A Hard Fought Ship: The Story of HMS Venomous

HMS Venomous was a destroyer of the V & W Class, the most advanced in the world when built and arguably the most successful ever. Sixty-seven were built at the end of the Great War. By the end of World War II all had been sunk or scrapped but thousands of men had served on them.After freezing in the forgotten war in the Baltic in 1919 Venomous spent the 1920s in the Mediterranean. She was in the front line when the German blitzkrieg swept across Europe and the V & Ws made high speed dashes across the Channel to bring the troops (and civilians) back from Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk.Venomous and her sister ships escorted the Atlantic convoys which kept Britain fed and the Arctic convoys which supplied our Russian allies with the weapons to stop the German advance. She took part in Operation Pedestal which saved Malta and, as the Allies prepared for the landings in North Africa, was ordered to escort the destroyer depot ship HMS Hecla to the invasion beaches. When Hecla was torpedoed off the coast of Morocco Venomous fought the attacking U-boat and rescued 500 survivors (see back cover). Venomous escorted convoys along the coast of north Africa including the first through convoy from Gib to Alex and the invasion force to Sicily, Operation Husky.In October 1943 she returned to Britain and was converted to an Air Target ship for training Barracuda Torpedo Bomber aircrew based at Douglas in the Isle of Man. She was nearly lost in a hurricane off the east coast of Scotland before being sent to Kristiansand in Norway to accept the surrender of German naval forces.Venomous and her sister ships were all scrapped after the war but this ship biography is a fitting memorial to the V & Ws and the men who served in them.