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Branfill-Cook - X.1: The Royal Navy’s Mystery Submarine

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Branfill-Cook X.1: The Royal Navy’s Mystery Submarine
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The X stood for experimental, but it might equally have meant extraordinary, exotic or extravagant, as this giant submarine attracted superlativesthe worlds largest, most heavily armed, and deepest diving submersible of the day. X.1 was a controversial project conceived behind the backs of politicians, and would remain an unwanted stepchild. This book explores the historical background of submarine cruisers, the personalities involved in X.1s design and service, the spy drama surrounding her launch, the treason trial of a leading RN submarine commander, the ships checkered career, and her political demise. Despite real technical successes, she would finally fall foul of black propaganda, aimed at persuading foreign naval powers that the cruiser submarine did not work; even today uninformed opinion repeats the myth of her failure. Well-illustrated with technical drawings and historical photographs, this book pays belated tribute to the real importance of the mysterious X.1

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X.I.
THE ROYAL NAVYS
MYSTERY SUBMARINE
X.I.
THE ROYAL NAVYS
MYSTERY SUBMARINE

Roger Branfill-Cook

Seaforth

PUBLISHING

Copyright Roger Branfill-Cook

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Seaforth Publishing

An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street, Barnsley

S Yorkshire S70 2AS

www.seaforthpublishing.com

Email info@seaforthpublishing.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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

ISBN 978 1 84832 161 8

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without
prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.

The right of Roger Branfill-Cook to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Typeset and designed by Ian Hughes, Mousemat Design Ltd

Printed in China through Printworks International Ltd

Contents













The concept for His Majestys Submarine X.1 was born from the bitter experience of the First World War, where the lone combatant, holding wide areas of ocean at risk, once again took centre stage. X.1 was designed to inflict devastating effects on naval and mercantile shipping, on the morale of those operating them and on the nations dependent on those supplies. Against the economic and political backdrop of the post-Great War era, naval architects sought to make a reality a submerged raider that was equally at home below and above the waves; carrying a potent armament and capable of conducting deadly ambush, she was conceived to bring fear to shipping, and to dominate a maritime area of operations whilst remaining largely unseen and untouchable.

In the modern context, X.1 became the capability demonstrator for submerged sea power; a precursor of what was to come decades later, she was the modern nuclear attack submarine of her generation. As with any innovative submarine build programme, concept and reality only came together with skill and effort, sweat and tears. X.1 suffered from severe first-of-class teething problems in much the same way that we do today, yet despite the additional weaponry, proved to have very sound underwater handling characteristics. Unfortunately, her design concept did not match the context of the interwar years in which she operated; she paid the price of being ahead of her time and her potential in the conflict to come lay unappreciated. Her detractors, with their various agendas, ensured that she would be dismissed as a waste of taxpayers money. Her lasting legacy to us was to prove that large submarines could dive and surface safely and that such a potent underwater capability can provide both fighting power and a powerful deterrent to an opposing maritime power. Even the threat of such a submarine being present would come to make an enemy think carefully about the risk to his capability and ambitions. A role most ably demonstrated during the Falklands Conflict.

Roger Branfill-Cooks superbly researched book succeeds in shining light on the truth surrounding the capability of X.1 and the military and political conditions that acted as a backdrop to her short career in the Royal Navy.

Rear Admiral Mark Anderson
Commander Operations &
Rear Admiral Submarines, Royal Navy
January 2009 to March 2011

Submarine cruisers have a great capacity to stir the imagination. The notion that a powerfully-armed vessel can rise to the surface in a deadly ambush, despatch an enemy vessel in a hail of shells, then simply slide away back into the depths has fascinated the submarine designers of Tsarist Russia, Imperial Germany, Great Britain, the USA, France and the Third Reich.

Traditionally, the cruiser type of vessel, successor to the classic sailing frigate, is both the protector and the predator of distant mercantile routes worldwide. A lone frigate or corsair, far from base and support, was always vulnerable to falling in with a faster or more powerful opponent. The Great War gives us the examples of Knigsberg and Emden, and the Second World War was to produce many others including the fatal first and last cruise of the Bismarck. Therefore the cruiser submarine, with her ability to hide from a hunter by simply submerging, seemed to many to be the ideal type of ocean raider. It was no surprise that La Royale should christen their own giant cruiser submarine after the great French corsair captain, Robert Surcouf.

The Royal Navys sole example of a cruiser submarine, the X.1, has long been dismissed as a failure, and a colossal white elephant. She was the only major British warship designed after the First World War which was withdrawn from service before the outbreak of the Second. Her heavy gun armament was her most obvious feature, and this was perhaps her most contentious aspect. It is undeniable she had great potential if correctly used in a surface action role. Paradoxically her very success doomed her to a half-life existence, neither fish nor fowl, spurned both by the exponents of the surface cruiser force, and by the submariners who favoured the more stealthy underwater attack. From the chequered history of her advanced propulsion machinery, it is clear she fell far short of her designers ambitions. However, alternative engines did later become available, which could have been fitted in X.1 to cure her chronic mechanical problems.

Every writer who mentions X.1, however, completely misses the most important aspect of this monster vessel. The resounding success of her design was her docile underwater handling. Designed to prove once and for all that a huge submarine vessel could be dived with safety, X.1 bridges the gap between the clumsy and deadly monster British submarines of the Great War which tended to kill their own crews more readily than those of enemy ships and all the large Royal Navy submarines which followed her, right up to present-day nuclear boats. In retrospect, her greatest failing was that her concept failed to address the political context of the age into which she was launched.

The X in her pennant number stands for experimental, but it also brings an air of mystery, and the story of X.1 is no stranger to mystery and subterfuge. This volume aims to lay to rest once and for all the deliberate, and innocent, misinformation spread about X.1, and tell the true story of the Royal Navys extraordinary secret weapon and her crew.

Left Sir Arthur W Johns KCB CBE 18731937 Sixth Director of Naval - photo 1

Left: Sir Arthur W Johns, KCB, CBE (18731937). Sixth Director of Naval Construction, responsible for the majority of Royal Navy submarine classes in the Great War, and the designer of the X.1. Born in 1873 at Torpoint, Cornwall, Arthur William Johns entered Devonport Dockyard as a Shipwright Apprentice at the age of 14. After heading the list of all apprentices in his examination year, he moved to Greenwich Royal Naval College as a probationary Assistant Constructor. In 1895 he qualified with the coveted First Class Professional Certificate. After several minor assignments, he worked on the design of Captain Scotts Antarctic research vessel, the Discovery, as well as the King Edward VII

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