HMS Tiptoe (pennant number P332) was a British submarine of the third group of the T class. She was built by Vickers Armstrong, Barrow, and launched on 25 February 1944. She was one of two submarines named by Winston Churchill, and so far has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to be named Tiptoe. In 1955 she was involved in a collision with a coastal steamer whilst in Tromsø harbour. She was involved in escape trials off Malta in 1962, and the commanding officer was reprimanded in 1964 following an incident in the Firth of Clyde where she was run aground, and again in 1965 when she collided with . Although originally named for the ability to sneak up on someone undetected, she maintained several links with ballet, including the Royal Ballet and ballet dancer Moira Shearer. She was scrapped at Portsmouth in 1975, while her anchor is on display in Blyth, Northumberland.
Design and description
HMS Tiptoe was one of the group three of T-class submarines. She was named by Winston Churchill, with the intention to imply that it could approach the enemy silently as if on tiptoe, although the Royal Navy naming committee was against the name, stating that "it was derogatory to one of His Majesty's ships", but the Prime Minister had his way. The only other Royal Navy vessel to be named by Churchill was .
She was part of the second batch of the third group to be ordered, in 1941. She was one of a number of boats which had an all-welded hull which increased diving depth to , an increase of . The torpedo armament was the same as the earlier group two, although by the time group three was coming into service it was realised that external torpedo tubes had major problems and affected the streamlining of the boats; the external tubes were abandoned in the following s. Because of expected use in tropical climates, boats of group three were equipped with freon blowers in order to deal with the increased temperatures.
She was built by Vickers Armstrong and was laid down at their shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness on 10 November 1942 whilst still known as P332. Following her launch on 25 February 1944, she departed the builders yard on 10 June 1944, arriving at Holy Loch on the following day, where she was commissioned on 12 June.
Service
Second World War
After completing training on 10 September, she returned to Barrow in order to correct some defects. Between 5 October and 12 January 1944, she was equipped with new radar equipment and other equipment to prepare her for deployment in the Far East. She arrived in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka on 1 March 1945 prior to her first war patrol. En route from Britain, she had stopped at Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said and Ismailia in Egypt and Aden, Yemen.
Her first patrol centred around the west coast of Burma and the Andaman Islands before heading onto Fremantle, Australia, and was uneventful. She departed Australia for her second patrol on 6 May with orders to patrol the Flores Sea. On 15 May, she sank a Japanese coaster of around 100 tons with gunfire near Dompo Bay, Sumbawa. The following day she sank another Japanese coaster with gunfire, this time around 200 tons, in Sepeh harbour. On 1 June, she approached and sank the Japanese merchant cargo ship Tobi Maru near Matasiri, one of the Laut Kecil Islands. Tiptoe was damaged during the attack as the cargo ship was about to rendezvous with an escort. The escort launched thirteen depth charges, putting all of Tiptoes torpedo tubes out of action and flooded her sonar equipment. She returned to Fremantle on 17 June, and remained there undergoing repairs until 16 July when she left on her third patrol in the Sunda Strait along with her sister .
On 31 July she attacked two small Japanese vessels, but broke off the attack when an aircraft was sighted. On 2 August, Tiptoe and Trump together destroyed two small vessels totalling 600 tons with gunfire. On 3 August, she carried out a torpedo attack against the Japanese army cargo vessel Tencho Maru whilst it was in a convoy defended by a patrol boat. The final action of Tiptoes last war patrol was on 9 August, when together with Trump, they destroyed an 800-ton coastal tanker in the northern part of the Sunda Strait. She returned to Fremantle on 21 August 1945.
Post war
During the royal inspection of the Home Fleet in 1947 by George VI, Tiptoe demonstrated diving and surfacing, along with the firing of her deck gun. In November of the same year, she was part of a group of seven submarines with destroyer to take part in anti–submarine training over the course of two weeks.