HMS Charity: The Destroyer That Sank a Train, Then Fell to Missiles as Shah Jahan

A Destroyer for the Postwar Fleet

HMS Charity was built by John I. Thornycroft and Company at Woolston, her keel laid on 9 July 1943, launched on 30 November 1944, and commissioned on 19 November 1945, a C-class destroyer armed with four QF 4.5-inch guns, Bofors and Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns and quadruple 21-inch torpedo tubes, entering service just after the Second World War had ended.

Patrolling Palestine

HMS Charity served with the 1st Destroyer Squadron in the Mediterranean, and in 1947 took part in operations preventing illegal immigration into Palestine, part of the Royal Navy's difficult and often thankless role attempting to intercept ships carrying Jewish refugees seeking to reach Palestine in defiance of British restrictions during the tense final years of the Mandate.

A Train Destroyed Off the Korean Coast

HMS Charity served with the 8th Destroyer Flotilla during the Korean War, steaming an extraordinary 126,000 nautical miles over the course of her deployment, and in the course of coastal patrol and gunfire support duties, destroyed an enemy train with naval gunfire, a genuinely striking piece of work that illustrated just how effectively a destroyer's guns could be brought to bear against targets well inland from the immediate coastline, disrupting North Korean supply and transport links along the Korean peninsula's coast.

Modernised, Then Sold

HMS Charity was modernised with her rear gun turret removed and replaced by Squid anti-submarine mortars, extending her useful life before she was paid off into reserve in 1955. She was sold to the United States Navy on 16 June 1958, before being transferred onward to the Pakistan Navy that December, recommissioned as Shah Jahan.

Struck by Missiles Alongside Her Old Fleetmate

Shah Jahan, the former HMS Charity, met her end on 4 December 1971 during Operation Trident, India's daring missile boat strike against Pakistani naval forces at Karachi during the Indo-Pakistani War, the same devastating operation that sank PNS Khaibar, formerly the Battle-class destroyer HMS Cadiz. Shah Jahan was struck by Indian missiles during the attack and left irreparably damaged, subsequently scrapped rather than repaired, a sobering final chapter for a ship whose Royal Navy career had ranged from patrolling the tense waters off Mandatory Palestine to breaking up enemy rail transport during the Korean War, only to end her days destroyed by exactly the kind of modern anti-ship missile technology that her original 1940s design could never have anticipated.