HMS Myngs (R06): From Screening Tirpitz Strikes to Sunk by Israeli Jets as an Egyptian Destroyer

Built at High Walker

HMS Myngs was ordered on 12 February 1942 and built by Vickers-Armstrongs at High Walker on the Tyne, laid down on 27 May that year, launched on 31 May 1943 and commissioned on 23 June 1944, a Z-class destroyer serving as a flotilla leader, displacing 1,710 tons and capable of a genuinely fast 37 knots, armed with four 4.5-inch guns, five 40mm guns and eight torpedo tubes.

Screening the Strikes on the Tirpitz

HMS Myngs joined the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet on commissioning, and spent much of her wartime service operating in the North West Approaches and escorting Russian convoys through the perilous Arctic waters. She also took part in operations against the German battleship Tirpitz, providing protective screening for the aircraft carriers whose bombers repeatedly struck at the great battleship in her Norwegian fjord anchorage, a genuinely important, if largely unglamorous, contribution to one of the most sustained naval campaigns of the entire war. She transferred to the 4th Destroyer Flotilla in April 1945, in time to take part in Victory in Europe celebrations in London.

A Coronation and a Quiet Postwar Decade

HMS Myngs served through various flotilla assignments in the years after the war, attending the Coronation Review at Spithead in 1953 to mark the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II, before being placed in reserve pending conversion in May 1955, at which point she was earmarked for transfer to an entirely new owner.

Becoming El Qaher

HMS Myngs was transferred to Egypt and, following refits carried out by J. Samuel White at Cowes, was commissioned into the Egyptian Navy as El Qaher on 28 August 1956, joining the not inconsiderable ranks of former Royal Navy destroyers that went on to serve friendly and allied fleets around the world in their later years.

Sunk in the War of Attrition

HMS Myngs met her end far from British waters and long after her Royal Navy service had ended: on 16 May 1970, as El Qaher, she was sunk by Israeli Air Force aircraft at Berenice, Egypt, during the War of Attrition, the prolonged and bitter conflict fought between Egypt and Israel following the Six-Day War of 1967. It was a genuinely sobering end for a destroyer that had once helped shield Allied carriers from one of the most feared warships in the German fleet, sunk in turn by aircraft in a conflict fought a quarter of a century after her own war had ended.