HIS MAJESTY'S "UNSINKABLE" SHIP
By LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ASHLEY HALSEY, JR.,
U. S. Naval Reserve (Thad.)
HE Berlin radio announced one morn-
T ing during the war that His Majesty's
ship Argonaut,a new light cruiser, had
been sunk by a daring U-boat skipper in the
Mediterranean. For once in its lie-filled life-
time, radio Berlin had every reason to be-
lieve it was telling the truth. By most naval
standards, a thin-skinned 5,500-ton cruiser
is a "one-torpedo" ship—meaning that one
well-placed fish will sink her. The Argonaut,
no sturdier than her frisky sisters, was
blasted stem and stern by two heavy sub-
marine torpedoes. Nearly 40 per cent of her
hull was completely blown away or torn
beyond repair. Yet she lived to fight another
day, and many times after that, against both
the Germans and the Japs.
In all the annals of fighting ships that re-
fused to be sunk, few surpass the epic of the
wounded Argonaut. At one point, she became
the only light cruiser in naval history to draw
300 feet of water forward and 53 feet aft,
compared with her normal draft of about 16
feet forward and 174 aft. At another point,
she crossed the Atlantic on only two of four
screws without the aid of a rudder. She
steamed unescorted and undaunted through
a submarine-infested area at the equivalent
of a walk, with nearly half of her guns out of
commission—unable to dodge a torpedo and
scarcely able to out-gun a submarine wolf-
pack. Her temporary bow gaped open in
mid-Atlantic and she chewed up a small
forest of timbers shoring up the bulkhead
behind the bow. It took the bulldog variety
of British courage, plus "more than a bit of
luck," to bring her through. But to get back
to the start:
The cruiser was proceeding homeward at
25 knots after a successful foray against
Italian naval forces between Sicily and
Bizerte early in 1943. It was before dawn
and there was a confusing sound of enemy
aircraft round about. Suddenly two ex-
plosions shook the ship fiercely. The fantail
and a considerable portion of the after deck
1437
disappeared in smoke and emerged as wreck-
age. Forward, a gigantic spout of water
tumbled down and back over the bridge, but
no damage was visible.
"My impression at the time was of a
bomb hit aft and a near-miss forward,"
Captain E. M. Longley-Cook, commanding,
wrote later in his official report. The ship
held doggedly on her course at reduced speed
while damage control crews labored aft. A
few minutes later, the sun rose. The ship's
shadow was outlined clearly on the water.
Officers on the bridge stared, rubbed their
eyes, stared again. No doubt about it. The
shadow of the bow revealed gaping area
bitten out, like the moon in partial eclipse.
The "near-miss" had been an enemy torpedo
which punched its way through the bow.
Plowing at a right angle to the ship, the
torpedo had wrapped plates from the side of
the ship nearly across the hole it made—
wounding and bandaging at one stroke.
"We were exceedingly lucky to be afloat,"
said Commander F. S. Walford, executive
officer of the Argonaut. "To all indications,
we had caught a spread of fish from an
Axis submarine, one forward and one aft."
Commander Walford, a torpedo officer,
added: "The torpedo that hit our bow was
running too shallow. If it had been set cor-
rectly, no telling what it would have done."
A damage control crew promptly rushed
forward and found the entire bow missing
below the main deck. The torpedo had
clipped the bottom out of the chain cable
locker, also. Fifty fathoms of chain cable-
300 feet by landsmen's measure—was dan-
gling straight down into the depths in a
LIEUTENANT HALSEY was a newspaperman be-
fore entering the Naval Reserve, where he was
promptly put to work in the press and photo-
graphic sections of Navy Public Information.
Since leaving active service he has become con-
nected with the Saturday Evening Post.
1438 U. S. Naval Institute-Proceedings [NOVEMBER

Official U. S. Navy Photograph

WITH A "LEND-LEASE" BOW AND STERN

The British cruiser Argonaut after extensive repairs in the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

bight or loop as neat as a watch chain. One directly downward by the explosion. At the
end was still secured to the ship, and the moment, the ship drew 300 feet forward and
other to an anchor on deck. With every 54 feet aft. There was hardly a port on
pitch of the bow, this enormous pendant earth which she could have entered with
gave a tug at the unsupported deck. Like impunity. And she needed desperately to get
men crawling out on a shaky precipice, the into port.
damage control crew began wrestling with Fortunately the electric capstan worked,
the chain cable. although tremulously. Slowly and gingerly,
Meanwhile the report from aft stated that the massive cable was hauled on deck. As
the torpedo there had blown off the rudder there was no place forward to stow it, the
and stempost and had carried an officer and men fisted it aft by hand—a brutal, back-
two stokers to their fate. The three were the breaking job. Below decks, the engineers
only losses out of more than 500 aboard. turned over the turbine connected with the
"Again we were lucky," Commander Wat- bent shaft until the 54-foot length revolved
ford remarked. But the torpedo had wrecked upward. With the Argonaut's draft restored
the aftermost pair of the ship's four pro- to a semblance of normal, Captain Longley-
pellers. The outboard one on the port side Cook managed to get her into Bizerte and
was gone entirely. The shaft of the opposite from there into Gibraltar. At that point he
one was laid bare for 54 feet and bent almost left her to become Captain of the Fleet in
1946] His Majesty's "Unsinkable Ship"
the Mediterranean under Admiral Sir An-
drew Browne Cunningham, a post he later
held in the Pacific aboard the King George V,
and Captain H. J. Haynes took over.
Between bombing raids and underwater
attacks by Italian "human torpedoes," the
dockyard at Gib did its overworked best to
build on a false bow. Since the dockyard was
crammed with damaged ships, Captain
Haynes was given orders to proceed to the
Navy Yard, Philadelphia, U.S.A., for per-
manent repairs. It was estimated that the
Argonaut could steam at a jaunty 18 knots
with her two remaining propellers. As one
of her officers later observed,"That reflected
undue optimism."
The cruiser put out in a calm sea. Soon
she ran into heavy weather. The walloping
given her false bow was more than it could
stand.The lengthwise stiffeners in it gave,and
the bow began to wobble up and down like
a slack jaw. The sides of the ship "panted"
in and out as much as 21 feet. All transverse
or crosswise timbers bracing the sides were
crushed to matchwood. The one war-bat-
tered destroyer assigned to escort the crip-
pled cruiser soon broke down herself. The
nearest port was Punta Delgado, in the
Azores. So Captain Haynes took the Argo-
naut in there. She was still afloat. But she
still had a long way to go. Getting fortified
for the ordeal, the crew loaded her up like
a lumber barge with 6X6 timbers to shore
her flabby bow. Then she set out again. And
the bow began to give way again. Soon some
of the steel shell or hull plates stripped off.
As the wounded bow pushed into wave after
wave, the plates began to peel back toward
the bulkhead, behind the false bow, that was
now holding out the sea. They threatened to
keep on skinning back until the ship forward
looked like a partly peeled banana.
At that point, she was out in the mid-
Atlantic alone and hardly able to creep.
"At four knots without an escort, we were
the answer to the U-boats' prayers," Cap-
tain Haynes wrote in his log. There were
reports of enemy submarines near by. In
addition to loss of speed, the cruiser had
virtually no maneuverability for dodging
torpedoes; her rudder being gone, she had to
be steered by speeding or slowing one of her
two remaining screws. After surviving two
1439
torpedoes, she looked ripe and ready to be
sunk by one. There was barely enough fuel
to reach Bermuda, the nearest port.
Then there steamed into sight a fast new
American destroyer, the Gherardi. Although
the British crew did not know it at the time,
the destroyer happened to have been built in
the Philadelphia Navy Yard to which they
were headed. At any rate, she was a welcome
sight. "We waved our hats and larffed
and larffed," one of the Argonaut's ratings
said later. The Gherardi escorted the crip-
pled craft for two days. Then two mine-
sweepers saw her safely into Bermuda. At
that point, Commander Walford took stock
of the remaining shorings. "I'd say that that
bow chewed up 2,000 feet of timber like
toothpicks," he reported. The Bermuda
dockyard shored up the forward bulkhead
all over again and the Argonaut finally ar-
rived at Philadelphia, 26 days out of Gib
and "damned thankful to be in out of the
Atlantic in the state we were in."
By the time the ragged ends of the 512-
foot ship were trimmed away, there remained
only 330 feet of hull. Fortunately, it was the
portion housing the engines and the five
main-battery turrets—the best part of the
ship. The navy yard built a new 59-foot
bow to British specifications and welded it
into place. Then it riveted together a new
123-foot stern, plate by plate, in dry dock.
When the cruiser was inspected prior to
departure by Rear Admiral Milo F. Drae-
mel, then Commandant, and Rear Admiral
A. J. Chantry, then Industrial Manager,
British officers showing them across from
the original ship to the new stern joked:
"At this point, you are now entering Amer-
ica!"
Throughout the project the British crew,
living aboard in a din and racket like the
inferno of battle, made only one complaint:
"I say,can you have your fellows hurry it up
a bit? We want to get back out there to do a
job, you know." And they did. Her guns tore
into the Germans in the invasion of France.
They sank barges filled with Nazi troops in
the Aegean Sea off Greece. Then,shifting tar-
gets to the Far East, they went into action
against the Japs in the Indies. The Argonaut
is still going strong today—while radio
Berlin is "sunk."