White Ensign flies over memorial for Royal Navy WW2 sub once under US command
A new White Ensign has been raised at a memorial in the US dedicated to a British Second World War submarine known for its involvement in Operation Mincemeat and for briefly serving under the command of the US Navy.
Relics from HMS Seraph, including its periscope and a forward torpedo loading hatch, can be found at The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina – the only onshore location in the US authorised to fly the Royal Navy's White Ensign.
Op Mincemeat – one of the most remarkable deceptions of the Second World War – involved planting details of a fake military plan on a dead body to divert German attention from the actual plans for an Allied invasion.
In April 1943, the Royal Navy's S-class submarine HMS Seraph dropped the dead body into the sea, which later floated to Spain and was found by a fisherman who reported the fake details to German intelligence.
A year earlier, HMS Seraph carried US General Mark W Clark on a secret mission to negotiate a surrender of the Vichy French forces before the Allied landings in North Africa.
Only a matter of days later, HMS Seraph was dispatched to southern France to rescue Vichy General Henri Giraud, however, he would only cooperate with Americans, so the submarine flew a US flag and temporarily became the USS Seraph under the command of the US Navy.
To remember this mission, the memorial has since flown both the Royal Navy White Ensign and the Stars and Stripes flags.
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