HMS Taku (N38)
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 HMS Taku |
|
| Career (UK) |  |
|---|---|
| Builder: | Cammell Laird & Co Limited, Birkenhead |
| Laid down: | 18 November 1937 |
| Launched: | 20 May 1939 |
| Commissioned: | 3 January 1940 |
| Fate: | Sold to be broken up for scrap November 1946 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | British T class submarine |
| Displacement: | 1,090 tons surfaced 1,575 tons submerged |
| Length: | 275 ft (84 m) |
| Beam: | 26 ft 6 in (8.1 m) |
| Draught: |
12 ft 9 in (3.9 m) forward |
| Propulsion: |
Two shafts |
| Speed: |
15.25 knots (28.7 km/h) surfaced |
| Range: | 4,500 nautical miles at 11 knots (8,330 km at 20 km/h) surfaced |
| Test depth: | 300 ft (91 m) max |
| Complement: | 59 |
| Armament: |
6 internal forward facing torpedo tubes |
HMS Taku was a British T class submarine built by Cammell Laird, Birkenhead. She was laid down on 18 November 1937 and was commissioned on 3 October 1940.
[edit] Career
Taku served in home waters and the Mediterranean. In April 1940, she mistook HMS Ashanti for a German destroyer and fired several torpedoes at her. Fortunately, they all missed. In an attack on a German convoy in May, she damaged the German torpedo boat Möwe, and in November, launched a failed attack on the German tanker Gedania.
Assigned to the Mediterranean in 1941, she scored numerous kills, including the Italian merchants Cagliari and Silvio Scaroni, the Italian passenger / cargo ship Caldea, the German munitions transport Tilly L. M. Russ, the Italian auxiliary minesweeper Vincenso P., the Italian tankers Arca and Delfin, and the Greek sailing vessels Niki, Lora and a small unidentified one. She also attacked, but failed to hit the German merchant Menes and the Italian tanker Cerere.
Reassigned to operate off the Scandinavian coast in 1944, Taku sunk the German merchants Rheinhausen and Hans Bornhofen, and heavily damaged the German merchant Harm Fritzen. In March she attacked a convoy, but missed her target, the German merchant Moshill.
Taku struck a mine in April 1944, and was damaged. After the end of the war, she was sold for scrap in November 1946 and broken up in South Wales.[1]
[edit] References
- Submarines, War Beneath the Waves, from 1776 to the Present Day, by Robert Hutchinson ISBN 978-0060819002
- Colledge, J. J. and Warlow, Ben (2006). Ships of the Royal Navy: the complete record of all fighting ships of the Royal Navy, Rev. ed., London: Chatham. ISBN 9781861762818. OCLC 67375475.
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