Loss
Following the Japanese Fast Carrier Task Force's attack on Colombo in early April, Hermes and Vampire were ordered to depart Trincomalee to avoid a follow-up strike. Sailing on April 8, the two ships avoided the aerial bombing of the port early the next morning, but were spotted and attacked by Japanese carrier aircraft at 10:35.
Hermes was lost within twenty minutes, and after the aircraft left, those aboard Vampire thought they had been spared. However, the aircraft had returned to the carriers to rearm, and on their return bombed the destroyer heavily. Vampire shot down at least one aircraft before breaking in half and sinking: her ensign the last to submerge. Despite the ferocity of the attack, Vampire's commanding officer and eight sailors were the only fatalities. The survivors from both Hermes and Vampire were recovered by the hospital ship Vita.
Vampire was awarded five battle honours for her wartime service: "Calabria 1940", "Libya 1940–41", "Greece 1941", "Crete 1941", and "Indian Ocean 1941–42".
Read more about this topic: HMAS Vampire (D68)
Famous quotes containing the word loss:
“Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life—its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness—conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“We feel public misfortunes just so far as they affect our private circumstances, and nothing of this nature appeals more directly to us than the loss of money.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)