HMS Sikh (L82): From the Bismarck Chase to a Doomed Raid on Tobruk

Built on the Clyde

HMS Sikh was ordered on 19 June 1936 from Alexander Stephen and Sons' Linthouse shipyard on the Clyde, laid down that September, launched on 8 June 1937 and commissioned on 12 October 1938 at a cost of £337,704 before weapons and communications equipment. A Tribal-class destroyer, she carried eight 4.7-inch guns and a quadruple set of 21-inch torpedo tubes, and could make 36 knots on her Parsons steam turbines, a genuinely formidable fighting ship for her size.

Torpedoes at the Bismarck

Sikh joined the 4th Destroyer Flotilla and took part in the climactic pursuit of the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941, firing four torpedoes at the crippled ship during her final night under the command of Commander Stokes and initially being credited with a hit, a claim later disproven but no less a mark of how closely she was involved in one of the war's most famous naval actions.

Sinking Two Italian Cruisers off Cape Bon

Transferred to Mediterranean operations with Force H, Sikh achieved her most significant combat success on 13 December 1941, when she joined HMS Legion, HMS Maori and the Dutch destroyer HNLMS Isaac Sweers in sinking the Italian cruisers Alberico da Barbiano and Alberto di Giussano at the Battle of Cape Bon, a decisive night action that removed two enemy cruisers from the board in a single engagement. The following August she helped destroy the German submarine U-372 off Haifa, adding a confirmed U-boat kill to her record.

Lost Covering the Tobruk Raid

On 14 September 1942, Sikh was providing covering support for Operation Agreement, a daring commando raid on the port of Tobruk, when she came under heavy fire from Italian coastal artillery, struck repeatedly by 152mm, 145mm and 120mm shells and possibly by aircraft as well. She was scuttled by HMS Croome to prevent her capture. The action cost 115 of her crew their lives, with further men taken prisoner after the small craft attempting to rescue them was itself seized by Italian forces, a heavy loss that this article records with the seriousness it deserves.

A Destroyer That Fought to the Very End

HMS Sikh's career spans some of the Royal Navy's most famous Mediterranean and Atlantic actions of the war, from the hunt for the Bismarck to the destruction of two Italian cruisers at Cape Bon, and her loss during the Tobruk raid stands as a sober reminder of the cost borne by the destroyer crews who carried out these dangerous covering operations.