HMS Denbigh Castle (K696) was one of 44 s built for the Royal Navy during World War II. The ship was completed at the end of 1944 and was assigned to the 7th Escort Group at the beginning of 1945. While escorting her first and only Arctic convoy to Russia, she claimed to have shot down a German torpedo bomber. Denbigh Castle was torpedoed in early 1945 by the , with the loss of 11 men, near the Soviet coast. The ship was beached in an effort to save her, but she was pulled off by the ebbing tide and capsized. Her wreck was declared a total loss. Design and description The Castle-class corvette was a stretched version of the preceding , enlarged to improve seakeeping and to accommodate modern weapons. The ships displaced at standard load and at deep load. They had an overall length of , a beam of and a deep draught of . They were powered by a pair of triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by two Admiralty three-drum boilers. The engines developed a total of and gave a maximum speed of . The Castles carried enough fuel oil to give them a range of at . The ships' complement was 99 officers and ratings. The Castle-class ships were equipped with a single QF Mk XVI gun forward, but their primary weapon was their single three-barrel Squid anti-submarine mortar. This was backed up by one depth charge rail and two throwers for 15 depth charges. The ships were fitted with two twin and a pair of single mounts for Oerlikon light AA guns. Provision was made for a further four single mounts if needed. They were equipped with Type 145Q and Type 147B ASDIC sets to detect submarines by reflections from sound waves beamed into the water. A Type 277 search radar and a HF/DF radio direction finder rounded out the Castles' sensor suite. Construction and career Denbigh Castle, the only ship of her name to serve in the Royal Navy, was ordered on 19 December 1942 and laid down by John Lewis & Sons at their shipyard in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 30 September 1943. The ship was launched on 5 August 1944 and completed on 30 December 1944. She arrived at Tobermory, Mull, Scotland, on 12 January 1945 to begin training at the Royal Navy's Anti-Submarine Training School, .