In 1939, the British Royal Navy ordered Vickers-Armstrongs on the River Tyne to build a new P-class destroyer named HMS Porcupine. The ship was delivered in June 1941, but it wasn’t until the summers of 1942, that HMS Porcupine was placed in active service.

On December 9, 1942, HMS Porcupine was escorting the depot ship HMS Maidstone from Gibraltar to Algiers, when it encountered a German U-boat northeast of Oran. The U-boat fired four torpedoes at Maidstone and missed, but one hit Porcupine and nearly blew her in half.

The stern half of HMS Porcupine being towed into Portsmouth, where it became HMS Pine.