He Was Too Colour Blind to Join the Navy. He Became Its Greatest Submarine Commander.
WW2 Dusty Archives
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He was colour blind — a condition that should have kept him out of the Royal Navy entirely. He was shy, modest, and so unremarkable as a young officer that his superiors privately doubted he'd ever amount to much.
Malcolm Wanklyn became the most successful Allied submarine commander of the Second World War.
Given command of HMS Upholder in 1941, Wanklyn took her to Malta and the 10th Submarine Flotilla — the "Fighting Tenth" — tasked with strangling Rommel's supply lines across the Mediterranean. His early patrols missed. Then, in April 1941, something changed. Over the next year he sank an Italian troopship in an attack that earned him the first Victoria Cross ever awarded to the Royal Navy Submarine Service — fired with broken sonar, in failing light, while a destroyer bore down to ram him. He sank two 19,000-ton troopships in a single night. He sank two enemy submarines. He survived depth charge attacks that should have ended him a dozen times over.
By April 1942, HMS Upholder had completed 24 war patrols and was due home for refit. She sailed on her 25th on April 6 — and never came back.
What happened to her remains genuinely unresolved. An Italian torpedo boat. A mine. German aircraft. Historians still argue about it today. Wanklyn and all 31 of his crew were lost, and the Royal Navy never confirmed exactly how.
This is the full story of the most decorated, most successful, and least self-promoting submarine commander Britain produced in the entire war.
sources:
• Jim Allaway, Hero of the Upholder (1991)
• First VC awarded to the Royal Navy Submarine Service
• 10th Submarine Flotilla, Malta — "The Fighting Tenth"
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He Was Too Colour Blind to Join the Navy. He Became Its Greatest Submarine Commander.
WW2 Dusty Archives
1,198 views
He was colour blind — a condition that should have kept him out of the Royal Navy entirely. He was shy, modest, and so unremarkable as a young officer that his superiors privately doubted he'd ever amount to much.
Malcolm Wanklyn became the most successful Allied submarine commander of the Second World War.
Given command of HMS Upholder in 1941, Wanklyn took her to Malta and the 10th Submarine Flotilla — the "Fighting Tenth" — tasked with strangling Rommel's supply lines across the Mediterranean. His early patrols missed. Then, in April 1941, something changed. Over the next year he sank an Italian troopship in an attack that earned him the first Victoria Cross ever awarded to the Royal Navy Submarine Service — fired with broken sonar, in failing light, while a destroyer bore down to ram him. He sank two 19,000-ton troopships in a single night. He sank two enemy submarines. He survived depth charge attacks that should have ended him a dozen times over.
By April 1942, HMS Upholder had completed 24 war patrols and was due home for refit. She sailed on her 25th on April 6 — and never came back.
What happened to her remains genuinely unresolved. An Italian torpedo boat. A mine. German aircraft. Historians still argue about it today. Wanklyn and all 31 of his crew were lost, and the Royal Navy never confirmed exactly how.
This is the full story of the most decorated, most successful, and least self-promoting submarine commander Britain produced in the entire war.
sources:
• Jim Allaway, Hero of the Upholder (1991)
• First VC awarded to the Royal Navy Submarine Service
• 10th Submarine Flotilla, Malta — "The Fighting Tenth"