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Allied Warships

HMS Vanquisher (D 54)

Destroyer of the Admiralty V & W class

NavyThe Royal Navy
TypeDestroyer
ClassAdmiralty V & W 
PennantD 54 
Built byJohn Brown Shipbuilding & Engineering Company Ltd. (Clydebank, Scotland) 
Ordered 
Laid down27 Sep, 1916 
Launched28 Aug, 1917 
Commissioned2 Oct, 1917 
End service 
Loss position
 
HistoryReconstruction to Long Range Escort finished in April 1943.

Sold to be broken up for scrap on 4 March 1947.

Commanding Officers:
Lt.Cdr. Kenneth Hillam Fraser, RN
8 August 1938 – 11 October 1939

Lt.Cdr. Conrad Byron Alers-Hankey, RN
11 October 1939 –11 August 1940
DSC awarded on 9 July 1940

Lt. Adrian Paul Northey, RN
11 August 1940 – February 1941
DSC awarded on 27 August 1940

Cdr. Norman Vincent Dickinson, DSC, RN
February 1941 – 7 June 1942

Lt.Cdr. Charles Leigh de Hauteville Bell, RD, RNR
7 June 1942 - ???

HMS Vanquisher was in Dockyard Control during conversion / refit

Lt.Cdr. Gerald Anthony Gore Ormsby, RN
15 February 1943 – 15 November 1943

A/Lt.Cdr. Frederick Meares Osborne, DSC, RANVR
15 November 1943 – still in command in April 1945 according to the Navy List

HMS Vanquisher is not listed in the July 1945 Navy list  


Noteable events involving Vanquisher include:

11 Sep, 1939
HMS Walker (Cdr. W.J.C. Robertson, RN) and HMS Vanquisher (Lt.Cdr. K.H. Fraser, RN) collide with each other about 200 nautical miles south-west of Cape Clear while escorting convoy OB 2. Both ships were heavily damaged. Vanquisher even had to be towed back to port. Vanquisher was under repair until early Janaury, Walker until mid-November.

8 Jul, 1940
HMS Scimitar (Lt. R.D. Franks, OBE, RN) and HMS Vanquisher (Cdr. C.B. Alers-Hankey, RN) together pick up 43 survivors from the British merchant Humber Arm that was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-99 60 miles south of Fastnet in position 50º36'N, 09º24'W.

19 May, 1941
HMS Vanquisher (Cdr. N.V. Dickinson, DSC, RN) picks up 2 survivors from the British merchant Empire Ridge that was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-96 90 nautical miles west of Bloody Foreland in position 55º08'N, 10º40'W.

10 Apr, 1945
The German submarine U-878 was sunk in the Bay of Biscay west of St Nazaire, France in position 47º35'N, 10º33'W, by depth charges from the British destroyer HMS Vanquisher (A/Lt.Cdr. F.M. Osborne, DSC, RANVR) and the British corvette HMS Tintagel Castle (A/Lt.Cdr. R. Atkinson, DSC, RN). (see map)


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