HMS Shalimar (P242): A Survivor, Not a Loss, in the Malacca Strait

Correcting the Record

It is worth stating plainly from the outset that HMS Shalimar was never lost with all hands, a fate sometimes mistakenly attached to her name, quite possibly through confusion with one of several other Royal Navy submarines notably lost in the Far East during the same period, such as HMS Stonehenge or HMS Porpoise.

Every source consulted for this article, without exception, confirms that Shalimar survived the war intact and returned safely home, and it is important to set that straight before telling her actual, rather more successful story.

Built at Chatham

HMS Shalimar was built at Chatham Dockyard, laid down in April 1942, launched in April 1943 and commissioned exactly a year later at Holy Loch, an Improved S-class submarine that sailed for the Far East that August, reaching Trincomalee in Ceylon by September 1944 to join the East Indies Fleet.

A Remarkably Successful War in South East Asia

Over the following year, Shalimar fought an active and effective campaign against Japanese shipping and installations, damaging landing craft and small vessels off Car Nicobar that autumn, before her clearest single success, the sinking of the Japanese auxiliary minesweeper Choun Maru No. 7 in the Strait of Malacca that November, alongside a number of smaller sailing vessels destroyed across her patrols.

She survived a minor bombing attack that August, and in her final patrol that summer operated jointly with HMS Seadog, sinking a Japanese landing ship and further small craft together.

Home Safely, and Quietly Scrapped

Shalimar left Trincomalee for the United Kingdom in September 1945 and reached Portsmouth that October, being placed into reserve at Harwich soon afterwards.

She was sold for scrap in the summer of 1950 and broken up at Troon on the Ayrshire coast by the end of that year, a quiet, unremarkable end for a submarine whose properly solid combat record deserves to be remembered accurately, rather than confused with the tragic fate of other boats that never came home at all.