HMS Kite (U87): Five U-boats Sunk Under Captain Walker, Then Lost in the Arctic

Birkenhead-Built

HMS Kite was ordered on 27 March 1941 and laid down on 25 September that year at Cammell Laird's shipyard in Birkenhead, launched on 13 October 1942 and commissioned on 1 March 1943, a modified Black Swan-class sloop that went on to operate out of Bootle's Gladstone Dock as part of one of the most celebrated anti-submarine escort groups of the entire war.

Five U-boats Under Captain Walker

HMS Kite served under Captain Frederic John Walker, the Royal Navy's foremost anti-submarine warfare specialist and by some distance the most successful U-boat hunter of the war, and shared in an extraordinary run of success against the German submarine fleet.

Working alongside her fellow sloops, HMS Kite helped sink U-449 near Cape Ortegal on 24 June 1943, U-462 and U-504, both destroyed in the Bay of Biscay on 30 July 1943 with the assistance of air support, U-226 east of Newfoundland on 6 November 1943, and U-238 southwest of Ireland on 9 February 1944, a tally of five confirmed U-boat kills in under a year that placed her firmly among the most effective anti-submarine vessels of the entire Battle of the Atlantic.

Lost Escorting the Arctic Convoys

HMS Kite was assigned to escort aircraft carriers supporting convoy JW 59 to northern Russia in August 1944, exactly the kind of dangerous Arctic convoy work that had claimed so many Royal Navy ships over the preceding years.

On 21 August, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Andrew Neil Gillespie Campbell, she slowed to just six knots in order to recover her anti-acoustic torpedo decoys, known as foxers, a routine but necessarily vulnerable manoeuvre that left her dangerously exposed at the worst possible moment.

The German submarine U-344 struck with two torpedoes, and HMS Kite sank rapidly in the icy waters off Norway, at a position of roughly 73 degrees North. Of an estimated 217 men aboard, only around 60 made it into the water alive, and of those just 14 were rescued, five of whom later died from their exposure to the freezing Arctic sea, leaving only around nine survivors from her entire crew.

She was picked up in part by HMS Keppel, whose crew, like so many others engaged in Arctic convoy rescue work, faced the grim task of pulling desperately few survivors from waters cold enough to kill within minutes.

A Sobering Postscript

HMS Kite's loss stands as a stark reminder of just how unforgiving the Arctic convoy routes were, even for a ship that had proven herself one of the most successful U-boat hunters of the war.

A vessel that had helped destroy five enemy submarines and saved countless Allied lives in the process was ultimately claimed by the very kind of attack she had spent so much of her career defending against, a properly sobering conclusion to what had, until that final August morning, been an outstandingly successful career.