B-2 was a Spanish Navy B-class submarine in commission from 1922 to 1951. She served initially under the Kingdom of Spain, seeing service during the Rif War in 1922, then was a unit of the Spanish Republican Navy under the Second Spanish Republic. She took part in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republican faction loyal to the government of the Second Spanish Republic. After the war, she became part of the naval forces of Francoist Spain, serving only as a hulk until decommissioned in 1951.
Design
Construction and commissioning On 1915, the Spanish Cortes Generales passed the Miranda Law, a naval construction program which called for a Spanish Navy force that included 28 submarines. Shortages during World War I (1914–1918) and budgetary limitations led to delays in the program, and none of the B-class submarines entered service until the 1920s. The Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval (SECN) built all six of the submarines at Cartagena, Spain. Originally, the Spanish Navy planned to name them A-4 through A-9.
B-2 was the second submarine of the class. SECN laid her keel on 1917 and launched her on 1921. She was commissioned on 1922.
Service history
Kingdom of Spain, 1922–1931 Rif War When B-2 entered service, the Rif War, which pitted Spanish forces against Berber tribes, was raging in the Rif region of Spanish Morocco in North Africa. B-2, her sister ship , and the submarines and got underway from Cartagena on 1922 to begin an attempt to resupply the Alhucemas Islands, which lie just off the coast of North Africa and were under siege by Riffian forces. The submarines called at Málaga before getting back underway on and arriving at the islands that night. They resupplied Peñón de Alhucemas during the night of and withdrew before dawn to head for Melilla on the North African coast. They arrived at Cartagena on 1922.
On 1922, B-2, B-1, and the torpedo boat No. 22 conducted a reconnaissance of Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, which in 1922 still was an islet just off the coast of North Africa, although a 1930 storm created a peninsula which now connects it with the mainland. During the operation, the Riffians opened rifle fire on the Spanish vessels.
1922–1931 By August 1922, the Spanish Navy's submarine flotilla consisted of B-2, her sister ships B-1 and , Isaac Peral, and the three A-class submarines — , , and A-3. All seven submarines departed Cartagena on and made for San Sebastián, where in September 1922 they held commemorative events marking the 400th anniversary of the completion of the first circumnavigation of the world, begun in 1519 by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and completed after Magellan's death by the Spanish navigator, shipowner, and explorer Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1522. The Spanish royal family visited the submarine flotilla when it called at Pasajes. After the royal visit, the submarine flotilla conducted exercises and made port calls at Ferrol, Marín, and Vigo. On 1922, B-1, B-2, B-3, Isaac Peral, Cosme García, A-3, and the tug Cíclope arrived at Cádiz. The same vessels departed Cádiz on 1922 in company with the submarine rescue ship Kanguro and proceeded to Cartagena.
With King Alfonso XIII observing from aboard the destroyer , the submarine flotilla conducted maneuvers in the Mediterranean Sea off Cartagena in March 1923. Later in 1923, the Spanish Navy reorganized its submarine force, creating a submarine division based at Mahón on Menorca in the Balearic Islands made up of Narciso Monturiol and Cosme García and a training division based at Cartagena consisting of B-1, B-2, B-3, , Isaac Peral, and A-3. B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, and Isaac Peral, carried out a training cruise off Catalonia and in the Balearic Islands between and 1923 and called at Alicante in mid-October 1923.
King Alfonso XIII, Queen Victoria Eugenie, and Prime Minister Miguel Primo de Rivera embarked on the battleship on and departed for Italy on accompanied by the Trasmediterránea mail steamer — which was carrying the royal entourage — and escorted by B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, the battleship , the light cruiser Reina Victoria Eugenia, and the destroyers and Villaamil. The royal family disembarked at La Spezia, Italy. On , the squadron anchored at Naples, Italy. After the completion of the royal visit, the squadron returned to Spain, arriving at Barcelona on and at Cartagena on 1923.
In early September 1924, B-2 and B-4 got underway from the Balearic Islands for a deployment to the coast of Spanish Morocco, where the Rif War continued to rage.
During 1927, B-2, B-3, and B-4 joined the Ferrol submarine division based at , which previously had consisted only of B-1 and Isaac Peral. In August and September 1928, B-1, B-2, B-3, B-4, and the submarines , , C-1, and carried out maneuvers in the Cantabrian Sea along the northern coast of Spain. In October and November 1928, all eight of the submarines conducted maneuvers in the Mediterranean Sea under the overall command of Capitán de navío (Ship-of-the-Line Captain) Mateo García de los Reyes, a future contralmirante (counter admiral) and minister of the navy. During the maneuvers, García de los Reyes's flagship, the troopship Almirante Lobo, arrived at Palma de Mallorca on Mallorca in the Balearic Islands at midnight on 1928, and the eight submarines, as well as the submarine Isaac Peral, subsequently anchored there as well. With Isaac Peral as its flagship, the submarine squadron called at Barcelona from until the morning of 1928 for a crew rest period.
In May 1929, all six B-class submarines as well as C-1, C-2, and their sister ship attended the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition, arriving in Barcelona a few days before the exposition officially opened on . They remained at Barcelona until the last week of May. Accompanied by the tug Galicia, B-1, B-2, B-3, and B-4 anchored at Ferrol at the end of July 1929 to again form the Ferrol submarine division based at A Graña. B-2 took part in the annual squadron maneuvers in the Mediterranean Sea between mid-September and mid-October 1929, arriving in Barcelona in mid-October 1929 for a crew rest period.
B-1, B-2, B-3, and B-4 began repairs at the Ferrol dockyard on 1930. On 1930, the four submarines got underway from Ferrol to begin a cruise along the northern coast of Spain, during which they visited several ports. They took part in maneuvers in the Cantabrian Sea off the northern coast of Spain in September and October 1930.
Second Spanish Republic, 1931–1936
On 14 April 1931, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed, replacing the Kingdom of Spain. The Spanish Navy came under the republic's control as the Spanish Republican Navy.
B-2 departed Ferrol in company with B-4 bound for Bilbao, which the two submarines reached on 1931. On , they departed Bilbao and set course for Pasajes. Both submarines got underway from Santander on the morning of 1931 to conduct maneuvers, and after completing them returned to Santander that afternoon. B-1, B-2, B-4 and the torpedo boats No. 2, No. 7, No. 9, and No. 10 departed Ferrol on 1931 for a cruise along the northern coast of Spain, where they made various port calls. The cruise included a stop at San Sebastián and then a visit to the Galician estuaries at the end of August 1931. B-2, B-3, B-4, and the torpedo boats No. 9 and No. 10 departed Ferrol on 1931 for another training cruise along Spain's northern coast, reaching Bilbao on .
On 1932, B-2, B-3, five cruisers, and four destroyers were taking part in maneuvers when the light cruiser struck an uncharted rock and sank in the Centollo Pass, a narrow passage off Cape Finisterre on the coast of Galicia. On 1933, Teniente de navío (Ship-of-the-Line Lieutenant) José Nieto Antúnez, a future almirante and minister of the navy, took command of B-2. An order of the Ministry of Navy of 1934 mandated that the crew size of all six B-class submarines increase from 28 to 34 men.
On 1935, B-1, B-2, B-3, and B-4 were reassigned from the naval base at to the naval station at Mahón on Menorca in the Balearic Islands. In early July 1936, B-2, B-3, B-4, and the water tanker A-3 conducted a cruise around the Balearic Islands.
Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939
On 17 July 1936, the Spanish Civil War began, with Nationalist forces under Francisco Franco opposing Republican forces which remained loyal to the Second Spanish Republic. At the time, B-3, and B-4 were at Sóller on Mallorca in the Balearic Islands. The three submarines anchored at Pollensa on the northern coast of Mallorca on the afternoon of , and they arrived in company with the water tanker A-3 at Mahón on the morning of 1936. Early on , B-2 got underway for Valencia, but her crew mutinied and forced her to return to Mahón. There her commanding officer and executive officer, suspected of harboring Nationalist sympathies, were arrested along with the other submarine commanders. They were murdered at the Mola Fortress on 1936.
Meanwhile, a boatswain took command of B-2, and she joined B-3 and B-4 in patrolling the waters around Republican-held Menorca until the end of July 1936 to intercept any Nationalist attempt to invade the island from neighboring Mallorca. Operating as a surface ship between and 1936, she took part in an unsuccessful Republican attempt to make an amphibious landing at Porto Cristo on the eastern coast of Nationalist-held Mallorca.
An alférez de navío (ship-of-the-line ensign) took command of B-2 in September 1936, and between late December 1936 and mid-January 1937 she carried out several patrols off Cartagena. In March 1937, she began operating from Almería. She returned to Cartagena on 1937. She moved back to Almería on 1937, where aircraft of the German Condor Legion made a bombing attack on her.
Subsequently, B-2 made some supply runs between the Spanish mainland and Mahón. Thereafter she remained in Cartagena in an inoperable condition due to damage. She was abandoned and eventually sank at Cartagena Naval Base; some sources claim that Republican forces scuttled her there in 1939. The war ended on 1939 in a Nationalist victory and the establishment of Francoist Spain.
Francoist Spain The victorious Nationalists took possession of B-2 at the Cartagena Naval Base in April 1939. She was refloated but was never again seaworthy, and the Spanish Navy placed her in service as a training hulk at the Ferrol School of Mechanics in June 1940. She was converted into a floating power plant in September 1948.
Although sources agree that B-2 was sold for scrapping, they otherwise provide different accounts of B-2′s final disposition. One source claims that she was scrapped,, and another specifies that she was scrapped in 1948. However, another source claims that B-2 was decommissioned on 1951, then was sold for scrapping, but sank in a storm in the Cantabrian Sea off the northern coast of Spain on 1951 while under tow to a shipbreaker in Avilés by the tug Cíclope.
References Citations
Bibliography ABC (newspaper, in Spanish)
La Vanguardia newspaper (in Spanish)