Thomas William Gould

How do two men save an entire submarine when the greatest danger is already lodged inside its hull? For Petty Officer Thomas William Gould, the answer was to crawl into darkness, take hold of an unexploded enemy bomb and accept that an emergency dive would mean certain death.

Thomas William Gould was born in Dover, Kent, on 28 December 1914. His father, Reuben Gould, was killed while serving with the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment during the First World War. Educated at St James’s School in Dover, Gould joined the Royal Navy on 29 September 1933. After serving in the cruisers HMS Emerald and HMS Colombo, he volunteered for the Royal Navy Submarine Service in 1937. His early submarine postings included HMS Grampus, Regent, Pandora and Regulus before he joined HMS Thrasher.

By February 1942, Gould was an experienced submariner and Acting Petty Officer serving aboard Thrasher in the Mediterranean. On 16 February, the submarine attacked and sank a heavily escorted Axis supply ship off the northern coast of Crete. Enemy escorts and aircraft immediately retaliated with depth charges and bombing. Thrasher survived the attack, but when she surfaced after dark, the crew discovered two unexploded bombs lodged in and around the gun casing. Either bomb could have destroyed the submarine and killed everyone aboard.

Gould and Lieutenant Peter Scawen Watkinson Roberts volunteered to remove them. The first bomb was wrapped, secured and carried forward before being dropped overboard. The second was far more difficult. It had penetrated the outer casing and was resting above the submarine’s pressure hull in a space so confined that the men had to lie flat to move through it.

Working in almost complete darkness, Gould lay on his back holding the bomb while Roberts pulled him by the shoulders through a maze of pipes, supports and ventilation equipment. They pushed and dragged it approximately twenty feet toward an access opening. Each movement produced a disturbing metallic twanging sound. At any moment, enemy forces might reappear and force Thrasher to crash-dive. Gould and Roberts knew that if this happened while they were still inside the unpressurised casing, they would drown.

After a prolonged and exhausting struggle, they passed the bomb through the opening, wrapped it in sacking and lowered it into the sea. Their actions removed the immediate threat to Thrasher and saved the submarine and her crew.

The official London Gazette of 9 June 1942 awarded Gould and Roberts the Victoria Cross for “great valour” while serving in HMS Thrasher. The citation emphasized the darkness, the confined space, the danger from the unknown bombs and the possibility that the submarine might have to dive while the men remained trapped inside the casing. Gould later received the Victoria Cross from King George VI at Buckingham Palace.

His courage did not end with the action aboard Thrasher. Gould later served in HMS Truculent, which conducted successful operations in northern waters and sank the German submarine U-308 near the Faroe Islands in June 1943. On 10 August 1943, Gould was officially Mentioned in Despatches. The London Gazette recognized him among members of a submarine crew honoured for bravery, skill and outstanding efficiency during successful patrols.

Invalided from the Royal Navy in October 1945, Gould returned to civilian life but never abandoned his connection to the sea or to military service. He became a business consultant and later worked as chief personnel manager for Great Universal Stores. He also received a commission in the Royal Naval Reserve and commanded the Sea Cadet unit at Bromley. For several years he served as president of the International Submariners Association of Great Britain and remained active in the Royal Naval Association, the Submariners Association and the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association.

Gould was equally committed to the British Jewish community. He participated in Jewish ex-servicemen’s activities after the war and publicly opposed antisemitism and fascism. He was associated with the 43 Group, whose Jewish veterans confronted the revival of organised fascism in postwar Britain. His life therefore became a story not only of wartime courage, but also of continued public service after the fighting had ended.

Thomas William Gould died in Peterborough on 6 December 2001, aged 86. His original Victoria Cross group had been purchased by the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women after its sale at Sotheby’s in 1987. AJEX remains the custodian of Gould’s full-size Victoria Cross and accompanying medals, preserving the group as a record of one of the most extraordinary acts of courage in the history of the Royal Navy Submarine Service.

Gould’s heroism was not born from a single fearless moment. It came from understanding exactly what could happen, entering the darkness anyway and refusing to leave an entire submarine crew at the mercy of two unexploded bombs.