HMS Decoy (H75): She Evacuated a King, Then Sank Three U-Boats as HMCS Kootenay

Constructed at Woolston

HMS Decoy was built by John I.

Thornycroft and Company at Woolston, Southampton, her keel laid on 25 June 1931, launched on 7 June 1932, and completed on 17 January 1933 at a cost of £225,236 excluding equipment supplied directly by the Admiralty, a D-class destroyer displacing 1,375 long tons standard, capable of 36 knots, and carrying four 4.7-inch guns alongside anti-aircraft armament, torpedo tubes and depth charges.

Hunting Italian Submarines

HMS Decoy was initially assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet, transferring briefly to Freetown in early 1940 for West African convoy escort duty before returning to the Mediterranean as Italy entered the war.

She helped sink the Italian submarine Console Generale Liuzzi on 27 June 1940 and the Argonauta two days later, and took part in the Battle of Calabria on 9 July 1940, one of the largest fleet actions of the entire Mediterranean naval campaign.

HMS Decoy was struck by a bomb at Alexandria on 13 November 1940 that penetrated completely through the ship, and suffered further damage in January 1941, requiring permanent repairs at Malta that ran until 1 February that year, a notably serious run of damage even by the standards of the hard-fought Mediterranean theatre.

Evacuating a King From Crete

HMS Decoy took part in Operation Demon, the evacuation of Allied troops from Greece, in April 1941, and on 22 May that year, following the German invasion of Crete, evacuated King George II of Greece and his entourage to safety, a truly dramatic and historically significant mission for a single destroyer to carry out amid the chaos of the German airborne assault on the island.

To the Indian Ocean and Then Canada

Following collision damage in December 1941, HMS Decoy transferred to the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean in March 1942, serving there until September that year. She was then transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy during a refit beginning 1 March 1943, recommissioning as HMCS Kootenay on 12 April 1943, beginning a remarkable second act under a new flag.

Three U-Boats in Six Weeks

As HMCS Kootenay, the former HMS Decoy sank U-678 in the English Channel south of Brighton on 7 July 1944, and went on to take part in sinking U-621 on 18 August and U-984 just two days later on 20 August 1944, an extraordinary run of three confirmed U-boat kills within barely six weeks, a record that stands among the most successful individual anti-submarine periods of any single escort vessel during the entire Battle of the Atlantic.

The End of Service

HMCS Kootenay underwent an extensive refit between October 1944 and February 1945, before serving as a troop transport after the war's end and being placed in reserve in October 1945.

She was broken up for scrap in 1946, closing out a remarkably extraordinary career that had carried her from Mediterranean submarine hunts and a royal evacuation under the White Ensign to three confirmed U-boat kills under Canadian colours, a remarkable working life packed into little more than a dozen years.