This day, 76 years ago, 14th March 1939 saw the second sinking of HMS Thetis. This 2nd time that she was afloat she was called HMS Thunderbolt.
As the reincarnated Thunderbolt she had somewhat avenged the men who had drowned in the her sinking in 1939.
As the reincarnated Thunderbolt she had somewhat avenged the men who had drowned in the her sinking in 1939.
She had sunk the Italian Submarine Capitano Raffaele Tarantini, the light cruiser the Ulpio Traiano and the freighter SS Viminale.
The first time she was sunk as HMS Thetis was on 1st June 1939. She had left Liverpool Bay for Birkenhead to conduct her final diving trials. As well as her normal complement of 59 men she was carrying technical observers from Cammell Laird and other naval personnel, 103 men.
Although the stern remained on the surface, only three RN personnel and one Cammell Laird man escaped before the rest were overcome by CO2 poisoning. 99 men were lost in the incident, within sight of shore.
In the trial the official account was that a german-manufactured valve had malfunctioned. But material evidence was suppressed, using the nefarious Public Interest Immunity Certificate procedure. This process has allowed many a cover-up inc. the Matrix -Churchill case in 1992.
In 1939 the spies in the UK's Cabinet Office and the Germans had wanted to turn the British public off the idea of war. The HMS Thetis was sabotaged by the Abwehr. But the Thetis’s intelligence officer got off the boat early – he had an urgent despatch from her Captain Lieutenant
- Commander Guy Bolus for the Admiralty & the Naval Intelligence Department. Holding up recovery efforts whilst the survivors asphyxiated is typical behaviour of the Abwehr, and was done in this case.
The officers & the petty officers – the ones with technical knowledge would have been the last off the submarine. Also, typically, Abwehr Assets in Whitehall maliciously block compensation to the victims of their activities - which actually helps counterintelligence.
Chamberlain’s government had been helping the Germans to rearm. In addition to wanting casualties, the Cabinet Secretary, Edward Bridges, (protégé of the spy Maurice Hankey, The Lord Hankey) was keen to hide the extent of the technology transfer to Germany.
He was also keen to cover-up arms purchases by pro-German British company directors mostly linked to the notorious Federation of British Industries (founded 1916 as the United British Industries’ Association) – later to morph in 1965 into the CBI.
The House of Lords sanctioned the cover-up under the pretext of national security in the case Duncan v Cammell-laird. The widows and children of the Thetis sailors were treated abominably as Eric Heffer, MP for Liverpool Walton 1964-1991, knew.
Whitehall took care to suppress the true facts of the Thetis disaster from every court, which subsequently ever considered Duncan v Cammell-Laird in its judgments.
The widows and descendants of the Thetis would be best honoured by the scrapping of the Public Interest Immunity System, which would make official cover-ups more difficult. The System was covered, without argument, to criminal trials and then incorporated into Crown Court Rules.
According to Michael Shrimpton author of Spyhunter: Every conviction by this unconstitutional withholding of material evidence (such as the Matrix Churchill and the Duncan v Cammell-Laird cases) should be quashed by statute.
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