the Thetis submarine disaster

[franksolich]

Well, it's a little early in the day yet, and it'll be hours before Ptarmigan shows up, but I have to venture out into the winter wonderland (it's not cold or windy or anything, just a lot of snow), and only God knows when I'll be back today.

In 1939 the Royal Navy suffered its worst ever submarine disaster just 40 miles from where it was built in Birkenhead.

During the maiden voyage of Thetis - the pride of the Royal Navy - 99 men tragically lost their lives - not through battle, but through an unfortunate accident.

In the summer of 1939 a major rescue operation to save the lives of 99 men trapped inside a submarine came to an abrupt and pitiful end.

For three days, in the heart of Liverpool Bay, just 38 miles from land, the men on board battled the effects of carbon dioxide poisoning, waiting for a rescue which never came.

The fateful launch.

On June 1, 1939, Thetis prepared to make its maiden voyage.

The voyage was to be a test run and dive in the home waters of Liverpool Bay.

Conditions on board were extremely cramped, with the submarine carrying 103 men - twice the number she was designed to carry.

Many aboard were engineers from Cammell Lairds.

Only 69 of Thetis's crew were sailors, the rest were mainly engineers from Cammell Laird.

Laird's workers were offered the opportunity to disembark prior to the dive, but all chose to stay aboard.

Diving to disaster.

Thetis's initial attempt at a dive was unsuccessful as the vessel, for some reason, was too light.

The decision to allow seawater into the torpedo tubes to add weight to the submarine fell to Lieutenant Frederick Woods.

Without the knowledge that the outer torpedo doors were already open and the tubes full of seawater, Woods gave the order.

Woods was also unaware that a few weeks earlier, a painter, working on the other side of the torpedo door, had allowed enamel to drip inside the test tap and solidify.

With the test tap blocked, Woods believed it was safe to open the door inside the submarine.

Stoker Walter Arnold was in the third compartment and immediately knew the dive was not progressing as it should.
 
"He knew something was wrong when he felt a blast of air go past him, most unusual in submarine, explains his son Derek.

"As soon as he felt that blast of wind he knew something was wrong, but he didn't know what."

With hundreds of tons of water filling the first and second compartments, Thetis nose-dived.

S.O.S.

It took over three and a half hours for the telegram raising the alarm to arrive at the Navy's Submarine Headquarters in Portsmouth.

Operation Subsmash was put into action by Captain I.A. Mcintyre but his efforts were beset by bad luck, bad timing and bad judgment.

The best rescue ship was hundreds of miles away, aircraft reported inaccurate locations for Thetis and cutting equipment was ordered late.

On board, levels of carbon dioxide became dangerously high.

During the night, 60 tonnes of drinking water and fuel-oil were dumped allowing Thetis to rise stern first.

Time was running out.
 
Thetis was only 38 miles from land when she sank.

Submerged for 13 hours, oxygen on board was quickly running out.

"They were sleepy basically, they just didn't have energy, they couldn't think straight," says Derek.

"They weren't making any conversation, they were not making any efforts, they were just going down, and down and down."

Lt. Woods, Stoker Arnold and two other men managed to escape through a hatch, yet four men died attempting to escape using the same route.

A wire hawser was strung around the stricken submarine and held in place by a salvage ship. They planned to keep the stern up during the rising tide.

However the strain on the wire was too great and the hawser snapped, leaving Thetis to sink to the bottom of the sea.

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 the Bay.

No individual was ever blamed for the disaster.

read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/northwest/series7/thetis.shtml

This is from 2005; reader comments:

Edward Hayter (grandson of Commander RGB Hayter RN)

My father was 8 months old when his father was killed in HMS Thetis. Below is a poem written by my great grandfather W.L.B.Hayter, In Memoriam R.G.B.H. Commander RN

Entomb'd within that narrow fateful bark,
Not Thetis self, immortal herein born,
Could raise her namesake from the waters dark.

What though the crew, ere yet all hope was shorn,
To win the surface and their strength repair
Full gallantly did strive, Ah! hope forlorn!
They droop'd and died in foul empoison'd air.

And you, dear Son, to earth at last consign'd
On Mona's seaward hill with others sleep,
Rewon yet lost.

E'en thus we fondly mind
How Lycidas, great Milton's sorrow deep,
In these same western waters' troubled tide
O'erwhelm'd, yet rose to Heaven; so you belov'd,
Through His great might who rules the Oceans wide
Now in God's keeping and His love abide.

W.L.B.H - 1939 submitted by Edward G B Hayter

Vicki Jordan

My mother, Joan Rocke, aged 93 and living in Chester remembers this incident well. She had been out to dinner the night before the fateful launch and round the table were some of the men who died. Tragically one was shortly due to marry a friend of my mothers. The waiting for some form of rescue, the image of the dreadful deaths, haunts her still and indeed she was reminded of it recently by something in the news and mentioned it to me again.

Cliff Duckworth

I was only eight years old in 1939 but I remember the headlines in the papers and people talking about the tragedy as it unfolded. My father went into the navy that year and he obtained a copy of a poem about the disaster written by, I think, a relative of one of the men who died. Over the years,it was unfortunately lost.

Michael Nash

I dont Know if know, this ship was rename the Thunderbolt it was sunk in the February or March,of 1943. By the Italians This ship was adopted by the town of Frome in Somerset the ships crest is in the museum, so this ship sunk twice.

I remember seeing an old news-photograph of the disaster; apparently right within arm's-length of land, one end of the submarine stuck up out of the water, clear, calm, serene water.  Why cutting a hole through this section wasn't considered, I have no idea.

[Bob Henneman]

Yes, this was a real tragedy.

The article leaves out a few important details. The boat had two escape hatches, but one was too deep in the water. The other was about 20 feet below the water, but its operation was dangerous, time consuming, and required a lot of effort. As there was no danger of flooding, and plenty of oxygen left in the hull, it was decided that it was safer to simply stay put than to attempt to use the hatch and put the crew out at night on the open ocean. Once it was determined that surface vessels were there to pick them up, two men escaped through this hatch. Another attempt was made with four men in the small space to speed things up, but they drowned inside the escape chamber. The bodies were removed, and two others escaped. But the operation of the inner hatch at the extreme angle of the hull took too much strength, and crew men were unable to get it closed, and water rushed into the boat. This compressed the remaining air, and the sudden increase in pressure and concentration of carbon dioxide very quickly killed the crew, who would have passed out almost instantly. Everyone was dead before the boat flooded enough to break the hawser and slip to the bottom.

The sub actually claimed a 100th life also- Diver Petty Officer Henry Otho Perdue died while working with the salvage crew to raise the sub. He became tangled on the wreck, and when suddenly freed he popped to the surface, and he was killed by ‘the bends’, the rapid expansion of gasses in his bloodstream from the sudden drop in pressure.

As for cutting into the stern, there were several problems. For starters, it was hard to cut through without special equipment that was not on hand. Secondly, those on the surface did not know the state of the boat: if the air in the stern had been holding back flooding, the boat would have instantly flooded as soon as the first hole let the air escape. Thirdly, there were no carbide saws back then, so the only real option was a cutting torch, and using a cutting torch would have resulted in smoke and poisonous fumes inside the hull, which would have killed the crew.

Marine compressed air salvage was in its infancy then, so no one really knew how to handle the situation. Ernest Cox (salvage expert of Scapa Flow fame) contacted the Admiralty but was put off. He later wrote that had he been brought in with his equipment to assist, he would have taken 20 minutes and drilled a small hole in the stern, fitted a pipe with a check valve, and pumped air into the hull for the crew. 50 PSI air (not enough to harm the crew despite some discomfort) would have been pumped into the boat to slowly push back the water one compartment at a time, until after 5 or 6 hours the boat would have floated again on its own. However, at the time there was not a single compressed air salvage expert in the Royal Navy, let alone present at the site, so all anyone knew to do was put lines on the stern and try and dead lift the boat with tugs. This failed miserably.

[franksolich]

Well, that clears that up, because I figured someone somewhere had thought of cutting a hole through the stern (the part that stuck up above the water) so those inside could get air--somebody had to think of it--but for some reason, probably a very good reason, it wasn't tried.

According to 1939, a book about England during that particular year, also they attempted to tow the submarine to higher ground using a barge, but the tow-chain snapped.  Since the water was so shallow, and conditions okay, one wonders then, after the first chain snapped, they didn't try it again.