Rubis Photo Gallery Photographs of the Free French Naval Forces submarine Rubis and her crew.
Rubis in Action (Google Map) The map shows the positions of all of Rubis's documented actions.
Rubis Today (Diving Videos) Rubis was scuttled in 1957 off St. Tropez, France, for sonar target practice.
Tribute to Submarines By Winston Spencer Churchill, Prime Minister.
Estuary Panorama (Scrollable Panorama) of the Tay Estuary with wartime points of interest highlighted.
Built on the site of an earlier fort in 1496, the castle on its rocky promontory jutting out into the Tay was then ideally placed to defend the vital sea route to Dundee against English invaders. It has seen its fair share of action over the years, falling first into English hands in 1547, then being retaken by the Scots, with French help, three years later. It was taken by a Cromwellian force under the infamous General Monck in 1651 then fell into decay until it was rebuilt in 1851 as a defence against possible Russian attack. By 1857 a large military camp had been established on the Castle Green for troops awaiting passage to the Crimea.
The advent of steam-driven warships meant that new and heavier guns were developed to defend important harbours. There was also a submarine minefield as well as groups of fixed charges on the seabed that could be detonated from the shore should any unwelcome visitor pass over them, which was a measure designed to defend important harbours. This weapon was deployed in both World Wars and, in the Second World War a minefield was installed in April 1940, consisting of four groups of three mines each which were moored at a fixed depth off Broughty Ferry. Initially, these were to be fired from the observation position at the top of the Castle, but this was very exposed so a stronger secondary position was built behind the window cut low down in the battlements. In addition to this minefield, in April 1940 the castle became the headquarters of 503 Coast Regiment, Royal Artillery and was equipped with two 4.7" guns for what was termed ‘local protection and emergency use’. However the main seaward defence battery at Broughty Ferry was immediately to the east on the Castle Green.
Originally constructed in 1905 and abandoned between the wars, this was restored and fitted with two 6" guns in April 1940. Castle Green Battery and the castle with its two 4.7" guns were guarded by the 2nd Battalion, City of Dundee Home Guard and regular firing practices were held to seaward until May 1942 when it was finally accepted that the threat of invasion had passed.
The Castle Green Battery was but a small part of Scotland’s elaborate anti-invasion defences that included ‘dragons teeth’ tank traps and further gun batteries on beaches at Carnoustie, Tayport and St. Andrews, roadblocks, pillboxes and fortified defence lines.
However there was never any realistic threat of an invasion of Scotland from occupied Europe. When the invasion alert was at it's height in mid-1940, the nearest German troops were some 250 miles away in Norway and any invasion force would have taken a minimum of three days to reach the Angus and Fife coastline, even in the most favourable weather. The notion that, even if they had possessed the ships to do it — and they did not — they could have done this without being spotted by the RAF and/or the Royal Navy is, of course, nonsensical. The reality was that the only place a successful invasion of Britain could have been mounted was in the south-east of England and, had this indeed taken place, the issue would have been resolved long before the Wehrmacht reached Watford, never mind the south bank of the Tay.
Broughty Ferry harbour, consists of two piers and the quayed side of a natural headland forming an irregularly-shaped basin. To the West of the basin is a short pier with a timber end.
The central pier was built as a railway pier, with beside it the ramp for one of Sir Thomas Bouch’s pioneer train ferries. The harbour in its present form is largely as built in 1849—51 by the Edinburgh and Northern Railway company.
The entire harbour except the West pier, which was built in 1872, was designed by engineers Thomas Bouch and Thomas Grainger. It was Thomas Bouch who was responsible for the first ill-fated Tay rail bridge which collapsed in 1879. Broughty Harbour was occasionally used for training soldiers in amphibious operations.
Broughty Ferry Lifeboat Station
Broughty Ferry’s wartime RNLI lifeboat, the Mona, was often called out to ships damaged by enemy action. Enemy bombers attacked a convoy off the Angus coast late on the 3rd of April 1941 and, in the resulting confusion, the Belgian steamer Emile Franqui ran aground on the Bell Rock.
The ship’s SOS call reached Broughty Ferry at midnight and the Mona was launched a few minutes later to go to her aid. Buddon Ness lighthouse, normally blacked out in wartime, was illuminated briefly to help the Lifeboat thread her way down river but Coxswain Jim Coull said later that this was of little use as he only got the briefest glimpse of the light through the gloom. The Lifeboat crew found the Emile Franqui, not as they expected stranded on the Bell Rock, but as a ghostly outline close inshore. It turned out that she had freed herself from the reef and made for safety in the Tay only to run aground again, this time on a sandbank.
By now the badly damaged steamer was making water so the Mona took off eight passengers and landed them at Broughty Ferry. The Lifeboat then put back out in worsening weather and, with some difficulty, took off most of the Emile Franqui’s crew. The officers, however, decided to stay aboard until she could be refloated and towed away for repair.
Dragon’s teeth (German: Drachenzähne, literally “Dragon Teeth”) were fortifications of reinforced concrete used during the Second World War to impede the movement of tanks. The idea was to slow down and channel tanks into “killing zones” where they could easily be disposed of by anti-tank weapons. In practice, however, the use of combat engineers and specialist clearance vehicles enabled them to be disposed of relatively quickly, and they proved far less of an obstacle than many had expected.
They were extensively used by all sides in the European Theatre. The Germans made extensive use of them in the Siegfried Line and the Atlantic Wall; typically, each “tooth” was 90 cm to 120 cm (about 3 to 4 feet) tall depending on the precise model. Landmines were often laid between the individual “teeth”, and further obstacles constructed along the lines of “teeth” (such as barbed wire to impede infantry, or diagonally-placed steel beams to further hinder tanks). The French employed them in the Maginot Line, while many were laid in the United Kingdom in 1940—1941 as part of the effort to strengthen the country’s defences against a possible German invasion.