HMS Diamond (H22): Lost Rescuing Survivors From the Slamat Disaster

The Build: Barrow

HMS Diamond was built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, her keel laid on 29 September 1931, launched on 8 April 1932, and completed on 3 November 1933 at a cost of £223,509 excluding Admiralty-supplied equipment, 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, with a complement of 145 officers and men.

China and the Mediterranean

HMS Diamond served on the China Station with the 8th, later the 21st, Destroyer Flotilla from January 1935, remaining there for four years before a refit at Singapore and transfer to the Mediterranean Fleet in November 1939, several months before Italy's own entry into the war made that theatre considerably more dangerous. She took part in Operations Hats and Collar, escorted convoys to the besieged island of Malta, and fought at the Battle of Cape Spartivento in November 1940, a significant fleet engagement between British and Italian naval forces in the western Mediterranean.

The Sinking of the Slamat

HMS Diamond's loss came on 27 April 1941 during Operation Demon, the evacuation of British, Australian and New Zealand forces from Greece following the country's defeat by German and Italian invasion.

The trouble began the previous evening in the Bay of Nauplia, where another grounded transport had blocked the harbour, forcing the evacuation ships to anchor offshore and rely on a single landing craft, local caïques and their own boats to bring troops out from the beaches, a painfully slow process. At 03:00 on 27 April, the convoy commander ordered every ship to sail in time to clear the area before daylight; most did, but Slamat, having embarked barely half her roughly one-thousand-strong capacity, delayed until 04:15, a decision that left her exposed when German aircraft found the convoy still within reach at dawn.

The Dutch troopship Slamat, carrying around 500 soldiers, came under attack from Luftwaffe aircraft off Leonidion, struck by a 250-kilogram bomb that set her ablaze and disabled her water systems, forcing her captain, Tjalling Luidinga, to order the ship abandoned.

HMS Diamond moved alongside to begin rescuing survivors from the burning wreck, continuing the rescue effort even as air attacks persisted around her, and taking an estimated 600 people aboard in the process, meaning that when her own turn came, most of those she carried were people she had only just pulled from the sea.

At around 13:15 that afternoon, a second wave of German aircraft targeted HMS Diamond and her fellow destroyer HMS Wryneck directly. A bomb struck HMS Diamond's engine room, and she sank within just eight minutes; HMS Wryneck took three direct hits and capsized within ten to fifteen minutes of her own.

The scale of loss across all three ships that day was catastrophic: of the roughly 500 soldiers embarked on Slamat, only eight survived, and of her 214 crew and gunners, only eleven survived.

HMS Diamond herself lost all but 20 of her 166-strong complement, while HMS Wryneck lost all but 27 of her 106 crew. In total, 983 people died and only 66 survived across the three ships, one of the single deadliest days of the entire Greek evacuation.

Legacy

HMS Diamond's loss stands as a stark illustration of the price paid during the desperate final stages of the Greek campaign, when Royal Navy destroyers repeatedly placed themselves directly in harm's way to rescue soldiers and sailors from sinking transports, fully aware of the mortal risk that German air superiority posed to any ship that lingered in these waters.

The overwhelming casualty toll from the Slamat disaster, and HMS Diamond's own near-total loss of life, remain a sober reminder of just how costly the Royal Navy's commitment to rescue operations could be, even when that commitment reflected exactly the kind of courage the service prided itself on.