HMS Wallace (1918)

HMS Wallace in 1942
History
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Wallace
Ordered	April 1917
Builder	John I. Thornycroft & Company
Laid down	15 August 1917
Launched	26 October 1918
Commissioned	14 February 1919
Fate	Scrapped, late 1945
General characteristics
Class and type	Thornycroft type destroyer leader
Displacement	1,554 long tons (1,579 t) (standard) 2,009 long tons (2,041 t) (full load)
Length	329 ft (100 m) o/a 318 ft 3 in (97.00 m) pp
Beam	31 ft 6 in (9.60 m)
Draught	12 ft 3 in (3.73 m)
Installed power	40,000 shp (30,000 kW)
Propulsion	2 × Brown-Curtiss single reduction steam turbines 4 × Yarrow boilers 2 × shafts
Speed	36.5 kn (42.0 mph; 67.6 km/h)
Capacity	500 short tons (450 t) fuel oil
Complement	164
Armament	5 × BL 4.7 in (120 mm) Mark I dual purpose gun, 1 × QF 3 inch 20 cwt anti-aircraft gun, 6 × 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes (2 × 3)

HMS Wallace was a Thornycroft type flotilla leader of the British Royal Navy. Built by J I Thornycroft during the First World War, Wallace was launched on 26 October 1918, and completed in February 1919, after the end of the war.

Wallace served mainly with the Atlantic Fleet between the wars, although she was deployed to the Baltic in 1919 as part of the British campaign in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War, and to the Eastern Mediterranean during the Chanak Crisis in 1922–23.

The ship was converted to a fast escort in 1938–1939, with her existing armament being removed and replaced with a more modern anti-aircraft and anti-ship armament. During the Second World War, Wallace was mainly employed in escorting convoys on the East coast of Great Britain, although these duties were interrupted to take part in Operation Husky, the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily in 1943. Wallace was placed in reserve in 1945 before being scrapped later that year.