ORP Sokół
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- For other ships of the Polish Navy named ORP Sokół see: ORP Sokół (disambiguation)
 ORP Sokół as seen in Malta, possibly in 1943 |
|
| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered | |
| Laid down | December 9, 1939 |
| Launched: | September 30, 1940 |
| Commissioned | MW: January 19, 1941 RN: August 3, 1946 |
| Decommissioned | MW: July 27, 1946 RN: December, 1948 |
| Fate | Scrapped in September of 1949 |
| Current position | |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | |
| surfaced | 540 tons |
| submerged | 732 tons |
| Length | 58.60 m |
| Beam | 4.90 m |
| Draft | 3.90 m |
| Speed | |
| surfaced | 13 knots (24 km/h) |
| submerged | 9 knots (16.7 km/h) |
| Complement | 37 |
| Armament | 1 x 76 mm deck gun, 2 x 7.5 mm AA MGs, 4 x aft 533 mm torpedo tubes, up to 12 torpedoes |
ORP Sokół (Falcon) was a U-class submarine built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness. Shortly after launching in September of 1940 she was to be commissioned by the Royal Navy as the HMS Urchin, but instead was leased to the Polish Navy due to a lack of experienced submarine crews. A sister ship to Dzik, both ships operated in the Mediterranean from Malta, where they became known as the Terrible Twins.
[edit] History
Shortly after her trials, the ship was handed to her Polish crew, in accordance with the Polish-British Military Alliance and amendments of November 18, 1939 and December 3, 1940. On January 19, 1941 the Polish banner was raised and the ship, commanded by Cmdr. Borys Karnicki, was moved to Portsmouth. There it spent half a year patrolling the Bay of Biscay off the French port of Brest. In September she was moved to Malta, where she was attached to the 10th Submarine Flotilla. She took part in the naval runs on the Italian ports of Taranto and Naples. It also provided far escort for numerous convoys in the Mediterranean. On October 28 of that year, the ORP Sokół achieved her first victory heavily damaging the Italian auxiliary cruiser Citta di Palermo. On November 2 in the Gulf of Naples she sank her first ship, a 2,469 BRT transport ship Balilla. On November 19 of the same year, she forced the anti-sumarine nets and entered the port of Navarino, where she (most probably) sank either the Italian destroyer Ascari or Italian destroyer Aviere. She was attacked by Italian torpedo boats and destroyers, but all depth charges missed and the ORP Sokół managed to escape from the harbour sinking additional transport steamer (5,600 BRT) with three torpedoes. On February 12, 1942 she boarded and then sank an Italian wooden merchant schooner Giuseppina (362 BRT) in the Gulf of Gabes, one of the last sailing ships to be sank during a war.
On April 17, while in the port of Malta, she was heavily damaged by German air raid and through Gibraltar she arrived to a shipyard in Blyth, where she received repairs. By mid-1943 she returned to the Mediterranean, where she continued to harass enemy shipment off the coasts of Italy, Northern Africa and in the Adriatic. On September 12 she rammed and sunk a fishing vessel Meattini (36 BRT). She took part in the allied blockade of the naval bases in Naples and Pula. Off the coast of the latter port, transferred by the Italians to Nazi Germany, ORP Sokół sunk a munitions transport (probably the 7,095 BRT s/s Eridania) and three days afterwards on November 11 an Italian schooner Argentina (64 BRT). Between November 4, 1943 and February 25, 1944, she was operating in the Aegean from the naval base in Beirut. Among the ships sunk in that period were two transport ships, 4 schooners and one cutter. In March of 1944 both of the Terrible Twins left Malta for Great Britain where they were attached to the Dundee-based 9th submarine flotilla. After additional 4 patrols off the coast of Norway, in the spring of 1945 she was designated as a training ship and was used by the Royal Air Force for training of naval bomber pilots.
Altogether, during her wartime service the ORP Sokół sunk or damaged 19 enemy vessels of ca. 55,000 BRT altogether. All of the commanding officers of the ship (Lt.Cmdr. Borys Karnicki, Lt.Cmdr. Jerzy Koziołkowski and Cpt. Tadeusz Bernas) were awarded with Virtuti Militari.
