HMS Simoom (P225)

For other ships with the same name, see HMS Simoom.
HMS Simoom
History
Class and type: S class submarine
Name: HMS Simoom
Builder: Cammell Laird & Co Limited, Birkenhead
Laid down: 14 July 1941
Launched: 12 October 1942
Commissioned: 30 December 1942
Fate: Sunk 4–19 November 1943
General characteristics
Displacement:
  • 814-872 tons surfaced
  • 990 tons submerged
Length: 217 ft (66 m)
Beam: 23 ft 6 in (7.16 m)
Draught: 11 ft (3.4 m)
Speed:
  • 14.75 knots surfaced
  • 8 knots submerged
Complement: 48 officers and men
Armament:
  • 6 × forward 21-inch torpedo tubes, one aft
  • 13 torpedoes
  • one three-inch gun (four-inch on later boats)
  • one 20 mm cannon
  • three .303-calibre machine gun

HMS Simoom 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 12 October 1942.

Career

She served in the Mediterranean, where she unsuccessfully attacked an unidentified merchant ship and later fired upon the Italian light cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi. The torpedoes missed the cruiser but hit and sank the destroyer Vincenzo Gioberti instead.

Details after this are sketchy. She possibly sank the Italian merchant (in German service) Trapani and the Greek sailing vessel Trias.[1]

Sinking

Simoom went on patrol from Port Said to the Aegean on 2 November 1943. On the 5th she was diverted to the entrance of the Dardanelles. Ten days later she was sent ordered to return to port, but never arrived. On 15 November German radio broadcasts stated that a submarine had been destroyed in the Aegean and that several of the crew had been rescued. It is unlikely that this was Simoom, as she would have been miles out of position, nor did any of the claimed survivors state that they were from Simoom. It is more likely that the submarine struck a mine or was lost through an accident.[2]

References

  1. ↑ HMS Simoom, Uboat.net
  2. ↑ Submarine losses 1904 to present day, RN Submarine Museum, Gosport

Coordinates: 44°04′N 9°23′E / 44.067°N 9.383°E / 44.067; 9.383

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