Sir Julian Lewis

It was an inspired idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) to mark the 125th anniversary of the founding of the submarine service today, the eve of the anniversary of Armistice Day. In preparation I spent time happily reminiscing about my schooldays in the 1960s, when I devoured a large range of books about the history of the Royal Navy in general and of submarines in particular. In those days there were still people alive who had participated in the battles of the first and the second world wars, and many of them were writing books. I will begin with a quotation from one of those books: “When submarines first became units of the fighting fleets of the world in the early years of the twentieth century, they were unimpressive, unseaworthy craft equipped with an unreliable, low performance weapon. Those who manned them were, like the early aviators, looked on as harmless cranks. When the First World War broke out, they had not entirely lived down this reputation. Sea-power was still believed by the orthodox sailor to lie with the squadrons of stately battleships. But before that war was over Britain, at that time the world’s greatest naval power, had been brought to within sight of total defeat by the submarine in the hands of her enemies. At the same time British submarines, with fewer opportunities to show their potentialities, had dominated the Baltic Sea and held German sea-power at bay on behalf of Britain’s Russian ally. Submariners had thus joined the front rank of fighting seamen, though they still formed a group apart. In doing so they had revolutionized naval warfare.” The author of that preface to his book “Fighting Under the Sea” was Captain Donald Macintyre DSO and two bars, DSC. Together with Captain Johnnie Walker, he was one of the two most successful U-boat hunters of the second world war. In the 1960s, such people were writing up the lessons they had learned. It was a great opportunity for those of us studying such subjects to be in touch with them. Indeed, I have a letter from Captain Macintyre regretting the fact that I had been unable to obtain a copy of his first book “U-Boat Killer”, which describes his role in the battle of the Atlantic, and that he was unable to supply me with a copy because he himself had managed to pick up one only when the Boots library sold off stock. Today, with the computer revolution, a copy of “U-Boat Killer” can be obtained with a few taps of the keyboard. I commend it to those who are interested in the story of the other side of the submarine equation. The other matter to which I would like to draw attention in the limited time available is the question of submarine escape. Hazardous as the profession was, a great deal of inventiveness and ingenuity was put into the idea of how it might be possible to survive if something went terribly wrong. Captain W. O. Shelford was the Navy specialist in submarine escape during the second world war and the 1950s. He wrote a book called “Subsunk” that I also commend because it tells of the tragedies and the successes in trying to save life when something goes wrong. Let us remember that something terrible did go wrong shortly before the second world war. In 1939 in Liverpool bay the submarine HMS Thetis, on its maiden voyage with 103 people onboard because many of the people from the builders were taking part in what was supposed to be the first of its sea trials, sank due to a concatenation of circumstances that are almost unbelievable until read in the account of the disaster given in “The Admiralty Regrets” by Jim Warren and James Benson. Both those people, like Captain Macintyre, knew that of which they spoke. One had been a human charioteer in the second world war; the other had served in midget submarines. In that case, 103 people were trapped in a submarine. They managed to raise its stern above the surface of the water, yet only four people were able to escape. Subsequently, the submarine was raised and recommissioned as HMS Thunderbolt. It had a distinguished wartime career until, sadly, it was lost with all hands in the Mediterranean. On the credit side, in terms of looking at the price that had to be paid, were some of the achievements that the submarine service wrote into history. One of the most famous was the midget submarine attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in the Norwegian fjord, where it was hiding in 1943. On that occasion, three midget submarines penetrated and at least two of them managed to lay their charges beneath the hull of the battleship. When they were captured—some of the crew survived; some sadly did not—and taken aboard, they said nothing about the mighty explosion they knew was about to happen underneath them. That explosion disabled the battleship for a considerable length of time. One has to remember that they were very young men, but some of them went on to have distinguished careers. Two of the midget submarine commanders, Godfrey Place and Donald Cameron, were awarded the Victoria Cross. The third, Lieutenant Henty-Creer, was sadly not awarded the VC because his submarine was destroyed and it is not known whether they successfully laid their charges and were on the way out, or whether they were still trying to get in to lay them. I always feel there is an unfairness that the crew of the X5 did not get the same recognition as the commanders of the X6 and X7, who were awarded VCs. As I think Churchill once said, every medal “casts a shadow”. Lieutenant Godfrey Place went on to become a rear-admiral in charge of reserves. I am not allowed to display accessories while making a speech, but if anyone wants to see it, I still have the autograph of Rear-Admiral Place, as he then was, from when he visited Swansea to meet the reserves back in the 1960s. I hope hon. Members can see from my enthusiasm, if not the rather unstructured way in which I have made my remarks, that 60 years later, some of us are still inspired by the memory of what it was like to read about the extreme peril that very young men put themselves into—usually, if not always, as volunteers. So many of them did not live to tell the tale, but my goodness, what a glorious page in British naval history they wrote.