description: HMS Penelope, a 6-inch gun cruiser, won fame the hard way. At the beginning of the war it seemed she had become what sailors call a Jonah ship. She grounded in the Vestfjord during the Norwegian Campaign while searching for enemy shipping and the captain ordered her to be scuttled. But for a 'we can save her' hunch from the engineer in charge she would have expired then and there. Ed Gordon, who served in the cruiser, tells in vivid detail how she fought her way back to take a permanent place in the annals of the Royal Navy. After an extensive refit and with a new captain Penelope sailed to the Mediterranean and won seven Battle Honours, for she was always in the thick of the action. Although designed as a cheap, light vessel suitable for convoying, she was involved in the destruction of twenty-three enemy vessels and numerous aircraft. In one fifteen-day period in 1942, while based at Malta, she survived 2,000 sorties by Axis bombers which dropped 3,000 tons of bombs and 14 aerial torpedoes - she was then dubbed, Pepperpot.
language: English
title: H. M. S. "Pepperpot!" The Penelope in World War Two
titlecomplete: H. M. S. "Pepperpot!" The Penelope in World War Two
ratings_count: 3
publisher: R. Hale