A Brief History Of HMS Belfast

Reading the new book by naval history podcaster Drachinifel

HMS Belfast passes under Tower Bridge on her final voyage in October 1971

Naval History Magazine, a publication of the Naval Institute Press, has just released a 92-page special edition authored by Alexander Pocklington, better known by his nom-de-podcast Drachinifel. Anyone familiar with his voice through his naval and maritime history and engineering videos will hear that same voice as they read this booklet. Which is good, because he has an excellent voice, written or spoken.

Pocklington prefers to script his videos, ad libbing only from prepared notes during his “Drydock” episodes where he responds to audience questions. Naturally, his text reads like his script: erudite and expert, anodyne in his commentary about the present day even as he is opinionated about the past. When it comes to naval and maritime history, few podcasting opinions are as well-informed as his. Having met Pocklington in person, I can certify his gift for personal engagement. He’s a good chap, as the Brits say.

Yours truly (left) meeting the author behind Y turret on the USS Alabama in 2022

I include the photograph above because the Alabama is one of only a handful of capital ships from the era that have been preserved as museum ships, as almost all of the preserved battleships are American. For despite being history’s winner of the battleship race, the Royal Navy scrapped its last BB in 1960, and has kept very few steel combat ships. The Belfast is an exception due to her exceptional history, which is the subject of Pocklington’s book.

For “throughout her life Belfast would find herself facing almost every situation imaginable for a light cruiser except the one for which she was actually designed.” She protected convoys, helped sink the Scharnhorst, supported the D-Day landings, and then refit for a race to the Pacific that the atomic bomb won. Recalled for the Korean War, she recovered an RAF Vampire jet crash-landed on the shore and wore our her gun barrels raiding the narrow enemy logistical trail along the west coast.

Belfast was continually modernized until the end of her service life, which ironically was extended by her wartime repairs. Her survival was due to the decision to move her machinery astern compared to her sister ships. Had the machinery spaces been in the middle, where the mine struck, the ship would likely have been lost.

A civil engineer by profession as well as a marine engineering enthusiast, Pocklington is at his absolute best interpreting the mine strike that put Belfast out of action early in the war. He details the damage it wrought, the patchwork at Rosyth, the delays, the repairs to her structure, and the resulting changes to her profile, as well as each stage of her modernization thereafter.

Belfast was the last cruiser of her class to be built, and because the 1930 London Naval Treaty was falling apart, she was finished without the previous limitations on displacement. As a result, when she finally returned to service after years in repair, she was easily the newest, most modernized cruiser in the Royal Navy. Whereas all her sister-ships were scrapped, Belfast served longest, and she was the best-preserved. Her choice as a museum ship was obvious enough, even if politics dragged out the process.

Drawing from the Imperial War Museum archives as well as his own extensive collection of sources, Pocklington inserts numerous primary source accounts from sailors who served on board the Belfast during key episodes. Scores of photos and illustrations bring the story to visual life. Anyone interested in the history of steel capital ships will find it an absorbing read.

Technological trends abound: the Vickers pom-pom aintaircraft guns were most effective against kamikaze attacks, so they proliferated on the Belfast. The ship started out equipped with a hangar and a Walrus floatplane that were removed; she was considered for conversion to a helicarrier, then received Cold War modifications for nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare.

Ultimately, what ended the career of the Belfast was not her age, or her technology, but her obsolescence as a cruiser. Pocklington explains that both the size and crew of cruiser builds decreased by the 1960s. Belfast was simply more expensive to operate and maintain, presenting a greater burden on public resources during the sunset of the British Empire. Thankfully, the Royal Navy still had a reserve system that kept her in good condition long enough to be anchored in the Thames.

I saw Belfast from the deck of the HMS Victory in 1984 as a boy, before I knew the story of the cruiser. Had I been able to read this little magazine-sized book before visiting London, I would have insisted on taking in the reverse view. If I ever do make it to London again, I shall have to visit her.

If I do, I will be taking a good look at the radars. Being an electronic warfare historian, I was gratified and excited to find a perfect depth of detail on the EW history of a proud ship. Belfast served throughout a period of rapid evolution in radar suites and the invention of the combat information center (CIC) found in every modern warship.

“Belfast at various points carried more than half the main naval radars produced,” Pocklington writes. Equipped with surface search radar during her post-repair refit, “Belfast used it to good effect at the Battle of the North Cape, tracking and following the battleship Scharnhorst in weather that otherwise would likely have allowed the German ship to escape.” Later, Belfast was equipped with a Type 91 radar jammer and an IFF (identify friend or foe) transponder. She was capable of fighting in every contemporary domain of EW except cyber, being too early for the digital revolution, which makes her a bit like the Battlestar Galactica in the reboot series.

I hope Alexander Pocklington will write more similar volumes on great ships, and that the Naval Institute Press will publish them. His voice is just as entertaining and informative in print as it ever is on YouTube. You can find his channel here and you can buy the HMS Belfast book here.