HMS M1
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His Majesty's Submarine M1 was a submarine of the British Royal Navy, one of four vessels of the M class ordered towards the end of World War I. She sank with the loss of her entire crew in 1925.
The vessels were originally intended as coastal bombardment vessels but their purpose had been changed before detailed design began. M1 was fitted with a 12 inch (305 mm) gun which was intended for use against surface ships in preference to torpedoes, the argument being that, "No case is known of a ship-of-war being torpedoed when under way at a range outside of 1000 yards".[verification needed] Although the gun had a 20 mile (32 km) range it was normally fired using a simple bead sight at periscope depth with only the barrel above the water. It was important for the submarine's gun to sink or disable the target with the first shot, because the gun could only be loaded on the surface.
She was 100 m long, displaced 1,950 tons submerged and operated out of Portsmouth. She was launched on 9 July 1917, but was not involved in active service in World War I.
She sank with all 69 hands on 12 November 1925 while on an exercise in the English Channel. A Swedish ship, SS Vidar, struck the submerged M1 and sank her in 70 m of water. The collision tore the gun from the hull and water flooded the interior through the open loading hole. The crew members who survived the collision appear to have tried to escape by flooding the interior and opening the escape hatch but their bodies were never found.
Her wreck was discovered by a diving team led by Innes McCartney in 1999 at a depth of 73 m. Later that year the wreck was visited again by Richard Larn and a BBC TV documentary crew, and the resulting film was broadcast in March 2000.
[edit] References
- Brown, D.K. (2003). The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922. London: Caxton Editions, p208. ISBN 1-84067-531-4.
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