HMS Snapper (39S): The Bombing Test That Changed Anti-Submarine Warfare

Constructed at Chatham

HMS Snapper was built at Chatham Dockyard, ordered on 12 June 1933, launched on 25 October 1934 by Lady Tweedie, and commissioned on 14 June 1935, a second-batch S-class submarine of 670 tons displacement that went on to complete fourteen war patrols between November 1939 and February 1941, chiefly in the North Sea, the Skagerrak and the Bay of Biscay.

An Accidental Discovery

In December 1939, Snapper was mistakenly bombed by a British aircraft while returning to Harwich, an alarming friendly-fire incident that nonetheless produced an useful result: it demonstrated that the standard 100lb bombs then carried by RAF aircraft were essentially useless against submarines, a discovery that directly informed the later development of more effective anti-submarine weapons.

A Productive War

Under Lieutenant W. D. A. King for her first thirteen patrols, Snapper built up a substantial tally of successes in April 1940 alone, sinking the German tanker Moonsund on 12 April, the merchant vessel Florida two days later, and two German minesweepers, M 1701, or H.M. Behrens, and M 1702, or Carsten Janssen, on 15 April.

She went on to sink the German armed trawler V 1107 and the Norwegian merchant Cygnus in June and July 1940, and attacked the German armed merchant cruiser Widder, though her torpedoes missed their target on that occasion.

Lost with All Hands

Snapper departed on her fourteenth and final patrol on 29 January 1941, now under the command of Lieutenant Geoffrey Vernon Prowse, bound for the Bay of Biscay. She failed to make her rendezvous with the escort vessel HMS La Capricieuse on 12 February and was never heard from again.

The most widely credited account holds that she was detected attacking German minesweepers near Brest on 10 or 11 February and was sunk by a sustained depth-charge counterattack, though the loss of a British mine has also been suggested.

Either way, all 41 of her crew were lost, a heavy and permanent silence that closed the book on a boat that had fought hard and well for over a year.