HMS Oribi (G66): Havant's Destroyer, Churchill's Ferry and the Ramming of U-125

Observer Becomes Oribi

HMS Oribi was one of the eight ships of the O Class, ordered from Fairfield at Govan on 3 September 1939, the first day of the war. Her keel was laid on 15 January 1940 and she was to have been called Observer, after a destroyer of the First World War.

Then the government of South Africa agreed to pay for her building, and in November 1940 her name was changed to Oribi, after the small South African antelope; her badge shows one on a blue field. Lady Dollan, wife of the Lord Provost of Glasgow, launched her on 14 January 1941.

The proprietors of the Sunday newspaper The Observer had promised the ship of that name free copies, and they kept their word, sending them to Oribi throughout the war.

She was completed on 5 July 1941, the first of her class to enter service, and on her trials she made 34 knots. She was one of four of the class that were never fitted to lay mines, and she carried four 4.7 inch guns, as her sister Onslow did.

In March 1942 the people of Havant, in Hampshire, adopted her after their Warship Week.

Churchill and the Prince of Wales

During her work-up at Scapa Flow she landed Norwegian agents on the enemy coast, and on 4 August 1941 she embarked the Prime Minister at Scrabster and carried him across to Scapa, where he boarded the battleship Prince of Wales for the voyage to Placentia Bay in Newfoundland and his meeting with President Roosevelt, at which the Atlantic Charter was agreed.

Oribi escorted the battleship with Laforey out into the Atlantic and met her again on her way home.

In September she went south for Operation Halberd, the Malta convoy of nine merchant ships. She was in Force X, the close escort that took the convoy through the Sicilian Narrows, and on 27 September she and the Hunt Class Heythrop tried to tow the Imperial Star, disabled by an aerial torpedo.

The tow failed and the ship had to be sunk. Hurrying to catch up with the convoy alone, Oribi hoisted Italian colours to confuse the Italian aircraft, and the trick worked.

Vaagso and the Arctic

In October 1941 she joined the new 17th Destroyer Flotilla in the Home Fleet. For the commando raid on Vaagso on 27 December, Operation Archery, she embarked 100 commandos for the landing at Rodberg and gave covering fire with the cruiser Kenya before the troops went ashore.

During the raid German patrol vessels were boarded, and an Enigma machine and papers were taken.

The winter of 1942 was the first of three she spent on the Russian convoys. With PQ 12 in March she lost two seamen overboard in heavy weather and had her bow stove in by ice, and she was docked for repair at Rosta, near Murmansk.

At the end of March she joined the eastern escort of PQ 13 after its fight with German destroyers, and offered to tow the damaged cruiser Trinidad, but was told to stay with the convoy. On 1 May, with the Home Fleet in thick fog, she saw King George V run down and sink Punjabi.

The Gil Eannes

In October 1942 she sailed south with a troop convoy, and on 2 November she was detached to find the Portuguese ship Gil Eannes, believed to be carrying a German agent from America to Lisbon with knowledge of the coming Allied landings in North Africa. Oribi stopped and boarded her the next day, arrested her radio officer and landed him at Gibraltar for questioning, then joined Force H to cover the landings.

At Christmas she sailed with the escort of convoy JW 51B. Ice built up so thickly on her upper deck that she rolled 55 degrees, her gyro compass failed and she lost touch with the convoy, and she made her own way to Kola.

She missed the Battle of the Barents Sea, in which her sisters Onslow, Obedient and Obdurate held off the Hipper, and in January 1943 the board of inquiry into the loss of Achates and the minesweeper Bramble was held on board her.

U-125

In the spring of 1943 she was one of the destroyers of the 3rd Support Group, with Offa, Penn, Panther and Impulsive, sent out from Londonderry to reinforce the convoys at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic. In March they searched for U-boats in hurricane conditions around convoy HX 230, and in April they helped beat off the attacks on HX 233.

At the end of April they were sent to the slow westbound convoy ONS 5, which over the next week was attacked by around forty U-boats in what became the turning point of the Atlantic battle.

On the night of 5/6 May, in thick fog east of Newfoundland, Oribi under Lieutenant Commander John Ingram found U-125 on the surface and rammed her. The U-boat, damaged and unable to dive, was sunk by gunfire from the corvette Snowflake, and none of her crew survived.

Six U-boats were lost attacking the convoy and the Germans, though they sank twelve ships, broke off. Oribi's bow was badly damaged and she had lost a propeller, and she went to Boston in the United States for repair, coming home by way of Bermuda in July.

Spitzbergen, Lyme Bay and Normandy

In October 1943, supporting convoy SC 143, she saw the Polish destroyer Orkan sunk by a homing torpedo. Orkan had been built as Myrmidon, the sister of Milne. Later that month Oribi went with the American cruiser Tuscaloosa to relieve and supply the garrison at Spitzbergen.

In 1944 she was back on the Russian run with JW 57 and JW 58, and in April she went to Plymouth for the D-Day rehearsals. On the night of Exercise Tiger, 27/28 April, she engaged the E-boats that had attacked the American landing ships in Lyme Bay.

From the end of May she patrolled the western edge of the invasion routes with Onslow, Offa and Onslaught, and she was in action with E-boats off Boulogne on 9 June and off Cap d'Antifer on 31 July.

Gayret

She finished the war with the last convoys to Russia and, after the German surrender, at Copenhagen with Diadem. In June 1945 she escorted the German supply ship Nordmark from Copenhagen to Rosyth, to be taken into the Royal Navy.

She was paid off in January 1946, and this photograph was taken on 30 May, just before she left the Royal Navy.

Turkey had ordered destroyers in Britain before the war, and one of them, building at Denny's as the Gayret, had been taken over in 1939 and commissioned as Ithuriel, which was wrecked by bombing at Bone in 1942. Oribi was handed over on 18 June 1946 as her replacement and took the name Gayret.

She served the Turkish Navy until 1965. In the Royal Navy she had won the battle honours Norway 1941, Malta Convoys 1941, Atlantic 1942-43, North Africa 1942, Arctic 1942-44 and Normandy 1944.