HMS Thorough

HMS Thorough
History
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Thorough
Builder	Vickers-Armstrongs, Barrow
Laid down	26 October 1942
Launched	30 October 1943
Commissioned	1 March 1944
Fate	Scrapped June 1962
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General characteristics
Class & type	British T class submarine
Displacement	1,290 tons surfaced 1,560 tons submerged
Length	276 ft 6 in (84.28 m)
Beam	25 ft 6 in (7.77 m)
Draught	12 ft 9 in (3.89 m) forward 14 ft 7 in (4.45 m) aft
Propulsion	Two shafts Twin diesel engines 2,500 hp (1.86 MW) each Twin electric motors 1,450 hp (1.08 MW) each
Speed	15.5 knots (28.7 km/h) surfaced 9 knots (20 km/h) submerged
Range	4,500 nautical miles at 11 knots (8,330 km at 20 km/h) surfaced
Test depth	300 ft (91 m) max
Complement	61
Armament	6 internal forward-facing 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes 2 external forward-facing torpedo tubes 2 external amidships rear-facing torpedo tubes 1 external rear-facing torpedo tubes 6 reload torpedoes QF 4 inch (100 mm) deck gun 3 anti aircraft machine guns

HMS Thorough was a British submarine of the third group of the T class. She was built as P324 by Vickers-Armstrongs, Barrow, and launched on 30 October 1943. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Thorough.

Service

Thorough served in the Far East for much of her wartime career, where she sank twenty seven Japanese sailing vessels, seven coasters, a small Japanese vessel, a Japanese barge, a small Japanese gunboat, a Japanese trawler, and the Malaysian sailing vessel Palange. In August 1945, in company with HMS Taciturn, she attacked Japanese shipping and shore targets off northern Bali. Thorough sank a Japanese coaster and a sailing vessel with gunfire.

On 16 December 1957 Thorough returned to HMS Dolphin, Portsmouth Dockyard, after completing the first circumnavigation by a submarine.^[1] While in Australian waters, on 2 August 1956, she rescued one of the four survivors of the sinking of the 'sixty-miler', Birchgrove Park.^[2][3]

She survived the war and continued in service with the Navy, finally being scrapped at Dunston on Tyne on 29 June 1962.^[4]

References

1. "Thorough (P324)". rnsubs.co.uk. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
2. "Michael McFadyen's Scuba Diving Web Site". www.michaelmcfadyenscuba.info. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
3. "8LIVES LOST AS SMALL COLLIER SINKS". Canberra Times. 3 August 1956. p. 1. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
4. HMS Thorough, Uboat.net

• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy from the 15th Century to the Present (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475.
• Hutchinson, Robert (2001). Jane's Submarines: War Beneath the Waves from 1776 to the Present Day. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-710558-8. OCLC 53783010.