Gray - Few Survived: a History of Submarine Disasters

FEW SURVIVED

by the same author

Non Fiction

A Damned Un-English Weapon.

The Killing Time.

The Devils Device.

Captains of War.

Operation Pacific.

Hitlers Battleships.

Fiction

No Survivors.

Action Atlantic.

Tokyo Torpedo.

Last Command.

Fighting Submarine.

Devil Flotilla.

Diving Stations.

Crash Dive 500.

FEW SURVIVED

A Comprehensive Survey of
Submarine Accidents and Disasters

by

EDWYN GRAY

To Vivienne with love

First published by Leo Cooper in association with
Seeker and Warburg Ltd.,
London, 1986

This edition published in Great Britain in 1996 by
LEO COOPER
190 Shaftesbury Avenue, London WC2H 8JL
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street,
Barnsley, South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Text Edwyn Gray, 1996

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 85052 499 7

The right of Edwyn Gray to be identified as author of this Work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patent Act, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, in any form by any means, without permission
from the publishers.

Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wilts

Contents

I would like to thank Messrs Seeley Service & Co Ltd for permission to adapt certain passages from two of my earlier books A Damned Un-English Weapon (1971) and The Killing Time (1972) when describing the sinking of K.13 in Gareloch; the disaster off May Island in 1918; the escape of Stoker Petty Officer Brown from E.41; and the loss of Bauers Der Brandtaucher in 1851. I also wish to thank the Fisk Publishing Co Ltd and Kenneth Bound for permission to re-use some paragraphs from my feature article Steam Submarines which was published in Mayfair in May, 1976.

EDWYN GRAY

Although I was only eleven years old in June, 1939, I still retain a vivid memory of the heavy black lettering of the evening newspaper placards: SUBMARINE DISASTER, THETIS SINKS, and of the anxious groups of people gathered on pavements and in doorways discussing the news in hushed voices. For it was a tragedy that shocked an entire nation. And I can remember my own family waiting by the wireless for the latest BBC bulletin. We lived in London 200 miles from the tragic scene in Liverpool Bay and we had no friends or relatives serving in the Royal Navy. But our house was in the middle of dockland and ships and the sea permeated our lives to an extent which is difficult to comprehend today.

If this book has any particular starting point it is that warm and sunny Thursday afternoon in 1939. And while another fifteen years and a World War were to pass before I began to write seriously, it had always been my ambition to produce a book on submarine disasters as a tribute to the men who died in Thetis. If I can be forgiven one further personal memory it is of meeting Captain H.K. Oram some eight years ago at a literary function. For Captain Oram was one of the four men who survived the disaster. And I wonder how that small schoolboy in London would have reacted had he known that, more than thirty years later, he would meet, talk to, and shake hands with a man who had actually escaped from the Thetis.

When tackling a subject as vast and fascinating as the history of submarine disasters the author must work within carefully defined limits. This book, then, is concerned only with submarines lost by accident or error in both peace and war. Submarines sunk in action by the enemy are excluded and, for reasons of space, it has also been unfortunately necessary to omit accidental sinkings of midget and one-man naval submarines, civilian operated submarines, diving bells and Deep Submergence Research Vessels.

Subject to the reservations set out in the Notes to the Appendices, and although written for the general and non-specialist reader, this book is intended to be a definitive account of submarine disasters and accidents and all known peacetime losses are included in the text. Lack of space, however, makes it impossible to accord similar treatment to every wartime accident but the enthusiast and student will find a schedule of all submarines sunk by accident or error in the appendices.

Many hundreds of books, newspapers, periodicals and unpublished papers have been consulted in the preparation of this history. However, certain specific books have been of greater value than others and I readily acknowledge my indebtedness to their authors and publishers: The Admiralty Regrets by C.E.T. Warren and James Benson (Harrap 1958) provided the factual basis for my account of the Thetis disaster; The Rescuer by Peter Maas (Collins 1968) was of considerable assistance when preparing the chapter on the Squalus rescue operation; and the signals data contained in The Thresher Disaster by John Bentley (Doubleday 1974) together with many aspects of this particular vessels history and tragic end was of great help in clarifying the relevant material in . Captain W.O. Shelfords Subsunk (Harrap 1960) provided a useful running reference on submarine escape techniques at all stages of writing; and The K Boats by Don Everitt (Harrap 1963) remains, as always, the only major account of the tragic misadventures of the Royal Navys steam submarines.

My special thanks to Commander Richard Compton-Hall, MBE, RN (Retd), the Director of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, for his interest in the project and his assistance with my queries; to A.S. (Taff) Evans for making available to me the fruits of his research into British submarine losses in advance of his own book on the subject; to the Editor of The Sunday Times for allowing me to use the information on Operation Jennifer which appeared in that newspaper in 1975; to Bob Smith, USAF, and Caroline Probyn for their assistance with Italian translations; and to Horst Bredow of the U. Boot Archiv in Sylt.

The following have also assisted in obtaining information: Capitaine de Fregate Gaucherand, French Navy; Commander P. De Vincentiis, Italian Navy; Captain K. Terashita and Commander G. Tsukuda, Japanese Navy; the Defence Attach, the Royal Danish Embassy, London, and Lizzie Haugbyrd; Le contre-amiral Chatelle, Etat-Major Service Historique; Commander P. Siedenburg, Federal German Navy; the U-Boot Kameraschaft Kiel; Commander H.J. Grefe, Royal Netherlands Navy; Commander K. Erkal, Turkish Navy; Captain Kurt Diggins; the Librarian and staff of the British Library, Newspaper Library section; and Dean C. Allard, Operational Archives Branch, US Navy; Martin Levene of CBS News; Gus Britton of the Submarine Museum, Gosport; David Scholl and the Lockheed Missiles & Space Co Inc; Mrs Ann George & Siebe Gorman Ltd; Robert A. Carlisle of the Navy Department, Washington DC; Howard Davies of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo; Mr J. Pavey of the Imperial War Museum and G.J.A. Raven, Ministerie van Defensie, Holland. I must also acknowledge my gratitude to Dominic Thomas for his diagrams and drawings.

I wish to thank the following publishers for permission to quote from copyright material: John Murray & Co Ltd; Collins & Company; Ward Lock Ltd; and Harraps Ltd. My apologies to those other copyright holders from whom I have quoted but have been unable to trace, in particular: Odhams Press Ltd (Sea Phantoms by Warren Armstrong); Geoffrey Bles Ltd (