Besides the huge power plant, a large part of her hull was taken up by armament, ammunition handling gear, magazines, storerooms, fuel and freshwater tanks, so that the accommodation for her company of some two hundred ratings was extremely cramped and very uncomfortable. In harbour, with a minimum number of men on watch, many of the junior ratings slept in blankets and sheets on the tops of mess tables and benches. Most workshops were occupied by individual members of the crew berthing in camp beds to avoid their confined mess decks and the consequent smell of overcrowding. This became especially acute on the tropics. Whilst the ship had been fitted with localised air-conditioning units, these were unreliable, and in the tropics the heat generated from the additional electrical equipment fitted in the modernisation compounded an already torrid situation if the air conditioning failed.
The galley and food counters were situated in front of the funnel, requiring those in the after mess decks to carry their trays of food along the exposed iron deck. In rough weather Cambrian proved to be a very wet ship, the iron deck often out of bounds, awash in several feet of water. In these conditions the men accommodated aft messed in the fore part of the ship wherever they could find a space. In heavy weather the fetid mess-deck conditions were exacerbated by the clattering of loose gear rolling up and down the decks and the reek of vomit. In sum, the junior rates’ accommodation could at best be described as squalid. Little wonder that the traditional ‘tot’, a generous slug of rum, was so welcome at lunchtime.
The officers fared much better, most occupying single-berth cabins, while the compact but comfortably appointed wardroom provided a pleasant area to relax in. The tradition of dressing for dinner even when at sea had endured, and most enjoyed a glass or two before sitting down to eat in the evening. The officers on the whole worked as a strong team and were a convivial bunch, which made a refreshing improvement from the anonymity of Eagle’s huge wardroom population, or Wizard’s dysfunctional leadership. Conley and one other midshipman shared a two-berth cabin situated in what was effectively a steel box on the upper deck, directly abaft the funnel and adjoining the radio transmitter room, which was packed full of hot equipment. When on one occasion in the Arabian Sea the cabin’s air conditioner failed, the cabin temperature soared above 50 °C.
Apart from these shortcomings, Conley was soon made aware of the ship’s deficiencies in the way of armament. In the development of the modernisation specification for the CA-class gunnery system, one key element was missed out: that of aircraft target acquisition. A gunnery system relies upon the target being promptly detected by radar or visual means in order to direct the narrow radar-beamed gun director onto the target at adequate range for the prediction process to calculate precisely the offset required for the shells to be placed within detonation range of the target. The modern anti-aircraft shell transmits a high-frequency signal which within 100ft or so of the target causes detonation, with the intention of destroying or disabling the target. With a maximum effective anti-aircraft range of 7,000 yards, against an incoming aircraft flying at 600 knots, there were only 20 seconds available to defend the ship. Prompt target acquisition was therefore of vital importance but, in the case of the CA-class destroyers, radar target detection depended upon radar equipment from the Second World War, developed for defence against piston-engined aircraft of little more than 300 knots. Conley noted in his midshipman’s journal that ‘the Type 293 Radar did not perform satisfactorily as sometimes the test aircraft flew overhead still undetected’.
This poor performance, exacerbated by the proximity of land, was troubling. The alternative, visual target acquisition, relied upon a very rudimentary arrangement of a pair of standard binoculars being fixed to a crude device which transmitted target bearing and elevation to the gun director, and of course depended upon good visibility and sharp eyesight if the target was to be acquired in plenty of time to achieve successful engagement. There was much better and not over-expensive equipment available at the time of the Cambrian’s upgrading, but such additional expenditure was not considered an important enough matter to compromise the prime objective of maintaining an impressive number of hulls in the Fleet, for reasons already touched upon. In terms of anti-aircraft effectiveness, the resources expended upon the CA-class modernisations were squandered in the name of economy. What impact this would have had in the achievements of the class in a shooting war may be left to the reader’s imagination.
Any anti-aircraft gunnery system depending upon the prediction of the aircraft’s position is going to be seriously challenged by a low-flying aircraft adopting an evasive flight path — precisely what the Fleet Air Arm pilots flying the Buccaneers were trained to do to fox the enemy’s radar tracking. In theory at least, the high-altitude Soviet cruise missile flying straight and steady should have been a much easier target. However, this proved a faulty premise when the Israeli destroyer Eilat, which was of very similar capability to the Cambrian, was sunk off Port Said in 1967 by cruise missiles fired from Soviet-built Komar-class missile boats of the Egyptian navy. This was exactly the type of opposition Cambrian was likely to be up against when deployed against the Indonesians in the Far East. That said, within the limitations of the gunnery system, the Commanding Officer, Commander Conrad Jenkin, himself a gunnery specialist, was determined that the ship would be as efficient as possible. Consequently, the ship’s weapons maintenance team were to work very hard ensuring the system fully performed to its limited capability.
Notwithstanding the high-level reasons for doing so, reliance upon such local make-do and mend seemed to Conley extraordinary, the more so since it was a deficiency from which the Royal Navy had taken dreadful losses during the Second World War. Despite these hard lessons, for many decades afterwards the Royal Navy would continue with inadequate anti-aircraft weapon systems accompanied by a seeming lack of political or Service will to rectify this. The losses of ships to aircraft or missile attack in the Falklands War was to deliver a tardy and expensive wake-up call to the Ministry of Defence, but even then it was to take almost thirty years before the Royal Navy had a ship capable of effectively dealing with most types of air attack in the shape of the Type 45 Daring-class destroyer.
On the other hand, the Cambrian’s gunnery system would have been effective against surface ships and for use in shore bombardment. This had been dramatically demonstrated in her part in helping put down the East African mutinies that had occurred early in 1964 and which almost overthrew the government of Tanganyika which had gained independence in December 1961. The new nation’s military forces consisted of only two battalions of the former King’s African Rifles, reconstituted as the 1st and 2nd Tanganyikan Rifles, but still largely commanded by the same British officers who remained in the country. In January 1964 civil unrest occurred in the port city of Dar es Salaam and the 1stTanganyikan Rifles mutinied, disarming their officers and packing them over the border into Kenya. The 2nd Regiment, stationed in Tabora, followed suit and with the British High Commissioner detained in his residence, the key points in the capital were occupied.