Ebook355 pages4 hours
Thetis Down: The Slow Death of a Submarine
By Tony Booth
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this ebook
On 1 June 1939 His Majestys Submarine Thetis sank in Liverpool Bay while on her diving trials. Her loss is still the worst peacetime submarine disaster the Royal Navy has yet faced when ninety-nine men drowned or slowly suffocated during their last fifty hours of life.The disaster became an international media event, mainly because the trapped souls aboard were so near to being saved after they managed to raise her stern about 18 ft above sea level. Still the Royal Navy-led rescue operation failed to find the submarine for many hours, only to rescue four of all those trapped. Very little is known about what actually happened, as the only comprehensive book written on the subject was published in 1958.Many years have now passed since the Thetis and her men died, for which no one was held to be ultimately accountable. However, a great deal of unpublished information has come to light in archives throughout the United Kingdom and beyond. After four years of painstaking research Thetis; The Slow Death of a Submarine explores in minute detail a more rounded picture of what really happened before, during and after her tragic loss. In doing so Tony Booths book also takes a fresh look at culpability and explores some of the alleged conspiracy theories that surrounded her demise.The result is the first definitive account what happened to HMS Thetis and her men a fitting tribute, as the seventieth anniversary of her loss will be on 1 June 2009.
Read more from Tony Booth
Cox's Navy: Salvaging the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow, 1924–1931 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Admiralty Salvage in Peace and War 1906–2006: Grope, Grub and Tremble Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Thetis Down
Related ebooks
Smoke and Mirrors: Q-Ships against the U-Boats in the First World War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaptains Of War: They Fought Beneath the Sea Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5British Submarines at War: 1914-1918 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tattie Lads: The untold story of the Rescue Tug Service in two world wars and its battles to save cargoes, ships and lives Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBattle of the Atlantic: Gauntlet to Victory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Captain Class Frigates in the Second World War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Few Survived: A History of Submarine Disasters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sea Wolves: Savage Submarine Commanders of WW2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Quiet Heroes: British Merchant Seamen at War, 1939–1945 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hellcats of the Sea: Operation Barney and the Mission to the Sea of Japan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSplinter Fleet: The Wooden Subchasers of World War II Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Zoomies, Subs, and Zeros (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Story Of Our Submarines Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Submarine Spadefish In World War 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUp Periscope! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Ordinary War: The Eventful Career of U-604 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Atlantic Linchpin: The Azores in Two World Wars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Execution for Duty: The Life, Trial & Murder of a U-boat Captain Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fatal Dive: Solving the World War II Mystery of the USS Grunion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5K Boat Catastrophe: Eight Ships & Five Collisions: The Full Story of the 'Battle' of the Isle of May Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fate of U-1055: The Other Side of Time, #0 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsU - 19: How a Single Submarine Could Have Changed the Course of Wwi Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hunters And The Hunted Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Battle Against The U-Boat In The American Theater [Illustrated Edition] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder Pressure: The Final Voyage of Submarine S-Five Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pacific Counterblow - The 11th Bombardment Group And The 67th Fighter Squadron In The Battle For Guadalcanal: [Illustrated Edition] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTorpedoes Away!: Our Submarine Navy in the Pacific Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoyage Of The Deutschland, The First Merchant Submarine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBattle For The Solomons [Illustrated Edition] Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pathfinder: Recollections of Those Who Served 1942-1971 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Wars & Military For You
Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sun Tzu's The Art of War: Bilingual Edition Complete Chinese and English Text Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Kingdom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Daily Creativity Journal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Making of the Atomic Bomb Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Art of War: The Definitive Interpretation of Sun Tzu's Classic Book of Strategy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unacknowledged: An Expose of the World's Greatest Secret Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of War & Other Classics of Eastern Philosophy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mein Kampf: The Original, Accurate, and Complete English Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unit 731: Testimony Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Thetis Down
Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
3/5
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I've had this book sitting on my "to be read" pile for awhile and to a certain degree I wish that I had left it there, as though the story is inherently gripping at a certain point I just don't trust this book. I was on edge from the start due to a rather bombastic forward by Len Deighton and there are just little things that put me off, like referring to the destroyer HMS "Brazen" as being coal-fired. The main thing is that there is a legend that the crew of HMS "Thetis" were sacrificed so that the vessel could be saved, as cutting into her pressure hull would destroy her structural integrity as a warship. The author appears to have bought into this myth and there are hints of evidence that this sort of intervention was a step that the Admiralty was prepared to take only as the last course of action, and too much time was allowed to pass while it was still a viable option.So why was "Thetis" lost on her first submergence test and why was it so hard to assign responsibility? Much of it comes down to many hands make light work and if no one agent can be blamed than no one is responsible. The shipyard Cammell Laird deserves blame for slipshod manufacturing practices and the RN really doesn't seem like it was trying very hard to hold the firm accountable. The RN and the yard probably also share blame for bad design elements. The RN had bad doctrine in regards to a situation like this and didn't even practice what doctrine they did have particularly well. Finally, there is an overarching sense of slack attitudes and arrogance that wouldn't have been tolerated by an Ernest King or a Hyman Rickover. Never mind the small matter that in the Summer of '39 war was in the air and the push was on to get ships into commission and one suspects that corners were being cut due to the sense of emergency; just think of the recent American incidents at sea driven by pushing too few ships and personnel too hard. This also begs the question that if submarine rescue in the RN was largely a matter of self-help why didn't the responsible officers start getting people off "Thetis" in a more reasonable time frame rather than waiting until it was almost too late? Again, slack attitudes all around.That still leaves the probably unanswerable question of why the external torpedo door that flooded the vessel was left open in the first place. Booth does note that the civilian contractors aboard and the RN had different doctrine on how torpedo tubes were supposed to be used as part of ballast system and in a situation of ambiguous authority it appears that one hand did not know what the other was doing. But that would mean blaming the trials crew for their own demise and no one wanted to go there, at least in public. Also, if the hydraulic systems for the sub's control surfaces were not properly set up why should the hydraulics for the torpedo tubes not also be suspect. Booth ends on a confidential quote from the eminent government official John Colville that implies there are documents that HM's government has not yet released that would more firmly place responsibility on the Admiralty, so that the author is not quite willing to say that there was nothing to the mythology.
Book preview
Thetis Down - Tony Booth
Y\e book_preview_excerpt.html }K$ǑU|6#Hd
Y=T (!p?XYs'{d(#+3LM?OZ~r|OiH/_>Ԥۿ|SWz|ah/סp^~α.77&uCziM4G?m_5XXS
b]v>ՏT}GtSBGk^}܇MڶjCW7ݡ:imųԴT}ɡ X\bչ71QnꋘC+1>Dn/M8SƄ}bݩ/!!}bmſPϩlgK8qMyu
KljF<]CN^'|WeF1Lj\/W[ jmڥ0GlXڎkApc§
l-v?2
M[nvŮm]_Kl;9L8[%C߇K>`0Ѿ xxΠoDr.}J-ywaPt.[GwMuR!>PfC1A
)Uuٳg7]5S.} me_b5*UթÒ')yӹRiWdž?o#̦w+y;*uPqPK\'wxoÏE9:%wxtuw
| "v<49ڟ7"[tg)v KH76G}N[<zM ?x>={9?6E7(3wchɟs=.!I!<@/85)D9 N@I1ы81&)PE67*kts/C b妸C@8p~$9cM5w~_M1"?$'gv_V:^9GO_NcN|Y`j<;APo=zVh)7RN': r19Lfb,ByaKz(p '^i(N0:\cw7