HMS Taku (N38)

Taku served in home waters and the Mediterranean. In April 1940, she mistook HMS Ashanti for a German destroyer and fired several torpedoes at her. All the torpedoes missed. In an attack on a German convoy in May, she damaged the German torpedo boat Möwe, and in November, launched a failed attack on the German tanker Gedania.

Assigned to the Mediterranean in 1941, she scored numerous kills, including the Italian merchantmen Cagliari and Silvio Scaroni, the Italian passenger/cargo ship Caldea, the German munitions transport Tilly L. M. Russ, the Italian auxiliary minesweeper Vincenso P., the Italian tankers Arca and Delfin, and the Greek sailing vessels Niki, Lora and a small vessel which was unidentified. She also attacked, but failed to hit, the German merchant ship Menes and the Italian tanker Cerere.

Reassigned to operate off the Scandinavian coast in 1944, Taku sank the German merchantmen Rheinhausen and Hans Bornhofen, and badly damaged the German freighter Harm Fritzen. In March, she attacked a convoy, but missed her target, the ex-Norwegian Kriegsmarine transport Moshill.^[1]

Taku struck a mine in April 1944, and was damaged. After the end of the war, she was sold for scrap in November 1946 and broken up in South Wales.^[2]

• Akermann, Paul (2002). Encyclopaedia of British Submarines 1901–1955 (reprint of the 1989 ed.). Penzance, Cornwall: Periscope Publishing. ISBN 1-904381-05-7.
• Bagnasco, Erminio (1977). Submarines of World War Two. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-962-6.
• Caruana, Joseph (2012). "Emergency Victualling of Malta During WWII". Warship International. LXIX (4): 357–364. ISSN 0043-0374.
• Colledge, J. J.; Warlow, Ben (2006) [1969]. Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of All Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy from the 15th Century to the Present (3rd Rev ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. OCLC 67375475.
• Chesneau, Roger, ed. (1980). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. Greenwich, UK: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-146-7.
• Kemp, Paul J. (1990). The T-class Submarine: The Classic British Design. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-826-7.
• McCartney, Innes (2006). British Submarines 1939–1945. New Vanguard. Vol. 129. Oxford, UK: Osprey. ISBN 1-84603-007-2.