to Malta and then escorted her and a convoy including the transport to Alexandria, Egypt where they arrived on the 17th. She was transferred to the 2nd DF of the Eastern Fleet and arrived at Trincomalee, Ceylon on 7 March. Admiral James Somerville, commander of the fleet, assigned her to screen the slow ships of Force B as he organised his forces in anticipation of the Japanese Indian Ocean Raid. On 4 April, the ship rescued 88 survivors from the torpedoed freighter . "Fortune" returned to the Mediterranean to participate in Operation Vigorous, a convoy from Alexandria to Malta, in June. After the ship returned to the Indian Ocean, she was assigned to the 12th DF and escorted the carrier when that ship supported operations on Madagascar in September. "Fortune" spent the rest of the year and the first part of 1943 escorting convoys in the Indian Ocean until she was sent home in February for conversion into an escort destroyer.