HMS
Malaya, a Queen Elizabeth class battleship served in WWI in Admiral
Hugh Evan-thomas's 5th Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet. She took part in the
Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916, where she was hit eight times and took major
damage and heavy crew casualties. A total of 65 men died, in the battle or
later of their injuries. Among the wounded was Able Seaman Willie Vicarage,
notable as one of the first men to receive facial reconstruction using plastic
surgery. Uniquely among the ships at the battle, HMS Malaya flew
the red-white-black-yellow ensign of the Federated Malay States who had paid for
her construction.
In WWII
she served in the Mediterranean in 1940, escorting convoys and operating
against the Italian fleet. On one occasion her presence in a convoy was
sufficiently discouraging to the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau that they
withdrew rather than risk damage in an attack.
She was
damaged by a torpedo from U-106 on 20 March 1941. U-106 attacked
the shadow of a merchant ship with a spread of two stern torpedoes in bad light
from the port side of convoy SL68 about 250 miles west-northwest of the
Cape Verde Islands. One torpedo damaged Malaya and the other the Meerkerk.
Malaya was hit by the torpedo on the port side, causing considerable
damage. Due to the flooding of some compartments the ship took a list of 7
degrees, but safely reached Trinidad. After temporary repairs were made, she
continued to the USA, where she was docked for four months.
On 9
July, under the command of Captain Cuthbert Coppinger, the battleship left New
York on trials and steamed to Halifax, Nova Scotia to provide protection for an
urgent fast convoy. On this Atlantic crossing no ships were lost and Malaya
arrived on 28 July in Rosyth. Thereafter Malaya escorted convoys from
the United Kingdom to Malta and Cape Town until summer 1943.
Malaya was placed in reserve at the end
of 1943 but reactivated just before the 1944 Normandy Landings to act as a
reserve bombardment battleship. Malaya was finally withdrawn from all
service at the end of 1944 and became an accommodation ship. She was finally
scrapped in 1948