in case Hunter needed further assistance. Hardy was berthed in Palma, Majorca, on 23 May 1937 when that port was bombed by the Spanish Republican Air Force, but was not damaged. After the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, she began a refit in Devonport Dockyard between 2 June and 29 July. The ship was in Malta when World War II began in September. In October Hardy (pennant no. H87) was transferred to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to hunt for German commerce raiders in the South Atlantic with Force K. The ship and her half-sisters , , and rendezvoused with the battlecruiser , the aircraft carrier , and the light cruiser on 17 December. They refuelled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil before proceeding to the estuary of the River Plate in case the damaged German pocket battleship attempted to escape from Montevideo, Uruguay, where she had taken refuge after losing the Battle of the River Plate. She was given a brief overhaul at Devonport between 25 January and 12 February 1940 and was then transferred to Greenock, Scotland for convoy escort duties. The ship rejoined the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla of the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow on 9 March and became its flagship. On 6 April Hardy and the rest of the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla escorted the four destroyer minelayers of the 20th Destroyer Flotilla as they sailed to implement Operation Wilfred, an operation to lay mines in the Vestfjord to prevent the shipment of Swedish iron ore from Narvik to Germany. The mines were laid on the early morning of 8 April, before the Germans began their invasion, and the destroyers then joined the battlecruiser and her escorts. The Admiralty ordered Captain Warburton-Lee to attack German shipping in Narvik, Norway, on 9 April. The following morning Hardy led four of her half-sisters down Ofotfjord in a surprise dawn attack on Narvik harbour during a blinding snowstorm. A torpedo from Hardy blew off the stern of the German flagship, , and killed the German flotilla commander, Commodore Friedrich Bonte. Heidkamp sank the next day. Another torpedo hit a merchant ship in the stern. A second salvo of four torpedoes was fired at two other German destroyers, but missed and badly damaged the ore docks. After regrouping, Captain Warburton-Lee led another attack on the harbour later that morning, but inflicted little additional damage due to poor visibility. As the British