Strana 15
Corfu and Lefkada as well as the port of Patras.
The following year it returned to Lefkada and
Corfu and also visited Ithaca (made famous by
the Homeric hero Odysseus) and Zakynthos.
Everything changed in the autumn of 1939,
by which time independent Poland had been
destroyed and the Soviet Union had just
attacked Finland. It was becoming clear that
peace in Europe was over, and the crew of
Papanikolis also began preparing for war.
It should be stressed that the Greek submarine
force was not in the best condition, primarily
because of financial constraints and their
impact on equipment maintenance. But that
was soon to change.
The Greco-Italian War broke out on 28
October 1940. At that time, the submarine
was commanded by Lieutenant Commander
(LtCdr, equivalent to a major in the army)
Miltiadis Iatridis, and its task was to operate
in the Ionian Sea. During this war, Papanikolis
completed a total of five war patrols and sank
two Italian vessels.
After Nazi Germany invaded the Kingdom
of Greece and occupied the Greek mainland,
the submarine‘s crew managed to sail to
Alexandria in Egypt. There it became part of
the British 1st Submarine Flotilla.
The submarine subsequently joined the Allied
war effort and conducted further war patrols
in the Mediterranean. Their objectives were to
attack shipping or transport Allied agents and
special forces to occupied territories. During
these operations, it sank more than 13,000
tonnes of enemy shipping. This was achieved
despite the limitations imposed by its technical
condition: for example, the submarine could
not remain submerged for long and had to
surface every 17–18 hours to replenish its air
supply.
Most of Greece was liberated in October
1944. At the time, Papanikolis was in Malta
undergoing further repairs to its propulsion
system. The boat returned home on 24
November 1944.
At the time of Greece‘s liberation, it was
one of only two submarines—from a pre-war
total of six—to survive the Second World
War. The other was Y 4 Nereus, which was
decommissioned in 1947.
By the end of the war, the submarine had
completed 18 years of intensive service, and
its technical condition and performance
had long since ceased to rank among the
best. Wear to the propulsion system, which
had already caused problems before the
war, was a particular concern. In July 1945,
a decision was therefore made to retire the boat
because it was obsolete. In recognition of its
achievements, the vessel‘s conning tower was
removed and respectfully preserved, while
the hull was sold for scrap and dismantled
in 1947. In addition to the complete conning
tower of Papanikolis, the museum‘s collection
also contains torpedo tubes, the complete
periscope and a compass mount. The Athens
War Museum displays an original British-made
Model 1937 torpedo dating from the Second
World War.
The boat exemplifies the Greek war effort
and the seamanship required to operate an
obsolete vessel, and it certainly deserves its
place in Greek history.
O :
1st war patrol: 28 October–2 November
1940, Ionian Sea area, commanding officer:
LtCdr Miltiadis Iatridis. The submarine
departed Salamina Base in the afternoon
together with the submarine Y 4 Nereus.
The following morning, the boats reached
the port of Patras. There, after some minor
organisational confusion partly caused by
Italian aerial bombing, arrangements were
made for cooperation with the British Navy and
operating areas were assigned. In the afternoon,
the submarine sailed on patrol into the Gulf
of Patras, from where it moved after dark to
the strait between the island of Kefalonia and
the mainland port of Kyllini. The next evening,
30 October, while patrolling between
Zakynthos and Kefalonia, the submarine‘s crew
sighted unidentified vessels that they assumed
were British. It therefore left the area without
TWO TOWERS
Painting the deck guns of the submarine Papanicolis.
The photograph was taken in Beirut, Syria, between
30 October and 7 November 1942.
Photo: IWM
The Peruvian submarine BAP Pisagua (SS-33) is a German Type 209/1200 vessel, a type that also includes
the Greek submarine Y/B S118 Okeanos. Photo: US Navy
INFO Eduard
15
August 2026