HMS Stubborn (P238)

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HMS Stubborn
Career Royal Navy Ensign
Name: HMS Stubborn
Builder: Cammell Laird & Co Limited, Birkenhead
Laid down: 10 September 1941
Launched: November 11, 1942
Commissioned: 20 February 1943
Fate: sunk as ASDIC target, April 30, 1946
General characteristics
Displacement: 814-872 tons surfaced
990 tons submerged
Length: 217 ft (66 m)
Beam: 23 ft 6 in (7.2 m)
Draught: 11 ft (3.4 m)
Speed: 14.75 knots surfaced
8 knots submerged
Complement: 48 officers and men
Armament: 6 x forward 21-inch torpedo tubes, one aft
13 torpedoes
one three-inch gun (four-inch on later boats)
one 20 mm cannon
three .303-calibre machine gun

HMS Stubborn was an S class submarine of the Royal Navy, and part of the Third Group built of that class. She was built by Cammell Laird and launched on November 11, 1942. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Stubborn.

Contents

[edit] Career

Stubborn spent the war in home waters, operating off the Scandinavian coast, and in the Pacific Far East.

[edit] Home waters

HMS Stubborn being towed by a tug off Greenock, after being damaged by depth charges
HMS Stubborn being towed by a tug off Greenock, after being damaged by depth charges

While on patrol in the Bay of Biscay, she fired torpedoes at a group of three German submarines escorted by two destroyers. The torpedoes however missed their targets and the attack was not observed by the Germans. The submarines were U-180, U-518, U-530. The two escorts were indentified by Stubborn as 'Narvik-class' destroyers. The German submarines were returning from patrol and were bound for Bordeaux.

Stubborn also made an unsuccessful attack on a German convoy off the Follafjord, west of Namsos, Norway, and on the 11 February 1944, she sank the German merchant Makki Faulbaum and torpedoed and damaged the German merchant Felix D. some 25 miles north-west of Namsos, Norway. She later made an unsuccessful attack on a German convoy of five ships off the Folda Fjord, Norway. Stubborn fired six torpedoes but none found their target. Stubborn was heavily damaged by the German escort ships and had to be towed home, with her crew acting as human "balance weights" to maintain the submarine on an even keel when her after hydroplanes were jammed "Hard Adive".

[edit] Pacific Far East

Stubborn was transferred, arriving in mid 1945, but had a distinguished career there before the war ended. She sank the Japanese patrol vessel Patrol Boat No.2 (the former destroyer Nadakaze) in the Java Sea. The survivors were shot in the water. She went on to sink a Japanese sailing vessel and an unidentified small Japanese vessel.[1]

[edit] Post war

Stubborn survived the Second World War and was sunk on April 30, 1946 as an ASDIC target off Malta.

[edit] References

  1. ^ HMS Stubborn, Uboat.net

Coordinates: 44°47′N 2°55′W / 44.783, -2.917

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