As part of AUKUS, the Royal Navy is set to forward-deploy one of its precious seven nuclear attack submarines (SSN) to Freemantle from around 2027. Of course, this has all happened before.
Here we see two Royal Navy T class submarines in Freemantle, Australia in 1945, outboard of a light cruiser, while American submarines and a sub tender are off in the distance.
The closest T-boat, with her crew busy working on her 4-inch gun and loading supplies, has her name board out of view but the second is HM Submarine Thorough (P 324).
Clik here to view.
Via the State Library of WA
Commissioned at Vickers in March 1944, Thorough was posted to the Far East in July, conducting her first 5 war patrols from Trincomalee, then shifted to Freemantle in March 1945 along with the general move into the region by the British Pacific Fleet. It was from the Western Australian base that she conducted Patrols Nos. 6-8.
Clik here to view.
HMS Thorough (P324), a T-class submarine. The class was equipped with an impressive battery of 8 21-inch bow tubes (2 external) as well as two amidship tubes, with 17 torpedoes carried. However, Thourogh by far used her forward 4-inch mount, 20mm stern Oerlikon cannon, and a trio of .303 machine guns more.
In August 1945, in company with HMS Taciturn, which may be the second T-class boat in the picture, Thorough attacked Japanese shipping and shore targets off northern Bali, sinking a coaster and a sailing vessel with gunfire, bringing her wartime total to 40 “kills” all via surface gun actions.
She survived the war, completed the first circumnavigation by a RN submarine in 1957, and was decommissioned in 1962, scrapped at Dunston on Tyne.
