HMS Swordfish (61S): The Wreck That Rewrote a Mystery

Chatham-Built

HMS Swordfish was built at Chatham Dockyard, ordered on 2 July 1930, laid down on 1 December 1930, launched on 10 November 1931 and commissioned on 28 November 1932, a first-batch S-class submarine of 730 tons surfaced displacement, armed with six 21-inch torpedo tubes and a 3-inch deck gun.

A War Full of Near Misses

Swordfish's twelve war patrols from September 1939 were marked by a properly striking run of scrapes that never quite proved fatal.

She was mistakenly targeted by her own sister boat HMS Sturgeon, which fired three torpedoes at her without effect, attacked German convoys in April 1940 without scoring a hit, narrowly avoided a drifting mine, and was bombed in error by an Allied Lockheed Hudson aircraft, a submarine that seemed to attract danger from every direction except, so far, a fatal one.

Lost Without a Trace

Swordfish departed Portsmouth on 7 November 1940 with 40 men aboard and failed to signal as scheduled. She was never heard from again, and the Admiralty declared her lost on 23 December 1940, with German destroyers long assumed to have been responsible, though no confirmed account of her final hours ever emerged.

A Wreck Found Four Decades Later

The true cause of her loss remained a mystery until July 1983, when local diver and museum founder Martin Woodward discovered her wreck south of the Isle of Wight in 46 metres of water, the first Second World War submarine wreck ever located.

The hull had been split into two sections just forward of the gun, and it is now believed she struck a mine, most likely while carrying out a trim dive shortly after sailing, a quiet and largely accidental end that had waited over forty years to be properly understood, and one that claimed all 40 of her crew.