HMS Hermes (95) - Service - 1930s

1930s

On 28 January 1930, Hermes transported the British Minister to China, Sir Miles Lampson, to Nanking for talks with the Chinese Government over the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and she remained there until she sailed downriver to Shanghai on 2 March. By the end of the month, the carrier was back in Hong Kong and remained there until June when she returned to Wei Hai Wei for her annual summer visit. The ship briefly returned to Hong Kong before departing for Great Britain on 7 August. Hermes reached Portsmouth on 23 September, but only remained there for six days before transferring to Sheerness. Captain E. J. G. MacKinnon relieved Captain Campbell there on 2 October. She was given a brief refit at Chatham Dockyard before sailing for the China Station. The ship had aboard only 403 and 440 Flights on this deployment and transported six Blackburn Ripons to deliver to Malta and HMS Eagle. Hermes departed Portsmouth on 12 November and reached Hong Kong on 2 January 1931. En route to her summer refuge at Wei Hai Wei, the ship received a report on 9 July that the submarine Poseidon had been sunk there while on exercise. Captain MacKinnon took command of the rescue effort when Hermes arrived at the accident site an hour afterwards. Eight of the submarine's crewmen managed to escape through the forward torpedo hatch, but only six of those reached the surface where they were picked up and treated in Hermes's sickbay; two of those six subsequently died.

The ship remained at Wei Hai Wei until the end of August when she sailed up the Yangtze River for Hankow. She reached the inland port on 5 September and dispatched armed guards to put down unrest on several British-owned merchant ships. Her primary purpose, though, was to aid the Chinese government's survey of the massive flooding in the area. Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, were also in the city to survey the flooding with their Lockheed Sirius float-plane and they were invited to use the carrier as their base. Unfortunately, their aircraft was flipped on the morning of 2 October by a strong current as it was being hoisted out by Hermes's crane. They were quickly rescued by a boat from the carrier, but their aircraft was damaged. Captain MacKinnon offered to take them and their aircraft to Shanghai where it could be repaired and the ship departed the next day. She remained in Shanghai until 2 November, when she sailed for Hong Kong. Hermes received a distress message on 3 November from a Japanese merchantman, SS Ryinjin Maru, that had run aground on the Tan Rocks near the Chinese mainland at the mouth of the Taiwan Strait. The ship managed to rescue nine crew members before she was relieved by the Japanese destroyer Nashi and could proceed to Hong Kong. She reached the city on 7 November and remained in the area until April 1932.

Captain MacKinnon took sick the next month and he was relieved by Captain W. B. Mackenzie on 25 February. After a short refit, the carrier, escorted by the destroyer Whitehall, made a brief visit to Amoy in late April before sailing for Wei Hai Wei where she stayed until 17 September. On that day, Hermes sailed for the Japanese city of Nagasaki and then spent four weeks in Shanghai. The ship did not return to Hong Kong until 28 October and spent the next few months there. In January 1933, the carrier visited the Philippines for several weeks before returning to Hong Kong where she was given a brief refit. After short visits to Tsingtao and Wei Hai Wei, Hermes departed Hong Kong in mid-June for Great Britain. She reached Sheerness on 22 July, but the ship was transferred shortly afterwards to Chatham Dockyard and opened to the public during Navy Week in early August. She sailed the next month for Devonport Dockyard for a thorough refit. Transverse arresting gear was fitted and her machinery was thoroughly overhauled. Sometime in 1932, the two single 2-pounders were replaced by two quadruple .50-calibre Mark III machine gun mounts.

Captain the Honourable G. Fraser was appointed on 15 August 1934 as the new commanding officer and the ship began trials of the new equipment in early November. At the same time the nine Fairey Seal torpedo bombers of 824 Squadron joined the ship. Hermes left Portsmouth on 18 November for the China Station and arrived at Hong Kong on 4 January 1935. The Hawker Osprey reconnaissance biplanes of 803 Squadron were transferred aboard from Eagle before that ship left Hong Kong. Pirates captured a British-owned merchant ship, SS Tungchow, with 90 British and American children on board on 29 January and Hermes was ordered to search for the ship when she failed to arrive at Chefoo at her scheduled time. Three Seals spotted her in Bias Bay on 1 February and the pirates abandoned the ship when it was found, leaving the passengers unharmed. Hermes remained in the vicinity of Hong Kong until mid-May when she steamed to Wei Hai Wei. There she remained until 12 September when the Admiralty decided to transfer her to Singapore where she was closer to East Africa in case a military response to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia was deemed necessary. The ship arrived on 19 September and remained in the area for the next five months.

The ship's aircraft were detailed to search for the missing Lady Southern Cross of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith when it failed to arrive at Singapore on 8 November during an attempt to set a new speed record between Britain and Australia. No sign was found of either the aircraft or its crew despite a month-long search. Hermes returned to Hong Kong at the beginning of March 1936 before beginning a tour of Japan on 21 April, escorted by the destroyers Duncan and Delight. She summered at Wei Hai Wei and did not return to Hong Kong until the end of October. For most of January 1937, the carrier, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Dorsetshire and the destroyers Duncan and Diana, toured the Dutch East Indies. The ship's torpedo bombers practised torpedo attacks on the cruisers Cumberland and Dorsetshire in February, working with the Royal Air Force's torpedo bombers based at RAF Seletar, Singapore. Hermes left Singapore on 17 March, leaving 803 Squadron behind, and reached Plymouth on 3 May 1937. Following the Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead on 20 May for King George VI, she was assigned to the Reserve Fleet. On 16 July 1938, Hermes was transferred from the Reserve Fleet and became a training ship at Devonport.

Plans were made in 1937 to replace Hermes's three single 4-inch guns with two twin 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, one forward and another aft of the island, as well as two octuple 2-pounder mounts. A single High-Angle Control System would have been fitted to control these guns, but the dockyard was overwhelmed with other work and couldn't begin to design the changes until July 1938. They were scheduled to be installed between September and December 1939, but the beginning of the war intervened and nothing was done. The ship's petrol storage was to be increased to 13,000 imperial gallons (59,000 l; 16,000 US gal) in April 1940, but this also does not seem to have occurred.