The little sub that struck big targets
Imagine being sealed inside a submarine barely larger than a bus, with just three other men, stale air, failing light and thirty miles of enemy-controlled fjord ahead. In April 1944, that was the reality for Lieutenant Max Shean and the crew of HMS X24.
X24 was an X-craft – a tiny “midget submarine” designed for missions so dangerous that success depended as much on nerve as on technology. Shean, an Australian officer with a reputation for cool determination, led his crew through minefields, patrol boats and narrow Norwegian waterways towards Bergen, one of the most heavily defended ports in occupied Europe. Their target was a strategically important floating dock used by the Germans.
Inside the claustrophobic submarine, every hour brought new danger.
The crew had little room to move, poor air to breathe, and no easy way out if anything went wrong. A single mistake could have trapped them underwater or revealed their position to the enemy above.
After slipping into the harbour undetected, Shean laid explosive charges beneath what he believed was the floating dock. Intelligence had been wrong: instead, the charges were placed beneath the 7,500-ton German cargo ship Barenfels, which was destroyed in the blast. Although not the intended target, the mission was still a remarkable success. Exhausted, sick from foul air and suffering headaches from hours spent submerged, Shean and his crew then had to escape the same deadly route back out to sea.
What makes X24 extraordinary is not just what she achieved, but what she represents.
These missions asked ordinary men to endure extraordinary conditions: darkness, discomfort, fear and the knowledge that rescue was unlikely. Five months later, X24 returned to Bergen under Lieutenant H. P. Westmacott for Operation Heckle, this time successfully destroying the floating dock itself.
Today, HMS X24 is the last surviving British X-craft. Preserved at the Royal Navy Museums Submarines, she is a reminder that some of the boldest operations of the Second World War were carried out not by large warships, but by four men in a tiny steel vessel, trusting each other completely as they disappeared beneath enemy waters.
