www.ns.legion.ca 31 The Ship’s Story HMCS Sackville was one of more than 120 corvettes built in Canada during the Second World War. Corvettes soon became the workhorses of the North Atlantic, escorting merchant convoys to Europe and attacking U-Boats. Without the supplies carried by these merchant ships, the war effort in Europe would have collapsed. The Canadian Navy escorted 25,343 merchant vessels across the Atlantic: ships which carried an incredible total of 181,643,180 tonnes of cargo during the war. HMCS Sackville was commissioned on December 29, 1941. Serving in well-known escort groups called C1, C2 and C3, Sackville escorted convoys from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Londonderry, Ireland, from January 1942 to August 1944. Sackville was an original member of the famous Barber Pole Group, with red-and-white barber pole stripes painted on the funnel. All ships in the East Coast Canadian Navy fleet now sport the barber pole symbol. During August 1942, on a westbound convoy mission and 250 nautical miles east of Newfoundland, Sackville encountered a U-boat on the surface. At a range of less than a quarter of a mile, Sackville fired a star shell. The U-boat crash-dived, Sackville accelerated, steamed into the swirl of water and fired a pattern of depth charges. The powerful blast forced the U-boat back up to the surface. She then slipped down into the sea and disappeared. Sackville was credited with a probable kill. Just ninety minutes later, Sackville engaged another surfaced U-boat in a dangerous tactical ballet. Sackville steered courses to ram while the U-boat steered to avoid being attacked, but Sackville’s crew succeeded with a good four-inch shell hit, punching a large hole in the base of the submarine’s conning tower. The ship was officially credited with the probable damage caused. This damage would have certainly put the U-boat out of commission and it would have had to return to its home port. In September 1943, Sackville was part of an escort group in the combined westbound convoys called ON. 202 and ONS. 18. (These ill-fated convoys became the victims of the first use of acoustic torpedoes. These advanced torpedoes were a German invention which had sensors to detect engine noise and could home in on the noise a ship made when underway. A lot did not work, but at first there was little Allied defence against them.) In addition to several merchant ships, four of the escort vessels were torpedoed and sunk: the British frigate HMS Lagan; the four-stack (four funnels) destroyer HMCS St. Croix; the British corvette HMS Polyanthus and the British frigate HMS Itchen. Itchen was carrying HMCS Sackville – The Ship’s Story Photo by: Ian Urquhart continued...
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