HMS Spearhead (P263): Towing XE4 to Cut the Saigon Cables and a Second Life in Portugal

One of the Last

HMS Spearhead was ordered from Cammell Laird at Birkenhead on 17 November 1942, one of the last of the S Class submarines to be ordered. She was laid down on 18 August 1943, launched on 2 October 1944 and commissioned on 21 December 1944.

Her badge, a white spearhead tipped with red, carried the motto "Strike hard, strike true". Her captain was an officer of the Royal Naval Reserve, Lieutenant Roy Youngman, who had already commanded the submarine P553.

Within days of her commissioning she suffered her only loss of the war: on 26 December 1944 Able Seaman Nathanial Harris of Glasgow was lost overboard after an accidental explosion at her gun.

The photograph was taken by Stewart Bale of Liverpool on 15 December 1944, less than a week before she commissioned, as she pushed through a lively grey sea with her hydroplanes folded, her gun raised and members of her crew on the bridge.

Norway

She worked up in Scottish waters in the early weeks of 1945. In February she joined Sibyl and Sceptre off Scapa Flow for the passage south to the Clyde, and in March she served as a target for Scotsman's night attack exercises.

On 21 March 1945 she sailed from Lerwick for her first war patrol, off the Norwegian coast near Bergen. The U-boats were still at sea, and her crew sighted several of them, but none came within reach of an attack. She returned to Lerwick on 1 April, and five weeks later the war in Europe was over.

Operation Sabre

She sailed for the Far East, passed through the Suez Canal on 16 May and went on by way of Ceylon to join the British submarines working with the Americans from Subic Bay in the Philippines and Brunei Bay in Borneo. Several of the S boats were chosen to tow the XE-class midget submarines, four-man craft that could be towed to the edge of an enemy harbour and then go in alone.

While Spark and Stygian towed XE1 and XE3 towards the Japanese cruisers at Singapore, Spearhead was given a different job.

The Japanese in South-East Asia relied on undersea telephone cables, which the Allies could not listen to. Two of them ran from Saigon, one to Singapore and the other to Hong Kong, and they came ashore near the mouth of the Mekong.

If they were cut, the Japanese would have to use their wireless, and their signals could be intercepted and read. On 27 July 1945 Spearhead left Brunei Bay with XE4 in tow and took her across the South China Sea in three days, with a passage crew in the midget submarine and her operational crew resting aboard Spearhead, as was the practice.

XE4's captain was Lieutenant Max Shean of the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve, and she carried two divers, Sub-Lieutenant Ken Briggs, another Australian, and Sub-Lieutenant Adam Bergius.

On 31 July, after Spearhead had slipped the tow, XE4 crept in towards the coast and spent hours dragging a grapnel along the seabed, built to Shean's own design, until it caught the first cable. Briggs went down and cut it, and was back aboard within thirteen minutes with a short length of it as proof.

The second cable lay in deeper water, and Bergius cut it only after several attempts. Shortly after midnight XE4 met Spearhead again and was taken back in tow, and Spearhead brought her into Subic Bay on 4 August. Shean received a Bar to his Distinguished Service Order and both divers the Distinguished Service Cross.

Spearhead went out again on lifeguard duty off Singapore, waiting for aircrew who might come down in the sea, and on 8 August she passed an American submarine, USS Icefish, which logged her on the horizon. When the war ended she visited Hong Kong and then sailed for home, reaching Portsmouth on 5 December 1945.

She was paid off into reserve on 27 December, a year and a week after she commissioned.

NRP Neptuno

In August 1948 she was sold to Portugal, which bought three of the surplus S boats that year: Spearhead, Spur and Saga. She was renamed Neptuno and served the Portuguese Navy until she was scrapped in 1967, more than twenty years after her short war with the Royal Navy had ended.