HMS Activity (D94)

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Career

Laid down:	1 February 1940
Launched:	30 May 1942
Commissioned:	29 September 1942
Decommissioned:	20 October 1945
Fate:	Merchant service as Breconshire. Scrapped 1967.
General Characteristics
Displacement:	14,250 tons fully-loaded
Length:	512 ft
Beam:	66 ft
Draught:	25 ft
Propulsion:	Diesel, 12,000 bhp
Speed:	18 knots
Complement:	700
Armament:	2 x 4" guns, 20 x 20mm guns
Aircraft:	10-15

HMS Activity was an escort aircraft carrier that served with the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom during World War II. She was built at Caledon shipyards in Dundee. When construction started in 1940 she was intended to become the merchant ship Telemachus for the Alfred Holt Line. However, she was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and converted to an escort carrier, entering service at the end of 1942.

Activity operated initially as a flight training carrier during 1943, then taking part in convoy escort duties in the North Altantic and Arctic theatres in 1944. She was used in Arctic convoys as British construction was deemed more durable in the extreme cold than American welded vessels. In April 1944 her aircraft, together with those from HMS Tracker were responsible for the sinking of U-boat U-288, during convoy JW-58.

Later in 1944 she was used as a ferry carrier, transporting aircraft, personnel and supplies to and from the Far East, until and immediately after the end of the war. After returning to the UK for the final time as a military ship in October 1945 she was decommissioned and placed in the reserve fleet. Activity was sold in April 1946 and converted to the merchant ship Breconshire of the Glen Lines. She was finally scrapped in Japan in 1967.

See HMS Activity for other ships of this name.