Yes she did. She was part of the HMS INDOMITABLE escort: a British task force. Individual Canadian ships may have served, but only as assigned to a British group. No Canadian task force, escort group or flotilla was ever assigned to the Murmansk run.
None of the Tribal class destroyers of Canada served under Canadian command in WWII: They all served in Royal Navy groups or fleets. The British were too chintzy to affect high end destroyers like the Tribals to mere mid-ocean escort tasks, regardless of the fact they would have been damn useful, and the Canadian Regular force "British" bent meant that they also looked down at the escort fleet as lower class to be left to the RCNVR. They wanted action with the real fleet, meaning with the Brits, and in fleet destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers.
This is my
sense of it, too ... as it was told to me, when I was a young boy, by a couple of people who had very "close up and personal" insights.
There was a deep, personal and professional animus between VAdm Percy Nelles, an able administrator but, generally, regarded as an indifferent sailor and a downright poor
strategist, and RAdm Leonard Murray who was highly regarded as both a seaman and as a leader who understood the
strategic imperatives. Murray, and his boss, Adm Sir Max Horton in the UK, were fighting a HUGE and, arguably, decisive battle ~ a strategically decisive campaign, really ~ and they believed that the only really important tools were the frigates (improved corvettes) and light aircraft carriers and, later, Lancaster bombers. Nelles wanted to build a Big Navy of real destroyers and cruisers while Murray (and Horton) wanted more and More and MORE frigates (and merchant ships). Both Nelles and Murray got what they wanted, the latter because Churchill, above all others, shared the Horton/Murray view of the strategic situation.
The convoys to Russia were important, Russia had to be kept in the war; that too was a key strategic imperative. But most of what went to Russia had, first, to make it to Britain from North America and Horton and Murray were responsible, as commanders, for making that happen.
Neither Horton nor Murray were liked, at all, by their respective political leadership groups ... which, partly, explains why RAdm Murray was "thrown under the bus" for the Halifax riots, but, I was assured, both were happy with their status ... as long as no-one in London or Ottawa was able to interfere with their command decisions and as long as new ships and crews continued to arrive.
The RCN, as a service, expanded far too much and too quickly in 1940 and 41. the RCNR and, especially the RCNVR simply could not cope and many (most) Canadians warships had to be pulled from convoy duty in 1942/43 for retraining: the captains and crews were not up to the job of mid-ocean escorts; it required levels of seamanship, ship handling and tactics that could not be learned "on the job." This is not, in any way, to denigrate the courage or abilities of those men ... they were, just, inadequately trained because the need for "throughput" overwhelmed the system. In 42/43 Murray was given more and more British ships and his Canadian ships were sent to special British squadrons, organized by Horton, specifically for training. It worked; it was, in a way, akin to the "battle schools" the Canadian Army used in the same time frame to turn uniformed civilians into soldiers.
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