HMS Sportsman 1943
Marker: recorded wreck position (Second World War).
Key facts
| Name | HMS Sportsman | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1943 | English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed) |
| Era | Second World War | derived from year |
| Ship type | submarine | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Nationality / flag | United Kingdom, France | Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country |
| Operator | Royal Navy, French Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Conflict | World War II | Wikidata P607 conflict |
| Depth | 91.0 m | Wikidata P4511 vertical depth |
| Sea / ocean | Mediterranean Sea | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | France | Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 82 km from land |
| Position | 43.0167, 7.6667 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
HMS Sportsman was a third-batch S-class submarine built for the Royal Navy during World War II. Completed in 1942, she spent most of the war serving in the Mediterranean Sea. After an initial patrol off Norway, she sank the heavy transport Général Bonaparte in the Mediterranean in 1943 and missed a French oil tanker. She was heavily damaged after a mistaken attack by an Allied bomber, and was sent east after repairs to participate in operations in the Black Sea. After the operation was cancelled, Sportsman patrolled the Aegean Sea, sending several Greek and German ships to the bottom. She sank the German transport SS Petrella in early 1944 despite it being clearly marked as a prisoner-of-war ship, killing 2,670 out of 3,173 Italians aboard. Sportsman sank several more ships, and suffered minor damage when she was detected and sighted while attempting to attack a convoy.
After a refit in the United States, she returned to the United Kingdom where she participated in additional training for operations in the Far East. The deployment was cancelled when the war in the Pacific ended in 1945, and Sportsman was placed in reserve at Harwich.
Location
- Recorded position: 43.0167, 7.6667 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Mediterranean Sea
- Nearest coast: France
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMS Sportsman (revision 1376004194), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
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All 599 wrecks of the World War II →
Browse more: Europe wrecks · wrecks off France · Mediterranean Sea · Second World War