USS Florida (BB-30) was the lead ship of the Florida class of dreadnought battleships of the United States Navy. She had one sister ship, Utah. Florida was laid down at the New York Navy Yard in March 1909, launched in May 1910, and commissioned into the US Navy in September 1911. She was armed with a main battery of ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns and was very similar in design to the preceding Delaware-class battleships.
HMS Griffin (H31) was a G-class destroyer, built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s. In World War II she took part in the Norwegian Campaign of April–May 1940 and the Battle of Dakar in September before being transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in November. She generally escorted larger ships of the Mediterranean Fleet as they protected convoys against attacks from the Italian Fleet. Griffin took part in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and the evacuations of Greece and Crete in April–May 1941. In June she took part in the Syria-Lebanon Campaign and was escorting convoys and the larger ships of the Mediterranean Fleet until she was transferred to the Eastern Fleet in March 1942.
HMS Kent, pennant number 54, was a County-class heavy cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the late 1920s. She was the lead ship of the Kent subclass. After completion the ship was sent to the China Station where she remained until the beginning of the Second World War, aside from a major refit in 1937–38. Kent hunted the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the East Indies in late 1939 and then was reassigned to troop convoy escort duties in the Indian Ocean in early 1940. She was transferred to the Mediterranean in mid-1940, but was torpedoed shortly after arriving. The ship was under repair for a year and was then assigned to Home Fleet where she escorted convoys to and from North Russia for the next several years. In mid-1944 Kent escorted British aircraft carriers as their aircraft made attacks on German shipping and airfields in Norway. A few months later she was flagship of a force that intercepted a German convoy in Norwegian waters and sank two freighters and five escorts. The ship was paid off in early 1945 and placed in reserve until she was used as a target. Kent was sold for scrap in 1948.
USS Cincinnati (CL-6), was the third Omaha-class light cruiser, originally classified as a scout cruiser, built for the United States Navy. She was the third Navy ship named after the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, the first being Cincinnati, an ironclad commissioned in 1862, during the Civil War, and the second being Cincinnati, a protected cruiser, that was decommissioned in 1919.
The E and F-class destroyers were a group of 18 destroyers built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s. The ships were initially assigned to the Home Fleet, although they reinforced the Mediterranean Fleet during the Italian invasion of Abyssinia of 1935–36 and enforced the Non-Intervention Agreement during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. After the beginning of the Second World War in August 1939, the E-class ships were mostly assigned to escort duties under the Western Approaches Command, while the Fs were assigned to escort the ships of the Home Fleet. Between them they sank four German submarines through March 1940 while losing only one ship to a submarine.
HMS Cornwall, pennant number 56, was a County-class heavy cruiser of the Kent sub-class built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1920s. The ship spent most of her pre-World War II career assigned to the China Station. Shortly after the war began in August 1939, she was assigned to search for German commerce raiders in the Indian Ocean. Cornwall was transferred to the South Atlantic in late 1939 where she escorted convoys before returning to the Indian Ocean in 1941. She then sank the German auxiliary cruiser Pinguin in May. After the start of the Pacific War in December 1941, she began escorting convoys until she was transferred to the Eastern Fleet in March 1942. The ship was sunk on 5 April by dive bombers from three Japanese aircraft carriers during the Indian Ocean Raid.
HMS Foresight was one of nine F-class destroyers built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s. She was assigned to the Home Fleet upon completion. Unlike her sister ships, she does not appear to have been attached to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1935–36 during the Abyssinia Crisis, nor did she enforce the arms blockade imposed by Britain and France on both sides of the conflict the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. The ship escorted the larger ships of the fleet during the early stages of World War II and played a minor role in the Norwegian Campaign of 1940. Foresight was sent to Gibraltar in mid-1940 and formed part of Force H where she participated in the attack on Mers-el-Kébir and the Battle of Dakar. The ship escorted numerous convoys to Malta in 1941 and Arctic convoys during 1942. Later that year, Foresight participated in Operation Pedestal, another convoy to Malta. She was torpedoed by an Italian aircraft on 12 August and had to be scuttled the next day.
Krasny Kavkaz was a cruiser of the Soviet Navy that began construction during World War I, but was still incomplete during the Russian Revolution. Her design was heavily modified by the Soviets and she was completed in 1932. During World War II she supported Soviet troops during the siege of Odessa, siege of Sevastopol, and the Kerch–Feodosiya operation in the winter of 1941–42. She was awarded the Guards title on 3 April 1942. She was reclassified as a training ship in May 1947 before being expended as a target in 1952.
Köln was a light cruiser, the third member of the Königsberg class that was operated between 1929 and March 1945, including service in World War II. She was operated by two German navies, the Reichsmarine and the Kriegsmarine. She had two sister ships, Königsberg and Karlsruhe. Köln was built by the Reichsmarinewerft in Wilhelmshaven; she was laid down in August 1926, launched in May 1928, and commissioned into the Reichsmarine on 15 January 1930. She was armed with a main battery of nine 15 cm SK C/25 (5.9-inch) guns in three triple turrets and had a top speed of 32 knots.
HMS Bonaventure was the lead ship of the Dido-class light cruisers built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the 1930s and during the Second World War. Completed in 1940, Bonaventure was assigned to the Home Fleet and participated in Operation Fish, the evacuation of British wealth from the UK to Canada in July. The ship made one short patrol in August into the North Atlantic to search for German blockade runners and followed that up by escorting an aircraft carrier as it conducted air strikes in Southern Norway in September. The next month she was tasked to provide cover for anti-shipping raids off the Norwegian coast. Bonaventure participated in the unsuccessful search for the German commerce raider Admiral Scheer in November and sustained weather damage that caused her to spend time in a dockyard for repairs. She was part of the escort force for Convoy WS 5A in December and helped to drive off another German commerce raider. While searching for stragglers from the convoy, the cruiser sank a German blockade runner.
HMS York was the lead ship of her class of two heavy cruisers built for the Royal Navy in the late 1920s. She mostly served on the North America and West Indies Station before World War II. Early in the war the ship escorted convoys in the Atlantic and participated in the Norwegian Campaign in 1940. York was transferred to the Mediterranean theatre in late 1940 where she escorted convoys and the larger ships of the Mediterranean Fleet. She was wrecked in an attack by Italian explosive motorboats of the 10th Flotilla MAS at Suda Bay, Crete, in March 1941. The ship's wreck was salvaged in 1952 and subsequently scrapped.
HMCS Huron was a Tribal-class destroyer that served in the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War and the Korean War. She was the first ship to bear this name, entering service in 1943. She was named for the Huron people. During the Second World War the vessel saw service in Operation Neptune in the Bay of Biscay and along the French coast in support of the invasion of Normandy and escorted convoys to the Soviet Union. Following the war, the ship was placed in reserve. The destroyer was activated in 1950 as a training ship, but with the onset of the Korean War, was modernized and deployed twice to Korea. Following the war, Huron reverted to a training ship and took part in Cold War-era North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) naval exercises until being paid off for the final time in 1963 and broken up for scrap in 1965.
HMS Onslow was an O-class destroyer of the Royal Navy. The O-class were intermediate destroyers, designed before the outbreak of the Second World War to meet likely demands for large number of destroyers. They had a main gun armament of four 4.7 in guns, and had a design speed of 36 kn. Onslow was ordered on 2 October 1939 and was built by John Brown & Company at their Clydebank, Glasgow shipyard, launching on 31 March 1941 and completing on 8 October 1941.
HMS Matabele was a Tribal-class destroyer of the Royal Navy that saw service in World War II, being sunk by a U-boat on 17 January 1942. She has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Matabele, which in common with the other ships of the Tribal class, was named after an ethnic group of the British Empire. In this case, this was the Anglicisation of the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe.
HMS Verulam was a V-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that saw service during the Second World War.
HMS Faulknor was the flotilla leader for the F-class destroyers built for the Royal Navy during the 1930s. The ship had a particularly active operational role during World War II, being awarded 11 battle honours, and was known as "The hardest worked destroyer in the Fleet". She was the first ship to sink a German U-boat, took part in the Norwegian Campaign, served with Force H in the Mediterranean on the Malta Convoys, escorted convoys to Russia and across the Atlantic, and saw action during the invasions of Sicily, Italy and Normandy, and was at the liberation of the Channel Islands. She was then decommissioned and sold for scrap in late 1945.
HMS Hawkins was the lead ship of her class of five heavy cruisers built for the Royal Navy during the First World War, although the ship was not completed until 1919. She was assigned to the China Station until 1928 and was briefly assigned to the Atlantic Fleet in 1929–1930, always serving as a flagship, before being placed in reserve. Hawkins was recommissioned in 1932 for service on the East Indies Station, but returned to reserve three years later. The ship was disarmed in 1937–1938 and converted into a cadet training ship in 1938.
The Admiral Nakhimov-class cruisers were a group of four light cruisers built for the Imperial Russian Navy just before World War I began in 1914. Construction was interrupted by the Russian Revolution and only two of the ships were eventually completed well after the end of the Russian Civil War by the Soviets. Chervona Ukraina was the first ship completed and was built to essentially the original design. Krasnyi Kavkaz was much modified and completed five years after Chervona Ukraina. Both ships participated in the Sieges of Odessa and Sevastopol after the Germans invaded Russia in June 1941. They ferried troops into the cities, evacuated wounded and bombarded the besieging German troops. Chervona Ukraina was bombed and sunk by dive bombers in November during one of these missions and Krasny Kavkaz was badly damaged by the same type of aircraft in January 1942. After her lengthy repairs were completed, the ship transported reinforcements to cities on the Black Sea coast during the Battle of the Caucasus. She was reclassified as a training ship in 1947 before she was sunk as a target in 1956. Chervona Ukraina was salvaged in 1947 and then became a hulked. She became a target ship in 1950.
NMS Mărășești was one of four Vifor-class destroyers ordered by Romania shortly before the beginning of the First World War from Italy. All four sister ships were requisitioned when Italy joined the war in 1915. Originally named Vârtej by the Romanians, she was renamed Nibbio in Italian service. Not completed until mid-1918, the ship engaged Austro-Hungarian ships in the Adriatic Sea only once before the war ended in November. She was renamed Mărășești when she was re-purchased by the Romanians in 1920.
Gromky was one of 29 Gnevny-class destroyers built for the Soviet Navy during the late 1930s. Completed in 1938, the ship was initially assigned to the Baltic Fleet before being transferred to the Northern Fleet in mid-1939 where she played a minor role in the 1939–1940 Winter War against Finland.
United States
Soviet Union
