HMS Milne (G14): Croydon's Flotilla Leader, PQ 18, ONS 154 and the End of U-289

A Leader from Greenock

HMS Milne was the flotilla leader of the M Class, the eight destroyers that followed the L Class with the same six 4.7 inch guns in three enclosed twin turrets. A leader carried the captain of the flotilla and his staff, so she was built a little larger than her sisters, with extra cabins and office space.

She was ordered from Scotts of Greenock on 7 July 1939 together with her sister Myrmidon, which was handed over to the Polish Navy before completion as the Orkan, and her keel was laid on 24 January 1940. She was launched on 30 December 1941.

According to one account, bomb damage to the Scotts yard meant she had to be taken up the river to John Brown's at Clydebank to be finished, and this photograph shows her on the Clyde on 24 July 1942, just before her completion on 6 August. She had cost £659,512, including the guns and equipment supplied by the Admiralty.

She was the second Milne. The first, a destroyer of 1914, had fought at the Dogger Bank in 1915 and off the Belgian coast in 1916 and was sold in 1921, and the new ship took on her battle honours and her badge, a gold cross moline on a blue field.

In February 1942, before she was even finished, the people of Croydon in Surrey adopted her after their Warship Week. Her first captain was Captain Ian Campbell, who had commanded her since she was fitting out, and she went to Scapa Flow as leader of the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet.

PQ 18

She was ready just in time for the most heavily defended of all the Arctic convoys. After the destruction of PQ 17 in July 1942, the Admiralty gave the next convoy, PQ 18, a fighting escort of fifteen fleet destroyers under Rear Admiral Robert Burnett in the anti-aircraft cruiser Scylla, together with the escort carrier Avenger.

Milne joined it on 9 September with her sisters Marne and Meteor and the rest of the flotilla. The convoy came under heavy torpedo bomber and U-boat attack, and about a third of its forty merchant ships were lost, but the escort and Avenger's fighters took a heavy toll of the attackers.

On 12 September Milne went with Scylla to refuel at Spitsbergen, rejoining the next day, and on the 17th she transferred to the homeward convoy QP 14. She came back to Scapa Flow on 22 September flying the flag of Rear Admiral Burnett, who had shifted across from Scylla two days earlier.

Torch and Convoy ONS 154

At the end of October she sailed with Duke of York and Nelson for Gibraltar, and on 8 November she screened the battleships and carriers of Force H, covering the landings in North Africa against any interference by the French or Italian fleets. Later that month she brought a troop convoy into Oran with Quality and two other destroyers.

On 25 December she left with Meteor to escort a fast troop convoy home to the Clyde, but three days later the two destroyers were detached to help the westbound convoy ONS 154, which was being torn apart by two U-boat packs in the mid-Atlantic. By the time they arrived on 29 December the worst was over.

Milne drove off night attacks with Meteor and picked up survivors from three British ships hit by U-406: 42 from the Baron Cochrane, 52 from the Lynton Grange and 49 from the Zarian, 143 men in all. Thirteen ships of the convoy had been lost.

On New Year's Day 1943 she left the convoy, refuelled at Ponta Delgada in the Azores and went home for docking at Jarrow.

The Russian Run

In February 1943 she took the ocean escort of convoy JW 53 to Murmansk through some of the worst weather of the war. The cruiser Sheffield and the escort carrier Dasher were both damaged by the sea and had to turn back, but all the merchant ships arrived.

She brought the homeward convoy RA 53 back in March and then spent a spell with the Plymouth Command, hunting German blockade runners with the cruiser Charybdis. In April she joined the 4th Support Group with the escort carrier Archer and the destroyers Eclipse and Fury, and in May, at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, the group supported the convoys SC 130 and HX 239.

In July she screened the Home Fleet's feints off the Norwegian coast, intended to make the Germans believe an invasion of Norway was coming while the Allies landed in Sicily.

After a refit at Hull she went back to the Arctic. In October 1943, with Matchless, Musketeer and others, she escorted a group of small minesweepers and motor launches, manned by Russian crews, out to North Russia, then brought home the first homeward convoy of the winter, RA 54A.

In December she escorted JW 55A, the convoy before the one that drew the Scharnhorst out to her destruction, and came home with RA 55A on 31 December.

The convoys of early 1944 were fought through massed U-boats. With JW 56B the destroyer Hardy was torpedoed and sunk on 30 January, and with JW 57 in February the Mahratta was lost with almost all her company.

Between the convoys Milne screened the Home Fleet's carriers for Operation Tungsten, the air attack on the Tirpitz in Altenfjord on 3 April.

That month she went out to Kola with sixteen other destroyers to bring back a convoy of empty ships, and because the personnel ship meant to carry them had broken down, the escorts took on board some of the Russian sailors coming to Britain to man warships lent to the Soviet Union, among them the old battleship Royal Sovereign. She brought them home with RA 59 in May.

U-289

Captain Maxwell Richmond had relieved Campbell in April. On 31 May 1944, while the Home Fleet was at sea off Norway, Milne found a U-boat north of the Arctic Circle, between Jan Mayen and Bear Island, and sank her with depth charges. She was U-289, on passage to the Arctic, and there were no survivors.

Through the summer Milne stayed with the Home Fleet, which was held in northern waters in case the German heavy ships tried to interfere with the Normandy landings, and in August and September she took the convoys JW 59 and JW 60 to Kola with Marne, Meteor and Musketeer, alongside the escort carriers and the cruiser Jamaica.

The Riviera and Genoa

In October 1944 the flotilla was ordered to the Mediterranean. Milne had another refit at Hull and reached Malta on 4 January 1945.

She spent the winter on patrols with the flotilla and French destroyers, intercepting the craft taking German troops off the islands, and in March she moved to the west coast of Italy and the Riviera, bombarding shore targets on the 9th and, with Marne, the port of Genoa on the 15th. After the German surrender she supported the garrisons in the Adriatic and visited ports in the eastern Mediterranean.

Alp Arslan

She left Gibraltar for Harwich on 4 April 1946 and paid off into reserve. For some years she was an accommodation ship for reserve crews at Rosyth, and she was towed to Plymouth to become a Type 62 aircraft direction frigate, but the M Class were found to be in poor condition and unsuitable, and the work was never done.

She was laid up at Penarth and on 24 September 1957 was sold to Turkey with Marne, Meteor and Matchless. After a refit and a modernised armament she was handed over on 12 June 1959 and renamed Alp Arslan, after the Seljuk sultan who beat the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071.

She served the Turkish Navy until 1971 and was broken up there. Her battle honours as a British ship were Arctic 1942 and North Africa 1942-43, and she was one of several of the Russian convoy destroyers to end their days under the Turkish flag, among them her old companion on the Kola run, Oribi.