Can you identify this mini sub?
Q My cousin has a photo of two Wrens having a picnic on the beach at Arromanches on one of their rest days in August 1944. With them are two men, one of them wearing a beret with a cap badge. Which regiment was this from? There are also two photos of what looks like a mini sub being repaired. Is there any way of identifying this craft? I had always thought that officers weren’t supposed to take personal cameras with them during active service.
Pete Stevens
A What interesting photos. The cap badge in the picture of the picnic is Royal Navy and the man an officer (he’s wearing a tie). His companion is an army officer, but I can’t tell either rank. The light clothing suggests a warm day, so August 1944 seems reasonable.
The submarine photos are different. British midget submarines operated off Normandy before D-Day, landing men to explore the beaches, and on D-Day itself guided the invasion inshore. They were X-Craft, which had no conning tower, a markedly sharper bow and were longer and broader than the submarine pictured. None was lost off Normandy, so this isn’t a recovered one.
The submarine is a Seehund (‘Seal’), a two-man craft, which only came into service with the Kriegsmarine at the very end of 1944. The circular contraption by the propeller could be moved to act as a rudder, and identifies the type. There’s a splendid website devoted to German midget submarines at bit.ly/midgetsubs. The Seehund section suggests that this is one of seven submarines beached after a fight with convoy escorts, off Zeebrugge, on 1 January 1945. This part of the Belgian coast was liberated in October 1944 and, as a major Channel port, it was presumably being cleared by the Navy and would have had a headquarters with staff from the Women’s Royal Naval Service. It had an important naval office.
The Seehund was a German secret weapon, and the recovery of an undamaged one was vitally important. It would have been salvaged almost immediately, so the date’s probably within days of 1 January. Cameras could not be taken into action, but I’m sure the officers would argue that this wasn’t action.
Phil Tomaselli