Trident torpedoes Prinz Eugen

23 February 1942, Off the Trondheimsfjord, Norway

British success; Prinz Eugen crippled

Ten days after the Channel Dash, Prinz Eugen and Admiral Scheer sailed north from Germany with five destroyers to join Tirpitz in Norway; heavy weather sent three of the destroyers back. On 23 February 1942, off the Trondheimsfjord, the submarine Trident, under Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Sladen, fired a salvo and hit Prinz Eugen right aft. The torpedo wrecked her stern and rudders and killed about 50 men. She reached Trondheim, where her stern was cut away and plated over and hand-worked rudders fitted, and she was not fully repaired until 1943.