HMS Worcester moored at a buoy during World War II, sometime between the changing of her pennant number to I96 in June 1940 and her becoming a constructive total loss in December 1943.
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History | |
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Class and type: | Admiralty Modified W-class destroyer |
Name: | HMS Worcester |
Ordered: | April 1918 |
Builder: | J. Samuel White, Cowes, Isle of Wight, and Royal Navy Dockyard, Portsmouth |
Laid down: | 20 December 1918 |
Launched: | 24 October 1919 |
Completed: | 20 September 1922 |
Commissioned: | 20 September 1922 |
Decommissioned: | early 1930s |
Recommissioned: | September 1939 |
Fate: | Constructive total loss 23 December 1943 |
Decommissioned: | April 1944 |
Reclassified: | Accommodation ship, May 1944 |
Recommissioned: | June 1945 |
Renamed: | HMS Yeoman, June 1945 |
Fate: | Sold 17 September 1946 for scrapping |
Motto: | In bello in pace fidelis ("Faithful in peace and war") |
Honours and awards: |
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Badge: | A silver castle with three towers on a field divided into black and red quarters |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | Admiralty Modified W-class destroyer |
Displacement: | 1,140 tons standard, 1,550 tons full |
Length: | 300 ft o/a, 312 ft p/p |
Beam: | 29.5 feet (9.0 m) |
Draught: | 9 feet (2.7 m), 11.25 feet (3.43 m) under full load |
Propulsion: | Yarrow type Water-tube boilers, Brown-Curtis geared steam turbines, 2 shafts, 27,000 shp |
Speed: | 34 kt |
Range: |
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Complement: | 127 |
Sensors and processing systems: |
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Armament: |
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The eighth HMS Worcester (D96, later I96), was a Modified W-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that saw service in World War II. She later served as an accommodation ship as the second HMS Yeoman.
Worcester was ordered in April 1918 as part of the 13th Order of the 1917-1918 Naval Programme. She was laid down on 20 December 1918 by J. Samuel White at Cowes, Isle of Wight, and launched on 24 October 1919. After launching, she was transferred to the Royal Navy Dockyard at Portsmouth for fitting out, and was completed there on 20 September 1922. She was commissioned into service the same day with the pennant number D96.
After entering service with the fleet in 1922, Worcester saw service in the Atlantic Fleet and Mediterranean Fleet before being decommissioned, transferred to the Reserve Fleet, and placed in reserve at Portsmouth in the early 1930s.
In 1939, Worcester was selected for recommissioning as the fleet mobilised because of deteriorating diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.
After the United Kingdom entered World War II on 3 September 1939, Worcester prepared for war service, recommissioning that month, taking aboard stores, and reporting for duty with the 16th Destroyer Flotilla – which also included the destroyer leader HMS Montrose (D01) and the destroyers HMS Venomous (D75), HMS Veteran (D72), HMS Verity (D63), HMS Whitshed (D77), HMS Wild Swan (D62), and HMS Wivern (D66) – at Portsmouth for convoy escort and patrol operations in the English Channel and Southwestern Approaches, which she began in October 1939. She remained on these duties until May 1940, when the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France began and she was transferred to Dover Command to support the evacuation of Allied personnel from Europe as German ground forces advanced. On 24 May, she was assigned to Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, during which she made six trips to the Dunkirk beaches, transported a total of 4,350 troops to the United Kingdom, and suffered damage in a German air attack on 27 May 1940.