The G- and H-class destroyers were a group of 18 destroyers built for the Royal Navy during the s. The design was a major export success with other ships built for the Argentine and Royal Hellenic Navies. Then they began to escort convoys and patrol for German submarines and commerce raiders. Two ships were lost to German mines in the first six months of the war.
Three more were lost during the Norwegian Campaign , one in combat with a German cruiser and two during the First Battle of Narvik in April The Battle of France was the next test for the destroyers from MayβJune, with many of the Gs and Havant s participating in the evacuation of Dunkirk and the subsequent evacuations of Allied troops from western France.
Three ships were sunk, two by bombs and the other to torpedoes. Most of the H-class ships were sent to the Mediterranean in May in case Mussolini decided to attack France and the majority of the surviving Gs were sent to Force H at Gibraltar in July. Two of them, Griffin and Greyhound , participated in the Battle of Dakar , before being assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet with their sister ships. By the end of the year, the ships participated in several battles with the Royal Italian Navy , losing two to Italian mines and torpedoes, while sinking two Italian submarines.
The Havant s spent most of the war in the North Atlantic on convoy escort duties, losing half their number to German submarines, while helping to sink six in exchange by the end of the war. The G- and H-class ships of the Mediterranean Fleet escorted numerous Malta convoys , participated in the Battle of Cape Matapan in March and covered the evacuation of troops from Greece and Crete from MayβJune, losing two to German bombers and another so badly damaged that she was later written off.
By the end of the year, they had sunk three submarines, two Italian and one German. Further damaged by aerial attacks, she was ordered to Gibraltar and ran aground in transit and had to be destroyed. Another was torpedoed and lost during Operation Vigorous in June. The ships sank two more submarines during and three destroyers began conversion to escort destroyers late that year and early in All of the surviving ships joined their Havant half-sisters on escort duty in the North Atlantic in One ship was sent to the Mediterranean in while three others were transferred to the UK in preparation for Operation Overlord.
