 Vasilissa Olga in the pre-war disruptive camouflage pattern
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| History | |
|---|---|
 Greece | |
| Name | Vasilissa Olga (ΒΠ Βασίλισσα Όλγα) |
| Namesake | Queen Olga |
| Ordered | 29 January 1937 |
| Builder | Yarrow & Company |
| Laid down | 1 February 1937 |
| Launched | 2 June 1938 |
| Commissioned | 4 February 1939 |
| Fate | Sunk 26 September 1943 |
| General characteristics (as built) | |
| Class and type | G and H-class destroyer |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 97.5 m (319 ft 11 in) (o/a) |
| Beam | 9.7 m (31 ft 10 in) |
| Draft | 2.7 m (8 ft 10 in) |
| Installed power |
|
| Propulsion | 2 shafts; 2 geared steam turbines |
| Speed | 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) |
| Range | 3,760 nmi (6,960 km; 4,330 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) |
| Complement | 162 |
| Armament |
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Vasilissa Olga (Greek: ΒΠ Βασίλισσα Όλγα) (Queen Olga) was the second and last destroyer of her class built for the Royal Hellenic Navy in Great Britain before the Second World War. She participated in the Greco-Italian War in 1940–1941, escorting convoys and unsuccessfully attacking Italian shipping in the Adriatic Sea. After the German invasion of Greece in April 1941, the ship escorted convoys between Egypt and Greece until she evacuated part of the government to Crete later that month and then to Egypt in May. After the Greek surrender on 1 June, Vasilissa Olga served with British forces for the rest of her career.
She escorted convoys in the Eastern Mediterranean for the next several months before she was sent to India for a refit. The ship resumed convoy escort duties upon its completion at the beginning of 1942 in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. In December of that year, now operating in the Central Mediterranean, Vasilissa Olga and a British destroyer briefly captured an Italian submarine, but it sank while under tow. The following month, the ship, together with a pair of British destroyers, sank a small Italian transport ship. She was briefly tasked to escort an Australian troop convoy in the Red Sea in February 1943 before returning to the Mediterranean. Together with a British destroyer, Vasilissa Olga sank at least two ships from an Italian convoy in June. Over the next several months, she escorted British ships as the Allies invaded Sicily (Operation Husky) and mainland Italy (Operation Avalanche).
The ship was transferred back to the Eastern Mediterranean in September to participate in the Dodecanese Campaign. Together with two British destroyers, she helped to destroy a small German convoy in the islands before beginning to ferry troops and supplies to the small British garrison on the island of Leros. After completing one such mission, she was sunk by German bombers in Lakki harbor on 26 September with the loss of 72 men.