HMS Thruster (F131): From Landing Tanks at Salerno to Guiding Fighters Over Normandy

Built to Land Tanks

HMS Thruster was a Mark I tank landing ship built by Harland and Wolff, launched in September 1942 and commissioned that March. Capable of carrying thirteen Churchill tanks, twenty-seven other vehicles and 193 men, she could manage 18 knots at her beaching draught, remarkably fast for a ship of her type, though she needed a bow ramp some 140 feet long to compensate for her lack of a properly shallow draught.

Landing Troops at Salerno

Thruster took part in the Salerno landings in September 1943, part of the Allied invasion of Italy, carrying tanks and troops ashore during one of the most fiercely contested amphibious operations of the entire Mediterranean campaign.

An Unusual Conversion for D-Day

Ahead of the Normandy landings in 1944, Thruster underwent a properly unusual conversion, being fitted out as a fighter direction ship to support ground-controlled interception of enemy aircraft, using her onboard radar and control facilities to help vector Allied fighters onto German raiders threatening the invasion fleet, a role a long way from her original purpose of simply delivering tanks onto a beach.

Returning Troops to Athens

Later in 1944, Thruster carried British troops back into Athens, part of the effort to restore order and British influence in Greece as German forces withdrew, a fittingly consequential final wartime task for a ship that had already served in two very different roles across the Mediterranean and northern European theatres.

A New Life With the Dutch

HMS Thruster was acquired by the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1947 and renamed HNLMS Pelikaan with the hull number A830, closing out her British service and beginning a new chapter under a different flag, much like many of her fellow landing ships once the demand for their unique capabilities eased with the war's end.