I am a relative of Cmdr. E. A. Woodward, the highly decorated captain of the HMS Unbeaten, a submarine that saw significant action in the Mediterranean during the second world war. Following his death, I inherited many of his 'war mementos'. These included a number of brass deck gun shells and brass torpedo pins that have been lying in storage now for many years. On polishing them, it became evident that the vessel sunk with that shell or torpedo was engraved upon it, along with the date. I have since had them framed.
Here is an imgur album with close up images, in addition to the two deck gun shells. Also shown is the flagged top of the champagne bottle used to christen the Unbeaten, the blank shell he fired from another surface vessel to celebrate VE day, and the cypher message that put the Unbeaten on war footing.
The engravings show:
Deck gun shells:
Torpedo Pins:
Can any of these be corroborated? Are the names of the vessels known?
Thank you for your help. I have only an armchair knowledge of history. I also realize that this is a little morbid and that unrestricted submarine warfare is quite a horrible business, but I somehow feel that as I have this little part of history in my hands I have some form of obligation to to learn more about it.
Thank you all so much!
WALL OF TEXT WARNING
These were really fascinating to see. They also do a good job of illustrating how unreliable hit and sinking reports were from submarines (of every navy) during the war. Most of the tonnage involved is vastly overestimated, and the bulk of the attacks actually resulted in no damage. I've gone into it in more detail below, but in short the Unbeaten sank four vessels while Woodward was in command (1 x fishing boat on July 15, 1941, 1 x schooner on Augus 30, 1941, 1 x German submarine on January 12, 1942, and 1 x Italian submarine on March 17, 1942). All of the pins and shell casings seem to correspond to attacks, but only those with the above dates resulted in any sinkings, and both of the non-submarines involved were much smaller than reported in the logs or inscriptions.
Below are the records that I could find, along with ship's log entries. U-boat.net is a fantastic and well-researched resource, and here is the entry for HMS Unbeaten where the bulk of this information came from. The information on the German submarines has better citation as opposed to sections like this on Allied warships, although given the reliability and accuracy I've seen there I wouldn't have a problem trusting this info apart from the usual grain of salt. I'll post what I was able to find in parts because of the character limits: