The light cruiser spent almost her entire wartime career on Arctic convoy duties, except for a deployment south for the landings in North Africa in November 1942.

Jamaica escorted several aircraft carriers in 1944 as they flew off airstrikes that attacked the German battleship Tirpitz in northern Norway.

The Fiji class carried a maximum of 1,700 long tons (1,700 t) of fuel oil that gave them a range of 6,520 nautical miles (12,080 km; 7,500 mi) at 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph).

[1] The armament of the Fiji-class ships consisted of a dozen 6-inch (152 mm) Mk XXIII guns in four three-gun turrets, one superfiring pair fore and aft of the superstructure.

She was assigned to the Centre Task Force of Operation Torch in early November and was unsuccessfully attacked by the Vichy French submarine Fresnel.

Jamaica and Sheffield, with several escorting destroyers, formed Force R under the command of Rear-Admiral Robert Burnett and were tasked to cover the convoy against any German surface ships.

Initially driven off, Admiral Hipper returned, only to be engaged by Force R shortly before noon and was hit by three 6-inch shells from the cruisers.

Two German destroyers, Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt and Z4 Richard Beitzen, misidentified Sheffield as Admiral Hipper and attempted to form up on her.

Sheffield sank Friedrich Eckoldt at a range of 2 miles (3.2 km) while Jamaica unsuccessfully engaged Richard Beitzen.

On 15 December she was assigned to Force 2, the distant escort for Convoy JW 55A, with the battleship HMS Duke of York and four destroyers.

Before he reached his destination, Admiral Fraser received Ultra information that a sortie by the German battleship Scharnhorst was likely to attack Convoy JW 55B, which was already at sea.

[11] A shell from Duke of York's last volley penetrated into Scharnhorst's Number One boiler room and effectively destroyed it.

This reduced the German ship's speed sufficiently for the British destroyers to catch up and make four torpedo hits using a pincer attack.

This slowed the ship again, so that Jamaica and Duke of York also caught up and opened fire at a range of 10,400 yards (5.9 mi; 9.5 km).

[12] She was detached from the latter to escort the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious as she launched an air strike against the German battleship Tirpitz as part of Operation Tungsten.

Jamaica escorted the Convoys JW 59 and RA 59 in August–September[13] before starting a major refit in October that lasted until April 1945.

She, and her escort HMS Black Swan, were ordered to rendezvous with the American light cruiser USS Juneau off the east coast of Korea to bombard advancing North Korean troops.

Two days after the landing Jamaica and the American heavy cruiser USS Rochester were attacked by a pair of Yakovlev piston-engined fighters at dawn.