HMS Thule (P325)
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HMS Thule |
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Career (UK) | |
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Builder: | Devonport Dockyard |
Laid down: | 20 September 1941 |
Launched: | 22 October 1942 |
Commissioned: | 13 May 1944 |
Fate: | Scrapped September 1962 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | British T class submarine |
Displacement: | 1,290 tons surfaced 1,560 tons submerged |
Length: | 276 ft 6 in (84.3 m) |
Beam: | 25 ft 6 in (7.8 m) |
Draught: |
12 ft 9 in (3.9 m) forward |
Propulsion: |
Two shafts |
Speed: |
15.5 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: | 61 |
Armament: |
6 internal forward facing torpedo tubes |
HMS Thule was a British submarine of the third group of the T class. She was built as P325 at Devonport Dockyard, and launched on 22 October 1942. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Thule, after Thule, the mythological name for a Northern island.
[edit] Service
Thule served in the Far East for much of her wartime career, where she sank thirteen junks, two lighters and five sampams with gunfire in the Strait of Malacca in a twelve day period between 17 December 1944 to 29 December 1944. She also attacked a submarine, probably the Japanese RO-113 and believed she had sunk it, but Thule's torpedoes exploded prematurely and the submarine escaped unharmed. She went on to sink a further five sailing vessels and three coasters, as well as laying a number of mines.
She survived the war and continued in service with the Navy, finally being scrapped at Inverkeithing on 14 September 1962.[1]
[edit] References
- Submarines, War Beneath The Waves, From 1776 To The Present Day, by Robert Hutchinson
- 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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