HMS Bonaventure
Marker: recorded wreck position (Date not recorded).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Bonaventure | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Ship type | light cruiser | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Cause of loss | War action | Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence |
| Nationality / flag | United Kingdom | Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country |
| Operator | Royal Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Conflict | Battle of the Atlantic | Wikidata P607 conflict |
| Sea / ocean | Mediterranean Sea | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Position | 33.3333, 26.5833 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Bonaventure was the lead ship of the Dido-class light cruisers built for the Royal Navy (RN) during the 1930s and during the Second World War. Completed in 1940, Bonaventure was assigned to the Home Fleet and participated in Operation Fish, the evacuation of British wealth from the UK to Canada in July. The ship made one short patrol in August into the North Atlantic to search for German blockade runners and followed that up by escorting an aircraft carrier as it conducted air strikes in Southern Norway in September. The next month she was tasked to provide cover for anti-shipping raids off the Norwegian coast. Bonaventure participated in the unsuccessful search for the German commerce raider Admiral Scheer in November and sustained weather damage that caused her to spend time in a dockyard for repairs. She was part of the escort force for Convoy WS 5A in December and helped to drive off another German commerce raider. While searching for stragglers from the convoy, the cruiser sank a German blockade runner.
Bonaventure was one of the escorts for Operation Excess, a convoy bound for Malta in January 1941 and helped to sink an Italian torpedo boat as the convoy approached Malta; she was transferred to the…
Diving & visiting
The main armament of the Dido's was intended to consist of ten 5.25-inch (133 mm) guns in five superfiring twin-gun turrets on the ship's centreline, with three turrets forward of the superstructure and two aft, designated 'A', 'B', 'Q', 'X' and 'Y' from bow to stern. Production difficulties with the turrets forced the navy to substitute a 4-inch (102 mm) Mk V star shell gun for 'X' turret on Bonaventure. Two quadruple two-pounder (40 mm (1.6 in)) AA gun mounts were positioned just forward of the aft funnel, one on each broadside to provide close-in anti-aircraft protection, backed up by two quadruple Vickers 0.50-inch (12.7 mm) machine gun mounts on the bridge wings.
Location
- Recorded position: 33.3333, 26.5833 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Mediterranean Sea
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Bonaventure (31) (revision 1375014526), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Armament, Fire control and sensors, and protection”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- HMS Hermione 1942 · 54 km
- HMS Jackal 1942 · 81 km
- HMS Jervis 81 km
- HMS Barham 1941 · 87 km
- HMS Lively 1942 · 89 km
- INS Dakar 97 km
Other wrecks of the Battle of the Atlantic
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- U-35 1939
- U-40 1939
- HMS Jervis Bay 1940
- U-102 1940
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- U-142 1940
- U-26 1940
- HMS Repulse 1941
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All 704 wrecks of the Battle of the Atlantic →
Browse more: Open ocean wrecks · Mediterranean Sea