HMS Wheatland (L122): Uttoxeter's Hunt, the Arctic Convoys, Two Submarines off Algeria and Three Warships in One Night

Ordered the Day After War Was Declared

HMS Wheatland was one of the Hunt Class escort destroyers of the 1939 War Emergency Programme, ordered from Yarrow at Scotstoun on 4 September 1939, the day after Britain went to war. Her keel was laid on 30 May 1940, she was launched on 7 June 1941 and she was completed on 3 November that year.

She was a Type II Hunt, with the wider hull that let the class carry six 4 inch guns in three twin mountings, and she was the first ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name, which is that of a foxhunt in Shropshire. Her badge showed three ears of wheat interlaced with a horseshoe, and in March 1942, after its Warship Week, the town of Uttoxeter in Staffordshire adopted her.

Her first captain was Lieutenant Ronald Brooke, who had her for almost two years.

The photograph shows her at anchor on still water, broadside on in plain dark grey with L122 painted below her bridge and one of her boats lying off the bow.

Screening the Home Fleet

She worked up at Scapa Flow in November 1941, and before Christmas she was told off for Operation Anklet, a commando raid on the Lofoten Islands. She sailed from Scapa on 24 December with the cruiser Arethusa and destroyers including Somali, but two days later she was detached to take one of the landing ships, Prinses Josephine Charlotte, back to Scapa after defects put her out of the operation.

After a short spell guarding convoys in the Channel from Portsmouth she was lent back to the Home Fleet, and from March to July 1942 she was one of the small ships screening the battleships and carriers that stood off in distant cover for the Russian convoys, ready in case the Tirpitz came out.

She was with Duke of York, the American battleship Washington and Victorious in the covering force for PQ 17 in July, when the convoy was ordered to scatter. Earlier, in May, she had helped to escort King George V home from Iceland after the battleship had run down and sunk the destroyer Punjabi in fog.

Guarding the Avenger on PQ 18

After a refit at Hull she was given a new job. The disaster of PQ 17 had shown how badly a Russian convoy needed air cover of its own, and for PQ 18 in September 1942 the Navy sent the escort carrier Avenger with it. Wheatland and her sister Wilton sailed as the carrier's own close escort.

The convoy was attacked by massed torpedo bombers, and Avenger, the prize target, was attacked again and again; she was not hit, and one account of the fighting says the torpedoes aimed at her were dropped from long range because of the fire put up by Wheatland, Wilton and the anti-aircraft ship Ulster Queen.

On 17 September the carrier and her escorts left PQ 18 to join the homeward convoy QP 14, and three days later, with the U-boat threat growing, they were detached for home. Rear Admiral Burnett had shifted his flag from the cruiser Scylla to Milne, and Scylla went home with them.

Algiers and the Bone Run

In November 1942 she escorted the headquarters ship Bulolo out to Gibraltar for Operation Torch, the Allied landings in French North Africa. On the night of 7 November she was with the group making for the Beer beaches west of Algiers, which found its way in by the light of the beacon submarine P48, lying offshore to mark the release position.

Four days later she and Lamerton put troops ashore at Bone, further east. For the next six months she was one of the 57th Destroyer Division, the Hunts that guarded the convoys running along the Algerian coast towards the Tunisian front.

On 22 December the troopship Cameronia was hit by an aircraft torpedo off Bougie, and Wheatland and Scylla saw her safely into port.

Two Submarines in a Week

In February 1943 she had the best week of her war. On the night of 17 February she and her sister Easton sank the Italian submarine Asteria north-west of Bougie.

Six days later, on 23 February, she was one of the escorts of the convoy KMF 10A when a U-boat was found near Algiers, and with Lamerton and Bicester she hunted and sank U-443 with depth charges.

Sicily and Salerno

In May 1943 she joined the blockade off Cape Bon, Operation Retribution, set up to stop the Axis armies escaping from Tunisia by sea, and in June she was present when the island of Pantelleria surrendered after its bombardment.

For the invasion of Sicily in July she was one of the escorts of the assault convoys, then patrolled off the beaches; on 31 July she bombarded Taormina in support of the Eighth Army, and on 16 August she covered a landing by Royal Marines behind the German lines at Cape Scaletta, near Messina.

In September she escorted convoys for the Salerno landings, and she spent the winter on convoys between Naples, Augusta and the North African ports.

Southern France

In June 1944 she moved to the 22nd Destroyer Flotilla at Malta, with Exmoor, Tetcott, Liddesdale and other Hunts. For Operation Dragoon, the landings on the Riviera coast in August, she joined the British escort carriers of Task Group 88.1 on 14 August, coming up from Naples to relieve Tumult.

The group included Khedive, Emperor, Searcher, Pursuer and Attacker, whose fighters flew over the beachhead, and she screened them until they were released at the end of the month.

Three Warships in One Night

From September 1944 she worked in the Adriatic, where the British were supporting the Yugoslav partisans along the Dalmatian coast and the Germans held the islands with small warships, many of them Italian-built ships they had taken over after Italy's surrender.

On the night of 1 November 1944, with her sister Avon Vale, she met a German force south of the island of Lussino and sank all three of its ships: the torpedo boat TA20 and the two submarine chasers UJ 202 and UJ 208. More than seventy of their crews were taken prisoner.

A fortnight later she bombarded targets at Bar on the coast of Montenegro, and on 28 November she and Aldenham supported landings on the island of Pag.

In March 1945 she began a refit at Taranto, to fit her for service against Japan with the Eastern Fleet. It was finished in July, and she came home to Devonport to prepare for the voyage east, but the Japanese surrender in August meant she was not needed.

Reserve, Breakwater and Bo'ness

Wheatland went into reserve at Devonport. In 1953 she spent a short time at Penarth, and in September of that year she was towed out to join the reserve fleet at Gibraltar.

When she was placed on the disposal list she was brought home and used for a time as part of a breakwater at Harwich, before she was sold to the British Iron and Steel Corporation and towed to Bo'ness on the Firth of Forth, where she arrived to be broken up on 20 September in the late 1950s. Her battle honours were Arctic 1942, North Africa 1942-43, Mediterranean 1943, Sicily 1943, Salerno 1943 and Adriatic 1944. Her Type II sisters included Zetland and Blankney.