HMS Sanguine (P266): The Submarine That Missed the War and Found a New Flag

Arriving Just as the Fighting Stopped

HMS Sanguine was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, laid down on 10 January 1944, launched on 15 February 1945 and commissioned that May, an Improved S-class submarine that, like several sisters completed in the war's closing months, arrived too late to see any real fighting.

She departed for the Far East that August, intended for service with the British Pacific Fleet, only to reach Malta on 15 August 1945, the very day Japan's surrender was announced, and was promptly ordered home again, her wartime service amounting to little more than a work up cruise cut short by peace.

A Place at the Coronation Review

Modernised with a snorkel and recommissioned in 1951 with the 1st Submarine Squadron based at Malta, Sanguine went on to take her place among the assembled fleet at the Coronation Fleet Review at Spithead on 15 June 1953, marking the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth II, a proud, ceremonial moment in an otherwise fairly quiet peacetime career.

A New Life as INS Rahav

Sanguine was sold to Israel in October 1958, becoming the country's second submarine under the name INS Rahav, after the sea monster of Hebrew mythology, alongside her sister boat HMS Springer, renamed Tanin.

She went on to serve roughly a decade in Israeli hands, though it appears she was not operationally active during the Six Day War of 1967, unlike her sister ship, which reportedly took part in commando landing operations near Alexandria around the same time.

Rahav was retired in 1968 and broken up at Haifa the following year, closing out the story of a submarine that never fired a shot for the Royal Navy but found a genuine, decade long second career flying another nation's flag instead.