HMS Satyr (P214): A U-Boat Killer That Ended Her Days as FS Saphir

Built on the Clyde for Norwegian Waters

HMS Satyr was built by Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering at Greenock, laid down on 8 June 1940, launched in September 1942 and commissioned in February 1943, an Improved S-class submarine that operated with the Home Fleet's submarine flotilla out of Dundee.

Across thirteen war patrols between April 1943 and November 1944, she worked almost exclusively off the Norwegian coast, ranging as far north as the waters around Narvik, with only a couple of patrols taking her further afield into the Bay of Biscay.

Sinking a U-Boat

Satyr's clearest fighting success came on 15 June 1944, when she sank the German submarine U-987 west of Narvik, with the loss of all 53 of her crew, a well documented and unambiguous result confirmed independently from both British and German records.

She had already sunk the Norwegian merchant vessel Nordnorge off Stadlandet that March, and went on to make further, unsuccessful torpedo attacks against German merchant shipping and a convoy off Egersund later that year.

Converted to a Training Target

As the war drew to a close, Satyr was taken in hand for a significant refit, disarmed, streamlined and fitted with more powerful batteries to serve as a high speed target submarine for training the Navy's anti submarine forces, a common and useful second career for a good number of surplus S-class boats once the fighting was over.

A Second Career With France

In February 1952, Satyr was transferred to the French Navy and renamed Saphir, serving under the tricolour until August 1961, nearly a decade of further useful life beyond her original Royal Navy service.

She was sold for scrap the following spring and broken up at Charlestown in Fife that June, bringing to a close the career of a submarine whose quiet, effective war against German shipping off Norway ultimately gave way to a second, equally long chapter of service with an entirely different navy.