HMS Sterlet (N22): Lost in the Skagerrak After Sinking a Gunnery Ship

Laid Down at Chatham

HMS Sterlet was built at Chatham Dockyard, ordered on 2 March 1936, laid down on 14 July 1936, launched on 22 September 1937 and commissioned on 6 April 1938, an S-class submarine that would spend her brief war under the command of Lieutenant Commander Gerard Henry Stacpoole Haward.

Six Patrols in the North Sea

Sterlet completed six war patrols between September 1939 and March 1940, operating chiefly in the North Sea and off Norway, before departing Harwich on 1 April 1940 for her seventh patrol, ordered to watch the western coast of Denmark and the entrance to the Skagerrak, waters that would soon become extremely dangerous as the German invasion of Norway loomed.

Sinking the Brummer

At 23:06 on 15 April 1940, Sterlet sank the German gunnery training ship Brummer in the Skagerrak, her torpedo striking the bow so effectively that it sheared clean off, a sharp and decisive success. She is also believed to have attacked a German convoy on 18 April, though this action was never officially reported back to base.

Lost Without Trace

HMS Sterlet's last confirmed signal, reporting an unsuccessful attack on a convoy of three merchant ships and a destroyer west of the Skaw, was received on 12 April 1940, and she is believed to have been sunk on or around 18 April 1940 in the Skagerrak south of Larvik, Norway, most likely by the German anti-submarine trawlers UJ 125, UJ 126 and UJ 128, though a mine cannot be ruled out as an alternative cause.

Her entire crew was lost, their exact fate never conclusively established, a quiet and uncertain end for a submarine that had just delivered one of the sharper blows of the young war.