HMS Seal (N37)
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HMS Seal (M37/N37) was a Grampus-class mine-laying submarine of the Royal Navy. She served in World War II and was captured by the Kriegsmarine and taken into German service as UB.
She was laid down at the Chatham Dockyard on 9 December 1936, launched on 27 September 1938 and commissioned in the Royal Navy on 24 May 1939.
On 29 April 1940 Seal set out on a mine-laying mission in the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden. On 4 May she was damaged by a mine and lay on the bottom until night, when she surfaced and tried to reach Swedish waters. At 01:30 she was spotted on the surface and attacked by two German Arado Ar 196s. With Seal unable to dive and the Lewis gun jammed, the crew surrendered to the anti-submarine trawler UJ-128 at 06:30. Seal was towed to Kiel where she was repaired and in November she was commissioned into the Kriegsmarine as UB under the command of Fregatkapitän Bruno Mahn.
As her equipment was not designed to German standards[verification needed] she had little military value, but was useful for propaganda purposes, and a study of the British torpedoes led to a better design of detonator. She was decommissioned in 1941 and scuttled at Kiel in 1945.
