HMCS Kelowna

There has been only one vessel named Kelowna in the Royal Canadian Navy.

HMCS Kelowna (J261)

The Kelowna was a Bangor Class minesweeper. The Bangor Class ships were built in order to replace the old Basset Class minesweepers, as they were larger, faster, had much greater endurance, and burned oil as opposed to coal. Most of the Bangors were named after Canadian towns and cities, the rest after bays.

As enemy mines were laid only once in 1943 in Canadian waters, the Bangors were used primarily as escorts to coastal shipping or as local escorts to ocean convoys. Sixteen of them, however, assisted in sweeping the approaches to Normandy before D-Day, and stayed to help clear German and Allied minefields in the Channel for some months afterward.

Commissioned on February 5, 1942, at Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Kelowna spent her entire career on the west coast, alternately a member of Prince Rupert Force and Esquimalt Force.

She was paid off at Esquimalt, British Columbia, on October 22, 1945, and sold the following year for commercial purposes, first renamed Condor and, in 1950, as Hung Hsin. Owned in Shanghai, she disappeared from Lloyd’s Register after 1950.

• Builder: Prince Rupert Dry Dock and Shipyards Co., Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
• Laid down: December 27, 1940
• Launched: May 28, 1941
• Commissionning date: February 5, 1942
• Paying off date: October 22, 1945
• Displacement: 672 tons
• Dimensions: 54.9 m x 8.7 m x 2.5 m
• Speed: 16 knots
• Crew: 83
• Armament: one 3-inch (76-mm) gun, three 20-mm guns (3 single mounts), depth charges