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H. M.
S. U R G E
B a t t l
e H o n o u r s
MALTA CONVOYS
1941 - MEDITERRANEAN 1941 - 42
Launched as P40 in August 1940 this submarine was renamed in
1943.
Briefly deployed in Home waters in 1941 on completion of work-up she
took passage to join the 10th Submarine Flotilla on 27th April 1941
and was the 2nd of this Class to join that Flotilla at Malta During passage to Gibraltar she carried out a
torpedo attack in the Bay of Biscay on the tanker FRANCO MARTELLI
which was sunk.
After a call
at Gibraltar she sailed for Malta to begin a very successful but
short lived career. On an early patrol in May she sank one
mercantile off Palermo and later another off Tunisia. Whilst on
patrol in the Aegean during August she sank a supply ship and the
next month off Libya in addition to sinking another mercantile
damaged the liner DUILIO which was carrying troops. Between
September and December, in addition to her ship interception duties
she provided defence for Malta relief convoys against Italian
surface attacks. In this period she sank a supply ship in the
central Mediterranean and most significantly, damaged the Italian
battleship VITTORIO VENETO in the Straits
of Messina on the 14th December 1941. This Italian warship was out
of service for several months.
Her patrols in
the first part of 1942 were not made especially eventful by sinkings but this was more than set aside by her
greatest success on 1st April. On that day
she attacked the Italian cruiser GIOVANNI DELLA BANDE MERE scoring
hits with two torpedoes sinking the ship in a few minutes. Her final
patrol began on 27th April after which she was to join the Flotilla
in Alexandria where it had been redeployed because of the scale of
air attacks on Malta. Her final days are not known in detail but
post war analysis records that she was sunk in air attacks by
Italian fighter-bombers in a position off Ras-el-Hilal, Libya. It is believed that she
attacked by gunfire the mercantile SAN GUISTO and was sighted by
aircraft.
The Commanding
Officer Lieutenant Commander E P Tomkinson
was one of the more successful submarine commanders and had joined
the submarine during build. Apart from one patrol in command of
Lieutenant Martin he had carried out 18 patrols and accounted for
26,000 tons of shipping sunk and another
37,000 damaged. |
