Remembering those lost on HMS Vandal in 1943
A Service of Commemoration was held at the Lochranza memorial for the 37 men who died when the submarine HMS Vandal sank off Lochranza in 1943.
Members and friends of the Submariners Association travelled from Dunoon on board the tender Omagh, along with a contingent of sea cadets from Helensburgh.
Arriving in Lochranza around noon on Saturday May 2, the assembled held a short Service of Remembrance before boarding the Omagh and heading out to drop wreaths in the sea above where the submarine lies with all 37 of her crew.
The submarine was lost with all hands on February 24, 1943, only four days after being commissioned into the Royal Navy. Having sailed from Barrow in Furness, where she was built, Vandal arrived in Lochranza on February 21, 1943 to begin three days of trials.
Tragically, on the evening of the final day the submarine failed to return to Holy Loch, having left Lochranza that morning for her final deep dive. The resting place of HMS Vandal and her crew was not located until 1995 when the Scottish branch of the Submariners Association persuaded the authorities to search in an area of the Kilbrannan Sound where fishermen reported their nets being snagged.
It was originally thought that HMS Vandal was probably lying in deep water near Inchmarnock. however, the wreck lies intact on the seabed about a mile and half from Lochranza, almost directly under the route of the ferry to Cloanaig.
The Submariners Association had the HMS Vandal memorial stone erected next to the slipway in 1997 and members and friends return each year to pay their respects to those lost in the tragedy.
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