Torbay was commissioned on 14 January 1941, under the command of Lt. Cdr. Anthony Miers. In March 1941 she sailed from Portsmouth on her first offensive patrol, to intercept the battleships and, which were heading for Brest after their raiding sortie in the North Atlantic. Unable to find them, Torbay was ordered to continue to Gibraltar, and, after another patrol in the Mediterranean, to join the 1st Flotilla at Alexandria.
Mediterranean
From there, Torbay operated for the next 12 months, sinking a number of ships and taking part in several special operations. In July 1941, on her first patrol from Alexandria, Torbay was involved in two incidents which gave rise to allegations of war crimes. It is alleged that on two occasions after sinking enemy ships, Miers had Torbays crew fire on troops as they swam in the water. Miers made no attempt to hide his actions and reported it in his official logs. He received a strongly worded reprimand from the Royal Navy after the first incident. Torbay was involved in attacks on Axis convoys on two occasions. The attack on the first, on 10 June 1941 involved Torbay making three attack runs on an Italian convoy off the Dardanelles. The first attack failed to produce any results; the second attack resulted in a torpedo hit on the Italian tanker Utilitas but the torpedo failed to explode. In the third attack the Italian tanker Giuseppina Ghirardi was torpedoed and sunk. The attack on the second convoy took place on 12 August 1941, west of Benghazi, Libya. Torbay fired on the Italian merchant ships Bosforo and Iseo but missed both. Torbay was heavily depth charged after these attacks. In November 1941 Torbay was tasked with landing a party of commandos, under Geoffrey Keyes, for the ill-fated Operation Flipper. On 15 December 1941Torbay torpedoed an Italian merchant ship in German service,, at Methoni in the Peloponnese. Sebastiano Veniero was already beached after having been damaged a week earlier by a torpedo fired by the . On 4 March 1942 in Corfu Harbour, north-western Greece, Torbay, having followed an enemy convoy into the harbour the previous day, fired torpedoes at a destroyer and two 5,000 ton transports, scoring hits on the two supply ships, which almost certainly sank. Torbay then had a very hazardous withdrawal to the open sea, enduring 40 depth charges. The submarine had been in closely patrolled enemy waters for 17 hours. For this exploit, her commander, Lieutenant Commander Anthony Miers was awarded the Victoria Cross.
Home waters
In mid-1942 Torbay returned to Britain. She returned to the Mediterranean in February 1943 under the command of Lieutenant Robert Clutterbuck.
Return to the Mediterranean
Back in the Mediterranean, Torbay carried out a further series of successful patrols. She also had a close encounter with the German Q-shipGA 45. In October 1943 Torbay's periscope was sighted first by GA 45 which dropped depth charges very close to Torbay. The submarine later surfaced, intending to attack GA 45 with her deck gun, but the German vessel opened fire and forced her to break off the action. GA 45 did not drop any further depth charges. Torbay managed to escape damage during this encounter. As the war in the Mediterranean quieted, Torbay was again reassigned, this time to the Pacific Far East.
Far East
Arriving in May 1945, and under the command of Lt. C.P. Norman, Torbay continued to cause losses amongst enemy shipping. She sank two Japanese sailing vessels and a coaster, and damaged a second coaster, before the end of the war.
The Italian merchant Trapani. Trapani was further damaged that night by the British escort destroyer and the Greek escort destroyer. The wreck of Trapani was finally destroyed off Kalymnos, Greece the following night by the British destroyers and.
