The Attack on Convoy BN 7 was a naval engagement in the Red Sea during the Second World War between a British force defending convoyed merchant ships and a flotilla of Italian destroyers. The Italian attack failed, with only one merchant ship being slightly damaged. After a chase, the British destroyer HMS Kimberley torpedoed the Italian destroyer Francesco Nullo which was beached on Harmil Island. Kimberley was hit, disabled by Italian shore batteries on the island and towed to safety by the cruiser HMS Leander.
Australian sloop HMAS Yarra
Italian destroyer Pantera
HMS Kimberley (photographed in 1942)
HMS Kimberley was a K-class destroyer of the Royal Navy. She served in the Second World War and survived it, being one of only two of the K-class to do so. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Kimberley, after the town of Kimberley, Northern Cape, site of the Siege of Kimberley in the Second Boer War. She was adopted by the civil community of Eastwood, Kimberley and Selston, Nottinghamshire in 1942 after a successful Warship Week campaign for National Savings.
HMS Kimberley (F50)
Winston Churchill with members of Kimberley's crew
The German delegation, aboard a captured British motor launch, come alongside Kimberley to formally surrender
HMS Kimberley (G50) laid up in Dartmouth after WWII