One British Submarine Changed the Entire Balance of the Mediterranean

1941. The Mediterranean Sea. Rommel's Afrika Korps was unstoppable. His tanks needed fuel. His guns needed ammunition. His men needed food. And every single supply ship carrying those things had to cross the same narrow stretch of water between Sicily and North Africa. One British submarine was waiting for them. HMS Upholder. 197 feet long. A crew of thirty-one men. A commander named Malcolm Wanklyn who attacked from closer range than any doctrine allowed — and held his position longer than any nerve should have permitted. In fourteen months, she sank twenty-three ships. More than ninety thousand tons of Axis supplies that never reached the desert. Rommel knew his army was being starved. He wrote about it. He fought against it. He could not stop it. When the decisive moment came at El Alamein, his tanks were short of fuel. His artillery was short of shells. The reinforcements he needed had gone down in the sea weeks before. Some of them were put there by one submarine. HMS Upholder sailed on her thirty-seventh patrol on April 6th, 1942. She did not come back. Thirty-one men. Wanklyn was thirty years old. This is the story that the desert war never told about itself. —————————————————————————— 🔔 Subscribe for more untold WW2 stories from the other side of history.