HMS Farndale (L70): Eleven Battle Honours, From the Caracciolo to Port Swettenham

Built on the Tyne

HMS Farndale was ordered from Swan Hunter at Wallsend on 4 September 1939, the day after war broke out, and was laid down on 21 November 1939, the same day as her sister Eridge in the same yard. She was one of the Type II Hunt Class escort destroyers, small ships of about a thousand tons with six 4 inch guns, named after fox hunts; hers was the Farndale in Yorkshire.

She was launched on 30 September 1940 and completed on 27 April 1941, the first ship of the name, and her badge showed a fox's head on a white roundel inside a blue ring. Her first captain was Commander Stephen Carlill. During Warship Week in March 1942 she was adopted by Southgate in Middlesex.

By the end of the war she had earned eleven battle honours, a remarkable number for so small a ship: Malta Convoys 1941, Mediterranean 1941, Libya 1942, Atlantic 1942, Arctic 1942, North Africa 1942-43, Sicily 1943, Salerno 1943, Aegean 1943, South France 1944 and North Sea 1945.

Substance and Halberd

She worked up at Scapa Flow and joined the 13th Flotilla at Gibraltar in June 1941. In July she sailed in Operation Substance, the convoy that took six merchant ships and the troopship Pasteur's soldiers through to Malta.

On 17 July she and Eridge met the Pasteur west of Gibraltar and brought her in, and on 21 July she sailed in Force X, the close escort, under the cruisers Edinburgh and Manchester. The Italian aircraft found them on the 23rd: the destroyer Fearless was sunk and Manchester torpedoed.

When the heavy ships of Force H turned back at the Sicilian Narrows, Farndale went on with the convoy, fought off an attack by Italian motor torpedo boats on the night of the 24th, and reached Malta with every merchant ship. She stayed a few days to repair her boilers and then made her own way back to Gibraltar.

In September she did it again, in Force X for Operation Halberd with the cruisers Kenya, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Hermione and Euryalus. Halberd's nine merchant ships lost only one on the way, and she arrived at Malta with Force X on 28 September before turning back west again.

The Caracciolo

In October 1941 she went round the Cape to Alexandria to join the 22nd Destroyer Flotilla, and was soon on the dangerous run to besieged Tobruk. On the evening of 24 November she was one of the escorts that took the battle fleet out of Alexandria, leaving them that night; the next afternoon Barham was torpedoed and blew up.

On 5 December she picked up survivors of the boarding vessel Chakdina, sunk by Italian torpedo bombers off Tobruk.

On 11 December, as the Eighth Army's winter offensive relieved Tobruk and drove west, she was patrolling about thirty miles north of Bardia when she found the Italian submarine Ammiraglio Caracciolo, which had been on a transport run to the cut off Axis garrison there. Farndale's depth charges forced the submarine to the surface, and her guns sank her.

Fifty three of the Italian crew were picked up; according to one record an Italian general who was aboard, probably being taken out before Bardia fell, was drowned.

A Bomb off Mersa Matruh

On 9 February 1942 she was escorting the convoy AT 27 from Alexandria to Tobruk when German aircraft caught her west of Mersa Matruh. A bomb hit her just forward of the bridge, went down through the captain's cabin and the stewards' quarters and out through the ship's side, where it exploded.

The asdic compartment and both engine rooms flooded and she began to go down by the bow, and the order was given to abandon ship. As she settled, though, it was clear she would float, and the order was cancelled.

The corvette Gloxinia took her in tow, a tug came out from Mersa Matruh to take over, and the destroyers Kipling and Jaguar joined them at daylight. She reached Alexandria on 11 February, was patched up in dock, and sailed all the way home round the Cape for repairs in a London shipyard, which kept her out of action until August.

The Arctic and Oran

Her first job back was the Arctic. On 2 September 1942 she sailed from Loch Ewe in the escort of PQ 18 for the first stage of its voyage, as far as Iceland, where the big ocean escort took over.

In October she went south with the Torch convoys, and with Avon Vale, Calpe and Puckeridge she joined the Central Task Force for the landings at Oran on 8 November, giving gunfire support to the troops on one of the beaches. She spent the winter and spring of 1943 escorting the Atlantic and Mediterranean convoys from Gibraltar.

Sicily and Salerno

In July 1943 she sailed from Algiers with the assault convoy KMS 18 for Sicily, and from 10 July she was off the Bark West beaches giving anti-aircraft cover and gunfire support.

For Salerno in September she was in the screen of Force V, the support carrier force: the cruisers Euryalus, Scylla and Charybdis and the carriers Unicorn, Battler, Hunter, Attacker and Stalker, whose Seafires flew cover over the beaches because the shore based fighters could barely reach them. The photograph at the top of this page was taken that month.

With her were her sisters Cleveland, Holcombe, Calpe, Atherstone and Liddesdale and the Polish Hunts Krakowiak and Slazak, and that winter she worked from Malta in a Hunt flotilla with Haydon and most of the same ships.

The South of France and the E-Boats

In August 1944 she sailed from Taranto in the escort of convoy TM 1 for the landings in the south of France, reaching the beachhead on 16 August, the day after the assault. In September she was in the Aegean, intercepting the craft carrying the German garrisons away from the islands, and in October she came home to join the 16th Destroyer Flotilla at Harwich.

Her last European honour came on 14 January 1945, when she fought German E-boats of the 5th Flotilla off the mouth of the Humber while protecting an east coast convoy.

Malaya

In June 1945 she sailed east again to join the 18th Destroyer Flotilla at Trincomalee, with Blackmore, Bicester, Bleasdale and Brecon, for the invasion of Malaya. The Japanese surrendered first, and Operation Zipper went ahead as a peaceful reoccupation; on 9 September 1945 she was off Port Swettenham as the troops came ashore.

She came home and paid off into reserve at Chatham in November.

In 1946 she recommissioned for the Nore Local Flotilla and served with it for five years, then went back into reserve at Chatham and later at Hartlepool, where she was sealed up and dehumidified. She was put on the disposal list in 1961 and arrived in tow at Hughes Bolckow's yard at Blyth for breaking up on 29 November 1962. The other prints of her class are in the Hunt Class destroyers collection.