HMS Tartar (F43): The Lucky Tartar, Present at Every Turning Point of the War

Built on the Tyne

HMS Tartar was built by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson at Wallsend, ordered on 19 June 1936, laid down that August, launched on 21 October 1937 and commissioned on 10 March 1938, a Tribal-class destroyer that would go on to earn the nickname the Lucky Tartar for a genuinely remarkable string of narrow escapes across nearly every major theatre of the Second World War.

Capturing an Enigma Machine

Tartar took part in Operation Claymore, the 1941 raid on the Lofoten Islands, during which the German trawler Krebs was captured along with an Enigma machine, a genuinely significant intelligence coup that contributed to the Allied codebreaking effort at Bletchley Park.

Present at the Sinking of the Bismarck

Later that year, Tartar was present at the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, and rescued 229 survivors of HMS Mashona, before surviving one of the most intense air attacks any Royal Navy destroyer faced during the entire war, a sustained assault by around fifty aircraft over thirteen hours on 28 May 1941, during which she managed to shoot down a Heinkel He 111 bomber.

Arctic Convoys, Malta, and North Africa

Through 1942, Tartar escorted the brutal PQ and QP Arctic convoy series, took part in Operation Pedestal, the desperate effort to resupply besieged Malta, supported Operation Torch in North Africa, and depth-charged Italian submarines, an exhausting run of some of the most dangerous convoy work of the entire war.

Rescuing a Hospital Ship's Survivors

During Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, in 1943, Tartar rescued two hundred survivors from the hospital ship Talamba, and went on to support Operation Avalanche at Salerno, where she came under attack from German glider bombs, a new and genuinely terrifying weapon that this account notes given the danger it posed to ships and crews alike.

D-Day and the Battle of Ushant

Tartar supported the D-Day landings in June 1944 and fought at the Battle of Ushant on 9 June, an action in which she was damaged and lost four of her crew, with twelve more wounded, a loss this article records honestly. She continued English Channel patrols and coastal raids through the rest of that year.

Rangoon, and the Japanese Surrender

In 1945, Tartar deployed to the Eastern Fleet, took part in Operation Dracula, the amphibious assault on Rangoon, and was present at the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, a fitting final chapter for one of only four Tribal-class destroyers to survive the entire war out of the sixteen originally built for the Royal Navy.

Scrapped After the War

HMS Tartar was paid off in January 1946 and sold to BISCO for scrap, demolished at J. Cashmore's Newport yard after arriving there in February 1948, closing the career of a ship whose extraordinary run of survivals across six years of war fully earned her nickname.