HMS Thule (P325)

HMS Thule (P325)
Career (UK)
Name:	HMS Thule
Builder:	Devonport Dockyard
Laid down:	20 September 1941
Launched:	22 October 1942
Commissioned:	13 May 1944
Fate:	Scrapped in September 1962
Badge:	File:THULE badge-1-.jpg
General characteristics
Class & type:	British T class submarine
Displacement:	1,290 long tons surfaced 1,560 tons submerged
Length:	276 ft 6 in (84.28 m)
Beam:	25 ft 6 in (7.77 m)
Draught:	12 ft 9 in (3.89 m) forward 14 ft 7 in (4.45 m) aft
Propulsion:	Two shafts Twin diesel engines 2,500 hp (1.86 MW) each Twin electric motors 1,450 hp (1.08 MW) each
Speed:	15.5 knots (28.7 km/h) surfaced 9 knots (20 km/h) submerged
Range:	4,500 nautical miles at 11 knots (8,330 km at 20 km/h) surfaced
Test depth:	300 ft (91 m) max
Complement:	61
Armament:	6 internal forward-facing torpedo tubes 2 external forward-facing torpedo tubes 2 external amidships rear-facing torpedo tubes 1 external rear-facing torpedo tubes 6 reload torpedoes 4 inch (100 mm) deck gun 3 anti aircraft machine guns

HMS Thule was a British submarine of the third group of the T class. She was built as P325 at Devonport Dockyard, and launched on 22 October 1942. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Thule, after Thule, the mythological name for a northern island.

Service

Thule served in the Far East for much of her wartime career, where she sank thirteen junks, two lighters and five sampans with gunfire in the Strait of Malacca in a twelve-day period between 17 December 1944 to 29 December 1944. She also attacked a submarine, probably the Japanese submarine Ro-113 and believed she had sunk it, but Thule's torpedoes exploded prematurely and the submarine escaped unharmed. She went on to sink a further five sailing vessels and three coasters, as well as laying a number of mines.

She survived the war and continued in service with the Navy, finally being scrapped at Inverkeithing on 14 September 1962. Her first commander, Alastair Mars, wrote HMS Thule Intercepts, about her operations from commissioning in Scotland to the end of the war in Australia.

References

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475. 
• Hutchinson, Robert (2001). Jane's Submarines: War Beneath the Waves from 1776 to the Present Day. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-710558-8. OCLC 53783010.