HMS Tenacious (R45): Malvern's Destroyer, Anzio, the End of U-453, Truk and the Fleet off Japan

Tempest Becomes Tenacious

HMS Tenacious was one of the eight T Class destroyers of the 6th War Emergency Flotilla, ordered from Cammell Laird at Birkenhead in March 1941. She was to have been called Tempest, but the name had already been given to a submarine, so she was launched on 24 March 1943 as Tenacious, the second ship of the name; the first had been a destroyer of the First World War.

Her keel had been laid on 3 December 1941, she was yard number 1100, and she was completed on 30 October 1943. Malvern in Worcestershire adopted her during its Warship Week in March 1942, and her badge was a bulldog's face, a fair picture of her name.

She carried four 4.7 inch guns, eight torpedo tubes and depth charges, and her captain through the whole war was Lieutenant Commander David Townsend.

The photograph shows her coming down the Mersey around the time she was completed, with R45 painted large on her side, the cranes of the Birkenhead waterfront behind her and a barrage balloon hanging in the haze above her mast.

Anzio and the Adriatic

She worked up at Scapa Flow that winter, screening Duke of York and the other heavy ships of the Home Fleet on their trials and exercises, and in December 1943 she sailed for the Mediterranean with the 24th Destroyer Flotilla.

On 22 January 1944 she was off the beaches at Anzio, where the Allies landed behind the German lines south of Rome, giving gunfire support off Peter Beach under air attacks that included the new German glider bombs. From there the flotilla moved to the Adriatic, supporting the Eighth Army as it pushed up the east coast of Italy; on 2 February she and Tumult bombarded Recanati and Pedaso, south of Ancona.

The End of U-453

In May 1944 a convoy escorted by Italian warships, now fighting on the Allied side, came under U-boat attack in the Ionian Sea, and Tenacious, Termagant and the Hunt Class Liddesdale were sent to reinforce the escort. On 20 May they found the submarine and began a long hunt with depth charges, then waited for her to come up, knowing her air and batteries must run out.

In the early hours of 21 May U-453 surfaced north-east of Cape Spartivento, at the toe of Italy, and the destroyers opened fire. The U-boat sank, and most of her crew were picked up. The three ships shared the credit.

Southern France and the Aegean

In August 1944 she was one of the destroyers screening the British and American escort carriers of Task Force 88 for Operation Dragoon, the Allied landings on the Riviera coast of France, with Troubridge and the rest of her flotilla.

When the carriers' work was done the flotilla went to Alexandria and in September joined the British Aegean Force, harrying the German garrisons on the Greek islands as the Germans pulled out of Greece. In the last weeks of 1944 she was supporting the reoccupation of the islands.

The British Pacific Fleet

After a refit at Malta she sailed for Australia in March 1945 with the 24th Flotilla to join the British Pacific Fleet. She was given the signal letters D23 to fit the American system, and on 9 May she joined the fleet off the Sakishima Islands, where the British carriers were striking at the airfields that fed Japanese aircraft into the battle for Okinawa.

That earned her the battle honour Okinawa 1945. At the end of the month she and Troubridge and Termagant escorted King George V to Guam, where Admiral Rawlings met the American naval staff.

In June she sailed with Implacable for Operation Inmate, the attack on the Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands, intended partly to give the newly arrived ships a taste of Pacific operations; on 15 June she was detached with Uganda and the New Zealand cruiser Achilles to bombard the seaplane base on Dublon Island.

Off Japan

This photograph was taken in August 1945, looking down on her from the American carrier USS Wasp, as she ploughed through the Pacific swell with her hull streaked and stained after weeks at sea, her funnel carrying the two bands of the 24th Flotilla, and a carrier and a battleship on the horizon.

In July the British fleet had joined the American Third Fleet for the final strikes on the Japanese home islands, and Tenacious screened the carriers through them. On 9 August she was one of the three destroyers screening Gambia and Newfoundland while they bombarded the steel works at Kamaishi.

By then the British fleet's tankers could no longer keep it supplied, and most of it was sent back to Manus. A small force stayed behind as part of the American fleet, built round Indefatigable and King George V, with a few cruisers and destroyers, and Tenacious was one of them, alongside Troubridge, Termagant and Teazer.

She was with them, operating among the American carriers, for the strikes on the Tokyo area on 13 August, and when the fighting ended two days later. In the weeks that followed she helped the occupation forces and the work of bringing home Allied prisoners of war and internees.

The Type 16 Frigate

She came home and paid off into reserve at Devonport, and in 1949 she was recommissioned as a target ship on the Clyde for the submarines of the 3rd Submarine Flotilla. In 1951 she was chosen for conversion to a Type 16 anti-submarine frigate at Rosyth.

The Navy needed fast anti-submarine escorts quickly, and while Rocket, Undine and other destroyers were being stripped to the deck for the full Type 15 rebuild, the Type 16 was a cheaper, quicker answer: the hull and much of the old upperworks were kept, her 4.7 inch guns and most of her torpedo tubes came off, and in their place she was given a frigate-style bridge, a twin 4 inch mounting, Squid anti-submarine mortars and the latest sonar.

The photograph shows her in this form in the 1950s, broadside on in pale post-war paint, with F44 painted on her side. She did not have a long second career. The Type 16s were a stop-gap until the new frigates came into service, and Tenacious spent most of her later years in reserve.

She was placed on the disposal list, sold to the British Iron and Steel Corporation, stripped of her equipment at Devonport, and towed to Troon, where she arrived to be broken up in June 1965. Her battle honours were Mediterranean 1944, Adriatic 1944, South France 1944 and Okinawa 1945.