World War 2: Submarine Stories: True Stories From the Underwater Battlegrounds (Submarine Warfare, World War 2, USS Barb, World War II, WW2, WWII, Grey wolf, Uboat, submarine book Book 1)

by Ryan Jenkins

  The initial days of the Upholder weren’t as promising as the Wanklyn had hoped for. The Upholder’s first patrol was not bad. She managed to torpedo the Duisburg, a German freighter. She also managed to survive a heavy depth charging. However, for her next three patrols she came up dry much to the displeasure of her commanding officer, Wanklyn. Even though his crew believed in him, the commander of the 10th Submarine Flotilla doubted if Wanklyn and the Upholder would ever be able to succeed again.

  Wanklyn proved him wrong. On April 21st 1942, the Upholder discovered an Italian merchantman off Lampedusa. The ship was halfway between Malta and Tunisia. The upholder managed to send her to the bottom of the sea while taking minimal damage. A few days later, Wanklyn and his crew came across a cargo ship Arta and an enemy destroyer near the Kerkenah Bank just north of Cape Bon in Tunisia. However, to their dismay they found that the water was too shallow for them to fire. So, they came up with another plan. Lieutenant Christopher Read led a party over to the side of the merchantman. Read was unusually stealthy and was a good burglar. Read and his party managed to blow open the ship’s safe and emptied it. They also took military souvenirs of the Afrika Korps after which they set the ship one fire and returned back to the submarine.

  On May 1st, the Upholder discovered and destroyed two more German merchantmen and managed to reach Malta after dodging all the parachute mines that infested the mouth of the harbor. As soon as the Upholder reached, the German Italian aircrafts struck again. The number of air attacks in February and Match alone were 100 and in April the bomb numbers increased. From there on, the attacks just kept increasing. If the British had any prior warnings, a submarine that was at port would dive to the bottom of the harbor. When there wasn’t, those moored at the harbor were invariably attacked and casualties increased. During the air raid in May, two submarines were lost because they couldn’t dive to the bottom of the harbor before the attack. Two more submarines, the Undaunted and Usk didn’t return from patrol.

  The Upholder finally struck gold in mid-May. The Upholder discovered a four thousand ton tanker off the coast of Sicily. She sent the tanker to the bottom of the sea and followed it up with a Vichy French tanker a few days later. Wanklyn managed to do this without the asdic. Asdic was the British equivalent of sonar. Now, with just two torpedoes left, Wanklyn went in search of more prey. He found a convoy of liners that were escorted by five destroyers. Using his periscope because of his lack of asdic, he reached almost point blank range and fired his two remaining torpedoes. Just as the destroyers spotted his torpedo tracks, the torpedoes hit the target. The nearly 18,000-ton transport Conte Rosso quickly sunk to the bottom, taking along with her three thousand troops and crewmembers. What followed after this attack was the supreme depth-charge attack from the Axis. The destroyers chased the Upholder, dropping close to forty charges. The crew initially panicked but upon their captain’s calm and quiet orders, they soon got themselves together and followed his orders to the T. Wanklyn was considered to be the perfect Englishman with his unemotional and calm attitude. He remained unflustered throughout the entire attack despite the creaking and moaning of the hull, the shattered light bulbs leaving glass all over the submarine and the heaving of the boat as charges hit her from all sides. Wanklyn brought his submarine and crew through the relentless attack by always thinking ahead of the destroyers and moving only when his attackers did.

  After this attack, the Upholder could fly the Jolly Roger with pride. The Jolly Roger is the black flag on which there is a skull and crossbones symbol that symbolized a victory by a British submarine. A red bar on the flag indicated a warship while a white bar indicated a merchantman.

  In July, the Upholder destroyed a supply vessel and also the Garibaldi, a fast Italian cruiser. At nearly four thousand yards away, the tiny submarine managed to hit the Garibaldi with two torpedoes leaving her to slowly die while the destroyers around her trying to cover the cruiser and failing miserably. Upholder managed to survive the barrage of 40 depth charges that followed. Eventhough the Garibaldi didn’t sink to the bottom of the ocean, Wanklyn made sure that she was never used in the war for a really long time.

  In August, Upholder destroyed a large tanker and a freighter. However, he couldn’t destroy the ships he wanted to: a flotilla of warships including a battleship. He tried to attack them from far and with just two torpedoes and he obviously failed because distance and number of torpedoes was against him. He wanted that to be his big victory. However, a huge victory eluded him just then. He would soon be synonymous with the biggest victory of his career.

  Upholder’s next mission was in mid-September. Her new mission didn’t start very well. Her gyrocompass failed which left the crew using a magnetic compass that was less reliable. But soon afterwards, her luck turned. One day when she was running in the night, the Upholder and her two consorts sported a convoy that was heavily escorted. The convoy seemed to be headed to Libya carrying reinforcement for the Axis. Wanklyn commanded his crew to wait till at least two of the three big twenty thousand ton liners were overlapping each other. He then asked them to shoot four torpedoes at range of nearly five thousand yards. One of the torpedoes hit the propeller of the liner Oceania that made her stop. The other one ripped open a hole in the Neptunia, which led to her sinking. Both ships were full of troops. While the escorts were busy saving soldiers from the Neptunia, the Upholder silently slipped away. Wanklyn went back to restock the Upholder. He then came back after he filled his tubes. He guided the Upholder back to finish Oceania and send her to the bottom. One of the escorts forced the Upholder deep into the water, which prevented him from shooting. So what Wanklyn did was that he went under the liner and came up the other side and took his shot. He let loose two more torpedoes. The Oceania didn’t stand a chance. The ship and all the troops on board sank within eight minutes. By this time, the Upholder under the command of Wanklyn had sunk sixty thousand tons of Axis ships that carried Axis troops to North Africa.

  By this time, the crew of the Upholder were tired and worn down from the endless combat and lack of sunlight and fresh air. They couldn’t even get any rest at the port due to the persistent bombing of the Axis powers. They had been in combat for 12 months straight and were past any normal accepted rate of combat time. However, this was the time of the war and the Allies position in North Africa relied mostly on the submarines. In the autumn of 1941, the fighting in North Africa was as fierce as ever and no soldier could be spared from the battle against the Axis. So the Upholder’s crew continued fighting against the Axis ships in the Mediterranean. In November they sank Libeccio, a destroyer. Libeccio was sunk in the Ionian Sea close to the port town of Taranto in Italy. In the same attack that destroyed Libeccio they also managed to damage another destroyer.

  1942 started well for the Upholder. Eventhough she could only account for a single casualty for most of her first mission, she spotted a large submarine just off the coast of Sicily. Wanklyn dived just as the Italian submarine spotted the Upholder and sped up. Wanklyn made an immediate mental calculation of the angle and range and fired his sole surviving torpedo and hit the submarine just before the forward gun. The submarine was the Admiraglio St. Bon. The huge submarine that was easily three or four times larger than the Upholder vanished into the sea without a trace. All the Upholders could find were three survivors covered in oil.

  These successes at sea did nothing to relieve the sailors of their exhaustion from the continuous missions and constant rain of bombs from the Axis powers. To add to this, there was a shortage of food and the harbor was clogged with wrecks from the constant bombing. None of the crews had much sleep or rest. As one reporter described “We could not see anything. Stones were falling and shrapnel coming down like rain. It was terrifying and more planes were coming in. We saw very little of the other planes because of the clouds of dust that enveloped us.”

  On February 7th 1942, Malta was attacked as many as seventeen times within twenty-four hours. G.W.G Simpson, the captain of the Submarin
e Flotilla tried once again to convince Wanklyn to head back to Britain to take some rest. However, Wanklyn couldn’t be convinced. The most he could be convinced to do was to take a longer than normal break just outside the port area of the island.

  When Wanklyn was on his break, the Upholder was led by Lieutenant Pat Norman. During this time, the crew managed to sink a small merchantman. However, when they came back to Malta, they still found bombs raining down on the port. This was just one of the 236 raids that were seen in that month alone. The Upholder was back at sea by the end of February. By this time Wanklyn was back in command of the submarine. During this mission, she sunk a decently sized merchantman, the Tembien. During the start of March, the Upholder was in the waters around the Italian port city of Brindisi.

  On March 18th, the Upholder was still near the city of Brindisi. All the crew saw were small ships moving in and out of the chain that was guarding the harbor entrance. The crew’s patience paid off. Finally, the Upholder was able to catch Italian Submarine, Tricheco when she was at the surface. The Tricheco was sent to the seabed with just two torpedoes. The very next morning the Upholder managed to sink a trawler with gunfire after allowing its crew to abandon ship. Once the Upholder returned to Malta, she ran into a bit of bad luck. One of her officers was ordered away, much to his dismay, for a routine medical checkup. She lost another of her officers to a new boat. However, these two were the lucky ones.

  Not all of the Upholder’s missions were to attack military and merchant ships. Most of the cargo and military ships were targets in the war because they were crucial to stopping Rommel’s supply. However, the Upholder also did other special operation missions where she was ordered to land British Special Operations teams safely on hostile territory. These Special Operations men usually attacked Italian railroads because they were easily visible from the sea. On occasion, the submarines also joined in the attacks. For example, one a Royal Navy submarine rose to the surface to shoot a train with its deck gun. It was during these operations was a young Royal Artillery Captain Tug Wilson. Wilson and Wanklyn became very close during the operation. Wilson was the person to say goodbye to the fearless captain. However, Wilson did not know that would be the last time he saw Wanklyn or what fate would await the crew of the Upholder.

  On April 9th 1942, the Upholder rose to the surface at the Gulf of Sousse near the land of the ancient Carthage. Lance-Corporal Charles Parker and Wilson ensured the landing of two agents. When they made their way back they found the submarine lying in low water, almost invisible unless you knew she was there. When Wilson gave his command of “Pongo approaching”, the crew fished the two men out of the Mediterranean.

  This mission was supposed to be the last for both Wilson and the Upholder. While Wilson did take a break after this mission, the Upholder didn’t. The Upholder met up with the Unbeaten, which was on its way home to England for the boat to be repaired and the crew to recuperate. Wilson transferred onto the Unbeaten in the middle of the night. Due to the badly damaged state of the Unbeaten, Wanklyn asked his friend to continue on with the Upholder to Malta. However, Wilson said that as much as he enjoyed Wanklyn’s company, he would take his chances with the Unbeaten and get to England.

  It was a fateful decision, which Wilson stuck to. Despite the first officer of Unbeaten saying, “Piss off Tug. We have two feet of water in the fore end and the batteries are gassing.” Wilson stuck to his decision. Wilson looked back at his friend standing on the small bridge of his submarine. That would be the last anybody would ever see the Upholder or her crew. Unfortunately, Wilson never realized that this would be the last time he would ever hear of Wanklyn.

  The Upholder had been in combat for nearly 16 months by this time. She had successfully completed twenty-four missions. The success of the Allies in Northern Africa depended on the Navy ships and aircrafts operating from Malta. Montgomery’s phenomenal victory in El Alamein towards the end of 1942 eased the pressure on the ships and planes at Malta. Till then, it was the burden of these men to defend Africa from the Axis and the Upholder was the most successful. No other submarine or boat ever contributed to the Axis destruction in Africa as much as the Upholder had.

  By this time the crew of the Upholder were beyond exhausted. They were sick of the stale air inside the submarine. However, the more they were blitzed, the more luck they seemed to have sinking Axis ships. Even Wanklyn showed signs of exhaustion. The commander of the 10th flotilla was worried that this exhaustion was affecting his judgment. He thought that the sinking of the Tricheco was a risky and immature thing to have tried and the only reason Wanklyn managed to do it was because luck was on his side. He worried that those decisions were a result of the mental exhaustion that Wanklyn was under. He also felt that Wanklyn was taking more risks now than he ever had before which could be attributed to the exhaustion. He might have been right about it.

  The Upholder had sunk a total of 129,529 tons worth of enemy ships, excluding the ships that were just damaged but survived. Besides her list of freighter, troop ships she had also sunk three submarines and a destroyer while severely damaging a destroyer and cruiser. She was in the most hazardous part of the Mediterranean and had already lasted long beyond her life expectancy. Her 25th patrol was supposed to be her last patrol and then the submarine and her crew were to go back to England for a well-deserved vacation. Wanklyn had written to his wife telling her that it would not be long before she saw him again. He wrote, “Count the days, they are not long. Just 59.”

  Unfortunately, time seemed to up for the small submarine. The Upholder’s amazing luck had just run out. This time, out on her 25th patrol, the submarine just didn’t make it back to Malta. Nobody has any idea what happened to this unsinkable boat. She just disappeared somewhere in the sea. The last anybody had heard of her that she was part of a picket line consisting of two other boats, the Urge and the Thrasher. They were assigned to keep a look out for an Axis convoy that was supposed to set sail from Tripoli. She set out for her last patrol on April 6th 1942 and was ordered to join the Urge and Thrasher on April 12th 1942.

  The authorities felt that the submarine might have met her match in the Italian Orsa-class destroyer Pegasus near Tripoli after she was spotted by an enemy seaplane. Francesco Acton, the captain of the Pegasus was, ironically, a descendant of an English sailor. His father had served for the Royal Navy during the World War I on the HMS Dartmouth. Acton’s Pegasus was heard attacking an unidentified submarine on April 14th 1942. The Urge and Thrasher both heard the booms of depth charging which seemed to go on forever. After the noise of the depth charges stopped, they tried to get in touch with the Upholder but there was just silence from that side. However, they could no evidence that the submarine that the Pegasus destroyed was indeed the Upholder. The attack was more than 100 miles from the area where Wanklyn was supposed to be patrolling. However, it would not be the first time that Wanklyn had changed position to hunt down more targets.

  Another possible scenario is that the Upholder might have fallen prey to one of the many mines on her way home to Malta. This theory was considered the most possible. Captain McKenzie of the Thrasher was not convinced that the Pegasus had managed to defeat the submarine. He heard the depth-charging but only thought that, “Poor Wanks. He’s getting a hell of a bollocking.” He never considered that the depth charging was enough to destroy the submarine. He also reported that he had picked up a radio message later on of the Upholder being seen by the British radars near Malta. He believed, as most British officers believed, that the Upholder struck a mine close to Malta. That wouldn’t be the first time a boat from Malta had sunk that way. The Mediterranean near Malta was saturated with hundreds of enemy mines.

  A third and least likely theory was that the submarine might have been sunk by a surface and air attack from the Germans. It was said that there was a German air and surface attack of a convoy with a submarine on April 14th 1942 off the port of Misrata but there was no record of such attack on the Axis records even after the wa
r.

  However, the sad reality was that the most famous and successful boat of the Royal Navy was gone, taking with her entire crew comprising of Wanklyn, three officers and twenty-seven other sailors. She lies somewhere at the bottom of the Mediterranean as an underwater tomb to Wanklyn and the crew who lost their lives along with her.

  A recent study by Francesco Mattesini who is an Italian naval expert shows that a German aircraft patrol acting as the convoy, consisting of two Messerschmitt Bf 110s and two Dornier Do 17 attacked an underwater vessel with air bombs. This occurred two hours before the Pegasus attack. The seaplanes saw a dark patching forming over the area where they dropped their bombs which indicates oil leakage. They further dropped smoke floats onto the position of the patches. However, the British say that the Upholder was not supposed to be anywhere nears the seaplane crew and hence the submarine that they attacked could not possibly be the Upholder. The attack by Pegasus was found it be against a school of dolphins since the aerial crew could not clearly see if it was a dolphin or a submarine but asked Pegasus to attack anyways,

  The commander of the 10th Submarine Flotilla, Captain G.W.G. Simpson, reported the missing of the Upholder and her crew to the Admiralty. He wrote, “I hope it is not out of place for me to take this opportunity to pay some tribute to Lieutenant Commander David Wanklyn, VC, DSO and his crew in HMS Upholder, whose record is unsurpassed and will always shine in the records of British submarines.”

  The Admiralty then publicly announced the loss of the submarine on August 22nd 1942. The announcement read as, “The Admiralty regrets to announce that HMS Upholder under the command of Lieutenant Commander David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, RN has been lost at sea.” The announcement went off to include a special tribute to the submarine and its crew. This was most unusual for the reserved Admiralty. The Royal Navy usually expects extraordinary risks and courage in combat so to single out any vessel is very rare. The announcement continued as, “It is rarely proper for Their Lordships to draw distinction between different services rendered in the course of naval duty, but they take this opportunity of singling out those of HMS Upholder, under the command of Lt. Cdr. David Wanklyn, for special mention. She was long employed against enemy communications in the Mediterranean where she became noted for the high quality of her services in that arduous and dangerous duty. Such was the standard of skill and daring set by Lt. Cdr. Wanklyn and the officers and men under him that they and their ship became an inspiration not only to their own flotilla, but to the Fleet of which it was a part and to Malta, where for so long HMS Upholder was based. The ship and her company are gone forever, but the inspiration and example will live on.”