Tracing its lineage to that time the scrappy hövitsman Gustav Eriksson (later Gustav I, later Gustav Vasa) purchased a dozen ships from the Hanseatic town of Lübeck for the princely sum of 7,600 marks on 7 June 1522, the Swedish Navy predated old Gus’s 37-year reign, one that didn’t begin till the summer of 1523 after he licked the Danes– with the help of said ships.
Principal among the vessels purchased from the Germans was Lybska Svan, aka the “Svanen från Lübeck,” or the “Swan from Lubeck,” a plucky little 20-gun brig.
Lybska Svan via the Swedish Naval Museum. The ship fought in nine sea battles in its short career, and it hosted the Denmark capitulation in 1523 that paved the way for Sweden to become an independent state. To Sweden, it is a combination of the USS Missouri and Independence Hall.
For those with basic math skills, that means the Marinen is fast approaching its 500th anniversary.
PostNord Sverige has just released a set of three 26-kroner stamps to celebrate the Swedish Navy’s 500th anniversary this year.
One stamp depicts an advanced Saab A26 AIP hunter-killer submarine, currently being built for the force, and the commemorative sheet also shows a Saab CB90 Next Generation patrol boat in action as well as a UH-46/KV-107, which the Swedes used for SAR and ASW from 1963-2011. For a throwback, the Lybska Svan is depicted, of course.
Check out this great view of Coast Guard Island in Alameda, taken 30 years ago this month, showing five immaculate USCG high endurance cutters:
USCGC Boutwell (WPG-719; WHEC-719) in the foreground; then directly starboard of Boutwell is the USCGC Jarvis (WHEC-725) which is moored ahead of the USCGC Munro (WHEC-724). Munro is astern of Jarvis and inboard of the Morgenthau (WHEC-722)–note the Harpoon launchers on Morgenthau directly behind her main battery; and finally, the USCGC Sherman (WPG-720; WHEC-720) is directly astern of the Munro; USCG PACAREA photo; photo no. #PA 051892(01)-34A; May, 1992; photo by PAC R. L. Woods.
The top of the line in 1960s warship technology, the dozen New Orleans-built Hamilton-class of High Endurance Coast Guard Cutters or “378s” as they are referred to by the branch, were the go-to workhorses of USCG for five decades. They replaced a host of WWII (and earlier) cutters and stood on the line against the Soviets, ready to escort convoys to Europe if the balloon ever went up. They saw a real-live shooting war in Vietnam, providing naval gunfire support to the troops ashore. Mostly based on the west coast, today the class spends most of its time in Alaskan and Hawaiian waters.
Above you see five in 1992 in San Diego (Alameda). This is just after they were FRAM’d with Harpoon missiles (only Morgenthau so equipped) 76mm guns, CIWS, and modern torpedo tubes using Mk50s.
Of these five today, all are still in hard use around the Pacific rim and the Indian Ocean. Sherman transferred to the Sri Lanka Navy in 2018 as SLNS Gajabahu (P626). Munro decommissioned last April and is slated to transfer to the Vietnam Coast Guard where Morgenthau has been serving as CSB 8020 since 2017. Boutwell transferred to the Philippine Navy in 2016 as BRP Andres Bonifacio. Meanwhile, Jarvis has served the Bangladesh Navy since 2012 as BNS Somudro Joy (F-28).
The Hamiltons have all since been replaced by the new Bertholf-class National Security Cutters and four– USCGC Bertholf (WMSL-750), Waesche (WMSL-751), Stratton (WMSL-752), and Munro (WMSL-755)– are all stationed there.
A chronicler of Western subjects by way of the Empire State, James Elliott Bama was born in Washington Heights, New York, in 1926. Following a stint in the USAAF during WWII as a mechanic, mural painter, and physical training instructor after graduating from the New York High School of Music and Art, he became a commercial illustrator and covered a ton of pulp work, including lots of military scenes, Aurora’s classic monster kit art, and something like 62 Doc Savage covers.
You have surely seen his work.
Mountain Man With Rifle 1820-1840 by James Bama
Wes Studi As Magua by James Bama
B-17 gunners, James Bama
STAG Magazine Illustration
1959 For Men Only Cover
Countdown for Cindy cover study Artist James E. Bama 1964
The Strange Kingdom of Marine Sergeant Faustin Wirkus 1958 Stag cover by James Bama
A member of the Illustrator’s Hall of Fame, Mr. Bama passed on April 24, 2022, four days before his 96th birthday.
The floating “Shangri-La,” the Yorktown-class carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) arrives at Pearl Harbor directly after the Doolittle Raid on Japan, 30 April 1942. Her harbor escorts, a pair of early 77-foot Elcos of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron One (MTBRON 1), PT-28 and PT-29, are speeding by in the foreground.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), # 80-G-16865.
MTBRON 1 had been commissioned 24 July 1940, with 58-foot Fisher boats which were later transferred to the Royal Navy under lend-lease. The unit also tested out prototype 81-foot Sparkman/Higgins, 81-foot PNSY, and 70-foot Scott-Paine boats before finally fielding the Elco 77s, which had originally been trialed with MTBRon 2 in the Caribbean in the winter of 1940-41.
Sent to the Philipines prior to the outbreak of the war, MTBRON 1 had only made it as far as Pearl Harbor before the beginning of hostilities.
During the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, PT-28 and PT-29 were already loaded on the replenishment oiler USS Ramapo (AO-12) for MTBRon 1’s assignment to the Philippines and as they could not get her motors started, the hydraulics on their gun turrets were not operative.
Crew members cut the hydraulic lines and operated the turrets manually. All 12 boats of the squadron fired on the attacking Japanese aircraft with one, PT-23, credited with shooting down two Nakajima B5N “Kate” torpedo bombers.
PT Boats and Zeros Painting, Oil on Canvas; by Griffith Baily Coale; 1942; Unframed Dimensions 10H X 20W Accession #: 88-188-AF “On the brightly colored waters of the lagoon, the PT’s are skimming about, darting here dodging there, maneuvering between the rows of machine gun splashes, incessantly firing their twin pairs 50 caliber guns.”
For the record, PT-28 was wrecked in a storm on 12 January 1943 at Dora Harbor, Unimak. Sistership, PT-29 completed the war and was struck from the Navy list 22 December 1944 while in Alaska waters as obsolete and unneeded.
Tracing its organization back to 1810, Regimiento de Caballería N°3 “Húsares” of the Chilean army is one of the few horse-mounted cavalry units in the world.
And yes, they used to be comparable to Central/Eastern European hussars of the same era and one unit even sported an all-black uniform and wore the common Prussian skulls, calling themselves the Húsares de la Muerte. Check out this drawing of a Chilean Húsares de la gran Guardia, circa 1812.
Based in Angol along the Nahuelbuta Mountain range, the Chilean hussars’ special capability is still needed in the same way that the German and Austrian army to this day maintains pack horses for use with mountain troops in the Alps and the U.S. Marines and SOCOM still have horse riding/packing schools and courses– it still works.
Of course, even with 212 years of history under their saddles, their kit has been upgraded to reflect the times, even if they still have some Prussian/Hungarian throwbacks.
In the great image below, recently released by the Royal Canadian Navy, you see the 5,000-ton Halifax-class patrol frigate HMCS Montréal (FFH 336) flanked by her embarked CH-148 Cyclone helicopter (Sikorsky S-92) while on NATO Op Reassurance.
You gotta love a great “bone in the teeth” shot
Commissioned in 1994 and based at CFB Halifax in Nova Scotia, Montreal and her companion Cyclone are currently assigned to Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 along with a single shore-based Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora (P-3C Orion with the ASW gear of an S-3A Viking) detached from No. 405 Squadron RCAF out of CFB Greenwood.
Born during the German occupation, Jacques André Simonet came from a Paris theatre family– he made his first uncredited film appearance at age five. Typically credited as Jacques Perrin, he was a part of almost 100 films either as an actor or behind the scenes, with some of his best work in Pierre Schoendoerffer’s gritty assorted 1960s-70s war movies including The 317th Platoon— which did Apocalypse Now before Apocalypse Now did– Le Crabe-tambour, and A Captain’s Honor.
Blonde and soft-spoken, his crooning young sailor in the 1967 musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, is memorable.
He also had a great role in Operation Leopard, about the Foreign Legion’s unsung Kolwezi mission in Zaire in 1978. In the latter days, American audiences not a fan of obscure war movies are most likely to have seen Perrin in his cameo at the close of Brotherhood of the Wolf.
A special reservist (réserve citoyenne) with the rank of Commander in the French Navy, Perrin served as an ambassador for the organization both at home and abroad for decades akin to what R. Lee Ermey was to the Marines in later life, albeit not so gruff. This was fitting as he had a great love of the ocean and was a member of the French society of maritime artists.
Jacques Perrin passed away Friday, at age 80.
Update:
The French Navy held a special service for Perrin last week:
Here we see the current flagship of the French Navy, the nuclear-powered carrier Charles de Gaulle, and her strike group in the Mediterranean including Horizon-class air defense frigate Forbin, Aquitaine-class FREMMs Normandie, and Alsace;Durance-class tanker Marne, Greek HS Hydra, and the BurkeUSS Ross. The CSG is on its “Clemenceau 22” deployment.
Now rewind the clock to 1983, and we see the smaller conventionally powered Clemenceau-class aircraft carrier Foch with Super Etendards and Atlantiques on deck, along with her escorts in the Mediterranean. These include two Tourville-class ASW frigates (Aconit and Duguay Trouin), two George Leygues-class ASW frigates, two Durance-class tankers (some things never change), the missile cruiser Colbert, and the destroyer Du Chalya (D630).
And yes, De Gaulle has the characteristic delta wing arrow on her deck as well, as seen in this great shot from a Dassault Rafale.
Warship Wednesday, April 13, 2022: The Example and Inspiration Remain
Here we see the sail of the British U-class submarine HMS/m Upholder (N99)with her only skipper, LCDR Malcolm David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, RN, pointing in the distance for the camera as the White Duster flaps in the breeze behind the boat’s attack periscope. Upholder is a legend, which we will get into, although her short yet brilliant career came to a tragic end 80 years ago this week.
The U-class was “Small Patrol Submarines” and simple, under 200-feet overall, and able to float in just 16 feet of water. Even in their largest format and ballasted down they only weighed about 700 tons. Carrying two diesels and two electric motors with no direct diesel drive they weren’t the fastest boats in the sea, capable of just 11 knots in a surface attack, but they made up for it in wartime use in the congested seas of the Mediterranean.
Armed with four 21-inch bow tubes and a few .303 Vickers guns, they were fitted with a single 3-inch deck gun forward of the sail.
They carried a single QF 3-inch 20 cwt gun forward, with shells handed up by hand from below decks
Standard U-type plan, with four forward tubes and none to the rear as there just wasn’t the space.
While most had “U” names, nine only received alpha-numeric designations (P32, P33, P36, P38, P39, P41, P47, P48, and P52) and four had “V” monikers (Varangian, Vandal, Varne, and Vox).
The first completed, HMS/m Undine (N48), joined the fleet on 21 August 1938 and the 49th, HMS/m Vox (P73) commissioned on 20 December 1943 while five units (Ulex, Unbridled, Upas, Upward, and Utopia) were canceled.
Our boat was a little different and was one of the seven (Undine, Unity, Ursala, Unique, Upright, and Utmost) completed with an extra pair of bow tubes, which gave them six forward tubes and a total load of 10 torpedoes, while the other members of the class just carried four and eight.
A great shot of Ursula tied to a buoy where you can note her extra two bow tubes and distinctive “nose.” Upholder and five others had this same arrangement. Of interest, Ursula fired the first British submarine torpedoes of the war when she attacked the German U-35 just eight days after Hitler crossed into Poland and would also count coup on the light cruiser Leipzig shortly after. IWM FL 20784
English built at Vickers Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness, Upholder was one of a dozen sisters on 4 September 1939 just hours into WWII, was laid down 30 October 1939, and was commissioned one year and one day later on Halloween 1940.
Her skipper from shakedown through loss was “Wanks” Wanklyn, who, of note, was colorblind, a fact that never seemed to affect his nighttime attacks at sea.
Lt Commander Malcolm David Wanklyn VC, DSO, left, with his First Lieutenant, Lt J R D Drummond, both of HMS Upholder, 13 January 1942. IWM A 7293, Russell J E (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer.
Born in British India in 1911, he stoked an early interest in the sea and applied to the Royal Navy in his early teens, leaving for Dartmouth Naval College at age 14 and finishing at the top of his class as a mid in 1929. After service on Great War battlewagons HMS Marlborough and Renown, he was a lieutenant in the Submarine Service by 1933, serving on HMS/m Oberon, L56, and Shark in the lead up to the war, including tense service in the Spanish Civil War. Starting WWII as the first lieutenant on HMS/m Otway in the then-sleepy waters of the Med, he was given his first command, the cramped little HMS/m H31, in early 1940, and commanded that boat on its 5th and 6th War Patrols in the North Sea, sinking the German auxiliary patrol vessel UJ 126/Steiermark (422 GRT, built 1938) on 18 July off the Dutch coast then bringing his boat back safely after the ensuing depth charge attacks by her fellow surface escorts.
In short, Upholder’s first skipper was a regular officer with a decade of service– most of it in subs– under his belt and was ready for a fight.
Malta!
After trials and working-up in Home waters at the end of 1940, covering her first two War Patrols, Upholder was dispatched to join the 10th Submarine Flotilla in Malta on 10 December. The 10th, composed of over a dozen U-class boats (including two sailing under Free Polish control), was in January 1941 put under the control of Commander George Walter Gillow “Shrimp” Simpson, RN as Commander (Submarines), Malta. Based at Lazaretto, near Grand Harbour, Shrimp had one marching order: to stop all supplies from Italy making for the Axis troops in North Africa.
HMS/m Urge inboard of HMS/m Upholder at Malta in WWII as part of the 10th Submarine Flotilla. Observe the difference between the two classmates as Upholder has her twin external bow tubes plus four internals, giving her a prominent nose, whereas Urge only has the quartet of bow tubes. Of note, Urge was also remarkably successful, sinking the Italian cruiser Giovanni dalle Bande Nere among some 74,669 tons of shipping and damaging the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto. She was lost after meeting a minefield in late April 1942, on passage from Malta to Alexandria with all hands including Bernard Gray, a reporter for Sunday Pictorial, who was unlucky enough to gain passage through the offices of his friend, Lord Gort.
Besides daily harassment from Axis air raids at Malta, the life of the 10th Flotilla was anything but business as usual.
As detailed in British Submarines of WWII:
The Mediterranean is a very difficult hunting ground for submarines, in some places deep and clear, the outline of a submerged craft is visible for miles. In many places where the 10th Flotilla operated, the sea was very shallow and was poorly charted at that time, causing many a submarine to bump along the bottom during an attack. Ultra-shallow seas forced submarines to caution in those areas where the depth was such to allow the laying of mines, and closer to the coast they would be avoiding hordes of small craft housed in many bases to hunt down and attack submarines. The whole operating area for the Malta submarines was within the range of land-based reconnaissance aircraft. Mirages also created confusion as land and other objects appeared to be distant aircraft carriers or enemy ships. Another problem, mainly encountered near the Northern coasts, was that of the many rivers emptying fresh water into the Mediterranean; this would cause serious ‘layering’, where a submarine might ‘drop’ 100 feet in seconds in the less buoyant water. Off the Tunisian coast, another problem was encountered, what to do about enemy ships in French territorial waters. With the advance of the enemy along the North African coastline, more ports became available for the handling of the essential supplies, resulting in a greater dispersal of shipping.
Nonetheless, Upholder was off on her first of 26 Mediterranean War Patrols on 24 January 1941 and was off to a busy campaign. On 25 April, she sank the 5,428-ton Italian freighter Antonietta Lauro, then a week later bagged the German cargo ships Arcturus (2,576 GRT) and Leverkusen (7,382 GRT).
While on her 10th Med War Patrol on the night of 24 May, despite his Sub’s vital listening gear being out of action, Upholder came across a heavily escorted troop convoy just east of Siracusa, Sicily, and picked as her target a ripe troopship.
From her report:
2030 hours – Sighted three very large two-funnel liners in position 36°48’N, 15°42’E. Course was 215°. Closed to attack. It was later seen that there were at least four destroyers but most likely six.
2043 hours – Fired the last two torpedoes at the centre ship which was the biggest. The nearest destroyer (a Grecale-class) was then only 400 yards ahead. Upholder went to 150 feet upon firing and retired to the East. Two explosions were heard about a minute after firing.
2047 hours – Depth charging started. In all 37 depth charges were dropped. The last four at 2107 hours were very close. No damage was sustained.
2120 to 2125 hours – The target was heard to sink.
2250 hours – Surfaced and passed a report to Malta. There was a strong smell of fuel oil in the breeze upon surfacing.
Her victim that night was the 18,000-ton former trans-oceanic passenger liner SS Conte Rosso, built in 1922, sunk with the last of Upholder’s torpedos. The Scottish-built liner was pressed into service as a troopship then torpedoed and sunk on 24 May 1941 in a convoy to North Africa by Upholder. Of the 2,729 soldiers and crew aboard headed to Tripoli, she instead took 1,297 to the bottom with her.
Italian Line’s SS Conte Rosso is shown with her neutrality markings on her side in a photo taken in the late 1930s. NH 91277
The incident, specifically the heavy depth charging after, was dramatized in the 2018 cable series, Hell Below: Defying Rommel.
Stacking up the tonnage
Upholder would soon sink a further three freighters– including the Italian cargo ship Laura Cosulich (6,181 GRT) which carried a vital load of explosives– then move firmly into the history books during her 17th War Patrol. On 18 September 1941, accompanied by HMS/m Unbeaten, Upright, and Ursula, Upholder torpedoed three large escorted Italian transports off Tripoli, sinking two and damaging a third.
Closing at night at full speed on the surface the little submarine managed to get into a good firing position despite six escorting Italian destroyers and her torpedoes mortally wounded the converted liners Neptunia and Oceania, each of 19,500 tons and full of reinforcements for North Africa.
From her report:
0350 hours – Sighted convoy of three lines escorted by four destroyers bearing 045°. Range was about 6 nautical miles. Closed to attack.
0406 hours – In position 33°01’N, 14°49’E fired four torpedoes from 5000 yards.
0408 hours – Dived and retired to the South.
0410 – 0411 hours – Two explosions were heard. Two of the liners had been hit by one torpedo each. No depth charges were dropped following the attack.
0445 hours – Surfaced and sighted one large vessel stopped in the area of the attack. One destroyer was nearby. A second large vessel was making to the Westward at 5 knots with another destroyer as escort. Set course to the East to reach a favourable attack position to attack again after dawn when the torpedo tubes would have been reloaded.
0530 hours – Dived and approached while reloading in the meantime.
0630 hours – Sighted one Oceania-class ship still stropped with one destroyer nearby. Closed to attack.
0756 hours – When about to open fire a Navigatori-class destroyer was spotted close by. Went deep. The destroyer went overhead when Upholder was at 45 feet but did not drop any depth charges.
0759 hours – Dived under the target while at 70 feet to obtain a new attack position.
0851 hours – In position 32°58’N, 14°50’E fired two torpedoes from 2000 yards. Both hit. The liner [Oceania] sank after 8 minutes. Again no counter attack by the destroyers followed.
A huge rescue operation mounted by the destroyers managed to save 5,400 German and Italian troops, who were sent back to Europe soggy and sans equipment, but the sea claimed at least 384.
Italian troopship Oceania as she sinks after being torpedoed by HMS Upholder on September 18, 1941
Detail of the above
Besides sidelining whole brigades of Italian soldiers, Upholder also took a toll on the Regia Marina, sinking the Italian Maestrale-class destroyer Libeccio, the minesweeper Maria (B 14), as well as the submarines Tricheco and Ammiraglio Saint-Bon.
Libeccio survived the disastrous Naples-Tripoli BETA (Duisburg) Convoy– annihilated midway across the Med by Bill Agnew’s cruiser and destroyers of Force K on 8 November– only to be torpedoed the next day by HMS Upholder.
At the height of Upholder’s success, Wanklyn was presented a VC in a quiet ceremony in Malta in January 1942, surrounded by his boat’s happy crew.
The problem is every story has an ending and some have a noticeably short third act.
On her 28th War Patrol– her last sortie before she was to head to Britain for refit– Upholder was sent on 6 April 1942 to land two SIS agents in Tunisia then patrol the western approaches to Tripoli along with sistership Urge. While the agents were safely put ashore on 10 April, Upholder was not heard from again.
On 16 April, Urge heard the distant explosions of continuous depth-charging. Two days later, Italian radio reported an Allied submarine had been sunk.
With Upholder and the 33 souls aboard missing, Shrimp Simpson wrote:
I hope it is not out of place to take this opportunity of paying some slight tribute to Lt Cdr David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, and his company in HMS Upholder, whose brilliant record will always shine in the records of British submarines and in the history of the Mediterranean Fleet in this war. The Upholder would have returned to the United Kingdom on completion of this patrol. She had carried out 23 successful attacks against the enemy, and the targets attacked had almost always been heavily escorted, or else enemy war vessels.
Epilogue
On 18 April 1942, the Admiralty reported HMS/m Upholder missing, perhaps mined off Tripoli.
On 22 August, with no contact from Wanklyn and crew for over four months, the Admiralty announced (emphasis mine):
It is seldom proper for the 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 Central Mediterranean, and she became noted for the uniformly 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 shier 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, but the example and inspiration remain.
While debate ensues on what happened to Upholder— theories include a sinking by the Italian Orsa-class torpedo boat Pegaso, German bombers, or a minefield– Upholder remains on eternal patrol and her wreck has not been found. She is keeping her secrets.
In terms of tonnage, the Upholder is considered to be the most successful of all British submarines.
According to U-boat.net, the “official” Admiralty figures are a bit overstated, but even the trimmed down data is impressive:
Postwar it was reported that HMS Upholder had sunk two destroyers, three submarines, three transports, ten supply ships, two tankers and one trawler, totaling 128353 GRT during her career. This figure was a bit optimistic, Given our detailed history listed below, HMS Upholder sank one destroyer, two submarines, nine supply ships (including three large troop transports and no tankers. Total tonnage sunk was 93031 GRT.
One of her victims, the 6,100-ton freighter Laura Cosulich, has gone on to a sort of infamy of her own. Sunk in shallow water off Saline Ioniche, Calabria, her 1,500-ton cargo of munitions has been extensively farmed by illegal salvagers for the benefit of the Mafia, who have used it as a “bomb supermarket” over the decades. The Italian navy sealed it off in 2015 and it is inspected routinely.
Upholder has been remembered extensively in maritime art and special stamp runs.
May 1981 40th anniversary of Upholder’s loss special issue
Zambia 948 MNH Royal Navy Submarines, Commander Wanklyn
HMS Upholder sinking Italian destroyer Libeccio by Raymond Dominic Agius
As is Wanks, who has an official portrait that he never had a chance to sit for, handing in a place of honor at the RN’s Submarine Museum.
Wankins’ portrait at RN Submarine Museum
The Submarine Museum has a mockup of her jolly roger on display as well.
In September 1944, with so few Axis targets left, the hardworking 10th Submarine Flotilla disbanded just three months after the last British boat sunk in the Mediterranean, HMS/m Sickle, became the Royal Navy’s 45th submarine loss in the ancient sea. Between June 1940 and the end of 1944, RN submarines in the Med had accounted for over 1 million tons of enemy shipping including three cruisers, at least 30 destroyers, torpedo boats, and several German and Italian submarines.
To be sure, had Rommel benefited from all the gear and stores that Shrimp Simpson’s dozen U-class boats, Upholder included, deep-sixed, Montgomery’s 8th Army would have had a tougher go of it as the Afrika Korps and its Italian allies would have been a much bigger gorilla to spank. This could have drawn the North African campaigns out longer, pushing the Atlantic Allies’ invasion of Sicily, Italy, and France even further down the calendar, and given Stalin a bigger role in the end game.
As for Shrimp Simpson, he would retire to New Zealand in 1954 as a Rear Admiral, after having served as Flag Officer Submarines/NATO COMSUBFORLANT.
Of Upholder’s sisters, the U-class itself took lots of lumps, losing besides class leader HMS/m Undine early in the war along with Unity (N66), Umpire (N82), Unbeaten (N93), Undaunted (N55), Union (N56), Unique (N95), Urge (N17), Usk (N65), Utmost (N19), Usurper (P56), P32, P33, P36, P38, P39, P41 (sailing as HNoMS Uredd under Free Norwegian command), P48, Vandal (P64) (who had the shortest life of any British submarine, lost just four days after commissioning), for a total of 19 submarines sunk– 13 in the Mediterranean and six in the Atlantic and the North Sea. This jumps to 20 if you count HMS/m Untamed (P58) which was lost while during training in 1943 due to a bad sluice valve then salvaged and recommissioned as HMS/m Vitality only to be scrapped less than two years later.
Postwar, with the class considered too small and slow by late 1940s standards, the survivors were quickly passed on to allies needing low-mileage and easy-to-use submarines (P47 to Holland, P52 to Poland then later Denmark, Untiring and Upstart to Greece, Upright to Poland, Varne to Norway, Vox to France, Unbroken, Unison and Ursula to Russia) or scrapped (Ultimatum, Umbra, Unbending, Una, United, Unrivalled, Unruffled, Unruly, Unseen, Ultor, Unshaken, Unsparing, Universal, Unswerving, Uproar, Uther, and Varangian).
Janes only listed 7 U-class submarines as being active in the Royal Navy in the 1946 edition.
The final units in British hands were withdrawn by 1950.
The last repatriated from overseas loans (Untiring and Upstart after service with the Greeks as Xifias and Amfitriti respectively) were sunk as sonar targets by the Royal Navy in 1957 and 1959. The holdout of the nearly 50 mighty British U-class boats, HNoMS Ula (P66), ex HMS/m Varne, continued in Norwegian service until 1965, when she was broken up, ironically, in Hamburg, having served just 23 years, most of them for King Haakon VII.
HNoMS Ula (P66), ex HMSm Varne in Norwegian service
Upholder was the first RN warship to carry the name while the second was given to the lead ship of the Type 2400 Patrol Submarines– Britain’s last diesel-electric boats.
HMS Upholder (S40), like her namesake built at VSEL, Barrow-in-Furness, led a class of four boats that repeated at least two of the names of the old U-class: Unseen, Ursula, and Unicorn. While MoD retired the class early, they were sold to the Royal Canadian Navy where they continue to serve today as the Victoria class, sadly, under new names.
Canadian submarine HMCS Victoria, ex HMS Upholder
Specs:
HMS-upholder-submarine by Dr Dan Saranga Blueprints.com
Displacement Surfaced – 540 tons standard, 630 tons full load Submerged – 730 tons Length 191 ft Beam 16 ft 1 in Draught 15 ft 2 in Propulsion 2 shaft diesel-electric 2 Paxman Ricardo diesel generators + electric motors 615 / 825 hp Speed 11+1⁄4 knots max. surfaced 10 knots max. submerged Complement: 27–31 Armament 4 × bow internal 21-inch torpedo tubes, 2 externals 10 torpedoes 1 × QF 3-inch 20 cwt gun
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Artwork titled “April Showers- USS Enterprise,” by artist Commander Edward T. Grigware, shows the flight deck and island of the Yorktown-class aircraft carrier Enterprise (CV 6) in 1944. In the foreground, a “yellow shirt” directs White 79, an F6F Hellcat fighter, as it taxis forward.
NNAM 1963.074.022
Grigware, born in 1889, was already a well-known American artist and illustrator before he moved from Chicago to Cody Wyoming in the 1930s. He attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and spent time working as a commercial artist. During WWII, Grigware created poster art to support the war effort and painted pieces for the Navy, including the haunting work above.
