HMCS Nootka (R96)

HMCS Nootka (R96) was a destroyer that served in the Royal Canadian Navy from 1946 to 1964.

She received the unit name Nootka while still under construction in Halifax after the RCN renamed the HMCS Nootka (J35) to HMCS Nanoose (J35) in 1943.

Nootka was commissioned into the RCN on 7 August 1946 at Halifax. She served as a training ship for the Atlantic Fleet until her conversion to a destroyer escort after being paid off on 15 August 1949.

During the conversion to DDE, her 4.7 inch guns were replaced with 4 inch guns and the Y mounting was removed and 2 triple-barrelled Mark IV Squids were installed. She also received 2 Boffin gun mounts and a single 40mm Bofors on a twin 20mm Oerlikon-powered mounting. She received the new pennant DDE 213 in January 1950 and departed Halifax for Korea in December 1950, transiting the Panama Canal for the first of two tours of duty in the Korean War.



She returned to Halifax via the Mediterranean Sea at the end of 1952, having become the second RCN warship to circumnavigate the globe; HMCS Quebec (C66) having been the first.

Nootka underwent further conversion and modernization in 1953-1954 and resumed training duties with the Atlantic Fleet. She participated in the massive RCN deployment for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; Nootka was assigned a patrol area off the northern tip of Cuba during the crisis.

In summer 1963, Nootka joined her sister ship HMCS Haida (G63) for a tour of the Great Lakes. Her last deployment was for a NATO exercise in Bermuda in fall 1963 where she sustained hull damage while docking in strong winds. She was temporarily patched and returned to Halifax and was decommissioned at Halifax on 6 February 1964. She was scrapped at Faslane, Scotland in 1965.