HMS Fury (H76): She Carried a King into Exile, Then Fought From the Arctic to Juno Beach

Built at Cowes

HMS Fury was ordered from J. Samuel White at Cowes on the Isle of Wight on 17 March 1933, one of the nine F Class destroyers of the 1932 programme. She was launched on 10 September 1934 and completed in 1935.

The F Class were a refinement of the E Class before them, about 1,400 tons, with four 4.7 inch guns, eight torpedo tubes and a speed of 36 knots, and Fury joined the 6th Destroyer Flotilla in the Home Fleet. During the Spanish Civil War she served on the Non-Intervention patrols in the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean.

A King into Exile

On the evening of 11 December 1936 King Edward VIII, who had abdicated the day before in order to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson, broadcast to the nation from Windsor Castle that he could not carry the burden of kingship without the help and support of the woman he loved. Then, as His Royal Highness the Duke of Windsor, he was driven through the night to Portsmouth Dockyard, where Fury was waiting.

She sailed in the early hours of 12 December and landed him at Boulogne, from where he went on to Austria. It was the start of an exile that would last, with brief visits home, for the rest of his life.

Force H

When war came she was with the 8th Destroyer Flotilla at Scapa Flow, screening the Home Fleet. In April 1940, during the Norwegian campaign, she helped escort the cruiser Suffolk, wrecked by bombing after shelling the German-held airfield at Stavanger, back to Scapa, and on 23 April she sailed with the carriers to fly strikes against the German forces in Norway.

In May she was one of the destroyers that brought home Lord Louis Mountbatten's Kelly, torpedoed by an E-boat in the North Sea and towed back to the Tyne, and she then spent the weeks of the fighting in France at Harwich. In the summer of 1940 she was sent to Gibraltar to join Force H, the squadron under Admiral Somerville that held the western Mediterranean after the fall of France.

With Force H she went to Dakar in September, where she and Greyhound drove a French destroyer ashore, and to the action off Cape Spartivento in November, screening Renown.

1941 was Force H's busiest year. Fury was in the screen when the battleships shelled Genoa on 9 February, and she escorted Ark Royal on the runs that flew Hurricanes off to reinforce Malta.

In May she sailed with Force H to cover the Tiger convoy of tanks for Egypt, and was in the screen when Force H was ordered north to cut off the Bismarck. In June she was one of the destroyers hunting the German supply ships that had been sent out to support the battleship, and on 23 June caught the Alstertor, whose crew scuttled her; British merchant seamen held aboard her as prisoners were freed.

She escorted the Substance and Halberd convoys to Malta that summer and autumn before going home in October.

The Arctic

After a refit on the Humber, with more anti-aircraft guns, she rejoined the 8th Flotilla at Scapa in February 1942 for the Russian convoys. On 29 March, with convoy PQ 13 scattered by a gale and under attack north of Norway, she was with the cruiser Trinidad and the destroyer Eclipse when three German destroyers came at the convoy out of a snowstorm.

In the fight that followed the German destroyer Z26 was crippled and sunk, and Trinidad was hit by one of her own torpedoes, which ran in a circle in the freezing water. Fury escorted the damaged cruiser into the Kola Inlet. Trinidad was patched up there, and was bombed and lost on her way home in May.

She was in the escort of PQ 17 at the beginning of July 1942, and on 4 July, when the Admiralty ordered the convoy to scatter for fear of the Tirpitz, she was among the destroyers withdrawn to join the cruisers. The merchant ships were left to make their own way, and twenty four of the thirty five were sunk.

It was one of the most bitter episodes of the naval war, and it was never forgotten by the escorts who were ordered to leave.

Pedestal

A month later she was in the Mediterranean again for Operation Pedestal, the great convoy fought through to Malta in August 1942. On the nights of 13 and 14 August she and other destroyers swept for mines in the Skerki Channel ahead of the surviving merchant ships, until her sweeping gear was carried away.

The losses of Pedestal, among them Cairo and her sister Foresight, are told in their own articles. She was back in the Arctic in September for PQ 18, the first convoy to sail with its own escort carrier, and on the way home was detached to bring the fleet oiler Oligarch back from Spitsbergen.

That winter she sailed with the convoys JW 51A, RA 51 and JW 53.

The Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1943

In the spring of 1943 she joined the 4th Escort Group in the Atlantic at the height of the convoy battles, helping to drive off a U-boat pack attacking one convoy in April and reinforcing the escorts of the famous ONS 5. In June she went south with the Home Fleet ships sent to strengthen the Mediterranean for the invasion of Sicily, and was with the covering force when the landings went in on 10 July.

On 10 September 1943, two days after Italy's surrender, she was one of the destroyers that escorted the Italian battle fleet into Malta to give itself up. Admiral Cunningham signalled the Admiralty that the Italian fleet now lay at anchor under the guns of the fortress.

Two days later she was off Salerno, and in October she was in the Aegean, where the British were trying to hold Leros and Kos against the Germans. On 7 October, with the cruiser Penelope and her sister Faulknor, she caught a German invasion convoy off Stampalia, and in November she bombarded the German positions on Leros. The Aegean islands were lost all the same.

Juno Beach

At Gibraltar that winter she was converted to a convoy escort, giving up a gun mounting for more anti-aircraft weapons and depth charges, and in the spring of 1944 she joined a support group in the Atlantic. In May she went to Portsmouth to join Force J, the naval force for the Canadian landing at Juno Beach.

On 5 June she sailed from the Solent escorting the minesweepers that would clear the channel ahead of the invasion fleet, and on the morning of 6 June she bombarded the German defences west of Courseulles as the Canadians went ashore.

For the next two weeks she was off the beachhead, escorting convoys and giving gunfire support, and returning to Portsmouth to refuel. On 21 June, as the great gale that wrecked the Mulberry harbour at Omaha was blowing up, she struck a mine and was driven ashore.

She was got off and towed back to England, but a survey in August found her not worth repairing. She was sold for scrap and arrived at T. W. Ward's yard at Briton Ferry in South Wales on 18 September 1944, ten years and eight days after she was launched.

The photograph at the top of this page, taken in 1942 by Lieutenant C. J. Ware, shows her leading the flotilla out from Scapa in the year of PQ 13 and PQ 17. Her sisters, including Foresight, Faulknor and Forester, are in the F Class destroyers collection.