HMS Teazer (F23): From the Aegean to Tokyo Bay, and a Starring Film Role

Into the Mediterranean

HMS Teazer completed builder's trials in September 1943 and joined the 24th Destroyer Flotilla, a T-class destroyer that, after working-up exercises at Scapa Flow, deployed to the Mediterranean, where she supported British X Corps operations in the Minturno sector during the hard-fought Italian campaign of November 1943.

Sinking a Submarine Chaser in the Aegean

In July 1944, Teazer came under American command to support the Operation Dragoon landings in southern France, before returning to the eastern Mediterranean, where during the Allied withdrawal from the Aegean Sea that year she sank the transport ship KT Erpel and the submarine chaser UJ2171 near Cape Spatha, a notably productive combat record for a single destroyer in a theatre often overshadowed by the fighting further west.

Screening Carriers Off Japan

Following a refit, Teazer joined Task Force 57 and later Task Force 37 in May 1945, providing escort for the Royal Navy carriers conducting air raids on the Japanese home islands, dangerous work at the very sharp end of the Pacific War's final months. She was present in Tokyo Bay for the formal Japanese surrender ceremony on 2 September 1945, a historic conclusion to her wartime service.

A New Role as a Training Frigate

After several years in reserve at Devonport, Teazer was converted between 1953 and 1954 by Mountstuart Dry Docks in Cardiff into a Type 16 fast anti-submarine frigate, and by January 1959 had taken her place in the 2nd Training Squadron, replacing HMS Grenville in training the next generation of Royal Navy sailors.

A Star of Stage and Screen

In a truly unusual footnote to her career, Teazer appeared in the 1957 film Yangtse Incident, dramatising the real-life escape of HMS Amethyst from Chinese Communist forces, and was later referenced in the television series Doctor Who as the assigned vessel of the companion character Ben Jackson, a small but charming piece of cultural trivia for a working Royal Navy frigate.

Scrapped in Scotland

HMS Teazer was placed on the disposal list in September 1961 and sold to Arnott Young at Dalmuir for scrapping, arriving there on 7 August 1965, closing out a career that had taken her from combat in the Aegean and the Pacific to an unlikely brush with popular culture.