HMS Storm (P233)
HMS Storm
|
|
| History | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Name: | HMS Storm (P233) |
| Builder: | Cammell Laird & Co Limited, Birkenhead |
| Yard number: | J.3067 |
| Laid down: | 23 June 1942 |
| Launched: | 18 May 1943 |
| Commissioned: | 9 July 1943 |
| Struck: | 1949 |
| Fate: | September 1949, scrapped at Troon, Scotland. |
| Badge: |  |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: |
|
| Length: | 217 ft (66 m) |
| Beam: | 23 ft 6 in (7.16 m) |
| Draught: | 14.3 ft (4.4 m) |
| Propulsion: |
|
| Speed: |
|
| Test depth: | 380 ft (120 m) |
| Complement: | 6 officers, 43 ratings (at end of wartime commission) |
| Armament: |
|
HMS Storm was an S-class submarine of the Royal Navy, and part of the third group built of that class. She was built by Cammell Laird and launched on 18 May 1943. So far, she is the only RN ship to bear the name Storm.
She served in the Far East, from Trincomalee in modern Sri Lanka and from Perth, Australia. She was notable for being the first submarine to be commanded by a British officer from the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Commander Edward Young, DSO, DSC and bar.
After sea trials and working up in Holy Loch and Scapa Flow, Storm's first (and uneventful) patrol was to the Norwegian coast, north of the Arctic Circle. The day after Boxing Day 1943 she departed Holy Loch for the long passage to Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) via Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, arriving in Trincomalee on 20 February 1944.
Her first patrol in the Far East was to the Malacca Straits between Malaya and Sumatra, both then occupied by the Japanese. On 11 March 1944 she sank her first victim, a 500-ton coaster, with gunfire. In April she patrolled to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal south of Rangoon and on 14 April made her first sinking by torpedo, a 3,500-ton merchant vessel. The following day Storm attacked a merchant ship that was escorted by what was originally identified as a destroyer, but was actually a minesweeper, plus a submarine chaser and one other anti-submarine ship. She sank the minesweeper, W-7, with torpedoes.Storm's third patrol was a so-called "cloak-and-dagger" operation, to land a local agent on an island off the northern tip of Sumatra. This ended in failure when men in an inflatable dinghy sent out to retrieve the agent from the island heard him calling from the shore at night. His voice was coming from the wrong location, and sounded strained: the dinghy retreated and Japanese machine guns opened up. The dinghy occupants made it safely back to the submarine, but the fate of the agent was unknown. The fourth patrol was back to the Malacca Straits and a third victim was sunk by torpedo; this time a Japanese submarine-chaser. A subsequent patrol led to the taking of Japanese prisoners who were brought back to Trincomalee, the first such captures of the war.
...
Wikipedia