[5] The Town-class ships mounted twelve BL six-inch (152 mm) Mk XXIII guns in four triple-gun turrets, one superfiring pair each fore and aft of the superstructure.

[3] The cruisers were designed to handle three Supermarine Walrus amphibious reconnaissance aircraft, one on the fixed D1H catapult and the others in the two hangars abreast the forward funnel, but only two were ever carried in service.

Manchester was torpedoed during this convoy escort mission and while she was being repaired in the United States and Britain, she received three more Oerlikon guns for a total of eight weapons, six of which were positioned in the superstructure, one on the roof of 'X' turret and one on the quarterdeck.

The ship was laid down at their Hebburn shipyard on 28 March 1936 and was launched on 12 April 1937 by the wife of Joseph Toole, the Lord Mayor of Manchester.

They spent the next month making port visits on the western coast of British India before returning to Ceylon for a maintenance period in Colombo's dockyard.

They conducted exercises with the aircraft carrier Eagle, the heavy cruiser Kent and the submarine depot ship Medway off the eastern coast of Malaya for the next several weeks.

[13] Visiting Port Blair in the Andaman Islands en route on 28 March, Manchester arrived at Trincomalee to prepare for a refit in Colombo.

The sisters sailed to Aden when they met the sloops Egret and Fleetwood later that month to practice convoy escort tactics in light of the potential threat posed by Italian colonies on the Red Sea.

On 7 April Manchester, her half-sister Southampton, the anti-aircraft cruiser Calcutta and four destroyers were escorting the 43 ships of Convoy ON-25 bound for Norway.

The only incident that night was when Manchester spotted a submarine crossing between the two cruisers on the surface; the ship attempted to ram, but only managed a glancing blow.

[19] On 12 April, Captain Herbert Packer assumed command and the ship departed Scapa to rendezvous with the escort for Convoy NP-1 which was loaded with two infantry brigades bound for Narvik, Norway.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to take advantage of the unopposed occupation of Namsos on the 14th and ordered that the 146th Infantry Brigade should arrive offshore at dusk on the 15th to reinforce the initial landing force.

Layton chose to escort the troopships Empress of Australia and MS Chrobry with Manchester, her half-sister HMS Birmingham (C19), the anti-aircraft cruiser Cairo and three destroyers.

The threat of air attack and poor port facilities at Namsos caused the Admiralty to change the destination, but the troops and most of their equipment completed unloading on the 19th.

On 22 April she returned to Rosyth to begin loading about half of the 15th Infantry Brigade, together with Birmingham and the heavy cruiser York, to be ferried to Åndalsnes and Molde.

The cruisers engaged Luftwaffe aircraft when they unsuccessfully attacked the next day and then were ordered to return to Rosyth in light of the submarine threat where she began a brief refit.

[22] On 15 November the ship departed Scapa Flow to rendezvous with a convoy that conveying RAF personnel and equipment to Alexandria, Egypt.

After their arrival in Gibraltar on 21 November, Manchester and Southampton loaded roughly 1,400 men and many tons of supplies and departed on the 25th, escorted by Force H. They were to be met by ships of the Mediterranean Fleet south of Sardinia, Italy, the whole affair codenamed Operation Collar.

The British concentrated their cruisers, even though the efficiency of Manchester and Southampton was reduced by their passengers, and engaged their Italian counterparts at long range with little effect.

On 18 May the cruiser and Birmingham were ordered to patrol the Iceland-Faroe Islands gap, but they played no part in the search for the Bismarck as they were repositioned north of Iceland in case the German ships attempted to return to Germany through the Denmark Strait after the battlecruiser Hood was sunk on 24 May.

Manchester sailed on 9 June to Hvalfjord, Iceland, to patrol the Denmark Strait for the rest of the month, returning to Scapa on 3 July.

The estimated 2,000 long tons (2,032 t) of water also caused the ship to trim down at the stern by 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m) and filled the aft engine room which meant that only a single propeller shaft was operable.

Earlier, the destroyer Pathfinder had stopped to render assistance at 01:54 and Drew had transferred 172 wounded and superfluous crewmen before she had to depart to rejoin the convoy.

Most made it ashore, but an estimated 60 to 90 men were rescued by the destroyers Somali and Eskimo when they were dispatched at 07:13 to render assistance to the cruiser after Pathfinder met up the rest of the 10th CS.

Rear-Admiral Bernard Rawlings, Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Foreign), and the First Sea Lord, Admiral Dudley Pound reviewed the board's findings and believed that Drew's actions showed a lack of determination to fight his ship.

A week later the Admiralty ordered that a court martial be convened for the loss of Manchester under Article 92 of the Naval Discipline Act of 1866 and it began on 2 March 1943.

The initial damage control report given to him after the torpedo hit estimated three hours to get steam power restored which allowed him only a narrow window to get clear of the coast.

His evidence made little mention of "Emergency Stations" and his reasoning behind evacuating unwounded crewmen aboard Pathfinder before ascertaining the full extent of the damage.

[33] After the modern Royal Navy's longest-ever court martial, the court determined that Manchester's damage was remarkably similar to that suffered on 23 July 1941 whilst under his command; that the cruiser was capable of steaming at 10–13 knots (19–24 km/h; 12–15 mph) on her port outer propeller shaft, that her main and secondary armament was largely intact, and that the initial list of 10–11 degrees had been considerably reduced via counter-flooding, jettisoning her torpedoes, and transfers of fuel oil.

[34] A diving expedition visited the wreck at a depth of about 80 m (260 ft) in 2002 and footage taken by the divers was used in a TV documentary entitled Running the Gauntlet produced by Crispin Sadler.