HMS Tuna (N94): Delivering the Cockleshell Heroes

Laid Down at Greenock

HMS Tuna was built by Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Greenock, launched on 10 May 1940 and commissioned on 1 August 1940, a T-class submarine that would go on to combine conventional anti-shipping patrols with two of the more celebrated special operations of the entire war.

A Beacon for the Vagsoy Raid

Across 21 war patrols in the Bay of Biscay and Norwegian waters, Tuna sank the captured Norwegian merchant vessel Tirranna on 22 September 1940, then carrying Allied prisoners, the German catapult ship Ostmark and the French tug Chassiron, and in December 1941 served as a navigational beacon guiding the commando raid on the Norwegian island of Vagsoy during Operation Archery, a role every bit as important as any torpedo attack.

The Cockleshell Heroes

Tuna's most famous mission came on 30 November 1942, when, under Lieutenant Commander Dick Raikes, she carried twelve Royal Marines commandos to the mouth of the Gironde estuary and launched them by canoe for Operation Frankton, the legendary raid on shipping in Bordeaux harbour that became known to history as the story of the Cockleshell Heroes.

Bad weather and enemy minefields delayed her arrival by a day, a small but genuine complication in an operation that demanded split-second timing, yet the mission went ahead regardless, becoming one of the most celebrated special operations raids of the entire war.

Sinking a U-Boat

Tuna added a clear-cut combat success to her record on 7 April 1943, sinking the German submarine U-644 in the Norwegian Sea, alongside unsuccessful attacks on U-302, the Italian submarine Brin, and two further unidentified submarines during her career.

The End of Her Service

HMS Tuna was decommissioned to reserve on 1 September 1945 and sold for scrap that December, broken up at Briton Ferry in Wales in June 1946, closing out the career of a submarine whose quiet insertion missions proved every bit as historically significant as the ships she sank.