HMS Oakley (L98): Sold to Germany, Renamed Gneisenau After the Battleship She Once Hunted

Renamed to Free Up a Name for Poland

HMS Oakley was ordered on 20 December 1939 from Yarrow and Co Ltd at Scotstoun, laid down on 19 August 1940, launched on 15 January 1942 and commissioned on 7 May that year, a Type II Hunt-class destroyer. She was originally to have been named HMS Tickham, but was renamed Oakley after the first ship to carry that name was transferred to the Polish Navy as ORP Kujawiak on 3 April 1941, freeing the name up for this second vessel.

Screening the Arctic Convoys

HMS Oakley sailed for Scapa Flow on 22 June 1942 following the correction of defects found during sea trials, and took on escort duties for minelaying operations and diversionary manoeuvres connected with the ill-fated Convoy PQ 17. She went on to escort Convoys PQ 18 and QP 15 to and from the Soviet Union later that year, earning her first battle honour for Arctic service in some of the most dangerous convoy waters of the entire war.

Sicily, Salerno and a Submerged Wreck

HMS Oakley joined the 59th Destroyer Division in the Mediterranean from February 1943, taking part in the Operation Retribution blockade that May, aimed at preventing the evacuation of Axis forces from Tunisia, and escorted a landing ship convoy during the invasion of Sicily that July, shelling Italian coastal defences in support of the landings. She struck a submerged wreck at the entrance to Taranto harbour in December 1943, requiring repairs that kept her out of action until April 1944.

Supporting France and Greece

HMS Oakley supported the Allied invasion of southern France during Operation Dragoon in August 1944, and took part in Operation Manna that October, supporting Greek operations and the re-occupation of Athens as German forces withdrew. She rounded out her wartime service on East Coast patrol duty with the 21st Destroyer Flotilla at Sheerness between January and March 1945, earning further battle honours for South France 1944 and North Sea 1945.

Sold to Germany, Renamed for a Battleship

HMS Oakley entered Category B reserve at Portsmouth in December 1945 and underwent a refit in 1947, but remained largely idle until 11 November 1957, when she was purchased by West Germany. Following a refit at Harland and Wolff in Liverpool, she was handed over on 2 October 1958 and commissioned into the German Navy at Bremerhaven on 18 October that year under a genuinely striking new name: Gneisenau, shared with the famous German battleship that had once been hunted across the Atlantic by ships very much like HMS Oakley herself. She served as a training ship for the German Naval Gunnery School alongside a sister vessel renamed Scharnhorst, after the second of the two legendary German capital ships, a remarkable piece of naming irony for two former British Hunt-class destroyers.

Rebuilt as a Modern Gunnery Trainer

HMS Oakley, as Gneisenau, was extensively modified between 1958 and 1964, fitted with stabilisers, new radar and a distinctive cowl funnel, before undergoing a major rebuild at Howaldtswerke in Kiel between 1962 and 1964 that removed her original British armament entirely, replacing it with a single French 100mm gun forward and four 40mm Bofors guns, along with modern Dutch radar and fire control systems, re-entering service in her rebuilt form on 5 March 1964, a ship almost unrecognisable from the wartime Hunt-class destroyer she had once been.

Scrapped at Wilhelmshaven

HMS Oakley became a stationary training ship in 1965, entered reserve in 1968, and was formally stricken from the German naval register on 30 September 1972, subsequently cannibalised at Wilhelmshaven before being scrapped from 18 January 1977 onward, closing out the career of a British-built destroyer that ended her days serving, and honouring the name of, one of the very warships the Royal Navy had once fought so hard to sink.