Mystery of the Submarine


Looking back in history it is hard to believe that in the early years of the War, when we were constantly loosing a large tonnage of ships due to submarines, enormous risks were taken concerning convoy routing. In order to keep ships in convoys, from Belfast to Loch Eire and onwards, forty of more of them with their escorts would be taken up through the Firth of Lorne and thence through the narrow Straits of Mull to Loch Eire - as many as forty merchantmen a time virtually completely filled the Straits of Mull.

(above) HMS Tarantella in heavy Atlantic weather on escort duty 1942 (painting courtesy of B. L. Moir)

On one occasion whilst escorting a convoy in the Firth of Lorne, we were ordered to investigate , by the Senior Officer of the convoy, a suspicious contact..

No one thought that a German U Boat would be so daring as to enter such restricted waters but, sure enough we found the contact. Over quite a long while, we dropped pattern after pattern of depth charges - 30 in all and finally saw something on the surface which proved to be oil and debris. Hours later, although the contact was still there, we were ordered to rejoin the convoy which was by then several miles ahead. Before doing so we obtained a sample of the oily debris and oil as proof of our claim for sinking a U Boat.

Months later we were informed by Admiralty that they had carried out a full investigation. The oil was definitely English and not the sort used by U. Boats. There had been no English Submarines in the Firth of Lorne at the time.

Admiralty claimed that it had been a U Boat which used English oil as a decoy to make the attackers desist thinking they had mistakenly been depth charging one of our own. The decoy had worked and the U Boat live to fight another day! I was the Commanding Officer of H.M.S. Tarantella at the time and I should have known better than let the "Jerries" hoodwink us.

Because in 1940 whilst mines sweeping in The Straits of Dover, what I thought was an air ambulance landed on the water ahead of us. Whilst all guns were being trained on this Red/White "Red Cross" plane we were attacked by 6 German "Messerchmidt" aircraft from astern with machine gun fire. RESULT ship badly damaged and myself seriously wounded and put out of commission for about 6 months - but I lived to go to sea again!

Early in 1943, due to confusion over names of Gunboat Tarantula stationed in the Far East and H.M.S. Tarantella, the latters name was changed to H.M.S. Twostep.



(above) Crew of HMS Twostep taken 1943 at Civitia Vechia Italy
(photograph by B. L. Moir with an old 'Box Brownie')

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Berkeley Moir Lt CDR RNR (Ret)
Nick Clark © 2001