HMAS Vampire was a V-class destroyer of the Royal Navy (RN) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Launched in 1917 as HMS Wallace, the ship was renamed and commissioned into the RN later that year. Vampire was lent to the RAN in 1933, and operated as a depot tender until just before World War II. Reactivated for war service, the destroyer served in the Mediterranean as part of the Scrap Iron Flotilla, and was escorting the British warships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse during their loss to Japanese aircraft in the South China Sea in December 1941. Vampire was sunk on 9 April 1942 by Japanese aircraft while sailing with the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes from Trincomalee.
HMAS Vampire
HMAS Vampire, circa 1940
Vampire on convoy escort in the Indian Ocean, 4 March 1942
The V and W class was an amalgam of six similar classes of destroyer built for the Royal Navy under the 9th, 10th, 13th and 14th of fourteen War Emergency Programmes during the First World War and generally treated as one class. For their time they were among the most powerful and advanced ships of their type in the world, and set the trend for future British designs.
HMS Veteran, an Admiralty modified W ship, a model at the Glasgow Museum of Transport
HMAS Waterhen (D22)
HMS Wanderer (D74/I74) in 1942
HMS Vidette (Admiralty V class), showing the typical inter-war layout of a V and W-class destroyer. She is wearing the 1939-pattern funnel bands of the 16th Destroyer Flotilla based at Portsmouth; one red over one white.