Link to HMS Manchester Web Site

Most Sea Cadet Units are affiliated to one of the Royal Navy's ships. Trafalgar SCC is affiliated to HMS Manchester she is a type 42 Destroyer

Part of the 5th Destroyer Squadron

5th Destroyer Squadron
Batch 1 & 2
HMS Exeter
HMS Southampton
HMS Cardiff
HMS Newcastle
Batch 3
HMS Manchester
HMS Gloucester

Equipped with the Sea Dart missile system, the Type 42 destroyers provide area air defence for task group operations, as well as being highly capable independent vessels. The Type 42 Destroyers form the back bone of the Royal Navy's anti-air capability. They are equipped with the Sea Dart medium range air defence missile system, which in its primary role is designed to provide area air defence to a group of ships, although it is also effective against surface targets at sea.

The system comprises a twin barrelled missile launcher and two powerful Type 909 fire control radars, which guide the missile to its target with the help of the ship's main computer system. The ships are also equipped with sophisticated communications and sensor equipment, the Mk 8 4.5 inch gun, anti-submarine torpedo tubes, the multi barrel Phalanx rapid-firing gun system and the highly versatile Lynx helicopter. 

The ship is powered by a combination of Rolls-Royce Marine Olympus and Tyne gas turbines. The Olympus engines are the same as the engines that drive Concord at supersonic speeds and develop 25,000 shaft horse power and are used for high speed, while the smaller Tyne engines are used for slower cruising speeds. The gas turbine engines drive two controllable-pitch propellers giving an efficient cruising speed 18 knots and a maximum speed of over 30 knots.

HMS Manchester is the third ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name. The first was a hired vessel used as a stores ship in 1814. The second  was a 9400 ton Southampton class cruiser launched in 1937 by Mrs Toole, the Lady Mayoress of Manchester Built by Hawthorn Leslie, Hebburn. Laid Down 28 March 1936. Launched 12 April 1937. Completed 4 August 1938. Torpedoed 23/7/41 Malta convoy - repaired Philadelphia 9/41 - 2/42. Sunk 13 August 1942 during Operation Pedestal by torpedoes from Italian MTBs MAS16 and MAS22, off Tunisia, crippled and scuttled (150 lost).

HMS Manchester in China station colours 1938 Repeat Southampton class with slight modifications including increased turret armour.

Manchester and Gloucester were sunk before the above modifications were carried out.

HMS Manchester May1941

Manchester was serving in the East Indies with the 4th Cruiser Squadron at the outbreak of war, but was ordered home and arrived back Britain on 25 November 1939. She subsequently served with the Home Fleet at Scapa on Northern Patrol duties, capturing the German merchantman Wahehe on 21 February 1940. After participating in the Norwegian campaign she was then based in the Humber for anti-invasion duties, but on 15 September sailed to the Mediterranean for Operation Collar and was present at the action off Cape Spartivento on 27 November. Manchester returned to Britain on 13 December 1940 and spent the first four months of 1941 under refit, then undertook Denmark Straits patrols during the Bismarck sortie. In July she returned to the Mediterranean for an important Malta convoy, but on 23 July she was hit on the port quarter by an aerial torpedo and badly damaged. Temporary repairs were made at Gibraltar, and the ship then sailed for Philadelphia for complete repair. This was finished on 27 February 1942, after which she returned to Portsmouth, where final work was completed by the end of April. On her return to service she joined the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow during the first week of May, then carried out Russian convoy cover duties and the reinforcement of Spitzbergen. In August she returned to the Mediterranean for Operation Pedestal, during which, on the night of 12/13 August 1942, she was hit by a torpedo from either Ms 16 or Ms 22 off Tunisia and crippled.

The aircraft carrier Eagle had already been sunk. In daylight there were ceaseless air attacks and at night submarines and motor torpedo boats followed up. It was a torpedo from an MTB, either Ms16 or Ms22, that struck Manchester in the early hours of the morning, when she was about 7 miles off the Tunisian coast.

Leading Stoker Albert Slater was in the engine-room when the torpedo struck home. He went through an ordeal which might have been the experience of any of the hundreds of men serving in the engine-rooms of other ships.

He was standing on some plates about 20 feet above the engine-room floor when the explosion plunged everything into darkness. He was blown off the plates, and only the water rushing into the compartment saved him from injury that would have made it impossible for him to get clear. The water carried him up, and there appeared to be nothing to stop his being drowned when the water reached the top of the compartment. Suddenly it ceased to rise, and Slater pulled himself on to a turbine where he sat in pitch darkness - half stifled by heat and steam.

A slight glimmer of light through some pipes gave him fresh hope, but he could not climb over the pipes without being badly burned, so he plunged into the water and came up at a point where the air was a little better. Groping along the deckheads he cut his hand on a broken lamp; but the lamp told him where he was. He went on until he found himself beneath an open hatch. He was pulled clear a few minutes before it became necessary to clamp down the hatch against the advancing waters.

When the Manchester sank three officers and 142 men were picked up, but only after some of them had spent several hours in the water.