HMS Tiptoe (P332): Named Personally by Winston Churchill

Constructed at Barrow, Named by the Prime Minister

HMS Tiptoe was built by Vickers-Armstrongs at Barrow-in-Furness, laid down on 10 November 1942 and launched on 25 February 1944. She holds a particularly unusual distinction: she was one of only two Royal Navy vessels ever named personally by Winston Churchill.

She departed her builders' yard on 10 June 1944, arrived at Holy Loch the next day, and was commissioned on 12 June.

Late to the Far East

After completing training, Tiptoe deployed to Trincomalee in Ceylon, arriving on 1 March 1945. Her first patrol, a reconnaissance off Burma and the Andaman Islands, passed largely without incident, but her second, in May and June 1945, brought sinkings of Japanese coasters and, on 1 June 1945, the merchant vessel Tobi Maru, along with depth-charge damage of her own.

Her third patrol, in July and August 1945, saw her working alongside HMS Trump to destroy further small Japanese vessels, including an 800-ton coastal tanker in the Sunda Strait.

A Surprisingly Glamorous Peacetime

Tiptoe's postwar career took a colourful turn. She took part in a Royal Fleet review in 1947 attended by King George VI, demonstrating diving, surfacing and gunnery.

She featured in the 1950 film Morning Departure, itself inspired by the Thetis disaster of a decade earlier, and in 1952 the celebrated ballerina Moira Shearer presented her crew with a pair of ballet shoes, an eccentric but fondly remembered gift.

She also took part in submarine escape trials off Malta in 1962.

A Run of Bumps and a Long Retirement

Tiptoe's later years included a 1955 collision in Tromso harbour, running aground in the Firth of Clyde in 1964, and a collision with HMS Yarmouth in 1965, a submarine that seemed to attract minor mishaps the way others attracted decorations.

She was finally decommissioned on 29 August 1969, by which point she was the last T-class submarine still in active service, and was laid up at Portsmouth before being sold in 1971 and broken up there in 1975, with her anchor preserved today at Blyth in Northumberland.