HMS Opossum (U33): From Rescuing Downed Airmen to Shelling Targets in Korea

Commissioned Just in Time for the Pacific

HMS Opossum was ordered on 12 August 1941 from William Denny and Brothers in Dumbarton, laid down on 28 July 1943, launched on 30 November 1944 and commissioned on 16 June 1945, a Modified Black Swan-class sloop that reached service just as the war against Japan was entering its final weeks, joining the British Pacific Fleet by that August.

Rescuing a Downed Bomber Crew

HMS Opossum carried out a genuinely valuable piece of lifesaving work on 10 May 1946, rescuing eight survivors from a Royal Australian Air Force Liberator bomber that had crashed some 75 nautical miles south of Mindanao in the Philippines, a rescue that, whatever the wider strategic picture, mattered enormously to the eight men who owed their survival to it.

Between Sydney and Portsmouth

HMS Opossum underwent a refit at Sydney in the middle of 1946 and served with the 1st Escort Flotilla afterward, before returning to reserve at Portsmouth in November 1947, her pennant number changed from U33 to F33 that same year, a quiet interlude between the intensity of her brief wartime commission and the further active service still to come.

Shelling Targets Near Haeju

HMS Opossum refitted at Chatham in early 1952 and rejoined the 3rd Frigate Squadron in the Far East, taking part in Korean War operations that included shelling targets near Haeju on 16 January 1953, alongside anti-submarine patrol duties, a genuinely active combat role for a sloop originally built in the final months of an entirely different war.

Into the Malayan Emergency

HMS Opossum went on to take part in operations during the Malayan Emergency, shelling suspected Communist positions in July 1954, part of the long, grinding counter-insurgency campaign the British fought against Communist guerrillas in Malaya through the 1950s. She recommissioned at Singapore with an entirely new crew on 27 June 1957, continuing her Far East service.

A Final Posting to the South Atlantic

HMS Opossum departed the 3rd Frigate Squadron in late 1957, arriving back in Britain that January, before joining the 7th Frigate Squadron for South Atlantic Station duty, a rather quieter final active posting after years spent in some of the most operationally demanding waters in the world. She paid off into reserve at Devonport in 1959 and was sold for scrap, arriving at the breakers' yard on 26 April 1960, closing out the career of a sloop whose service had ranged from wartime rescue work in the Pacific to active combat operations in two separate Asian conflicts.