William Whitley was born in Oldbury in Worcestershire on 25 October 1914, the son of William (a company director) and Lilian Whitley.

He was serving HMS X4 as the Engineer on 11 December 1942 when Sub Lieutenant Ivor Morgan Thomas was washed off the deck in a squall and was lost overboard and was presumed to have been drowned. The escape compartment (the Wet & Dry chamber) was flooded and the Commanding Officer (Lieutenant Basil C G Place) and William Marriner Whitley were trapped in the submarine. The Commanding Officer managed to send a signal requesting help. Help arrived in the shape of HM Drifter PRESENT HELP.  The submarine was taken in tow and the two trapped men were released after a few worrying hours. X4 was repaired and refitted and returned to service.

William Whitley was then selected as the Engineer for the operational crew of HMS X7 for the attack on the German battleship TIRPITZ in Kaa Fjord, Northern Norway on 22 September 1943. X7 with a passage crew on board was towed to the operational area by HMS STUBBORN (Lieutenant Arthur Anthony Duff RN). The operational crew took over from the passage crew for the approach to the target and the attack. X7’s two side cargoes were placed under the TIRPITZ. Still in the area at the time of the explosion, X7 was damaged and became impossible to control.

X7 was then surfaced alongside a gunnery target and the Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Place stepped onto it but X7 went back to the bottom with three of the operational crew still onboard. One of them, Sub Lieutenant Aitken, managed to escape sometime later and was rescued by the Germans. He and Lieutenant Place became Prisoners of War but Lieutenant Whittam and William Whitley were lost. The attack was successful in that the TIRPITZ was badly damaged although not sunk.

William Whitley was posthumously Mentioned in Dispatches (see London Gazette of 1 August 1944) “for great daring and enterprise in the attack the German Battleship Tirpitz carried out by Midget Submarines in September 1943“.  He is commemorated on the Plymouth Naval Memorial on Panel 81, Column 2 and on the 12th Submarine Flotilla memorials at Rothesay on the Isle of Bute and at Kylesku.