HMS Jackal (F22): First of the J Class, Gubbins out of Mosjoen and Bomb Alley off Mersa Matruh

The First of the Js

HMS Jackal was ordered from John Brown and Company at Clydebank on 25 March 1937, one of the eight J Class destroyers of the 1936 programme, and was laid down on 24 September 1937. The Js were a new start in British destroyer design.

They were smaller than the Tribals that came just before them but carried six 4.7 inch guns in three twin mountings and ten torpedo tubes, and by using two large boilers instead of three the designers were able to give them a single, large funnel instead of the two of the classes before them. That funnel made them easy to recognise, and the photograph above, taken in May 1939, shows it well.

She was launched on 25 October 1938, the seventh ship of the name since 1778, and ran her first trials in February 1939. Completed on 31 March and in service from 13 April, she was the first of the class to join the fleet, at a cost of £391,370, not counting the guns and the equipment the Admiralty supplied.

Her badge was a golden jackal on a red field. Her first captain was Commander Trevylyan Napier.

The Humber and the Norwegian Campaign

When war came she was with the 7th Destroyer Flotilla, based in the Humber, alongside her sisters Janus, Javelin, Jupiter and the flotilla leader Jervis. On 6 September 1939 she, Janus and Juno escorted the steamer Batavia across the North Sea, bringing home the staff of the British Embassy in Berlin.

The first winter was hard on her. She collided with Janus at Kirkwall in October, and on the night of 27 February 1940, on patrol off the Tyne, she ran into the small Swedish steamer Storfors, which was in the wrong and sank.

Jackal picked up the Swedish crew, but her own bow was damaged and she spent March in dock at Blyth.

She was back in time for Norway. On 20 April 1940 she sailed from Aberdeen escorting the troopships St Magnus and St Sunniva and the store ship Cedarbank to Andalsnes for the landings south of Trondheim; Cedarbank was torpedoed and sunk on the way.

On 29 April she and Javelin escorted the cruiser Glasgow into Molde, where King Haakon, his government and part of Norway's gold reserves were taken aboard, and then saw Glasgow north to Tromso.

On 11 May, on their way home from Narvik, Jackal and Javelin were turned back to help a British force cut off by the German advance at Mosjoen. The troops had got away down the fjord in a Norwegian coastal steamer, and the destroyers met them at Sandnessjoen.

Jackal took aboard their commander, Colonel Colin Gubbins, and a hundred of his men, shelled a German headquarters on the way north, and landed them all at Bodo the next morning. Gubbins later went on to run the Special Operations Executive. On the way home she escorted the damaged sloop Pelican to Kirkwall.

The Invasion Summer and Mountbatten's Flotilla

She was then sent to Harwich. On 19 May she and her sisters escorted the cable ships of Operation Quixote, which cut the telegraph cables running from England to the Continent so that the Germans could not use them, and on 25 May she attacked U-9 off East Anglia without result. Her pennant number was changed to G22.

For part of June she was the only ship of her flotilla fit for sea, and through the summer she kept up the anti-invasion patrols and escorted the minelayers laying the East Coast Barrier.

In October 1940 she joined the 5th Destroyer Flotilla at Plymouth under Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten. On the night of 10 October she was in the screen of the battleship Revenge when she shelled the German invasion shipping in Cherbourg, with the cruisers Newcastle and Emerald in support.

On the night of 28 November, on a patrol line between Land's End and Start Point, the flotilla ran into three German destroyers, Karl Galster, Hans Lody and Erich Steinbrinck, which had just attacked a convoy. In a short, confused fight Mountbatten's own ship, Javelin, was hit by two torpedoes that blew off her bow and her stern.

Jackal broke off the chase to stand by her, took off her wounded and brought them into Plymouth at dawn. The way the flotilla had been handled was argued about for years afterwards.

Malta and Crete

In April 1941 the flotilla, now with Kelly, Kashmir, Kipling, Kelvin and Jersey, was sent to Malta as a striking force against the Axis convoys to North Africa. On 2 May, coming in from a patrol, Jersey hit a mine at the entrance to Grand Harbour and sank in the channel, trapping Jackal and the others inside until a way could be cleared.

In May they joined the escort of the Tiger convoy, and on the night of 10 May they bombarded Benghazi, Jackal being near missed by a bomb that failed to go off.

When the Germans landed on Crete she sailed from Malta with Kelly, Kelvin, Kashmir and Kipling to join the fleet. She and Kelvin were south west of the island, on their way to Alexandria, on the morning of 23 May when German dive bombers sank Kelly and Kashmir. Then she was back for the evacuation.

On the night of 28 May she was one of the destroyers that brought the garrison out of Heraklion, with Imperial, and on 31 May she went to Sphakia with the cruiser Phoebe, the fast minelayer Abdiel, Hotspur and Kimberley, taking off some 4,000 men in a single night.

Syria, Tobruk and the Barham

In June she was off the coast of Syria for the campaign against the Vichy French. On 9 June she and Janus were attacked by the big French destroyers Valmy and Guepard. Janus was hit five times and badly damaged, Jackal once, without casualties, and the French drew off when Isis and Hotspur came up.

That summer and autumn she ran supplies and men into besieged Tobruk at night and screened the battle fleet.

On 25 November 1941 she was in the screen of the battleships off the Libyan coast when U-331 got through and torpedoed Barham, which rolled over and blew up within five minutes. Jackal hunted for the U-boat without success and then helped pick up the survivors, about 450 from a ship's company of more than 1,300.

Five days later, sweeping for Italian convoys off Derna with Jervis, Jaguar and Kipling, she was hit right aft by a torpedo from an Italian aircraft. She got home to Alexandria at 14 knots, steering with her engines, and her repairs took until the end of April 1942.

Bomb Alley, 11 May 1942

She came out of dock to join the 14th Destroyer Flotilla, under Commander Christopher Jellicoe. On the evening of 10 May an Italian convoy was reported on its way to Benghazi, and Jervis, Jackal, Kipling and Lively were sent from Alexandria to try to catch it at dawn on the 12th.

Their chance depended on not being seen, because there was little fighter cover over that stretch of sea, which the sailors called Bomb Alley. On the 11th they were spotted and turned for home, and the German bombers found them on the way back. At 4.45 that afternoon Lively was hit and sank at once.

At seven minutes past eight that evening, about 60 miles north of Mersa Matruh, Jackal and Kipling were both hit. Kipling sank quickly. A bomb in Jackal's boiler room started a fire, and Jervis took her in tow while her crew fought it.

Through the night the fire spread beyond control, and at five to five on the morning of 12 May she was abandoned and Jervis sank her with a torpedo. Jervis came home to Alexandria alone, carrying some 630 survivors from the three lost ships.

Nine of Jackal's men were killed, almost all of them stokers and engine room artificers caught below. She had served for just over three years and earned six battle honours in that time. Her sisters are in the J Class destroyers collection.