HMS ''Ultor'' (P53) was a

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 ...

U-class

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 ...

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, w ...

Barrow-in-Furness Barrow-in-Furness is a port town in Cumbria, England. Historically in Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867 and merged with Dalton-in-Furness Urban District in 1974 to form the Borough of Barrow-in-Furness. In 2023 the ...

, launched in 1942, and part of the third group of the class. So far she has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name ''Ultor''.

Career

During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, ''Ultor'' operated in the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...

, where she sank the French ship ''Penerf'', the Italian auxiliary minesweeper No.92/''Tullio'', the Italian merchant ''Valfiorita'', the Italian torpedo boat , the German merchant ''Aversa'' (the former Greek ''Kakoulima''), the German sailing vessel ''Paule'', the German guardvessel ''FCi 01'', the German patrol vessel ''SG-11'' (the former French ''Alice Robert''), the German tug ''Cebre'', the German tankers ''Felix 1'' and ''Tempo 3'' (the former Greek ''Pallas''), the German auxiliary patrol vessel ''Vinotra III'' and the German auxiliary submarine chaser UJ 2211/''Hardy''. ''Ultor'' also sank nine sailing vessels in the Mediterranean. ''Ultor'' also unsuccessfully attacked the German-controlled French merchant ''Condé'' and the former Danish, German merchant ''Nicoline Maersk'', the German auxiliary minelayer ''Niedersachsen'' and the German netlayer ''NT 38''. She also damaged a French fishing vessel and torpedoed and damaged the German (former French) tanker ''Champagne''. The damaged tanker was beached and later torpedoed again by . By 19 October 1943, when ''Aversa'' was sunk, ''Ultor'' had fired 68 torpedoes of which 32 were hits (47%), the highest proportion of hits made by any submarine commander up to that time. At this time she was under the command of

George Hunt George Hunt may refer to: Sport *George Hunt (American football) (born 1949), American football player *George Hunt (footballer, born 1910) (1910–1996), English international footballer for Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal * George Hunt (footballer, ...

. ''Ultor'' survived the war and returned to the shore establishment at Gosport, and after a brief refit joined the 6th Flotilla at Blyth. When Blyth was closed ''Ultor'' went around to Rothesay, with the depot ship . She spent some time as an ASDIC training target, then was put into reserve at Londonderry. She was finally broken up at Briton Ferry, in January 1946.

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ultor (P53) British U-class submarines Ships built in Barrow-in-Furness 1942 ships World War II submarines of the United Kingdom