At 1100 on Friday 2 June 1944, just four days before the D-Day landings, a Royal Navy cruiser was commissioned for trials alongside Vickers-Armstrongs’ shipyard on the River Tyne. The new HMS Swiftsure was to be the final Royal Navy cruiser delivered for wartime service when she was formally accepted from the builders later that month. Originally intended to be one of a large series of ‘Improved Fiji’ class cruisers, she was destined to serve as a class of her own.
traced her origins to decisions made on the British cruiser force during the darkest days of World War II. The outbreak of hostilities in September 1939 had brought to an end the regime of naval armaments treaties that had restricted cruiser displacement and armament during much of the inter-war period. Various schemes were devised for new and more powerful ships that could be built under this newfound freedom. A number of factors,
