While at Dunoon Grammar School in the early 1940’s rumours were circulating that the sound of an explosion one night had been due to an unsuccessful attempt by a German submarine to penetrate the anti submarine boom defence. This stretched from the Castle Rocks immediately south of Dunoon Pier to the Cloch. While thinking about this recently as a result of a visit to the graves of submariners in Dunoon Cemetery I decided to research the matter.
My first enquiry was at the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office. Their Wrecks Office very helpfully provided a copy of a section of an Admiralty Chart. This showed a submarine lying in about 33 fathoms at a position roughly equidistant between Pladda, just south of Arran & Ailsa Craig at the south end of the Firth of Clyde. It is shown as the U33, a German submarine of 745 tons displacement. Under circumstances of loss was the brief enty “Depth Charged and sunk by HMS Gleaner”.
I then came across full details of the sinking boat by David Kahn entitled “Seizing the Enigma” (1993). These are that on 12 February 1940 the U33 was at night on the surface to lay mines at the entrance to the Firth when she was sighted by the Gleaner. The Gleaner fired four patterns of depth charges which damaged the submarine forcing it to the surface. The crew then scuttled the submarine, which sank almost immediately.
One interesting detail which emerged from this incident is that the crew of the submarine removed the eight rotors from the secret Enigma cipher machine. These were distributed among crew members with instructions that the rotors were to be dropped into the sea. One forgot and the three rotors he had on him were seized. The capture of the rotors speeded up the work of the cryptograpers at Bletchley who were trying to solve the cryptograms. After similar recoveries from other German ships the secret code was broken. As a result the Allies were able to intercept, solve and read the coded messages between the German High Command and the U-boats at sea. This gave their locations and movements enabling the Allies to divert their convoys around wolfpacks, sink U-boats and so win the crucial Battle of the Atlantic.
The other memory I have is in the late 1940s during Sunday walks looking at the gravestones in the then new cemetery of seamen from the submarine “HMS Untamed”. I had assumed that their submarine had been lost in the Clyde near Dunoon, hence their burial at Dunoon. I now wondered whether this had any connection with the explosion.
Consulting a website I found that the Untamed on 30 May, 1943 was in the Clyde on trials exercising with ships of the 8th Escort Group off Campbeltown. She had dived twice then failed to surface. She settled on the seabed at a depth of 160 feet off Sanda Island. This island lies approximately 1 and 3 quarter miles SSE of the SE end of the Kintyre peninsula. It was subsequently discovered that the forward part had flooded when the external log was not fully withdrawn thereby allowing seawater to force its way into the boat through an open sluice valve. The 36 man crew had been poisoned by a build up of carbon dioxide. None had escaped.
I later discovered in a book “Beneath the Waves – A History of HMS Submarine Losses” by AS Evans (1986) that the Royal Navy Diving Ship “Tedworth” directed salvage operations to recover the Untamed. About 26 June the Untamed was lifted and moved inside the boom of Campbeltown. The submarine was at some point towed to Barrow. It is not clear when the bodies of the crew were removed but it must have been at Campbeltown to clear it for inspection.
The big mystery is how the crew came to be buried at Dunoon and not at or near Campbeltown. Perhaps some reader can shed light on this. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, in response to a query stated “The only information we hold for Dunoon Cemetery is that the majority of the 1939-1945 War burials are in a plot which was set aside for Service War Graves. The burials in this plot include 34 casualties from the Untamed. The Commission does not have any information on the disposal of remains.”
While researching the above I noticed references to “HMS Vandal”. This submarine had been working up in Kilbrannan Sound on 24 February, 1943. It had been last seen leaving Lochranza but by nightfall had failed to make her surfacing signal. Searches of the area revealed no trace of the submarine. It had only been completed some four days earlier. The crew of 37 all perished. Again the Wrecks Office came to my aid with details. The submarine had a displacement of 740 tons. It was not found until 1994 in a depth of about 71 metres. The forward escape hatch was found open.
The location of the submarine is latitude 55 43 683 N longitude 005 20 017 W. The website I consulted gives the position as one and a half miles NW of Lochranza, Arran. The Vandal unfortunately had the shortest career of any submarine in the Royal Navy.
It is likely the the Untamed as did the Vandal sailed from the Holy Loch, being the home base of the Clyde Submarine Flotilla. It is an amazing coincidence that two new submarines, the Untamed 6 weeks in service and the Vandal 4 days, both on trials, had disappeared to the west of Arran and both sunk probably due to faults and not to enemy action.
This brief account is not intended as an exhaustive examination of the losses of these two ships and what caused the losses nor is any criticism intended of their crews who were faced with sudden and dire emergencies. One can only admire the immense courage of the crews.
It would appear therefore on the basis of the above that the noise of any explosion was not linked with these submarines.
A possible explanation of the explosion could be the destruction of the Aircraft Carrier “HMS Dasher” due to a massive internal explosion. This occurred when the carrier was sailing in the channel between Ardrossan and Arran on 27 March, 1943. The carrier sank with the loss of 379 lives. No enemy action was involved. As the distance from Ardrossan to Dunoon is about 20 miles it is possible that the sound of this carried as far as Dunoon. The loss was so great that it was hushed up at the time by the Government.
Moving still nearer to Dunoon there was the mysterious sinking of the French Destroyer “Maille Breeze” off Greenock on 30 April 1940. Torpedo tubes were accidentally fired, setting fire to fuel and the ship blew up and sank with the loss of 28 ratings. It is thought that the choosing of the site for the Free French monument on the Lyle Hill was greatly influenced by this tragedy. This could be another possible explanation.
Finally, there was the serious incident on a date possibly in 1944 in the Holy Loch off Sandbank. In the loch at the time were the Depot Ships Forth, Alrawdah and Montcalm renamed Wolfe (an ironic choice of name) and numerous other ships and submarines. On returning from missions it was the practice for checks to be made on the firing mechanisms of the torpedo tubes in submarines but only after all torpedoes were removed. On this occasion a live torpedo was not removed. When the firing mechanism was activated a live torpedo was despatched towards Sandbank. Fortunately it missed all vessels and struck the shore near the house Fife Park to the north of Robertson’s yard, shattering windows in many Sandbank houses and it is said leaving a crater big enough to hold two buses.
A recent book “The Secrets of HMS Dasher” by John and Noreen Steele (2004) has suggested that a similar accidental discharge of a live torpedo from a British submarine was responsible for the sinking of the Dasher. Two British submarines were apparently in the vicinity of the Dasher at the time of her sinking, one being involved in exercises some 4/5 miles from the Dasher.
While I did not conclusively solve the mystery of the explosion I did unravel some interesting but tragic stories of the war which are probably now forgotten by all except relatives of those who tragically lost their lives.
Finally it is of interest to note that the paddle steamer “Waverley” nearly landed up at the grave of the Untamed. On 20 June, 2004 she touched rocky bottom on Boiler’s Reef, southwest of Sanda Island, Kintyre but fortunately there was no serious damage to the steamer.
