HMS Montgomery (G95)
| Navy: | RN |
| Type: | Destroyer |
| Class: | Town |
| Pennant: | G 95 |
| Built by: | Bath Iron Works (Bath, Maine, U.S.A.) |
| Laid down: | 26 Jun, 1917 |
| Launched: | 25 Jun, 1918 |
| Commissioned: | 23 Oct, 1940 |
| End service: | 23 Feb, 1944 |
| History: | HMS Montgomery
(G.95) was commissioned under the White Ensign on 23 October 1940, Lt.
Comdr. W. L. Puxley, RN, in command. The destroyer underwent further fitting
out and familiarization before departing Canadian waters on 1 November,
bound for the British Isles. En route, Montgomery and the other of her
sister ships in company swept through the scene of the one-sided naval
engagement between the armed merchant cruiser HMS Jervis Bay and the German
"pocket battleship" Admiral Scheer. This action had occurred on 5 November
when the German warship attacked a convoy escorted by the erstwhile merchant
steamship. Jervis Bay had gallantly interspersed herself between the raider
and the convoy, allowing the latter to escape while being herself smashed to
junk and sunk. Montgomerg found nothing, however, and after searching
briefly for the German "pocket battleship" with orders to shadow by day and
attack by night arrived at Belfast, Northern Ireland on 11 November.
Shifting to Plymouth, England, a week later, Montgomery was allocated to the Western Approaches command and based at Liverpool. During the course of one of her early patrols, Montgomery rescued 39 survivors from the torpedoed motor tanker Scottish Standard which had been torpedoed and sunk by U-96 on 21 February 1941. Disembarking the rescued mariners on the 24th, Montgomery resumed her Western Approaches patrols soon thereafter. The flush-decker underwent repairs at Barrow, Laneashire from April to September and was later assigned to the 4 th Escort Group. Based now at Greenock, Scotland, the destroyer operated between the British Isles and Canadian ports through the end of 1941. On 13 January 1942, the Panamanian-registered steamer SS Friar Rock was torpedoed and sunk by U-180 100 miles southeast of Cape Race' Newfoundland. Four days later Montgomery picked up seven survivors from that ship. In February 1942, Montgomery came under the aegis of the Western Local Escort Force at Halifax. Later in 1942, the destroyer was loaned to the Royal Canadian Navy before she sailed south and underwent repairs at the Charleston (S.C.) Navy Yard which lasted into the following year 1943. Resuming her coastwise convoy escort operations in February 1943, Montgomery rescued survivors of the torpedoed Manchester Merchant sunk by U-628 on 25 February 1943, 390 miles off Cape Race. The destroyer remained with the Western Local Escort Force into late 1943, operating out of Halifax. On 12 December 1943, she assisted the Bowater-Lloyd Paper Co. barge Spruce Lake and, on the 27th, departed Halifax for the British Isles, carrying the surviving crew members from the torpedoed British destroyer HMS Hurricane which had been sunk by U-415 on Christmas Eve. Arriving in England soon thereafter, Montgomery was placed in reserve in the Tyne River on 23 February 1944. Removed from the "effective list" the British equivalent of the United States Navy's "Navy list" the veteran flush-decker was subsequently broken up for scrap in the spring of 1945 shortly before the end of the war in Europe. |
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