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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday 4 March 2026: Lucky Tartar

Above we see a cluster of happy ratings aboard the Tribal (Afridi) class destroyer HMS Tartar (G 43) in June 1941 after having bagged a German Heinkel in the slow crawl back to Scapa after helping sink Bismarck. They had several reasons to be proud of their little greyhound, as Tartar, some 85 years ago today, chalked up as many as five German vessels in the Norwegian Sea off the Lofoten Islands as part of Operation Claymore.

And that wasn’t even the hairiest of her surface actions during the war!

The Tribals

The Afridis were a new type of destroyer designed for the Royal Navy in the late 1920s off experience both in the Great War and to match the large, modern escorts on the drawing boards of contemporary naval rivals of the time.

These 378-foot vessels could make 36+ knots on a pair of geared steam turbines and a trio of Admiralty three-drum boilers, while an impressive battery of up to eight 4.7″/45 (12 cm) QF Mark XII guns in four twin CPXIX mountings gave them the same firepower as early WWI light cruisers (though typically just three turrets were mounted).

Some 32 Afridis were planned in eight-ship flights: 16 for the RN (named after tribal warriors: HMS Eskimo, HMS Sikh, HMS Zulu, et al.), eight for the Royal Australian Navy, and eight for the Canadians. Of the Canadian ships, four were to be built by Vickers in the UK and the other four by Halifax shipyards in Nova Scotia. All the Canadian ships were to be named after First Nations tribes (Iroquois, Athabaskan, Huron, Haida, Micmac, Nootka, Cayuga, etc.)

Meet Tartar

Our subject is at least the eighth warship (the 17th if prizes and launches are included) to carry the name in the Royal Navy, going back to a 32-gun fifth rate launched in 1702. They had a storied past and earned our subject the carried-forward eight battle honors: Velez Malaga 1704, Lagos 1759, Ushant 1781, Dogger Bank 1781, Baltic 1855, Shimonoseki 1864, South Africa 1899-1900, and Dover Patrol 1914-18.

Laid down on 26 August 1936 at Swan Hunter, Wallsend, alongside sister HMS Somali (the only other Tribal built at the yard), the eighth Tartar was launched on 21 October 1937.

She commissioned on 10 March 1939 while the world was (largely) still at peace. Given the pennant L43 while building, this changed to F43 by completion (Somali was F33). She was later shifted to G43.

Tartar was fitted for use as a Flotilla Leader and constructed for £339,750, exclusive of armament and RN supplied equipment.

Following trials, she was transferred to the newly reformed 6th Destroyer Flotilla alongside sisters HMS Somali, Ashanti, Bedouin, Matabele, Punjabi, and Eskimo.

Her first skipper was Capt. Gerald Harman Warner, DSC, RN, aged 48, a regular who joined up in 1911 and earned his DSC in Russia in 1919.

Warner’s steady hand would be needed on Tartar very soon.

War

Just a fortnight into the conflict, on 14 September, while on patrol out of Scapa Flow looking for German blockade runners, Tartar picked up 42 survivors from the torpedoed British merchant Fanad Head, which had been sunk by U-30 about 200 nautical miles west of the Hebrides.

In October 1939, Tartar sailed on her first of at least 28 convoys, the dozen steamer Narvik 1, shuttling British merchant vessels back to Methill from neutral Norway. She would join two other Norwegian runs, Convoy ON 1 and Convoy HN 1, by mid-November.

In late November, she sortied to help chase the roaming German battleship Scharnhorst following the latter’s sinking of the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi. 

Norway

Over the several months into the new year, she logged nine more Norway-to-Methill and back convoys (HN 6, ON 7, HN 7, ON 9, ON 10, HN 11, ON 22, HN 22, and ON 24), and was part of the posse that unsuccessfully chased the German blockade runner Trautenfels. She then helped screen the new liner RMS (HMT) Queen Elizabeth in March 1940 on her first outbound run. By this time, her skipper was CDR Lionel Peyton Skipwith, RN, who had earned his lieutenant’s stripe in 1922.

In April 1940, Tartar was heavily engaged in the Norway campaign, screening the fast battlecruisers HMS Renown and Repulse during Operation Duck, bombarding captured Norwegian airfields around Stavanger in April, then in May, rushing the troopships Ulster Monarch and Ulster Prince from Scapa Flow to Åndalsnes and Molde to evacuate Allied troops. June saw her once more screening Allied evacuations from the doomed Norwegian front, operating alongside the battlewagon HMS Valiant during the withdrawals from the Narvik/ Harstad /Tromso pockets.

Late July, following the Fall of France and the Low Countries, saw her once again sortie out with the fleet to chase a German raider, the battlecruiser Gneisenau, without luck.

By August, she was again on convoy runs, AP 1 and AP 2, shuttling desperately needed troops to Egypt, then tagged along with the Dakar-bound Convoy MP.

September 1940 saw her back in Norwegian waters, escorting the carrier HMS Furious and the battleship HMS Nelson on Operation DF, an anti-shipping raid off Trondheim. The same month, she escorted the ships of the 1st Minelaying Squadron during egg emplacement in Northern Barrage and helped shepherd the wounded cruiser HMS Fiji after the latter was torpedoed by U-32 off the Shetlands.

October through December 1940 saw Tartar in a much-needed refit by HM Dockyard, Devonport, and by January 1941, she was back to chasing reports of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and riding shotgun on minelayer sorties, which would keep her very busy over the next couple of months.

4 March saw Tartar as part of Operation Claymore, the first large Commando raid on Norway, hitting the isolated Lofoten Islands, an all-day festival of destruction that saw the large cod boiling plant in the islands torched, 225 prisoners and collaborators bagged, and 300 local volunteers tag along back to Britain to join Free Norwegian troops. Further, Commandos sank four small German-controlled vessels by demolition charges while Tartar’s sister Bedouin sank a fourth via gunfire.

Speaking of gunfire, during Claymore Tartar sank no less than two German merchant vessels at Solvær, the Hamburg (fishmeal factory ship, 6136 GRT) and Pasajes (1996 GRT). She likewise damaged the Kriegsmarine coal ship Elbing (1422 GRT) so badly that she had to be beached to keep from sinking and only returned to service a year later. Other reports cite Tartar as also sinking Bernhard Schulte (1058 GRT) and Gumbinnen (1381 GRT) during the operation, but most hold that the Army accounted for them.

Soon after, she was back to saving lives, joining on 25 March with sister HMS Gurkha to pull the entire 86-member crew from SS Beaverbrae when the freighter was sunk by land-based Condors of 1./KG 40.

Bismarck and Enigma

In May 1941, she was part of the epic chase that ran Bismarck to ground, escorting Rodney and being present at the leviathan’s sinking on the 27th. Ludovic Kennedy insists that film footage of Bismarck’s brutal last battle was apparently shot from HMS Tartar.

On the way back to Scapa with Tribal-class sister HMS Mashona, the two destroyers, low on fuel and forced to steam at a leisurely 15 knots, were attacked by numerous Luftwaffe Heinkel He 111  bombers of 1./KG 28 that left Mashona dead in the water and sinking. Tartar rescued her 184 survivors from her 14 officers and 215 ratings and landed them at Greenock.

Tartar then helped get the gang in Bletchley Park along in the Enigma decoding business when, sailing with the light cruiser HMS Nigeria and her sister Bedouin on 28 June, the task force chased down the 344-ton German weather ship (Wetterbeobachtungs-Schiff) Lauenburg (WBS 3) some 300 miles north-east of Jan Mayen Island via HF/DF. Although the weather ship’s crew tried to scuttle, Tartar’s boarding party managed to secure and recover codebooks and the vessel’s Enigma machine.

Lauenburg’s haul, coupled with a similar find from the captured trawler Munchen and the submarine U-110, effectively broke Naval Enigma.

July 1941 saw Tartar on an antishipping raid (Operation DN) off Norway’s Stadtlandet, followed by operations around and the evacuation of Spitsbergen (Operations FB and Gauntlet) in August.

By November 1941, she was screening the new battleship HMS Duke of York and later KGV during Russia-bound convoy operations out of Iceland, with the runs needing such big guns as the bruising heavy cruiser Hipper, the pocket battleship Scheer, and the actual battleship Tirpitz, which were all operating out of occupied Norway. As such, Tartar would sail with Convoys PQ 7B/QP 5 in January 1942, followed by PQ 12/QP 8 and PQ 13/QP 9 in March.

In June 1942, her next skipper, CDR St. John Reginald Joseph Tyrwhitt DSC, RN, arrived aboard, late of the destroyer HMS Juno (F 46)— on whose decks he earned a DSC.

Torch, Husky, Avalanche

By August 1942, Tartar was nominated for detached service for support of the Malta relief operation, then sailed from Clyde as part of the escort for military convoys WS21 during Operation Pedestal. This soon saw her lock horns with the Italian subs Cobalto, Emo, and Granito, as well as U-73, missing torpedoes and replying with depth charges.

Her job done in the Med, she was back in Scapa by September and would sail with Force A out of Iceland to provide cover for Convoys PQ 18/QP 14.

Shifting back to the Med once again– twice in three months!– Tartar sailed with Force H from Scapa Flow on 30 October, including the familiar battlewagons Duke of York, Nelson, and Renown, bound to support the Torch Landings in North Africa.

She would remain in the Med through the rest of the year and continue to find work not only with Force H. Notably, on 23 March 1942, Tartar also picked up 14 survivors from the French armed trawler Sergent Gouarne that was sunk by U-755 about 25 miles north-east of Alboran Island.

Tartar was on hand for the June 1943 capture of the Italian islands of Pantellaria and Lampedusa between Sicily and Tunisia (Operation Corkscrew) in the weeks before the much larger Husky Landings on Sicily.

It was during Husky that Tartar came to the rescue of a second of her sisters when Eskimo was extensively damaged by two German dive bombers. Tartar towed Eskimo back to Malta, providing counter-U-boat and AAA defense the whole way, then returned to Sicily to conduct NGFS bombardments around the island.

August 1943 saw Tartar, once again with Rodney and Nelson’s screen, as part of Operation Hammer, plastering the Italian coastal batteries on the Calabrian coast adjacent to the Straits of Messina in preparation for the Avalanche landings in early September, during which Tartar supported the Allied landing between Catona and Reggio Calabria. It was there that Tartar embarked C-in-C, Mediterranean, ADM Andrew Browne Cunningham, to bring him inshore to inspect the landing beaches.

Off Salerno, she batted away attacks by German aircraft and radio-controlled glider bombs.

France

In late October, Tartar sailed back to HM Dockyard, Devonport, for refit and remained there into early 1944 when, following post-refit trials, she joined the 10th Destroyer Flotilla at Plymouth as leader in February.

The list of ships in the 10th was both familiar and historic:

On 15 March 1944, CDR Basil Jones DSO, DSC, RN, became Tartar’s 8th skipper and the 10th Commodore by extension. He had earned his DSC as commander of the destroyer HMS Ivanhoe (D 16) and his DSO on HMS Pakenham (G 06).

In the months before D-Day, Tartar and her sisters took part in Operations Specimen and Tunnel (anti-shipping patrols of the Bay of Biscay and French west coast) and Operation Hostile (minelaying operations off the French coast).

Then came D-Day itself, with the 10th up front, almost a footnote in Tartar’s extensive career.

On the early morning of D+3, eight destroyers of the 10th DF encountered three German destroyers, the Type 36A Z24 and Z32, and the ZH1 (formerly the Dutch destroyer Gerard Callenburgh), along with the Elbing-class torpedo boat T24 (Theodor von Bechtolsheim). When the smoke cleared, ZH1 was at the bottom, and the mauled Germans limped off to fight another day.

Tartar was hit in the swirling action three times, setting fires in her galley and bridge. Four men were killed and 12 wounded, including Commodore Jones. She arrived back at Plymouth with her foremast hung over the side and all of the radar and communications dead.

But she arrived– and had her shrapnel-riddled ensign flying.

Gifted RN war photographer, LT Harold William John Tomlin, captured a great series of images of our battle-scarred destroyer while back in port on 9 June.

August 1944 saw Tartar and company maul a convoy of small German coasters in the Bay of Biscay north of the Île d’Yeu. In a single wild action on the night of the 5th, she is credited with assisting in the sinking of German Convoy Nr. 4121 with the minesweepers M 263 and M 486, the patrol vessel V 414, and the coaster Otto (217 GRT) were sent to the bottom.

Headed to the Far East

By October 1944, Tartar was selected for a tropical overhaul with plans to ship her and the rest of the 10th to the East Indies Fleet.

Such modified, she left the Clyde in March 1945 bound for Gibraltar for passage to Trincomalee via the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Once there, she joined Force 63 with her flotilla by 28 April, screening the battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and Richelieu for a sweep of the Andamans and Nicobars areas. It was during that sweep that Tartar, across a three-night period, bombarded  Car Nicohar and Port Blair repeatedly.

She continued to bring the heat to the Japanese in Operation Dukedom, interdicting Japanese surface ships trying to evacuate troops from the Andamans. Then came a push into the occupied Dutch East Indies which included a surface action on 12 June 1945 when, sailing with Eskimo and Nubian, they intercept a Japanese convoy 20 miles north of Sumatra and sank the Japanese submarine chaser Ch 57 (420 tons) and landing ship Kuroshio Maru No.2 (950 tons, former T 149) in a short gun duel.

Afterall, her gunners were used to the work.

She later witnessed the Japanese surrender at Penang in September, then was ordered home, arrived at Plymouth on 17 November 1945, where she was promptly paid off and laid up for use as an accommodation hulk. Sold to BISCO for breaking up, she arrived at J Cashmere’s yard in Newport for demolition on 22 February 1948.

Tartar earned every one of her 12 WWII battle honors: Norway 1940-41 – Bismarck Action 1941 – Arctic 1941 – Malta Convoys 1942 – North Africa 1942-43 – Sicily 1943 –  Salerno 1943  – Mediterranean 1943 –  Normandy 1944  – English Channel 1944 – Biscay 1944 – Burma 1945. 

Of her 15 RN Tribal class sisters, only Ashanti, Eskimo, and Nubian survived the war, and all were scrapped by 1949. Her old 10th Flotilla partner, Haida, the “most fightingest ship” in the Canadian Navy, saw Korean War and Cold War service and survives as a memorial.

Epilogue

Tartar had been adopted by the civil community of Finchley during a 1942 savings week program, and the area, now part of the London Borough of Barnet, maintains some small relics from her.

Of her skippers, her circa 1939 commander, Warner, retired in 1946 as a full captain. Bismarck and Russia Convoy-era Skipwith retired in 1952 and passed in 1975. Tyrwhitt, who commanded her for the Torch, Avalanche, and Husky landings, remained in the Navy until 1958, when he retired as a vice admiral after commanding the cruiser HMS Newcastle during Korea. The unsinkable Basil Jones pinned a Bar to his DSC for Tartar’s actions off Normandy in 1944 and faded into history after the war.

The RN recycled the name one last time, for a new 2,700-ton Tribal-class frigate, HMS Tartar (F133), that served from 1962 to 1984 and then for a further 16 years with the Indonesians. Her motto, appropriately, was “Without Fear,” and she had 21 battle honors carried forward to back it up.

While the current British government would never authorize a new warship by that name, it is the Admiralty’s loss.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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