HMS Vimiera (1917)

Vimiera circa 1918
History
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Vimiera
Namesake	Battle of Vimeiro (1808)
Builder	Swan Hunter, Tyne and Wear
Laid down	October 1916
Launched	22 June 1917
Completed	19 September 1917
Motto	Sicut clin[disputed – discuss]: ‘Victory as formerly’
Fate	Sank on 9 January 1942 after striking a mine in the Thames estuary, off Warden, Kent.
General characteristics
Class and type	Admiralty V-class destroyer
Displacement	1,272-1,339 tons
Length	300 ft (91.4 m) o/a, 312 ft (95.1 m) p/p
Beam	26 ft 9 in (8.2 m)
Draught	9 ft (2.7 m) standard, 11 ft 3 in (3.4 m) deep
Propulsion	3 Yarrow type Water-tube boilers Brown-Curtis steam turbines 2 shafts, 27,000 shp
Speed	34 kn
Range	320-370 tons oil, 3,500 nmi at 15 kn, 900 nmi at 32 kn
Complement	110
Armament	4 × QF 4 in Mk.V (102mm L/45), mount P Mk.I 2 × QF 2 pdr Mk.II "pom-pom" (40 mm L/39) or; 1 z QF 12 pdr 20 cwt Mk.I (76 mm), mount HA Mk.II 4 (2x2) tubes for 21 in torpedoes
Notes	Pennant number: L29

HMS Vimiera was a V-class destroyer ordered as part of the 1917–18 programme.

One of her early missions was a trip to Reval, conveying Leonid Krasin and Viktor Nogin back to the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, following the first stage of negotiations in the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement.^[1]

Vimiera was chosen for conversion to an escort destroyer (WAIR) with an enhanced anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability as part of the naval rearmament programme preceding the outbreak of war in September 1939. Conversion was complete, whereon in January 1940 she joined the Nore Command for coastal convoy escort duty in the North Sea and English Channel. Her company was formed largely of men from the Clyde Division of the Royal Naval Reserve, HMS Graham.

In April 1940 she was transferred under the Commander-in-Chief, Dover to support military operations in France. This included the Battle of Dunkirk to providing additional anti-aircraft defence in Dunkirk (Operation FA) and assisting in the evacuation of allied personnel from Flushing. With HMS Wolsey she provided naval gunfire support for military operations at Escault. On 19 May she rescued survivors from HMS Whitley and in the following days she assisted both in taking reinforcements to Boulogne and in evacuating wounded soldiers and medical staff. (One soldier she evacuated was the actor Arnold Ridley.) Alongside HMS Wessex, ORP Burza, HMS Whitshed, and HMS Wolfhound she saw action around Boulogne and Calais, during which Wessex was sunk and Vimiera sustained substantial damage. She was taken into repair on 25 May 1940, and so was not involved in the evacuation from Dunkirk. She was subsequently redeployed to the North Sea in defence of East Coast convoys.

In December 1941, she was adopted by the civil community of Sandbach, Cheshire, following the successful Warship Week National Saving campaign. Vimiera, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Angus Alexander Mackenzie, RNR, was sunk by a mine in the Thames estuary off East Spile Buoy, near the Isle of Sheppey on 9 January 1942 with the loss of around 96 hands. 92 or 93 went down with the ship, and a further four of the 38 survivors died of wounds.^[2][3][4] The survivors were brought to sghore and tended to at Sheerness.^[5]

Eight of her nine officers survived, and Lt. Cdr. Mackenzie, having been found blameless in the sinking, was put in command of HMS Liddesdale.^[6] Vimiera's loss was commemorated on a memorial within HMS Graham.^{[citation needed]}

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• HMS Vimiera
• V&W Destroyer Association (HMS Vimiera)
• "For Whom the Bell Tolls" - The Living and the Dead - V&W Destroyer Association (HMS Vimiera)