HMS Unruly

HMS Unruly was a Royal Navy U-class submarine built by Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Unruly.

HMS Unruly coming in from patrol at Algiers
History
United Kingdom
Name	HMS Unruly
Builder	Vickers Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness
Laid down	19 November 1941
Launched	28 July 1942
Commissioned	3 November 1942
Identification	Pennant number P49
Fate	Scrapped February 1946
General characteristics
Class and type	U-class submarine
Displacement	Surfaced - 540 tons standard, 630 tons full load Submerged - 730 tons
Length	58.22 m (191.0 ft)
Beam	4.9 m (16 ft)
Draught	4.62 m (15 ft 2 in)
Propulsion	2 shaft diesel-electric 2 Paxman Ricardo diesel generators + electric motors 615 hp (459 kW) / 825 hp (615 kW)
Speed	11.25 knots (20.84 km/h; 12.95 mph) max surfaced 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) max submerged
Complement	27-31
Armament	4 bow internal 21 inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes - 8 - 10 torpedoes 1 × 3-inch (76 mm) gun

Career

Unruly spent most of her eventful wartime career in the Mediterranean, apart from a period on convoy escort duty off the North Cape. Whilst serving in the Mediterranean, she sank the French merchant St Lucien, the Italian merchant Valentino Coda, twelve sailing vessels, including the Greek Aghios Giorgios, and the German minelayer Bulgaria. Bulgaria was loaded with supplies for the island of Kos. Unruly missed the minelayer Drache the same day. She spotted Drache several days later, but again failed to sink her.

Unruly also damaged the Italian tanker Cesco, and the Italian merchant Nicolo Tommaseo. The damaged Nicolo Tommaseo was later sunk by Allied aircraft. Unruly also launched failed attacks on the German merchants Erpel and Pelikan, and an unidentified Spanish merchant.

One of her most significant actions however, was the sinking of the Acciaio during the Allied invasion of Sicily. She was attacked with four torpedoes, at least one of which hit the Italian submarine, which sank her with the loss of all 46 of her crew. The crew of Unruly did not actually see the results of the attack, and initially believed they had missed and their target had escaped.

Unruly survived the war and was scrapped in February 1946 by Thos. W. Ward in Inverkeithing.^[1]

Citations

1. "Unruly (P49)". rnsubs.co.uk. Retrieved 1 August 2021.

References

• "HMS Unruly (P 49)". uboat.net.
• "Universal to Untamed". British submarines of World War II. Archived from the original on 11 July 2007.
• "R.Smg. ACCIAIO". Sinking of the Acciaio. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007.
• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8.
• 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.