HMS Imperial (D09): Namsos, a Mine off Malta and a Jammed Rudder on the Way Home from Crete

The First Imperial

HMS Imperial was ordered from Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn on the Tyne on 30 October 1935, alongside her sister Imogen, as one of the I Class destroyers. She was laid down on 26 January 1936 and launched on 11 December, the first ship in the Royal Navy to carry the name.

Her guns arrived late from the makers, and she was not completed until 30 June 1937, at a contract price of £257,117, which did not include the guns, radio and other items the Admiralty supplied. Like the rest of her class she had four 4.7 inch guns and ten torpedo tubes, and was designed so that she could be quickly fitted out as a minelayer.

Her badge was a gold orb above two crossed sceptres on a purple field, and her motto was Deum cole, regem serva, "Worship God, serve the King". She joined the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla in the Mediterranean, and the photograph above was taken in September 1937, only three months into her first commission, with a boat alongside and the flotilla's three black bands on her after funnel.

For the next two years the flotilla spent much of its time on the non-intervention patrols off the coast of Spain, where the civil war was at its height. From January 1939 she was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Charles Kitcat, who stayed in her for the rest of her life.

Home Waters and a Swedish Freighter

At the outbreak of war the flotilla was brought home, first to Plymouth for the Atlantic convoys and then, in November 1939, to the Home Fleet. After Royal Oak was sunk at Scapa Flow the fleet was working from the Clyde and Loch Ewe, and Imperial screened the heavy ships and the troop convoys bringing the first Canadian soldiers across the Atlantic that December.

On 4 January 1940 she and Faulknor escorted the battleship Nelson, damaged by a magnetic mine at the entrance to Loch Ewe, round to Portsmouth for repair.

In February she was on the Norway convoys, the regular runs to and from Bergen that carried neutral ships across the North Sea under escort. On the night of 18 February, as she brought three merchant ships out from Orkney to join a convoy, the destroyer Daring was torpedoed and sunk by U-23 a few miles away.

A week later, at the end of the month, while escorting the convoy ON 15 towards Norway, she collided with the Swedish steamer Nordia. The freighter sank, and Imperial's bow was so badly damaged that she could make only 12 knots.

The anti-aircraft cruiser Calcutta saw her into Lerwick for emergency repairs, and she then went round to Swan Hunter's yard at Wallsend, a few miles from where she had been built, for six weeks.

Namsos

She was back at sea on 14 April 1940, five days after the Germans invaded Norway, and spent the next month escorting the troop and supply convoys to the landings in the north and screening the cruisers off the coast. At the end of April the Allied force at Namsos, north of Trondheim, was ordered out.

On the nights of 2 and 3 May the transports went into the fjord and took off 1,850 British and 2,345 French troops, while Imperial stayed at sea with the cruiser Devonshire, the French cruiser Montcalm, Hasty and Griffin to cover them. The convoy was attacked by German dive bombers all the way out.

The French destroyer Bison was hit and set on fire, and Afridi, having taken off Bison's crew, was herself sunk. Imperial and Griffin helped to pick up the survivors from both ships and the soldiers who had been aboard. Imperial then screened Devonshire back to the Clyde.

To the Mediterranean

In May her pennant was changed from D09 to I09, and with Italy expected to come into the war at any moment she was sent back to the Mediterranean. She sailed from Plymouth on 17 May with the cruiser Carlisle, Havock, Hereward and Hero, and joined the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla at Alexandria on 24 May.

For the rest of 1940 she was in the screen of the battle fleet. In July she sailed with the fleet to cover the convoys from Malta, but was detached on the 8th, the day before the battleships met the Italian fleet off Calabria, and so missed the action. Later in the month she and Hereward took convoy AN 2 to Piraeus.

At the end of August she was in the screen of Eagle, Malaya and Warspite for Operation Hats, the passage of the new armoured carrier Illustrious and her consorts from Gibraltar to join the fleet. On 4 September, screening Warspite after the air attacks on Rhodes, she made a depth charge attack on a submarine contact.

In October she was out again with the fleet for the convoys to and from Malta.

Mined off Malta

On 11 October 1940 she was detached to fuel at Malta, and fifteen miles south of Delimara Point she struck a mine. She was badly damaged but stayed afloat, and Decoy, standing by, took her in tow into Grand Harbour. The dockyard estimated the repairs would take at least four months.

In the event they took more than six, partly because new steering gear had to be found for her. It came out of her flotilla mate Gallant, whose bow had been blown off by a mine in January 1941, and Imperial was damaged again in the heavy air raids that fell on the dockyard that spring.

She sailed at last at the end of April 1941, with Jervis, the cruiser Dido and the fast minelayer Abdiel, as escort for the supply ship Breconshire on her run to Alexandria. Within a week she was at sea again for Operation Tiger, and on the night of 7 May she, Ajax, Havock and Hotspur were sent in to bombard the harbour at Benghazi.

Crete

When the Germans landed on Crete from the air on 20 May she was one of the destroyers sent to sweep the waters north of the island to stop any landing by sea. On the night of 21 May she was with the cruisers Orion, Ajax and Dido west of the island, and on the nights of 24 and 25 May she was north of the island again with Ajax, Dido, Hotspur and Kimberley.

By the 26th it was clear that Crete could not be held, and the Navy began to take the army off.

On the morning of 28 May she sailed from Alexandria with Rear Admiral Rawlings in the cruiser Orion, with Ajax, Dido and the destroyers Decoy, Jackal, Hotspur, Kimberley and Hereward, to bring out the garrison of Heraklion. At about 7.20 that evening, as they passed through the Kaso Strait, Italian bombers attacked and one bomb burst in the water close under Imperial's stern.

She seemed to be undamaged. That night the destroyers went into the harbour and ferried the troops out to the cruisers, and Imperial took about 300 soldiers on board herself. The squadron sailed at 3.20 in the morning of 29 May.

Barely twenty minutes later, as she worked up to 29 knots, her rudder jammed. The near miss had damaged her steering after all. Out of control, she swung across the bow of Orion and only just missed colliding with the flagship.

There was no time for repairs, and every hour of darkness lost would bring the bombers down on the whole squadron, so Rawlings ordered Hotspur to take off her crew and the soldiers and then sink her. By 4.45 everyone was aboard Hotspur, which then fired two torpedoes into her, about 55 miles east of Kasos.

The delay had cost the squadron its lead. When daylight came the German and Italian bombers found it still in the Kaso Strait, and that morning Hereward was sunk and Orion and Dido were badly hit, with hundreds of men killed.

Imperial had earned four battle honours in under two years of war: Atlantic 1939, Norway 1940, Mediterranean and Crete 1941. Her sisters are among the prints in the I Class destroyers collection.