HMS Loch Eck (K422): Three U-boats Sunk, Then New Zealand's First Shot Fired in Anger

Built by Smiths Dock

HMS Loch Eck was laid down by Smiths Dock on 25 October 1943, launched on 25 April 1944 and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 7 November that year, one of the Loch-class frigates displacing 1,435 tons standard and equipped with reciprocating engines producing 5,500 indicated horsepower, a remarkably capable submarine hunter that would go on to enjoy a remarkably successful, if brief, run against the German U-boat fleet.

Three U-boats in a Fortnight

HMS Loch Eck joined anti-submarine operations with the 10th Escort Group on commissioning, and achieved an exceptional run of success in a very short space of time.

On 3 February 1945, she sank the German submarine U-327 using her Squid mortar, and in the days that followed took part in the destruction of both U-989 and U-1278, three confirmed U-boat kills within a matter of weeks, a tally that placed her firmly among the most successful individual anti-submarine escorts of the entire war's final phase.

Norway and the Japanese Surrender

HMS Loch Eck went on to support Operation Doomsday, the reoccupation of Norway following Germany's surrender, and escorted defeated U-boats into captivity.

After a refit in Bristol she deployed to the Indian Ocean, where she was present at the formal Japanese surrender of Bali in February 1946 and at Lombok the following month, a fitting final wartime chapter for a ship that had already proven so effective in the Atlantic. She decommissioned on 13 August 1946.

Becoming HMNZS Hawea

HMS Loch Eck was acquired by New Zealand on 7 September 1948 and commissioned into the Royal New Zealand Navy as HMNZS Hawea on 1 October that year, renamed after a glacial lake in New Zealand's South Island, in keeping with the Admiralty's practice of naming the class after Scottish lochs and, in her new service, a New Zealand equivalent.

New Zealand's First Shot Fired in Anger

HMNZS Hawea deployed to Korea in February 1951, and on 18 May that year shelled an enemy gun position on the coast, an action recorded as the first time a Royal New Zealand Navy ship had ever fired on the enemy, a historic moment for the young navy.

She went on to accumulate 272 days at sea during her Korean deployment and fired some 21,000 rounds in total, before returning to Auckland in August 1953 following the armistice that July.

A Long Retirement

HMNZS Hawea was decommissioned on 15 February 1957, and went on to serve as a harbour training ship in Auckland for a further eight years before finally being sold for breaking up in September 1965, towed to Hong Kong for scrapping that November, closing out the career of a frigate whose achievements spanned two navies and two wars, sinking three U-boats under one flag and firing the first shots of an entire nation's naval combat history under another.