Untiring is a Royal Navy submarine of the 'U' class. She was built by Vickers Armstrong on the Tyne, and launched on January 20th. 1943.
The Untiring is 196 feet long, 16 feet wide, with a maximum hull depth of just less than 13 feet. This was all supposed to house all the food, ammunition, machinery, and a complement of 31 officers and men. Talk about a steel coffin. The Untiring had a surface displacement of 545 tons, and underwater weighed 740 tons. The submarine was powered by two diesel electric motors, which gave her around 11 knots on the surface and up to 9 knots submerged. She had a three inch gun mounted just in front of the conning tower, three machine guns, and her four 21 inch torpedo's were all fired from the bow.
Not the Untiring but the Unitedseen at Plymouth
After the War she was surplus to requirements, but instead of being broken up she was lent to the Royal Hellenic Navy (Greece) and during July 1945 she was renamed the 'Amfitriti'. She was returned to England in 1952 but was now completely obsolete, so the Navy decided in 1957 to scuttle her just off the East Rutts and use her as a sonar and asdic target.
I dived the Untiring back in the 1980's but we missed the main part of the wreck and only saw a hawser. I never dived it again (too deep for me) but my companion on that dive, Steve Carpenter of the well-known dive emporium Sound Diving has, and it's his impressions that I relate here.
United, same class as Untiring
The Untiring lies in 55 metres on a sand and silt bottom with a slight list to starboard. You cannot enter the hull but the conning tower is of an open design and you can have a good look around there. Moving towards the stern you soon see the two phosphor bronze propellers still firmly in place and the whole of the hull is covered in a carpet of plumose anemones. At the bow the most recognisable feature are the bow torpedo tubes all with their hatches closed. The visibility is usually very good, twenty feet or more. The tides are pretty savage so make sure you get the slack right.
If any one has any underwater photos or video of this wreck I would be very glad to see it. More dive reports are also welcome.
Submerged is a website about shipwrecks and scuba diving around Devon, UK and the world. It's written by Peter Mitchell, author of The Wrecker's Guide To South West Devon Vols 1 and II and several DVDs. [more info]
