HMS Union was a British U class submarine

British U class submarine

The British U class submarines were a class of 49 small submarines built just before and during the Second World War...

, of the second group of that class, built by Vickers Armstrong

Vickers Armstrong

Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927...

, Barrow-in-Furness

Barrow-in-Furness

Barrow-in-Furness is an industrial town and seaport which forms about half the territory of the wider Borough of Barrow-in-Furness in the county of Cumbria, England. It lies north of Liverpool, northwest of Manchester and southwest from the county town of Carlisle...

. She was laid down on 9 December 1939 and was commissioned on 22 February 1941.

Career and sinking

Union spent much of her short career operating in the Mediterranean, where she sank the Italian merchant Pietro Querini

Pietro Querini

Pietro Querini was a 15th century sailing captain from the Republic of Venice.He is known for being shipwrecked in Røst, in northern Norway, in the winter of 1432, and subsequently returning to Venice, where he wrote a report of his travels for the senate...

. Her success was short-lived however. Union sailed from Malta

Malta

Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...

at 1 o’clock on the morning of 14 July 1941 with orders to intercept a convoy north of Tripoli the following day. On 20 July 1941 she was sunk with all hands during an attack on the convoy by the Italian torpedo boat Circe. When she failed to return to Malta she was reported overdue on 22 July 1941.

External link

• The abandoned Pietro Querini photographed by a Malta-based RAF Blenheim. The vessel later sank