HMS Griffin (H31)

HMS Griffin (H31) in 1936
History
United Kingdom
Name:	HMS Griffin
Namesake:	Griffin
Builder:	Vickers-Armstrongs, Barrow-in-Furness, UK
Cost:	£248,518
Laid down:	20 September 1934
Launched:	15 August 1935
Commissioned:	6 June 1936
Motto:	Dentibus ac rostro (Latin : "With teeth and beak")
Fate:	Transferred to Canada, 1 March 1943
Canada
Name:	HMCS Ottawa
Namesake:	Ottawa River
Acquired:	By purchase, 1 March 1943 Gifted, 15 June 1943
Commissioned:	7 April 1943
Decommissioned:	May 1945
Honours and awards:	Atlantic, 1939-45 Normandy, 1944 English Channel, 1944 Biscay, 1944
Fate:	Sold for scrap, August 1946
General characteristics as built
Class and type:	G-class destroyer
Displacement:	1,350 long tons (1,370 t) (standard) 1,883 long tons (1,913 t) (deep load)
Length:	323 ft (98.5 m)
Beam:	33 ft (10.1 m)
Draught:	12 ft 5 in (3.8 m)
Installed power:	34,000 shp (25,000 kW)
Propulsion:	2 shafts, Parsons geared steam turbines 3 Admiralty 3-drum water-tube boilers
Speed:	36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph)
Range:	5,530 nmi (10,240 km; 6,360 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph)
Complement:	137 (peacetime), 146 (wartime)
Sensors and processing systems:	ASDIC
Armament:	4 × 1 - 4.7-inch (120 mm) guns 2 × 4 - 0.5-inch (12.7 mm) machine guns 2 × 4 - 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes 20 × depth charges, 1 rail and 2 throwers
Notes:	Pennant number H31

HMS Griffin (H31) was a G-class destroyer, built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s. In World War II she took part in the Norwegian Campaign of April–May 1940 and the Battle of Dakar in September before being transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in November. She generally escorted larger ships of the Mediterranean Fleet as they protected convoys against attacks from the Italian Fleet. Griffin took part in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941 and the evacuations of Greece and Crete in April–May 1941. In June she took part in the Syria-Lebanon Campaign and was escorting convoys and the larger ships of the Mediterranean Fleet until she was transferred to the Eastern Fleet in March 1942.

Griffin saw no action in the Japanese Indian Ocean raid in April, but was escorting convoys for most of her time in the Indian Ocean. In June she returned to the Mediterranean to escort another convoy to Malta in Operation Vigorous. Beginning in November 1942, she was converted to an escort destroyer in the United Kingdom and was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy on 1 March 1943. The ship, now renamed HMCS Ottawa, was assigned to escort convoys in the North Atlantic until she was transferred in May 1944 to protect the forces involved with the Normandy Landings. Working with other destroyers, Ottawa sank three German submarines off the French coast before she returned to Canada for a lengthy refit. After the end of the European war in May 1945 she was used to bring Canadian troops until she was paid off in October 1945. Ottawa was sold for scrap in August 1946.