SEE AMAZON.COM DEALS FOR TODAY
Un sous-marin britannique, le HMS Tantalus, a vécu une rencontre terrifiante avec un destroyer japonais en 1944. La tension était palpable alors que le navire ennemi menaçait d’attaquer. Le capitaine, le lieutenant-commandant Hugh “Rufus” Mackenzie, a pris une décision audacieuse pour sauver l’équipage en ordonnant de foncer à pleine vitesse. Les charges de profondeur explosaient tout autour, secouant le sous-marin et créant un chaos dans les entrailles du navire.
Le lieutenant Michael Tibbs, qui servait à bord du HMS Tantalus entre 1943 et 1945, a partagé des souvenirs poignants de ces moments périlleux. Malgré la peur qui régnait, l’équipage a fait preuve d’un courage inébranlable pour affronter l’ennemi. Le sous-marin a mené des patrouilles intenses dans les mers de l’Extrême-Orient, attaquant des navires ennemis et contribuant à la victoire des Alliés pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.
You may also like to watch : Who Is Kamala Harris? Biography - Parents - Husband - Sister - Career - Indian - Jamaican Heritage
Geoffrey Michael Graydon Tibbs, né en 1921, a consacré une grande partie de sa vie au service de son pays, que ce soit en tant que marin pendant la guerre ou en tant que membre du service politique au Soudan après son départ de la Royal Navy. Sa bravoure et son dévouement ont marqué son parcours, le conduisant à des rencontres inoubliables et à des exploits héroïques.
Après une vie bien remplie, Geoffrey Tibbs s’est éteint en 2024, laissant derrière lui un héritage de courage et de service désintéressé. Sa mémoire restera gravée dans les annales de l’histoire, rappelant le sacrifice et la détermination des hommes et femmes qui ont combattu pour la liberté et la paix dans le monde.
In 1944 the British submarine HMS Tantalus was so close to a Japanese destroyer that the top of its conning tower was a mere 6ft below the warship’s hull. The communications officer Lt Michael Tibbs waited tensely for the enemy to attack them. The murky seas off the east coast of Malaya were on the continental shelf and only 60ft deep, leaving the captain, Lt Cdr Hugh “Rufus” Mackenzie, with few options to slip away. Meanwhile, Tantalus was all but scraping the sea bed.
“Everything was shut off and the atmosphere was stifling as the destroyers came in, sounding like an express train going through a station. We could hear the ‘ping’ as they fired the charges — hold your breath for the ‘woof’ as they exploded,” Tibbs recalled. Paint was thrown off the bulkheads, lightbulbs burst and the wardroom lampshade covered in scantily clad women spun round and round.
You may also like to watch: Is US-NATO Prepared For A Potential Nuclear War With Russia - China And North Korea?
Mackenzie was by this stage of the war highly decorated and an assured submarine ace. His reflex decision to order “full ahead” undoubtedly saved them. The boat shot forward. “They dropped one depth charge just ahead of us. The next one went just astern. All you could do is hold on to something and pray hard,” Tibbs added. “That was the worst we ever had. Of course you were frightened but tried hard to pretend that you weren’t.”
Tibbs served in HMS Tantalus between 1943 and 1945, arriving in the Far East in January 1944. That October, the submarine was tasked to covertly retrieve commandos who had taken part in Operation Rimau from the small island of Merapas. The audacious plan had been for the men to enter Singapore harbour in “Sleeping Beauty” submersible canoes and lay limpet mines on the hulls of Japanese shipping. On Tibbs’s 23rd birthday, he asked Major Walter Chapman, the army officer going ashore to pick up the party, if he might accompany him.
Chapman agreed, though stipulated that the young officer must wear dark clothes and trainers, camouflage his face and carry a cyanide capsule with which to swiftly commit suicide should he face capture. At the last minute Mackenzie intervened and overruled Chapman, explaining that the risk of Tibbs tagging along was not justifiable.
Chapman went ashore but returned without the commandos. His face haggard with worry, he wordlessly handed over a bunch of ripening bananas he had picked up on the island. After the war he took his own life. None of the commandos survived. Ten were executed in Singapore just three weeks before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Based out of Fremantle, western Australia, Tantalus carried out the two longest Second World War patrols of any British submarine, one of 52 days and the other of 55 days, during which it covered 12,000 miles. While in the Far East it attacked Japanese and Malaysian ships, sinking four merchant vessels. It also attacked a Japanese submarine, which was sunk later that day by another British boat.
Tibbs kept his naval overcoat for the rest of his life, along with the Gieves & Hawkes receipt for its purchase for £13
The enduring presence of the enemy routinely meant the submarine was not able to surface to replenish its crew and diesel engine’s oxygen levels. Once it was forced to remain submerged for 48 hours, by which time there was barely enough oxygen to light a cigarette. When Tantalus returned from its final patrol, the boat’s company had almost run out of fuel and food, and were surviving on biscuits and tinned guavas.
Geoffrey Michael Graydon Tibbs was born on November 21, 1921, in Ewell, Surrey, to the Rev Geoffrey Tibbs, the naval chaplain of HMS Iron Duke, and his wife, Madge. He was christened in the upturned ship’s bell while the battleship was docked in Malta, at a service attended by a crew that included Prince George, later the Duke of Kent. The bell is now housed in Winchester Cathedral.
Tibbs was brought up in Plymouth, attending Mount House Preparatory School, where he got full marks for a ten-minute lecture about submarines, then Berkhamsted School, Hertfordshire, where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps.
In 1932, the Rev Tibbs retired from sea life to become the vicar of Linchmere, a village in West Sussex, where he toured his parish on horseback and kept a goose called Adolf. Despite an obvious link to the fighting branch of the Senior Service, the vicar wanted his son to join up as a dentist. However, a visit to Portsmouth’s naval recruiting office meant they were caught up in an early war air raid: “So into the car we got with bombs falling, ack ack guns firing up, some of the planes were very low and dodging through the wires of the barrage balloons. We drove at 60mph up Commercial Road that, needless to say, was quite deserted and got home safely.” Tibbs wrote in his memoir Hello Lad, Come to Join the Navy?
He eventually entered as an Ordinary Seaman in September 1940, undertaking his preliminary training at HMS Collingwood, Gosport, while dodging German air raids. Tibbs discovered that, like Nelson, he suffered from seasickness while serving in his first ship, the destroyer HMS Cottesmore, after which he was sent for officer training at Lancing College, near Hove, named HMS King Alfred during the war. While there, he was inspected by King George VI, who stopped to talk to him.
Made a midshipman, he joined HMS Sheffield as a watchkeeper after the vessel had been painted in disruptive camouflage to make it harder to target. In the early autumn of 1941 the cruiser helped to escort a Mediterranean convoy to Malta. “Every single vantage point was covered with cheering people greeting the ships that had brought the first supplies they had had for six months; a welcome from the brave people of Malta that none of us would ever forget,” he wrote.
An Arctic convoy to the Barents Sea followed, during which Sheffield was encased in an inch of frost and a bare hand on deck would immediately stick to anything it touched. During a visit to Spitzbergen, one of the ship’s petty officers broke the rules and drank a surfeit of vodka. He was found on a jetty bench frozen to death.
Promoted to sub lieutenant, Tibbs was an officer of the watch in Sheffield during the Battle of the Barents Sea on December 31, 1942, while they were protecting another Russian convoy. He watched as the German destroyer Friedrich Eckoldt came alongside in flames, before breaking in two and sinking with all hands.
Switching to submarines, he did his initial training at Blyth and the shore establishment HMS Dolphin, Gosport, before joining the T-Class boat HMS Tantalus in August 1943 as its navigator. Within days they were off to patrol around Bear Island in the Barents Sea hunting for German U-boats. Temperatures on board were so low that the crew were issued with “submarine frocks” like long johns but made from thick, white wool.
Scrambled to urgently sail to Spitzbergen in response to the infamous German battleship Tirpitz putting to sea, Tantalus surfaced in front of a U-boat. Both submarines dived and circled but couldn’t attack. They later learnt that they had missed Tirpitz by only a couple of hours.
After retiring Tibbs moved to Linchmere
Tibbs was second-in-command of the V-Class submarine HMS Varne and training up in Scotland when the news of VJ Day broke. After peace was declared, it was announced that members of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, including Tibbs, could no longer serve in submarines, swiftly concluding his life as a sailor. On the cusp of entering the command chain, it proved a huge disappointment to him. He had relished his time at sea.
On leaving the Royal Navy in 1946, he studied geography at Oxford University, before becoming a member of the Sudan Political Service. While home on leave his younger brother fell ill, rendering him unable to escort a friend to a party. His sibling’s sickness proved pivotal. Tibbs took his place and, instantly enchanted by the 18-year-old Anne Wortley, proposed to her three weeks later, returning to Sudan the following year with her as his wife.
When Sudan declared independence, the couple returned to Britain and lived in Linchmere. He remained in the village for the rest of his life. He was a manager at the Automobile Association, and later secretary of the Royal College of Physicians for 18 years, for which he was appointed OBE. His wife died in 2019 after 68 years of marriage and Tibbs is survived by their two sons, Christopher and Philip, both doctors, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Tibbs receiving his Covid jab in 2020
EWAN GALVIN/GETTY IMAGES
In December 2020 the press watched when he became one of the first people in Britain to receive a Covid-19 vaccine at Portsmouth’s Queen Alexandra Hospital. He grinned and chatted with nurses, feistily asserting that that he hadn’t felt the injection. To mark his 96th and 102nd birthdays, he walked through the museum boat HMS Alliance at The Royal Navy Submarine Museum, Gosport, while regaling his family with tales of his wartime exploits.
Tibbs kept his naval overcoat for the rest of his life, along with the Gieves & Hawkes receipt for its purchase for £13. He was one of only a handful of surviving Second World War Royal Navy submariners and among a small minority of veterans who could ever claim to have seen action in all of the world’s oceans.
Geoffrey Michael Graydon Tibbs, Second World War submarine executive officer, was born on November 21, 1921. He died after a short illness on on October 4, 2024, aged 102
