Official version of sinking of wartime submarine sponsored by Bridgend is false, claims diver

Martin Shipton

A Belgian diver has reopened a dispute over the fate of a World War Two submarine sponsored by the town of Bridgend by denouncing the officially accepted version as false.

HMS Urge was a British U-class submarine built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness. She entered service in the Royal Navy in December 1940.

In 1941 there was a national “warship week” in the UK which raised money to meet the costs of providing military machinery and vehicles for the war. Bridgend contributed about £300,000 to the fund and the town adopted HMS Urge along with two other warships.

From 1941 to 1942 the submarine formed part of the 10th Submarine Flotilla based in Malta and spent most of her career operating in the Mediterranean, where she damaged and sank enemy warships and merchant vessels and undertook special operations.

Alexandria 

As the siege of Malta intensified, bombing of the base of the 10th Submarine Flotilla caused the difficult decision to withdraw it from Malta to set up a new base of operations at Alexandria in Egypt. On April 27 1942, Urge departed for Alexandria in Egypt, with 32 crew, 11 naval passengers and a war correspondent. She failed to arrive at Alexandria on May 6 1942, and was reported overdue on that day. Urge never did arrive and her exact fate was uncertain.

In 2015 a veteran Belgian diver, Jean-Pierre Misson, claimed to have discovered the submarine’s wreck off the coast of Libya, where he said it had been sunk by Italian warplanes during a secret mission.

Misson’s claims were contentious because they implied the Urge was off course when it sank, and that its commander may have disobeyed his orders.

In October 2019 it was announced that a maritime archaeology project (Project Spur) had discovered the wreck of the submarine off the coast of Malta.

In 2022 a memorial to those who lost their lives while serving in HMS Urge was unveiled at Fort St Elmo in Malta by the President of Malta and the British High Commissioner to Malta.

The unveiling formed part of a number of events to commemorate those lost, which included a wreath laying at sea and was attended by HMS Urge families and friends and the Royal Navy Submarine Service.

But Mr Misson, now 85 and living in Brussels, refuses to accept the official story, and has issued a statement alleging that it is false.

Falsification

In the statement he says: “The time has come for me to unequivocally state that the 2019 claim of University of Malta / Heritage Malta, to the effect that World War Two submarine HMS Urge was lost to a mine off Malta on April 27 1942 is a blatant falsification of the truth.

“My assertion is based on three lines of evidence:

Archival documents in British and Italian public records in the National Archives, Kew; the Admiralty War Diaries [stated] that HMS Urge was lost on April 29 1942 at Ras el Hilal [Libya] to an attack of Italian biplanes. The Relazione Operativa of the Italian Air Force, retrieved from their archives in Rome, confirm both the date and the place where they report having bomb-dived an enemy submarine.

The wreck of a British submarine in the Bay of Marsa El Hilal, Libya. This wreck got sonar-detected in 2012 and was duly reported to the UK Home Office and Bridgend City Council [sic]. Both sonar images reveal that the deck gun has been removed and that the hull has been prised open to retrieve the valuable torpedoes. The salvage operation may have taken place in 1943 and may be absent from the records because of the Official Secrets Act. This wreck is undoubtedly Urge as it corresponds to [GPS coordinates] in the National Archives at Kew.

The anomalies, discrepancies and forgeries seen on the documents produced by the University of Malta in support of their claim that Urge lies off Malta.”

Misled

In an open letter to those who participated in the 2022 memorial event in Malta, Mr Misson states: “I take no pleasure in letting you know that you have been misled when asked to embark with University of Malta in the claim that they had found the wreck of HMS Urge and in the subsequent construction of a memorial.

“In inaugurating this memorial you have (presumably unknowingly) contributed to a public falsification of history as the epitaph reads a date and a place of loss of HMS Urge in contradiction with what is recorded in the British and Italian archives and with what reads on a scroll in the Remembrance Chapel at Fort Blockhouse in Gosport.

“A false narrative and a deliberate tampering of the pictures and the sonar images provided by University of Malta in support of their claim have allowed the Naval Historical Branch, Navy Command, the journalists and the public (including President Vella and High Commissioner Ward) to be fooled simply because nobody questioned the validity of a claim submitted by a university and taken at face value.

“Nobody will take away from me the privilege of having sonar-located the wreck of Urge at Marsa el Hilal in Libya in 2012.

“Although I know precisely who conducted the fraudulent exercise and who is the artist who falsified pictures and sonar images alike, I will only hold myself available to contribute to an Inquiry that would establish who is responsible for this stain on the respectability of the island.”

‘Established beyond doubt’

The university maintains that its search results had “established beyond doubt that on April 27 1942 HMS Urge struck a German mine when leaving the British submarine base at the height of the siege of Malta by German and Italian forces in WW2”. The university added that the wreck was “at a depth of 427ft (130m) on the sea bed, her deck gun facing forward”.

The Ministry of Defence said it recognised the wreck site “as the last resting place of HMS Urge and those who lost their lives in service of their country”. It said it was “grateful” to the team that found it and requested that “the vessel is undisturbed and in situ”.

The Royal Navy said: “Given the amount of vessels lost during the war . . . and our position of not disturbing such sites, we are often in a position where we cannot be certain of the identity of such wrecks.”

The Royal Navy lost 76 submarines during the war, 32% of the entire fleet.

During 1943 and 1944 the chances of not returning from a patrol were 65%.