Inside The Ships
With Richard "The Challenger" Cutland
Inside the HMAS Vampire
Hello. Welcome to Sydney, Australia.
Today, we're on board the destroyer, HMAS Vampire.
Join us today for an in-depth look at this fantastic ship.
The Vampire is actually the second Vampire that was built
to continue the name made famous by the VMW-class destroyer.
The first Vampire and her sister ships
formed the famous scrap-iron flotilla,
so named by the Germans in reference to their age and condition.
The second Vampire was commissioned to the Royal Australian Navy
on the 23rd of June, 1959,
and remained in service until 1986.
Her crew nicknamed her "The Bat",
after a flying vampire bat insignia
perched on the aft funnel on the ship.
Underneath the insignia is the Latin motto, audamus,
which translates as, "let us be daring" -
a great pun, considering the ship being Daring-class.
The Bridge
Here we are now on the bridge of the ship.
Now it was from the bridge that the Big Three were conducted.
That is, the safety of the ship, the navigation,
and also the steering.
Now this actual ship, until the refit in 1970,
was open and exposed to the elements.
Surrounding me, you can see various controls.
Taking pride of place in the centre here is the ship's compass.
Just to my right is the rudder indicator.
And across there, you can see the engine order equipment.
Another thing which is really interesting up on the bridge
is also this sonar equipment,
of course used to actually identify submarines.
The Wheelhouse
The wheelhouse, where the actual steering of the ship
is carried out, with orders coming from the bridge above.
As you can see, it's an incredibly well-protected environment.
Operations
We're here now at the nerve centre of the ship:
the operations room.
It was here during battlestations that the captain
would control and command the ship.
Some 22 personnel were present in this room,
including weapons and systems officers and radar specialists,
all with one clear aim in life:
to collate and gather tactical information
and react to any possible threat.
The room is absolutely full of equipment,
but some of the key things to point out.
Just to the left of me is the radar,
for reacting to any aerial threat.
Across to my right-hand side, we can see the submarine plotter.
And directly above that, the mortar controls
to react to any possible submarine threat.
Directly across from me, we've also got the surface plotter.
This area is where the radio operators
would maintain communications with other ships around the world.
Also, one of the other important tasks they had,
certainly from a morale point of view,
is to receive telegrams for the sailors.
The Daring-class destroyer design evolved in Britain
during the Second World War.
Requirements for a new fleet destroyer for the Royal Navy
saw the first of eight ships ordered in March 1945.
The Darings had a standard displacement of 2,800 tons,
which increased to 3,600 tons at full load.
The new ships were so far beyond accepted destroyer design
that many naval authorities claimed
they should be classified as light cruisers.
The ship and her sisters were 120 meters long,
with a beam of 30 meters.
Her propulsion system consisted of two Foster Wheeler boilers,
feeding two English Electric gear turbines,
which provided 54,000 horsepower to two propeller shafts.
Vampire could sail at over 30 knots,
and had a range of 3,700 nautical miles at 20 knots.
Her standard ship's company consisted of 20 officers
and 300 sailors - quite a number for any destroyer.
X Gun Bay
We're very lucky now to be joined by Len.
Len, thanks ever so much for talking to us.
Now, you served on HMAS Vampire?
I did, I did.
For how long?
Some years.
And your role on the ship was?
I was a gunnery man.
Fantastic. So, very apt, then - we're obviously in the gun bay.
We're in the right place, yeah.
Can you tell us a little bit about the gun bay, please, Len?
The gun bay, it's a very important part of the whole system,
because this is the transfer point of the ordnance,
from the fixed structure of the ship
to the moving structure of the turret.
Because the turret above is all attached to this,
so when this rotates - when the turret rotates,
all this rotates with it.
So, you're getting the ordnance from the ship into the turret,
all hand-moved, until you're ready to load the guns
and then you've got these hoists here.
That's a hoist for the projectile to go up to the gun,
and another one behind here for the propellant,
which is cordite to go up to the gun.
So, it all has to be organised around these rings.
So, if you've got your back to the gun when you're taking
the ordnance out of the hoist from the magazine,
you turn back around, the gun's in a different position.
So, you have to put the ordnance the right way around,
so the Navy's very good.
They put a little cut-out on top, so you know which way
to put the ordnance in, so you don't get them back-to-front.
We were discussing briefly earlier on
about the fuses on the ammunition,
the various fuses you use.
So, for example, the one at the moment on the platform there...
The one on the - ready in the hoist -
is what's called a timed mechanical.
It's got a clock fuse and you set it to so many seconds
to detonate after it leaves the barrel.
The other type is a direct action, which is this one -
requires impact to detonate.
And the third one, which we can't display
because the Navy wouldn't give us any,
that's a proximity fuse.
It detonates 20 feet in front of a target.
Twin Turret
Here we are in the turret, which is the end result
of what you were looking at in the gun bay,
where the ordnance comes up to the turret,
the propellant comes up in this hoist here
and the projectile comes up in this hoist.
Two loaders are here, that take the ordnance out of the hoist
and put them on the loading tray,
which is in front of us here.
The cordite goes on first, then the shell.
Once they're on, hands together and strike the rammer,
which then under hydraulic power,
throws the ordnance up into the breech and shuts the breech.
When the gun fires, the gun recoils,
spits the empty out, and re-cocks the rammer.
Now, this happens every three and a half -
one every three and a half seconds -
which is quite a bit, when you consider
the projectile weighs 25 kilos,
and the cordite weighs about 17 kilos.
Inside the turret is not actually noisy for the firing.
It certainly - it makes a lot of noise -
but the biggest amount of noise
is the hydraulic motors that run everything.
And when the empty goes into the bin,
which is in the centre of the gun bay,
that makes a lot of noise, as well.
Captain's Cabin and Sick Bay
This is the captain's day cabin,
and as you can see, it's full of home comforts,
something which the majority of the crew didn't have.
The ship's sick bay was incredibly well-stocked,
and of course it had to be to cover every eventuality.
Anti-Aircraft Gun
As well as those four and a half inch guns,
Vampire also had other weaponry on board.
Behind me, we can see the Bofors anti-aircraft gun -
this particular one being the Mark V 40 millimetre.
It was an effective gun, with a maximum range of 2,500 meters
and a rate of fire of 140 rounds per minute.
HMAS Vampire served in the Royal Australian Navy
from 1959 to 1986.
Despite her armament, Vampire had a peaceful career,
and was not involved in any combat.
She was involved in the
Southeast Asian Treaty Organisation exercises
held off Singapore during the Indonesian confrontation
with Malaysia in 1965 and offered gun support
while escorting troops to Vietnam in the 1960's.
In June 1970, she sailed into Williamstown Dockyard in Victoria
to undergo an extended refit as part of being paid off
for her half-life modernisation.
She received new gun turrets and fire control systems,
new aircraft warning and navigation radar,
plus replacement of a major portion of her superstructure,
including a closed bridge.
Her old funnels were replaced with new ones.
The pentad torpedo mount was removed and a new radar suite
was installed to stay relevant to changing times.
HMAS Vampire was decommissioned on the 13th of August, 1987,
after serving 27 years in the Royal Australian Navy
and clocking up in the region of 808 thousand nautical miles.
In 1997, she was gifted
to the Australian National Maritime Museum,
to be preserved as a museum ship.