HMS Striker (D12): From Attacking the Tirpitz to the Skies Over Okinawa

Built in San Francisco, Lent to Britain

HMS Striker was built by the Western Pipe and Steel Corporation in San Francisco, laid down in December 1941 as the American escort carrier Prince William before being transferred to the Royal Navy under the Lend-Lease Agreement. Launched on 7 July 1942, she commissioned into Royal Navy service on 29 April 1943, one of the many American-built escort carriers that helped bridge Britain's wartime shipbuilding shortfall.

Into the Atlantic Convoy War

After crossing the Atlantic with Convoy HX246 and completing modifications at Chatham, Striker joined the 1st British Escort Group in December 1943, providing anti-submarine air cover for convoys through the following winter. In March 1944 her aircraft engaged the U-boat U-575, which had recently sunk HMS Asphodel, a direct reminder of the deadly stakes of this ongoing convoy war.

Striking at the Tirpitz

Transferring to the Home Fleet that March, Striker took part in operations against German shipping off Norway, including strikes against the German battleship Tirpitz, one of the Royal Navy's most sustained and dangerous ongoing campaigns of the war, aimed at neutralising a single ship whose mere presence tied down a significant portion of Britain's home fleet.

133 Sorties to the Kola Inlet

In August and September 1944, Striker escorted the Arctic convoys JW59 and RA59 to and from the Kola Inlet in northern Russia, her embarked aircraft flying 133 sorties during the passage, gruelling flying in some of the most hostile weather any Royal Navy aviator faced during the entire war.

Ferrying Aircraft Over Okinawa

Nominated for the British Pacific Fleet, Striker transited to Australia via Suez and, from January 1945, served as a replenishment carrier with Task Force 112, ferrying replacement aircraft to the fleet carriers engaged in the brutal fighting around the Sakishima Gunto islands during the Okinawa campaign, unglamorous but absolutely vital logistics work that kept the front-line carriers flying.

Returned to America and Scrapped

After further service supporting operations in Hong Kong and Singapore, Striker returned to British waters in November 1945 and was handed back to the United States Navy on 12 February 1946, struck from the Naval Register the following month and eventually sold for scrap in 1948, closing out a career that had taken her from the Atlantic convoy lanes to the Arctic and finally to the Pacific.