HMS Splendid (P228): The Most Successful British Submarine of Her Moment

Chatham-Built

HMS Splendid was built at Chatham Dockyard, her keel laid on 7 March 1941, launched on 19 January 1942 and commissioned on 8 August 1942 under the command of Lieutenant Ian Lachlan Mackay McGeoch, a third-batch S-class submarine of 865 tons surfaced displacement armed with seven 21-inch torpedo tubes and a 3-inch deck gun.

A Remarkable Run in the Mediterranean

Deployed to the Mediterranean from October 1942, Splendid embarked on a run of successes that few British submarines could match.

In November 1942 she damaged the Italian destroyer Velite and sank the merchant vessel Favorita by gunfire, and on 17 December 1942 she torpedoed the Italian destroyer Aviere some 35 nautical miles north-north-east of Bizerte, which went down in just ten seconds with 220 men lost, a devastatingly effective single strike.

Through the early months of 1943 she added the merchant vessels Emma and XXI Aprile, the tankers Devoli and Giorgio, and the minesweeper Cleopatra to her total, and also carried out a special operation landing an agent on Sardinia in January 1943. Between her first Mediterranean patrol and her loss, Splendid was, by tonnage sunk, the most successful British submarine then at sea.

Cornered off Capri

HMS Splendid's run of success ended on 21 April 1943, when her periscope was spotted south of Capri by the German destroyer Hermes, formerly the Greek destroyer Vasilefs Georgios, which subjected her to a sustained attack of 41 depth charges. Forced down to 500 feet and then driven to the surface by hull damage, Splendid came under gunfire that killed 18 of her crew before she was scuttled to prevent capture.

The remaining 30 men survived to become prisoners of war, and Lieutenant Commander McGeoch, who had lost an eye in the action, later escaped from captivity and made his way home via Switzerland, France and Spain, a hard-won survival story that closed out a truly remarkable patrol record.