HMS Trident (N52)

HMS Trident (N52)
General data
Ship type :	Submarine
Ship class :	Triton class ( T class )
Navy :	Royal Navy
Builder :	Cammell Laird ( Birkenhead )
Keel laying :	January 12, 1937
Launch :	December 7, 1938
Commissioning:	October 1, 1939
Whereabouts:	Sold for scrapping on February 17, 1946 and scrapped in Newport .
Technical data (see Triton class )

HMS Triton (N52) was a submarine of the British Royal Navy in World War II .

Mission history

see also: History of the Triton Class and Detailed History of the T Class

The HMS Trident sank the German tanker Stedingen (8036 GRT), among other things, during the German Weser Exercise around noon on April 8, 1940 . On the same evening around 7:00 p.m., the German heavy cruiser Lützow ran in front of her . LtCmr Seale ordered 10 torpedoes to be fired, but all of them missed their target. The German torpedo boat Albatros then hunted the submarine with depth charges, but was unsuccessful. The Trident was used in the waters of the North Sea until 1943 and has since been stationed on the Soviet submarine base Polyarny on the Barents Sea .

The greatest success was the damage to the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen on February 23, 1942 off Trondheim. Of three torpedoes shot down, one hit the stern of the cruiser and damaged it so badly that he had to return to Germany for a long stay in the shipyard.

In the first half of 1943, the Triton sank several Greek and German sailing ships in the Mediterranean and appeared in the Asian theater of war in the second half of the year . On August 29, 1943, she attacked the Japanese cruiser Kashii in Malakka Street with a fan made of all bow torpedo tubes. The eight torpedoes missed the target. The Trident remained in Asia until the end of the war.

The HMS Trident survived the war and was decommissioned in 1946.

Commanders

• Cdr. James Gordon Gould (July 19, 1939 - February 1940)
• According to Cdr. Alan George Luscombe Seale (February 1940 - April 18, 1940)
• According to Cdr. Geoffrey Mainwaring Sladen (April 18, 1940 - March 20, 1942)
• Lt. Arthur Richard Hezlet (March 20, 1942 - October 18, 1942)
• Lt. Peter Edward Newstead (October 18, 1942 -?)
• Lt. Anthony James Sumption (?)
• Lt. Arthur John Wright Pitt (November 1944 - January 20, 1945)
• Lt. Anthony Robert Profit (January 20, 1945 - July 1945)

Battle successes (selection)

The most important combat successes achieved the HMS Trident off the Norwegian coast. In the Mediterranean and Asia, only smaller units such as sailing ships or landing craft could be sunk.

date
April 8, 1940	HMS Trident torpedoes and sunk to the south of Oslo fjord at 58 ° 57 '  N , 10 ° 25'  O German tanker Stedingen (8036 BRT, ex Posidonia ).
May 2, 1940	HMS Trident attacks the German transport ship Cläre Hugo Stinnes 1 (5295 GRT) with on-board artillery and torpedoes in front of the Björn Fjord . The ship is damaged.
August 19, 1941	HMS Trident damaged east of Havøysund at 71 ° 1 '  N , 24 ° 34'  O German transporter Levante (4769 BRT).
August 22, 1941	HMS Trident torpedoes and sunk in Kvaenangenfjord at 70 ° 12 '  N , 21 ° 5'  O the German transport ship Prussia (3030 BRT).
August 30, 1941	HMS Trident torpedoes and sunk near Lopphavet at 70 ° 35 '  N , 21 ° 45'  O German transporter Donau II (2931 BRT) and Bahia Laura (8561 BRT).
November 3, 1941	HMS Trident torpedoed and sank in the Porsangerfjord at 70 ° 58 ′  N , 26 ° 8 ′  E the German auxiliary U-Jäger UJ 1213 / Rau IV (354 GRT) and the German transport ship Altkirch (4713 GRT).
February 23, 1942	HMS Trident attacks the two German heavy cruisers Prinz Eugen (14680 ts) and Admiral Scheer (13660 ts) west of Kristiansund with a total of seven torpedoes. The Prinz Eugen suffers hits and severe damage to the stern. The Admiral Scheer is missed.
April 20, 1942	HMS Trident torpedoes and sunk in Svefjord at 64 ° 38 '  N , 10 ° 49'  O German transporter Hödur (5368 BRT).

See also

• HMS Trident (other British ships of the same name)

literature

• Erminio Bagnasco: Submarines in World War II. 5th edition. Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-613-01252-9 .
• Robert Hutchinson: Fight Under Water - Submarines from 1776 to the Present. 1st edition. Motorbuchverlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-613-02585-X .
• Peter Padfield: The Submarine War 1939-1945. Ullstein Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-548-24766-0 .

Web links

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

• HMS Trident on uboat.net (English)
• Trident. British submarines in World War II. Archived from the original on March 21, 2012 ; accessed on January 13, 2016 . 

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. ↑ Cajus Bekker: Damned Sea. 1971, p. 101.
3. ↑ Kashii on www.combinedfleet.com (Engl.)
4. ↑ James Gordon Gould on uboat.net (engl.)
5. ↑ Alan George Luscombe Seale in uboat.net (Engl.)
6. ↑ Geoffrey Mainwaring Sladen in uboat.net (engl.)
7. ↑ Arthur Richard Hezlet in uboat.net (engl.)
8. ↑ Peter Edward Newstead in uboat.net (engl.)
9. ↑ Anthony James Sumption in uboat.net (engl.)
10. ↑ Arthur John Wright Pitt in uboat.net (engl.)
11. ↑ Anthony Robert Profit in uboat.net (engl.)
12. ↑ The uboat.net is contradictory, on the one hand it is written by the Admiral Scheer , in the next sentence the source means the Admiral Hipper .

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 . Trident is the English word for trident .