Scuba Diving: HMTS Alert 1945 Wreck Dive

On the 14th June 2016 we dived the HMTS Alert. The mission was to lay a memorial to the late Percy Ellis who lost his life on this wreck on 24th February 1945. We were privileged to have with us Malcolm Ellis (the Son of Percy) and Peter Ellis (the Grandson of Percy).

This wreck took the lives of 59 young men when it was torpedoed by a midget German submarine.

On the morning of 24 February 1945 the two man crew of the U-5330, Oberleutnant zur See, Klaus Sparbrodt, and Masch Mt. Günter Jahnke claimed to have sunk a corvette northeast of the South Falls. Initially it was assumed by the Kriegsmarine that they had sunk the 1,050 ton French destroyer La Combattante, but this ship had been mined off the Humber estuary on the night of 23/24 February, by a mine laid on 16th February 1945 by German Motor Torpedo Boats (Schnellboots or E-boats), and the real victim of U-5330 was in fact the British G.P.O. cable layer ‘HMTS Alert.’

Points Of Interest

Cloth - Flags?? (Flags can be seen flying on the original picture from rope above the boat??) – 04:16, 05:30-05:36

Cable – 04:56, 06:47

Rope – 06:07-06:26

Laying Memorial – 07:19-08:26

Memorial – 08:12

Selfie Time - 08:59

The Chris Webb Moment – 10:12

Sleepy Karlos Frogtec – 11:05