Sept. 10, 1942 the HMS Talisman N-78 departed Gibraltar for Malta and was never seen again. The submarine
was involved on two occasions in actions against other British forces. On Aug. 16, 1941 Talisman fired a
spread of torpedoes at a submarine off Alexandria, Egypt. The torpedoes missed the target which was
fortunate since the other submarine was HMS Otus N-92! After an attack on an Italian convoy Oct. 1, 1941
the Talisman was depth charged by the escorting ships but not seriously damaged in fact three days later she
scored her largest kill when she sunk the 8,194 ton French passenger ship Theophile Gautier. Three days
after that she sank the German cargo ship Salzburg near Kasos Island, Greece. The last large vessel sunk by
Talisman was the Italian cargo ship Calitea on Dec. 11, 1941

The second engagement with British forces came in July 1942 when a Sunderland flying boat spotted the Talisman on the surface. The commander on the boat chose not to signal the aircraft but to crash dive the boat believing he had not been seen. This was a mistake because the pilot of the flying boat interpreted the action to indicate the boat was German or Italian and he depth charged her. The attack drove the boat down to a depth of 355', 55' deeper than the service depth. Her commander used all his skillfully recovered and the boat was spared.

When she left Gibraltar she was carrying stores bound for Malta but it is believed she hit an Italian mine on or about the 17th. Over sixty men are still inside her hull somewhere at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

© 2007 Michael W. Pocock
MaritimeQuest.com