guns
- 3 × quadruple 2 pdr AA guns
- 6 × twin 20 mm AA guns
- 2 × triple 21 in torpedo tubes
Roster
| Vessel | Pennant | Commissioned | Fate |
|---|---|---|---|
| HMS Argonaut (61) | 61 | 1942 | Scrapped 1955 |
| HMS Bellona (63) | 63 | 1943 | Transferred 1956 |
| HMS Black Prince (81) | 81 | 1943 | Scrapped 1962 |
| HMS Bonaventure (31) | 31 | 1940 | Sunk 1941 |
| HMS Charybdis (88) | 88 | 1940 | Sunk 1943 |
| HMS Cleopatra (33) | 33 | 1941 | Scrapped 1958 |
| HMS Diadem (84) | 84 | 1957 | Scrapped 1985 |
| HMS Dido (37) | 37 | 1940 | Scrapped 1957 |
| HMS Euryalus (42) | 42 | 1941 | Scrapped 1959 |
| HMS Hermione (74) | 74 | 1941 | Sunk 1942 |
| HMS Naiad (93) | 93 | 1940 | Sunk 1942 |
| HMS Phoebe (43) | 43 | 1940 | Scrapped 1956 |
| HMS Royalist (89) | 89 | 1943 | Scrapped 1967 |
| HMS Scylla (98) | 98 | 1942 | Scrapped 1950 |
| HMS Sirius (82) | 82 | 1942 | Scrapped 1956 |
| HMS Spartan (95) | 95 | 1943 | Sunk 1944 |
Sources
- Facts harvested from Dido-class cruiser on Wikipedia. Figures only — no wording is taken from it.