Jim will like this one: Review of Diving Stations

[Onkel Neal]

Well, just a few weeks after an interesting read about one noteworthy RN sub commander, I find another. Capt. George Hunt sank more ships than any other British sub commander, and was the Brit equivalent of Richard O'Kane. This book looks spiffy right next to Midget Submarine Commander!





Subsim book review: Diving Stations by Peter Dornan

Another parallel in the careers of Hunt and Godfrey Place; they both served with the Polish submarine hero Borys Karnicki. Hunt was assigned to the HMS Urchin as the Liaison Officer prior to Place, before the Urchin was renamed as Sokol and began her storied career. Hunt went next to serve as First Lieutenant aboard HMS Proteus. They carried out one of the first submarine radar attacks in the Aegean Sea. During Proteus' sixth patrol, there is a really neat exploit described in the book where Proteus and an Italian destroyer surprised each other with a close encounter in a dark, stormy night. While Captain Phillip Francis on the bridge was calling frantic maneuvering commands down the voice tube to the helmsmen, Hunt called up to remind the captain they were still running on batteries, not the diesels. Captain Francis "called back down the pipe, "You wouldn't be worried about the bloody batteries if you were up here!". The sub and destroyer mutually rammed each other, and the sub's bow plane served as a dagger to the escort's side.