Submarine Memorial

A bright day but freezing cold.

I had read about the Scottish International Submarine Memorial on Facebook earlier in the week but had not previously known about it. It is rather tucked away in a place at the old docks only used by residents of new flats. (See map) It is a very simple design but very effective.

It seems that Dundee was the home port of the Royal Navy’s 2nd Submarine Flotilla between August and October 1939. From 18 April 1940 until the end of the Second World War, Dundee was the base of the 9th Submarine Flotilla, a unique international flotilla that included crews from Poland, the Netherlands, France and Norway after these countries fell under the Nazi heel. Russian submarine crews also operated from Dundee during the summer of 1944.
Dundee-based submarines patrolled the enemy-held coastline of mainland Europe, attacking enemy warships including the battle-cruiser Gneisenau and the cruiser Prinz Eugen  and ventured far inside the Arctic Circle to help protect convoys carrying war supplies to the Soviet Union.

The extra photo (best seen large) is of one of the memorials and is of the crew of HMS Thames which was reported overdue on 3 August 1940, and had probably struck a mine off Norway in late July or early August 1940.

Standing at the Memorial it was bitterly cold and reminded me of the kind of conditions which would have been faced in the North Sea and beyond by the shipping which was taking supplies to Russia during the war.