They sent a message to the commander in charge of submarines at Portsmouth.

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Storm chasers Change ), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Marriage, Superstition and the Modern Woman, Some Corney Humour to Help Us All Stay Sane Through the Lock-In. He collapsed and died shortly after. Instead they decided to experience a dive in a submarine, a decision that would ultimately cost them their lives. She was old, and her radio could reach only 120 kilometres on a good day. Captain Oram, Bolus, Chapman and Woods, along with Mr Baily, the Admiralty constructor, discussed what best could be done. Operation Subsmash was put into action, with Captain I.A.McIntyre in charge, but his efforts to save the people inside the sub went awry. By 16:00, Grebecock was becoming concerned for the safety of Thetis and radioed HMS Dolphin submarine base at Gosport. Any physical effort was very difficult, especially for the older men, who were by this time in a bad way.

I have kept the versed card in the hope of discovering the link. The tug Grebecock, commanded by Lieutenant Coltart, went to a position half a mile away, but it was not anchored and so it continued to drift away from the dive area and eventually lost the position of the submarine when this submerged. Contact usContact the North West team with the issues that affect you. Cliff DuckworthI was only eight years old in 1939 but I remember the headlines in the papers and people talking about the tragedy as it unfolded.

The bedraggled Thetis, on a slight list, was towed back to her birthplace of Birkenhead. When the Thetis left Birkenhead on 1st June 1939, she was carrying a crew of 53 sailors together with a further 50 people. After the tragedy, she was salvaged The extras were Admiralty overseers, representatives from the builders and sub-contractors who had worked on the submarine, senior crew-members of other submarines building in the yard and the Mersey River pilot who had guided them down the river and into Liverpool Bay. This new design was not liked in the submarine service. Although the Royal Navy personnel were actually operating the vessel, the men from the dockyard were involved with how the machinery and systems were performing. In the autumn of 1942, Thunderbolt was converted with her sister ships Trooper and P311 to carry two "Chariots" (a type of manned torpedo) and their crews for operations against Axis shipping in harbour, and was transferred with them to the Mediterranean in December 1942. This was abnormal, but they decided not to worry as no smoke candles had been fired to indicate an accident or distress. In the meantime, all that night down in the submarine, the Cammell Lairds fitters were kept busy adapting pipe-work in order to achieve the necessary pumping. After completion, trials were delayed because the forward hydroplanes jammed, but eventually started in Liverpool Bay under Lieutenant Commander Guy Bolus. On Sunday 3 September, Thetis was intentionally grounded ashore at Traeth Bychan, Anglesey. The two accompanying naval officers on board the Grebecock had experienced some anxiety about the dive because the Thetis had seemed reluctant to dive for over an hour, then had gone under quite suddenly with a flurry of bubbles. The cause of the loss of Thetis was also used in the 1968 film Ice Station Zebra, where the character played by Patrick McGoohan describes a method of sabotaging a submarine by blocking the tube test cocks, allowing the inner door to be opened with the outer door also open. For some reason, when she was down, with only her gun and conning tower above water, she would not dive any further. Warrant Engineer Roy Glen calculated that part of the stern was now above water. Vicki JordanMy mother, Joan Rocke, aged 93 and living in Chester remembers this incident well. There were 103 men on board that day, twice the normal crew. The. The second man would remain in the escape compartment in case Woods became unconscious from oxygen poisoning once inside the torpedo room.

( Log Out /  There were many who considered that the neutral position made the system more confusing and therefore more dangerous.

Because she was a new vessel that had not yet been accepted into the Royal Navy, there was a casual, somewhat ill defined division of responsibility. "We are making a story and that means we make things up," explains John.

All hands were lost and Thunderbolt settled to the bottom in 1,350 m of water. Thunderbolt was sunk on 14 March 1943 off Sicily by the Italian corvette Cicogna,[6] which had detected her and attacked with depth charges. By the time the door was opened, both he and his companion had died of their exertions. This makes Thetis one of the few military vessels that have been lost twice with her crew in their service history. ( Log Out /  Almost instantly, the remaining 99 men inside the submarine breathed their last before they even had time to drown.

The play was also broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside and the BBC World Service. The Pilgrims' Way Human remains that had not already been removed by the salvage team were now brought out to a Naval funeral, with full honours.

The destroyer Brazen had arrived to assist, once they had spotted the stern of the submarine sticking up out of the sea. Thunderbolt's objective was shipping in Cagliari, but the operation was not a success, and P311 was lost at La Maddalena, her intended target. The incident attracted legal action from one of the widows, who brought a claim of negligence against the shipbuilders, for not removing the material blocking the valve. We are not adding any new comments to this page but you can still read some of the comments previously submitted by readers. Lieutenant Chapman became dizzy from the effects of the oxygen poisoning before the escape compartment was even full of water.

These days we would probably call that undiagnosed and untreated ‘survivor guilt’. The Thetis disaster was in marked contrast to the successful rescue of the survivors of USS Squalus, which had sunk off the coast of New Hampshire just a week previously. All of the indicators, therefore, were pointing in the same direction. BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service. She was salvaged, repaired and recommissioned as HMS Thunderbolt serving in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres until she was lost with all hands on 14 March 1943. But the fire had eaten up much of the remaining oxygen and breathing was now extremely painful. One of the fitters lived just long enough to explain that he thought the hatch was jammed. The commander of the. After being depth charged many times Thunderbolt broke the surface, and as the Cicogna opened fire with all her guns the submarine dipped her bow, lifted her stern high in the air and took her final dive.

They entered the escape chamber and as it was flooding there came a series of dull explosions from overhead – signal grenades. On completion of the salvage operation the bell from Thetis was presented to the Liverpool & Glasgow Salvage Association by the Admiralty. Woods then decided to undertake one of the many jobs he had on his check-list for that day, to inspect the inside of the tubes and particularly the bow-cap seals, which had previously given some trouble and had leaked badly.

To the officers,crew and civilians who lost their lives on June 2nd 1939 in HMS THETIS. In addition to the normal crew of 53, there were 26 Cammell Laird employees, another 9 naval officers, 4 Vickers-Armstrong employees and 2 caterers. During the next 18 months, she saw service in the Atlantic: In December 1940 she was on patrol in the Bay of Biscay and on 15 December she encountered and sank the Italian submarine Capitano Raffaele Tarantini. With DSEA sets strapped on they climbed into the chamber once more and waited as the water rose. The torpedo tubes on British and Australian submarines were afterwards equipped with a "Thetis clip", one of the modifications introduced as a result of the accident. The bodies of the 99 men who suffocated remained inside Thetis for a further four months until the submarine was salvaged from the bottom of Liverpool Bay. The people on board the tug Grebecock noticed that for 25 minutes the Thetis struggled to submerge. Unfortunately, this class of submarine had only six torpedo tubes, all forward. On the rest of Inside OutGerman submarinesDecoy Q-boats, On bbc.co.ukMilitary Fact File - SubmarineBBC Wales - Thetis, On the rest of the webBritish submarines of World War TwoCammell Laird Shipyard A jammed exit hatch, combined with the mounting weakness, breathlessness and giddiness of those on board, resulted in failed attempts and death. According to his tests, however, Woods was happy in his own mind that the bow-caps were closed and all the torpedo tubes were empty of water.
Perhaps due to this lack of cohesive operation, someone – it was never established who – had opened the outer door, or bow cap, of number five torpedo tube, and then forgotten to close it. After the Thetis tragedy, Lt.Frederick Woods left submarines, but went on to win a DSC for his bravery as a destroyer officer, before dying in a car crash soon after the war. Director John Wright explains how the play uses a variety of theatrical styles to bring the story to life.

As Thetis began its trials the US Navy was attempting to rescue survivors from the stricken Squalus. The submarine was to become a tomb for the 99 men on board, Many aboard were engineers from Cammell Lairds, Derek Arnold, son of Stoker Walter Arnold, Thetis was only 38 miles from land when she sank.

These people were 26 Cammell Laird shipyard employees, 9 dockyard managers and fitters, 9 Royal Navy officers from submarine headquarters, 4 Vickers Armstrong employees and 2 representatives of a firm of Liverpool caterers, who were to supply the pies, sandwiches and beer. Arnold gave Shaw a string of instructions, which Shaw tried to understand with his tired, oxygen-starved brain.

The submarine has been moved from the position in which she sank and is now beached in 37 feet of water.


The inrush of water caused the bow of the submarine to sink to the seabed 150 ft (46 m) below the surface.