HMS Wild Swan was member of the V and W

V and W class destroyer

The V and W class was an amalgam of six similar classes of destroyer built for the Royal Navy under the War Emergency Programme of the First World War and generally treated as one class...

 class of destroyer

Destroyer

In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. Destroyers, originally called torpedo-boat destroyers in 1892, evolved from...

s, of the "Admiralty modified W" type. Wild Swan, like most of the rest of class was launched too late for World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

The ship had a long and varied life in the period between the wars and by 1939, like the rest of her class, was old and lightly armed compared to her modern contemporaries. However, like most of her consorts, Wild Swan was badly needed by the war thinned Royal Navy and after refitting rejoined the navy as a short range escort, spending her time escorting convoys.

Her end in 1942 was dramatic. Having been detached from a convoy, was steaming in the Bay of Biscay

Bay of Biscay

The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...

, when she came under heavy air attack from a squadron of German

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 Junkers Ju 88

Junkers Ju 88

The Junkers Ju 88 was a World War II German Luftwaffe twin-engine, multi-role aircraft. Designed by Hugo Junkers' company through the services of two American aviation engineers in the mid-1930s, it suffered from a number of technical problems during the later stages of its development and early...

bombers. The bombers had been dispatched to attack the convoy, but as Wild Swan happened at the time to be steaming through a formation of neutral trawlers, the German aircraft misidentified these small vessels as the convoy and started to attack. Wild Swan replied with vigour, the ship's crew claiming a number of aircraft destroyed, but the vessel was badly damaged and when it was noticed that she was starting to bend in two amidships, the crew abandoned ship. The ship was reported to have sunk slowly, her bows and stern rising up into a "V" shape before she slipped under the surface (00'N,11.00'W). The survivors were picked up not long after.

According to Ministry of Defence historical document: 17 June 1942 "Picked up 10 officers and 123 ratings, five of whom seriously injured, from WILD SWAN, (sunk after damaged by air attack and collision with Spanish trawler in Bay of Biscay) and 11 men from Spanish trawler."