Cape Spada,

[dougeagle]

As part of me getting into the WWII naval battles, I'm looking at the Battle of Cape Spada in which Italian light cruisers tangle with British/ Aussie cruiser and destroyers. Now, from the research that I have been doing shows the Australian light cruiser Sydney to be a modified Leander class light cruiser. In GHQ's TO&E for it, it says the Sydney is a Perth class light cruiser.

Is there a difference between the 2 class of ships?

[TAMMY]

They are e same thing. The Sidney was a Perth class cruiser and the Perth class was a modified Leander class

The immediate visual difference were the funnels. The Leabder class has one funnel only while the Perth Class had two ofe them due to a different arrangement of the machinery.

[mark.hinds]

Sydney was one of a class of 3 follow-on Leanders, but with unit machinery (2 funnels). All 3 were sold to Australia, and given names of Australian cities (Sydney, Perth, and Hobart). All 3 looked basically the same, except that Sydney retained her original single 4-inch secondary mounts, whereas her 2 sisters had them replaced with twin 4-inch mounts with shelters for the gun crews in between. So the GHQ Perth model is what you want, but you can do some minor mods on the 4-inch gun area if desired.

Some useful links; the first one has a plans link:
http://www.defence.gov.au/sydneyii/fina ... index.html
http://www.perthone.com/perth.htm
http://www.world-war.co.uk/sydney/sydney.php3

MH

[dougeagle]

Awesome stuff guys...thanks