Name HMS Onslow Cost £416,942 Commissioned 8 October 1941 Construction started 1 July 1940 Length 105 m Builder John Brown & Company | Ordered 3 September 1939 Laid down 1 July 1940 Decommissioned April 1947 Launched 31 March 1941 Draft 4.11 m Part of Home Fleet | |
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Operations Battle of the Barents Sea (1942), Battle of the North Cape (1943), Exercise Tiger (1944), Normandy landings (1944) | ||
HMS Onslow was an O-class destroyer flotilla leader of the Royal Navy She was ordered from John Brown & Company at Clydebank, Glasgow on 3 September 1939. The ship was laid down on 1 July 1940 and launched on 31 March 1941. She was completed on 8 October 1941 at a cost of £416,942.
Service history
Attached to the Home Fleet, Onslow served mostly as an escort to Arctic convoys. She also saw detached service in the Mediterranean during "Operation Harpoon" in 1942, and in the English Channel before and after the Normandy landings in mid-1944. Her most notable action was at the Battle of the Barents Sea in 1942, while escorting Convoy JW 51B to Russia. The convoy escorts held off attacks from the powerful German cruiser Admiral Hipper, with Onslow being heavily damaged and her captain, Robert Sherbrooke, severely injured.
In November 1945 she was the headquarter ship for Operation Deadlight - moving U-Boats from Loch Ryan to scuttle them off Bloody Foreland. She returned to the reserve at Devonport in 1947. In August 1947 she was a submarine target ship and anti-submarine trials ship at Portsmouth
Decommissioned in October 1947, the ship was procured by the Pakistan Navy in 1949 and commissioned as PNS Tippu Sultan. In 1954 she underwent a refit at Malta. Between 1957 and 1959 she underwent conversion to a Type 16 frigate at Birkenhead. She served in the Pakistan Navy until 1979.