Murphy’s Law in Action: The Bizarre Sinking of HMS Thetis
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- Опубликовано: 17 сен 2024
- It has been called the “silent service.” Since their introduction in the early 20th century, service aboard submarines has been among the deadliest military occupations, with a full 70% of German U-boat crews during WWII never returning from patrol. But the hazards faced by submariners go well beyond enemy guns, depth charges, and torpedoes; submarines are complex machines operating in an extremely hostile environment, and can prove just as deadly in peacetime as in war. So the crew of the British submarine HMS Thetis was to discover in June 1939 when a seemingly routine shakedown cruise ended in tragic accident where Murphy’s Law was proven an immutable rule of the universe. (By the way, if you’ve not seen our video on Who was the Murphy in Murphy’s Law, we strongly suggest you go watch it. Go ahead, we’ll wait. The man behind it, Dr. John Paul Stapp, is the unsung hero and saver of millions of lives since his incredibly badass work and balls of solid steel did what he did to give us Murphy’s Law.)
My Grandfather actually worked on the Thetis when he was in Cammel Laird (he was a stainless steel welder) he was scheduled to go on it's test dive (being a shakedown voyage it was considered a bit of a 'jolly') but my Grandmother objected (apparently she'd had nightmares of my grandfather being trapped in a flooding coffin) and he gave his place to colleague - who didn't survive. Co-incidentally before moving to Liverpool because of his job, Grandparents had lived in Holyhead where most of the dead were interred. I also was one of the honourguard at the 50th (and the last financed by the MOD) memorial at Maeshyfryd where I met survivors Oram, Arnold & Shaw.
Interesting story, my great uncle Jim was also supposed to be on the Thetis trials, but was called away for an inspection tour of the Ark Royal.
@@PatGilliland What did he work on? I presume it was some internal fixture & fitting, so there's a chance they knew each other.
I knew someone,who's uncle had a friend that was dating a women who's father had a second that was suppose to be there that exact same day but they had also scheduled a dentist appointment that same day coincidentally,and that saved their life.Or I'm pretty sure it was about this.Could have also been the titanic,and a large airship that exploded.One of those things for sure though.And it's not made up,so don't even say that.
Sodd’s LAW “Murphy was an optimist “
I learned that as O’Malley’s law
Haha
@@philvanderlaan5942 Sodd O’Malley?
@@Jarvalicious no Sodd the English
Simon's Law: If a RUclips channel can exist, it definitely does and should. It will also be hosted by Simon Whistler.
Im subbed to so many channels this guy hosts haha
How does he get any sleep?
alot of us in the Cult of Simon follow "The Law of Simon" which is very different than the comment above. Can't say what it is here but you can join the cult to find out
Anyone know how many videos a day Simon puts out over all of his channels?
I’m subbed to none of them and I refuse to
Wow, that is a serious chain of increasingly terrible events.
Doors and Valves on Sumarines are either Open or Shut, never closed. "Thetis Clips" were fitted after to torpedo tubes to all British Submarines till the Swiftsure Class in the early 70's. The clip was a heavy duty bracket and a bolt and nut with a fine thread. This allowed the rear door to be cracked but could be screwed back and the rear door shut again.
There is so much more of this type of stuff in naval history: HMS victoria, IJN Taiho, The K-class submarines, the scuttling of the high seas fleet and many more
Would be cool to see more!
Oh the K class subs...thats a dark, DARK story. The channel Wartime Stories actually did a fine video on their horrible fate.
@@kremesauce there are drachinifel and dr. Alexander clarke which are good for naval history
The abacus NE-1, with damn tank treads crawling the ocean floor
@@comettamer Frederik Knudsen did a video on the battle of May Island not too long ago. Those ships were built and entered service unseaworthy
For a laugh, I had the closed captions on. This is how I learned that the theatre sank, and a boy got tangled up in the stern. And there was a ship named grabbac*ck that searched for the Cetus. Ah, Google and RUclips, you are a neverending source for inane giggling... Seems like there was a camel layered fitter involved, too. And Henry Purdue died of the Benz....
Yeah I used to think a Mercedes-Benz was a nice car to have, I guess not.
@@fvckyoutubescensorshipandt2718 killed a diver!
It also called the submarine fetus.
@@N_0968 How'd I miss that? 😂
CC butchers whatever Simon says
Imagine serving on a ship in which a hundred men had already drown and decayed for three months.
The Thetis only sunk and killed one crew... imagine a sub that sank several times, killing full crews with it each time (see CSS Hunley).
@@wolfshanze5980 The Hunley killed 21 men in total across three sinkings. As a very early submarine - or semi-submersible - with inadequate controls and ventilation, and with a single 'torpedo' attached by a boom to the boat itself, was arguably a death trap by design. The Thetis, a modern submarine that should have been a relatively safe boat killed 99 men in peacetime, including civilians who would not normally have been aboard, in its first sinking in 1939. After being recommissioned as HMS Thunderbolt it then took down a wartime crew - normal complement 59 men - in 1943 after being depth-charged while on patrol in the Mediterranean.
@@innocentoctave I think you completely missed the point... which would you rather get on... a ship that sank once before killing everyone on board, or the ship that sank multiple times before, killing everyone on board.
You focused on the completely wrong thing. The OP was talking about the sub's reputation. The Hunley's reputation for sinking and killing everyone is far worse than the Thetis.
@@wolfshanze5980 Not being a superstitious man, I don't believe in 'reputation'. I would far rather get on the better-designed boat, which was the Thetis. The men on that ship were extraordinarily unlucky, as the narrator points out - a whole string of errors had to occur for them to die. The Hunley by contrast was inherently unsafe. The men who took her out must have been very brave, because the danger would have been apparent even to contemporaries.
Ewwwww
Wow… I forgot Highlight History was among the myriad channels of Fact Boi Whistler. Good to see some content from them.
FACT BOI WHISTLER!!!! *wheezes with glee*
Top 3 Empires in history:
3) Ottoman Empire
2) Austro-Hungarian Empire
1) Simon Whistler RUclips Empire
Seriously though I'd forgotten he has this channel. What a legend!
Pretty sure khans empire was bigger than ah
Didnt mention the actual top empire, the British one. But username checks out.
Yet the Empire State Building rose higher than all of them
1) British Empire
Massive respect to submariners. Don’t think I could do it. I like having the sky over my head…
And it's always the small things that get overlooked/misbehave; enough grains of sand will make a mountain, or at least a fairly big sand dune.
Correctly it was both; Carbon Monoxide as a byproduct of the electrical fire (combustion) and Carbon Dioxide from exhaled breath (respiration). The carbon monoxide would kill quicker as it binds with hemoglobin much more readily than oxygen but the carbon dioxide just made the situation worse.
You can imagine that as the CO and CO2 levels increased the judgement of the crew was further impaired.
Very interesting, but tragic.
One of my relatives was on the HMS Triton submarine when it disappeared (presumed attacked).
RIP lads .... I was so hoping they all survived.
I read this story as a child in a book about submarines. One of the saddest failures I ever heard of!
I can't imagine the claustrophobic horror of being trapped in a sunk submarine. makes me shudder.
After watching this, it's officially right up there with 'buried alive' on my top fears list.
This story used to haunt me as a child as my father (who would have been ten at the time), born and bred in Birkenhead had a friend who's own father died aboard this boat. I presume he was a worker from Cammell Laird, shipbuilders, who made it.
how I have missed HH videos! glad to see this channel uploading a new one!
The tell-tale which would have revealed water in the bow compartment had been blocked with enamel (during construction, which was never checked) and the hatch was opened as no water was, therefore detected. The decision to send two people at a time in the tiny escape chamber (one more expeienced) did not work and the outer hatch allegedly could not open. The Admiralty was accused of being unwilling to cut an escape hole in the stern as this would damage its later use. The leading staff from Portsmouth arrived slowly by destroyer rather than by air. The best salvage expert in Scotland offered help but it was declined. Mining rescuers were employed to remove bodies once beached. Even worse was to follow when, after a world-wide relief fund for the families had been opened, a magistrate was appointed to distribute the welfare. The fund was interpreted as being for naval officers' families whereas those of ratings and the dockyard workers were denied relief, often in the harshest personal terms by the magistrate himself. Much of the story was hidden by the advent of war and, apparently, Thunderbolt displayed a slanting watermark under her internal paint for the remainder of her short life.
It has always fascinated me how these disasters are a culmination of unfortunate circumstances coming together at precisely the wrong time. Such as the Tenerife disaster.
I’m not much a believer in fate or determinism, but it does make you ponder how much we are in actual control of our lives, and how much our day to day living is simply a matter of luck in threading the needle around circumstances that are slowly drifting together towards misfortune.
My great aunties father died on this. She was a little girl at the time and he was an engineer at Cammell Laird.
The last she saw was when she waved at the submarine with her skipping rope as it made its way down the Mersey.
When they finally recovered the bodies the coffins had to be enormous as the bodies had swelled up.
My father's friend's father also died on this boat. As my father was born and bred in Birkenhead I assume the guy that perished was also from Cammell Laird rather than a navy person. My father would have been ten at the time and unlikely that a friend would be much differently aged. The father who perished was probably only in his thirties.
Although not covered in the video my father told me that when the stern of the submarine was above the water the would be rescuers could hear the men inside tapping on the hull. Even hearing that the navy refused to cut a hole to them.
Tragic.
It's as much a example of Murphy's law as it is normal accident theory. The more complex systems are made, the more likely it is that a chain of unpredictable reactions between sub-systems lead to an accident. Particularly with the non-functioning escape system. Charles Perrows work on this is a really good read for anyone interested in this.
Murphys law: Simon kept saying carbon monoxide instead of carbon dioxide, even though he knows better.
Good video 👍
This is much like a aircraft disaster-they have an overwhelming tendency to be chains of events as well, for example the Concorde crash as Charles de Gaulle International: 1) Plane overloaded; 2) Wheel spacer in gear incorrectly installed; 3) Debris coming off previous jet to take off; 4) Hitting debris with landing gear. None of those things by themselves would add up to a fatal crash (and I probably left something out). Maybe two would be survivable. But not all together.
I work in aviation and can confirm this. It's well know that 99% of incidents are caused by a cascade of failures from mechanical to human error, to policy. It's almost never just one thing. Head off any one of those issues and the entire incident is likely prevented or at least lessened/becomes survivable.
Fun fact, the submarine corp has the best food in most armed forces as it has been found to be the cheapest and most effective way to keep up moral while in a tube underwater.
i’ve stumbled upon another of simon’s infinite channels
Very nice opening with a photo of the Royal Navy testing the Holland submarine
I joined Australian submarines in the 80s. We were taught to escape in the UK. It was generally accepted that escape and rescue was really just to make family and friends happy. We expected to die
I've been waiting for another one of these!
The first error on the subs test was that the support ships were not with her when she tried her test dive. The second error was when the captain failed to abort of the test dive when they had the initial problem. The third error was trying to investigate the problem in the middle of the test while the ship was half-submerged. The boat was doomed from the start.
Besides your detailed content, I always appreciate your classy, Lionel Jeffries’ sounding voice! Great video!
It seems like British submarines have killed far more of their own crews than enemies ever did.
There's a reason we dont often hear abou their achieviments
.
.
.
Eternal Patrol.
Russian sub fleet: are we a joke to you?
The K class specifically. Most were good, but the K classes were shocking. And this one of course.
Wasen't there an american sub that blew to bits with its own torpedo? It was launched and somehow circled back if I remember correctly.
@@alreed2434 yes during WW2. the MK14 torpedo was notorious for that along with a high dud rate.
During that time, the USS Squalus had also sunk. Half the crew died in the sinking, but everyone who did not die in the sinking was rescued.
The credit goes to Swede Momsen, the man who basically invented the science of submaritime rescue.
Unfortunately what worked for the Squalus, would not have worked for Thetis. The two major differences being the stupid inclusion of an extra 50 "Guests" onboard "Thetis" thereby more than halving the oxygen supply, and cinsequently reducing the response time of any rescue effort to virtually nil, and the fact that Squalus lay on the seabed off New Hampshire on an even keel allowing the diving bell to safely attach. With the Thetis inclined at the steep angle she was no such rescue submersible could be used.
Am I the only one who could almost swear that Simon kept saying "fetus" instead of Thetis?
I also missed hearing the first syllable when he said the word "torpedoes" while talking about the hazards, and did a quick double take.
@@Mochrie99 🤣🤣
@@coolnegative No, you're not - apparently the Captions heard it that way, at times, too, lol!
@@prophetsam 🤣🤣🤣I'll have to check it out! Thanx!
Every time I think I’m subscribed to every Simon Whistler channel I find another
Great to see a new video😎
The reason that lead to its sinking, I was told by family friends in the navy was the black bitumen paint had seeped into the locking mechanism on the torpedo tube and solidified with the outer cap open, when the inner cap was opened it couldn’t be closed because of water pressure, this was found when it was in for a refit, the majority of the people one board were fitters as it was the first sea trial and sunk in the Anglesey deep water trench the waters outside of the trench is too shallow for large ships. I was told the story of this submarine early 1950s.
YAY! Highlight History!👍🏻😀
Apparently, when salvaged and recommissioned as HMS Thunderbolt, it didn't matter how many times the torpedo compartment was repainted a 'tide mark' would bleed through the new paint to indicate the level of flooding that occurred. Must have been wonderful for morale.....
The definition of- "And then things got worse..."
This isn't the voyage of the Russian Baltic fleet.
@@wolfshanze5980 Fair enough.
In an accident it's like Swiss cheese with the holes. Each hole is an incident and if all thes line up and you see through the cheese you see an accident. That how we were taught that in crewchief school.
Good description. That is why it is annoying when someone takes just ONE of the numerous (and individually unlikely) series of events that added up into a disaster, and claims it was "the cause" (Usually when they have a personal agenda or axe to grind)
Another first rate video, for which thanks.
When HMS Thunderbolt, as she was then, was anchored in the Gareloch - a sea loch on the River Clyde estuary (along with many other Royal Naval and mercantile vessels, my Mother and some friends rowed out to her. I remember her saying that there was an intense feeling of combined sadness and horror about her, and how appalling it must have been for the ship's company, knowing the history.
Point of information: the tug's name is pronounced GREEBCOCK. She was sent for breaking in 1967.
Great presentation.
April 29 - July 21, the video break is finally over!!
Can you blame him with a channel that gets no views compared to his others?
@@andrewfell7642 fair point. Never thought about view count
Listening to all the events transpire I started to feel sick to my stomach with a pressure building around my heart. I can hardly imagine the horror of being onboard.
Everything that could go wrong went wrong in this situation smh RIP to the sailors
I've been missing you guys
There is a really good book about the development of submarine rescue technology and the recovery of the USS Squalus called "Those Terrible Hours" by Peter Maas. Although it has a happier end, the crew of that boat knew full well what happened to the HMS Thetis only a few months earlier.
well that was cursed
Was Murphy himself on that sub?
No, he had more important duties on the communications line / chain. But he had subordinates working the sub.
The intro jingle is so similar to that of Castle. Beautiful.
@1:04, a tugboat called Grabthecock
Lmao!
Wow 😳
How did I not know this channel exists? History and ancient history were my majors at uni and it's my favourite thing next to guitars, pizza, and my new toddler nephew who is awesome. So much for the all knowing algorithm huh? It constantly recommends videos I have either seen before, or are a bunch of bollocks (or are trying to sell me something, or sell me on something).
P.S. I am an English raised Kiwi with a bunch of Welsh, Scots and Italian for good measure. But my favourite history series is Oliver's Stone's Untold History Of The USA. I knew a fair bit of that stuff, but there was plenty I didn't and not to that level of analysis and detail. I liked the way they did not sugar coat it too, or try to justify it with BS, e.g., "we killed 100s of 1000s to save lives" when it was really just a vulgar display of power if anything. I was wondering how the hell so much of the stuff that shocked me is not common knowledge. Swept under the carpet, or spin doctored I suppose.
BTW. How does Simon do all these channels? Seen the film Multiplicity? He clones himself and gets the clones to take care of his hectic schedule. The final clone was a bit wonky in the head. Simon has cloned himself. That wonky clone does Brain Blaze.
Just being on a Navy ship is hazardous to your life. I was standing quarterdeck watch when the corpsman and a guy I knew, came across with his fingers in a baggie with ice to go to the base hospital because he was swinging down the lip of a very large deck hatch which had no pins in the latches because the yard workers who were repairing our steam lines left them out and it fell onto his fingers chopping them off. He had them reattached but a couple of them got infected and they had to amputate them. He got a medical discharge for that.
I have other stories.
holy resurrected channel, Batman! lol
Rolled natural 1's.... 12 times in a row
"It refused to sink". As it should. Going into the deep is usually called "dive".
Man, what a whole ass series of unfortunate events, quite literally one after the other. Very first error, thinking “oh it’s sealed outside I’ll open this other piece inside, I’m safe.” is what lead to the rest to follow, so, human error. Human error, 100 people and one of those one-hundred was part of the rescue team. Human error lead to 100 people meeting, in my opinion, an incredibly gristly end. Rest In Peace to those lives lost.
Keep in mind EVERY nation that operates submarines has suffered its own series of equally avoidable tragedies.
My grandfather helped remove the unfortunate dead, he said it was a terrible sight, a tot of rum was give to the rescuers to give them courage.
I still have a bolt from the thetis that my grandfather gave me.
I would argue that the environment underwater is even more hostile to humans and our machines than even outer space. (space is just far far far harder to get to)
To my knowledge it might be because under the ocean the pressure is so high
In some ways this is true. Vacuum is only about 15 psi away from surface pressure; sub-marine pressure differentials can become...far greater. But, there are other hazards to space flight which aren't wholly paralleled by undersea travel...but surprisingly many are
@@LetsTalkAboutPrepping Those analogs also give rise to awesomeness in fiction... I need to stop before I start singing the theme song to Space Battleship Yamato, or start praising the God-Emperor of Mankind and his flying space cathedrals of the Navis Imperialis.
But in all seriousness, there really are a lot of similarities, and differences, but to humans, the things that make them hostile to us, make them feel almost the same.
One of the things I was really thinking about was the vicious way that salt water attacks our tech. It is like salt has it out for us, and will do us in by murdering our tech and letting us drown.
Something dissimilar that I was thinking about, was the relative difference in hull strength. Compare the stuff NASA used in the lunar lander back in the Apollo days. They said you could literally poke your finger through it if you wanted to. (I think it was Aldrin who I heard make that remark) When you compare actual spacecraft that have been used, to various submersibles, the difference in required strength is simply stunning.
@@samjohnson1992 Add that salt wants to destroy all things made by man. That you cannot see for shit. That there is no good source of natural light (there are some bioluminescent creatures, but thats about it) after a couple hundred feet & the light you bring gets refracted into oblivion. And this isn't even getting into terrain hazards or wildlife hazards.
TBH, we can do a pretty good job of dealing with the pressure, so long as the vessel isn't too big. Just look at the stuff sent to places like the Challenger Deep.
I survived 16 years of submarine duty. Dope video
Woot
EDIT: oh darn... not for the story but for fact boy... I feel bad now...
Took 2 months to make this video lol, I serious look forward to content from all your channels so keep up the hard work and make more lol just kidding, but really you should make more lol
Next Topic?
1. US Navy Submarine runs aground on a sandy ocean beach.
2. Rescue Ship also runs aground and is a total loss
3. A local company straps logs on the side of the
submarine and rolls it on even more logs for
1/4 mile and relaunches it in the nearby bay (not the ocean it came from).
After this event the submarine serves 5 more years active duty.
No Lives lost.
Submarine was the USS H-3 (SS-30)
Lives tend not to be lost when you beach a boat. See how the USS Scorpion handled the situation when she sank uncontrolably.
Awesome video! I don’t think I’ve ever been this early before
I had no clue he had this channel aswell just finished binge watching the casual criminalist and saw this and went... wait what... awesome 👍
Submarine operations require the utmost in discipline and attention to detail and procedures. IC 3 SS here.
Heard that as "civilian boat Grabacock" earlier in the video.
A clip on Italian partisans would be good. I can't really find one that nails it. And Bella Ciao is such a good song.
Hubris.
Really great episode,well told.
What a horrible way for so many people to pass away rip.
Thank you
Pretty sure Simon had a drink or two before cutting this one lmao.
So when they recovered this sub they ran it around on the bay my holiday home is located… I’ve heard about this before but never knew much about it so it’s so cool to get a video on it
And yet another channel this man is on xD
My brother serves on a newer US sub. On their first handful of test runs out to sea: it caught fire (not the ships fault) and they ran out of food in the middle of the ocean lmao.
As a ships cook I know would say (defensively): "We didn't run out, we just used it all up!"
fresh
Oh shit son! He's back to posting in this channel!!
where the blazers at? 😜
Here! (Allegedly)
Im a regular viewer of all of Simon's other pages, yet I somehow just found out about this one yesterday...
The incredible and famous "IF ONLY"
Simon Whistler....owner of 63% of all active youtube channels
Whoever named the civilian tugboat is my champion. That made me laugh harder than it should have.
Pity its pronounced "GREEBcock" and Simon's pronunciation is mistaken.
This is not a comment about this video but a suggestion for Simon. Today I was looking for a video covering the history of swimming. There are a few already on RUclips but none of them are very comprehensive and several are less than 5 minutes long. I thought it might make a good candidate for the Simon treatment.
Cascade failure is much underreported as it's not excited. We want the single pin or screw which caused the issue.
Tugboat grabacock?
I live near the bay it was beached, Traeth Bychan. Lauch my boat from there all the time
If one guy, or it they, can have multiple channels with at least 100k subs, it's this guy, or it them.
Simon you need to put the whip to Sam or callium or whoever is writing the scripts you don’t read
Submarines were developed and deployed in the 19th century CSS Hunley 1864 German submarines nordenfelt 1 and 2 in the 1890s. USS Holland in 1897 to name a few of you don’t count the turtle 1775 that succeeded in failure failing to attack a bomb to hms eagle discarded the bomb which blew up causing the eagle to think it was under attack buy some massive unknown cannon and nope right out of there.
Where’s a link to this Murphy’s law video?
What is the History of British Submarines displaying a Pirate Flag?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_the_Jolly_Roger_by_submarines
Simon is the man, I love this shit…
Did I just stumble across another Simon channel… GIVE ME FACTS, FACT BOY !
Imagine if Liverpool had attempted to reply to the telegraph about when the Thetis was suppose to surface:
Well I'd say it should have been four hours ago, might I ask you fine gentlemen to confirm this?
And send the guy on the bike back to send the message.
The sum of Human progress is written in blood and forever be so.
Good grief. Poor guys.
Wish I could read that fast. It would have helped.
Another interesting topic to me is the oxygen toxicity, oxygen becomes fatal at such a shallow depth I can’t imagine a scenario where a submarine crew would need it. Had their bailout system been equipped with normal compressed air, I wonder if it would have helped.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage with dressing.
Good to see HH back on! Havent seen a new one of these in ages. Please can you make more of them Simon with some of your spare Michael VSauce failed clones?