HMS Kelly (F01): Mountbatten's Unluckiest, Luckiest Destroyer

Built on the Tyne

HMS Kelly was laid down on 26 August 1937 and launched on 25 October 1938 by Hawthorn Leslie and Company at Hebburn on the River Tyne, entering service on 23 August 1939, a mere eleven days before Britain went to war.

Named after Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Kelly, she served as flotilla leader of the K class, and would soon come under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten, a cousin of the King, who commanded her for most of her short but eventful career.

Mined, Rammed and Torpedoed, All Within a Year

HMS Kelly's first year of war reads almost like a catalogue of every misfortune a destroyer could suffer short of actually sinking. On 14 December 1939, while engaged in a rescue operation off the Tyne Estuary, she struck a German-laid mine and needed three months of repairs at her builder's yard.

She had barely returned to service, completing repairs on 28 February 1940, before colliding with HMS Gurkha just two days later, on 2 March, sending her back into dry dock on the Thames for a further eight weeks.

Then, on the night of 9 to 10 May 1940, during the Norwegian campaign, she was torpedoed amidships by the German E-boat S 31, a hit severe enough that she had to be towed home at a crawling three knots while still under continued attack, surviving only thanks to what was later credited as excellent workmanship in her original construction that kept her compartments intact. Repairs from that ordeal ran on until December 1940.

Three separate near-disasters within a single year would have finished off many ships; HMS Kelly simply kept coming back.

Malta and the Evacuation of Crete

HMS Kelly recommissioned in December 1940 and arrived at Malta in April 1941 under Lord Mountbatten's command, taking part in Operation Tiger, escorting a vital supply convoy, and carrying out bombardment operations before being sent to support the evacuation of Crete. It was there, on 23 May 1941, that her run of luck finally ran out.

Operating alongside her sister ship HMS Kashmir against German positions near Maleme airfield, both destroyers came under sustained attack from Luftwaffe Stuka dive-bombers.

HMS Kashmir went down first, struck by a 1,000-pound bomb, though not before her gunner, Ian Rhodes, shot down one of the attacking aircraft, an act that earned him the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal and made him the only Australian sailor of either world war to receive that particular honour.

With HMS Kashmir gone, the German bombers turned their full attention on HMS Kelly. A bomb struck her X Turret, penetrated through the hull, and detonated near the engine room, and the ship capsized in roughly a minute, trapping many of her crew below decks; her propellers reportedly kept turning even as the capsized hull briefly remained afloat.

HMS Kelly's own gunners fought back fiercely, shooting down three of the attacking Stukas even as the ship went down beneath them. In total, 80 men were lost with HMS Kashmir and 131 with HMS Kelly, roughly half her crew, and German aircraft strafed survivors as they waited in the water to be picked up, a remarkably harrowing end to a ship that had already survived so much.

The Ship That Became a Film

HMS Kelly's story did not end with her sinking. Lord Mountbatten's account of her loss went on to inspire the 1943 film In Which We Serve, in which the fictional HMS Torrin and her captain, played by Noel Coward, were closely modelled on Mountbatten's own experiences aboard HMS Kelly.

The film became the second most popular picture at British cinemas that year, ensuring that a destroyer whose career had been defined as much by mishap and misfortune as by genuine heroism ended up as one of the most famous ships of the entire war, remembered on screen by millions who never set foot on a warship in their lives.