HMS Subtle (P251): Twice Firing at a Japanese Heavy Cruiser

Birkenhead-Built

HMS Subtle was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, laid down on 1 February 1943, launched on 27 January 1944 and commissioned on 16 April 1944 under Lieutenant Bruce John Bevis Andrew, who would remain her commanding officer through to November 1945.

Seven Patrols in the Far East

Subtle completed seven war patrols between June 1944 and August 1945, chiefly in the Andaman Sea and the Malacca Strait, sinking a Japanese coaster and six sailing vessels by demolition charge and gunfire between December 1944 and March 1945, and in October 1944 attacking a Japanese minesweeper and its escorting convoy with mixed results.

In July 1945 she also carried out a weather-reporting mission northwest of Sumatra, unglamorous but truly useful work for the wider Allied campaign.

Engaging the Haguro

Subtle's most notable moments came in May 1945, when she twice fired torpedoes at the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro, helping in the tracking and eventual sinking of the warship alongside her sister boat HMS Statesman, a coordinated effort between British submarines against one of the larger prizes still available to hunt in the closing months of the Pacific war.

A Long Peacetime Retirement

HMS Subtle returned to British waters in October 1945 and entered reserve, surviving the war intact before finally being sold off to be broken up at Charlestown in July 1959, bringing to a close a fifteen-year postwar existence for a boat whose war record had briefly put her in company with one of the Imperial Japanese Navy's larger warships.