HMS Thunderbolt (N25)

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HMS Thunderbolt (N25)
(ex HMS Thetis)
Royal Navy
HMS Thunderbolt 1940
General data
Ship type : Submarine
Ship class : Triton class ( T class )
Navy : Royal Navy
Builder : Cammell Laird ( Birkenhead )
Keel laying : December 21, 1936
Launch : June 29, 1938
Commissioning: October 26, 1940
Whereabouts: Sunk by the Italian corvette Cigogna near Sicily on March 14, 1943 .
Technical data
(see Triton class )

The HMS Thunderbolt (N25) (ex HMS Thetis ) was a submarine of the British Royal Navy .

The warship was launched in 1938 under the name HMS  Thetis and was lost on its first test voyage in 1939. The submarine was later lifted, made afloat and put into service in 1940 under the name HMS  Thunderbolt . The submarine was mainly used in the Mediterranean during World War II and was lost in 1943.

Mission history

HMS Thetis

The submarine was launched in 1938 as HMS  Thetis at the Cammell Laird shipyard as the second unit of the then newest and most modern British ocean-going class.

On the morning of June 1, 1939, the HMS  Thetis Birkenhead left to conduct her first diving tests in the mouth of the River Mersey . In addition to the normal crew, there were several commanders of other older submarines on board who wanted to convince themselves of the efficiency of the new building. There were also over 30 employees from the Cammell Laird and Vickers-Armstrong shipyards , a pilot and even two stewards from a civil catering company . A total of 103 people were on board. The nominal crew of a Triton boat was actually only 62 men.

After several hours of crossing the water, the submarine signaled to the accompanying tug Grebecock at 13:30 that the first diving test was imminent and that the passengers wanted to stay on board. Actually, the guests should change to the tug before the dive trip.

At 2 p.m. the Thetis flooded its diving cells with a clearly audible noise . Even so, she stayed on the surface for the next hour and obviously had trouble diving. At 2:58 p.m., it disappeared from the surface in no time.

The unarmed boat had too little downforce. Therefore, Commander Bolus decided to flood the two empty bow torpedo tubes five and six as an additional downforce aid for trimming . Since this still didn't help, he later increased the speed and set the elevator to an extreme angle of attack.

The bow crew was apparently not aware that two pipes were flooded, which was directly attributable to a production error. The hatches of the torpedo tubes were provided with small bores through which a small amount of water could penetrate, so that it was possible to see at any time whether the tube was flooded or not, even without complicated measuring technology. At the shipyard it was apparently forgotten to mark these holes separately, so that they were painted over in a later step and unintentionally sealed with the paint.

Unfortunately, at the same time as the last dive attempt, the bow crew was testing tube five and trying to open its jammed inner cargo hatch. Assuming the pipe was dry, they forcibly opened it. In truth, the hatch lock was stuck in the torpedo tube because of the water pressure. When the hatch finally opened, a gush of water weighing tons poured into the bow torpedo room.

As a result of the inrush of water, the boat became extremely bow-heavy and sank very quickly in an uncontrolled manner, supported by the increased speed and the angle of attack of the down rudder with a steep angle. The desperate efforts to close the hatch of pipe five against the rising water pressure were unsuccessful. After the tip of the bow hit the bottom hard at a depth of 49 m, the severe shock caused u. a. the lights off. The bow crew gave up the now pointless fight and tried to escape behind the next bulkhead in the dark and cold . The hatch there couldn't be closed either. The men were initially able to escape into the following section, the bow-side access of which could be locked.

The Thetis was now lying aground with two flooded sections and had no chance to free herself on her own. At the time of the accident, the accompanying tug was already over a nautical mile away. The precarious situation of the boat was not known on the surface. In addition, the tug would not have been suitable for a rescue operation. When the crew of the tug finally suspected an incident around 4 p.m., help was requested. In the meantime the Grebecock was more than 4 nautical miles from the submarine, the exact position of which was unknown. In addition, dusk began and visibility deteriorated visibly.

The submarine was equipped with two emergency exit locks. All 103 men on board also had a personal dive rescuer . The air supply was only sufficient for 18 hours due to the far too large crew. In order to make one's own position on the surface visible, the aft diving cells were blown. The 84 m long hull erected, as planned, at a steep angle. The stern then protruded about six meters from the water, and the rear emergency exit was at a water depth of almost seven meters. But since darkness had fallen in the meantime, it was not possible to boot out immediately. An exit from the relatively shallow depth would have been possible at any time without the diving rescuer and without the decompression problems. In the cold water, however, the seafarers only had a chance of survival if they were picked up quickly by a surface craft, otherwise they would have drifted off the surface as a result of the strong current and frozen to death or drowned in a short time.

An hour after sunrise the next day discovered a reconnaissance aircraft at 07:45 which projects out of the water Thetis . Rescue workers immediately drove to the submarine and knocked on the pressure hull to signal their arrival to the crew. The conditions on board were extremely critical after 18 hours without fresh air. The men were very weak due to the rising carbon dioxide concentration. Most slept.

During the first rescue attempt, the rescue lock was used by two seamen who escaped unscathed. Because of the increasingly scarce breathing air and the high number of people, four men were ejected on the second attempt. All four already drowned in the lock, which is why only two men got out on the next attempt and reached the surface alive.

Carbon dioxide in high concentrations leads to severe headaches and poor concentration. It can be assumed that this is the reason why a fatal error was made by the crew on the fourth and final attempt to exit when both the inner and outer hatches of the exit lock were opened at the same time. The subsequent flooding sealed the fate of the remaining 99 men. The boat began to fill up. The pressure of the remaining air increased suddenly. Presumably, most of the victims were spared the agony of drowning . They probably suffocated in their sleep in a very short time and minutes before the boat was completely flooded as a result of the increased carbon dioxide partial pressure . The Thetis filled up in a few minutes and sank.

After several attempts in which a salvage diver was killed, the wreck of the Thetis was lifted on September 2, 1939 and towed ashore. The remains of the crew were buried at sea.

The sinking of the HMS  Thetis counts with 99 dead in addition to the losses of the Surcouf  (1942, 130 dead), USS  Thresher  (1963, 129 dead), K-141 Kursk  (2000, 118 dead), USS  Scorpion  (1968, 99 dead), K-129  (1968, 98 deaths) and the so-called Battle of May Island  (1918, 105 deaths) were among the worst accidents in submarine history .

Thunderbolt 1942

HMS Thunderbolt

The thetis was in very bad shape. In peacetime it would certainly have been scrapped. The outbreak of the Second World War in September forced all resources to be pooled and the wreck of the Thetis to be reactivated.

The submarine was overhauled in the following months and was named HMS  Thunderbolt . All references to the previous name, such as B. the tower labels have been removed. As the most important modification, the hatches of the torpedo tubes were equipped with an additional safety device, so that the hatches had to be opened in two steps. At first it could only be opened a crack and only completely after actuating another mechanism. This thetis clip was later introduced on many other British submarines as well.

The HMS  Thunderbolt entered service during 1940. Their first patrols led to the North Sea and the French Atlantic coast. As her first combat success, she sank the Italian submarine Capitano Tarantini on December 15, 1940 in the Bay of Biscay . On June 15, 1941, Commander Crouch attempted an attack against the German submarine U 557 in the North Atlantic . But the torpedoes missed their target.

In the late summer of 1941 the submarine moved to the Mediterranean, where it sank several Axis transport ships until it was lost .

In January 1943, the Thunderbolt transported several manned torpedoes of the Chariot type together with HMS Trooper in front of the port of Palermo , where the Italian light cruiser Ulpio Traiano was mined and sunk.

On March 12, 1943, the HMS Thunderbolt attacked  a large Italian convoy off Cap San Vito and sank the French freighter Esterel . The accompanying Italian corvette Cigogna immediately began the hunt for the fleeing submarine. The Italian commander, Capitano di Corvetta Augusto Migliorini, had operational experience on submarines himself and proved to be a stubborn opponent. On the morning of March 14th, he was able to catch the HMS  Thunderbolt and sank her with 24  depth charges . There were no survivors.

The Royal Navy officially declared the submarine missing on March 28 and lost on June 2, 1943.

Commanders

HMS Thetis

HMS Thunderbold

  • According to Cdr. Cecil Bernard Crouch (born November 26, 1909 - † March 14, 1943)

Combat successes

see also: Detailed history of the T-Class

date
December 15, 1940 The Italian submarine Capitano Tarantini is torpedoed and sunk southwest of the Gironde near Bordeaux at 45 ° 25 ′  N , 1 ° 22 ′  W.
September 7, 1941 The Italian freighter Sirena (974 GRT ) is torpedoed and sunk 50 NM west of Benghazi ( Libya ).
September 10, 1941 The Italian auxiliary patrol boat V 224 / Svan I (388 BRT) is sunk in the Great Syrte with the deck gun .
September 11, 1941 The German freighter Livorno (1829 BRT) is 35 NM west-south-west of Benghazi at 31 ° 58 '  N , 19 ° 23'  O torpedoes and sunk.
October 10, 1941 The Italian sailing ship Citta di Simi (25 GRT) is sunk 12 NM northeast of Cape Sidero ( Crete ) at 35 ° 31 '  N , 26 ° 25'  E with the deck gun.
November 25, 1941 The German sailing ship L VII (300 GRT) is sunk off Kythira with the deck gun.
January 2, 1942 The Italian freighter Anna Capano (1216 GRT) is torpedoed and damaged off Argostoli .
January 4, 1942 The Italian auxiliary minesweeper R 195 / Nuovo San Pietro (32 GRT) is sunk off Kefalonia with the on-board gun.
February 1, 1942 The Italian freighter Absirtea (4170 BRT) is 6 NM off Cape Dukato at 38 ° 40 '  N , 20 ° 30'  O torpedoes and sunk.
February 13, 1943 The Italian auxiliary minesweeper No. 112 / Mafalda (364 GRT) is sunk off the Croatian island of Dugi Otok with artillery on board.
February 20, 1943 An Italian sailing ship is sunk off Bari with the deck gun.
March 12, 1943 The French (in German service) freighter Esterel (3100 GRT) is torpedoed and sunk off Cape San Vito .

See also

Web links

Commons : Triton class  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Tony Booth: Thetis down. The slow death of a submarine. Pen & Sword maritime, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84415-859-1
  • Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines in World War II , Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart, 5th edition 1996, ISBN 3-613-01252-9
  • Robert Hutchinson: KAMPF UNDER WASSER - Submarines from 1776 to today , Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart, 1st edition 2006, ISBN 3-613-02585-X
  • Anthony Preston: The history of the submarines , Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen, German edition 1998, ISBN 3-86070-697-7
  • Peter Padfield: Der U-Boot-Krieg 1939-1945 , Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag, Munich, 2000, ISBN 3-548-24766-0

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hutchinson and Bagnasco do not provide any information on the launching of the T-class submarines. The information on launch runs comes from uboat.net .
  2. ↑ a b The uboat.net states October 26, 1940 for the Thunderbolt to go into service. Hutchinson gives April 1940.
  3. ↑ Main source on the subject of the sinking of the HMS Thetis : http://www.angelfire.com/co3/submarinethetis/thetis.htm
  4. ↑ a b Capitano Tarantini ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www.www.regiamarina.net. (engl.)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.regiamarina.net
  5. ↑ The sources are contradicting the sinking of the Ulpio Traiano . Robert Hutchinson, www.wlb-stuttgart.de , regiamarina.net ( Memento of the original dated May 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and www.schiffswrackliste.de give the 2./3. January 1943. www.marinearchiv.de gives the 2nd / 3rd June 1943, which is unlikely since the HMS Thunderbolt was lost in March. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / regiamarina.net
  6. ↑ Source: http://www.angelfire.com/co3/submarinethetis/thunderbolt.htm
  7. ↑ Cecil Bernard Crouch in uboat.net (engl.)

Remarks

  1. ↑ HMS is the abbreviation for His / Her Majesty's Ship and the name prefix of British ships. HMS means His / Her Majesty's Ship . Thetis is a nymph from ancient Greek mythology . Thunderbolt is the English term for [[thunderbolt (mythology) |]].