HMS Aldenham (L22): The Last Royal Navy Destroyer Lost in the Second World War

A Busy Early War

HMS Aldenham was ordered from Cammell Laird at Birkenhead on 4 July 1940, laid down that August, launched on 27 August 1941, and completed on 5 February 1942. A Hunt-class escort destroyer armed with four 4-inch guns, torpedo tubes and a generous depth charge outfit, she was built for exactly the kind of convoy escort and anti-submarine work that would define much of her career.

She got straight into the thick of it. After working up at Scapa Flow, she deployed with Convoy WS 17 on 21 March 1942, and less than a week later, on 27 March, she combined with HMS Leamington, HMS Grove and HMS Volunteer to sink the German submarine U-587 in the North Atlantic west of Ushant, a genuinely strong early result for a ship barely a month into active service.

Years of Mediterranean Convoy Work

Aldenham transited the Suez Canal and joined the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, spending much of 1942 and 1943 escorting no fewer than 14 convoys between Alexandria, Malta and Tobruk, the unglamorous, essential work that kept the Mediterranean Fleet supplied through some of its hardest years. She went on to support the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, the landings at Salerno that September, Operation Shingle at Anzio, and Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, a genuinely remarkable run of major Allied amphibious operations for a single ship to take part in over the course of little more than a year.

Into the Adriatic

By late 1944, Aldenham had moved into the Adriatic campaign, where her work took on a more varied character. She led a Royal Navy flotilla in the capture of the German hospital ship Bonn, and on 9 December 1944 bombarded German positions on Rab Island alongside HMS Atherstone, continuing the same pattern of steady, aggressive coastal operations that had characterised much of her Mediterranean service.

Lost to a Mine

Aldenham's war ended just five days later. On 14 December 1944, returning from a bombardment mission at around half past three in the afternoon, she struck a mine that exploded beneath her engine room between the islands of Planik and Olib in the Adriatic Sea. The explosion broke the ship in two; her bow sank quickly, followed shortly after by the stern. In total, 126 of her crew were killed, along with two Yugoslav partisans who had been aboard, while 63 survivors, including her commanding officer, Commander James Farrant, were pulled from the water. The wreck site has since been declared a British war grave.

It was a bitter loss made more poignant by its timing: Aldenham holds the grim distinction of being the last Royal Navy destroyer lost in the entire Second World War, sunk with the war in Europe barely five months from its end, after a career that had already taken her through some of the conflict's most significant Mediterranean operations.

Rediscovered Decades Later

Aldenham's wreck was located by Yugoslav Navy specialists in 1974, though it would be years before her full story underwater was pieced together: her 30-metre bow section was found in 1999 at a depth of 86 metres, and her stern section followed in 2000 at 82 metres, finally allowing historians and divers to confirm the exact circumstances of how the ship that had survived Sicily, Salerno and Anzio was ultimately broken apart by a single unseen mine in the closing months of the war.