page_title: Greek cruiser Georgios Averof
section_title: World War II and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Greek cruiser Georgios Averof / History / World War II and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: THE BRITISH NAVY BRINGS FOOD TO GREECE. 20 AND 21 OCTOBER 1944, PIRAEUS HARBOUR, ATHENS. BRITISH MERCHANTMEN ESCORTED BY SHIPS OF THE BRITISH AND GREEK NAVIES, BROUGHT THE FIRST FOOD SUPPLIES FOR THE RELIEF OF GREECE. (A 26352) Greek citizens watching their country's veteran heavy cruiser GEORGE AVEROFF after her arrival at Piraeus. Copyright: � IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205157963
context_page_description: Georgios Averof is a modified Pisa-class armored cruiser built in Italy for the Royal Hellenic Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The ship served as the Greek flagship during most of the first half of the century. Although popularly known as a battleship in Greek, she is in fact an armored cruiser, the only ship of this type still in existence.
  The ship was initially ordered by the Italian Regia Marina, but budgetary constraints led Italy to offer it for sale to international customers. With the bequest of the wealthy benefactor George Averoff as down payment, Greece acquired the ship in 1909. Launched in 1910, Averof arrived in Greece in September 1911. The most modern warship in the Aegean at the time, she served as the flagship of admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis in the First Balkan War, and played a major role in the establishment of Greek predominance over the Ottoman Navy and the incorporation of many Aegean islands to Greece.
  The ship continued to serve in World War I, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, and the interwar period, receiving a modernization in France in 1925 to 1927.
context_section_description: In the early morning of 18 April 1941, after the collapse of the Greco-German front, the Averof's crew disobeyed direct orders to scuttle the ship in preventing her possible capture by the enemy.  They cut through a closed harbor-boom with axes and handsaws to let the vessel escape, and their commanding officer dramatically embarked up a rope ladder to join them as the vessel was underway.  Under the constant threat of Luftwaffe air strikes (which had sunk many Greek and British warships during the evacuation), the cruiser sailed to Souda Bay, Crete. Then on to the UK naval station at Alexandria, arriving in Egypt on 23 April.
   
  While too slow to serve with the British Fleet in the Mediterranean, and also lacking sufficient anti-aircraft armament for that theatre of operation, the old armored cruiser was considered quite appropriate for escorting Indian Ocean convoys.  In this capacity, she could offer more firepower than a contemporary heavy cruiser (albeit with less gunnery range), and twice their respective armour protection, quite sufficient to deal with the threat posed by German raiders operating in the sector.  This task also required no more speed than her then greatly reduced maximum of 12 knots. So from September 1941 through October 1942, under British control, she was assigned to convoy escort and patrol duties in the Indian Ocean and based at Bombay.
  The Averof left Alexandria on 30 June and passed through the Suez Canal to Port Tewfiq (Port Suez). The three weeks spent there saw her crew involved in the rescue of sailors and soldiers aboard the Cunard Line troopship MV Georgic, which was set ablaze and sunk at an adjacent berth during a Luftwaffe air raid on 6 July. With several of her boilers deactivated, and the fuel-oil spraying mechanism for her coal furnaces now inoperable, the Averof was then capable of only 9 knots, insufficient for her planned convoy duties.  So on 20 July, the ship departed for Port Sudan, where she underwent three weeks of emergency repairs to her oil-accelerant apparatus, raising her cruising speed to the required minimum.  The vessel then resumed her passage of the Red Sea and reached the port of Aden, in late-August.  From there, she sailed in an unassigned convoy crossing of the Indian Ocean, arriving at Bombay on 10 September 1941.
  As the Averof had not seen an overhaul of her boilers and furnaces since 1926, mechanical problems continued to plague the vessel and ultimately cut short her usefulness in convoy service.  On 28 September she was assigned to escort an oil tanker convoy (BP.16) from Bombay to Basra in the Persian Gulf, but was detached before completing the voyage due to faulty boilers. This was of extra concern because on 24 September, the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran had sunk the Stamatios G. Embiricos at the equator, ending three months of raider inactivity in the sector.  By the time the Averof was forced to leave her convoy, the Greek freighter was already four days overdue to Columbo, Ceylon, meaning the enemy would have had a week to sail in any direction from the Embiricos' last known position.  However, the Kormoran had moved southeast towards Australia (and her fateful meeting with HMAS Sydney), and convoy BP.16 reached Basra safely on 5 October.  The Averof returned to Bombay on 4 October, where the cruiser underwent emergency repairs. On 20 December, she finally sailed again from Bombay to “cover” a troop-support convoy (BM.31B) headed for Singapore with a stop at Columbo.  Here she was detached, returning to Bombay on 5 January 1942.
  On 9 January the Averof again put to sea in advance of the unescorted departures of six troopships from Bombay and Karachi, headed for Basra (BP.31A – 31B).  The cruiser could not hope to keep up with these vessels, traveling at 14 to 16 knots, so she was once again designated as a patrol vessel (“defensive cover”) for the sea lane in which they would eventually overtake her.  Turning in the Gulf of Oman, the Averof's lookout spotted a modern freighter appearing to shadow the warship at a safe distance. The cruiser we
caption: Averoff in Piraeus, 20 October 1944
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