HMS Mashona (F59): Sunk by German Bombers the Day After Helping Chase Down the Bismarck

Built on the Tyne

HMS Mashona was ordered on 19 June 1936, built by Vickers-Armstrong at High Walker on the Tyne, laid down on 5 August 1936, launched on 3 September 1937 and commissioned on 1 April 1939, a Tribal-class destroyer that cost £341,108 excluding her weapons and communications equipment, entering service just months before the war she would spend her entire, brief career fighting in.

Seizing Swedish Warships

HMS Mashona carried out convoy escort duties in the early months of the war and took an active part in the Norwegian Campaign of 1940, before playing a genuinely unusual role in June that year in what became known as the Psilander affair, helping briefly seize four Swedish warships that were attempting to make their way to Sweden, a curious little episode of Baltic-adjacent diplomacy and naval brinkmanship rather than outright combat. Following repairs from earlier collision damage in early 1941, HMS Mashona returned to escorting Home Fleet units through the North Atlantic.

Chasing the Bismarck

HMS Mashona formed part of the escort for the battleship HMS Rodney and the ocean liner MV Britannic as they set sail for Halifax, Canada, on 22 May 1941, only to be swept up into one of the most dramatic naval pursuits in modern history when the German battleship Bismarck sank HMS Hood days later. HMS Mashona joined the chase, and by 26 May was tasked with relaying HMS Rodney's position to Admiral Tovey as the net closed around the German raider. That evening, however, HMS Mashona, together with HMS Tartar and HMS Somali, was forced to turn back for lack of fuel, missing the climactic final action against the Bismarck by the narrowest of margins.

Sunk Returning to Port

HMS Mashona was returning to port at 15 knots on 28 May 1941, the very day after the Bismarck's own destruction, when she was attacked by Luftwaffe bombers off the coast of Galway, Ireland. A Heinkel He 111 from the first group of Bomber Wing 28 struck her with a single bomb in the forward boiler room, causing severe flooding that killed 46 of her crew outright, with a further number of survivors subsequently dying of hypothermia in the water before rescue could reach them all. HMS Tartar managed to pull 184 survivors from the sea and carried them to Greenock, while the disabled, capsizing hulk of HMS Mashona was finally finished off by shellfire from a Canadian destroyer.

A Cruelly Ironic Fate

HMS Mashona's loss stands as a genuinely bitter footnote to one of the Royal Navy's proudest moments of the war, a destroyer that had helped hunt down and relay position reports on one of the most feared warships afloat, only to be sunk by aircraft within a day of that hunt's triumphant conclusion, a stark reminder that victory at sea rarely came without a price paid somewhere along the way.