HMS ''Taciturn'' was a British

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

of the third group of the ''T'' class. built by

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. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, wi ...

, Barrow and launched on 7 June 1944. So far she has been the only ship of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

to bear the name ''Taciturn''.

Service

''Taciturn'' served in the Far East for much of her wartime career, where she sank a Japanese air warning picket hulk (this was the hulk of the salvaged former Dutch submarine ), the Japanese auxiliary submarine chaser ''Cha 105'', and a Japanese sailing vessel. On 1 August 1945, ''Taciturn'', in company with HMS ''Thorough'', attacked Japanese shipping and shore targets off northern Bali. ''Taciturn'' sank two Japanese sailing vessels with gunfire. She survived the war and continued in service with the Navy, becoming the first ship of the class to undergo the 'Super T' conversion. On 9 January 1958, ''Taciturn'' ran aground in the

Firth of Clyde The Firth of Clyde is the mouth of the River Clyde. It is located on the west coast of Scotland and constitutes the deepest coastal waters in the British Isles (it is 164 metres deep at its deepest). The firth is sheltered from the Atlantic ...

. She later was refloated with the aid of the

boom defence vessel A net laying ship, also known as a net layer, net tender, gate ship or boom defence vessel was a type of naval auxiliary ship. A net layer's primary function was to lay and maintain steel anti-torpedo or anti-submarine nets. Nets could be laid ...

. ''Taciturn'' was sold to

Thos. W. Ward Thos. W. Ward Ltd was a Sheffield, Yorkshire, steel, engineering and cement business, which began as coal and coke merchants. It expanded into recycling metal for Sheffield's steel industry, and then the supply and manufacture of machinery. I ...

and scrapped at Briton Ferry, Wales on 8 August 1971.HMS Taciturn
Uboat.net

References

Publications

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Taciturn (P334) British T-class submarines of the Royal Navy Ships built in Barrow-in-Furness 1944 ships World War II submarines of the United Kingdom Cold War submarines of the United Kingdom Maritime incidents in 1958