Sad demise of wartime submarine.

This photograph shows the S Class submarine HMS Selene lying on her side at low tide at King's shipbreaking yard in Gateshead waiting to be dismantled in 1961.

It was a sad end for a vessel with an auspicious wartime history.

She was built by Cammell Laird in Birkenhead in 1943, commissioned in 1944 and involved in 1945 in Operation Foil, the cutting of underwater telephone cables between Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

The purpose was to force the Japanese to use the airwaves for communication, thereby making it easier to intercept their radio traffic.

Selene was involved in the Hong Kong end of the operation, towing a midget submarine, XE 5, whose divers carried out successfully the operation which was described as "one of the most daring, dangerous and tenacious operations of the war".