HMS/M Upholder

HMS/M Upholder (left), with HMS/M Urge at Malta in 1942. (While both were 'U' Class, this picture shows some of the obvious differences in development, particularly the removal of external tubes in Urge).

Lt Cdr David Wanklyn VC

Upholder, under the command of Lt. Cdr. Malcolm David Wanklyn, carried out 24 patrols in the Mediterranean, being lost on her 25th. It would have been her last before being sent home.

Upholder had obtained her first score on her first patrol when she hit or damaged an 8000-ton supply ship and on 25 April 41 she sank the 5428-ton Antonietta Lauro.

David Wanklyn was the first submarine officer to win the Victoria Cross during World War Two. It was awarded for an incident during his seventh patrol when, on 24th May 1941, he attacked a strongly escorted troop convoy. It was carried out in failing light and was made at periscope depth throughout, the Upholder's listening gear being out of action and thus preventing her from going deep and closing the convoy by steering towards the sounds of propellers.

As Wanklyn approached on his attack course, the Upholder was sighted by one of the escorting destroyers, which turned at high speed and tried to ram. Wanklyn succeeded in dodging the oncoming destroyer without going deep and, as his periscope sights came on, fired at the largest transport. His torpedoes ran true and sank her. She was the Italian liner Conte Rosso, 18,000 tons.

As the Upholder fired her torpedoes, she went deep in an effort to evade the inevitable counter-attack from the destroyers. During the next 20 minutes, 37 depth charges were dropped near her, but with great coolness and skill her captain brought the Upholder clear of the enemy and safely back to harbour.

LtCdr David Wanklyn, of HMS Upholder, receiving the congratulations of his First Lieutenant on his award of the Victoria Cross.

Shortly afterwards, Wanklyn intercepted another convoy of five heavily laden supply ships, escorted by four destroyers. In spite of continuous zigzags by the convoy, the Upholder was brought to a good firing position and two torpedoes sank a German Fels class liner. A third torpedo hit a 7,500 ton German Burgenland class ship, damaging her severely. The remainder of the convoy turned back with three of the four destroyers, but the damaged ship set a course for Sfax, the nearest port. She was not allowed to reach it. The Upholder reloaded her tubes and, closing in again, hit her with two more torpedoes and sent her to the bottom.

Again, in September of the same year, the Upholder was in luck. This time her target was a fast troop convoy, which had been sighted and reported from the air. Three other submarines, Upright, Ursula and Unbeaten, were spread on the probable line of advance, but it was the Upholder who drew first blood. Closing at night at full speed on the surface she managed to get into a good firing position and her torpedoes hit two of the three ships in convoy, the liners Neptunia and Oceania, each of 19,500 tons and each full of reinforcements for North Africa. The third ship, the Vulcania of 24,500 tons, escaped southward.

The dawn showed one of the two vessels hit still afloat, though with a heavy list. Wanklyn took Upholder in to finish her off, but was forced to go deep by a destroyer just before his sights came on. He dived under the transport and, coming up to periscope depth on the other side, turned and hit her with two more torpedoes, sending her to join her sister on the bottom. Meanwhile the Vulcania, making for Tripoli, had come within range of the Ursula, who neatly torpedoed and sank her.

The Upholder had carried out twenty-four patrols by April 1942. For her last sortie before she went home for refit she was sent to patrol the western approaches to Tripoli as usual, in company with Lt. Cdr. Tomkinson's Urge, to watch in particular for two large merchantmen which had discharged their cargoes at Tripoli and would be sailing to the westward. Then aerial recce reported an important convoy approaching Tripoli. To watch for the latter the submarines were ordered to a position north-east of Tripoli in deep water.

At 0651 on the 16th April, Tomkinson heard the distant explosion of a depth charge, which was repeated at regular intervals; he took this to be the normal Italian practice of dropping a depth charge at intervals while escorting a convoy. These isolated warning shots were suddenly replaced by an outburst of continuous depth-charging, which did not stop until 1800. Had the regular depth-charging signified the presence of the convoy which they were looking out for, Wanklyn would certainly have attacked it, as Upholder had her full quota of eight torpedoes.

The noise of the battle had been near Upholder's billet. The sporadic depth-charging continued until dusk, and there was further heavy depth-charging in the afternoon.

Upholder did not reply to Tomkinson's signals, and she was never heard from again. On 18th April, Italian radio, at 1300 and again at 1400, mentioned the name of the captain of a torpedo boat who had sunk a submarine on the 16th in the central Mediterranean, and it became finally clear that Upholder would lie forever on the bottom of the shallow sea along with the 97,000 tons' worth of ships which she herself had sunk.

Lt Cdr Wanklyn (centre) with some of Upholder's crew - Malta 1942.

I've been delighted to receive a picture of a scroll presented to the mother of the rating standing fifth from right in the picture - AB James Smith. This was sent to me by AB Smith's nephew, John Cruces. AB Smith was lost on Upholder's 25th patrol.

The Upholder never returned from her 25th patrol. In reporting her loss to the Admiralty, the captain of her flotilla, Captain GWG Simpson, wrote:

"I hope it is not out of place to take this opportunity of paying some slight tribute to Lt Cdr David Wanklyn, VC, DSO, and his company in HMS Upholder, whose brilliant record will always shine in the records of British submarines and in the history of the Mediterranean Fleet in this war. The Upholder would have returned to the United Kingdom on completion of this patrol. She had carried out 23 successful attacks against the enemy, and the targets attacked had almost always been heavily escorted, or else enemy war vessels."

When, on 22nd August 1942, the Admiralty announced her loss, the communique carried with it an unusual tribute to Wanklyn and his men:

"It is seldom proper for the Their Lordships to draw distinction between different services rendered in the course of naval duty, but they take this opportunity of singling out those of HMS Upholder, under the command of Lt.Cdr. David Wanklyn, for special mention. She was long employed against enemy communications in the Central Mediterranean, and she became noted for the uniformly high quality of her services in that arduous and dangerous duty. Such was the standard of skill and daring set by Lt.Cdr. Wanklyn and the officers and men under him that they and shier ship became an inspiration not only to their own flotilla, but to the Fleet of which it was a part and to Malta, where for so long HMS Upholder was based. The ship and her company are gone, but the example and inspiration remain."

In all, Upholder was credited with having sunk 97,000 tons of enemy shipping, in addition to three U-boats and one destroyer.