HMS Spark (P236): The Java Sea, a Cruiser Seen to Sink and a Midget Submarine Towed to Singapore

Sparks Will Fly

HMS Spark was ordered from Scotts of Greenock on 12 July 1941, one of the third group of S Class submarines. She was laid down on 10 October 1942, launched on 28 December 1943 and commissioned on 28 April 1944. Her badge was a winged golden star with the motto "Sparks will fly".

Her captain for the whole of her war was Lieutenant Derrick Kent, who had already commanded the submarines Sea Nymph and H33, and who retired many years later as a rear-admiral.

The photograph was taken by W. Ralston of Glasgow on 15 April 1944, two weeks before she commissioned, as she lay on flat calm water in a haze that hides any sign of land, with her bow hydroplanes folded and the jumping wires stretched the length of her casing.

Burma

Her first patrol, east of Orkney and Shetland in July and August 1944, began and ended in company with the submarine Thrasher, whose captain, Michael Ainslie, had made his name in Shakespeare. She then sailed for the East, passed through the Suez Canal on 3 October and joined the flotilla at Trincomalee.

Her first patrol there, from 14 November, was off the west coast of Burma. On 20 November she surfaced and sank a 150-ton schooner with her gun, and on 28 November, just north of the Mergui Archipelago, she came up fifty yards from a sailing boat of the local Mergui type, boarded her, took her five crew prisoner and sank her with charges.

Her cargo was tobacco. In between, she spent days on air-sea rescue duty, waiting for the crews of aircraft that might come down in the sea, as Scythian would do in the same waters a few months later.

The Java Sea

At the end of 1944 she moved to Fremantle in Western Australia, from where British submarines were sent north through the Lombok Strait into the waters of the Dutch East Indies. Her first patrol from there, beginning on 16 January 1945, took her into the Java Sea, and on 1 February, off the north coast of Java, she had the busiest afternoon of her war.

She fired four torpedoes at a coaster towing a lighter, but the water was so shallow that three of them hit the bottom and failed to run, and shortly afterwards Spark herself grounded in thirty-seven feet of water. She surfaced and attacked with her gun instead.

The coaster and its lighter sank, and a larger ship of about 1,100 tons made off at full speed for Panjang Island. A small vessel heading straight for Spark was taken for an escort and fired on, and turned out to be a tug laden with stores; it turned over and sank.

The larger ship beached itself, and a torpedo fired at it missed and exploded on the beach. A 500-ton coaster then came up from the north and ran itself ashore on the mainland at Tanjong Piring, where Spark wrecked it with fifty-eight rounds.

As she made for deeper water a twin-engined bomber came over the hills, and two bombs went off close to her as she dived.

A week later she missed a Japanese torpedo boat with four torpedoes and was counter-attacked with sixteen depth charges, which did her no harm. On 11 February a Japanese aircraft bombed her as she prepared to pass back through the Lombok Strait, and she reached Fremantle safely.

The Flores Sea and the Isuzu

In March she went further east, into the Flores Sea. On 29 March her torpedoes missed a 600-ton coaster, which replied with a depth charge and a 20mm gun, and at that moment her attack periscope jammed in its well.

Kent ran across the coaster's stern and surfaced on the side where he hoped its gun would not be pointing, and left it sinking. Two nights later she sank another coaster of the same size, which caught fire and went down after a dozen more rounds.

On 4 April she sighted a Japanese cruiser with three escorts and fired four torpedoes at her from 8,000 yards, a very long shot. Four explosions were heard, but none was a hit. The cruiser was the Isuzu, and on the morning of 7 April Spark saw her sink, torpedoed by American submarines.

Operation Struggle

In May she moved north to Subic Bay in the Philippines, and after a patrol east of Singapore she was chosen to tow one of the XE-class midget submarines into action. Two Japanese heavy cruisers, the Myoko and the Takao, lay in the Johore Strait at Singapore, and four-man midget submarines were to go in and lay explosive charges beneath them.

On 26 July 1945 Spark sailed from Brunei Bay towing XE1, under Lieutenant John Smart, while Stygian towed XE3. On the night of 30 July Spark slipped her tow near the Horsburgh lighthouse at the entrance to the Singapore Strait.

XE1 could not reach the Myoko in time and laid her charges on the seabed near the Takao instead, which was XE3's target. On the night of 1 August Spark met XE1 again at the rendezvous, took her operational crew on board and towed her back to Brunei Bay, arriving on 5 August. Ten days later the war was over.

Kent left her in November 1945. She was sold in October 1949 and broken up at Faslane. Her sister Spearhead towed XE4 on a different midget submarine mission that same week, and Spirit and Subtle also hunted the Japanese from Fremantle.