As HNoMS St. Albans
St. Albans had no sooner entered service with the Norwegians than she collided with the minesweeper HMS Alberic, sinking the minecraft and sustaining enough damage herself to necessitate repairs in the dockyard.
When again ready for action, St Albans joined the 7th Escort Group, operating out of Liverpool. On 12 June, she picked up the survivors from the sunken steamship SS Empire Dew — torpedoed that day by U-48 — and brought them safely to Liverpool.
On 3 August 1941, while bound from Sierra Leone to the United Kingdom in the screen of convoy SL 81, St Albans joined the destroyer HMS Wanderer (D74) and the Flower-class corvette HMS Hydrangea (K39) in sinking U-401. During subsequent operations screening convoys in shipping lanes between West Africa and the British Isles, St Albans made a score of attacks on U-boats but could not repeat her "kill" performance of 3 August.
During the following autumn, a heavy gale severely damaged St Albans while she was escorting convoy ON 22 on 8 October. The following day brought little respite from the high seas and strong winds, but St Albans's Norwegian sailors brought her safely into Reykjavík, Iceland. The destroyer's seaworthiness and the seamanship exhibited by her Norwegian crew elicited a warm commendatory signal from the Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches (C-in-C WA). In this message of 12 October 1941, he also praised the destroyer's exemplary steaming performance during the previous three months.
St Albans, meanwhile, continued her escort duties with the 7th Escort Group into 1942. In March, she escorted the damaged aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious from Liverpool to the Clyde and, in the following month, helped to screen convoy PQ 15 as it carried arms to Russia. During the operation, heavy German air and submarine attacks took a toll of three Allied ships.
In wartime, however, mistakes in identification or errors in navigation sometimes lead to disaster. On one occasion, these factors combined with tragic results when St Albans and the minesweeper HMS Seagull sank the Polish submarine Jastrząb on 2 May. Five crewmen were killed. A court of Enquiry found that Jastrząb was 100 miles out of position, in an area where U-boats were expected to operate, and no blame could be attached to either commander. However this conclusion is disputed by other sources.
Later that month, the flush-decked destroyer joined the Liverpool Special Escort Division. Among the vessels escorted early in June was the Cunard-White Star liner RMS Queen Elizabeth, as the Cunarder steamed from the British Isles toward the Cape of Good Hope with troops bound for the Middle East. Then, after refitting at Falmouth between July and October 1942, St Albans again operated with the Special Escort Division until the end of 1942. In January 1943, she served as a target vessel for training RAF Coastal Command aircraft.
Late in February, she got underway and steamed into the North Sea toward the Scandinavian coast to search for a Norwegian merchantman which was reportedly attempting to escape to sea from Nazi-controlled waters. During this mission, the destroyer was attacked by German aircraft but emerged unharmed.
Shifted to the Western Local Escort Force soon thereafter, St Albans was based at Halifax and operated in convoy escort missions in the western Atlantic for the remainder of 1943. Departing Halifax four days after Christmas 1943, St Albans arrived in the Tyne on 10 January 1944, where she was soon laid up in reserve.
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