Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 361 - The K Class Submarine and the Battle of May Island

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Come see us live in London June 22nd: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-big-fat-festival-southbank/ Once upon a time, the British Navy built one of the worst submarines ever put to sea and then promptly smashed them into one another repeatedly. Sources: N.S Nash. K Boat Catastrophe: Eight Ships and Five Collisions. Edwyn Gray. Disasters of the Deep: A Comprehensive Survey of Submarine Accidents & Disasters Anthony Preston. World's Worst Warships https://web.archive.org/web/20150924120339/http://www.public.navy.mil/subfor/underseawarfaremagazine/issues/archives/issue_49/KforKatastrophe.html https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/the-battle-of-may-island-january-1917-and-k-class-submarines-of-the-first-world-war/

If you've ever wanted to see us live, well, we're heading back to London. That's right. Again, we will be performing June 22nd at the Big Fat Festival at the Big Belly Comedy Club in London. So get your tickets now. They'll be in the show notes. You can come see us like 20 other acts, including friends of the show that we have worked with before. Get your tickets now and we hope to see you there. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you access to our entire bonus episode catalog, as well as every regular episode

one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you ebooks, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available. And also gets ebooks, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available. And also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys and join the Legion Hello, and welcome to the Lines It By Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me is Tom, and we're the head of the Royal Navy Submarine Recruitment Drive circa 1916. Hello, would you like to enlist in His Majesty's Submarine Corps brought to you by G4S Solutions?

Are you some kind of strange gremlin who enjoys passing their time hanging out in dark, slightly moist pipes? Do you like standing, sleeping and shitting so close to your co-workers that you can touch them at all times? Most importantly, do you reject all forms of bathing to the point that your filth and fluids can chill together with your body hair into what we call our patented Submariner Carapace, sponsored by Tesco? Enlist today! Hey Tom, how you doing? It's way too fucking early in the morning to body carapaces. It is quarter past eight in the morning.

We're recording area because I have to go to the airport. It like, you know, I brought up the ass carapace at the live show and I just don't like the idea that we're extending that idea to full body, like, hoplite armour made out of matted hair and sweat and shit. Yeah, it's like what happens if you don't brush your poodle enough, but for a human being. This is our first show since both the live show we had in London, which was lovely. Thank you everybody for coming and since the end of our Armenian genocide series so now we get to talk about things like matted human hair Carapaces the works. Mm-hmm. I hate when my hair Engulfs my thorax. I mean, you learn to live with it.

Don't worry. They sell razors on sticks now. Don't ask me how I know that. This show inadvertently has become sponsored by Manscaped. Okay. I think I've told this story before when our show is a couple of years ago, like five years ago now, like when you have a podcast and it's a certain threshold You start to get really weird emails. Mm-hmm about

Advertisers and of course, we don't have advertisements but back in the day we were getting a lot of emails about them We don't get nearly as many now I'm sure those two things are connected because these things are all just AI generated shit emails that are full of like spelling errors like easy grammatical fixes and things, but one of the first things we got was an email from Manscaped. Is this what every podcast hosted by an Armenian gets in their inbox at some point? No, it's just every podcast. Manscaped's products suck. Their whole, like, I've never had one. No Nick technology is like, I have cut my nuts with their shavers

I will never ever use them again. So your official rating is Tom two balls down for for the man's skate racer My personal favorite one was the mattress companies. I'm sure of which are all out of business. Yeah, they all are I got a lot of emails from them, too. This podcast as always is brought to you by His Majesty's Submarine Corps brought to you by G4S solutions because it is Technically British which means it must be ran by G4S. Like look, you know a lot of people hate on advertising The only advertising I would accept for this show is from the monster manufacturing company. I say this as I am only for white monster, only for white monster, as I am drinking

one at 8 a.m. in the morning. Taste the flavor. Feel the energy. Yeah, I did. Ping was old crow whiskey. You were telling me about this the other day. Seven years ago, give or take and, uh, I was like, Hey, we keep making a joke about it on the podcast. Let's make this official, you know, and their, their answer from their official marketer was simply

one word and it was just no, uh, which I respect. I respect it. I can't imagine the Jalalabad dick sucking union, the human ass carapace, making fun of the entire nation of Turkey is that advertiser friendly. I hate to be so unfriendly to advertisers when I could have very easily gotten an endless stream of advertisers if we were just fascists, because that seems to be much better for advertisers in general. They're fine with, you know, like race science, openly advocating for like white supremacy. But if you're just the history show that occasionally makes a dick joke, nope. Fine with me. Uh, famously the people who are pushing like modern eugenics also need to wear underwear

and like, uh, do body grooming. So, you know, got to cover all their bases. Do you like to measure human skulls? Well, I know I like to measure human skulls and my me undies. Much like Michael Jordan once said, a conservative have pubes too. But today brings us to an episode that was actually originally going to be our episode for London and that is the Battle of May Island. Tom, resident of the United Kingdom, are you familiar with the Battle of May Island? Joe, I think that's a, you know the answer answer to that question, given my role on this show. I do not have a fucking clue.

I have a feeling most people actually haven't heard of it. And the people I've gotten a lot of emails to cover this. And I think it might be just really well known for the person that really likes our show specifically, but for, let's say someone stumbling upon this for their first Lions episode, which I'm sure you've already quickly exited out of this after the last seven minutes of podcast. But this is, this might be a good introduction to the world of really dumb naval accidents, because I thought after a month of talking about the Armenian genocide, it would be really good to dip our whole body, get nice and slippery and slide right back into the world of submarines.

And I mean like a platonic kind of slipperiness. We've been over this. Platonic lubrication. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Yeah. But like I think it is a very telling sign that there is no shortage of both surface level and submarine level calamities that it's a sign from God that we should respect the sea. Yeah, at a certain point when you stuff enough humans into something, you're going to get an endless parade of fuck ups and that number only goes up. What's weird is back in the day,

cause we're talking about world war one today. So it's the first real time that humans jam themselves into submarines in large numbers. So obviously the number of accidents will increase. And then modern day, we're getting people still being crabbed in submarines, but along with very confusing and half-baked technology Yeah, so you're gonna get an increase of dumb shit happening again

I mean we've talked about the modern US Navy Accidentally wrecking a bunch of their ships because they thought touchscreens were a good idea I'm so like once we figure out the physical engineering parts of things are like ship float ship sink This is what's supposed to happen, and then make it more complicated, you just go back to being the very confused man in 1916 who has no idea of like, what if get wet? See, we are at least, or maybe at max two years away from like a submarine just exploding under the water because one of the sailors was vaping and the vape just exploded. Probably, probably. As oftentimes happens whenever we talk

about submarines on the show we get a lot of messages from some mariners. Can you vape on submarines? Right into the show! I have no idea because before we were told like I was surprised that up until quite recently they could still smoke on submarines, which sounds horrifying to me. And someone did tell me that occasionally it was really hard to smoke because their oxygen level would get so low they couldn't light their cigarettes, which is troubling. It's just like me smoking in the Bucharest airport where they just have the smoking cube

just in the airport. I think that was probably it. Yeah. Yeah. So can you vape in submarines? Write it and let us know. How do you consume nicotine on your submarines? Did you do so illicitly? I would like to know that even more. Either if you are a sub mariner or a resident of the lost city of Atlantis, please let us know. Yeah. Huge,, huge Atlantean fan base. We would do a live show in Atlantis, but I cannot grow gills. Now, some of you might know this, but outside of a few incidents, World War I was not exactly a war known for its glorious naval victories. Rather, it was something of a large scale standoff between a lot of powers that didn't

really want to risk their wonderful expensive playthings in something like a large-scale standoff between a lot of powers that didn't really want to risk their wonderful expensive playthings in something like a battle. However, that didn't mean that throughout the years of horrible generational grinding of bones that was happening on land, the Navy simply stayed at port and did nothing. Rather, it was largely a boring existence of patrols and training. Somehow, for sailors of the Royal Navy, even with no enemies around most of the time, this would still end in hundreds of deaths. This is because today we're talking about the Battle of May Island. Yeah, because like up until this point, like the British Navy, a lot of it was like kind

of mercantile base, the same with any other national Navy, like the Dutch and the Portuguese. So it's like, now suddenly he's like, Oh, we don't have to sail to India anymore. It's like, what are we going to do? I don't know. Stand on the dock. Yeah. And it was one that like, there's this huge story of world war one, which we've never really talked about in depth in the show, but it is like the dreadnought arms race where Britain and Germany and many other countries just hemorrhaged their economy to try to build the biggest ships they possibly could as many times as they could until eventually there's treaties about it and whatnot. And then when World War I

actually happens, they realize that if they lost all of these ships, it looked really bad. There's famously a battle of the Battle of Jutland where these two fleets finally do smash into one another in a complete Inconsequential battle that has no clear Victor So most of the time okay arguably you could say the Germans lost the battle because they get smacked around so bad that their high seas Fleet really stayed at port for the rest of the time, but it was meaningless. The navies really didn't have, weren't slugging it out in the, let's say, the Atlantic at the time. Obviously there's unrestricted submarine warfare, convoys, things of that nature, but you're

not seeing like World War II style fleet on fleet actions, mostly because everyone was too worried about, okay, but what if we lost all of these cool play things that we have? Now, like we've pointed out before, the Royal Navy and every Navy for that matter during World War I, with the exception of the Russian Imperial Navy, mostly because most of that had been destroyed about 10 years before during the Russo-Japanese War. We did several different episodes about that one. Go listen to it. It was a place of massive, massive change. Within really only a few years, the ships that ruled the waves of

both trade and war had gone from wood and sails to metal and steam. Line of sight warfare to cannons that could reach out and touch people from beyond unaided human sight for the first time were now possible. It was really revolutionary. Pretty much how airplanes went from a rickety pile of shit in Ohio that could barely leave the ground to bombing and dogfighting within very, very, very short amount of time. For example, World War I begins in 1914 and the last all-wood sail-powered ship leaves Royal Navy service in 1866. Not really that long before, when you think of all the things that are coming. Furthermore, the men building the new Royal Navy had to deal with a Navy itself that was not exactly fighting full fleet actions anymore. By the mid-1800s the Royal Navy was fighting more minor engagements like

anti-piracy, show-of-force type stuff. For example, like the Anglo-Zanzibar War that we did an episode on. That was the kind of stuff that the Royal Navy was doing. Showing up, flashing its its guns and shooting at people that probably were not really all that well equipped to fight back. But it's also like, I think to remember is like transitioning from wood ships to large like metal ships requires like a whole different set of tactics from like the commanders, but also like completely changes like the way you engage with an enemy. Because if you are in a big fucking sailboat or a big coal powered ship, it's a very different style of combat.

So it's like, oh, hence why Russia got absolutely fucking destroyed. The whole fleet of the dam story is just a wonderful example of how not to fight a naval engagement. Also, this transition into modernity, for a lack of a better term of naval warfare requires, like kind of like you said, a new kind of leadership. There requires a new kind of sailor and normally actually requires more sailors. Everybody's kind of caught in this middle ground while simultaneously fighting less actions, which famously is generally how the Royal Navy trained.

There wasn't really huge training exercises in the Royal Navy back in the day. Most of the time it was kind of on the job training after a very, very basic level of understanding of the systems at play. The problem is, is all of that is going to require officers and institutions to change with the times. Obviously, since we're talking about the British Royal Navy, you know that that did not happen. Officers of the Royal Navy came from like the same tiny social circles that they always had during the era of say Horatio Nelson, hundreds of years before. This is sometimes called the gentleman drawing room culture of where these guys came from, which is pomp and circumstance,

the importance of titles, spit and shine, breeding stock, you know, whose family owns what. They breeding stock, whose family owns what, they resisted as an ideology any kind of reform or change about this. The very small cadre of Royal Navy officers is constantly kept plucking from the same group of people. So obviously why would they want that to change? change. Also as well, like, you know, one, Horatio Nelson, Ireland's first astronaut, two... Like yeah, when you have, I suppose, like a rank structure of like all these like inbred freaks who are like, don't want to adjust to the new times, you don't really have that kind of influx of like new ideas, new training to adapt to new technology. So like they're fighting old wars with new technology. Right. I mean, it's, it's easier to describe them less as a rank and more of a cast at

this point, you know, it's like going to an upper class group, an institutional cast and being like, we really need you guys to buy into having less power. Are you in with that? No, of course they're not. I'd say the best way you could probably describe it is like sclerotic. Yes. Yes. For example, officers back then who had retired from active service would retain their rank

and privileges and would continue to be promoted based on simple seniority as long as they left active service at the rank of captain. So all they had to do was keep hanging out in these gentlemen drawing rooms, these clubs, and if they retired at the rank of captain, they would hypothetically eventually become an admiral based on just being alive. Yeah. And this included with an increase of pay and privilege. I mean, these guys wouldn't have an active command, they'd be in like a reserve, but

they would still, all their pay and privileges would accrue and hypothetically during a time of emergency there's an admiral laying around that could suddenly be put in an admiral's position but had retired as a captain and had been doing nothing but drinking gin and getting fat in the boys room. I cannot fit into my suit anymore. I've spent past 20 years drinking nothing but brandy Get me my tactical trash bag, please. I'll help me fit into this tactical gusset This was effectively a jobs program for the upper class Which they didn't need the House of Lords already exists. You don't need to do this Well, it's very hard to get into the House of Lords.

True. I mean, I guess this is a... I would say this is a jobs program for people just below that, but there's Lords involved in this as well. As many Lords love to have naval rank and wear naval uniforms because it is the Royal Navy. Very few of them like to cosplay as army officers. It's always the Navy. Also as well, like, is a whole over from a time where the, I suppose, upper crust of British society, it was the norm for men to serve some sort of like army rank. A lot of times they were sent to the Navy and

it's also like that in-between period of the 1800s to the eight like the 1900s where it was a lot of like exploration so it's like oh yes you are like a captain in the Navy go find the Northwest Passage and freeze your nuts off and die. Yeah they miss their calling of dying while eating like rotten polar bear meat so now they just have to go to some Imperial post in India and absolutely lose their mind from malaria. My boy you've joined the British Navy and die in Alaska someday you will be played by Jared Harris. For example it took a muzzle-loading cannon exploding and killing 11 people during a training exercise in Alexandria, Egypt for the British Admiralty to accept a breach loading

cannons for the first time in 1879, way behind the curve. Still only a few years later in 1882, during a bombardment, Royal Navy gunnery crews consider the elite of the Navy when it came to social standings Like if you were an officer and a gunnery officer, that's the best position to have with your drawing room bros They fired 3,000 shells during a live combat action and only managed to hit ten targets that is a ratio of 0.003%? At any point your hit ratio is worse than my grade in high school math, you should be fired. Oh shit.

This was the catalyst that made Sir Percy Scott suggest that maybe the most important thing to a ship's crew was knowing how to use the ship effectively, specifically its guns, rather than do spit, shine and polish all day every day. Because that is something that the Royal Navy prized above anything else at the time was everything has to look really good. Everything else is secondary to the first thing. Sir Scott Perry joked, quote, We gave up on instruction and gunnery, spent money on paint,

and burnished every bit of steel, and soon we got the reputation for being a very good ship. Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe He's right. Uh, man, we got our teeth kicked in by a dude with a cannon on his rowboat, but goddamn is the brush shiny. Scott's suggestion of practical and consistent training for gunnery crews the Royal Navy was met with, let's say, controversy. People insulted him left, right, and center, said like he was an affront to being a gentleman, things of that nature. One guy even wrote a fake prayer to him written by old school officers and they called it

the terrible creed, which includes the line, I believe in Percy Scott, Lord of humility, maker of gun carriages. This is the worst type of like samurai Bushido writing poetry and water painting. It's just like, yes, we are writing poetry to our alcoholic officers who are into buggery and Jane. In that specific order. As you can imagine, despite his insistence, Percy was largely mocked and ignored for his ideas of maybe we should train our gun crews. Instead, the Navy continued on as it always had, struggling to evolve,

but kept chained to history. For example, by the late 1800s, the Royal Navy was still designing rams for their ship. Because they believed that a physical ram on the front of a modern destroyer what-have-you would have better armor penetrating abilities than gunnery despite the fact that armor piercing shells already existed and according to a study done in 1861 the Royal Navy had literally never used their Rams in an offensive capacity in a hundred years. Fuck's sake. So they just kept on being built. Thanks to traditional inertia, I guess

This is gonna go really fucking well All this done was at the urging of the chief of the old school officers again named J.A Fisher who owing to a very close friendship with the king Continued to rise up throughout the ranks despite while being third Sea Lord. He helped design the HMS Victoria, one of the worst ships the Royal Navy would ever crank out, and then was ironically destroyed in a ramming accident by the HMS Camper Town, killing hundreds of people. Who could have seen this coming at all? Also I love all of these lordly ranks of the British crown. They all sound like really shitty fantasy book characters.

Like oh he's only third Sea Lord, I remember back when he was fifth Sea Lord. Yeah there's some like absolute trash paperback fantasy novel that like has that cover and I'm not going to describe it because you know what it is. Yeah it looks like it could be airbrushed onto the side of an 80s hair metal band. It's like we saw Master and Commander and it's like, let's just do that, but worse. We watched Master and Commander, we really liked the aesthetics and we thought we should bring it back despite the fact that that movie is based 100 years ago. By 1902, he returned as second Sea Lord and then quickly became the first Sea Lord and Admiral of the fleet within three years.

Now I should point out here that Fisher was, for a very, very long time, afforded something of a legendary status in the Royal Navy, owing mostly to the fact that he had been in charge when the Navy designed and deployed the infamous HMS Dreadnought. He got all of the credit for this revolutionary ship, however he quickly followed that with some wet farts of ship design. For example, there was the Battle Cruiser meant to match the firepower of a battleship and the speed of a cruiser. However, he quickly learned that there's a good reason why that hadn't been done before. Mm-hmm. He had a target speed of 27 knots that he won the ship to get to. In order to get to that speed, this ship had to have all of its armor

cut down to nothing and all of the guns rearranged to fit on a much smaller ship. So when a cannon goes off, all that gas has to go somewhere. Not all of the guns rearranged to fit on a much smaller ship. So when a cannon goes off, all that gas has to go somewhere. Not all of it goes out the barrel because naval cannons are so large, they need to be vented somehow. Normally they have vents at the top of them, which isn't much of an issue

because these are all breech loaded weapons. You can't exactly have all of the gas vent directly back into where the crew is standing, for example. You will just liquefy them. However, back then, Navy cannons had observers, like observer gunnery officers, to literally guide the shells on target, right? In this battle cruiser, he decided to put that guy in a post directly above the guns. So when the guns fired, they vented 550 degree plumes of carbon monoxide directly up at them.

Somehow nobody was ever killed by this. Also do you want to know I'm one person who was at first sea Lord that you might recognize. Oh boy, who is it? Lord Louie Mountbatten, first Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Oh, so we get our second astronaut as deployed by the Irish in this episode. Yeah. Eventually Fisher retired and was elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Fisher, first

Baron of Kilverstone, who was not technically in charge of the Navy, but one of the problems with being promoted out of this position into the House of Lords meant now he had more influence over the Navy than he ever did before, even when he was technically running it. And now his mission was to expand

the non-existent British submarine fleet, urging the Admiralty that they needed a submarine that could keep up with the rest of the fleet, because in his mind the subs would be working with the rest of the Navy, not out hunting on their own, as we now know that submarines generally work as. This turned into a shit fit, resulting in him in his mid-70s and having been retired twice, coming out of retirement again and being named first Sea Lord again, just as World War I starts. Under his guise they come up with the J-Class submarine which is a direct counter to the

German U-boat. Eight of them are built. Fisher hates all of them because they're too slow. They can only go 19 knots. I need to point out this is actually quite fast for a submarine of the day. But Fisher wanted specifically 24 knots. I need to point out this is actually quite fast for a submarine of the day, but Fisher wanted specifically 24 knots. Because he wanted the submarine to be able to keep up with the fleet, and that could only happen because his other standard for the rest of the fleet was 24 to 27 knots, what I'm saying here is much like your friend that's really into wolferotica, he wouldn't rest until he got his knots.

Joe! That is disgusting. The British Admiralty has entered the Omegaverse! I didn't need to hear that before 9am. For anyone interested, 24 knots is 27.61871 miles per hour. Thank you. But engineers had hit something of a limit for submarine based diesel motors of the era. That is when Vickers, famously both engine and machine gun and airplane manufacturer,

approached the Admiralty and told them, we've got an idea, it'll be fast as hell, however, it will require an oil fired, steam driven engine. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. In a submarine. You might as well just be feeding fucking submariners into the engine like it is the emperor on the golden throne. I was like my spirit powered submarine. Oh, I'm just thinking like imagine how fucking hot it would be in that submarine. Oh, as we will quickly find out that the heat will not be

necessarily the most dangerous problem that's going on here. All I gotta say is I know it smelled crazy in there. Oh, fuck yeah. A fisher knowing little about engineering and only wanting speed said, fuck yeah, give me that submarine. And thus the K-class submarine was born. And most importantly, the Navy ordered 21 K-class submarines without any tests being done on any prototype burst. This is going to go really, really well.

I legitimately like we've talked about a lot of dumb ships, we've talked about a lot of dumb weapons, planes, you name it on this show. I do not think we've ever seen anybody like, yep, give me a flea of those motherfuckers, I don't need to test it. I don't think we've had that yet. Like at least they tested the turtle. Yeah, I mean the turtle was, when it comes to all the submarines we've ever talked about on this show, the most successful because nobody ever died in it. The turtle. Yeah, I mean the turtle was, when it comes to all the submarines we've ever talked about

on the show, the most successful because nobody ever died in it. You can't say the same for the K-Class. So I am calling it now 35 minutes into the episode or whatever. This is going to explode and kill people. Yeah, yeah you got that part alright. Now I should point out here from the start, the K-Class was in fact really fast. That is the end of the list of good things you can say about the K-Class. It goes without saying that in the annals of this show, possibly history, the K-Class

is the worst submarine ever built. For starters, I talked about, I admitted, that is in fact very fast on the surface because when he's talking about his speed of the submarine, that's what he wants on the surface because submarines back then really traveled most of the time on the surface. They could only remain submerged for a very, very short amount of time due to technological limits, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But so it can hit its speed limit at the surface level. Here's a problem.

Okay. Due to its shape, a very sharply cut nose cone specifically, that when it hit that speed, the nose would dip into the water and they would not be submerging. The sub would be in surface mode and start submerging. This would slow the submarine down and it rattled the fucking thing as if like the sea god picked up the K-class submarine and shook the piss out of it. People would bounce around inside when it was at full tilt. It's bad enough being a submariner in like 1915, 1916. This just makes it worse

and I didn't think that was possible. It required a fair amount of effort to make it worse. And now we get to talk about the thing that all of you are probably curious about. The combustion engine on the inside of it. Because that is effectively what it uses a combustion engine to generate steam power which then powers the submarine. But at the end of the day, there's still an oil burning engine in that submarine. Those would require vents, obviously, right? Otherwise everybody would just die within like, I don't know, 10 minutes.

Each submarine would be fitted with a system of funnels and vents to vent off this poisonous gas. And there'd be two funnels that would need to be stored in special housing before the submarine could dive. Also, the oil-burning furnaces could not be put out because obviously it takes time to get them started again, etc, etc. So even when the submarine is diving, the furnaces must keep going. So they'd have to enter a dampened state. Still on, still burning, but not as hot as the sub-dove underwater. It must be pretty easy to spot a submarine coming towards you by the trail of fucking

bubbles, it's oil powered engine and vents is leaving on the surface. Have you ever thought to yourself, what if the Kuznetsov was a submarine? Why is there a plume of smoke erupting from the ocean? Is Neptune smoking fat doinks? Like what is going on here? Why is there a volcano speeding towards me? Each turbine would also need an air intake, and those intakes would also need to be sealed before any diving happened. There is so many things to do before diving that the process could take up to 30 minutes before the submarine was fully ready to go underwater.

If that wasn't bad enough that due to the subs weight and design in general, that despite being a fraction of their size, the K-class submarine had the same turning radius of a battleship. You know, I think there's a, there's a valid argument for not deploying stuff that you haven't tested rigorously enough that it's not going to immediately kill everyone involved. Yeah, that's a good it's generally a solid policy to have. Instead the British Navy has made the submarine that kills you. I mean that's a lot of submarines. That's most submarines to be fair. I'll say this there's one thing for a fuck-up in a submarine. Fuckups can be fixed, right?

There's one small thing that's wrong with it. Famously, we talked about the American torpedo that had a tendency to circle back around at the submarine that fired it. That was actually very easily fixed once the Navy admitted that they had built the torpedo that kills you. But the K-Class fundamentally, from its very shape to its design on paper, it was like, it would make more sense if it was like, oh yeah, it turns out that the Sea Lord was actually a German spy, and this was a huge operation to undermine the Royal Navy. Like there is a general saying with people who who do like deep sea diving and like scuba diving and stuff is like when you are deep enough in the water, you realize what it's

like to be part of the food chain again. And somehow they have managed to reintroduce people into the sub aquatic food chain. But the natural predator is tens of thousands of tons of steel crushing you like a crumpled piece of paper. Yes. We have introduced the British back into the food chain in the worst way possible. The only thing that they didn't do before throwing them in the ocean was covering it with brown sauce. And then look at, you know, we managed to do it again by breeding XL bullies, the natural predator of British people.

Just throwing them in the sea. These ones have gills. Oh God. The Atlantean XL bullies. Four times blimpy, three times Poseidon. One of my favorite remarks I've ever seen made of any submarine that we've ever talked about on this show comes from a British Submariner that upon seeing the K-Class and simply quote, there are too many holes in the hull. Which, yeah, that is a problem for most ships. It is certainly the biggest problem for submarines. This is either something you are only going to hear on Xbox life about

your mom, or something you really don't want to hear about a submarine you're about to crawl inside of. I love entrusting my life to the HMS SpongeBob. You too will soon live under the sea, but it won't be as cute and your best friend will not be a starfish. No. You'll just be dead. No. You and all your friends will be dead.

Yeah. Even if all of these holes were sealed correctly, and there was a process for this, one thing they forgot was there was no safeties involved in this situation. Meaning that this submarine would not throw up any warning lights or sirens should you try to dive with, let's's say one of the many holes still just open to the air. With all of that aside, it was still a burning hot death trap, a weakness that you've already kind of stumbled upon, right?

There's a furnace instead of a sealed metal tube, which is always burning, generating heat but also consuming oxygen. Meaning that the K-Class actually did have something in common with the Turtle and that was the time underwater was only as short as the amount of air still left trapped inside the tube. But however, the Turtle was still a better submarine despite being built in the 1700s because the Turtle was not in fact filled with active fire consuming said oxygen. Yeah, the British Royal Navy like only deployed sailors on the submarines who had the biggest lungs is like the advice is just just hold your breath. It'll be fine. We've built a submarine corp out of only the best rowers that we could find. Unfortunately,

we killed them all in two weeks. So now we're down to that guy who's coughing way too much on the subway, but still standing way too close to you. He's your captain now. So this gave the crew of the K-Class two options. Stay underwater for a very, very, very short amount of time or die in one of two ways. Slow roasting or suffocation. Yeah, not really ideal. Everyone hated these new submarines from the men who used them to the people in government once they got them. Several people in the Admiralty said quote, they were obsolete before they were complete, which I hate because bars.

I hate to hand it to the Admiralty here. They're spitting lines here. A thing that will happen recurringly over the next 40 years of this period is like, Oh, we built this thing. It's completely obsolete now. What do we do? Use it anyway. Yeah, we have built something that's only efficient at one thing. Killing our own sailors.

Mm hmm. But most importantly than any of the problems I have already named here, Fisher loved the K-Class because it did smash the 24 knot per hour target on the surface, as long as you were fine liquefying the crew as they went. And he was. And as soon as his submarines made it to the fleet, people learned that on top of being a bad design on paper, they were suicidal in practice. Even in mild seas, water would flood through the vents and the funnels, especially when they hit that vaunted 24 knots per hour. Water would slosh over them, the nose would get pushed under the water, and water would soon be coming in through the vents and the funnels, because again,

the submarine has too many holes in it. But also as well, like I think, or maybe you can tell me this or not, like the design of the nose was obviously meant to help it achieve that 24 knots per hour. If they had accepted a slower speed, do you think it would have been better designed? Well, that's the thing you are right about the nose cone design. And once they found out that if they hit the targeted speed that same design would threaten the stability of the submarine and water would slosh inside

that came with an added safety. So much water would flood into the submarine that it would swamp the furnaces, kill the engines, and stop it from sinking. And they did eventually come to a problem solving skill, if you will, about this. And that was, oh, just don't do that. Just don't go that fast. Go like, try like 20. It should be safe. The submarine is also designed to dive to 200 feet, which is actually less than the total length of the submarine. Meaning that depending on the angle of the submarine, the stern would be on the surface while the bow was at its diving limit. This led to a joke between

officers serving on the subs that one would pick up the phone to the other officer on the other side of the submarine and say, hey, my side is diving. What's your side doing? Oh, but in case you're wondering that whole 200 foot limit shit, they also had a safety check to stop that from becoming an issue because the bulkheads that held the submarine together for some reason were only rated to go 70 feet underwater. So don't worry, we fixed the problem. You'll die before you even make it that far. I think that is a summary phrase of this entire show. Don't worry. You'll die before you even make it that far. I think that is a summary phrase of this entire show Don't worry. You'll die before you make it that far. Don't worry

You'll die before the worst possible outcome, which is all of you dying some of you may die There was another problem mainly around the shoddy construction job. That was the entire existence of the K-Class We've talked about this targeted speed of 24 knots, right? People that actually got the sub up to 24 knots found that the sub was slowly tearing itself apart due to its really, really, really bad quality of construction. So captains were advised just don't do that. Problem solved. It's like the captain like slap and it's like, this can go 24 knots and it just falls apart like the front of Lenny's house in the Simpsons and all officers inside slides out

in a bathtub. He's just like, don't tell anyone I command like this. The war started in 1914 and most people know this as like the war of the submarine, the first real war of the submarine, the first real war of the submarine, especially if you happen to be an American because unrestricted submarine warfare is one of the things that drag America kicking and screaming into the conflict, you know? I for one support unrestricted submarine warfare.

Sure. I mean, you got to do something with all your submarines you have laying around, right? I believe in a second amendment, which is I have the right to own a submarine for self-defense. But the Germans and their vaunted U-boats and everything, they only had 57 torpedoes in their entire stockpile when the war started. However, those torpedoes were used very effectively. And within only a few weeks of the war starting, the German U-boat fleet had killed thousands of sailors. Most of this had been done by a single U-boat, by Captain Otto Wettigen, who had single-handedly

caused more damage to the Royal Navy than probably any other man in history. And as 1914 turned into 1915, the hitch just kept coming. Fisher resigns as first Sea Lord, so did four other men within around a year, creating a revolving door of Sea Lords as the Navy struggled to do anything about U-boats. There's the famed Battle of Jutland, which we've already talked about. Thousands upon thousands of people die. The Royal Navy loses 14 ships. The Germans lose 11 ships.

Like we said, it comes to an inconsequential end. It's often said the Germans lost because their fleet got bottled up afterwards. But it's kind of like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer only wins boxing after just pushing the guy over. After he's tired. Who got tired punching him in the face. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. However, with its high seas fleet, that being dreadnoughts, battleships, things

of that nature, being confined to port, that left the German U-boat fleet to do most of the heavy lifting, which did continue to beat the ever living hell out of the British, at one point one in four merchant ships were sunk trying to leave British ports. As 1916 slipped into 1917, the U-boat menace only worsened. Now the real answer to this question had actually been found. The convoy system. That being a convoy of armed ships escorting merchant transport ships creating a target that was far too well armed and protected for U-boats to take a chance shooting at them and not it just be a suicide run, right? Of course, the Royal Navy knew what convoys were. They had been using them to protect troop

transports working to move British colonial troops up into the Western Front. However, the first Sea Lord and commander of the Grand Fleet, John Jellicoe, refused to employ them to cover merchant lines, thinking they were simply a waste of resources. Which is impressive to think about because like this is a time where like the Isles starving was a real possibility. And he's like, nah, we can't risk the naval resources despite the fact we're not using them for anything else. There's different factions in the Admiralty at the time, some who wanted to use convoys, some who didn't. One was a guy named First Lord of the Admiralty Geddes, wanted to fire

Jellicoe for his refusal to protect British merchant shipping. Because like I said, the British were staring the possibility of rationing and starvation directly in the face at the time. But Geddes is worried that his friends in parliament would make this hell for him to try to do, because of course he had friends in parliament would make this hell for him to try to do, because of course he had friends in parliament. So he simply waited until Christmas Eve when parliament would take the day off, and then he fired him. The king and the second commander of the grand fleet, David Beatty, both pretended to be

shocked by this news, but had both been told that it was coming, Beatty and the king himself both told Jellicoe that they would speak to Lord Geddes about getting him his job back, and then they ghosted him. Which is... Mmm. Imagine being told by the King, don't worry, I'll try to get your job back. It's just like, aw bro, come on. You could just give me my job back. Like, I know you're a constitutional monarch, but come on. Not even left on read just hasn't opened the message at all Yeah, yeah

then Beatty replaced him as Admiral of the Grand Fleet and he like pretty much everyone else in the British Admiralty thought they need to strike out at the German Navy Convoys would be employed to counter the U-boat threat but to Beatty the only way the British were really going to keep the U-boat fleet at bay would be to Engage the German high seas fleet in another large scale battle like Jutland, which makes absolutely zero sense until you learn a little bit more about Beatty. Meanwhile, the king is just getting texts and saying like reinstatement tonight king, you up king. He's trying to type back, right? But his giant veiny sausage fingers can't quite hit the buttons.

Hey King George, you know if King George famously had a tattoo done by Sutherland McDonald maybe he was like jacked to the gills on cocaine getting blasted and he was like bleh fuck em. I don't remember this guy. This plan all sounds very stupid and that's because it is. It's because it just isn't true and Beedie knew it. Beedie had been second command under Jellicoe during the Battle of Jutland, and they had faced a fair amount of criticism for their actions there, leading Beatty to think, you know, if I just had one more shot,

I could repair my reputation. But also in his telling, the reputation of the Royal Navy, which, of course, he doesn't actually care about. He cares about his own personal reputation, which has resolved at this point he got promoted mmm but it's like a personal slight that he didn't clearly win his one big sea battle yeah right so he organized exercise EC1 in January of 1918 which would require the two components of the Grand Fleet one which was stationed at Scapa Flow and the other Rosseth,

that come together, sail through the North Sea, and with the possibility that, with their powers combined, they might make contact with the German high seas fleet and start a battle. Part of this mission was the 13th Submarine Flotilla, which is commanded by Ernest Lear and has flagshiped the HMS Ethereal. And I'm trying not to fall into too many holes here, this is a long enough episode as it is. But Lear, weirdly before the Battle of May Island, was known for being the biggest thief the Royal Navy has ever seen.

It's just called procurement? Unlicensed procurement? See the thing is, normally that's what I would say. But he was like a petty thief, like he was like a kleptomaniac. Everyone that he met, he would steal from. He would steal anything that wasn't bolted down. He would use this trick on new sailors to offer them a cigarette, and then as they were

focusing on the cigarette, he would fucking pickpocket them while making smallpox. He's an officer of the Royal Navy. You know what? I kind of appreciate it. I do like it. It's so weird to me. I can't help but to love it. He became so well known for this that sailors would warn new sailors like, don't take a cigarette from the captain. Under Lear's command were the K-class submarines 11, 17, 14, 12, and 22 because the Royal Navy only numbered their submarines rather than name them at the time. There was also the 12th submarine flotilla under Captain Charles Little with the other

K-class submarines 4, 3, 6, and 7. These are all stationed at Rossenthal under the command of Q. Evan Thomas. And going into this battle, the K-class subs had already gotten a reputation for being deathtreps. Hard to control, shitty, not to mention commanded by dudes who really had no idea what they were doing owing to the fact that this is the first large-scale deployment of submarines in Royal Navy history, leading a lot of people to doing the worst form of on-the-job training you could really have. When you think of it, if you're on a ship with thousands of people, they're coming from a tradition, from institutions, from years and years

of training throughout the Royal Navy, starting at a young ensign up to a captain. They've been in the Navy for years, they've learned from people who had been in the Navy for years, whether that be a good thing or a bad thing, but submariners are the first generation. A lot of these dudes went to school in surface warfare. You know what I mean? They're not learning from anyone who has a long history on these things. Yeah, but like fucking, I don't want to learn on the job on a submarine, on a ship. Yeah, maybe.

Exactly. Not under the water. It makes everything a lot harder. And what makes everything even harder than that is when your submarine is this one. Yeah, just two months before EC1, the sub K1 have been lost due to being ran into by another sub, the K4, and the K4 had been ran aground after that ramming incident and had to be rescued. The commander of K4, David Stock, was not punished for this at all, remained in command and is now taking part in the exercise. But men like Stock were kind of just what

the sub fleet was led by. You had guys who learned seamanship specifically on subs, but they're a minority. They were brand new and virtually untested, followed by guys who came from the surface fleet, who had no idea what to do with the sub and not thinking very highly of their position because being a sub mariner in the Royal Navy was not a status symbol. It was not like being a gunnery officer on a battleship or whatever. And then you had guys like Ernest Cunningham, who is 19 years old, had just became an officer,

and everybody believed that he had a bright career ahead of him because he had won a fleet boxing championship. Bring back the days of meritocracy. I somehow respect the fact that his career was advanced through punching people, more than who he was related to in the drawing room though that was certainly part of it of how he originally got into the academy

system. Yeah. But whatever. And remember the submarine they're being asked to use as a fucking death trap because stocks accident was not the only one involving a K class sub at one point of the war. There's also the K-13 that sank because it tried to dive when its crew had simply forgotten to seal all of the various holes. It killed several people, was recovered, and then renamed the K-22 and sent back into service. Life in a K-class sub was a never-ending series of close calls. Even when they didn't kill anyone, everyone serving on them knew they were always very very close to death at any given time. So, Sub-Aironers serving on them nicknamed themselves the Suicide Club. submarines with the British Royal Navy and you're being commanded by the guy who can punch really good.

This is captain one punch man. It's fine. I would trust Saitama with my life. Yeah Saitama would be a solid captain over fucking Ernest Cunningham. I don't trust anybody named Ernest. I blame the Ernest scared stupid movie series. Yeah it's a completely different meaning of the importance of being earnest and while we all know that's a solid band name You know like you said it's never it's never a good way to determine your existence They also gave nicknames to the submarine itself the calamity class the catastrophe class and the killer class Mm-hmm

So the submariners were fully aware of what they were using was a pile of shit. Now despite the goal of the exercise to be drawing the Germans out for a fight, virtually nobody thought it would actually happen. So many people believe that this is just a kind of show of force. Vice Admiral Evan Thomas would lead the force with his flagship the HMS Courageous. They would sail out of their two ports, meet up in the Firth of Fourth and then turn past a tiny little speck of nothing known as May Island. It was pretty much just a lighthouse post. One of those tiny little scary looking islands in the middle of night, you know?

Yeah, and Willem Dafoe and Robert Pansen are like having a weird existential fight in the background and then these cons are just about to like all crash into each other. Yeah, that's exactly. I'm pretty sure that's where the, the movie, the lighthouse is based, which I still have not seen it. I know it involves jerking off at some point. Why'd you have to crash your boat? Tom. Behind courageous would be the 13th submarine flotilla, a gap of 5 nautical miles, another group of ships, another gap of 5 nautical miles, and so forth all the way down until

BD himself pulled up the rear in his ship. This force was massive and once fully arranged and sailing would cover 30 miles of water. The Firth had a ton of navigational lights and May Island was, like I said, a lighthouse post, but none of these were lit on January 31st, 1918. They did a procedure for a time of war because you don't want to aid the enemy with your navigational lights, you know. But it would require the ships coming from Rossinth to navigate via dead reckoning, which at sea means to navigate solely based on estimating the distance between themselves and a fixed point, and then adding in how fast they were going, and then coming out with a general idea of where they actually were on

their charts. In a very simplistic way to explain this, the ship's navigators were kind of eye-fucking it in a mathematical sense. It was not perfect, but it was a pretty basic form of nighttime seamen ship. Anyone should be able to do it, and each ship had faint blue lights on their stern, making it easier for each ship to follow the other and therefore have a fixed reference point at any point of the journey. Then, right as the ships are setting out, a British sea plane spotted a submarine in the Firth, which dived as soon as the plane saw it. So of course, they assumed the sub was German.

And to this day, we actually have no idea if it was a sub or not. Obviously, not a lot of records about the German submarine in that area were ever found. There's no camera footage to review. We just have that the pilots in the seaplane totally thought they saw a submarine. It's a bit of a Gulf of Tonkin type situation. This isn't as bad because it doesn't have what comes next, I suppose. It doesn't start a giant fucking war. Yeah, thankfully the war has already started.

Yeah, actually funny enough, I watched Er. Errol Morris's documentary fog of war about Robert McNamara. And it was just like so funny that like he just took no responsibility for it at all. Robert McNamara famed piece of shit. Yes. Rest in piss. You won't be missed. Evan Thomas ordered that all ships should set sail at 21 knots once they got past May Island where the sub had been spotted,

because back then speed was just about the best form of safety you could have when it came to submarines. If you went really fast, a submarine might have had a much harder time hitting you with a torpedo is what it boiled down to. At first, the fleet was sailing along without any problems, visibility is fine. And then as they got close to May Island, a cloud of mist kind of settled on the sea. Noticing this, Thomas ordered everyone to slow down to 16 knots so not to make things complicated. Then back at the HMS Ethereal, it's Captain Lear, the lost site of the ship that it was following, the Courageous,. He ordered his ship to speed up

first the 16 and then 19 knots Lear did catch up but at a cost you're familiar with, you know, like a slinky. Yeah. Yeah from Toy Story. This is the naval version of a slinky. Everyone slows down Lear speeds up that meant he opens a gap behind himself forcing ships behind him to speed up, which then pulled away from the ships behind them, forcing them to speed up, so forth, all the way down the line for 30 fucking miles. Everybody is suddenly speeding up and slowing down. I can see where this is going.

Worse still was the Royal Navy had drafted local ships to act as minesweepers in the Firth. These were a little more than fishing trawlers that just kind of repurposed, they just putted back and forth all day on the lookout. Nobody thought to tell any of these trawlers that, hey, by the way, we're sending the entire fucking fleet right by May Island. So suddenly ships and submarines were forced to quickly dodge around these trawlers without any warning whatsoever. And remember, most of these ships, they're not exactly fast moving when it comes to dodging things. Especially the K-classes. One of these subs had to

dodge around the trawlers was K-14 under the command of Thomas Harbottle. Now, because his shitty K-class sub was cruising at about 16 knots in a dense mist, he could hardly see anything, and due to the design of the K-Class, like we've talked about, he could hardly maneuver whatsoever. Harbottle had two other incidents of running his submarine into shit, and he was only able to see one of the minesweepers a few minutes before he was about to hit it, so he ordered his helmsman to turn hard, only for the helm, that being the steering wheel let's say, to stick in place turning. Oh no.

Panicking, he ordered the engineer to fix the submarine as it continued to fly towards the port side with him unable to control it. This went on for 6 minutes, which is a hell of a lot of time when you're turning into a crowded fleet of subs and other ships, and the engine finally managed to unstick it. But now the K-14 was badly out of position, Harbital had no idea where they were in relation to the fleet around him, and he knew he was in trouble, so he turned on his navigational lights so others could see him. Then the Ethereal suddenly saw those lights off to the starboard side, which confused

the hell out of them because they had no idea that anything was wrong with Harbottle or the K-14. There was no way for them to just communicate easily. And if the leading ship of a particular part of a fleet had no idea where they were, then the rest of the shitty K-class classes had no chance to locate it. The K-22 smashed into the side of the K-14, cutting straight into it, and two men in the sub vanished immediately, never to be seen again. The K-22 quickly sent a message to the Ethereal about what had happened, but for whatever reason, it would take 25 minutes for that message to get into the hands of the ethereal's commander Lear who had

No idea anything was wrong, and they just kept sailing. You know it's a it's it's really bad when it comes down to the minutes Yeah Meanwhile further to the west the officer of the watch and the HMS inflexible Could no longer see the lights ahead of it which belonged to the HMS Indomitable owing to the fact that the mist was getting worse. Then suddenly, they saw lights poking out, out of nowhere, in front of them. They sighed with relief until someone realized that, the lights that they were seeing were green. Meaning it was not the rear lights of a ship, but the starboard lights of a ship. Specifically, it was the starboard side of the K-22, which

was dead in the water after being crashed in two by the K-14. The captain of the Inflexible turned the ship hard to port, but it was way too late, and the ship glanced off the side of the submarine, peeling back 30 feet of its bow. Onboard InFlexible, the captain hardly knows they'd hit anything and they just drove away. Somehow the K-22 was still floating though. Didn't see anything. Just ignore it. Just ignore it.

If you acknowledge it, then we have to do something. Love to do a hit and run on my battleship. Now remember here for a minute how the fleet is arrayed, which is something that the crew of the K-22 would have been probably having running through their minds at the same time. That is, each flotilla was separate from one another by a few hours, but each one was coming up after the other in waves, let's say. And had just been in its second accident with as many waves of ships, so they knew the next wave of ships would not be too far behind them.

All this while bailing water out of their submarine which was mixing with the fuel and burning their skin just to remain floating. At this point, Lear had finally been given a message that the two submarines had ran into one another, so he turned the ethereal around to go back to get them because he was technically their commander and it was his responsibility. The rest of the submarines under his command followed him but had no idea why he was doing what he was doing. He sent a message to the HMS Australia, who he thought would be the next nearest ship, telling him that the K-22 and the K-12 had been in a crash. Which is kind of funny, because the K-14 had been in a crash, not the K-12.

The K-12 was actually one of the subs that was still following him, meaning he had no idea where anybody was. This is not good. As he turned, the ship barreled straight towards the HMS Fearless. He managed to skirt around the Fearless, but something Lear wasn't thinking about was the K-class subs that were following him, the 11, the 17, and the 12 in in that order absolutely could not dodge anything. The K-11 managed to get out of the Fearless's way, but the 17 didn't stand a chance, and the Fearless slammed directly into the side of it. The K-22 was dead in the water, an abandoned ship order was given, and the Fearless itself

was badly damaged since they hit it dead on. But it's important to remember here that there are still dozens of other ships buzzing around them and coming up from behind them stretching back 30 miles. The Ks 6, 4 and 3 were approaching the scene of the wreck. The 4 caught the distress message coming from the fearless and smashed on its brakes. The K6, due to all the mist and speed, had lost track of the K3, the sub which it was supposed to be following. It saw lights ahead of it and thought it must be the 3, and therefore they had caught back up. But in reality it was the lights of the K4, and by the time the K6 realised they were looking

at it was way too late, and they crashed into the K4 at full speed, cutting the submarine clean in half. Holy shit. Like imagine being the Submariner on the K4 and she's like, Oh, it's just completely cut in half. Now we're fucked. Yeah. They they're dead immediately. They're sinking. And if that wasn't bad enough, the K7 speeds by running over the wreckage of the K4 and the survivors as it's saying, They're just whipping shitties. That's all this is, is a whole naval fleet of people whipping shitties in a very small body of water. Due to limitations in visibility and technology, the vast majority of the ships of the Grand Fleet had no idea what was going on.

They had no idea there had been any accidents, that anybody was dead, nothing. They were just steaming towards the North Sea. Of course, this meant that ship after ship just blasted through the water, which is now full of hundreds of survivors from the very submarine wrecks, killing dozens of men that may have survived. In the end, two submarines, the 4 and the 17, went down completely. The 6, 7, 14, and 22 were all damaged, as well as the HMAS fearless. 105 men were dead, and it all happened in just slightly over an hour. So in about as long as this podcast is right now.

Like, yeah. A fucking just a fuck up of unimaginable proportions just because of like fog. I also it's crazy to think about one of the things that sticks out to me is in most of these giant fuck ups that we talk about on the show, not necessarily battles, but more of just like whoopsie doodles, let's call them. People see them happening and try to stop them, but it's kind of like a slow speed car rack there's not a lot they can do. This all happened in like a vacuum. Nobody in the greater fleet had any idea that these dudes were dying. Mm-hmm.

Dozens of people were killed because ships just like boned out right over them as they were swimming for their lives. Mm-hmm. And we get a court of inquiry within record time, pretty much four days later. The Royal Navy calls a court of inquiry. And immediately there's issues with it. Every ship effectively, as we've kind of laid out here, is its own world in a way. There's no reliable communications with the outside world, especially like minute by minute detailed conversation, which meant every single captain, every single sailor, and every person in the fleet had a different version of events that took place.

This was made worse by the fact that some captains knew this would be known and expected, so they lied their fucking asses off to protect themselves. Oh yeah, like it's a consequence of like the fact that it took what, 20 minutes for communication is like, oh yeah, we're splitting half to like reach one of the captains. It's very easy to fudge one of the captains. It's very easy to fudge the numbers a little bit. Exactly. My personal favourite though is the captain of the HMS Inflexible, who wrote a report so purposefully vague that he refused to say even which part of his ship had hit the K-22. He's like, you know, like we're on some like float and shit and like,

you know, stuff happens, but like, you know, the vibes were good. So like, I don't really know. I love the idea that his paperwork was so vague that nobody could use it against him either. Like you can't use my own words against me if I say nothing. It's just all written in emojis. Writing a whole naval after action review in cop tense. It's just like eggplant emoji, ship emoji, splash emoji, and they're like, so what did you mean by this? They're just squinting down like, well everything seems to be in order. I should point out here for the benefit of my beloved co-host that one of the officers on the board was a

lieutenant with quite possibly the most Hideo Kojima name ever seen on the show. Lieutenant A. Batman. LLTN A BADMAN. The second I saw that I knew I had to tell you. Oh fuck yes. I got another one for you. One of the admirals on the board of inquiry was Admiral Goodenough. You're fucking joking.

You're lying to me. Nope. Nope. A bad man and good enough. It's best to assume that Admiral Goodenough is the one that has to wear no clothing so he can use photosynthesis to power himself. Now this entire investigation really came down to one thing. The K-class subs were a mechanical deathtrap.

Sailors knew it, captains knew it. And all of this was caused by, in the very beginning, a K-class breaking. The K-14 steering getting jammed. Everything else happened secondary to that. But the Navy board was in no way going to find themselves guilty of admitting that they have continued and knowingly built a class of submarines that kills you. So they put all the blame officially on Lear, the Navy's resident kleptomaniac. He wanted to crash the subs because he wanted to take the copper out of them, you know? He walks into his hearing and he's like has all the guy all

the admirals of the board stolen medals on his uniform Admiral Leia stop stealing the pens jamming pens down the neck of his fucking uniform he has a whole K class at the bed of a pickup truck outside they also blame the captains of the submarines that crashed as well, mostly because some of them were dead. They couldn't argue back. But the everyone that lived through it, Lear included, caught charges at a courts martial, namely all boiling down to negligence.

Weirdly enough, when Lear sat down for the courts martial, one of the officers acting as judge on his board was Captain James Huxley, who was captain of the inflexible, who had crashed into the 22, wrote that incredibly vague report, and was present for the entire incident and now he was the judge. F**ks sake man. Nobody saw a problem with this and weirdly, Lear didn't even object. I think it's because he kind of assumed like I'm fucked regardless, it doesn't really matter what happens here, like they're looking

for someone to blame, it's gonna be me. However, charges of negligence were not proven and Lear was declared innocent. A few subcaptains were found guilty, but nobody was given any serious punishment for the role in the accident. This could be for a lot of reasons. It could be seen as the old boys club looking out for each other because everyone involved in knew one another. There's also you can't write the judgment if you don't have any pens. Yeah. That was Captain Lear's main defense. Like they cannot sentence me to prison if I have still at all of their quills and ink jars. He's stolen the gavel so he can't be handed down a sentence.

I find you guilty to just someone just slapping their palm against like, oh this doesn't work. Fuck, he's even stolen my weird wig that we still have to wear for some reason when we're up here on the chair. And Lear's just sitting there with like seven wigs stacked on top of each other. Like I said, this could be the old boys program, or it could also be that the war wasn't over. They couldn't suddenly sentence all of these naval officers to prison. They needed them. Or because of due to a bad investigation and a prosecutor leading the courts, Marshall, who was not even a lawyer, tanked the case entirely.

Whatever it might be, the Royal Navy knew as soon as the, well, the gavel had been stolen, so the empty palm slapping on the table, as soon as that happened, the Royal Navy knew that everything about this was a steaming pile of shit. So they wrapped that shit up, declared it a state secret, and buried it in the Royal Navy archives until 1994. I do have some fun facts about what Lear was up to later on in life though. Okay, hit me. Lear came out of retirement to serve in World War II and again to be a very well known thief.

After that he retired again and lived out his life without any real problems until 1952 when at the age of 70 he punched the vicar of his church because the vicar accused him of stealing from the church. Which I never thought I'd say this but the vicar is probably right. Yeah, definitely right. Whatever I mean I like to know that even as a 70 year old man, he never quit the hustle. He was stealing shit from the church, you know, live in his life with two different pensions. But in closing, let's talk about the K-class sub again.

By the end of the war, 270 British sailors died while serving in the K-Class subs. None of them died because of enemy action. Folk psych. The only direct combat the K-Class would ever see was a case when one submarine fired a torpedo at an enemy ship. The torpedo hit, but the torpedo did not explode. Therefore, the K-Class's KD ratio is zero and two hundred and seven. We're putting up spiked smiles, no mercy. The end. Fucking hell.

The British is gonna set the K-class to liberate hostages from the local theater. So that is the story of the K-class submarine in the Battle of May Island. Tom, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. For people who don't know, support the show on Patreon. You can ask us a question on Discord. You can ask us a question on Patreon, which is a DM thing. You can put it into a K-Class submarine, sink it to the bottom of the sea, and Tom's Atlantean relatives will read it on air.

And today's question is what are you currently looking forward to that is not show related? Parentheses not to get that parasocial. I'm going on holiday next month for a couple of days. It's going to be nice. I'm going to Spain as every Irish person does have a couple of cool gigs coming up. Um, and I have a really cool project with beneath the skin that, um, I'll be announcing soon. Um, it's, I'll let you know it is a book, but yeah, other than that, like I'm just, I'm chilling. I'm having a good time. That's awesome. Speaking of books, uh, my bright thing I'm looking forward to is also a book. I have been working on my first fantasy novel, military fantasy slash gun powered

fantasy, whatever way you want to put it. It is still no projected release date, but I am nearly done with the first editor's pass, which is always very painful to anybody who listened to the show editor's pass, which is always very painful to anybody who listened to the show long enough has heard me bitch and complain about editing my work when it comes to books. The first pass is almost done, which is a huge step in the right direction. I like where it's going. So I'm really, really looking forward to the next parts of getting more feedback of book cover art. I'm really excited. I haven't been excited about something that I've created in a very long time. This excited I should say. I have been excited. I don't want to sound like a depressed person. Everything's shit. I haven't been this excited.

Yeah. I haven't been this excited about something I've created in a very long time so I'm really really looking forward to it. And most importantly I really hope it doesn't suck. But with the excitement comes the fear. But I am really, really happy about it. But Tom, that is a podcast. You host other podcasts. Plug those other podcasts. Beneath Skin show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. And this guy sucked a show about scholars coming on to air their scholarly beef against people throughout history who have sucked. And also as well, a little show that a friend of mine, Holly, is doing that

I am helping her out with called Stuffed.jpeg. So if you want to learn about visual culture, you can check that out. I went on it to talk about the history of the visual representation of Santa in which I invented Ghanaian Santa. So if that sounds like your bag, check it out. Yeah. This is the only show that I host. So thank you for listening to it. If you like what we do here, consider supporting us on Patreon. Just $5 a month gets you everything in our catalog, including years and years of bonus content, side series, eBooks, audiobooks, regular bonus episodes we make and every regular weekly episode early. It also gets you first dibs on live show tickets and merch.

And speaking of which, we're doing another show in London on June 22nd at the Big Fat Festival on that Sunday in the afternoon, where you can see us, you can see all sorts of other shows we have worked with in the past and from my understanding like 30 other shows. So come to the festival, we'll have a ton of merch there, we'll be there, it'll be a fun time. And until next time, build a submarine that actively kills sailors.