HMS M3

HMS M3 was a submarine of the M-Class, the British Royal Navy.

The M3 was part of a comprehensive four ships of class submarines, which was ordered by the Royal Navy in February 1916 instead of four vehicles the K- class ( K18 -K21 ). But It was not, as is sometimes read to conversions from the driven with steam turbines K- class, but a stand-alone design. In contrast to this, the double-hulled boats of the M-Class had the typical hybrid drive from diesel engines and electric motors. In addition to an armament of four 18-inch torpedo tubes, the M3 and its sister ships led one in a gun turret housed as main armament forward of the conning tower, large caliber battleship gun in the caliber of 12 inches ( 305 mm). The idea for this concept resulted from the unreliability and lack of range of the torpedoes used at that time (for armament concept see the sister ship M1).

The keel for M3 was down 4 December 1916 at the shipyard of Armstrong Whitworth in Newcastle upon Tyne, launched the submarine was launched on October 19, 1918, the commissioning took place only on July 9, 1920. Together with its sister ships was the submarine used in the following years, especially for testing and trial purposes. At an extraordinary drive came the M3, as they 1926 that supplied during a general strike between 9 and 15 May Victoria Dock and the King George V Dock in London as a generator.

After the loss of M1 in 1925 by a collision and the provisions of the Washington Naval Conference of 1922, which limited the maximum caliber of naval artillery of submarines to 8 inches ( 203 mm ) away to the turrets of the two remaining M-Class submarines. M3 was 1927/28, rebuilt in Chatham for testing purposes in a minelayer. Here, a case has been mounted on the upper deck of the first 80, 100 mines could later be transferred to a kind of conveyor belt through a door at the rear. As proven the concept, we used it on the boats of the Porpoise class.

After completion of the tests, the M3 was decommissioned and sold on February 16, 1932 for scrapping. The scrapping in April 1932 in Newport.

M1 | M2 | M3

See also: List of British submarine classes

• Submarine class M ( 1917)