HMS Offa (G29): Pulling Torpedoed Tanker Crews From the Arctic Sea

Built at Fairfield's Govan Yard

HMS Offa was ordered on 3 September 1939, built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Co. at Govan, laid down on 15 January 1940, launched on 11 March 1941 and commissioned on 20 September that year, an O-class destroyer built directly into the teeth of the Battle of the Atlantic and the newly opened Arctic convoy route to the Soviet Union.

Minelaying and Fleet Escort

HMS Offa took part in minelaying missions in the autumn of 1941, and carried out fleet exercises and escort duties alongside major warships including HMS King George V and HMS Victorious, before settling into what would become the defining work of her wartime career, escorting the perilous Arctic convoys carrying vital supplies to northern Russia.

Escorting the First Arctic Convoys

HMS Offa escorted Convoy PQ 4 in November 1941, sailing from Hvalfjord in Iceland on 17 November and reaching Arkhangelsk by 28 November, one of the earliest of the Arctic convoy runs, undertaken before the full scale of the German threat to that route had even become apparent.

Two Rescues in the Barents Sea

HMS Offa, under the command of Lieutenant Commander R. A. Ewing, picked up survivors from the British tanker Atheltemplar on 14 September 1942, after she had been torpedoed by the German submarine U-457 southwest of Bear Island, and repeated the feat on 26 January 1944, rescuing survivors from the merchant vessel Fort Bellingham, torpedoed by U-957 in the Barents Sea north of North Cape. Both rescues represented exactly the kind of unglamorous but genuinely lifesaving work that escort destroyers performed constantly throughout the Arctic convoy campaign, work that rarely made headlines but mattered enormously to the men whose lives depended on it.

Celebrating in Kiel

HMS Offa took part in King's Birthday celebrations at Kiel on 2 June 1945 alongside HMS Obedient, a proud moment of victory celebrated in what had so recently been the heart of enemy territory.

A New Life as Tariq

HMS Offa served as a submarine target ship in 1946, before entering reserve at Devonport in February 1948. Following a refit that April, she was transferred to Pakistan on 30 November 1949 and renamed Tariq, joining the fleet of the newly independent nation's fledgling navy. She eventually returned to Portsmouth in July 1959 and was scrapped, arriving at Sunderland on 13 October that year, closing out the career of a destroyer whose wartime service had been defined above all by the patient, dangerous work of pulling survivors from freezing Arctic waters.