HMS Hereward (H93) - Service

Service

The ship was laid down by the High Walker Yard of Vickers Armstrong at Newcastle-on-Tyne on 28 February 1935, launched on 10 March 1936 and completed on 9 December 1936. Excluding government-furnished equipment like the armament, the ship cost £249,591. She tested the twin-gun mounted intended for use on the Tribal-class destroyers in January–March 1937 at Gibraltar. It was removed at the end of the trials and her two forward guns were replaced immediately afterwards. The ship was then assigned to the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla of the Mediterranean Fleet and began patrolling Spanish waters in the Mediterranean enforcing the Non-Intervention Agreement during the Spanish Civil War. Hereward was refitted in Malta from 30 September to 30 October 1937 and again a year later, this time in Portsmouth Dockyard in June–July 1939 and she returned to the Mediterranean afterwards.

Hereward was transferred to Freetown to hunt for German commerce raiders in the South Atlantic with Force K in October. The ship and her sisters, Hardy, Hasty, and Hostile, rendezvoused with the battlecruiser HMS Renown, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, and the light cruiser Neptune on 17 December. They refueled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before proceeding to the estuary of the River Plate in case the damaged German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee attempted to escape from Montevideo, Uruguay, where she had taken refuge after losing the Battle of the River Plate. Hereward captured the German blockade runner Uhenfels on 5 November. The ship was based at Trinidad from 20 November to 23 January 1940 and blockaded the German merchant ship Arauca in Port Everglades, Florida whilst based there. She escorted the battleship Valiant to Halifax, but suffered weather damage en route that required three weeks for repairs. Hereward then escorted the light cruiser Orion to the UK as the latter carried the ashes of John Buchan, Governor General of Canada, home. She required further repairs at Portsmouth upon arrival and missed the Battles of Narvik in April.

Hereward escorted ships into Scheveningen, Netherlands on 11 May to evacuate British citizens after the Germans invaded the previous day. She evacuated Queen Wilhelmina and her family from the Netherlands on 13 May, and was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet a few days later. The ship arrived at Alexandria on 24 May and began escorting convoys and larger ships of the fleet. Hereward participated in the Battle of Calabria in July 1940, where she was hit by splinters from a near-miss of the Italian battleship Cesare. The ship escorted a convoy during Operation Collar and then fired at retreating Italians in Cyrenaica after the Battle of Sidi Barrani. Together with her sister Hyperion, she sank the Italian submarine Naiade on 13 December. Hereward escorted the battleships of the Mediterranean Fleet as they bombarded Valona on 19 December and then sortied into the North Atlantic when Convoy WS-5A reported that it had been attacked by the German cruiser Admiral Hipper on 25 December. She escorted three of the convoy's ship to Gibraltar on 29 December.

The ship participated in Operation Excess in early January 1941 and sank the Italian torpedo boat Vega on 10 January with a torpedo in the Strait of Sicily. Together with the destroyer Decoy and the gunboat Ladybird, Hereward landed commandos on the island of Kastelorizo as part of Operation Abstention, but they were overwhelmed by an Italian counter-attack. Only a few survivors were taken off two days later. The ship participated in the Battle of Cape Matapan in early March 1941 and the evacuation of Greece in April 1941. She sank a number of fishing boats transporting German troops to Crete on 21 May and helped evacuate the Allied garrison of Heraklion on 29 May. Later that day she was attacked by German Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bombers and hit by one bomb just in front of her forward funnel. She turned towards the nearby coast of Crete, but was sunk by further attacks. Four officers and 72 crewmen were killed, but the 89 survivors were rescued by Italian MAS torpedo boats and taken prisoner.