HMCS Algonquin (R17)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Valentine and HMCS Algonquin.

300px Ship's bell of HMS Valentine aboard HMCS Algonquin (DDH 283)
History
Canada
Name:	Algonquin
Builder:	John Brown & Company, Clydebank
Yard number:	602
Laid down:	8 October 1942
Launched:	2 September 1943
Commissioned:	28 February 1944
Out of service:	6 February 1946
Refit:	1954
Motto:	A coup sur ("With sure stroke")
Honours and awards:	Norway, 1944 Normandy, 1944 Arctic, 1944-1945
Fate:	Scrapped April 1971
Badge:	Blazon Sable, a base barry wavy argent and azure of four, from which issues an Indian's arm embowed proper wearing arm and wrist bands argent and holding a fish spear in bend argent transfixing an eel Or
General characteristics (as built)
Class & type:	V-class destroyer
Displacement:	2,700 long tons (2,743 t)
Length:	362 ft 9 in (110.57 m)
Beam:	35 ft 8 in (10.87 m)
Draught:	10 ft (3.0 m)
Propulsion:	2 × Admiralty 3-drum boilers 2-shaft Parsons geared turbines 40,000 shp (29,828 kW)
Speed:	31 knots (57 km/h; 36 mph)
Range:	4,860 nmi (9,000 km) at 20 kn (37 km/h)
Complement:	250
Sensors and processing systems:	HF/DF
Electronic warfare & decoys:	Radar 272, later Radar 276
Armament:	4 × 4.7in QF Mk IX (4×1) 2 × 40 mm Mk IV 4 × 20 mm (4×1) 8 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes (2×4)

HMCS Algonquin was a V-class Second World War destroyer, laid down for the Royal Navy as HMS Valentine (R17) and transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy on completion. She saw service in the Second World War escorting the aircraft carriers that bombed the Tirpitz in March 1944 and providing naval gunfire support to the Normandy landings. She was to participate in the Pacific Campaign but the war ended before her arrival in that theatre. She was modernized in 1953 and saw out the rest of her career in the Atlantic, being decommissioned in 1970.

Second World War

File:HMCS Algonquin 4.7 inch gun crew LAC 3223884.jpg

Algonquin's 4.7 inch gun crew during the Invasion of Normandy.

One of Algonquin's first assignments was as part of the British Home Fleet's 26th Destroyer Flotilla. In March 1944, with the flotilla, she formed part of the escort for the aircraft carriers that bombed the German battleship Tirpitz in Operation Tungsten. In April of that year she escorted a strike force hunting for German ships near the Norwegian Lofoten Islands. Algonquin left Scapa Flow in May to participate in Operation Neptune, the naval component of the Normandy invasion and later provided gunfire support to the landings on Juno Beach. Upon the operation's conclusion she returned to Scapa Floe to resume he usual duties. In July she formed part of the escort for the British aircraft carriers during the Operation Mascot raid against Tirpitz.

In August Algonquin participated in the rescue of the crew of the carrier HMS Nabob, which had been torpedoed and badly damaged during the Operation Goodwood strikes on Tirpitz, and rescued 200 men. In the winter of 1944/5 she helped to escort arctic convoy JW 63/RW 63 from Scotland to Kola Bay, Russia and back.

Algonquin arrived in Canada in February 1945 for a tropicalization refit at Halifax. Work was complete by August when she departed to join the British Pacific Fleet, though she did not arrive by the war's end, being in the Eastern Mediterranean on VJ-day. Following a brief stop in Alexandria, Egypt she crossed the Indian and Pacific Oceans to her new base at Esquimalt Royal Navy Dockyard. Once there she was placed into reserve and remained unused for several years.

Post-war service

In 1953, Algonquin was modernized to a Type 15 frigate at Esquimalt and recommissioned on 25 February 1953 as HMCS Algonquin (224). She was not selected for duty in the Korean War and was instead posted to CFB Shearwater on the North Atlantic coast where she spent much of the next 14 years working with Canada's NATO allies. Algonquin returned to Esquimalt in 1967 and was paid off on 1 April 1970. She was scrapped in Taiwan in 1971.

External links

• Naval Museum of Manitoba
• HMCS Algonquin (Clydebuilt Ships Database)