HMS Thorn (N11): A Highly Effective Boat, Lost Off Crete

Laid Down at Birkenhead

HMS Thorn was built by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead, laid down on 20 January 1940, launched in March 1941 and commissioned on 26 August 1941 under Lieutenant Commander Robert Galliano Norfolk, a T-class submarine that went on to compile an impressive record in the Mediterranean.

A Highly Productive War

Across eight war patrols between October 1941 and August 1942, Thorn sank the German tanker Campina on 30 December 1941, the Italian merchant Ninuccia on 28 January 1942, the Italian auxiliary patrol vessel AS 91, known as Ottavia, on 5 March 1942, and the Italian transport Monviso.

Her most notable success came on 30 January 1942, when she sank the Italian submarine Medusa, a significant kill against an enemy underwater adversary rather than the surface shipping that made up the bulk of most patrol reports.

Lost Off Southern Crete

Thorn departed Beirut on 21 July 1942 for a patrol near Tobruk, her eighth, and failed to return by her ordered date of 11 August 1942.

The most probable account holds that on 6 or 7 August she encountered the Italian torpedo boat Pegaso, then escorting the steamer Istria from Benghazi off southern Crete; Pegaso detected a sonar contact and carried out seven separate depth-charge attacks before losing contact, and it is believed this action accounted for Thorn's loss.

Her wreck has never been found, and until it is, the precise circumstances of her final hours cannot be confirmed with absolute certainty, a quiet uncertainty that still surrounds one of the more successful British submarines lost in the Mediterranean campaign.