As I feel like most submarine talk during both world wars focus on the German U-boats I would to share today some facts about their British counterparts and just how dangerous a job it really was.

A staggering 42% of submarines deployed in the Mediterranean were lost. Of 57 boats deployed in 1939, just 2 were still active in 1945.

Of 206 boats employed in total, 74 did not return from patrols, with 46 being sunk in the Mediterranean. There were 3383 men mobilised in 1939, by the end of 1940, 851 were dead and 115 were POWs. This equates to 28% of those serving.

About 3100 men were killed in total, being roughly a third of the total of 9316 in the service in March 1945 with 425 captured. The Navy general service casualty figures were 7.6%, whilst the submarine branch comes in at 38%.

Compare this to the defeated German Unterseeboot losses - 785 out of 1205 boats were sunk and a whopping 28,000 out of 39,000 were killed. America lost 52 boats out of 288 deployed against Japan in the pacific, with casualty rates at 13% of personnel in the service.

Those who were there at the beginning of the war were highly unlikely to see the end of it, and those joining towards the end were relatively safe, with casualties coming in at 3% in 44-45. Those who did survive were more often than not both mentally and physically scarred.

Many would suffer from reoccurring nightmares from the experiences they had gone through, but remained deeply proud in the duties they had carried out for the #SeniorService #RoyalNavy #Submarines

Fritz Bayerlein, Rommel’s Chief of Staff in the Afrika Korps, blamed British submarines for the failure of not driving onto Egypt and beyond. Submarines sank 44% of Italian large ships, and were responsible for 43% of the total tonnage.

I hope you enjoyed this thread and thank you for reading!