HMS Thorn was commissioned on 26 August 1941 and lost on 6 August 1942, before completing a year in service. Royal Navy submarines faced a target environment very different from the massed convoys attacked by Axis commerce raiders. Blockade runners carrying critical goods between Japan and Germany were isolated ships, while Mediterranean supply traffic lay in waters especially dangerous for large submarines. British boats therefore spent long periods waiting for suitable enemy forces to enter their patrol areas rather than accumulating a continuous sequence of visible merchant-ship attacks. When an opportunity appeared, the T class could deliver the heavy ambush for which it had been designed, but the campaign produced fewer spectacular public examples. That limited public record may help explain why Conqueror's 1982 sinking of General Belgrano became such a prominent demonstration of British submarine capability: it made a long-standing proficiency unmistakably visible.
Chapter · 56:39-1:00:34
Effective ambush boats with too few targets
HMS Thorn's service of less than a year and the wider target picture show why effective British ambush boats could suffer rapid losses without accumulating Axis-style commerce-raiding totals.