Service
The ship was ordered on 30 October 1935 from Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn under the 1935 Naval Programme. She was laid down on 18 January 1936, launched on 30 December 1936, as the seventh Royal Navy ship to carry this name, and completed on 2 June 1937, at a contract price of £256,917, excluding items supplied by Admiralty such as armaments and communications equipment. Imogen was assigned to the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla of the Mediterranean Fleet upon commissioning and was initially based in Malta. Transferred to Gibraltar, she patrolled Spanish waters enforcing the policies of the Non-Intervention Committee during 1938. The ship was given a brief refit in Malta from 17 October–28 November 1938 and another at Sheerness Dockyard in August 1939.
Imogen returned to the Mediterranean on 3 September, but was transferred to the Western Approaches Command for convoy escort duties two days later when Italy did not enter the war. Together with the entire 3rd Destroyer Flotilla, the ship was transferred to the Home Fleet in October. Together with her sister Ilex, she sank the German submarine U-42 on 13 October after the submarine attempted to sink the freighter SS Stonepool. Whilst escorting the merchant ship to Barry, Imogen rescued survivors from the ships Louisiane and Bretagne. She was refitted at Liverpool between 20 October and 7 November and then rejoined Home Fleet. The following month, the ship came to the aid of the torpedoed battleship Barham off the Butt of Lewis on 28 December.
With her sister Inglefield and the destroyer Escort, Imogen sank U-63 after it had been spotted by the British submarine Rorqual on 25 February 1940. During the Norwegian Campaign, the ship searched unsuccessfully for German ships, escorted ships of Home Fleet and troopships carrying Norwegian Army units from Kirkenes and Alta to Sjøvegan in mid-April. In mid-June, she escorted the aircraft carrier Illustrious to Bermuda to work up. Off Duncansby Head during the night of 16 July, Imogen collided with the light cruiser Glasgow in thick fog whilst bound for Scapa Flow. She was badly damaged, caught fire, and sank at position 58°34′N 02°54′W / 58.567°N 2.9°W / 58.567; -2.9Coordinates: 58°34′N 02°54′W / 58.567°N 2.9°W / 58.567; -2.9. Glasgow rescued 10 officers and 125 enlisted men, but 19 men were killed in the collision.
Read more about this topic: HMS Imogen (D44)
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The gods’ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“The more the specific feelings of being under obligation range themselves under a supreme principle of human dependence the clearer and more fertile will be the realization of the concept, indispensable to all true culture, of service; from the service of God down to the simple social relationship as between employer and employee.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)