Submarine escape: A WWII survival tale from Kefalonia

BBC ^ | December 1, 2011 | Tim Clayton

[decimon]

Seventy years ago, off the Greek island of Kefalonia, the British submarine HMS Perseus hit an Italian mine, sparking one of the greatest and most controversial survival stories of World War II.

The clear waters of the Mediterranean were a death trap for British submarines in World War II.

Some were bombed from the air, others hunted with sonar and depth charges, and many, perhaps most, collided with mines.

Two fifths of the subs that ventured into the Mediterranean were sunk and when a submarine sank it became a communal coffin - everyone on board died. That was the rule.

In fact, during the whole of the war there were only four escapes from stricken British submarines. And the most remarkable of these took place on 6 December 1941, when HMS Perseus plummeted to the seabed.

[Twotone]

Cool story! My sweetie was a Polaris missile tech on subs & he’s described the escape protocols they were trained to do. IIRC, our guys can come up from 400 feet - but I don’t remember if that was an actual event or just an estimate.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Wow, this is an amazing story, well worth the read. Thanks for posting it!

[yarddog]

That is the same island on which the fictitious, but I thought, sort of realistic movie, “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” was set.

That island is also sometimes thought to be the real Ithaca of the Iliad and Odyssey instead of the one now named Ithaca.

[Natufian]

Amazing. My uncle Ritchie on the British side of my family served on RN subs in the mediterranean during WWII. Sadly, he passed away about 3 years ago but he had some fantastic tales to tell us on the few occasions that we met. I think you needed to be a special breed to serve in those things regardless of what side you were on.

[RitchieAprile]

the massacre did happen. whether a CPT Corelli or a mandolin were involved is impossible to say..

[GreenLanternCorps]

Cool, which boats was he on?

[yarddog]

That is interesting, I didn’t know that was basically a true story or maybe sort of like a historical novel.

I thought Penelope Cruz made a very convincing Greek Girl, an unusually pretty one at that.

[Natufian]

I’m not sure which boats but I know he was deployed to Gibraltar/Malta between ‘41 and ‘43. In ‘43, he was redeployed to the North Sea. He was invalided out that same year after he lost 3 fingers in an accident. He was a very happy man but felt guilty about leaving his shipmates.

He talked a lot about the sheer terror of being depth charged, especially when they lost electrical power and they could hear rivets pinging in the darkness but what pissed him most was a bunch of Italian survivors that they’d surfaced to take on wouldn’t stop complaining about the stench and hygiene of the boat. More than one jack tar wanted to push them out via the tubes. LOL!

[Oatka]

Back in the early ‘50s we had to go through a Momsen Lung drill at the New London sub base. The tower was over 100 feet high and we had to simulate escaping from that depth.

As a 17-year-old, I thought the whole thing was cool - I remember looking up to the surface, which looked about the size of a silver dollar. Mermaids painted along the walls to entertain you as you rose, with a frogman keeping pace in case you got into trouble.

We were told the Germans did some “free escape” during the war - no Momsens at all - just hyperventilate, take a deep breath, and exit the boat. We did it from 25 feet, which I though was ridiculous. Had frogmen escort you even at that shallow depth as some guys panicked and held their breath, and risked rupturing their lungs from air expansion. We were told to make believe we were blowing through a straw and keep pace with the bubbles to relieve the compressed air pressure. On the surface, we had to stand at attention. That way if someone had breathing problems, he’d keel over pretty fast.

Thankfully, we never had to escape for real.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks decimon. Wow, nice one. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[decimon]

Wow, nice one.

Thanks.

Now what did you think of the story?