Thorough served in the Far East for much of her wartime career, where she sank twenty seven Japanese sailing vessels, seven coasters, a small Japanese vessel, a Japanese barge, a small Japanese gunboat, a Japanese trawler, and the Malaysian sailing vessel Palange. In August 1945, in company with HMS Taciturn, she attacked Japanese shipping and shore targets off northern Bali. Thorough sank a Japanese coaster and a sailing vessel with gunfire.
On 16 December 1957 Thorough returned to HMS Dolphin, Portsmouth Dockyard, after completing the first circumnavigation by a submarine.[1] While in Australian waters, on 2 August 1956, she rescued one of the four survivors of the sinking of the 'sixty-miler', Birchgrove Park.[2] [3]
She survived the war and continued in service with the Navy, finally being scrapped at Dunston on Tyne on 29 June 1962.[4]