Vampire

HMAS Vampire before her first deployment to the Mediterranean in 1939.

History

Design

Vampire belonged to the Admiralty "V"-class of flotilla leaders. Their design stemmed from the creation of the "S" class of destroyers which were capable of reaching a 36-knot top speed. Since the existing flotilla leaders were incapable of matching this speed, the Royal Navy requested a new class of leaders capable of keeping pace with the "S" class.

The "V"-class leaders were built under Britain's "Wartime Emergency Programme", so to speed production time they were built using the existing machinery designs of the "R"-class destroyers. The "R" class was larger than the proposed "V" class, so the larger machinery resulted in a higher weight and larger dimensions than originally planned, and further resulted in a decreased top speed of 34 knots.

The original "V"-class leaders were armed with two twin 21-inch torpedo tubes, and a later modification with two triple 21-inch tubes would become the "W" class. Vampire, however, was initially built as a test bed for the triple tubes, and as such, is still a "V"-class. The "V"-class introduced other improvements over previous classes, such as super firing guns in an AB-XY layout that would continue to be used for most of the following Royal Navy destroyer classes.

Throughout her carrier in the Royal Australian Navy, Vampire went through constant refits in order to maintain the functionality of her systems and update her armaments as the shape of naval combat changed. Particularly, there was a push to increase her anti-aircraft firepower. A refit in summer of 1941 had installed a single 12-pounder gun for a brief time. Her most extensive refit occurred in January 1942, where her aft torpedo-tube launcher was removed in order to install two 2-pounder guns in their place.

Service

In 1933, the British Admiralty agreed to loan a flotilla leader and four "V" and "W" class destroyers to the Royal Australian Navy to replace the ageing "S"-class destroyers that were currently in service in the RAN; HMS Vampire (D68) was among them. Sailing across the seas, Vampire reached Sydney on 21 December 1933, and was officially recommissioned into the RAN as HMAS Vampire on 14 July 1936. Vampire initially saw little duty beyond ordinary training and patrols, until the outbreak of World War II.

With the onset of war in the fall of 1939, Vampire and her flotilla departed from their bases of Sydney and Fremantle for Singapore. It was intended for the flotilla to be based at Singapore for a period of training, but it was decided that their stop at Singapore would be brief, and that they would continue on to the Mediterranean. Vampire arrived at Malta on 24 December 1939, her flotilla mates and herself forming the 19th Destroyer Division of the Mediterranean Fleet. At the time, Italy had not yet joined the war, so the Allies enjoyed naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. Vampire’s assigned duties were primarily routine escort and patrols from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. By 4 March 1940, she entered drydock at Malta for a 30-day refit. Following the refit, she returned to her escort duties without incident. Her first action came on 29 June 1940, when Italian aircraft attempted and failed to bomb her from high levels. Italy had declared war on Britain in early June, and the situation in the Mediterranean was changing rapidly. No longer were the waters exclusively in Allied or Neutral hand; there were but a few ports the Allies held, and the Regia Marina striking out from the heart of the Mediterranean.

Vampire’s days in the Mediterranean with her flotilla mates became the legacy of the "Scrap Iron Flotilla". This all-Australian flotilla would prove to be the thorn in the side of the Regia Marina, with Vampire at the head of it. Her first fight was the Battle of Calabria on 9 July 1940, where Vampire and her sister-ship HMAS Voyager screened the British carrier HMS Eagle. Vampire learned the value of violent evasive maneuvers when she came under repeated air attacks from Italian aircraft. Vampire was at sea for six whole days during Operation MA5 with the Mediterranean Fleet, her war diary recording that an estimated 1,350 bombs were dropped on her fleet. While Vampire avoided being hit directly, she suffered considerable damage from splinters, shrapnel, and near misses. Following repairs in Alexandria, Egypt, she resumed escort duty, covering convoys sailing from Alexandria to Malta and back again, operating out of Malta or Alexandria. Suffering only from repeated air raids, this was the norm for Vampire until the Italian invasion of Greece in late October 1940. Vampire joined the forces bound for the Aegean Sea to reinforce Greek resistance on land and sea, escorting troop convoys back and forth from Alexandria to Greece and Crete. By December 1940, Vampire joined the fleet supporting the Western Desert Campaign, striking into Italian Libya with resounding success, remaining off the coast of western Libya until 1941.

Things were continuing to change in the Mediterranean, however, for the Germans had arrived to aide their Italian allies. It gradually became much tougher to sail across the Mediterranean without coming under attack, and Vampire’s escort duties increased accordingly. She primarily found herself screening convoys in the western Mediterranean, particularly those ferrying vital men and equipment from Egypt to Greece, past the Axis-held Dodecanese Islands. During one such convoy run, Vampire transported ex-Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović from the Gulf of Athens to Alexandria. While on an escort mission on 17 April 1941, Vampire came under attack from four German Ju88 dive bombers, successfully driving them off and hitting one in the port engine – twenty minutes later, only three Ju88s returned, and the plane kill was credited to Vampire. In Greece, however, the Greeks and British were fast losing ground to the German offensives, and a full-scale evacuation by sea was ordered. Vampire — as well as HMAS Perth and every other Australian warship in the Mediterranean — took part in the evacuations, screening unarmed troop convoys while carrying men themselves. With the German arrival in North Africa and the loss of Greece, Allied military fortunes were at a low, with the British being pushed back to the borders of Egypt by the Germans (save the garrison of the fortress of Tobruk, which was doggedly held by Australian troops). The duty of supplying these troops in Tobruk fell to the navy, and the "Tobruk Ferry" began.

For Vampire’s first "Ferry" trip on 13 May 1941, she set sail with materiel and 102 troops for Tobruk. She returned two days later with 180 wounded. On 21 May she sailed again, but limped back to Alexandria a tired, beaten ship. She was badly in need of repairs, and couldn’t maintain the speeds required for "Tobruk Ferry" work. The Admiralty reluctantly decided to withdraw her from the Mediterranean and send her to Singapore for an extensive refit. She departed via the Suez Canal at the end of May, reached Singapore in mid-June and entered drydock, remaining there until late November 1941. Returning to active duty on 26 November 1941, Vampire operated out of Singapore, becoming an escort for HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. On 8 December 1941, Prince of Wales and Repulse set sail with Vampire in tow in an attempt to intercept the Japanese invasion of Malaya. Following the disastrous loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse at the hands of Japanese aviation, Vampire recovered all the sailors she could and escaped back to Singapore.

Each day, the Japanese threat grew closer to Vampire. She kept busy escorting inward and outward convoys to Singapore. On 26 January 1942, she was sent alongside destroyer HMS Thanet to intercept Japanese transports within 80 miles of Singapore. These transports were escorted by the Japanese light cruiser Sendai and six Japanese destroyers. The resulting engagement sunk hopelessly outnumbered Thanet, but Vampire refused to sink that day, escaping back to Singapore — unscathed — by the following morning. She was dispatched to the British-held island of Ceylon, joining the screening force for aircraft carrier HMS Hermes until the end of March. It was clear to the British Admiralty that the overwhelming successes of Japanese operations on land and at sea was driving them further and further out of the Far East; if Ceylon fell, Australia and New Zealand would essentially be on their own against Japan, and a Japanese strike force was already underway for Ceylon. The Royal Navy rallied a force of five battleships, three aircraft carriers, six cruisers, and fourteen destroyers — including Vampire — to defend Ceylon. The Japanese striking force — comprised of five fast carriers and four battleships — fell upon the defenses of Ceylon too quickly for the Royal Navy to intervene. Cruisers HMS Dorsetshire and HMS Cornwall were lost at sea less than fifteen minutes after leaving Trincomalee, and Vampire and Hermes escaped south by the early morning of 9 April. At 10:35am on the 9th, aircraft were sighted by Hermes as Japanese dive bombers suddenly fell upon her, sinking the aircraft-less Hermes in twenty minutes. With Hermes sunk, the dive bombers turned their attention to lone Vampire. Fighting back with all her guns, she downed at least one aircraft before she broke in half after repeated hits, sinking in less than ten minutes and going down with her commanding officer and eight of her 130 men. The survivors from both Hermes and Vampire were recovered by the hospital ship Vita.

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  HMAS Vampire, circa 1940.

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  HMAS Vampire in her original configuration. Note the division markings on her stacks.

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  Vampire in peacetime colors.

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  Vampire at anchor with her full set of awnings in place.

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  Vampire after her second torpedo launcher had been landed. Note her contrast camouflage scheme.

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  Vampire at sea, her contrast camouflage pattern fully visible.