Qualla: HMS Affray https://qualla.com/hms-affray en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:11 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/3/hms-affray-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: HMS Affray https://qualla.com/hms-affray HMS Affray: Introduction https://qualla.com/hms-affray/ Photo credit Martin Allen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Seventy-five men went down with her. They were submariners and trainees, engineers and officers, most of them young, all of them aboard HMS Affray when she vanished beneath the English Channel on the night of 16 April 1951. The Royal Navy searched for nearly two months. Mothers waited. Wives waited. Children grew used to fathers who would not come home. When divers finally found her on the edge of Hurd's Deep, the hatches were sealed and the periscopes were up - she had been listening for the world above when whatever happened, happened.

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Image: Martin Allen | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/3/hms-affray-wp/gbv3-hms-affray-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full HMS Affray: State of the Art https://qualla.com/hms-affray/ Photo credit Martin Allen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Affray was a new kind of submarine for a new kind of war. Laid down at Cammell Laird in Birkenhead in January 1944 and commissioned the November after the war ended, she belonged to the Amphion class - sixteen boats designed to hunt the Japanese across the vast Pacific. Her build...

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Image: Martin Allen | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/3/hms-affray-wp/gbv3-hms-affray-state-of-the-art.mp3 0:06 2 full HMS Affray: The Snort https://qualla.com/hms-affray/ Photo credit Martin Allen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Then came the modification that would haunt her. In 1949 she went into drydock for a snort mast - the British name for a snorkel - a pneumatically raised steel tube that let a submarine breathe at periscope depth, running her diesels and charging her batteries without ever surfac...

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Image: Martin Allen | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/3/hms-affray-wp/gbv3-hms-affray-the-snort.mp3 0:06 3 full HMS Affray: Exercise Spring Train https://qualla.com/hms-affray/ Photo credit Martin Allen, CC BY-SA 4.0. By spring 1951 Affray was at Portsmouth, freshly recommissioned with a young crew under Lieutenant John Blackburn. On 16 April she sailed for an exercise called Spring Train, carrying not only her regular complement but a draft of trainee officers and Royal Marines learning their...

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Image: Martin Allen | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/3/hms-affray-wp/gbv3-hms-affray-exercise-spring-train.mp3 0:06 4 full HMS Affray: YARFFA https://qualla.com/hms-affray/ Photo credit Martin Allen, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 14 June, two months after she vanished, HMS Loch Fyne picked up an asdic contact on the very edge of Hurd's Deep, an underwater valley off Alderney. It was the same patch where an oil slick had been seen the night she disappeared. HMS Reclaim came in with a new waterproof came...

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Image: Martin Allen | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/3/hms-affray-wp/gbv3-hms-affray-yarffa.mp3 0:06 5 full HMS Affray: War Grave https://qualla.com/hms-affray/ Photo credit Martin Allen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Half a century later, the technical diver Innes McCartney followed the coordinates the Ministry of Defence had finally released and descended into the dark of Hurd's Deep. At 83 metres the ambient light is almost nothing, and the wreck loomed out of the gloom only when their torc...

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Image: Martin Allen | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/b/v/3/hms-affray-wp/gbv3-hms-affray-war-grave.mp3 0:06 6 full