[5] Following commissioning, Dundee was assigned to the America and West Indies Station, replacing the old sloop Heliotrope.

She was sunk at 00.25 hours on 15 September 1940 by the most successful German submarine of the war, U-48, commanded at that time by Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Bleichrodt.

U-48 missed the British merchant ship Empire Soldier, but later torpedoed and sank Dundee, commanded by Capt.

The Imperial War Museum has a recording from its sound archives of W J H Mills, a Canadian serving with the Royal Navy on Dundee, describing the sinking.

In the recording he recounts "The blast was so severe that it tore the lockers away from the bulkhead mess – we knew we'd been hit – there was no mistaking it."