BRIEF HISTORY OF

HMCS KITCHENER

Naval Historical Section, Naval Headquarters, Ottawa, Ontario, with special thanks to CPO2 Chris Fraser for retyping these official histories from museum files for use on the internet.

HMCS KITCHENER, a corvette of the Revised Flower Class, was built by George T. Davie and Sons, Ltd, of Lauzon, Quebec. She had a displacement of 1,015 tons and an over-all length of 208’ 4”.[1]

The hull that was to be KITCHENER was launched on 18 November, 1941. For the ceremony many guests were invited, a large number of them being from the city of Kitchener, Ontario, after which the ship was named. [2] Present to deliver prayers of blessing for the ship was the Reverend A. Vincent Bennett of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and, to christen her, Mrs. L. O. Breithaupt, wife of the Member of Parliament for North Waterloo.

HMCS KITCHENER was commissioned on 28 June, 1942, with Lieutenant William Evans, RCNVR, as her first Commanding Officer. Following the ceremony the ship became in a sense a movie star, for she took the leading part in a Hollywood motion picture, “K-225”, this title being also her pennant numbers. For weeks, while she carried out her working-up exercises in Bermudan waters and after she had started convoy runs in the North Atlantic, she carried aboard Hollywood camera crews, directors, script writers and actors. Many anecdotes are told of the period. One relates the enactment of a dramatic scene of burial at sea. “Cameras ground and the guard of honour and officers stood solemnly at attention while the ‘corpse’ slipped overboard…only to float and bob merrily away across the waves in its shroud.”

For a time the ship sailed as escort for convoys between Quebec and Sydney, N.S.; then, in September, she sailed to meet a convoy from the United Kingdom (ON-125) [3] and accompany it to New York. In October, she made her first Atlantic crossing as one of the mid-ocean escort for a convoy sailing to the United Kingdom, (SC-106).[4]

After her arrival in Londonderry, the naval base in Northern Ireland, KITCHENER joined in the preparations being made for Operation “Torch”, the invasion of North Africa. On 11 December, 1942, she was one of the escorts of a Mediterranean-bound convoy (KMS-5)[5] sailing from the Clyde. En route there were heavy attacks by torpedo bombers. On the return voyage she accompanied a homeward-bound convoy (MKS-4).[6] She helped escort other convoys and was present in the Mediterranean (with KMS-8) on 6 February, 1943, when HMC Corvette LOUISBURG was destroyed by an aerial torpedo.

On 29 March, 1943, KITCHENER joined an America-bound convoy to return to Canada (ONS-2). [7] Here she resumed duties as an escort in the North Atlantic until October 1943 when she proceeded to Liverpool, N.S., for a refit. On 17 January, 1944, Lieutenant J. E. Moles, RCNVR, assumed command of the ship. In February, while en route to Bermuda for working-up exercises, the corvette went to the assistance of HM Rescue Tug Director who was on passage from Boston to Bermuda and had reported herself as leaking badly. KITCHENER and the corvette HMCS SACKVILLE, who also responded to the call for help, found the tug in no immediate danger of sinking. KITCHENER sent over her whaler to pick up an officer who had been injured by an explosion in the engine room and, after the arrival of US Fleet Tug Choctaw, detached to land the man in Bermuda.

The invasion of Normandy began on 6 June, 1944. KITCHENER had sailed independently to the United Kingdom from St. John’s, Newfoundland, in April, 1944, and her first duty in preparation for the great event was to tow a barge from Londonderry to Portsmouth. On the day itself she was one of a group escorting a landing craft convoy to the Normandy beach, arriving at her destination and landing troops at 1600. Following this, voyages to the beach head were routine; nevertheless, danger was never far away and on one occasion, for instance, she and the corvette HMCS PORT ARTHUR had near misses from glider bombs. After June, KITCHENER was based in Milford Haven, North Wales, and she continued throughout the year to escort British Channel convoys to Cherbourg and the western beach head.

KITCHENER continued to be based in Milford Haven until May 1945 when she returned to Canada, arriving in Halifax on 8 June. Turned over to War Assets Corporation on 11 July, she was sold on 17 October 1945 to the International Iron and Metal Company of Hamilton to be broken up for scrap.

LIST OF COMMANDING OFFICERS

HMCS KITCHENER

FROM	TO	COMMANDING OFFICER
28 June 1942	16 January 1944	Lieutenant W. Evans, RCNVR.
17 January 1944	11 July 1945	Lieutenant J. E. Moles, RCNVR.

Footnotes

1. Further particulars of the ship follow:

Main Armament:
one 4” gun
one 2-pdr
two-twin .5 machine-guns
one Lewis gun
Standard displacement 1,015 tons
Extreme length 208’ 4”
Extreme breadth 33’ 1”
Draught forward at full load 11’ 10”
Draught aft at full load 15’ 7”.

2. See Appendix “A”: “GUESTS ACCEPTING INVITATIONS TO THE LAUNCHING OF HMCS KITCHENER, 18 NOVEMBER, 1941.”

3. ON Convoys ran from the United Kingdom to Halifax and New York.

4. SC Convoys were slow convoys running from Halifax and Sydney to the United Kingdom.

5. KMS Convoys ran from the United Kingdom to Alexandria.

6. MKS Convoys ran from Alexandria to the United Kingdom.

7. ONS Convoys were slow ON Convoys.

APPENDIX “A”