HMS Delight (H38): Sunk in Daylight After Sailing Against Orders

The Build: Govan

HMS Delight was built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Govan, Scotstoun, her keel laid on 22 April 1931, launched on 2 June 1932, and completed on 31 January 1933 at a total cost of £229,378, a D-class destroyer displacing 1,375 long tons standard, capable of 36 knots on 36,000 shaft horsepower.

Norway and the Retreat

HMS Delight transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in late 1939 before moving to the Home Fleet that December. During the Norwegian Campaign, she escorted HMS Furious, ferried troops during the evacuation from Åndalsnes, and supported operations around Narvik between April and June 1940, direct participation in the difficult and ultimately unsuccessful Allied effort to hold Norway against the German invasion.

Sailing Against Orders

HMS Delight's loss came on 29 July 1940 in circumstances that made the disaster considerably more painful in retrospect: she departed Portland Harbour in broad daylight, contrary to standing orders that called for exactly this kind of movement to be made under cover of darkness given the very real threat of German air attack along the south coast at that stage of the war.

She was detected by German radar shortly after leaving harbour, and at 19:25 that evening, twelve Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers attacked her.

HMS Delight was hit by a bomb on her forecastle, causing a major fire and a subsequent explosion, and she sank that same evening with six of her crew killed.

A Preventable Loss

HMS Delight's sinking stands as a notably sobering example of how quickly a straightforward breach of standing orders could turn into disaster during the summer of 1940, when German air superiority along the Channel and south coast made daylight movements by Royal Navy warships a remarkably serious gamble.

Her wreck now rests at a depth of 62 metres off Portland, broken into multiple sections, and is protected today under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986, a permanent and legally safeguarded memorial to the six men lost when she went down.