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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Sue Manning-Jones on behalf of Paul Jasper and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Jasper fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was on HMS Seaham off the coast of Sicily. The troops had landed earlier and the Eighth Army was working up the coast of Sicily. Augusta which was supposed to have been captured that morning we went to sweep the channel so that the main shipping could get in. We swept up the harbour entrance thinking that the place had been cleared by the Army but it hadn’t. When we turned round to go back the battery at the back of the town opened fire and we had to stop sweeping. As soon as we had stopped sweeping and gone out farther to sea all of a sudden a submarine popped up right in front of the bows. It was an Italian submarine called the Bronzo — it all happened so quickly, we didn’t know whether to ram the thing or avoid it. In the end we decided to go hard to starboard and avoid it and it scraped alongside the ship. During that time we managed to fire off one 3 inch shell. Eventually the crew came up from down below and surrendered and we then towed it into Augusta.

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