HMS Starfish (19S): A Drill Error Off Heligoland

The Build: Chatham

HMS Starfish was built at Chatham Royal Dockyard, ordered on 16 March 1931, laid down on 29 September 1931, launched on 14 March 1933 and commissioned on 27 October 1933, a first-batch S-class submarine designed for operations in the cold, congested waters of the North Sea and off Norway.

A Quiet Start to the War

Under Lieutenant Thomas Anthony Turner, Starfish carried out five war patrols between August 1939 and January 1940 southwest of Norway, northwest of Bergen and across the North Sea, without significant contact with the enemy, the kind of watchful, uneventful work that made up so much of a submarine's war even when nothing happened.

A Costly Misfire

On her sixth patrol, off Heligoland Bight on 9 January 1940, Starfish located and attacked the German minesweeper M 7, only for her torpedoes to remain stuck in their tubes owing to a drill error at the critical moment. A second attempt was thwarted when her hydroplanes jammed, forcing her to settle on the seabed for emergency repairs while M 7 hunted overhead.

Hunted to the Surface

M 7 began a sustained depth-charge attack at 10:50 that morning, and by early evening the situation aboard Starfish had become remarkably dangerous, with flooding in the engine room crankcases and the starboard main motor bearings. Her commander gave the order to surface at 18:20, and the submarine sank shortly afterwards at approximately 19:32 in the North Sea.

All 48 of her crew survived and were taken prisoner, a fortunate outcome given how close the attack had come to a far worse ending, while M 7's commander, Heinrich Timm, received the Iron Cross Second Class and promotion for the sinking.