Eskimo in April 1944
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History | |
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United Kingdom | |
Name: | Eskimo |
Namesake: | Eskimo |
Ordered: | 19 June 1936 |
Builder: | Vickers-Armstrongs, Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne |
Cost: | £342,108 |
Laid down: | 5 August 1936 |
Launched: | 3 September 1937 |
Completed: | 30 December 1938 |
Identification: | Pennant number: L75, F75 & G75 successively |
Fate: | Sold for scrap, 27 June 1949 |
General characteristics (as built) | |
Class and type: | Tribal-class destroyer |
Displacement: | |
Length: | 377 ft (115 m) (o/a) |
Beam: | 36 ft 6 in (11.13 m) |
Draught: | 11 ft 3 in (3.43 m) |
Installed power: |
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Propulsion: | 2 × shafts; 2 × geared steam turbines |
Speed: | 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) |
Range: | 5,700 nmi (10,600 km; 6,600 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) |
Complement: | 190 |
Sensors and processing systems: |
ASDIC |
Armament: |
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HMS Eskimo was a Tribal-class destroyer, laid down by the High Walker Yard of Vickers Armstrong at Newcastle-on-Tyne on 5 August 1936. She was launched on 3 September 1937 and commissioned on 30 December 1938. Eskimo served throughout the Second World War, seeing action in Norway, the Mediterranean, the English Channel and in Burma. After the war Eskimo was used as an accommodation and headquarters ship, finally being used as a practice target before being scrapped in 1949.
Eskimo participated in the Second Battle of Narvik in April 1940. On 12 April Eskimo was hit by a torpedo fired from German destroyer Z2 Georg Thiele. The explosion caused severe damage, blowing off Eskimo's bow. After temporary repairs, by the shipwrights of the fleet repair ship Vindictive at Skjelfjorden in Norway,Eskimo was able to return to the Vickers Armstrong works at Newcastle for rebuilding.
She supported the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942 and served with the 10th Destroyer Flotilla at Plymouth. Eskimo was extensively damaged when two German dive bombers attacked her in the Mediterranean while taking part in Operation Husky. She cornered and sank the enemy German submarine U-971 while in company with the Canadian destroyer Haida and a Liberator aircraft of the Czech air force in the English Channel north of Brest on 24 June 1944. During the final days of the war, she operated in the Far East.