HMS Valorous (L00)

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The fifth HMS Valorous (L00), ex-HMS Montrose, was a V-class destroyer leader of the British Royal Navy that saw service in World War I, the Russian Civil War, and World War II.

Construction and commissioning
The ship was ordered in April 1916 for delivery in April 1917 as the first HMS Montrose, and was laid down on 25 May 1916 by William Denny and Brothers of Dumbarton, Scotland. Sometime prior to launching, she was renamed HMS Valorous, and she was launched under that name on 8 May 1917. She was completed on 21 August 1917 and commissioned the same day.

World War I
Upon completion, Valorous entered service with the fleet during World War I. Before the Armistice with Germany ended the war on 11 November 1918, she had been converted for use as minelayer.

Interwar
After the conclusion of World War I, Valorous deployed to the Baltic Sea to participate in the British campaign there against Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War, seeing action against Russian warships. In 1919, she and the destroyer HMS Vancouver (1917) severely damaged the Bolshevik submarine Ersh, which barely made it back to base at Kronstadt. In 1921 she began service in the Atlantic Fleet and later was assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet until relieved there in 1931, when she was decommissioned and placed in reserve.

In 1938, the Royal Navy selected Valorous for conversion into an antiaircraft escort under the naval rearmament programme, and she entered Chatham Dockyard for the required work. Upon its completion in June 1939, she was recommissioned, and in August 1939 was assigned to the escort force at Rosyth, Scotland.

World War II
When the United Kingdom entered World War II in September 1939, Valorous took up convoy defence duties in the North Sea and Northwestern Approaches with Rosyth Force. In January 1940 her duties were expanded to include the defence of convoys along the east coast of Great Britain and in the English Channel. She did not take part in the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, remaining on convoy escort duties instead. On 11 June 1940, she was escorting Convoy FN 23 when it came under German air attack and, after a German bomb hit sank the collier Heworth, rescued Heworth's crew.

In July 1940, Valorous's duties expanded again to include anti-invasion patrols. In 1941, after the threat of invasion had subsided, she returned to her convoy escort focus. On 21 June 1941 she rescued the only three survivors of the tanker Vancouver, which had struck a naval mine and caught fire off Sunk Head Buoy, Harwich, with the loss of 45 lives while on a voyage from Shell Haven to Halifax, Yorkshire. Valorous was “adopted” by the civil community of Dewsbury, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as the result of a Warship Week National Savings campaign in October 1941.

Valorous interrupted her regular duties in January 1942 to take part in Operation Performance, deploying with the Home Fleet to cover the break-out of merchant ships from Sweden into the North Sea via the Danish Straits. Fitted with a Type 285 fire-control radar for her main armament in 1942 and with Type 286P radar and direction-finding equipment in 1943-1944, she continued her convoy defense duties through the surrender of Germany in early May 1945, not taking part in any operations related to the Allied invasion of Normandy in the summer of 1944.

After Germanys surrender, Valorous supported reoccupation forces, and on 14 May 1945 joined the destroyer HMS Venomous (D75) in escorting minesweepers during minesweeping operations at Kristiansund, Norway.

Decommissioning and disposal
Valorous was decommissioned in 1945 – sources differ on whether she had been deleted from the Royal Navy's active list as of July 1945 or stayed in commission until after the surrender of Japan on 15 August 1945 – and placed on the disposal list in 1946. She was sold on 4 March 1947 for scrapping at Thornaby.