HMS E5

Career
Name: HMS E5
Builder: Vickers, Barrow
Cost: £106,700
Laid down: 9 June 1911
Commissioned: 28 June 1913
Fate: Sunk by mine, 7 March 1916
General characteristics
Class and type:E-class submarine
Displacement:665 long tons (676 t) (surfaced)
796 long tons (809 t) (submerged)
Length:178 ft (54 m)
Beam:15 ft 5 in (4.70 m)
Installed power:3,500 hp (2,600 kW) (diesel engines)
1,200 hp (890 kW) (electric motors)
Propulsion:2 × diesel engines
2 × electric motors
2 × screws
Speed:15 kn (17 mph; 28 km/h) (surfaced)
9.5 kn (10.9 mph; 17.6 km/h) (submerged)
Range:3,000 nmi (3,500 mi; 5,600 km) at 10 kn (12 mph; 19 km/h)
65 nmi (75 mi; 120 km) at 5 kn (5.8 mph; 9.3 km/h)
Complement:30
Armament:4 × 18 in (457 mm) torpedo tubes (1 bow, 2 beam, 1 stern)

HMS E5 was a British E class submarine built by Vickers Barrow-in-Furness. She was laid down on 9 June 1911 and was commissioned on 28 June 1913. She cost £106,700.

Service history

E5 had a very short career before and after her commissioning. She had an engine room explosion on 8 June 1913, 20 days before commissioning. 13 were killed.

Only three men were killed when there was an oil blow back into the starboard engine off St Ann's Head. The submarine depot ship HMS Adamant and HMS Alligator carried the medical team out to meet E5 on her way into Pembroke Dock. Those killed were Engineer Commander Walter Lancelot Moore, who lost both legs and an arm and suffered third degree burns, dying in hospital Pembroke Dock and returned for burial in Hampshire, believed Winchester. The first to die at the time and scene of the explosion was CERA James Alexander Greenall son of Henry & Alice Greenall of Preston Lancs. the last to succumb was Leading Stoker Lewis Alfred Clarke of Esher in Surrey, dying in Pembroke Dock Naval Hospital. The last two are buried at Pembroke Dock Military Cemetery in plots R244 (Greenall) and R246 (Clarke). Ten other men were seriously injured, although all civilian staff from Barrow were safe and unharmed.

E5 was lost on 7 March 1916 while rescuing the survivors of trawler Resono just north of Juist in the North Sea, apparently striking a mine, possibly after straying into a German minefield upon being sighted by the German light cruiser Regensburg. Others have attributed her loss to depth charge attack by torpedo boats escorting the battlecruiser Seydlitz.

References