HMS Hambledon (L37): Gold for Halifax, Eisenhower at Malta and Truman to Antwerp

One of the First Hunts

HMS Hambledon was ordered from Swan Hunter at Wallsend on 21 March 1939, months before the war began, as one of the first group of Hunt Class escort destroyers. The Hunts were a new idea, small and quickly built ships of about a thousand tons with four 4 inch guns that could fire at aircraft as well as ships, meant to escort convoys on the coast where the bombers would be the main threat.

The first group, the Type Is, turned out to be top heavy, and had to have weight taken out of them before they could go to sea. Hambledon was laid down on 8 June 1939, launched on 12 December and completed on 8 June 1940, two days ahead of her sister Holderness from the same yard, just after the last of the British army had come home from Dunkirk.

She was named after the Hambledon hunt, the second ship of the name, and her badge showed a fox's mask and two crossed brushes. In March 1942 the village of Hambledon in Hampshire, home of the hunt, adopted her during its Warship Week.

Her first captain was Commander Stephen Carlill, who went on to command her sister Farndale in the Mediterranean.

Gold for Halifax

Her very first sailing, a week after she was completed, was an unusual one. On the evening of 14 June 1940 she left Greenock with the cruiser Devonshire to join the old carrier Furious, which was taking eighteen million pounds in gold bullion across the Atlantic to Halifax, part of the reserves Britain was sending to Canada for safety as France collapsed.

Hambledon saw them out through the danger area and turned back the next evening. In July she escorted the minelayers laying the first stretch of the Northern Barrage between Scotland and Iceland, and then worked up at Scapa Flow in the screen of Furious.

Mined off the South Foreland

She joined the 21st Destroyer Flotilla at Sheerness for the Channel and east coast convoys at the height of the invasion summer. On the night of 31 August 1940, when the destroyers of the 20th Flotilla ran into a German minefield off the Dutch coast, she and Garth were sent out to help; Esk had gone down and Express had lost her bow, and Hambledon stood by until a tug arrived.

On 8 September she joined the cruiser Aurora in bombarding the invasion barges in Boulogne.

In October she was picked for Operation Lucid, a plan to send old ships filled with oil and explosive into the French ports as fireships to burn the invasion fleet gathering there. The operation was called off, and on 7 October, off the South Foreland, Hambledon set off an acoustic mine under her stern.

Both her propeller shaft brackets were broken and her after compartments flooded; one of her ratings was killed and two injured. The destroyer Vesper towed her into Sheerness, and the repairs at Chatham kept her out of action until May 1941, when she came out fitted with one of the new gunnery radar sets.

The East Coast

For the next two years she was with the 16th Destroyer Flotilla at Harwich, one of the hardest worked groups of ships in the Navy. Its job was to bring the coastal convoys up and down the east coast, through the stretch the sailors called E-boat Alley, against German motor torpedo boats at night, mines and bombers.

In 1942 she was given a surface warning radar set, which made all the difference in the dark and the bad weather off that coast. In November 1942 she was lent to the escorts of the troop convoys for the North African landings, and was slightly damaged by a torpedo exploding nearby, and then she went back to Harwich and the convoys again.

Sicily and the Italian Fleet

In June 1943 she went south for the invasion of Sicily, sailing from the Clyde with the cruiser Uganda and a large group of escorts. In Escort Group V with her sisters Blankney, Brecon, Blencathra and Brissenden she escorted the assault convoy KMF 18, and on 10 July she was off the Bark West beaches at the south eastern corner of the island. She then joined the Hunt division based at Malta.

On 8 September Italy's surrender was announced, and under the terms of the armistice the Italian fleet was to sail to Malta and give itself up. On 9 September Hambledon embarked Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the naval Commander in Chief, and General Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, at Bizerta and took them out to see it happen.

On 10 September she was present as the Italian warships came in, escorted by Warspite and Valiant, and the next day Cunningham signalled the Admiralty that the Italian battle fleet now lay at anchor under the guns of the fortress of Malta. Then she went on to Salerno to support the landings there.

In October and November she was in the Aegean for the doomed campaign to hold Kos and Leros, landing troops and stores in the islands.

U-223 and the Laforey

In 1944 she was based at Naples, supporting the armies on the west coast of Italy. On 29 March she and Blencathra were sent out to join a hunt for a U-boat north of Sicily, near the island of Filicudi, led by the destroyer Laforey.

For hours the hunters held the submarine down, with orders to stop dropping depth charges and wait for her to surface. In the early hours of 30 March she came up, and Hambledon lit her with her searchlight. U-223 was sunk, but in her last minutes she fired a torpedo that hit Laforey and sank her.

Only 69 of Laforey's ship's company survived and 182 were lost. Hambledon picked up survivors and then the German sailors, fourteen of them, two of whom died on the way back, and before returning to Naples she held funerals for the British and German dead.

Gold Beach

In May she came home for the invasion of Normandy, joining the 21st Destroyer Flotilla at Sheerness. On 5 June she sailed from the West Solent as escort to convoy G 16, nine infantry landing craft and two rescue craft with her sister Albrighton, which was the headquarters ship controlling the landings on Gold Beach.

On D-Day she shelled the beach defences, and then went back to the Solent for the build-up convoys, fighting off E-boats in the swept channel south of the Isle of Wight. On 7 June she escorted convoy EBP 2, five personnel ships carrying a pre-loaded American division and the headquarters ship for the Mulberry harbour, to the American beaches.

On 8 June she escorted Nelson along the coast from Plymouth.

Truman to Antwerp

In July 1944 she went back to Harwich and the North Sea convoys, which were now carrying supplies to the armies in Belgium and Holland, and on 12 April 1945 she was in action with minelaying E-boats off Flushing with the frigate Ekins. After VE Day she joined the Nore Local Flotilla, and on 15 July 1945 she had one last distinguished passenger to see safely in.

The American cruiser Augusta was bringing President Truman across the Atlantic to Antwerp on his way to the Potsdam conference, and Hambledon, Garth and Holderness took over the escort off the North Goodwin and brought Augusta and the cruiser Philadelphia into the Scheldt.

She was paid off in December 1945 and spent eight years in reserve at Harwich, then moved to Barrow in 1953. In 1955 her equipment was taken out and she was put on the disposal list, and in August 1957 she was sold for breaking up and towed to Clayton and Davie's yard at Dunston on Tyne, not far from where she had been built. The other prints of her class are in the Hunt Class destroyers collection.