Gallant

Design

Gallant had guns that went pew-pew and torpedoes that went splish-zzzzzzzzzrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Service History

HMS Gallant was commissioned on the 25th of February 1936, joining the 1st Destroyer Flotilla of the Mediterranean fleet. During the late 1930’s she patrolled Spanish waters during the Spanish Civil War, coming under attack by Spanish Nationalist aircraft in April 1937 but was undamaged. She was still in the Mediterranean when World War II broke out, but she along with her entire flotilla were transferred to the Western Approaches Command by October 1939, again being moved to the Nore Command by the end of October. She spent the rest of 1939 and early 1940 escorting convoys and performing patrols in the North Sea until the late May, when she moved to the English Channel in preparation for Operation Dynamo; the evacuation of troops at Dunkirk.

Gallant spent the 26th of May guarding the first convoys to reach Dunkirk, and on the night of the 27th she alongside HMS Vega scouted a smaller harbor in Dunkirk to see if it may be useful in Allied evacuation; and it was. She first embarked troops herself on the 28th, carrying them back to Dover. On the 29th she embarked her second load of troops, coming under attack by German dive bombers, and a near-miss knocked out her steering. Nevertheless, Gallant made it back to Dover under her own steam, before docking for repairs in the Hull shipyard, having carried 1,466 soldiers back to Britain. She returned to duty by June 5th, a day after the final Dunkirk evacuations were completed. She resumed her escort and patrol duty, later joining battlecruisers HMS Renown and HMS Repulse in the ultimately unsuccessful search for the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.

In late July 1940 Gallant was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet, sailing for Gibraltar on the 24th of July to join Force H, to join the screen of aircraft carrier HMS Argus until the end of August, where she was moved to the screen of aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious and battleship HMS Valiant to reinforce the British Fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean. Gallant returned Gibraltar via Malta in mid-September, remaining stationed around Gibraltar, where on the 20th of October she alongside destroyers HMS Griffin and HMS Hotspur were credited for the sinking of Italian submarine Lafolé, and on the 31st of October she joined the screen of Renown and battleship HMS Barham to monitor Vichy French naval movements off Morocco. Come November she was to be transferred to the Eastern Mediterranean Fleet, joining Barham again to sail for the Eastern Mediterranean, stopping over in Malta, On the 24th of November she screened battleship HMS Ramillies and accompanying ships being transferred out of the Mediterranean via Gibraltar. She was involved in the inconclusive Battle of Spartivento on the 27th, finally arriving at Alexandria on the 29th. She spent the rest of the year on screening duties, most notably screening Illustrious and battleships HMS Warspite and Valiant in mid-December.

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  HMS Gallant in April 1938