Submarine Disasters
by Published on 29th June 2021 07:59 AM
I can name two further submarine disasters, P58 HMS Untamed and P64 HMS Vandal, both U class craft just 58 metres long with a beam of 4.90 metres and a draft of 4.62 metres.
Untamed had just been built by Vickers Armstrong on the Tyne. On 30th May 1943 she was in the process of working up in the Firth of Clyde before being sent out on patrol.
She was exercising in the Clyde with the yacht Shemara. The Untamed was coming to the end of the day's trials. This is where the tragic event started.
The Untamed was having trouble with the ships log which was in the forward torpedo room.
As the log was causing problems it was decided to take the log out of the sleeving and repair it for the trials tomorrow.
The tube is normally held between two cut off valves. The Untamed was brand new and had just come round from her sea trials in the North Sea.
When the two valves were both closed there should be no water coming out of the tube.
However, there was in sudden rush of water into the forward torpedo room at high pressure, caused by the two persons doing the repair. not closing the
bottom valve, putting a direct 3 inch hole to the outside sea.
This hole was allowing somewhere in the region of 2 tons of water a minute into the Untamed hull.
Given that the Untamed was between fifty and ninety feet this was hardly surprising.
This all happened in a relatively short space of time and was exacerbated by a leaking water-tight door which allowed the forward part of Untamed to rapidly
fill up the bow sections with water making the submarine too bow heavy and Untamed went down bow first into the mud on the bottom and was stuck there.
On the surface Heavy engine noise and high pressure water tanks were heard all night as they tried to get her bow free of the mud.
By the next morning they had expended the battery power to no effect.
The next thing to do was to escape from the conning tower escape hatch, this is where the second problem occurred.
The whole crew must have been in and around the engine room and conning tower ready to make their escape.
Unfortunately another drain valve had been incorrectly installed to the extent that the position of the valve, would never allow
Untamed to be able to flood and so to escape.
The crew were deemed to have been lost on 30th May 1943.
My future father in law was only 23 and my late wife was due to be born in the next four weeks so she never saw her father.
He had only arrived on the Clyde a few shortly before for his first posting. When the signalman was taken ashore ill, He was available!!!!!
A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Untamed was eventually raised a few weeks later and this was when they discovered the problem drain valve fitted incorrectly had helped
towards the loss of Untamed and of course the open valve in the log housing.
All the crew except one, were buried at Dunoon Cemetery, he was buried in his home town of Campbeltown.
The sight of all those headstones is a sobering sight and goes to show how small problems when combined in the right order can lead to such tragic circumstances.
Little was known about these tragic circumstances until we were able to read through papers listing the event, a truly terrible experience.
My wife and I took part in the 70th commemoration of her loss.
My interest in this tragic event is Leading Signalman Arthur George Read RN who would have been my father in law.
When looking through his papers I saw for the first and only time, the discharge of DD.
HMS Vandal was lost in very similar circumstances 1n 1943, with all hands and was only relatively recently located in 1994.
She still lies where she went down and is now a War Grave. Vandal was only commissioned 4 days.
The Untamed was raised and refitted and spent the rest of the war under the name Vitality. She was sold for Scrap at the end of the war.
The name Untamed was never used again on a Royal Navy vessel.
Gordon Petrie
R745806
Last edited by Brian Probetts (Site Admin); 30th June 2021 at 10:28 AM.
