British T class submarine HMS Triumph (N18) underway, circa 1940. IWM FL 5477
HM Submarine Triumph (N 18), a Royal Navy T class boat, was ordered from Vickers in 1936 just after Hitler ordered the Rhineland reoccupied, launched in early 1938 as his forces made ready to roll into Austria for the Anschluss, and commissioned in early 1939 as the Czechoslovakia crisis was coming to an end following that country disappearing from the map.
Beginning her first war patrol off Norway the day Germany and Britain opened hostilities, Triumph would go missing while on her 21st war patrol in January 1942 while conducting special operations off Axis-occupied Greece.
She never made it back to Alexandria and her skipper, Lt. John Symons Huddart, two SOE commandos hitching a ride, and his crew of 6 officers and 55 ratings were marked lost with HMS Triumph on 23 January.
Well, it looks like this mystery has been solved by Greek wreck diver Kostas Thoctarides, with a wreck found at a 203m depth in the Aegean Sea.
His group, ROV Services, has extensively documented the wreck verifying the following:
- 84.28 meters long
- A maximum width of 7.77 meters.
- The tropid depth at periscopic depth was 34 feet (10.36 meters).
- The TRIUMPH was the only of its T Class without external primary torpedo tubes, as they were removed during repairs in 1940 following an impact into a mine.
Of note, the Royal Navy lost 79 commissioned submarines during WWII, compared to the 52 lost by the U.S. Navy. This figure does not include such special operation vessels as the seven X craft, 18 chariots, and 5 Welmans.