HMS ''E7'' was a
British E class submarine built at
Chatham Dockyard
Chatham Dockyard was a Royal Navy Dockyard located on the River Medway in Kent. Established in Chatham, Kent, Chatham in the mid-16th century, the dockyard subsequently expanded into neighbouring Gillingham, Kent, Gillingham; at its most extens ...
. She was laid down on 30 March 1912 and was commissioned on 16 March 1914. She cost £105,700.
Design
The early
British E-class submarine
The British E-class submarines started out as improved versions of the British D-class submarine. The E class served with the Royal Navy throughout World War I as the backbone of the submarine fleet. The last surviving E class submarines we ...
s, from ''E1'' to ''E8'', had a displacement of at the surface and while submerged. They had a length overall of and a beam of , and were powered by two Vickers eight-cylinder two-stroke diesel engines and two electric motors.
[Akerman, P. (1989). ''Encyclopaedia of British submarines 1901–1955''. p.150. Maritime Books. ] The class had a maximum surface speed of and a submerged speed of , with a fuel capacity of of diesel affording a range of when travelling at , while submerged they had a range of at .
[
The early 'Group 1' ''E'' class boats were armed with four 18 inch (450 mm) ]torpedo tube
A torpedo tube is a cylindrical device for launching torpedoes.
There are two main types of torpedo tube: underwater tubes fitted to submarines and some surface ships, and deck-mounted units (also referred to as torpedo launchers) installed aboa ...
s, one in the bow, one either side amidships, and one in the stern; a total of eight torpedoes were carried. Group 1 boats were not fitted with a deck gun during construction, but those involved in the Dardanelles campaign had guns mounted forward of the conning tower while at Malta Dockyard.[
E-Class submarines had wireless systems with power ratings; in some submarines, these were later upgraded to systems by removing a midship torpedo tube. Their maximum design depth was although in service some reached depths of below .][
]
Crew
Her complement
Complement may refer to:
The arts
* Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave
** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-class collections into complementary sets
* Complementary color, in the visu ...
was three officers and 28 men.[
]
Service history
When war
War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...
was declared with Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
on 5 August 1914, ''E7'' was based at Harwich
Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-west and Clacton-o ...
, in the 8th Submarine Flotilla of the Home Fleet
The Home Fleet was a fleet of the Royal Navy that operated from the United Kingdom's territorial waters from 1902 with intervals until 1967. In 1967, it was merged with the Mediterranean Fleet creating the new Western Fleet.
Before the First ...
s.Heligoland Bight
The Heligoland Bight, also known as Helgoland Bight, (, ) is a bay which forms the southern part of the German Bight, itself a bay of the North Sea, located at the mouth of the Elbe river. The Heligoland Bight extends from the mouth of the Elb ...
Patrol along with , and . She and the other submarines returned from the patrol on 18 August 1914. Then on 30 June 1915, ''E7'' began a 24-day patrol in the Sea of Marmara
The Sea of Marmara, also known as the Sea of Marmora or the Marmara Sea, is a small inland sea entirely within the borders of Turkey. It links the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea via the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, separating Turkey's E ...
. She succeeded in sinking 13 ships and damaging many more.
The German Submarine ''UB-14'' was in port of Chanak to await repairs. While there on 4 September, word came that ''E7'' was entangled in Ottoman antisubmarine nets off Nagara Point, which the Ottoman battleship
A battleship is a large, heavily naval armour, armored warship with a main battery consisting of large naval gun, guns, designed to serve as a capital ship. From their advent in the late 1880s, battleships were among the largest and most form ...
had laid.
The U-boat′s commander, ''Oberleutnant zur See'' Heino von Heimburg, and ''UB-14''s cook, a man by the name of Herzig, set out in a rowboat to observe the Ottoman attempts to destroy ''E7''. After several mines that formed part of the net had been detonated to no avail,[The type of net in use had electric contact mines that were triggered from the shore. See: Stern: p. 29.] von Heimburg and his group rowed out and repeatedly dropped a plumb line until it contacted metal. Then, von Heimburg dropped an Ottoman sinker mine with a shortened fuse right on top of ''E7''.[Stern, pp. 29–30.] After the hand-dropped mine detonated too close for the British submarine's captain's comfort, he ordered his boat surfaced, abandoned, and scuttled
Scuttling is the act of deliberately sinking a ship by allowing water to flow into the hull, typically by its crew opening holes in its hull.
Scuttling may be performed to dispose of an abandoned, old, or captured vessel; to prevent the vesse ...
. Between shellfire from the Ottoman shore batteries and ''E7''′s scuttling charges, von Heimburg and company narrowly escaped harm.[Stern, p. 30.] While most sources credit ''E7''′s sinking to the Ottoman efforts, author Robert Stern contends that von Heimburg and ''UB-14'' deserve partial credit for the demise of ''E7''.[Stern, p. 38.]
Notes
Citations
References
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* .
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External links
'Submarine losses 1904 to present day' - Royal Navy Submarine Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:E07
British E-class submarines of the Royal Navy
Ships built in Chatham
1913 ships
World War I submarines of the United Kingdom
Royal Navy ship names
World War I shipwrecks in the Dardanelles
Maritime incidents in 1915