HMIS Bengal

HMIS Bengal (J243) was a Bathurst-class corvette of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) which served during the Second World War.

History
India
Name	Bengal
Namesake	Bengal
Ordered	24 September 1940
Builder	Cockatoo Docks and Engineering Company
Laid down	3 December 1941
Launched	28 May 1942
Commissioned	8 August 1942
Decommissioned	1960
Fate	Scrapped 1960
General characteristics
Class and type	Bathurst-class corvette
Displacement	650 tons (standard) 1,025 tons (full load)
Length	186 ft (57 m)
Beam	31 ft (9.4 m)
Draught	8.5 ft (2.6 m)
Propulsion	Triple expansion engine, 2 shafts, 2,000 hp (1,500 kW)
Speed	15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) at 1,750 hp
Complement	85
Armament	1 × 4-inch Mk XIX gun 3 × 20 mm Oerlikon guns Machine guns Depth charge chutes and throwers

History

HMIS Bengal was ordered from Cockatoo Docks and Engineering Company, Australia, for the Royal Indian Navy in 1940. She was commissioned into the RIN in 1942.

Operations in the Second World War

HMIS Bengal was a part of the Eastern Fleet during the Second World War and escorted numerous convoys between 1942 and 1945.^[1]

On 11 November 1942, Bengal was escorting the Dutch tanker Ondina^[2] to the southwest of Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Two Japanese commerce raiders armed with 5.5-inch (140 mm) guns attacked Ondina. Bengal fired her single 4-inch (100 mm) gun and Ondina fired her 4-inch (102 mm) gun and both scored hits on Hōkoku Maru, which shortly blew up and sank.^[2] Both Ondina and Bengal ran out of ammunition. Ondina was badly damaged by shellfire and torpedoes, and her captain signaled "abandon ship" before he died. Bengal, seeing there was nothing more she could do, sailed away.

The other raider, Aikoku Maru, machine-gunned the lifeboats with Ondina's crew aboard, causing some casualties, picked up the survivors from Hōkoku Maru and sailed off, believing that Ondina was sinking.^[2] Ondina's surviving crew re-boarded their ship, put out the fires and sailed to Freemantle. Bengal, too, reached port safely.^[3][4]