HMS Tempest (N86): A Six-Hour Hunt in the Gulf of Taranto

Built at Birkenhead

HMS Tempest was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, launched in June 1941 and commissioned on 6 December 1941, a T-class submarine of 1,090 tons surfaced displacement, armed with eleven torpedo tubes and a 4-inch deck gun, carrying a complement of 61 men and assigned to the 1st Flotilla operating out of Alexandria.

A Fateful Encounter

On 13 February 1942, during only her second war patrol, Tempest encountered the Italian torpedo boat Circe, commanded by Capitano di Corvetta Stefanino Palmas, while Circe was escorting the merchant vessel Bosforo towards Taranto. Under her commanding officer, the Australian-born career Royal Navy officer Lieutenant Commander Cavaye, Tempest attempted a surface attack, likely underestimating the danger Circe posed.

When the Italian vessel turned to ram, Tempest crash-dived, but the first depth charges struck as she was still descending, at around 03:22.

A Long, Grim Hunt

What followed was a sustained six-and-a-half-hour hunt, during which Palmas expended his depth charges methodically until, with his very last pattern, he finally damaged Tempest badly enough to force her to the surface roughly 1,000 metres from Circe, a remarkably relentless piece of anti-submarine work by any measure.

A Measure of Humanity Amid Loss

Of the 62 men aboard Tempest, only 23 survived, the remainder killed by Circe's gunfire or lost to the cold Mediterranean waters, a heavy toll that deserves to be remembered with full seriousness.

What has been separately and consistently recorded, however, is that Palmas treated the survivors he recovered with genuine humanity, providing food, hot drinks and clothing before delivering them to the Italian mainland, a small note of decency in an otherwise sombre and costly episode of the war at sea.