HMNZS Bellona at Bluff 1949

HMS/HMNZS Bellona was the name ship of her sub-class of light cruisers for the Royal Navy. She was a modified Dido-class design with only four turrets but improved anti-aircraft armament. Entering service in 1943, the cruiser operated during World War II as an escort for the Arctic convoys, as a jamming ship to prevent the use of radio-controlled bombs and in support of the Omaha Beach landings.

In 1946 the cruiser was loaned to the Royal New Zealand Navy. Although not involved in the multi-ship mutiny, at the start of the month, 140 sailors elected to not return to the ship in protest at the poor pay and working conditions and how their colleagues had been treated. Fifty-two sailors were eventually marked as deserters while the others were charged with various lesser offences.

Bellona was returned to the Royal Navy in 1956. She did not reenter service and was scrapped two years later.

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Aircraft from HMAS SYDNEY over NZ cruiser HMNZS BELLONA, Feb.-Mar. 1951 – ADFS.

6481. Another view of the Commonwealth Jubilee Exercises off the coast of Tasmania in Feb.-March 1951. Here we see a flight of 10 aircraft – seven Hawker Sea Furies and three Fairey Fireflies from HMAS SYDN EY  over the 5,950-7,200 ton  New Zealand Modified Dido Class cruiser HMNZS BELLONA.

In a way this is a physical manifestation of postwar New Zealand naval policy, in that the RNZN Dido Class anti-aircraft cruisers were obtained by loan and acquisition after WWII specifically to operate with Australian aircraft carriers, making a strong combined regional force.

Again, these were the exercises during which, on Feb. 26, 1951, a practice rocket [or rockets, we’re not sure] fired by a Sea Fury from SYDNEY struck the quarterdeck of HMNZS BELLONA, fortunately without major damage or casualties.

BELLONA was towing a target astern, but as we have previously reported, a little facetiously, the Sea Fury pilot, Lt Peter Seed – a New Zealander, like many in the RAN’s FAA squadrons then – had insisted before an enquiry that he had not pressed the rocket firing button, and the plane’s rockets had streaked off independently, and inadvertently.

Noone quite accepted that at the time, although it was clearly as accident. It was only later, during SYDNEY’S tour of duty in Korea that it was discovered that powerful low frequency radio transmissions from the carrier had the capacity to spontaneously ignite the under-wing rockets on her aircraft aloft. Indeed it was found to be a problem on other carriers also, and arming procedures for the ordnance had to be changed.

Subsequently, in somewhat different circumstances, it was a spontaneous under-wing rocket firing from an an electrical surge that caused the huge deck fire on the U.S. super carrier USS FORRESTAL in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 27, 1967. The consequences in that case were truly tragic, with 134 men killed and 161 injured, as explosions and fire spread among fuel and bomb-laden aircraft on the giant carrier’s crowded flight deck. Details of that incident are here.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

By the way, we had a wonderful Allan C. Green portrait of HMNZS BELLONA at Entry NO. 5317, here: