Two additional cruisers that served in the RHN, but whom I have not yet included were the old, but spirited
Helle of 1912-vintage and the even older ACR
Averoff (
Giorgios Averoff) Since Navarchos already has provided us with two sterling depictions of these ships (the latter as if rebuilt by Ansaldo, Trieste, Italy, 1937-39), I will just go ahead and re-post them hereas a reminder of how they looked like.
What needs to be said is the following:
Helle was stationed with the Black Seas fleet, not the Adriatic, as would have been her real-life service station. Faithfully she accompanied the main body of the fleet, often performing rather daring mine-laying operations right under the nose of the Turkish enemy. When the break-out from the Euxine was ordered, May, 1942, she bravely led the remaining Black Seas Fleet units through the closed and mined Bosporus, hitting a mine on the 23rd and blowing up with heavy loss of life - but not till she had cleared the Straits for the Cruiser Fleet.
The
Averoff finally received her long anticipated rebuilding. That she was rebuilt in the first place was controversial enough, since the Hellenes held this ship in a particularly high and nostalgic esteem, due to her association with the famed Adm. Pavlos Kontourioutis.
She received a modern bridge, had her fore funnel trunked back into her middle one and received funnel caps. Four obsolete, Italian 100mm HA/LA two-barrel gun mounts were situated amidships; the ships casemates having been plated in and the secondary armament supressed. A flared, lengthened bow, enabled the old cruiser to reach 24.5 knots. She was also reboilered with oil-heated boilers.
For most of the time, afterwards,
Averoff was relegated to the reserve; she functioned as the administrative flagship for the C-in-C in the absence of the CA
Olympia, which almost exclusively served as the active flagship for the Euxine Fleet. After the war, she was quickly put back into the reserve, and is, today, along with the
Olympia and
Sphendoni preserved as a museum ship.