Hms Pegasus was launched from Harland and wolf shipyard in Belfast in 1928. She was 820ft long and weighed 46,000 tonnes. She was armed with 4 16inch and 9 8inch guns. She also had a top speed of 25 knots.
Pegasus entered service on the 19th January 1931 in which she joined the main fleet at scapa flow. For almost 6 months she sat here doing virtually nothing. Then she spent most of her time practicing for war. When ww2 started she was employed primarily for escort duty. She was going to be used to hunt the Bismarck with hood and prince of Wales but on the way home from her latest convoy escort she struck 2 mines, crippling her. By march 1943 she was battered by continuous bomber attacks, her once mighty silver hull was now riddled with black scorch marks from bombs that hit her side but failed to penetrate the 3ft thick armour belt. in may 1943 she received orders to hunt down and sink 2 battle cruisers. She joined up with the old cruiser “admiral cox†and set of to hunt the 2 enemy ships. How ever 4 days out of port a u-boat had torpedoed and sunk the admiral cox. Pegasus was hit by 2 torpedoes which crippled her starboard engine. The ship headed to the mid Atlantic at a speed of 16 knots when mechanical failure suddenly meant she was dead in the water. In 9 hours she was surrounded and sunk by enemy battleships. Pegasus’ bow rose 40 degrees before the ship slid from sight at 12:57pm.
After sliding beneath the surface the ship’s 2nd funnel collapsed on the deck, crushing the railings, colapsable boat, the fwd starboard deck crane and the aft davit of the lifeboat on the starboard side. Currents tore away the first funnel, mast and many of the deck fittings. As she sank the bow dropped and she was droping towards the bottom at a speed of 20 knots, Pegasus slamed intoe a long flat underwater plane 2 ½ miles beneath the surface. She hit the ocean floor bow first at an angle of 45 degrees moving forward as well as down, causing the ship to skid across the ocean floor for 180feet before finally coming to rest.
The wreck of the Pegasus was found on may 31st 2001, 58 years after she sank. Today she remains a war grave to the 3300 crewmen who died on hms Pegasus and the admiral cox that fateful voyage, a permanent reminder of a time when the whole world went mad !………
