HMS Hesperus

HMS Hesperus was an H-class destroyer that had originally been ordered by the Brazilian Navy with the name Juruena in the late 1930s, but was purchased by the Royal Navy after the beginning of World War II in September 1939, commissioned in 1940 as HMS Hearty and then quickly renamed as Hesperus. Hesperus was damaged by German aircraft during the Norwegian Campaign in May 1940 and was assigned to convoy escort and anti-submarine patrols after her repairs were completed. She was assigned to the Western Approaches Command for convoy escort duties in late 1940. She was briefly assigned to Force H in 1941, but her anti-aircraft armament was deemed too weak and she was transferred to the Newfoundland Escort Force the next month for escort duties in the North Atlantic. Hesperus was transferred to the Mid-Ocean Escort Force in late 1941 and continued to escort convoys in the North Atlantic for the next three years. She was converted to an escort destroyer in early 1943 after suffering damage from one of her two ramming attacks that sank German submarines. The ship sank two other submarines during the war by more conventional means. After the end of the war, Hesperus escorted the ships carrying the Norwegian government in exile back to Norway and served as a target ship through mid-1946. She was scrapped beginning in mid-1947.