HMS Cossack

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HMS Cossack

Tribal-class destroyer (2f/1m). L/B/D: 377 × 36.5 × 9 (114.9m m 11.1m × 2.7m). Tons: 2,559 disp. Hull: steel. Comp.: 190. Arm.: 8 × 4.7 (4×2), 4 × 2pdr, 8 × 0.5; 4 × 21TT. Mach.: geared turbines, 44,000 shp, 2 screws; 36 kts. Built: Vickers-Armstrong, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Eng.; 1938.
Part of the Home Fleet, HMS Cossack was at the center of a diplomatic crisis in February 1940, when Norway was still neutral. Her captain, Philip Vian, sailed into Jössing Fjord near Bergen and illegally boarded the German auxiliary tanker Altmark to liberate 299 British prisoners of war who had been captured by Admiral Graf Spee. Under Commander R. St. V. Sherbrooke, Cossack returned to Norway as part of a force of eight destroyers and the battleship Repulse. During the second battle of Narvik (April 13), she was hit six times by the beached German destroyer Diether von Roeder and drifted ashore; refloated that night, she steamed out of Ofotfjord stern first. Quickly repaired, Cossack was one of five destroyers detached from convoy WS8B to join in the search for Bismarck on May 25-26, 1940, during which Cossack reported a torpedo hit on the doomed German battleship. Dispatched to the Mediterranean in 1941, Cossack was torpedoed by U-563 on the night of October 23-24 while escorting convoy HG74 west of Gibraltar; she sank three days later while in tow.

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