THE DISTRIBUTION OF HONOURS AND AWARDS can be a difficult task, but in general, so far as the Submarine branch was concerned, it was done well and fairly. Recommendations for awards were the business of the flotilla commanders as far as the submarine commanding officers were concerned. The submarine commanding officers, in their turn, recommended members of their ship's companies. The recommendations were then submitted through Flag Officers and the C-in-C to the Admiralty. In the Admiralty they were dealt with by an Honours and Awards Committee which was in permanent session under the chairmanship of a retired Flag Officer. This committee had to be careful to see that gallantry and merit did not go unrewarded, but that the standard for awards was kept high. The awards available were the Victoria and George Crosses for all ranks, the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Service Cross for Officers and the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal and Distinguished Service Medal for ratings. All ranks could also be Mentioned in Despatches. No scale for awards was laid down but a number of conventions were normally followed. The Victoria Cross was kept for acts of conspicuous gallantry or of outstanding individual merit. The Distinguished Service Order was awarded to Submarine Commanding Officers who made successful attacks on heavy enemy ships of cruiser size or above, and also for the destruction of a U-boat. It was also awarded for successful attacks on convoys, but several would be required unless the attack was of particular merit. For lesser exploits or for conducting a number of successful patrols, Commanding Officers could be awarded a Distinguished Service Cross or be Mentioned in Despatches.

Altogether, during the war, nine Victoria Crosses were awarded to personnel of the submarine branch and two George Crosses. Three of the Victoria Crosses went to submarine captains and these were Lieutenant Commander MD Wanklyn of Upholder, Lieutenant Commander ACC Miers of Torbay and Commander JW Linton of Turbulent, this last being posthumous. All three were given for the outstanding performance of these officers in the Mediterranean against enemy shipping. For Lieutenant Commander MD Wanklyn, the sinking of the troopships Oceania and Neptunia was particularly noticed while for Lieutenant Commander Miers the entry into Corfu Roads in pursuit of a convoy and the sinking of a supply ship there, was quoted in the citation. The next two Victoria Crosses went to Lieutenant PSW Roberts and to Petty Officer TW Gould for removing an unexploded bomb from the casing of Thrasher in enemy waters where the submarine was liable to have to dive at any moment. Two more Victoria Crosses went to Lieutenant BCG Place DSC RN and Lieutenant D Cameron RNR for their attack on the Tirpitz in Alten Fjord in X7 and X6. The final pair of Victoria Crosses went to Lieutenant IE Fraser RNR and Leading Seaman JJ Magennis of XE3 for their attack on the Japanese cruiser Takao. The two George Crosses were awarded posthumously to Lieutenant JNA Low RN and Able Seaman HJ Miller for their self-sacrifice when Unity was sunk in collision and they lost their lives⁶.

In addition to the three Victoria Crosses awarded to submarine commanding officers, seventy-eight were made Companions of the Distinguished Service Order, twenty-five of whom received a Bar to the Order and six two Bars⁷. About twenty of the Distinguished Service Orders went to the 'Giant Killers', about forty to the 'U-boat Hunters', and the rest mainly to the 'Corsairs'. Seventy of the DSOs were won in the Mediterranean, thirty-one on the Home Station and eight in the Far East. Commanding Officers of submarines also received sixty-four Distinguished Service Crosses, fourteen Bars to the DSC and in one case two Bars. In general these were for lesser exploits but some successful 'Giant Killers' and 'U-boat Hunters' only received DSCs rather than DSOs, and there does not seem to be any rational explanation for this⁸.Altogether about a quarter of the 303 submarine commanding officers who made war patrols received the Distinguished Service Order, and another quarter or so received the Distinguished Service Cross or were Mentioned in Despatches. Only one officer who was not in command received the Distinguished Service Order and that was Lieutenant Commander(E) HA Kidd RN of Torbay and Tantalus, and he had already been decorated with the DSC and Bar and had been Mentioned in Despatches.

IN THE BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE in the Memorial Chapel at Fort Blockhouse are recorded the names of 3083 officers and men lost in submarines during the Second World War. This breaks down into 349 Officers and 2734 men or sixty-three submarine Commanding Officers, 286 other Officers, 783 Chief and Petty Officers and Artificers and 1951 ratings. These numbers, when compared with the number killed in the Navy as a whole in the war, which was 50,758, does not seem very high, but when compared with the numbers serving in submarines, the picture becomes very different. The number killed is actually larger than the number of men who manned all our submarines at the outbreak of war. It may also be compared with the total of 9316 who were in the submarine branch in March 1945.

The crews of submarines lost on patrol were not always drowned, and a total of 425 were picked up by the enemy and made prisoners of war. These prisoners included fourteen Commanding Officers¹⁴, and thirty-three other officers. A few officers and men were taken prisoner in X-craft and Chariot attacks. The number of men wounded in submarines was comparatively small. The majority of the wounded became casualties in submarines unable to dive and which were attacked from the air by machine guns.

The worst period for casualties was 1939-40, when we lost twenty-three submarines, all manned by pre-war crews. The total lost was 851 men drowned and 115 taken prisoner of war. This was out of a total mobilised in September 1939 of 3383, which makes the casualty rate some 28%. The best period was in 1944-5 when we only lost five submarines, their crews totalling¹⁵ 262, with ten taken prisoners of war. The strength of the submarine branch in 1944 was 9033 and so this works out with a casualty rate of 3%.

In these casualty rates, the numbers lost have been related to the total number serving in submarines at the time. Figures that have more meaning, however, can be obtained by comparing the actual numbers involved over a period in a given theatre. We can first take the Norwegian Campaign in Home waters from April to August 1940. Twenty-seven British submarines took part and their crews totalled 1323 officers and men. Ten boats were lost; 356 officers and men were drowned and another 101 were taken prisoner of war, many of them wounded. This works out that 26% lost their lives and another 7.5% were taken prisoner, making the total casualties 33.5% or one third of those taking part. In the Mediterranean the main campaign lasted from June 1940 to September 1943, when the Italians surrendered. In this period ninety-three individual British submarines were thrown into the fray, thirteen of them for two tours. The crews of these boats totalled 5030 officers and men. Forty-three submarines were lost and the casualties were 1861 officers and men drowned and 242 taken prisoner of war. This works out at a casualty rate of 41.6%. On the other hand, the casualty rate in the Far East was much lower. Here fifty-seven British submarines patrolled in the area and one made two tours. The total of the crews employed added up to 3168 officers and men and of these 166 were drowned and eight made prisoners of war. This works out at 5.5%

Of the sixty-five Commanding Officers who lost their lives, all except one were regular officers of the Royal Navy. The other was a Lieutenant of the Royal Naval Reserve. Four held the rank of Commander, twenty-eight were Lieutenant Commanders and thirty were Lieutenants. Their ages varied from twenty-three to nearly forty but the great majority were in their late twenties or early thirties. There is, of course, no space in this history to record the names of all those lost in submarines during the Second World War. We will, however, make room for a list of the Commanding Officers who did not return and of those who lost lives on submarine duties. The list is on the facing page.

Of the other officers not in command, the largest number were also regular naval officers of the rank of Lieutenant and 115 of them were lost. There were thirty-two regular Sub Lieutenants too who did not return from patrol. There were ninety officers of the reserves who were lost: twenty-eight were Lieutenants RNR and twenty were Lieutenants RNVR together with twelve Sub Lieutenants RNR and thirty Sub Lieutenants RNVR. All these officers were in their twenties and most of them in their early twenties. Engineer Officers suffered the loss of one Lieutenant Commander(E), twelve Lieutenants (E) and twenty-nine Commissioned or Warrant Engineers. All these were regular officers except for one Lieutenant (E) of the RNR. The remaining twelve casualties, to make up the total, were mainly officers from the Dominion Forces, mostly of the Reserves, and these were lost largely in X-craft and chariots.

Of the sixteen Allied submarines sunk while under operational control, eleven were lost with all hands. One was sunk by 'friendly' forces and the crew were nearly all saved; one was wrecked and another was bombed in harbour without casualties. The remaining two were sunk by the enemy but some of their crews were saved and taken prisoner of war. Altogether, our Allies had some 550 drowned in the submarines lost, and about 35 taken prisoner¹⁵. Two hundred and sixty were from the Netherlands, one hundred and sixty were French, eighty were Greek, fifty-six Polish and thirty-two Norwegian. In addition, twenty-one British liaison personal were lost with these submarines.

The total casualties in killed and taken prisoner of war in the Royal Navy from 1939-45 were 58,979 and the total number serving in 1945 was 776,000. This works out at a casualty rate of 7.6%. The corresponding figures for the submarine branch were 3508 killed or prisoners of war out of a total of 9310 and this works out at 38% or over five times the casualty rate in general service. These figures are appalling and the casualty rate in British submarines is only exceeded by those suffered by Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force during the war¹⁶ and by the German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic¹⁷. Submarines have always been known to be dangerous and those who served in them knew this full well¹⁸. The author vividly recollects a conversation between three officers in Regulus in China before the war, in which probable casualties in war were the topic. One of the three said that casualties were likely to be one third of those engaged and he was not far wrong. Another said that, if that was so, it meant that one of us three would be killed. In fact it meant that both the others were killed in the first year of the war¹⁹ and the author, after serving the whole six years of the war in submarines, is the only survivor of the trio.

Morale, however, never suffered even among the families. The Thetis disaster, just before the war, when 99 officers, men and civilian contractors were lost, alerted all to the dangers. These men were suffocated in the submarine, which sank in shallow water and they were not drowned. This lead to a belief that all submariners who were lost, suffered a slow and lingering death. In fact we know very little of what actually happened in submarines which were lost. A survivor of Perseus, which was mined, reported that most of the men in the engine room, which was not flooded, were killed by the shock of the explosion²⁰.On the other hand, when Triumph struck a mine in the North Sea, she not only survived but one of her crew, asleep in his hammock in the fore ends, did not even wake up! Many submarines, damaged by depth charges, especially in the Mediterranean, sank below their crushing depth. Captain Fell, an experienced submarine officer who conducted post war trials lowering unmanned submarines to their crushing depth from salvage vessels, states that a loss of this type is catastrophic and mercifully quick²¹. In general, I doubt if the last moments of a submariner are any worse than those of a stoker in the boiler room of a large ship such as Hood or Barham when they sank.

It is nevertheless difficult to understand how morale could have stood up to such casualties. There are, however, two facts about casualties in submarines which are different from those suffered by other forces and may help to explain matters. The first is that very few men were wounded and nearly all, except those taken prisoner, lost their lives. The second fact is that, unlike soldiers or airmen in battle, submariners did not see their colleagues killed or wounded or, if they did, did not survive to tell the tale. They never saw their friends or comrades blown to pieces or die in agony and there were no depressing burial parties or funerals. When a submarine was lost, it simply did not return. It was almost as if it had been transferred to another flotilla or station. It was, in fact, the exception even to know what had happened and how individual boats had been lost. To relations and families, however, the effect was the same as for soldiers and airmen and the telegram announcing the loss caused the same grief. The wish of close relations to know what had happened and how their loved ones died, was generally denied to them and, if it is any comfort, those who were suffocated probably first fell asleep and their deaths were peaceful. Nevertheless the British submarine branch stood up to terrible casualties without flinching and fought hard for the whole six long years of the war.