Tag Archives: Freemantle submarine

Freemantle days with the BPF

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As part of AUKUS, the Royal Navy is set to forward-deploy one of its precious seven nuclear attack submarines (SSN) to Freemantle from around 2027. Of course, this has all happened before.

Here we see two Royal Navy T class submarines in Freemantle, Australia in 1945, outboard of a light cruiser, while American submarines and a sub tender are off in the distance.

The closest T-boat, with her crew busy working on her 4-inch gun and loading supplies, has her name board out of view but the second is HM Submarine Thorough (P 324).

Via the State Library of WA

Commissioned at Vickers in March 1944, Thorough was posted to the Far East in July, conducting her first 5 war patrols from Trincomalee, then shifted to Freemantle in March 1945 along with the general move into the region by the British Pacific Fleet. It was from the Western Australian base that she conducted Patrols Nos. 6-8.

HMS Thorough (P324), a T-class submarine. The class was equipped with an impressive battery of 8 21-inch bow tubes (2 external) as well as two amidship tubes, with 17 torpedoes carried. However, Thourogh by far used her forward 4-inch mount, 20mm stern Oerlikon cannon, and a trio of .303 machine guns more.

In August 1945, in company with HMS Taciturn, which may be the second T-class boat in the picture, Thorough attacked Japanese shipping and shore targets off northern Bali, sinking a coaster and a sailing vessel with gunfire, bringing her wartime total to 40 “kills” all via surface gun actions.

She survived the war, completed the first circumnavigation by a RN submarine in 1957, and was decommissioned in 1962, scrapped at Dunston on Tyne.

Freemantle, ahoy!

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In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the idea to keep the Japanese Combined Fleet fenced in its home waters was through investing a lot in submarines. Admiral Hart’s Asiatic Squadron, based in the Philippines, had no capital ships and just a few old cruisers and destroyers, but it did have subs– 29 of them!

As noted in IJNH:

Following his arrival as CinCAF in 1939, Hart had steadily increased the number of submarines assigned to his small fleet from six to seventeen, including the first modern fleet-type boats. As the war clouds gathered in November 1941, another squadron of twelve modern fleet boats with their submarine tender Holland sailed into Manila Bay from Pearl Harbor as reinforcements.

Likewise, the Dutch spent a bunch of guilders in buying Koloniën (“colonial”) submarines for use in barring the door to the Dutch East Indies.

Of course, events soon proved that almost nothing was enough to stop the Japanese juggernaut in December 1941-April 1942 and (almost) all of these boats soon found themselves forced to withdraw to the best friendly option available at the time— Freemantle in Western Australia.

Freemantle was a submarine hub in the West Pac during WWII, with Allied boats of all stripes including British and Dutch vessels, mixing with locals and Americans. In all, some 170 Allied subs at one time or another passed through Fremantle between 1941 and 1945.

In fact, during the war, no less than 127 American submarines operated out of Fremantle at one time or another, carrying out 353 patrols. Added to this were 10 Dutch boats and, after August 1944, an increasing number of British Pacific Fleet boats. All told the Allies mounted something like 416 submarine patrols from Fremantle during the war.

“From 1943 to 1945 Fremantle-based boats sank over 273,000 tons of enemy tankers as well as 19 destroyers, 16 frigates, 4 minesweepers, 9 submarine chasers, and 6 patrol craft.”

And, in this edition of Everything Old is New Again, an American sub-tender is headed to HMAS Stirling, just outside of Freemantle.

From Navy Times:

The Navy plans to conduct its first-ever submarine maintenance work in Australia this summer using the sub tender Emory S. Land, with 30 Australian sailors embarked to learn how to repair the Virginia class of submarine.

This step will help establish a nuclear-powered attack submarine maintenance capability at the HMAS Stirling naval base in Western Australia in the next few years as part of the trilateral AUKUS arrangement.

And the beat goes on…