Carrier’s 25 years of service

Very much linked to Mr Sellars’ vintage Caledon photo, a mention of the Dundeebuilt aircraft carrier HMS Activity popped up in last week’s Past and Present and its history is worth recounting.

After it was originally laid down at the Caledon yard in February 1940 as a cargo vessel, the Admiralty assumed control a year later and the ship was designated as a carrier named Empire Activity, writes Craigie quizmaster Fraser Elder.

Launched in May 1942 and commissioned four months later as HMS Activity, the vessel was deployed for escort duties in the North Atlantic to combat the major threat of the wolfpack U-boats targeting merchant ships from America helping Britain’s war effort.

Next she joined convoys in the Baltic heading to Murmansk as the USSR faced the might of Germany’s sieges on Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad.

In service, the carrier’s aircraft sank two

U-boats, put three others out of action, and received naval awards as merchant vessels from Scotland reached their destinations without loss.

HMS Activity was then drafted to the East Indies Fleet and made headlines in February 1945 by rescuing 92 survivors from a US liberty ship which had been sunk, the last Allied vessel to suffer such a fate in the Indian Ocean in wartime.

The carrier returned to the Clyde in October 1945 and two years later the Dundee-built vessel was decommissioned and converted to a merchant ship named MV Breconshire.

She was removed from service in April 1967 and scrapped in Japan after a last sailing from Kobe to Mihara.