HMS Unruffled was a Royal Navy U-class submarine built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, and operated from April 1942 until being scrapped in January 1946. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Unruffled.
Unruffled served in the Battle of the Mediterranean from August 1942 to October 1943, operating primarily against Axis shipping; in all, she sunk or severely damaged roughly 40,000 tons of shipping.
Unruffled was ordered on 23 August 1940, for construction by Vickers Armstrong in Barrow-in-Furness.[1] The funds for her construction had been raised through the War Savings Campaign by the town of Colchester - a total of £435,233 being raised, against a target of £250,000.[2] The town also provided the boat's Paxman engines,[3] while locals sent the crew clothes and letters.[4]
The keel was laid down on 25 February 1941, and construction was undertaken at a time when the shipyard was subject to regular bombing raids, with particularly heavy bombing in April and May 1941. The boat was launched on 19 December 1941,[1] and commissioned on 9 April 1942.[5]
Initially the submarine was known as P46, as Royal Navy submarines at the time did not have names; however, this policy changed in late 1942, and the submarine was given the name HMS Unruffled.
P46 slipped her moorings for the first time on 6 April 1942, under the command of Lieutenant John Samuel Stevens, and sailed for Holy Loch for sea trials.[6]
P46's first wartime patrol began on 13 May 1942, sailing from Holy Loch to the coast of Norway. This proved an uneventful patrol, and P46 returned to Lerwick on 1 June having encountered no hostile ships.[7] P46 then travelled to Gibraltar, arriving on the morning of 25 June under escort by HMT Haarlem.
While in Gibraltar in July 1942, one of the crew was given a cat by a Wren as they were passing through the dockyard.[8] The crew of P46 adopted the cat to be the ship's cat, and named him Timoshenko after the Russian general Semyon Timoshenko. 'Timmo' undertook twenty patrols on board the submarine, and was considered a good luck charm by the crew - so much so that, on one occasion, sailing was delayed for twenty-four hours until he could be found.[2]
P46 left Gibraltar on 1 August to take part in Operation Pedestal, an escort operation to convoy supplies to the besieged island of Malta. On 10 August P46 sighted the Italian merchant ship Siculo off of Marettimo and fired three torpedoes, all of which missed the target.[9] P46 arrived at Malta on 15 August, navigating through a minefield and entering Marsamxett Harbour.[10]
P46's first successful action came in the early hours of the morning on 21 September, when she engaged the Italian auxiliary minesweeper N10 / Aquila with her three-inch gun. Firing twelve rounds, P46 landed eight hits; Aquila
On her following patrol, P46 surfaced off the coast of Calabria on the night of 8/9 October, and opened fire on a passing train; two hits were observed, but damage was light. Two days later on 11 October, P46 torpedoed and sunk an Italian cargo ship, Una, near Capri, before fleeing from an Italian warship and falling back to Cape Gallo.
P46's next action came on 13 October, torpedoing and sinking the Italian cargo ship . Unbeknownst to the crew of P46, Loreto had been carrying 350 prisoners of war from the British Indian Army, 130 of whom died.[12] British intelligence had been aware that Loreto was carrying prisoners of war since 9 October and had transmitted the information but it appears that P46 did not receive the signal.
On 3 November P46 put to sea as part of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, with orders to attack enemy warships that may have interfered with the landings. On 6 November P46 sighted an Italian U-boat and gave chase; the two submarines exchanged torpedoes, without either landing a hit, before P46 called off the chase.
On 8 November, P46 encountered an Italian flotilla led by the cruiser Attilio Regolo and attacked, scoring a hit with one torpedo that shattered the cruiser's bow. At this point P46 was out of torpedoes, and surfaced to call for allied ships to finish off the damaged cruiser. In the event HMS Safari attempted to do so but was driven off and Attilio Regolo was towed to dry dock, where she spent the rest of the war. P46 returned to Malta, arriving on 11 November.
P46 was back at sea on 16 November and on 22 November unsuccessfully engaged an Italian tug with the three-inch gun, before returning on 29 November. Her next patrol began on 10 December. On 14 December, she encountered an Italian convoy, which was under attack by submarine . P46 joined the attack, sinking the tanker Castelverde, while P212 sank Honestas. The following day P46 sighted and sank another Italian merchant vessel, Sant'Antioco. Following this she was attacked by an Italian aircraft dropping depth charges, which caused minor damage to P46, but ultimately she survived and returned to Malta on 18 December.
In early January 1943 P46 accompanied Operation Principal, a frogman attack on Palermo, and recovered two crews after they deployed their Chariot manned torpedoes. Her next patrol saw her engage a schooner with her three-inch gun on 23 January, before being forced to submerge by shore guns. On 26 January she engaged and sunk the Italian Z 90 / Redentore and on 31 January, the German SS Lisbon. The patrol concluded on 2 February, and while in port, P46 was formally named HMS Unruffled.
Unruffled's first engagement since being named came on 18 February, when she fired on two schooners, hitting neither but forcing both crews to abandon ship. The schooners were wrecked on the shore, but as Unruffled had not hit them, they were not added to her tally. On 21 February Unruffled sank the German merchant vessel Baalbek She returned to Malta on 24 February.
Unruffled
From 9 June to 10 July, Unruffled undertook another two reconnaissance patrols. Her next combat patrol began on 27 July, and saw the sinking of the Italian merchant vessel Città di Catania on 3 August.
Upon arriving back in Malta on 10 August, a fault was found with Unruffled
Unruffled departed Malta for her final patrol in the Mediterranean on 26 September, and docked in Algiers on 9 October. The crew spent a week aboard HMS Maidstone, before departing for Britain on 17 October. Unruffled stopped in Gibraltar from 21 October to 4 November, where they parted company with Timoshenko, before reaching Gosport on 18 November.[13] [14]
This was to be the end of Unruffled
The town of Colchester, which funded the construction of Unruffled, was presented a commemorative plaque by the Admiralty in December 1942, bearing the words 'Burdened but Unruffled'.[2] At some point in the post-war years, the plaque was lost, before being re-discovered and put back on display in Colchester Town Hall on 14 March 2012.[16]
| Ship | Flag | GRT | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 September 1942 | Aquila | 305 | Minesweeper | ||
| 21 September 1942 | Liberia | 3,890 | Merchant ship | ||
| 22 September 1942 | Leonardo Palomba | 1,110 | Merchant ship | ||
| 11 October 1942 | Una | 1395 | Merchant ship | ||
| 13 October 1942 | Loreto | 1395 | 129 Indian prisoners of war killed | ||
| 14 December 1942 | Castelverde | 6,958 | Transport | ||
| 15 December 1942 | Sant'Antioco | 4,944 | Merchant ship | ||
| 23 January 1943 | Amabile Carolina | 39 | Sailing vessel | ||
| 25 January 1943 | Teodolinda | 361 | Tanker | ||
| 26 January 1943 | Z 90 / Redentore | 46 | Naval auxiliary | ||
| 31 January 1943 | Lisboa | 1,799 | Merchant ship | ||
| 21 February 1943 | Baalbeck | 2,115 | Merchant ship | ||
| 3 June 1943 | Henry Desprez | 9,895 | Tanker; in German service | ||
| 3 August 1943 | Città di Catania | 3,335 | Merchant ship | ||
| 27 August 1943 | Città di Spezia | 2,474 | Merchant ship |