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Lt Cdr John L. Younghusband joined HMS Wild Swan as CO in July 1940 during her long refit at Chatham on coming out of Reserve. On completion of her work-up at Portland she joined the 18th Destroyer Flotilla as a convoy escort in Western Approaches Command at Plymouth until the German Blitzkrieg in May when she transferred to 19DF at Dover with HMS Verity and Windsor.

The Netherlands was neutral during the previous war but anticipating the invasion of the Low Countries Britain drew up plans for XD Operations, the demolition of fuel reserves and harbour installations in the Netherlands, Belgium and France to prevent them falling into German hands. Fuel reserves would be destroyed by the Kent Fortress Royal Engineers (KFRE), a Territorial Unit formed from employees of the Blue Circle Cement Co, Gravesend, headed by a Colonel Brazier, a veteran of the last war, and naval parties would destroy the harbour installations. HMS Wild Swan would take Demolition Party B to the Hook of Holland, a ferry port on the "new Waterway" leading to Rotterdam, the main port and commercial centre in the Netherlands. In overall command of the KFRE "Demo" party and the naval party was Cdr James A. Corrie Hill who commanded HMS Westcott on the China Station in 1938-9 but had spent the last two months in the Plans Division of the Admiralty, HMS President.

Plans for Operation XD in the Netherland stamped "Most Secret" issued by Vice Admiral Ramsay, Flag officer Commanding Dover, on 7 May, named HMS Verity as the destroyer to carry Cdr Hill and Demo Party X(B) plus a military Mission headed by a Major General to the Hook of Holland. At 3.55am on Friday 10 May the German invaded and at 11.30 the War Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street discussed the plans for  XD Operations and decided that Dutch gold at the branch of the Nederlandsche Bank in Rotteredam should be brought back by the Demo Party. Plans changed and HMS Wild Swan left Dover later that day with Cdr Hill and his team of 95 men and arrived at  the Hook of Holland at 5.30 pm but without the Military Mission which followed later in HMS Wivern. After landing he received the order to retrieve the gold from the Rotterdam branch of the National Bank.

Lt Smit in the Dutch Navy had taken command of Pilot Boat 19A that morning and at 1930 Cdr Hill and the 95 members of the naval party and the KFRE demolition party led by  Captain Goodwin, a South African, boarded the steamer and left immediately on the three hour journey along the New Waterway to Lekhaven jetty in central Rotterdam. Parachutists and gliders had landed and fighting was taking place throughout the city. Cdr Hill and Captain Tommy Goodwin set off to contact the authorities about their separate missions and both were arrested as suspected Germans. Matters were made worse when Goodwin tried to win favour by speaking in Afrikaans! In the end the misunderstanding was resolved and after drinking toasts with their captors Goodwin and the KFRE set off for the Shell oil plant on the south bank of the Maas, found it deserted and patrolled by Germans and returned to the north bank where the Dutch General refused consent for the demolition. The KFRE unit returned to the Hook at 1800 on Saturday 11 May having achieved nothing.

Cdr Hill and his naval team headed for the Nederlandsche Bank where fighting was taking place at the front while 11 tons of gold packed in crates were being loaded into four trucks at the rear of the building. Another 110 tons which had not been crated remained in the vaults. The trucks set off to Lekerhaven at intervals, were fired on but reached the jetty safely and the loading of 170 crates of gold bars onto the Pilot Steamer began at 0300 on Saturday 11 May. The ship left two hours later with Cdr Hill and Ordinary Seamen T.G. Goshawk and F.G. Higgs and the twenty man crew. The rest of Cdr Hill's naval team returned westward by land to their demolition positions. At 0530 on Saturday 11 May the 500 ton steel pilot boat detonated a magnetic mine dropped by a German bomber at 2300 the previous night. The effect in the constricted waterway was devastating. The Pilot Boat broke in two and there were only three survivors. Cdr Hill and ODs Goshawk and Higgs are buried in CWG at the Emaus General Cemetery at Vlaardingen. Most of the gold bars were retrieved by the Germans after salvage by the Dutch but a few were never recovered. For a more detailed account of Cdr Hill's mission and its tragic end see Traces of War.

HMS Wild Swan had been on patrol to escape being bombed while berthed alongside and to leave the quayside clear for other ships. At sunrise on Sunday 12 May Wild Swan guided HMS Venomous and Verity each bringing 200 Royal Marines to protect the perimeter of the Hook of Holland in preparation for the arrival of a combined batallion of Welsh and Irish Guards hastily assembled to safeguard the evacuation of Government officials, foreign ambassadors and prominent businessmen (Operation Harpoon). Lt Peter Kershaw RNVR photographed the two V & W destroyers berthed alongside while they disembarked the Marines.


HMS Verity and Venomous were bombed as they left the quayside at 0815 as described by AB Clapton on Venomous in A Hard Fought Ship:



At 1014 HMS Wild Swan received a signal from Cdr. Hugh St. Lawrence Nicolson, RN in HMS Hyperion to order "Zeeland" to disembark her troops into a pilot ship to attack German troops who had landed by plane and parachute near a wood overlooking the Hook. Nicolson was refering to the unarmed passenger ferry SS Prinses Juliana owned by the Zeeland Shipping Co which had taken aboard 200 Dutch soldiers and their horses at Bresken on the Scheldt opposite Vlissengen (Flushing) and was heading north to Ijmuiden. The message was misunderstood and the troops were still aboard the SS Prinses Juliana when Stuka dive bombers attacked from 6,000 ft at a 70 degree angle. Capt Creasey in HMS Codrington -


Some of the crew of Wild Swan jumped overboard to save the Dutch soldiers from drowning and 40 survivors were brought safely to the Hook of Holland quay. There were also five members of the military mission sent to Vlissingen with HMS Wivern. Lt Goodwin of the Mission reported to Nicolson in HMS Hyperion that secret documents were left behind in cabins 4, 5 and 6 (the SS Prinses Juliana was still floating at the time). It was a miracle that only one crew member was lost, a stoker. The soldiers were brought to the modern  Fortress overlooking the Hook but were in such a state of shock that they could not fight the German troops hiding in the wood. HMS Wild Swan shelled the Germans and Dutch troops joined in from the coastal battery in the old fortress by the New Waterway until their guns broke down.

In the meantime Capt Goodwin and his team of Sappers had finally received clear instructions from an official in the Dutch government for the immediate destruction of fuel stocks and returned to Rotterdam with a Dutch officer. On arrival, a messenger gave the Dutch officer written instructions forbidding them from doing anything! Goodwin, sick of the constant mixed messages, struck off on his own with the sappers carrying their explosives on stretchers, but they were bombed and spent the night in nearby deserted buildings.

At dawn on Whit Monday morning, Goodwin received "final instructions" to destroy the Shell and American Petroleum installations on the south bank of the Maas and crossed the river at Vlaardingen. The Manager of the plant protested vehemently but Goodwin wrote a signed statement in his presence ordering him and his staff to withdraw at once as he intended to blow up the refinery and set fire to the oil in the tank farm. This done they returned to their lorries at Vlaardingen and were about to leave for the Hook when they were told parachutists had dropped along the road. They divided into two streams and proceeded on foot across country on either side of the road and arrived at 2000 to find the Hook a shambles from bombing and that Wild Swan had left at 0700 for Dover with a broken propeller blade.

In their absence, the mixed batallion of Welsh and Irish Guards had been landed by the former passenger ferries SS Canterbury and Maid of Orleans, HMS Hereward had evacuated Queen Wilhelmena and the diplomatic corp, government officials and prominent industrialists had left on destroyers. Their job done the Guards left on destroyers. The RoP of the commanding officers who took part in the evacuation of the Hook need to be traced to get an accurate record of the events of these final days at the Hook so this account will need amending but an interim description of the evacuation can be seen on the website of HMS Vivien.

The KFRE sappers slept under a string of wrecked railway carriages, plundered buildings for a splendid breakfast and were making plans to steal a small boat to escape back to England when a naval officer told them a destroyer would arrive that afternoon to pick up stragglers. They left that afternoon on HMS Malcolm with another destroyer which was bombed and arrived at Dover at midnight and returned to their unit at Gravesend the next day.