Deep Dive

Lost hero of Gallipoli

2008-04-18T21:06:00.002+01:00

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The Australian

By Michael White
April 18, 2008

AS the terrible tragedy of the Anzacs was being played out on the beach and hills of the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915, an enthralling story of Australian daring and success was taking place in the narrows behind the peninsula in the Sea of Marmora involving the AE2 submarine.

It was Winston Churchill's plan to damage the German war effort with a surprise attack on the eastern front with Russia through Germany's Ottoman ally, Turkey. He proposed that the joint British and French fleets attack the Ottoman forts on the shores of the Dardanelles, steam up the Sea of Marmora and harass Constantinople (now Istanbul).

This did not go according to plan. The forts proved resistant to naval bombardment and the decision was made to land the army on the peninsula while the fleet stood well off. While that was happening, the AE2, under the command of Hugh Stoker, penetrated the narrows on the morning of April 25, 1915, harassed the Turkish naval vessels attacking the allied landings and secured a respite from the shelling.

It remained a little-known Gallipoli success story until the publication of Fred and Elizabeth Brenchley's book Stoker's Submarine in 2001.

The story of the AE2 begins in 1910 when the Australian government resolved to build its own navy. In addition to the flagship light battle cruiser HMAS Australia, hot debate ensued whether to include what were regarded as new-fangled submarines.

Australia bought two E class submarines and in early 1914 the AE1 and AE2 (the A designation distinguished them from the Royal Navy E class submarines) were towed halfway across the world from Britain to Australia. They arrived in Sydney on May 24, 1914, to excited public acclamation.

War was declared on August 5, 1914, and the AE1 and AE2 joined the Australian fleet to search the waters around Papua, now Papua New Guinea, for the German Pacific battle fleet. On September 4, 1914, disaster struck. While on patrol off Rabaul, the AE1 disappeared and was lost with all 35 crew. No trace has been found despite extensive searches. As it could not operate alone, AE2 was sent back to Britain to join one of the British submarine squadrons in the North Sea. It was the sole armed naval vessel escorting the second contingent of soldiers from the First Australian Imperial Force as their convoy sailed across the Indian Ocean towards war. As the ships passed through the Suez Canal in January 1915, Australian soldiers guarding the canal cheered them on.

The AE2 was diverted at Suez, along with many other ships and soldiers, to the naval attack on the Dardanelles. On February 5, 1915, the AE2 joined three British B class and two French submarines and witnessed the unsuccessful bombardment of the Ottoman forts by the big battleships and cruisers.

Several of the allied battleships were sunk or damaged by mines and return fire from the forts. Stoker and many of the AE2 crew recorded the events in their diaries.

Due in part to the incompetence of the British admirals, the failing naval attack was called off and the army brought in for landings to clear the forts. It was expected that the fleet could then sail through and complete its task of attacking Constantinople. But when the allied landing finally occurred, beginning on the morning of April 25, 1915, the German and Ottoman armies and navies were ready.

Stoker was keen to penetrate the Dardanelles. Already three submarines had been lost in that attempt, including the newly arrived E15. On April 23, Stoker was given permission to attempt the passage. He sailed in the dark on the surface as far up the Dardanelles as he could before the dawn would allow the shore gunners to see him. At first light he dived, but one of the forward hydroplanes broke and the boat became unmanageable. He surfaced and raced back to safety in the dawn light.

He returned to the depot ship for repairs and was briefed for the landings the next morning and instructed to try again.

In the early hours of April 25, 1915, as the surface ships unloaded soldiers into their boats for the invasion, the AE2 again went on the surface up the Dardanelles. At first light the first fort fired on the submarine and it dived. Almost immediately it was among mines. The crew could hear the scraping of the mine mooring wires down the side of the submarine but, thanks to the newly welded wires, they survived. It was clear weather above and every time Stoker raised the periscope the guns opened fire. All around there were explosions from the shells, making it difficult to see.

Fortunately, no shell put the periscope out of action. Stoker saw a Turkish warship to starboard, turned the AE2, ran in and fired a torpedo. The ship, the Peykisevket, was hit and, with the rudder damaged and jammed, ran up on to the beach.

A Turkish battleship was anchored in the narrows, lobbing shells across the peninsula that fell directly among the allied landings. Threatened by the presence of the AE2, the battleship left the area for safer waters, granting a respite from its shelling.

But strong and uncertain currents running through the Dardanelles, together with the primitive gyro compasses of the day, resulted in the AE2 running aground in the mud so close to Fort Anatoli Medjidieh that the gunners could not depress the guns sufficiently to blow the building apart.

Stoker had to lower the periscope as he was being blinded by gunpowder flashes. The AE2 slid astern into the deeper water and continued up the narrows, running aground on the other side.

Again the boat got off without being hit. By then, numerous destroyers, gunboats, armed fishing vessels and other craft were pursuing the AE2. They dragged grapnels and wires, fired at the raised periscope and tried to ram when the AE2 was at periscope depth. With great skill and courage from all the crew, Stoker took the AE2 deeper and navigated through the narrows. With the submarine battery almost flat, he bottomed in the Sea of Marmora. There they lay for many hours while the heat of the chase eased. When the submarine finally surfaced the air inside was so foul it barely supported the crew.

With the engines running to charge the battery and change the air, Stoker sent a signal on the newly installed Marconi wireless reporting that they had succeeded in penetrating the Dardanelles.

In allied headquarters on the British battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth, general Ian Hamilton had called an emergency midnight meeting. General William Birdwood, commanding officer of the Anzacs, had signalled that they had suffered horrific casualties and were now so few, he feared they might be wiped out altogether. There was a possibility the survivors would need to be taken to the ships. When the AE2 signal was read to the meeting, the mood became more optimistic, and Hamilton sent back the famous signal to Birdwood that the AE2 had got through and all the Anzacs had to do was "dig, dig, dig" until they were safe.

Back at the submarine squadron, the next vessel, the E14, immediately sailed for the narrows knowing that, despite earlier losses, penetration could be achieved. The AE2 spent the next five days patrolling the Sea of Marmora and fired all but one of its torpedoes. There was no gun on the E class until later, so the AE2 could not surface and sink the numerous small craft by gunfire.

Thousands of Turkish soldiers and tonnes of supplies were being ferried across the Marmora to the battle on the Gallipoli peninsula. This was disrupted by the AE2 and more so after the E14 and other allied submarines arrived in the Marmora.

After the E14 arrived through the narrows into the Marmora, the two submarines rendezvoused south of Marmora Island on April 29. They arranged a further meeting the next day and spent the night charging batteries and getting some sleep. The next day, at the rendezvous, the AE2 was attacked by the Ottoman gunboat Sultanhissar. The AE2 hit a patch of cold, dense water, lost depth and broke surface. The gunboat achieved a hit on the pressure hull. Diving was impossible so Stoker ordered the signal books destroyed and the crew to abandon ship. He and his first lieutenant, Arthur Haggard, scuttled the submarine. They only just got out before it sank and became the first Australian naval vessel to be lost in battle.

On seeing the AE2 abandoned, the Sultanhissar stopped firing and rescued the crew. They spent 3 1/2 miserable years in a prisoner of war camp where four of the crew died.

For 82 years the AE2 rested on the seabed in the Sea of Marmora. Efforts were made to find it and in 1997 Turkish maritime historian, diver and museum director Selcuk Kolay discovered a submarine in 72m of water. A joint Turkish and Australian team, including Mark Spencer, marine archeologist Tim Smith and diver John Riley, joined Turkish colleagues and, amid much rejoicing, their dives confirmed that it was indeed the AE2. Unlike the AE1 and HMAS Sydney, the AE2 is not a war grave, as the crew escaped.

Another joint Australian and Turkish team surveyed the submarine last year and found it in reasonable shape. Dragged anchors and nets from fishing trawlers had damaged some of the casing but the control room was as the crew had left it in 1915.

Another joint Australian and Turkish workshop is to be held the weekend after Anzac Day in Istanbul to discuss what to do with the AE2. Defence ministers from both countries will attend with defence chiefs.

Raising the AE2 would be expensive and technically challenging, but it is hoped a resolution will be reached before the centenary commemorations in Turkey in 2015.

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WW II Japanese Midget Submarine Donated To Park

2008-04-17T20:50:00.000+01:00

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National Parks Gallery
April 17, 2008

The park has acquired a very rare Type C Japanese midget submarine from World War II and placed it on display in front of its visitor center on Guam. The submarine was donated to the park by the U.S. Navy.

In August, 1944, a Ko-Hyoteki (Target A) Hei Gata (Type C ) Japanese midget submarine ran aground off the southeastern coast of Guam. The submarine was crewed by two Japanese soldiers, who held off American troops ashore for three days prior to surrendering. The submarine was then internally gutted and placed on exhibit at Camp Dealy on Toghca Bay, Guam, by the United States Navy’s 103rd Construction Battalion.

The Type C class was equipped with a diesel generator to recharge its batteries and for use in running on the surface. Built in three sections of 5mm to 8mm thick welded steel with rivets added for extra strength in the fore and aft sections, the submarine is just over 80 feet long. The forward section contained two bow-mounted 17.7-inch torpedoes in tubes. In the center section was the conning tower and the stations for the two-man crew. Fore and aft of the conning tower were the batteries, while the aft section held the motor and the reduction gear.

The submarines were carried by either Chitose class seaplane tenders or C1 type submarines. They had a displacement of 46 – 49 tons submerged and had a range that varied, but was not thought to exceed 300 miles. Most craft were launched very close to their targets. Few crewmembers were expected to return safely.
It’s believed that 47 subs of this type were built before the end of the war, but only 15 saw action during World War II. The fate of eight of the submarines is known, while the boat recently donated to the NPS is one of seven that have remained unaccounted for since the war.

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What to Do with Hitler's Submarine Bunker?

2008-04-16T20:54:00.000+01:00

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Spiegel

By Michael Fröhlingsdorf
April 16, 2008

The submarine bunker is gigantic -- and expensive. A World War II-era military facility is slowly succumbing to the elements, and nobody seems willing to pay for its upkeep. In fact, the German armed forces has offered it up for sale.

By far the largest object in the rather odd real estate catalogue carries the number 220039 on the Web site of Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr. It is nestled about midway down the long list of property bargains, part of the Bundeswehr's project of shutting down hundreds of unneeded facilities. One can make offers on storage tanks, training camps, barracks and former weapons depots.

But number 220039 is different. The "Materiel Depot Wilhelmshaven -- TE Bremen" is a dark gray cement colossus -- 426 meters (1,398 feet) long, 97 meters wide and 25 meters high. The ceilings are up to 7 meters thick. Indeed, the structure is so cavernous that even an institution as large as the German armed forces is only able to occupy a third of it. The rest lies empty -- as it has since the end of World War II.

The structure is left over from one of the most megalomaniacal projects of Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship: the submarine bunker named "Valentin." Some 12,000 prisoners of war, concentration camp inmates and forced laborers constructed the bomb-proof submarine factory from 1943 to 1945. An estimated 4,000 of the slave workers didn't survive to see the project's completion.

Excesses of the Nazis

Now the military wants to get rid of the site, and the current search for a buyer has become Exhibit A in an absurd dispute between the state of Bremen and the federal government in Berlin. For months, the two sides have quarrelled over whose budget should pay for expensive maintenance work and upkeep.

But all sides agree that the landmark should be saved. It is a unique memorial to both Nazi inhumanity and the technocratic future envisioned by Hitler's dictatorship.

Since the mid-1960s, the bunker has been used by the German military as cheap storage. Nowadays, though, the facility is spooky in its emptiness. Just six soldiers and 24 civilians are responsible for guarding the mostly empty space. The only life comes from the 10,000 annual visitors who file through its echoing halls.

But such limited use is hardly efficient. Each year, the facility costs taxpayers an estimated €700,000 ($1.1 million) to €800,000. "And that is only for the most necessary of expenses," says Wolfgang zu Putlitz, who is in charge of the facility.

The results are clear to all: Unused parts of the bunker are crumbling and can no longer be visited. Signs warn that bits of the ceiling may fall. German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung says he is aware of the bunker's "unique importance." But, he goes on, the German military is not in the business of maintaining historical monuments.

Waiting for a Buyer

The Finance Ministry, which is normally responsible for federally owned properties, likewise denies authority. The bunker, says Ministry deputy Karl Diller, still belongs to the military after all. And in any case, he adds, it should be Bremen's responsibility -- states, he points out, have jurisdiction for cultural sites like memorials.

Bremen, though, is not exactly swimming in extra money. The city(which has the status of a state) has no desire to cough up for the World War II facility. "The bunker belongs to the federal government," says Bremen Mayor Jens Böhrnsen, "and for financial and ethical reasons it should not be sold."

The mayor says his city-state would have no problem contributing to the development of a concept for the memorial site. But Bremen, he says, simply can't afford the site's restoration and maintenance.

The only possible savior for the site is Federal Commissioner for Culture Bernd Neumann. He is, as it happens, also head of Bremen's Christian Democratic Union party and is currently in negotiations with all German states to create a nationwide framework for sites of commemoration. But Valentin has so far not been made a talking point.

On Tuesday, Mayor Böhrnsen visited the bunker together with his cabinet in order to raise awareness of the site's deteriorating condition and provide symbolic support for its conversion into a memorial site. But so far, no one has come forward with the money. And article number 220039 continues to wait for a buyer.

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DDA eyeing Navy submarine for museum

2008-04-16T20:02:00.000+01:00

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The Times of India
April 16, 2008

NEW DELHI: So what if the Capital is thousands of miles away from the sea? If the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has its way, Delhiites will soon have an added attraction on their must-see list in the form of a submarine. The Indian Navy has offered DDA one of the two Russian-made Foxtrot submarines it plans to decommission soon. The idea is to use the mammoth seacraft - 92 metres in length - to create a submarine museum which will be an educational and tourist attraction in the run-up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Having decided in principle to accept the Navy's offer, DDA is now working on the modalities of who would bear the cost of transporting the submarine from its present base in Vishakhapatnam. A DDA team recently visited the southern port town where the country's first submarine museum was set up by the development authority there. The museum today is a major tourist attraction and boasts of a decommissioned submarine. The idea is that instead of letting decommissioned submarines rot as scrap, it is better to use them for educational purposes.

DDA's director public relations Neemo Dhar told TOI that in principle DDA has decided to opt for the offer. "But first we want to work out the modalities of bringing the submarine to Delhi and the cost involved. Also the location where the craft will be placed too has to be finalised," Dhar said.

According to senior officials, DDA has carried out inspections of various green spaces under its purview like the Millennium Park, the Swarn Jayanti Park in Rohini and another location in Dwarka but as of now a large open space near the Delhi-Noida-Delhi flyover has emerged as a plausible option for setting up the mega museum. The location has another plus to its credit as it falls along the route of the yet to be built elevated road over the Barapulla drain, connecting the Games Village to the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium. If the submarine is located in the open space along this route then it will be visible to players who will use the stretch during the 2010 Games.

In the proposed museum, visitors will be introduced to the internal mechanisms of a submarine and it is likely that officials from the Navy will themselves be stationed there to impart technical information.

The Indian Navy acquired eight Foxtrot submarines between 1964 and 1974. Six of them have already been decommissioned. As of now the Navy has two of these sea crafts - INS Vela and INS Vagli - which are functional. One of these is likely to be decommissioned soon and would be the one to be handed over to the DDA for the museum. These submarines cost around Rs 75 crore and require a crew of 75, led by eight Naval officials.

The Indian Navy has 16 submarines as of now. These include 10 kilo class Russian submarines, four HDW submarines from Germany and two Foxtrot submarines.

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Tonight's submarine talk dives into history

2008-04-14T21:12:00.001+01:00

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The Plainville Citizen
April 14, 2008

"David Bushnell's ‘Infernal Machine'" will be the subject of an illustrated talk at the Plainville Historic Center, 29 Pierce St., tonight, April 15, at 7 p.m. Bushnell, of Saybrook, invented the world's first fully operational submarine, the American Turtle, at the time of the American Revolution. The event is being sponsored by the Plainville Historical Society.

Brenda Milkofsky, senior curator of the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, will present the history of the original submarine that was used in the New York City harbor against the flagship of the British Navy, its subsequent missions, and the 20th century development and preservation of Bushnell's life story. A mystery surrounds the final disposition of the underwater craft and Milkofsky will talk about ongoing research, new interpretations and future projects related to what the British called an "infernal machine."

The Connecticut River Museum, which owns the only working, full-scale model of Bushnell's 1776 invention, provided the following information about the American Turtle.

This first submarine ever to be used in combat was actually constructed as an afterthought. Bushnell and fellow Yale University intellectual, Phineas Pratt, had conceived of the underwater bomb with a time-delayed flintlock detonator. The one-man, hand-propelled submarine was designed simply to transport the bomb to the enemy vessel.

The American Turtle was successfully launched in the dark of night on Sept. 6, 1776 against the British flagship, HMS Eagle, a 64-gun frigate moored in New York harbor off of the island now occupied by the Statue of Liberty. The Turtle had undergone extensive test trials in the safe colonial waters of the Connecticut River off Old Saybrook, piloted by the inventor's brother Ezra Bushnell. Unfortunately, on the eve of the submarine's first combat mission, Ezra Bushnell was, according to one version of the story, taken ill and unable participate.

With a freshly recruited, but less-practiced pilot, Ezra Lee, of Old Lyme, the American Turtle made its way underwater to the rudder of the Eagle's hull. Unfortunately, Lee first struck metal rather than wood with the screw intended to attach the bomb to the enemy's hull. After a second failed attempt, Lee propelled the American Turtle away, only to be observed and chased. The bomb was released into the water and resulted in a frightening explosion. While the American Turtle failed to destroy its target, the British recognized the threat and moved the fleet. Weather problems, and other operating difficulties prevented a successful attack by the submarine before it was scuttled by the British while being transported.

The model on exhibit at the Connecticut River Museum was designed by Joseph Leary and built by Fred Frese in 1976 as a U.S. bicentennial project. Christened by Gov. Ella Grasso and launched in the Connecticut River, the model was tested for its maneuverability and submersible ability. This demonstrated for modern viewers that the submarine worked as intended and confirmed the ingenuity of early American inventor David Bushnell. Last November, a second reproduction built by students of Old Saybrook High School was also launched at the museum.

Milkofsky, who is the past director of Wethersfield Museum and Historical Society, is a consultant to several Connecticut museums, as well as the Merchant Marine Museum at King's Point, N.Y. She has written and lectured widely on river valley topics.

A $2 donation for the historical society is suggested at the lecture.

For more information, call the historic center at (860) 747-6577. For more information about the Connecticut River Museum, call (860) 767-8269 or visit the Web site Ctrivermuseum.org.

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129 victims remembered

2008-04-13T21:23:00.000+01:00

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The Boston Globe
By Maria Sacchetti
April 13, 2008

The nuclear submarine USS Thresher sank 45 years ago off Cape Cod

KITTERY, Maine - On a dark night in April 1963, Fernley Wagner's Navy buddies awakened him in his bunk. The USS Thresher, the submarine he had left months earlier in Maine, was in trouble - with 129 men aboard.

more stories like thisHe knew those men - Pappy, Heiser, Tilly, the five Johnsons, and the rest. For months he ate with them, slept with them, tipped back beer with them. They were on the Navy's finest submarine, the fastest, deepest-diving vessel in the world.

He shook his head.

"I said they should be all right. Don't worry about it," he recalled yesterday. "They'll bring that boat back up."

He paused, his eyes cloudy. "Well," he said, "they didn't."

Forty-five years have passed since the nuclear submarine sank and shattered at the bottom of the sea, more than 100 miles off Cape Cod, stunning the Navy and devastating a tight-knit community at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery. Yesterday, 300 survivors, naval officers, and others gathered for a memorial service to remember those lost in one of the Navy's worst disasters and the safety measures that followed to prevent calamities.

Fifteen of the men in the crowd yesterday - their hair white, their hearing less than it used to be - were among the former crew who were transferred off the ship weeks or months before the disaster. Now they are symbols of what might have been and storytellers who can connect dozens of now-middle-age children to the fading memories of their fathers.

The Thresher was a sleek "hunter-killer" submarine built to pinpoint and destroy Soviet ships during the throes of the Cold War. In Portsmouth, it was a point of pride.

To the wives, sons, and daughters of the Thresher seamen, it was also the job that separated them for months at a time. They were proud but missed them.

Tilmon Arsenault's daughter Lori recalled yesterday how her father taught her to play the organ and to love music. Michael Lyman remembered how his father, John, the ship's engineering officer, umpired his baseball games, even though he was exhausted from work on the sub.

At work, the men were a serious but fun-loving. They played pranks like putting shaving cream on a guy's hands when he slept and tickling his nose so he would cover his face with the stuff. On their off hours, they sometimes hit the beach with families and friends.

On April 9, 1963, the Thresher left the shipyard in Kittery for three days of testing. It was supposed to be a short trip. Back home, families made plans. The Lymans eagerly hoped for news that their father would be assigned to Hawaii.

John Riemenschneider, a Navy seaman, gloated that he had won a $2 bet with his best friend, Jack Hudson. Hudson had gambled that Riemenschneider would be on the Thresher for the journey. But Riemenschneider had left the crew 18 days before.

"It was the first trip it ever made without me," he said yesterday.

more stories like thisOn April 10, 1963, the television news started reporting that a submarine was in trouble. Despite frantic efforts on board, the ship was unable to surface. It sank and broke apart, crushed by water pressure.

The news ripped through the Naval community. In shock, parents, wives, and children searched for answers.

Days after the disaster, at his wife's urging, Wagner visited the parents of his friend Laird Heiser in Pennsylvania. He was reluctant to go, unsure whether he could bear it.

Heiser's mother served cookies and coffee, and both parents peppered him with questions. Most of all, they wanted to know whether he thought their son had suffered.

"He did not suffer," he told Heiser's parents. "It was that quick."

Wagner was 29 then.

Yesterday, at 74, he and other former crew members still offered comfort, with their stories, to the children and relatives of survivors who had traveled from as far away as Seattle and Florida to attend the service.

Riemenschneider said he would get phone calls from children asking about their fathers. He searches his memory and tells them everything he knows - and how their loss ultimately helped others, like the young submarine students who attended the service yesterday.

Mike Lyman, a captain in the US Public Health Service, said he was moved when one of his father's former employees said he admired his father for always keeping a clear head, never getting angry or rattled. "It was extraordinarily meaningful," he said. Mike Lyman is 54; his father was 31 when he died.

The Navy concluded that electrical problems caused by a hole in a pipe triggered the disaster, according to news accounts. Yesterday officials said the Navy made changes as a result of the calamity that surely prevented future losses.

"If they had kept building them the way they were the would have lost some more," said Riemenschneider.

The mourners listened to speeches and shared condolences. They read each name and rang a bell after it. Tissues were pulled out of pockets and tears wiped away. Men stood stock-straight and sailors in dress blues saluted.

Then, as the afternoon fog crept in, the group gathered on a grassy hill across the river from the shipyard. A relative of one of the men lost placed a flowery wreath on the water. An easterly wind and incoming tide pushed the wreath into the bay, past the families.

When the tides change, they said, the flowers will head out to the Atlantic, out of reach.

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'Sub-committee' on WW 2 U-Boat

2008-04-11T21:38:00.000+01:00

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Derry Journal
April 11, 2008

An all-party working group is to be established by Derry City Council to assist plans to raise a World War Two U-Boat from the sea bed off the coast of Malin Head.

SDLP Councillor Shaun Gallagher has been working on the project for the last twelve months but it was decided at this week's meeting of the council's delevopment committee to establish a group to speed up the project.

SDLP Councillor Sean Carr said he hoped to see the U-Boat brought to the surface as soon as possible. "Councillor Gallagher has done a lot of good work on this project but I think we should formalise that work and give him some assistance. It is a very worthwhile project and hopefully with cross party support we can speed it up," he said.

DUP Alderman Joe Miller quipped that the working party should be called a "sub-committee."

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WWII sub mystery revealed at Norwich

2008-04-09T21:35:00.000+01:00

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Burlington Free Press
By Sam Hemingway
April 09, 2008

NORTHFIELD -- Bruce Abele, 78, stepped toward the big screen in the darkened lecture hall at Norwich University and reached out toward the watery image of a damaged submarine hatch door.

"That's very important," he told the class of 175 cadets and midshipmen, pointing to a set of arrows and the words "To Lock" on the encrusted hatch door wheel.

The class leaned forward to see what Abele was seeing.

"That proves this was not a Japanese sub," Abele said.

The tiny lettering in English, embossed on the hatch wheel of a sunken submarine 3,000 feet below the surface of the North Pacific Ocean near the Aleutian Islands, was a very big deal to Abele and his two brothers, Brad and John Abele.

It meant their search for the USS Grunion, a 312-foot attack submarine that went missing on its maiden voyage in 1942, was over.

After 65 years, they finally knew what had happened to their father, Mannett "Jim" Abele, the submarine's skipper, and the 69 sailors under his command.

"Emotions are hard to describe with words," Bruce Abele said of what it felt like to finally learn the location of the submarine his father had commanded. "It was sort of like throwing a pin at the moon."

Now, he said, comes the even harder part: determining what caused the submarine to go down.

"We haven't solved that at all," he said.

One theory, Abele told his rapt audience Tuesday, is that artillery fire from the Kano Maru, a nearby Japanese merchant vessel, hit the Grunion's periscope and disabled its sonar, locking the submarine into a fatal dive to the bottom of the ocean.

Another is that one of the torpedoes the Grunion fired at the Kano Maru circled around and struck the submarine.

The question of what happened to the Grunion is a lingering World War II naval mystery. The ship had sunk three Japanese destroyers on its first trip out of Pearl Harbor in the summer of 1942.

On July 30, it reported that it was under heavy anti-submarine fire but still had 10 torpedoes left to deploy. An American sub base at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians ordered the Grunion to return to the base, but no one knows whether the vessel got the message.

The Navy had no clue what had happened to the Grunion and still doesn't. Even now, it won't confirm that what the Abele search found is the Grunion, although no other allied submarine was lost in the area where the wreck was located.

For years, the search by the Abele brothers for their father's ship had gone nowhere. The break came in 2002, when the family was told about an Internet posting of a report by a Japanese man, Yutaka Iwasaki.

Iwasaki's posting was a translated account from a Kano Maru ship member who described a battle with an American submarine in the area where the Grunion disappeared. After four years of research into the information provided by Iwasaki, the Abeles felt they finally could pinpoint the location of the sunken sub.

John Abele, who owns a home in Shelburne and is co-founder of Boston Scientific, a medical device company, agreed to fund the expensive exploration that led to the discovery of what they thought was the Grunion in 2006, and confirmation of the wreck in 2007.

Last year, John Abele spoke to the same class at Norwich about the Grunion case. Tuesday's appearance by Bruce Abele, who lives in Newton, Mass., was both a promised follow-up report on the matter and an appeal to the students to help solve the puzzle of why the sub sunk.

"What's made this project so remarkable is that people all over the world have collaborated on it without any formal direction," Bruce Abele said.

Tuesday's presentation at Norwich, which included never-before-seen video of the wreck taken by the underwater remote vehicle, will be repeated at the Museum of Science in Boston on May 1.

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Ex-sailor wins fight to have submarine he sank declared a war grave

2008-04-08T21:16:00.000+01:00

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The Scotsman
By Gerri Peev

April 08, 2008

AS A teenage navy seaman, four hours into his maiden voyage, he fired the depth-charge that sank a German U-boat off the coast of Scotland.

Yesterday, Roger Williams quietly honoured the lives of the 50 men who lost their lives as his campaign to have the wreck declared a protected war grave was finally won.

The U-boat U-714, which went down eight miles off St Abb's Head, Berwickshire, on 14 March, 1945, is one of ten sites to be given protected status by the Ministry of Defence, it was announced yesterday.

Mr Williams struck up a friendship with Axel Schwebcke, the son of the 27-year-old skipper of the U-714, and the two began their campaign. Mr Schwebcke, a retired journalist who is now 64, met his father, Hans-Joachim, only once.

Yesterday, Mr Williams said his fight to see the site designated a military grave was not about guilt, and he insisted: "We have respect for seamen of all nations; that is part of the brotherhood of the sea."

He was just 18 when the South African frigate Natal fired on the German sub, during the final weeks of the Second World War.

Both Mr Williams and the ship were on their first voyage, setting off from Newcastle upon Tyne where the vessel had been built, when they received a distress signal from the Danish ship Magne.

Speaking to The Scotsman from his home in Cape Town, Mr Williams recalled: "As we passed the Firth of Forth, a Danish merchant ship was torpedoed and sank. We were just five miles away, so we went at full speed to rescue the crew.

"We found some survivors bobbing in the life rafts," he went on. "While we were rescuing them, we picked up a very positive underwater signal."

The radar signal was from U-714 and the depth-charge mortar team wasted no time in firing their weapon, sending the submarine to the seabed. Mr Williams said: "It was billed as a feat unique in the annals of naval history, and it still is."

But he insisted there was no sense of euphoria at the time, as the crew were aware "we could have been the ones being torpedoed".

Mr Schwebcke is coming to Scotland next month to pay his last respects at the site where his father perished. But his mother, who is in her eighties and never remarried, will not be making the trip.

Stevie Adams, from South Queensferry Sub Aqua Club, along with divers from Marinequest, discovered the wreck nearly 18 months ago. He has kept the GPS co-ordinates of the sitesecret, as he is anxious the site is not disturbed by looters, not least because the boat's pressure hull is still sealed, meaning the remains of the crew are probably lying there.

He said: "This protected status is great, because it does mean that people are told they can look but not touch anything at the site."

Derek Twigg, the defence minister, said he was pleased to be able to extend protection to the ten wreck sites, which will come into force on 1 May.

He said: "I hope this will be of some comfort to the families of those who lost their lives on board these ships."

The other sites include the Atlantic Conveyor container ship sunk by the Argentines during the Falklands War, the HMS Curacao, a cruiser sunk in the Atlantic during the Second World War with the loss of 338 men, and HMS Amphion, which was the first British warship to be lost in the First World War.

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Slicing up a sub!

2008-03-12T08:30:00.000Z

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This is Lancashire
By Nick Yates
March 12, 2008

ENGINEERS at a Westhoughton-based drilling and cutting firm have used their skills to create a unique slice of World War Two history.

Holemasters Demtech, a specialist diamond drilling and cutting firm that employs 33 drillers and an administration staff of six at its Bolton depot, was contracted to slice up a Second World War German U-Boat by its owners, Merseytravel.

The submarine, known as U- 534, was brought to Liverpool in 1996 and formed part of the Historic Warship Museum at Mortar Mill Quay, Birkenhead.

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It was destined for scrap until Merseytravel, the Liverpool transport and tourism body, stepped in with a plan to make the U-Boat part of a new tourist attraction at Woodside Ferry Terminal on the River Mersey.

Holemasters has just finished slicing the aging submarine into sections, so visitors can get a real idea of what life was like inside the crafts so dreaded by Allied ships during World War Two.

Andrew Doyle, technical manager of Holemasters Sellafield, was responsible for designing and delivering the project.

He said: "We were contacted with a request to see if it would be possible to cut the U-Boat into five sections. We decided the best solution was to use diamond wire, so we designed a bespoke system to undertake the task which we have completed successfully."

He added: "We have cut steel previously, but not on this scale. The complexity is that you are not just cutting one face, you could be cutting six or eight faces at one time, including items of pipe work valves, ballast tanks, pressure hull and internal services.

"On the stern section, we cut through the drive shafts that were 300mm of solid steel. We used a series of pullies to control the wire's angle of attack, creating straight clean cuts and maximising the cutting potential."

The sections, which weigh 240 tons each, will each take a day to move by floating crane to the new home at Woodside. The first section, currently being removed, is a 23-metre length of the bow.

Huge glass panels will be installed at Woodside, over the end of each section, to allow visitors to see inside U- 534 from specially built viewing platforms.

The craft will be located close to a full scale model of Resurgum, the world's first submarine.

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New destination for WWII U-boat

2008-03-10T08:33:00.001Z

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BBC
March 10, 2008

Work is under way to move the only World War II German submarine in the UK to a new location.

The U-534 has been stationed at Mortar Mill Quay, near Birkenhead, Merseyside, in the Historic Warships Museum, until it closed last year.

Now the 900-ton U-boat, which is too big to move in one piece, has been cut into five parts and is being floated to Woodside Ferry Terminal in Birkenhead.

Once it has been put back together it will become a tourist attraction.

Merseytravel, which owns and operates Mersey Ferries, bought the U-boat to house it at its terminal.

Work to divide the vessel into portable sections took a month to complete and it is expected to take barges another week to transport the parts along the River Mersey.

Historical importance

Neil Scales, chief executive and director general of Merseytravel, said: "It's a really important piece of history which we want to preserve."

The Imperial War Museum confirmed there are only four full-size WWII German U-Boats in existence, and that U-534 is the only one in the UK.

According to the museum's archives, the submarine, which was launched on 23 September 1942, was used as a training vessel in the Baltic.

However, it was sunk less than three years later on 5 May 1945 by depth charges dropped by an RAF Liberator.

The vessel was salvaged in 1993 and brought to the UK in May 1996, before becoming a popular tourist attraction in Seacombe, Wirral.

The new exhibition at Woodside, which includes artefacts from the submarine and an enigma machine, is due to open in July.

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U-don’t know how hard it is to take away a German sub

2008-03-09T12:47:00.002Z

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Liverpool Echo
By Kevin Core
March 08, 2008

SIXTY-THREE years after it was sunk, a German U-boat is making its reappearance.

Now divided into three sections, the U354 will be slowly moved to Woodside by the enormous floating crane Mammoth on Monday.

It will take up residence in a new £2.5m Merseytravel tourist attraction.

Engineers spent a month using a state-of-the-art diamond wire cutter to cut up the 240 ton U-boat.

The vessel was never involved in active combat but carried out meteorological operations, and was raised in 1993, eventually coming to Birkenhead where it was part of the historic warship collection.

It was sunk en-route to Norway by depth charges dropped by a Liberator aircraft from RAF 547 Squadron.

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Horses on Submarines: A Transportation Nightmare

2008-03-09T12:23:00.002Z

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Equestrian Mag
By Raul Colon

When we talk about the submarine in a war, we immediately focus on the German U-boat effort during the colossal Battle of the Atlantic or the massive Soviet attempt to achieve parity with the United States in the nuclear delivery strike platforms during the Cold War. There’s even talk of Imperial Germany attempt to cut and starve the British Isles during the Great War, but seldom, if ever, the fact that submarines were used as transportation platforms for the transferring of, not only troops and war related materials, but animals, mainly combat horses; have not received any notice from historians. But such were the cases, especially during World War I. A conflict permeated by the transition of war technologies. From observation balloons to combat airplanes. From a surface navy to an underwater fleet. And from horse mounted cavalry and infantry, to an all mechanized force centered about a new tool of war: the main battle tank. As all these changes were occurring, transporting and supplying and expeditionary force was still the domain of the horses in those early years of the war. Such was the case in the battle for the Dardanelles, most commonly known as the Battle of Gallipoli. There, the largest concentration of submarines, outside European waters, took place beginning in the spring of 1915. The Dardanelles, a strait formation in what is today’s north-west Turkey, represented an opportunity for the then struggling Western Allies to inflict a major blow to Germany’s main allied in the Middle East: the Ottoman Empire. The British Admiralty knew that if the Turks could be dislocated from the Gallipoli peninsula, the Germans would have a hard time supplying their troops fighting the Russians on the Eastern Front, thus the planning for the Gallipoli invasion commenced at earnest in the fall of 1914. As soon as the plan was ready, the French jumped aboard enthusiastically. They saw the operation as distraction affair. One that, if it played out to their planning, would divert German attention from its incursion into northern France.

The operation, mounting an invasion on a far away strip of land occupied by a determinate and well defended enemy, was a planning and logistical nightmare. The Dardanelles straits where well defended by the Turks. They recognized early on the importance of the peninsula to their own war effort and made a conscious decision to fortify it. Naval guns were mounted on each approaching ridge. Heavy minefields were laid out near the strait’s gateway. Thousand of troops were available within a five mile radius. Even combat planes, a first for the tradition rich Ottomans, were dispatched to Gallipoli. How then will the vaunted Royal Navy and elements of the French Navy ship tons of supplies, thousand of combat troops and thousand of combat horses without being detected by a suspecting enemy? The logical answer was the submarine. The submarine could penetrate Gallipolis’s defenses at night, unload its cargo and leave the area before the enemy knew it had been there, so the thinking was. A series of small submarine incursions began in December 1914 in order to test the concept. They meet with unexpected success paving the way for a large scale deployment of submarines in the area. Boarding men and equipment into submarines of that era, they were crude vessels fitted with just the basic systems needed to perform an assigned task, was a tall order, but the housing of a horse force inside those steel monsters was an almost impossible feat. A feat that, not only was accomplished, but will be respite many times during the Gallipoli campaign. The British selected their newly commissioned E class submarines. The E class boats represented a major leap in submarine design and development. It was bigger than the previous classes, the dreaded C and Ds, and could hold more cargo due to an expanded cargo hold in the aft section of the boat. The E class was destined to become the British main submarine platform during the four years of the struggle.

Back in England, the British Imperial Army began a massive effort to recruit as many horses as possible for the impending Gallipoli expedition. But by this time, horses were a hot commodity. Purges of horses for deployment to northern France lifted the once vigorous horse breeding industry in a flat state. No major horses were available for operation in the straits. Scotland and Wales were also purged of their horses in an attempt to fill the assigned quota. Fortunately for the British, there was the Commonwealth. Australia filled the requirement gap shipping between December 1914 and February 1915, 8,450 horses to the British bases at Dover where they would be prepared for the fifteenth day journey to the Dardanelles straits. Due to the smallness of the cargo hold, it was never intended that live stock or even humans could be placed in the hold for a medium to long range voyage, and the fact that the horses needed space to eat and stretch, the Royal Navy decided to ferry just one company of horses, (10) per trip. At this rate, it would take the entire E fleet twenty five trips in order to supply the estimated 250 horses needed to support one fully manned expeditionary combat brigade. A real tall order indeed. Nevertheless, the journeys began in earnest on March 21, 1915.

The loading of the horses by itself was more difficult than shipping horses on commercial cargo ships. The E boats used were modified to use a loading ramp, instead of the regular loading hatch. The loading compartment was enclosed to avoid the horses to divert to sensitive areas where cables and pipes were exposed. Provisions for the horses were stored in the front of the sub, in the area where torpedoes were stored. This deprived the boat of its full capacity of torpedoes. In fact, some E boats would carry only the torpedoes already placed on their firing tubes, a fact not lost on the submariners. And a fact that would make them resent the gallant animal’s role in the eventual loss of some of their shipmates. Once onboard, the caring of the horses began an imposing proposition. Due to the lack of space, soldiers assigned to feeding and caring for the animals usually found themselves in precarious spots in the hold. The journey was a tenuous one for both crew and cargo. The E boats would depart the Dover area in route to the Mediterranean by way of Spain. That route was infested with U boats. When and if they survived the trip to Gibraltar, the subs would make out for the Island fortress of Malta, where they would be re-fueled and re-supplied for the last leg of the trip. On Malta, the horses where off boarded for stretching and carrying. A waiting team of veterinaries, shipped from the main British naval base at Scapa Flow three weeks before, was tasked for the evaluation of the horse’s condition as well as caring for any sick or injured animal. Many of the horses received thigh cuts due to the smallness of the cargo hold. They would collide with with each other or just simply collide with with one of the exposed sharp edges of the welded hatches. The horses that stayed on Malta was a matter of hours, not days. In those pressure hours, the vets sometimes worked miracles. The veterinary service tried to prepare the horses the best they could. Sometimes the cuts on the animals were such that the horse was deemed unfit for combat, thus relegating it to pastoral duties. When the animal was fully recovered, it would be shipped aboard another E boat to the combat zone.

In just four days, the horses would be asked to depart the un-comforts of the submarines for the treacherous beaches of Gallipoli. They needed all the stretching and preparing that the soldiers could give them. The journey from Malta to Gallipoli was relatively easy. No major U-boat concentration was expected and what ever force the Turks could muster, was utterly defeated. The problem for the E boats and its precious cargo, was not getting into Gallipoli, it was disembarking on a heavy defended peninsula. Once the sub arrived on the area, it would make for the upper left corner of the Dardanelles where it would distribute its precious cargo to a gathering of soldiers in dire need of it. Having traveled for nearly sixteen days, the horses welcomed the respite of an open area, not knowing of course that this would probably be their last ride. Once on land, the British, Canadian and French troops already fighting the Turks, would use the horses as transportation vehicles around the rugged Gallipoli terrain. Unfortunately for the allies and their animal comrades, the expedition was a complete failure. The combine British and French force was unable to establish a sustained beach head in the peninsula, furthermore, they were being pushed to the sea and by the end of the spring a complete evacuation of the Gallipoli beach head was ordered. The Dardanelles operation would cost the British much. It would cost Winston Churchill his post at the Admiralty and would seed the idea on the Germans that if the poorly trained Turks could out gun and out perform a professional British army in a remote location, they could certainly destroy in France.

For the horses onboard these submarines and the voyage itself proved deadly. Of the twenty-one horse-carried E boat trips to Gallipoli, three were lost at sea. One near the Canarias Islands, the cause of its loss is still unknown; and the other two near the strait itself. These were probably lost due to minefield engagements. All three boats went down with all hands, humans and animals. Of the nearly 2,100 horses deployed in Gallipoli, only five hundred survived the affair, even less made it back to England, and the ones that did make it, were shipped to northern France, where they would battle a more savage enemy, the dreaded trenches. Today, we can see the valor of this animal entrenched on a monument atop of A4 ridge in the Gallipoli peninsula. The monument, described the valor of the invading soldiers and its four-legged comrades.

References:
Submarines of the World, Robert Jackson, Friedman/FairFax Books 200

The First World War, New Strachan, Penguin Books 2003

Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War, Robert Massie 1991

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Fresh waters for museum chief

2008-03-07T22:11:00.000Z

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The News
By Matt Jackson
March 07, 2008

HIS office is now just a sparse collection of packed boxes, but Commander Jeff Tall will forever remember the view from his window.

After 14 years in charge of the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, he still cannot suppress a smile as he looks at the heritage gems framing the waterfront.

The 65-year-old from Eastney is moving on to lecture on cruise ships, but nothing will change about the passion he has for submarines and those who serve in them.

'There is a bond forged under the most strenuous conditions you can imagine, and that never leaves you,' he said.

'Submariners are at best like pirates, eager to throw themselves back into the fray and pit themselves against a huge technological challenge.'

Cdr Tall saw action in the Falklands and was in charge of four submarines before he applied for the museum job.

'There was a great deal of competition, but perhaps because of my experience I was chosen,' he said.

'When I arrived the facilities were limited to say the least, and that represented a huge challenge.'

Cdr Tall has welcomed thousands of visitors to the museum and bargained for millions of pounds offunding during his time, but saving the 1901 submarine Holland 1 stands out as a highlight.

'Saving Holland 1 from falling into disrepair has to be the legacy of my time here. It was a five-year project and took enormous effort from the team,' he said.

'It is quite simply the most historically significant submarine in the world, and there was a real risk it would be ruined if we didn't take action.'

In 2001, the restored boat was displayed to the public in a specially controlled hall, and similar plans are afoot to improve the other attractions.

'The challenge for Marion Budgett, who follows me, is to get to work on HMS Alliance,' he said.

'It will be another large project and I think that stands as a good reason for me to hand over.

'I like to think that during my time we managed to put the family experience into the museum, because getting children here has been so important.'

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Submarine pigeon traps criticised

2008-03-06T16:03:00.002Z

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BBC
March 06, 2008

A Hampshire museum has been accused of animal cruelty after setting up nets to trap a flock of 100 pigeons living inside one of its prize exhibits.

The birds are in HMS Alliance, a submarine from World War II which has been at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport for 25 years.

The museum has set up nets to trap the birds before releasing them.

But the approach has angered some bird lovers who say the trapped pigeons are showing signs of distress.

The museum is planning a £4m project to conserve and repair the submarine, but that is being hampered by growing layers of corrosive pigeon droppings.

Last year, it attempted to solve the problem by shooting the pigeons, but that was unsuccessful.

A pest control company has now been brought in to put up nets over the bow and the stern, places where years of corrosion have left gaping holes.

Traps with food and water have also been set up to catch those birds inside the submarine.

Once their entrance holes have been blocked, the birds will be shooed out of the hull.

Emma Haskell, from Pigeon Control Advisory Service, said in the meantime the birds were suffering.

"It's very distressing, she said.

"The birds are throwing themselves at the net and doing everything they can to get out."

Bob Mealings, curator at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum, said: "We are following the recommendations of the RSPCA and we are working with a licensed contractor who is working within guidelines laid down by the law."

The removal is expected to take several weeks and the trapped pigeons are being given food and water.

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Bowfin aims its periscope on German sub Thursday

2008-02-20T11:10:00.000Z

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Honolulu Advertiser
February 20, 2008

PEARL HARBOR — Daniel Martinez, a noted historian at the USS Arizona Memorial, will give a free presentation on the U-505 German submarine on Thursday, Feb. 21.

The 7 p.m. talk is part of the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park's Adventures in History lecture series.

The U-505, which is the only German submarine captured by the U.S. Navy during World War II, is now enclosed in a 35,000 square foot interactive exhibit in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Martinez will share the story of the German craft, including its fascinating history and the rebuilding of the museum around the submarine.

He will also let attendees take a virtual tour inside the submarine museum, showing how it was built around the U-505 to create an astonishing experience.

Video clips, a submarine model and artwork are incorporated into the presentation.

Martinez, in addition to being the historian at the USS Arizona Memorial, is a much sought after historical consultant. He has worked on documentaries about Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway and Little Big Horn.

He is a frequent guest speaker at national historical events.

Thursday's free program will take place at the Bowfin Park lanai, with light refreshments to be served at 6:30.

The USS Bowfin Submarine Museum & Park is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to restore and preserve the World War II submarine USS Bowfin (SS-287). Located next to the USS Arizona Memorial Visitors Center, it is open to the public daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Call 423-1341 or go online to www.bowfin.org.

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Euro-cash for Wirral U-Boat project

2008-02-18T14:30:00.000Z

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Liverpool Daily Post
By Liam Murphy
February 18, 2008

A SCHEME to rejuvenate Woodside ferry terminal by siting a former German U-Boat there has received a cash boost from the EU.

The plans by Merseytravel would aim to see the Wirral ferry terminal become a major tourist attraction in the £2.5m scheme.

Now the plans have been boosted by a £550,000 grant, and it is expected the U-Boat will be opened to the public this summer.

Work has already started on cutting up the U-534 which will become the centrepiece of the attraction.

Neil Scales, chief executive and director general of Merseytravel, which owns and operates the Mersey Ferries, welcomed the extra cash for the scheme.

He said: “This is a great boost to an exciting project which has a twofold objective.

“It will complement the wider regeneration of the Woodside development and help maintain Mersey Ferries as the premier paid for attraction in the region.”

U-534 was one of the last U-boats to be sunk by the Allies in 1945, around two days before the end of the war in Europe.

It was never involved in active combat but carried out meteorological operations, and was raised in 1993, eventually coming to Birkenhead, where it was part of the historic warship collection.

Engineers using a diamond wire cutter are cutting the sub into four sections, each of which will be moved by floating crane from its present location at Mortar Mill Quay to Woodside.

Each section will take a day to move and the operation will take about a month. The first to be removed will be a 23-metre length of the bow and work will start next month.

The cutting has been designed with such precision that the submarine could be re-assembled into one piece if required.

Preliminary work has also started on the exhibition area at Woodside, which will include artefacts from the sub and other memorabilia portraying the history of undersea warfare.

Richard Nutter, director of the European Objective One programme, said: “Objective One has long been one of the biggest supporters of the Mersey Ferries.”

SEE a video about the project to slice up the U-Boat on the Daily Post website, www. dailypost.co.uk

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Last hours of midget sub

2008-02-17T14:34:00.001Z

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The Sydney Morning Herald
By Lisa Carty
February 17, 2008

THE mystery of how the Japanese midget sub that attacked Sydney Harbour in 1942 met its end off Sydney's northern beaches has been solved.

State Government maritime archaeologist Tim Smith led a team which has found M24 came to grief as it was on its way to rendezvous with a mother sub near Broken Bay.

Five massive mother subs - each 110 metres long and carrying 100 crew - had been waiting south of the harbour for M24 and two other midget subs to return from their assault on the night of May 31-June 1.

The other midget subs were blown up in the harbour - one by its own crew after being detected, the other by the Royal Australian Navy. M24, which attacked a ferry being used by the navy, killing 21 and injuring 10, slipped out of the harbour and remained undetected until it was discovered by recreational divers in November 2006.

Mr Smith said a map recovered from one of the bombed subs combined with Australian wartime intelligence records showed the attackers had planned a second rendezvous spot off Broken Bay.

"The historical records show the Japanese had more flexibility in their recovery plans than had been postulated by researchers in the past," he said.

The two men aboard the M24 - Katsuhisa Ban, 23, and Mamoru Ashibe, 24 - had probably decided on the northern rendezvous because they did not want to draw attention to the fleet of mother subs to the south.

While one mother sub did head north, it seems Ban and Ashibe were forced to stay submerged off Bungan Head, new Newport, and died of a lack of oxygen, or fumes.

"I am sure they tried to get to the northern recovery point because the wreck lies on the agreed route but ... they either ran out of battery power or were overcome by bad air, or decided to commit suicide and end the mission," he said.

Naval historian Steve Carruthers said Mr Smith's work showed M24 did not head north by mistake.

"It wasn't on the wrong course, it was supposed to be there," Mr Carruthers said. "Tim's put forward the theory in his preliminary final report, which I have read and totally agree with."

The Japanese submariners' remains and some unexploded weapons remain in the sub, which is protected by a 500-metre exclusion zone, underwater cameras and sound detectors. Planning Minister Frank Sartor has placed a permanent heritage listing on the site, with fines of up to $1.1 million for those breaching the exclusion zone.

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And up she rises

2008-02-15T16:47:00.001Z

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North-West Evening Mail
February 15, 2008

A FIRST World War Barrow submarine commanded by the cousin of Dracula author Bram Stoker, may rise from the dead after 90 years.

The AE2 sub was scuttled off Turkey in April, 1915, after being holed by enemy gunfire while on the surface.

Its voyage proved allied submarines could make it through the narrow, mine-infested Dardanelles straits linking the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora.

Her successful voyage to Gallipoli on the Turkish coast helped pave the way for other subs and ships which went on to sink more than 220 Turkish vessels during the disastrous allied troop landings at Gallipoli.

HMAS AE2’s mixed Australian and British crew was commanded by Irishman Henry Stoker.

The AE2 which had a crew of 34, was launched on June 18, 1913. Since being scuttled on April 27, 1915, she lay unseen until found in 73m of water in 1998 largely intact.

BAE shipyard history and heritage representative, Tony Salter-Ellis said: “HMAS AE2 was the second of two E Class submarines built at Barrow for the Royal Australian Navy.

“Yard No 419, AE1, became the first casualty of the First World War when she was lost without trace off German New Guinea on September 14, 1914. A private diving company claimed to have found the AE1 last year but this has yet to be confirmed.”

Mr Salter-Ellis said that in the Dardanelles AE2 faced mines, submarine nets and groundings underwater and searchlights, shelling and ramming by gunboats and shelling from cliff forts whenever they had to surface to recharge batteries.

Mr Salter-Ellis added: “BAE Systems is pleased to hear of the intention of the Submarine Institute of Australia to raise and preserve AE2, so that the key role played by the Vickers Barrow-built submarine and her crew in the Gallipoli Campaign can be honoured.”

The boat is 181ft long, 22ft 6in wide, with a range of 3,225 nautical miles, and a displacement of 800 tons.

Now the Submarine Institute of Australia, where AE2’s exploits are nationally known, and the Turkish Institute of Nautical Archaeology are discussing proposals to raise her.

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WWII submarine missing for 65 years found in Bering Sea

2008-02-09T22:42:00.000Z

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Norwich Bulletin
By Michael Gannon
February 09, 2008

Four sailors from Eastern Connecticut were among the crew of the submarine USS Grunion in July 1942, when it disappeared off the coast of Alaska.

Chief Motor Machinist’s Mate Leo Joseph Isaie Bedard of Taftville was 34.

Torpedoman’s Mate John Harrison Wells of Gales Ferry was 22. Motor Machinist’s mate John Wesley Nobles was 25. Chief Motor Machinist’s Mate Daniel Cullinane, an Irish immigrant living in Killingly, was 47 when he gave his life for his adopted country.

Even though they are not coming home, family members are expressing confidence and relief that after 65 years, their final resting place may have been found 3,000 feet beneath the Bering Sea.

Harry Wells and his twin sister, May Laiply, of Bucyrus, Ohio, were 14 when their half brother, John Harrison Wells, was reported missing by the Navy in August 1942.

“Jude was from our father’s first marriage,” Laiply explained in a telephone interview.

“He was a junior. My niece couldn’t say junior, so she called him Jude. I was shocked when we got the news. He was so young. He had just married a Connecticut girl. She called my sister and notified us.”

The Navy has not formally identified the wreck yet. It was found last August in an expedition run and financed by the three sons of Lt. Cmdr. Mannert “Jim” Abele, the Grunion’s commanding officer.

“I was 12 years old. My brother John was 5 and my brother Brad was 7,” Bruce Abele of Newton, Mass, said of the Grunion’s sinking. “Our father was 39 when he died. He attended Annapolis and was career Navy. He never swore. I remember he was a disciplinarian, but a fair one, and he always gave us haircuts with hand clippers.”

Off Alaska
The Grunion was on patrol off the Aleutian Islands, near Japanese-occupied Kiska.

The crew reported sinking three enemy ships in its last transmission July 30, when it was ordered back to port at Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
It never made it.

“For so long, we didn’t know where he was,” said Ron Bedard of Aurora, Ill., who was 7 when his father, Leo Bedard, was lost. “When the sub first disappeared, my mother kept hoping that he had been taken as a prisoner of war, that they might find him on some desert island. But as they liberated more and more of the (POW) camps ... she never talked about him very much. After so many years, you give up hope of ever finding him.”

Jim Meagher of Dayville is married to Daniel Cullinane’s granddaughter, Karen. He said the wreck was discovered only about two months after his father-in-law — Cullinane’s son — died.

Meagher said Daniel Cullinane had gone missing in war once before — as a Marine in World War I.

“He was wounded and disappeared for about two months before turning up again,” he said. That’s what they said when the sub went missing: ‘He’ll be back. He’s done this before.’ ”

Cullinane was one of the first 100 American troops wounded in World War I. He earned the Purple Heart, and President Woodrow Wilson presented him with a citation. Cullinane was working on the Grunion as an employee of Electric Boat when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

“He was working on her (sea) trials and decided he was going to enlist in the Navy,” Meagher said.

Long search
Abele said the discovery of the sub was the result of more than 12 years of searching the Internet, reading everything available and talking to anyone the family could find.
The key information they needed came from a Japanese magazine article in which a former naval officer aboard the armed freighter Kano Maru described a battle in which his ship sank a U.S. submarine near Kiska in July 1942, giving an exact location.

In 2006, Abele ran an expedition to locate the sub and his brother, John, financed it.

They identified a “target” that was the right length and width to be the Grunion.

“And most important, it was right where it was supposed to be,” Abele said.

A return trip last year has confirmed it to the satisfaction of the hundreds of Grunion relatives and decedents who have formed a family of their own in recent years.

‘I have no doubt’
“I have no doubt it’s the boat,” said John Nobles Jr. of Apple Valley, Calif., who was 3 when his father, John Wesley Nobles, died. As proof, he noted the unusual propeller guard structure on the stern of the Grunion and on the boat the Abeles found. Grunion also is the only U.S. submarine listed as missing in the Bering Sea.

“I think the ID is positive,” Nobles said.

Lt. Clay Doss, a spokesman for the Navy, said the Naval Historical Center has not received any data or video from the Abeles’ expeditions, so it can’t identify the wreck positively as the Grunion. The Abeles said they plan to send the data to the historical center.

Nobles and Harry Wells said it’s hard to describe how hearing about the discovery of the sub made them feel.

“I’d always been a realist about this,” Wells said. “I knew lost at sea was lost. But it’s always good to really know.”

“To finally know what happened was tremendous,” Nobles said. “You come to grips with something you’ve buried. Then you find out it wasn’t buried so deep after all.”

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In Pictures: U-boat operation

2008-02-06T15:04:00.001Z

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BBC
February 06, 2008

U-534, the UK's only full-size World War II German U-boat, is being split into four sections to be moved to a new location.

The rusting vessel, one of only four left in the world, was originally sunk by RAF depth charges near Denmark in 1945.

Engineers are using diamond cutters to break up the submarine. It will then be moved in sections by floating crane down the water.

Merseytravel is to create a new tourist attraction at its Woodside terminal which will allow visitors to walk through the sections of the U-boat.

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Sliced-up submarine gets ready for a new home

2008-02-06T09:45:00.001Z

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Liverpool Daily Post
By Richard Down
February 06, 2008

WORK has started on cutting up the wartime German U-boat in Birkenhead docks.

Engineers using a special diamond wire cutter will slice the sub into four sections.

The decision to chop up the U-boat has attracted some controversy, but the costs of moving the submarine intact are said to have been too expensive.

Instead each section, weighing up to 240 tons, will be moved by floating crane from its present site at Mortar Mill Quay to Mersey Ferries’ Woodside Ferry Terminal. The overall operation will take about a month to complete.

First to ship out to Woodside is a 23-metre length of the bow.

The cuts have been designed with such precision the U-534 could be re-assembled if required. A glass panel will be installed over the end of each section to allow visitors to see inside the submarine from viewing platforms.

Netherlands-based Royal Haskoning is project managing the operation from its office in Liverpool.

David Ricketts, director of infrastructure and building, said: “It is one of the most unusual projects the company has ever undertaken. There are complications because engineers are not often asked to calculate the exact weight of an old U-boat.”

Preliminary work has started on the exhibition area at Woodside, which will include artefacts from the sub and other memorabilia portraying the history of undersea warfare. It is due to open this summer.

Neil Scales, chief executive and director general of Merseytravel, which owns and operates Mersey Ferries, said: “We’re now moving on to the next stage in what is an exciting project to boost tourism on Merseyside.

“More people than ever before will be able to view the sub in its new location. Previously, youngsters under the age of 16 were not allowed to enter the craft.

“Our plans for the sub will now make a trip on the Mersey Ferries an even more memorable experience as well as complementing the wider regeneration of the Woodside development.”

The future of U-534 was in doubt after the Historic Warship Museum at Birkenhead, where it was displayed, closed two years ago.

THE U-534 was sunk by an RAF bomber in the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden on May 6, 1945, just 48 hours before the end of the war in Europe.

She was raised from the sea bed in 1993, and is believed to be one of only four surviving World War II U-boats.

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Submarine’s (U-534) new lease of life

2008-02-05T23:46:00.000Z

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Liverpool Echo
By Kevin Core
February 5, 2008

A “GIANT wire cheese cutter” sliced into a piece of Merseyside’s naval history today.

Work began this morning dividing the German submarine U-534 into four sections.

Tourist officials hope it will become a major attraction at Mersey Ferries’ Woodside terminal.

Engineers were using a state-of-the-art diamond wire cutter to cut up the 240 ton U-boat.

It was sunk en-route to Norway by depth charges dropped by a Liberator aircraft from RAF 547 Squadron.

The operation is expected to take up to one month.

Each section will make a day-long journey by floating crane from Mortar Mill Quay to Woodside.

Cuttings were designed with such precision the sub could be reassembled in one piece.

But visitors at the new attraction will be able to walk around the hull parts on raised platforms.

The first section to be removed will be a 23-metre length of the bow.

Work so far has concentrated on painting the exterior and removing rotten timbers and steelwork from the top deck.

Due to open in summer, the exhibition area will include artefacts such as tools found on the sub and memorabilia portraying the history of undersea warfare.

Fifteen thousand litres of diesel remained in the U-534’s storage tanks which had to be pumped out.

Neil Scales, chief executive and director general of Merseytravel which owns and operates Mersey Ferries, said: “We’re now moving on to the next stage in what is an exciting project to boost tourism on Merseyside.

“More people than ever will be able to view the sub in its new location with superb viewing areas so that everyone will be able to see what it is like inside.”

History of a relic

Launched in February 1942 U-534 was most probably a training boat in the Baltic

She never saw active combat and was used for meteorological purposes

In May 1944, U-534 was released for operational duty avoiding contact with the enemy to ensure regular weather reports

On May 5, 1945 while in the Kattegat, north-west of Helsingor, it refused Admiral Dönitz’s order for all U-boats to surrender.

Heading north towards Norway, with no flag of surrender, she was attacked by a Liberator aircraft from RAF 547 Squadron which dropped depth charges.

U-534 took heavy damage and began to sink, 49 of 52 crew members survived.

It was discovered in 1986 and was thought to be carrying Nazi gold. It was given to Merseyside by Karsten Rae.

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Under the Sea at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall - Replica of the Drebbel Submarine in Exhibition

2008-02-05T23:05:00.000Z

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24 Hour Museum
February 04, 2008

A replica of the Drebbel Submarine, which originally dated to the early 1600s, and used oar power. © National Maritime Museum Cornwall.

It is said that the under sea world is as strange and inhospitable as outer space. Little wonder then that we have gone to extraordinary lengths to train our bodies and invent all types of equipment just to explore it.

Now the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall is launching its own exploration of this fascinating environment with an exhibition called Under the Sea. Exploring the fascinating underwater world of shipwrecks, diving, submarines, physiology, underwater warfare and photography the new exhibition promises to get you as close to the underwater world as possible – without getting wet.

One of the key exhibits is a replica of the very first submarine designed in 1620 by Cornelius Drebbel. Made of wood, this four-oared, underwater rowing machine is the beginning of a journey that focuses on the advancement of technology in submarines and submersibles, that plumbs the murky depths of everything from underwater exploration to sub-aqua warfare.

Visitors can climb inside a bell and chamber to see for themselves how time has enabled new advancements in technology and allowed greater deep-sea exploration.

Underwater warfare is also a key element of the exhibition and visitors can examine a 1930s Italian Mark 1 human torpedo, otherwise known as a Siluro a lenta corsa (SLC or slow-speed torpedo). These manned torpedoes were used in one of the most daring missions ever conducted by the Italian submersible fleet during WW2.

In 1941 the torpedoes and their crews were carried through the minefields of the Mediterranean by submarine and deployed just outside Alexandria harbour in Egypt. Navigating through the cold water, the manned chariots found their way inside the enemy harbour and disabled two of the most powerful ships in the British fleet.

Much like the early days of submarines, the genesis of people diving the depths of the ocean with breathing apparatus began in the 1600s and the exhibition takes an in-depth look at this phenomenon. Displays include an early diving bell as used in Falmouth Docks, a hyperbaric chamber and a number of valuable objects showing early diving compared to today’s modern technology.

As befits a museum in a county boasting its own champion free diver, the Cornish museum also explores the world of diving underwater without breathing apparatus. The history of this unusual sport also dates back centuries and hands-on exhibits examine the amazing pearl and sponge divers of Korea and Japan and how they contrast with the growing sport of today.

Apart from its nautical traditions, one of the reasons Cornwall has such a strong connection to diving is the abundance of shipwrecks that dot the coastline – it is currently estimated that there are over 3,000 wrecks off the south Cornish coast alone.

Highlighted are a few of the most famous wrecks with some rare and previously unseen artefacts. From the Flying Enterprise saga, including stunning artefacts retrieved from the wreck to the stories of the SS Mohegan, Cita, Anson, Association and Suevic the exhibit shows the truth behind shipwrecks and the challenges of salvage.

One of the great pioneers of underwater exploration and sport diving also gets a look in with a celebration of the great underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau. A huge icon in the diving world, Cousteau and his adventures are celebrated through film footage and objects for his studies of the sea and the life within it.

For many it was Cousteau that really opened up the world of under sea exploration and a number of award winning images by underwater photographers Alex Mustard and Mark Webster are displayed within the exhibition to bring home the wonder and beauty of the underwater world. Offering a fish eye view, the images illustrate the range of colours, the richness of our wildlife and the leisure element of our seas.

Alongside the images are objects chronologically charting the development of underwater photography such as the Calypsophot, developed for Jacques Cousteau’s underwater research group, which featured in the Bond thriller Thunderball and an early Rolleiflex camera from 1951.

The exhibition closes by looking at climate change and the Wave Hub project - a groundbreaking renewable energy project in the South West that aims to create the UK's first offshore facility for wave energy generation.

Timed to coincide with the launch of Wave Hub activities in 2008 and touching on this new technology, Under the Sea explores the plans for using the sea’s natural abilities to solve today’s energy crisis.

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Adolf Hitler's 'lost fleet' found in Black Sea

2008-02-03T18:46:00.000Z

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Telegraph
By Jasper Copping
February 03, 2008

On the road: One of the U-boats being taken to Ingolstadt

The final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed "Hitler's lost fleet", has been found at the bottom of the Black Sea.

The submarines had been carried 2,000 miles overland from Germany to attack Russian shipping during the Second World War, but were scuttled as the war neared its end. Now, more than 60 years on, explorers have located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of Turkey.

The vessels, including one once commanded by Germany's most successful U-boat ace, formed part of the 30th Flotilla of six submarines, taken by road and river across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Germany's Baltic port at Kiel to Constanta, the Romanian Black Sea port.

In two years, the fleet sank dozens of ships and lost three of their number to enemy action. But in August 1944, Romania switched sides and declared war on Germany, leaving the three remaining vessels stranded.

With no base and unable to sail home - the Bosporus and Dardanelles were closed to them because of Turkish neutrality - their captains were ordered to scuttle the boats before rowing ashore and trying to make their way back to Germany. However, all three crews were caught and interned by the Turks.

Now the submarines' hulls have been discovered by a team led by Selçuk Kolay, a Turkish marine engineer, who will present his findings to a shipwreck conference in Plymouth this week.

Mr Kolay established the boats' positions through research in German archives, interviews with surviving sailors and by sonar studies of the seabed.

He has already completed successful dives to the wreckage of one vessel, U-20, two miles offshore in about 80ft of water. He believes he has discovered another, U-23, at twice that depth, three miles from the town of Agva, but bad weather forced him to suspend diving until the spring.

He thinks he is also close to pinpointing the third boat, U-19, thought to lie more than 1,000ft down, three miles from the Turkish city of Zonguldak.

"It's one of the least well known stories of the war but one of the most interesting," said Mr Kolay.

"It is a quite incredible story. To get to the Black Sea these boats had to be taken across the land, and once they got there they had no way out."

All three U-boats had been operating against British shipping in the North Sea. U-23 gained notoriety for scoring one of Germany's earliest successes, sinking a British ship off the Shetland Islands days after war began. It was later commanded by Otto Kretschmer, known as "Silent Otto", the most successful U-boat ace.

In 1941, Germany invaded Russia and decided it needed a presence in the Black Sea to harass Soviet shipping there. Unable to use the Bosporus, the only shipping route into the Black Sea, the boats were dismantled at Kiel and taken by canal to the River Elbe, and upstream to Dresden.

Here, they were partly dismantled and taken by lorry to Ingolstadt, on the Danube, and then ferried downstream to the Black Sea and Constanta, where they were re-assembled.

When Romania switched sides the crews were ordered to scuttle out of sight of the Turks so the submarines' locations would remain a mystery. Mr Kolay was helped by a map drawn by Rudolf Arendt, 85, the former captain of the U-23, showing where his crew came ashore.

Mike Williams, secretary of the Nautical Archaeology Society, said: "This is a significant find because these U-boats were all scuttled, so they should be intact, like a sealed tube. They are unique survivors of the war."

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Fairy's battle with U-boat

2008-02-01T21:31:00.000Z

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Bridlington Free Press
February 01, 2008

HMS Fairy and the sinking of the UC75

Position:53 56.770 N

000 09.893 E

Location:14.7 miles approx south east of Bridlington

Depth: 42 metres

HMS Fairy was a steel-hulled 380-ton C Class British destroyer that measured 63.7 metres in length with a beam of 6.4 metres.

She was built in 1897 by Fairfield Ship Building Co and she was one of 38 such vessels built between 1896 and 1902 at a cost of £60,000.

Fairfield also built HMS Falcon (to follow in a later article), Gypsy, Leven, Ostrich and Osprey.

She had two four-cylinder steam engines side by side, developing 6,300 horsepower, using four Thorneycroft coal-fired boilers, which powered two bronze propellers and gave a maximum speed of 30 knots.

The vessel, like all the C class, was equipped with six guns – one forward at the bow which was a 12 pounder and five at her sides and stern which were six pounders.

She had two 18" torpedo tubes positioned on her decks between the second and third funnels and depth charges fitted close at the stern.

The C class boat had three funnels and a turtle back bow, a very large forward bridge and carried 80 tons of coal and a crew of 60. The vessels were nicknamed the greyhounds of the sea as some of them could do 35 knots.

On May 31, 1918 the weather conditions were quite reasonable when a convoy of 30 merchant ships rounded Flamborough Head in the early hours of the morning.

Escorting the convoy was HMS Fairy, the senior officer's ship under the command of Lieut GH Barnish.

She was astern of the rear vessel when, at 2.05am, there was a crashing noise about 275 metres off her port bow and the alarm was raised.

The steamer Blaydonian had accidentally struck and run over the casing of a submerged submarine which turned out to be the UC75, a German minelayer operating off Flamborough Head and the Bridlington Bay area.

The UC75 was in the command of Walter Schmitz and had sailed from Flanders at 7pm on May 22, 1918, carrying a crew of 33.

Her mission was to lay mines and attack allied shipping off the English east coast.

After laying his mines, Schmitz then made his way north and cruised around, studying the situation of certain convoys that were expected off Flamborough Head.

It was then he encountered the Blaydonian, which accidentally struck the submarine casing and forced him to the surface.

HMS Fairy immediately raced to the scene and, seeing the submarine on the surface, challenged her.

After a second challenge went unanswered, Fairy put both engines at half speed and rammed the stern section of the UC75.

This was an action to frighten the crew into surrender rather than sink the submarine as there could have been British captives aboard.

There was obvious confusion in the submarine as some of her crew scrambled out onto the deck and voices were heard from the conning tower.

However, some of the crew manned the deck gun and fired a shell at the destroyer.

Fairy immediately retaliated by firing 40 rounds back at the U-boat and as she turned they went full speed ahead on both engines, ramming the submarine open and in turn causing the Fairy's bows to peal back like tinfoil as she had tried to sink a vessel much larger than herself.

Without hesitating, two of the German submariners leapt form the deck casing onto the destroyer's forecastle where they stood with their hands up, surrendering.

Twelve others who had leapt over as the submarine sank were picked up from the sea.

Unfortunately, damage sustained by the destroyer was so severe she sank within an hour of the action.

This was a significant sinking as the UC75, throughout its lifetime, sank over 125,000 tons of Allied shipping.

Lieut Barnish, captain of the Fairy, was awarded the DSO for his fine effort in protecting the convoy and sinking the U-boat.

Along with Graham Hirst, Bob Jolly and Darren Warters, we found the wreck of the Fairy in July 1989 after months of wreck researching with Tony Pockley.

I asked Tony to let me know the position of the wrecks he knew of that only marked up small on the echo sounder.

We went to the first wreck, which later turned out to be the Forest Queen.

Some weeks later we used a magnetometer to locate another small wreck and this turned out to be the wreck of HMS Fairy, which we identified when we found the two engines side by side and the 12 pounder deck gun forward.

After some research we found the link between the Fairy and the UC75, which has turned out to be quite a story.

The HMS Fairy lies approximately a mile east of the UC75. It is on a soft, sandy bed with her boilers being the highest part of the wreck.

Because of this she is very hard to find on the echo sounder.

The 12lb gun was recovered from the wreck when it became entangled in trawl gear and was given to the Bridlington Harbour Commissioners who displayed it in the harbour for five to six years.

It is now in the hands of the council and is awaiting a new home.

Over the years this has been a popular dive site, with lots of interesting finds.

But, as with every wreck sunk in the First World War, the movement of the sea is taking its toll and they are disintegrating and breaking up.

We occasionally return to the wreck of the HMS Fairy to see if the sand has shifted and uncovered anything more of interest.

The UC75 lies on a sandy, gravely bed with her bows pointing towards land and with a slight starboard list.

Her outer hull casing has rotted away, leaving only the pressure hull and conning tower intact but it is still an interesting dive.

You can go across the deck with the mine chutes still visible but full of silt and the conning tower standing some 20ft off the seabed always attracts shoals of fish, including whiting and cod.

We regularly take dive parties to the wreck of the UC75.

It is a popular site and of interest to all divers because of its history and link to HMS Fairy.

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

The Haunted Submarine

2008-02-01T09:46:00.000Z

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Ghost Ships
January 31, 2008

The Haunted Submarine was a German U-Boat called “UB65” built in 1916. Only a week after its launch, mysterious events began to happen. There was an unusually high number of fatal accidents on the sub.

The Second Officer was loading torpedos when one dropped and exploded, killing him instantly and damaging the UB65.

A malfunction in the engine room caused three men to be overcome by fumes. They died before anyone could reach them.

During a storm, a crewman mysteriously fell overboard. Onlookers said it looked like he had been pushed.

During submarine diving tests, one of the ballast tanks sprang a leak. It left the crew without any oxygen in the u-boat. The frantic crew were able to resurface just before they were all about to suffocate.

A crewman was on lookout duty in a tower as the submarine was preparing to dive. Suddenly, he spotted a figure on deck, even though all the hatches were sealed and every member of the crew was supposed to be below. The figure turned and the lookout recognised him as the Second Officer who had been killed by the torpedo blast. The ghostly figure seemed to shout a warning. The lookout’s terrified yells alerted the UB65’s captain who also witnessed the ghost before it disappeared.

Later, another crew member encountered the dead Second Officer in the corridor below deck on the submarine. Again, the ghost seemed to be trying to communicate with the crewman before it vanished.

The U-boat started getting a reputation for being haunted, and many men refused to work on board the sub. After another ghostly incident, the torpedo gunner went insane, shouting that the ghost tormented him at night and would not leave him alone. In a fit of madness, he jumped overboard and his body was never recovered. Eventually, the German naval command was forced to investigate the reported haunting and asked a priest to perform an exorcism.

That seemed to do the trick and no other ghostly apparitions were reported until the morning of July 10th. A crewman claimed he saw a shadowy figure entering the torpedo room. The crewman ran into the torpedo room and came face to face with the ghost of the Second Officer who had been killed by an explosion in that very room. The ghost was pointing at the torpedo loading bay. Then it disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

Later that same day, July 10th, an American submarine spotted the UB65 and prepared to attack. The American commander ordered several sailors to check through the periscope to make sure that he had the right number when suddenly, the UB65 exploded without being fired upon. The americans were amazed. When the smoke cleared, all that could be seen was debris. There were no survivors.

An investigation determined that the German U-Boat had tried to fire its torpedos but there was a malfunction. The torpedos were activated but not launched and they exploded inside the submarine, killing all the German crew on board. Was this what the ghost was trying to warn his fellow crew members about?

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Germans unleash U-boats on this day in 1917

2008-01-31T16:10:00.001Z

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Focus

Germans unleash U-boats on this day in 1917: January 31, 1917, Germany announces the renewal of unlimited submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and German torpedo-armed submarines prepare to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sited in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. None of the 25 Americans on board were killed, and all were later picked up by a British steamer.

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New building will give artifacts room to shine

2008-01-19T10:03:00.000Z

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mlive.com
By Robert C. Burns
January 19, 2008

The World War II Navy submarine USS Silversides has become a familiar sight along the Muskegon Channel since its arrival from Chicago's Navy Pier two decades ago.

But there's a great deal more to the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum -- an outfit whose Navy and World War II-era artifacts number in the thousands, many of which have been stashed away in storage areas for lack of space to display them.

That is a situation the museum's board of directors is well on its way to correcting. A new $2 million channel-side museum is scheduled for opening in mid-June, rounding out a visitor destination center that is expected to attract more than 50,000 visitors annually.

It includes the highly popular Silversides, now a National Historic Landmark, as well as the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter McLane. Built in 1927 as a Prohibition-era "rum chaser," it later saw service in World War II and came to Muskegon in 1993.

Both vessels have been restored largely through many hours of volunteer effort.

Besides bringing the Silversides' propellers and torpedoes and other outdoor exhibits in out of the weather, the sizable 16,500-square-foot museum building will properly display an actual control system taken from a nuclear-powered incarnation of the USS Silversides, since its decommissioning.

Acquisition of a nuclear submarine periscope to go with it is "in the works," said museum chairman Robert Morin Sr.

And besides adding greatly to exhibit space, the recently christened Robert G. Morin Sr. Building will include two exhibit areas, a research library, classrooms, a 72-seat theater, on-premise storage space for artifacts, offices, a banquet and conference area overlooking the Muskegon Channel and an expanded gift shop.

It also will have a staging area for tours and for those participating in the museum's popular Overnight Encampment Program before going aboard the submarine or the Coast Guard cutter for the night.

The building also will become a training location for the U.S. Navy Sea Cadet, Power Squadron and museum education programs.

Finding space for all those different displays and activities called for a large building, and it is -- too large, say disgruntled neighbors like Randy Bandstra, 3520 Fulton.

The building will be 28 feet tall, enough to obscure his view of the west end of the Channel and Lake Michigan.

"It's a big commercial building that doesn't belong in a residential neighborhood, and an ugly commercial building at that," says Bandstra, who said the structure would be better suited for the city's downtown lakefront.

Morin contends that the building was set back as far as possible from the channel to prevent blocking the view from houses along it.

"There's no way to please everybody, but we tried," Morin said, adding that the building will look much different after the windows, trim and front entrance are added to the marine blue siding.

"I think it's going to be a beautiful building when it's done," Morin said.

The idea of the large museum is not to cram in every last artifact the organization has in its possession, says the museum's registrar and collection manager, Denise Herzhaft. An exhibit committee will be selecting which of several thousand artifacts to display and which to leave out, she said.

But the new building will give curators an opportunity to rotate the exhibits each year to keep things fresh.

"We have tourists and groups that come here once a year, every year," she said, "so we like to change the exhibits periodically."

Community outreach and education are a part of the museum's mission as well. A curriculum is now being written by Toni Seyferth, a communications teacher for the North Muskegon school district, and Pat Gabriel, a retired teacher from Jenison.

Researchers will find books, documents, workspace and an Internet feed to Navy archives. The library includes volumes on military history, particularly the World War II era. About a year and a half ago, Virginia Marsick, of Kankakee, Ill., donated an estimated $12,000 worth of books on the war -- and another $1,000 for bookcases to shelve them.

Already considered Muskegon County's second-most popular tourist destination, the Silversides organization got a boost with the start of Lake Express cross-lake service in 2004, in the form of a steady increase in tours and gift shop sales.

"The Silversides is the first thing to welcome visitors and the last to wish them goodbye," said Herzhaft.

A fundraising drive for the new facility is about 80 percent of the way toward its goal, said Mark Fazakerley, treasurer of the organization. Of the $2 million overall cost, a $400,000 savings has been realized through cost reductions and various in-kind services. Of that, $1.3 million has been raised to date, Fazakerley said. That leaves $300,000, which Fazakerley said he fully expects to be in hand by the end of this year.

"The (fundraising) momentum just keeps getting better and better."

That money will cover completion of the second-floor library and offices. The museum will open in June, he said. "It can be a functioning museum with what we have right now."

Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum When: It opens in mid-June.
Cost: $2 million.
Location: 1346 Bluff, near the channel.
Size: 16,500 square feet over two floors.
Inside: Two exhibit areas, 72-seat theater, classrooms, research library, artifact storage, banquet and conference areas, gift shop, staging area for tours and overnighters, training for U.S. Navy Sea Cadets, Power Squadron and museum education programs.
Information or to make a contribution: Call (231) 755-1230 or go to the Great Lakes Naval Memorial and Museum Web site.

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Scientists pumped about Hunley clues

2008-01-18T15:12:00.000Z

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The Post and Courier

By Brian Hicks
January 18, 2008

Pulling answers out of the H.L. Hunley has never been easy, but on Thursday it took a crane.

Scientists, however, may have just snagged the answer to one of the Confederate submarine's most perplexing mysteries: whether the crew drowned or ran out of air.

After weeks of work and years of planning, conservators and archaeologists on Thursday removed the sub's heavy aft pump, one of two such devices that emptied its ballast tanks.

Encased in a rock-hard casing of sand and shell, the pump might not look like much, but it might soon answer a lot of questions.

"The whole reason it was taken out was for conservation," archaeologist James Hunter said, "but now that it's out, we'll be trying to figure some things out."

The settings of the pump's valves will tell whether the crew was trying to pump water out of the ballast tanks or the sub's floor when they died. If they were pumping, it would mean they were trying to surface or the sub was filling with water.

If they weren't, it could suggest the Hunley's crew simply ran out of air. The Hunley disappeared shortly after it sank the USS Housatonic four miles off Sullivan's Island on Feb. 17, 1864.

"Once we know the pump's setting, it will help us close in on discovering what prevented the Hunley and her crew from returning home," said Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, chairman of the state Hunley Commission. "It will help us eliminate some of the existing possibilities."

The answer has always been there, but the pump sat in a place that made it just about impossible to X-ray its valves. Now that it's out, conservators say they hope to get a better look to the internal workings of the pump in a couple of weeks.

Philippe de Vivies, a Hunley conservator, said the pump was heavier than they thought — the estimate is between 120 and 180 pounds — and they had to drop one of the sub's keel ballast blocks to get it out.

Hunter said some of the primary things archaeologists want to know — beyond the obvious — is how the pump system worked and whether it was built from the ground up special for the Hunley.

"For the submarine, it's a fairly complex piece of machinery," Hunter said.

Right now, it looks like the pumping system was fairly intricate. There was one pump for the each of the two ballast tanks on the sub, but the piping system on the sub suggests that either the forward or aft pump could drain either ballast tank, like a fail-safe, Hunter said.

One or both of the pumps also might have been able to pump water from the floor of the sub's crew compartment.

The aft pump is famous in Hunley lore for nearly killing the crew in January 1864. It became clogged with seaweed during an underwater test, forcing William Alexander, who helped build the sub and crewed it for a while — to take the pump apart in the dark, unclog it and reassemble it before the crew suffocated.

Now, the pump might serve another purpose: revealing what happened to the Hunley's last crew.

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www.shnorkel.blogspot.com

Divers discover U-boat wreckage

2008-01-14T23:07:00.000Z

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BBC
January 14, 2008

A German U-boat sunk off Scotland's coast more than 90 years ago has been discovered by two divers.

Jim MacLeod, of Bo'ness, and Martin Sinclair, from Falkirk, found the wreckage of the U12 about 25 miles from Eyemouth at the weekend.

They had been looking for the 60-metre U-boat for the past five years.

The precise location has now been reported to the German authorities as 19 sailors died in the sinking and relatives will be informed.

The site has been declared an official war grave and it will remain untouched.

Its final resting place was thought to have been found in 1984 by noted international historian Clive Cussler.

However, dives around the area proved fruitless.

The Scottish divers enlisted the help of a researcher who was able to get log books from destroyers HMS Ariel, Acheron and Attack involved in the sinking of the U12 to help pinpoint the site.

They then used Eyemouth firm Marine Quest Dive Charters to visit the location where they found the boat lying 150ft down on the seabed.

It was the first time the wreck had been visited since it was sunk in 1915.

"It has taken a lot of effort and perseverance but it has finally paid off," said Mr MacLeod.

"It was the first ever submarine to launch a plane at sea.

"We are delighted with the find."

Shipwreck expert Kevin Heath, from Stromness, Orkney, said it was an important discovery.

"The U12 had been targeting cargo ships off the east coast of Britain and had been as far north as Peterhead," he said.

"It had sunk a boat the previous night but on 10 March, 1915, it was hunted down by the three British destroyers HMS Ariel, Acheron and Attack.

"It attempted to dive under the surface but it was rammed by HMS Ariel."

'Diplomatic incident'

The submarine then surfaced and was shelled by two of the destroyers and sank with the loss of 19 lives although there were 10 survivors.

"They surrendered but it led to a diplomatic incident," added Mr Heath.

"They were treated as pirates by the British for the way they were targeting cargo ships and put into solitary confinement.

"This angered the Germans who did the same with British prisoners of war and the situation had to be dealt with by the Swiss."

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

Hunley expert to speak at Historic Effingham banquet

2008-01-13T09:50:00.000Z

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Savannah Morning News
January 13, 2008

An expert from the Hunley Commission will be the guest speaker at the annual banquet of the Historic Effingham Society.

The event will be at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 2 in the Great Hall at New Ebenezer Retreat Center.

Randall Burbage will speak on the history, recovery and restoration of the Confederate submarine the H.L. Hunley, which was lost off the coast of Charleston, S.C., after successfully attacking the USS Housatonic on Feb. 17, 1864.

This action during the Civil War was one of the most remarkable events in Naval history, as it was the first submarine to successfully sink a ship in military action and was not repeated again for another 50 years.

Historic Effingham spokeswoman Susan Exley said guests to the event will be in for a wonderful presentation.

"A lot has happened over the last few years in the restoration of the Hunley since Mr. Burbage first spoke at our banquet," Exley said. "His presentation then was so interesting that few checked their watches while eagerly anticipating the next photograph or remark. We look forward to more of this fascinating story."

Burbage is a native of Charleston and is owner of Randy Burbage Equipment Co. He is married to the former Judith Rabun of Hanahan, S.C., where they live. They have six children.

He is a life member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and, among other accomplishments, has been commander of the South Carolina Division of the SCV since 2006. He was awarded the Order of Palmetto by Governor Carroll Campbell in 1993. In 1995, the governor appointed him to the Hunley Commission. He was chairman of the Hunley Funeral Committee from 2002 to 2004.

The banquet will begin with a fellowship time at 5:30 p.m., and dinner will be served at 6 p.m. The event is by reservation only and is open to the public as long as tickets are available. Tickets cost $20 and are on sale at the Effingham Museum, 1002 N, Pine St., in Springfield or from members.

The Effingham Museum is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 2 to 5 p.m. Sundays. Tickets must be purchased by Jan. 28.

Tickets also can be reserved by mailing a check or money order no later than Jan. 25 to: Historic Effingham Society, P.O. Box 999, Springfield, GA 31329. Call the office at 912-754-2170, or Exley at 912-754-6681 for more information.

For more information about the Historic Effingham Society, visit www.historiceffinghamsociety.org. For more information about the Hunley, visit www.hunley.org.

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IF YOU GO

WHAT: Historic Effingham Society annual banquet and dinner

WHEN: 5:30 p.m. Feb. 2 with dinner served at 6 p.m.

WHERE: New Ebenezer Retreat Center, 2887 Ebenezer Road, Rincon.

DETAILS: Banquet is by reservation only. Tickets may be purchased in advance for $20 at the Effingham Museum, 1002 N. Pine St., Springfield, or from any member of the Historic Effingham Society. RSVP by Jan. 28.

INFO: For more information, call the museum office at 912-754-2170 or Susan Exley at 912-754-6681. www.historiceffinghamsociety.org.

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

Shipwreck divers share tales of the deep with Oyster River students

2008-01-12T09:43:00.000Z

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Foster's Daily Democrat
By Rebecca Hamm
January 12, 2008

DURHAM — John Chatterton and Ritchie Kohler, described as being among the most accomplished wreck divers in the world, spoke to a group of high school students about their discovery of a sunken World War II-era German submarine 60 miles off the U.S. coast.

The students in Judy Kucera's Readings in Nonfiction class at Oyster River High School met with the deep-sea explorers on Friday morning.

The men recounted aspects of their dives to the U-869, which was the subject of Rob Kurson's New York Times bestselling book, "Shadow Divers." Having read the book, the class asked the divers questions about their seven-year quest to identify the mysterious U-boat, dubbed "U-Who" by the dive team.

In 1991, Bill Nagle, captain of the diving ship The Seeker, led a team of recreational divers, including Chatterton and Kohler, to the site of a sunken submarine off the coast of New Jersey.

Chatterton and Kohler became friends during the expedition and the two have partnered for dives many times since.

The submarine, located 230 feet under the waves, contained the remains of 56 men. Neither historians nor the U.S. Navy or German Navy had any evidence of a U-boat located so close to American shores.

For six years the men, with the elite team of divers, made numerous dives down to the U-boat in a mission to solve its identity. The dive team made it a quest to discover the identities of the men whose bodies they found on the sea floor and how the sub came to rest there.

"They had no record of it. The answer was not going to be found in a history book … There were people on this submarine and it fell through the cracks of history," Chatterton told the group of students.

Although there were some hardships — the men faced harrowing underwater conditions and lost three fellow divers in the course of the expedition — Kohler said overall the experience was a dream come true.

"As a diver, this is something you hope for. You go to bed at night and dream of a virgin shipwreck."

When asked by a student what his favorite dive had been, Kohler said, "It kinda sounds flip, but it's the next one. We're always looking for the next one. As divers, we're always going a little bit further and a little bit deeper," he said.

The men said there a lot of challenges involved with deep shipwreck diving because divers are often in situations where time is of the essence and they need to stay calm.

"There are a lot of psychological elements. This is a hostile, intimidating environment and you're going where other people have never been. But, you can't be intimidated and you can't panic, because if you do, you're going to lose your life," said Chatterton.

The men underlined the perils of diving and said they meticulously prepare their equipment before every dive and make sure they coordinate a diving plan with each other before descending.

Although they generally donate most of their artifacts they find on the ocean floor to museums or to families of shipwreck victims, the men brought in a bowl with a swastika imprinted on the bottom, a browning pack of cigarettes and box of matches they found on the U-869 to Kohler said it's not uncommon to stir up sediment while diving, which can cause the diver to lose the sense of sight. "It looks just like chocolate milk. It's what you call a brown dive. You have to be an incredibly comfortable diver when you lose one of your senses like sight. Actually, you end up losing several senses. You can't smell because there's the mask and there's no tactile sense because the gloves are too thick."

He said divers eventually acquire a skill to maneuver out of those situations when all senses are impaired.

"Nothing starts your heart quicker than when you think there's an exit and it's a wall," Chatterton said. "If you touch something you never know if it's going to come loose. If you stir something up, you could lose visibility."

Despite the danger, the men have been on many of the most famous wrecks in the world.

Chatterton was a member of the first technical diving expedition to Ireland and the legendary RMS Lusitania in 1994. Several years later, at a depth of 400 feet, he was the first diver to use rebreather diving technology on the wreck of HMHS Britannic, near the island of Kea in Greece. He was also the sole American on a British expedition, sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Museum, looking for the historic shipwreck Struma in the Black Sea near Istanbul.

Kohler has explored the SS Andrea Doria, and the RMS Titanic. Diving from the Russian research vessel Keldysh, he has also made multiple dives of more than 12,000 feet in the MIR submersible to explore the wreck site.

"When you go into the submarine, you feel empowered," Kohler told the class.

The discovery of the U-869 has been the subject of several documentaries including "Hitler's Lost Sub" and a special on the PBS series NOVA.

Chatterton and Kohler were co-hosts on the History Channel's Deep Sea Detectives, and both are consultants in the film and television industries. A movie of "Shadow Divers" is being created by 20th Century Fox. The two are currently working on a book about the famous ocean liner RMS Titanic.

Chatterton lives in Harpswell, Maine. Kohler makes his home in New Jersey.

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www.shnorkel.blogspot.com

Cavalla nominated for historic designation

2008-01-10T17:07:00.003Z

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The Galveston County Daily News
By Leigh Jones

January 10, 2008

GALVESTON — The Cavalla Historical Foundation is nominating the USS Cavalla to the National Register of Historic Places, a designation that would give the submarine federal protection.

If the Cavalla makes the list, which is maintained by the National Park Service, the federal government would not interfere with its maintenance or management but would review any federally funded projects that might effect the submarine.

Both foundation and Port of Galveston officials say the designation would not hamper plans for a new container terminal on Pelican Island, but the application is an unwelcome reminder of the recent disagreement between local preservationists and economic development proponents about Seawolf Park.

“I’m disappointed no one has come to talk to us or even asked whether this is going to become a project,” said Steve Cernak, Port of Galveston director. “But this won’t affect the project at all.”

The city council will consider endorsing the national register application today.

The ports of Galveston and Houston have been planning the $1 billion, 1,100 acre container terminal project for the past 10 years. It had widespread support from local officials, until they discovered the original memorandum of understanding between the two ports included the possibility of moving the park, where the WWII-era Cavalla and the destroyer escort USS Stewart are permanently berthed.

Members of the Cavalla foundation and the Galveston Park Board of Trustees, which operates Seawolf Park, said the park could not be moved because the land was given by the federal government to the city in perpetuity. Voters would have to agree to move the park, if port and city officials decided it was necessary.

Although both ports have said the move would not be necessary, the national registry listing could make it all but impossible.

Debbie Head, spokeswoman for the Texas Historical Commission, said the state agency would review any project receiving either state or federal funds that might materially alter a site with historical designation or even eligibility.

The commission recently prevented city officials from demolishing the Menard Park bandshell and forced them to alter plans for the recreation center that is now under construction. Because the center is partially funded with state money, the commission is requiring the city to restore the band shell at a cost of about $300,000.

But Cavalla foundation president Grady Harrison said the submarine’s application had nothing to do with the container terminal or possible protection from the state historical agency.

Harrison said after the Stewart received its national register designation on Veterans Day last year, the group decided to start the process for the Cavalla.

“We believe the viability and long-term vision of our exhibits is still sound,” he said. “We will see how we need to adapt should conditions of the (container terminal) project change. We need to ensure the attractiveness of the exhibits.”

Although port officials say the park would not have to move, they are concerned about the possible effects the terminal could have on park access and operations.

Construction on the container terminal is not likely to begin for another 10 years. In the meantime, Harrison said the foundation hoped to complete the Cavalla’s restoration and build a visitor’s center nearby.

Harrison also said he hoped city officials would pursue historic designations for the old quarantine station.

But Dwayne Jones, director of the Galveston Historical Foundation, said he had set aside plans to apply for such recognition because he wasn’t sure whether any archaeological evidence of the station existed.

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

Hunley shows 'Southern ingenuity,' says preservation expert

2008-01-09T16:25:00.000Z

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Mooresville Tribune
By Melinda Skutnick
January 09, 2008

An educational discussion about the “Southern ingenuity” of the first submarine to sink an enemy ship brought local members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to the Mooresville Public Library Monday night.

“We’re in education and preservation,” Jack Marlar, chief technical advisor for the H.L. Hunley Commission, said of the SCV, for which he serves as a field representative. “The more people know about the South, the more they’ll like us.”

During his presentation to the members of SCV Camp 2106 of Mooresville, Marlar discussed the many technological innovations the South was making during the Civil War, which are exhibited by the H.L. Hunley – a Confederate submarine that made its debut in 1863.

Among the technological advances of the Hunley was a cutwater, an angled piece of metal at the top of the sub allowing it to divide the water as the vessel moved, aiding in stabilization and aerodynamics, Marlar said. There was also an air box, more commonly known as a snorkel box, providing better air flow to the submarine’s eight crew members.

The crew, which sat on a bench on the left side of the vessel, operated the sub using a crank shaft. The Hunley’s design forced the seven crew members operating the crank to bend over, putting the weight of their bodies “exactly perpendicular to the axle,” said Marlar, which helped keep the sub upright.

The Hunley, which was salvaged just off the coast of Charleston, S.C., on Aug. 8, 2000, also had a four-section ballast bar on its bottom, allowing the submarine to remain vertical while doubling as a safety device, explained Marlar.

Crew members could detach singular sections of the ballast bar to help retain buoyancy in the water.

However, noted Marlar, the ballast bar was still attached to the vessel when it was brought up from the ocean floor, “which adds to the mystery of what went wrong.”

Shortly after sinking the USS Housatonic with a torpedo on Feb. 17, 1864, the Hunley’s eight crew members perished when the submarine never made it back to shore. Years of speculation about what happened to the vessel after signaling that it would be returning to base have left researchers pondering this mystery.

“If they only made it back, (the Confederate army) probably would have made a dozen of these things,” said Marlar, adding that this single event, had the vessel returned, could have changed the war.

With innovations such as a fly wheel, a balance tube to keep actuation and many other technological advances, Marlar said the Hunley proves brilliant engineering.

Commander Mike Brewer of the Mooresville SCV said the members in attendance Monday evening gained a great deal of knowledge about the famed submarine.

“Learned a lot about the Hunley, specifically about the engineering aspects of the Hunley that I wasn’t even aware of,” he said. “Everybody I talked to really appreciated (the presentation).”

Brewer added that the organization, which thrives on studying the history of the Confederacy based on facts, has been trying to get Marlar to speak to them about the Hunley for “a couple of years, but he’s in such high demand.”

Monday’s speaker at the Camp’s monthly meeting – held at the library on the first Monday of each month – allowed for a new, interesting perspective on the way the Hunley was built, noted Brewer.

When the ship was raised and brought into Charleston in 2000, many artifacts were aboard the vessel, Marlar said, including pocket knives, Lt. George E. Dixon’s watch and a $20 gold piece given to him by his love with the inscription “Shiloh April 6 1862 My life preserver G.E.D.”

The gold piece is believed to have saved Dixon’s life by blocking a bullet when he was shot in 1862.

Two additional metal objects were found in the Hunley, a nine-diamond gold ring and a 37-diamond gold broach, both discovered wrapped in cloth under Dixon’s seat at the helm of the vessel.

All of these artifacts from the H.L. Hunley as well as the submarine itself can be viewed at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston, S.C.

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

Relative wants information about 1916 u-boat attack

2008-01-07T10:32:00.000Z

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Scarborough Evening News
By Ian Duncan
January 07, 2008

A RELATIVE of the skipper of a Scarborough fishing boat, sunk by a German U-boat during the First World War, is wanting to find out more about the incident.

Great-great-granddaughter Lisa Farring- ton, who now lives in Lancashire, is looking for information for her family tree relating to Dave Naylor who was the skipper of the Fisher Prince, which was part of Scarborough’s fishing fleet.

It was the boat used by the submarine’s captain to hold all of the fishermen while he methodically sank the remaining vessels in 1916.

Ms Farrington said: “My gran, Doris Raper, used to tell this story exactly as it appeared in the Evening News but none of us knew if it was true.

“As a child, it made me realise that not all Germans were as evil as the Nazis seen in films.

“It was only when I read the article that I realised just what an act of bravery this was.”

The story was published again last September, under the headline Hell In High Water, and marked the 90th anniversary of the attack.

She added her gran had lived most of her life in St Mary’s Walk and was the eldest of five children.

“I would like to hear from anyone else descended from Dave Naylor, as I do have family tree details to pass on if anyone is interested,” she said.

Anyone with any information should send an email to jamesandco@talk21.com

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

SUBMARINES IN THE MOVIES: Past and present

2007-12-20T15:48:00.001Z

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Kitsap Sun

Here is a sampler of past and present movies about or involving submarines.

'Above Us The Waves' (1956)

Drama filmed documentary-style about a British crew of sailors determined to sink a Nazi ship. Cast includes John Mills, John Gregson, Donald Sinden, James Robertson Justice.

'Around The World Under The Sea' (1966)

Lloyd Bridges and other TV personalities lead an underwater tour about subs looking for earthquake warnings.

'The Atomic Submarine' (1959)

In the near-future, a submarine crew goes patrolling near the Arctic Circle and discovers an underwater UFO.

'The Bedford Incident' (1965)

A Cold War saga about scouting Russian subs off the coast of Greenland, with Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier and Donald Sutherland.

'Crash Dive' (1943)

An Oscar winner for special effects, pitting Tyrone Power, Anne Baxter and Dana Andrews in a submarine love triangle.

'Crimson Tide' (1995)

Supposedly about a Bangor-based boat, with Gene Hackman possibly losing his mind and his command when Denzel Washington challenges his orders to launch nukes. By the producing-directing team behind ""Top Gun."" Look for a small and inglorious part for Ricky Schroder, and the appearance of James Gandolfini (now of hit HBO show, ""The Sopranos"").

'Das Boot' (1981)

Considered by some the best and most accurate submarine movie, directed by Wolfgang Petersen. It's based on an autobiographical novel about a U-boat mission during WWII. In two versions: 145 minutes or 211 minutes.

'Destination Tokyo' (1943)

Cary Grant commands a submarine sent into Japanese waters during WWII.

'Down Periscope' (1996)

A naval officer tries to prove his worth and get promoted to a first-class sub by taking on a mediocre boat and crew. Bad News Bears on a boat, without the humor. The crew includes Kelsey Grammer, Lauren Holly, Bruce Dern,Rob Schneider, Rip Torn, William H. Macy and Harry Dean Stanton.

'The Enemy Below' (1957)

An Oscar winner for special effects. Robert Mitchum stars in this submarine chase with the Germans.

'Gray Lady Down' (1978)

Charlton Heston captains a sub in need of a dramatic rescue. Also stars David Carradine, Stacy Keach and Ned Beatty.

'Hell Below' (1933)

While on leave in Italy, Robert Montgomery falls in love with the married daughter of his submarine commander. Conflict develops between the officers at sea. With Walter Huston and Jimmy Durante.

'Hellcats Of The Navy' (1957)

Notable as the only film featuring Ronald Reagan and the then-Nancy Davis together, before they became the First Family.

'Hostile Waters' (1997)

A TV movie starring Rutger Hauer, Martin Sheen and Max von Sydow in a ""fact-based"" account of a collision that occurred between a Russian sub and a U.S. sub during Cold War peace talks.

'The Hunley' (1999)

Armand Assante and Donald Sutherland star in a TNT original movie based on the true story of the first submersible vessel, the Confederate ship H.L. Hunley, during the Civil War.

'The Hunt For Red October' (1990)

The best-seller by Tom Clancy also was a box-office success and an Oscar winner for sound-effects editing. Sean Connery is a Soviet sub captain who may or may not be defecting during the maiden voyage of a new supersecret sub. Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, Sam Neill, James Earl Jones and now-U.S. Senator Fred Thompson also star in this thriller.

'Ice Station Zebra' (1968)

Based on the Alistair MacLean novel and filmed in Cinerama, it's a Cold War incident just waiting to happen for a sub on its way to the North Pole. The crew includes Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown.

'The Land That Time Forgot' (1975)

A British film based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs' 1918 novel about Germans and Americans in a WWI sub who discover a mysterious world in South America, with dinosaurs and all sorts of weird stuff.

'Monster from the Ocean Floor' (1954)

The first film produced by Roger Corman has a mini-sub in hot pursuit of said monster.

'Mystery Submarine'

Two films with this title. The 1950 version stars Macdonald Carey as a military officer who helps destroy a Nazi sub in SouthAmerica. The 1963 British film (also called ""Decoy"") has the British fleet capture a Nazi sub that's manned by Brits.

'On the Beach' (1959)

A U.S. submarine is on patrol when the Northern Hemisphere is destroyed by nuclear war. They land in Australia and live with the rest of the city which has less than 12 months to live. They travel back to the West Coast of the United States and witness the holocaust. Cast includes Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins.

'Operation Pacific' (1951)

John Wayne stars as an overzealous Navy commander.

'Operation Petticoat' (1959)

Blake Edwards directed this comedy about a bad sub that Cary Grant hopes to make seaworthy, but con-artist Tony Curtis stands in his way. The cast also includes Gavin McLeod (who would later captain ""The Love Boat"") and Marion Ross (the future Mrs. Cunningham on ""HappyDays"").

'Run Silent, Run Deep' (1958)

A battle of wills aboard a WWII sub, with Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, Jack Warden and Don Rickles.

'The Sea Wolves' (1980)

Based on the improbable but true WWII story about a group of retired British soldiers dispatched to India to capture and destroy Nazi ships that are transmitting vital information to their U-boats. Stars Gregory Peck and Roger Moore.

'Submarine Command' (1951)

A post-war account of Navy life, with William Holden, Nancy Olson and William Bendix.

'Submarine D-1' (1937)

Loving and fighting reigns among the crew of a new sub.

'Submarine Patrol' (1938)

A tough captain is charged with inspiring a beat-up crew and sub for a WWI mission. Directed by John Ford.

'Submarine X-1' (1968)

James Caan loses his sub in a battle with the Germans, but gets a second chance at the helm of a mini-sub.

'Torpedo Alley' (1953)

A WWII Navy pilot is rescued by a submarine crew and looks for redemption.

'Torpedo Run' (1958)

Glenn Ford is a sub commander seeking revenge after blowing up a Japanese prison ship that was holding his family captive. Also stars Ernest Borgnine.

'20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' (1954)

James Mason is Capt. Nemo in Disney's epic version of the Jules Verne novel, with Paul Lukas and Kirk Douglas as the visitors to Nemo's futuristic sub. Won Oscars for art direction and special effects.

'U-571'

Matthew McConaughey, Harvey Keitel and Jon Bon Jovi star in this new drama ""inspired,"" as they say, by an actual World War II episode. A U.S. crew sneaks on board a Nazi U-boat to steal the enemy's encryption machine, only to find their own boat torpedoed during the mission.

'Up Periscope' (1959)

James Garner gets transferred aboard a sub engaged with the enemy off the shore of a Japanese island. With Alan Hale Jr. (best known as The Skipper from ""Gilligan's Island"").

'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' (1961)

Irwin Allen directs a cast that includes Barbara Eden, Peter Lorre and Frankie Avalon about the goofy adventures of a sub trying to protect the Earth from radiation, or something like that.

'We Dive at Dawn' (1943)

A WWII sub goes on assignment to sink a German battleship.

'Yellow Submarine' (1968)

A psychedelic, animated Beatles flick about a land taken over by the Blue Meanies. Ringo sings!

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

Haney presents WWII sub patrol reports to SFLMA

2007-12-13T10:11:00.000Z

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zwire.com
By Steven L. Myers

December 13, 2007

Rear Adm. Cecil Haney, Submarine Group 2 commander, presented a set of digitized WWII submarine patrol reports to the Submarine Force Library and Museum Association (SFLMA) during a brief ceremony Dec. 7.

The 29 discs contain 1,620 patrol logs of 255 submarines during WWII. The war patrol reports contain a summary of submarine daily activities and whereabouts, and include detailed information concerning sightings of enemy planes and warships, weather and sea conditions, enemy anti-submarine measures and attacks on enemy targets.

"It was an honor for me to present these war patrol reports to the SFLMA on behalf of retired Vice Adm. Roger Bacon," said Haney. "These reports contain numerous tales of bravery and sacrifice from submarines like USS Wahoo (SS 238), USS Batfish (SS 310) and USS Albacore (SS 218)."

Bacon advocated the movement before the microfilm and microfiche slides decayed and the information was lost to history. Bill Galvani, Naval Undersea Warfare Museum director, retired Chief Petty Officer John Clark and other volunteers worked vigorously for nearly a year moving more than 60,000 pages of patrol reports to DVDs.

"The format was chosen to bring them back into the 21st century and make them more user-friendly," said Cmdr. Randy Tupas, officer in charge Historic Ship Nautilus and Submarine Force Library and Museum (SFLM) director.

The SFLM became one of only a handful of institutions to have these war patrol reports in a digital format.

"We are extremely grateful to receive these reports," said Tupas. "The public now has another great opportunity to review the history of their submarine force."

The SFLM serves as the official repository for the records and history of the U.S. submarine force. Within its walls are more than 6,000 titles and 2.5 million archival documents and photographs relevant to submarine history.

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

U-boat hunters

2007-11-03T16:21:00.000Z

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ECHO.co.uk
November 03, 2007

HMS Audacity was the Royal Navy’s first merchant aircraft carrier whose role was to protect convoys crossing the Atlantic with vital supplies for Britain during World War II.

Surprisingly, she started life as a German passenger ship, the Hannover, which was captured early in the war.

The crew had attempted to scuttle her but were foiled by a boarding party from a British destroyer.

In 1941 she was converted into a flat-top escort carrier, also known as a MAC ship.

She could operate just four light Grumman Martlet aircraft from her short flight deck with no hanger.

There is a 1:300 scale model of the camouflaged Audacity in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Battle of the Atlantic gallery.

She did not have a long life as she was sunk by a German U-boat submarine in December 1941 after just four escort passages.

The need to close the 400-mile “air gap” in the mid-Atlantic led to the development of the MAC ships. Most were grain carriers or oil tankers fitted, while being built, with a basic flight deck for three or four Swordfish bi-planes.

The MAC ships not only provided air cover for convoys but also carried much-needed supplies of grain or oil for Britain.

From mid-1943 at least one MAC ship, crewed by the Merchant Navy and carrying aircraft and men of the 836 Squadron Fleet Air Arm, sailed with every north Atlantic convoy.

They were joined by new purpose-built British and US naval aircraft carriers. US Liberator bombers closed the “air gap” by late April 1943. At the same time, long-range British and American aircraft attacked U-boats in the Bay of Biscay near their French bases.

Equipped with powerful searchlights for night operations, air-to-surface radar and increasingly effective weapons, these aircraft enjoyed many successes.

The fitting of highly-accurate centimetric radar on long-range aircraft was another major turning point in the anti-U-boat campaign.

More U-boats were sunk by aircraft than by ships during the last two years of the war. The RAF Coastal Command played a decisive role in the Battle of the Atlantic, particularly from 1943 onwards. In all, it sank at least 155 U-boats in Atlantic waters.

RAF Coastal Command was a multi-national air force involving the RAF, Royal Navy Squadrons, Royal Australian Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Czech and Polish Air Forces and US Navy and US Army Air Forces.

Other exhibits include a green-coloured 100 lb air-dropped anti-submarine bomb from about 1941 – the earliest of its type used by the British.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free.

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Submarine relic begins final journey

2007-11-02T16:28:00.000Z

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TheWest.com.au

By Kate Campbell
November 02, 2007

A towering chunk of naval history was painstakingly transported yesterday in the first step towards its final resting place.

The submarine Orion’s conning tower, measuring a huge 12m wide and 6m high and weighing 25 tonnes, was conveyed from Tenix shipyard in Henderson to Rockingham’s council depot, where it will be restored and repainted.

After more than a decade of gathering dust in the shipyard, it will finally be displayed in the city’s naval memorial park, near the home of the navy in WA – Garden Island – by April next year, to coincide with Anzac Day.

The Orion, the last of six Oberon-class navy submarines, was decommissioned in 1996 after 22 years of service.

Despite submarines playing an important part in WA’s maritime history, few submarine relics have been kept.

The Orion was stripped and sold for scrap metal to China after it was retired.

But several parts, including the operations room, conning tower and periscope, were saved as historical keepsakes.

The operations room is on display at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, while the periscope is showcased at the WA Maritime Museum.

Talk of the tower, still in relatively good condition, being destined for Albany dissipated due to the logistics and costs of such a move.

A police escort and road closures helped yesterday’s mammoth moving task, which took more than four hours, to run smoothly.

The drive took only 35 minutes, while manoeuvring and hoisting the giant tower off the truck by an 80-tonne crane was the time-consuming job.

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THE SECRETS OF THE DEEP

2007-10-26T13:00:00.000+01:00

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The Herald
By Tristan Nichols
October 25, 2007

It's hard to imagine a nuclear submarine welcoming a Royal visitor on board just days after losing a man overboard.

But that's exactly what happened in December 1972 on HMS Courageous.

The anecdote is just one of many that will appear in a new book dedicated to the decommissioned hunter killer submarine, laid up at Devonport Naval Base.

Having ended her operational life in 1992, the former covert surveillance vessel is now enjoying a new lease of life as a city tourist attraction.

And one of the vessel's former leading seamen, Mike 'Pitt' Keathly, is writing a book on her life in a bid to dispel the mystery surrounding nuclear submarines.

"She had a good life," said Pitt, from Saltash, referring to his ocean home between 1970 and 1974.

"She did six operational patrols when she was gathering intelligence and a great many other shorter patrols.

"We tragically lost a man over the side in 1972 off the Isle of Skye and, two or three days later, we welcomed Princess Anne on board.

"The submarine's life was not all squeaky clean. She had her bumps and scrapes - she even bounced off Sanda Island near the Mull of Kintyre once.

"The damage didn't get repaired for four years.The hull was slightly stoved in and it was not repaired until her refit.

"Luckily she was made of some tough metal."

After more than 21 years of service, the 285ft vessel was finally decommissioned in April 1992 at Devonport Naval Base, where she now lies.

Pitt, who has painstakingly helped to restore her over the years and who now also volunteers as a tour guide on her open days, added: "I want to demystify the feelings towards, and the workings of, the nuclear submarine.

"Also I cannot help but feel that if we do not capture a record of what happened during that period, then it will be lost in history.

"During the Cold War, nuclear submarines were a big taboo subject. Fifteen years after the Cold War ended, I feel it is time to tell the story."

Pitt said it had taken him four or five years to get the information together for the book, which he hopes to publish next year.

Tours of HMS Courageous are now staged every Thursday. To organise a tour, call 01752 553941 and leave a message with your contact details.

Former crew members with photographs, documents or any other items are being asked to contact Pitt. He is also keen to welcome new volunteer tour guides to help with demand. For further information, email him at pittk@hotmail.co.uk

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Why new U-boat plan may sink or swim

2007-10-25T13:18:00.000+01:00

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ECHO
By Joe Riley
October 25, 2007

FOR just ONE euro, better value – even as junk – than anything in a charity shop, Merseytravel has taken delivery of its strangest mode of transport: a rust-bucket German U-boat about to be booted out of Birkenhead docks to make way for houses.

But what is to become of the iron hulk, salvaged off the coast of Denmark in 1993, and then loaned as prize exhibit to the now defunct Wirral-based Historic Warships Museum?

Merseytravel chief Neil Scalextric wants to chop the vessel into four bits and re-arrange it, like Lego, into a new visitor centre at Woodside ferry terminal.

Using the giant floating crane Mersey Mammoth the home removal could be managed for a tenth of the £2.5m said to be needed to shift the Nazi sub in one piece.

Reliable calculations? It is costing just £1m to bring sole surviving U-boat destroyer HMS Whimbrel back to the Mersey – all the way from her present Egyptian base in Alexandria.

Also, a sister ship and exact replica of the German U-boat, was successfully transported from Africa, across the Atlantic, through the North American Great Lakes, and finally through the streets of Chicago – all in one piece – to the city’s museum of science and technology.

The Birkenhead U-boat (U534) is unique as the only such vessel raised from the seabed.

The crew were not on board at the time of the sinking. All other torpedoed U-boats have remained untouched, deemed war graves.

But before history overwhelms reason, I can reveal that a formative Mersey Maritime Museum turned its nose up at dry-docking U534, leaving it to prototype super-quango Merseyside Development Corporation to earmark a berth next to the former Pier Head floating roadway.

That plan came unstuck when the U-boat’s Danish owners came to Liverpool to offer U534 as a gift ( to tie in with Liverpool’s Battle of the Atlantic heritage), but were then sent a £150 hotel bill by over-zealous municipal mandarins.

You can imagine what the Danes said the council could do with the U-boat.

And the bottom line?

Rather than arranging a Mersey chainsaw massacre solution to an expensive relocation problem, just melt the whole thing down.

History may be learned in chunks. But it never looks good cut into bits.

Imagine hacking HMS Victory into cubes and turning it into a ferry terminal?

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Volunteers work to spruce up, improve Batfish for tourists

2007-10-25T00:30:00.000+01:00

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MuskogeePhoenix.com
By Keith Purtell
October 25, 2007

Even though it’s closed for the season, things are hopping at the USS Batfish Submarine and Military Museum.

Rick Dennis, Batfish park manager, said there are three main projects.

“On our Walk of Honor, Lanny Cartwright has been getting those brick cleaned up and organized for display,” he said. “Also, we’re working on the 52 Submarines Memorial that honors the 52 subs lost in World War II. The 2006 Chamber of Commerce Leadership Class donated a bench for that. We’re also getting the (internal) museum work done, both developing the additional room and freshening up the displays.”

The Batfish sank three enemy submarines and 11 ships before being sent to Muskogee as a museum in 1973. It was called “Killer Sub” for sinking more enemy vessels than any other submarine. It’s now a tourist attraction drawing people from across the country and the globe.

Fishermen and nature lovers may get a combination fishing pier and trail system.

“At the end of it, we may have a nice nature preserve with trails down to the river,” Dennis said. “There are definite fishing possibilities. Two weeks ago, I went up the river with one of the port guys, and we actually had a fish almost try to jump in the boat.”

Last Saturday, Cub Scout packs from Hilldale Elementary School and Fort Gibson volunteered their time to help at the museum.

“They did a phenomenal job,” Dennis said. “I was so proud of them.”

Joe Smythe, cub master for Cub Scout Pack 638 of Fort Gibson, said approximately 15 of his youngsters teamed up with a similar number from Hilldale, led by Janey Riddle.

“They cleaned out a fence row and bagged that up, cleaned the glass on the display cases, and polished the brass on the torpedo tube,” he said. “The kids I was with said the torpedo tube was their favorite. They were surprised that 80 people fit in that sub.”

The scouts were ages 6 to 10. Smythe, a teacher at Norwood Elementary, said the service project at the Batfish was important to the boys.

“They get to feel like they are actually doing something to help out,” he said. “That’s what scouting is all about.”

Rod Mish, a volunteer at the Batfish, said he’s excited to see the improvements at the museum.

“I went up in an airplane yesterday and got a fresh aerial view and took some pictures,” he said. “This spring we may be putting in a fishing pier. Everyone thinks it’s a great idea. That place is ripe. Things are growing out there.”

USS Batfish Submarine

WHAT: USS Batfish Submarine and Military Museum.

HOURS: Open March 15 to Oct. 15; 9 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays and Saturday; noon-4 p.m. Sunday. Closed Tuesdays.

LOCATION: Take Muskogee Turnpike to Exit 33, turn east, then turn north at the Batfish sign.

ADMISSION: Adults $5; children $2; adult group $4; senior citizens $3; children’s group (10 or more) $1; children under 6 free, except for groups.

PHONE: 682-6294.

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Replica Of First Sub Passes 'Sea Trial'

2007-10-23T13:39:00.000+01:00

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TheDay.com
By Eileen McNamara
October 23, 2007

Essex — True to its name, the Turtle moved slowly through the murky waters of the Connecticut River, its rear propeller spinning smoothly on the manual power supplied by sole passenger and operator Roy Manstan.

On the dock above, Fred Frese, the principal builder of the unwieldy-looking contraption, looked on as it moved along, a wide grin on his face.

“It works,” he declared after the little boat turned around and made its way back to its starting point.

Frese was among some 25 people who turned out Monday morning for one of the first test launches of the Turtle, a reproduction of the first American submarine, which was built in 1776 by Old Saybrook patriot David Bushnell to help Colonial forces sink British warships.

The Turtle, so named because the 7-foot-tall, slightly egg-shaped ship resembles a turtle that's standing on end, was built over the last four years by Frese, the technology education teacher at Old Saybrook High School, with the help of two retired engineers and at least 50 of his students.

This is the third Turtle reproduction Frese has built. He constructed the first in 1976 for the country's bicentennial after learning about Bushnell and his unusual invention.

Frese's first Turtle is currently on exhibit at the Connecticut River Museum in Essex. His second Turtle is on display at the Submarine Force Library & Museum in Groton.

When completed, this latest Turtle reproduction will go to the David Bushnell House Museum in Westbrook, owned by the Lee Co., which has helped finance the current Turtle's construction.

The submarine has spent most of its four years of development in the shop area of the high school, where students taking courses in technology education have assisted in various aspects of its unusual design.

The submarine is made from planks of white oak held together by bands of iron that are wrapped around its oval frame. The sub's single propeller is powered by a foot-operated interior treadle similar to the ones used on manual sewing machines. A rudder, also operated from inside, steers the boat.

A rudimentary depth gauge and a compass tell the sub's captain roughly where he is and in how much water.

The submarine's interior is barely large enough to fit a single occupant. On Monday that occupant was Manstan, a retired engineer and U.S. Navy diver who was conducting the tests with the help of several active and reserve Navy divers. Manstan and Ken Beatrice, also a retired engineer and Navy diver, have assisted Frese and his high school students with the Turtle's construction.

Manstan had to carefully fold his 6-foot-plus frame into the cramped interior of the submarine. The Turtle was then lifted by crane and gently dropped into the waters of the Connecticut River at the Essex Boat Works shipyard.

Almost immediately Manstan reported tiny leaks in its hull.

That's to be expected, Frese said, from a wooden boat. One of the few changes Frese and his team made to Bushnell's original design was the inclusion of a battery-operated bilge pump inside the sub. While Manstan bilged out water from the slow leaks, Frese and his team came up with a centuries-old technique to plug the leaks — sawdust. Rubbed on the outside of the hull it will get sucked into the tiny holes and “stop leaks dead,” Frese said.

Minutes after Navy diver Jim Dennison applied the sawdust, the most serious leaks were plugged and Manstan took the submarine on a short but successful test run. He did so with the Turtle's hatch above water, his head poking out of the top.

With two Navy divers swimming alongside, Manstan steered the ship about 20 feet, turned it, and came back. The Turtle, bobbing like an oversized cork in the river, was pulled slightly off course by the tide and Beatrice pulled it back toward the dock with a rope that was attached to the submarine.

“This is a huge deal,” said Scott Schoonmaker, the high school's principal. He and Tara Winch, the school's associate principal, turned out to watch the tests. “It's been a long time in the making.”

Also attending was Jerry Roberts, executive director of the Connecticut River Museum. Roberts said the museum is set to kick off a program of events focused on the Turtle. They will include a christening of the submarine next month and a research project with participation by high school students from the region to determine what became of Bushnell's original invention.

The first Turtle was designed as a means for colonists to sneak up on moored British war ships and plant explosives on their hulls. Although Colonial forces tried to do that several times with the Turtle, they were never successful, Roberts said. The submarine worked, Frese said, but usually either the attachment of explosives on the ships' hulls failed or British sailors spotted the sub before it got close to their ship.

Bushnell, it is believed, hid the Turtle in his brother's barn in Old Saybrook, but what became of the submarine after that is a mystery, Roberts said. Trying to find out, he said, should prove instructive for students and adults.

“It's a good history lesson for everyone that the first submarine ever built was built about 20 miles away from where they are still being built today,” he said.

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Approval for U-boat to resurface

2007-10-22T09:41:00.000+01:00

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BBC
October 22, 2007

Plans for a former tourist attraction to be handed a permanent home on the banks of the Mersey have been given the go-ahead.

Wirral council has approved Merseytravel's proposal to house a German World War II U-boat at the Woodside Ferry Terminal.

The submarine was formerly an attraction at the Historic Warships Museum at Seacombe docks.

Plans include the provision of a visitor exhibition centre at the site.

The submarine was sunk during the war when, on her way to Norway, she was attacked by an RAF Liberator aircraft in 1945.

Forty-nine of the 52 crew members survived, including five who escaped via a torpedo hatch as the submarine lay on the sea bed.

'Good news'

The boat will be cut into three sections to be transported and viewed.

At Woodside huge glass panels installed over the end of each section will allow visitors to see inside the submarine from specially-built viewing platforms.

Neil Scales, chief executive of Merseytravel, said: "It's very good news, not only does it give a home to the U-boat but it also compliments our work along the river with other attractions like Spaceport.

"We'll do a good job with this."

The exhibition in the visitors centre will display some of the four-and-a-half tons of memorabilia that was found on U534.

This includes an Enigma cipher machine, ammunition, uniforms, tools, charts and maps.

Work is expected to cost about £2.5m and will start next month and is to due to finish next year.

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WW II sub oil leak threatens marine life

2007-10-19T14:36:00.000+01:00

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SR
October 19, 2007

The wreck of a Second World War submarine, one of many littering the seabed around the Swedish coast, has been found to be leaking oil, posing a threat to marine life.

According to the Swedish coast guard, the submarine is a German U-boat which was hit towards the end of the war, and is one of 249 wrecks off the west coast of Sweden.

Authorities were alerted by a local man fishing in the area who spotted oil on the water.

The coast guard says the wreck lies at a depth of 65 metres, and that the vessel had 113 tonnes of diesel oil on board when she sank.

The submarine also contains unknown quantities of lead in large battery units.

An operation to extract the oil and lead is however unlikely, due to unexploded torpedoes on board.

The wreck is just one of the many submarines and ships lying in Swedish waters, and experts fear the high salt content in the area will ultimately erode many of the hulls resulting in severe environmental damage.

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WWII Submarine, Helsinki, Finland

2007-10-15T14:53:00.000+01:00

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Flickr

Vesikko was a submarine of the Finnish Navy in World War II. It was designed by Dutch Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw den Haag (I.v.S) and built in 1933 by the Crichton-Vulcan shipyard in Turku, Finland. It served as a direct prototype (named as CV-707) for German Type IIA U-boats. Between the years 1933 and 1934 the German Navy carried out trials with the submarine in the Turku Archipelago. In 1936, the Finnish Navy bought it and named it as Vesikko.

Vesikko was one of five submarines to serve the Finnish Navy. The other four were the three larger Vetehinen class boats Vetehinen, Vesihiisi, Iku-Turso (named after Finnish mythology characters, see Kalevala) and the small Saukko (Finnish for otter). The word "vesikko" is the Finnish name for the European mink, a small predator now near extinction (already extinct within Finland).

Vesikko saw service during World War II. Like other submarines of the Finnish Navy, she patrolled the Gulf of Finland during the Winter War against the Soviet Baltic Fleet. On December 1 and 19 December 1939, Vesikko made attempts to attack the Soviet heavy cruiser Kirov and battleship Marat, both of which which had been damaged by Finnish coastal batteriers.

During the Continuation War, Vesikko continued her patrolling career but there were few targets of opportunity due to extensive minefields laid by Finnish and Germans forces on the eastern half of Gulf of Finland, which essentially blockaded the Soviet ships in their ports. Nontheless, in 3 July 1941, Vesikko managed to torpedo one Soviet merchant ship named Vyborg of 3,500 tons.

After the war Vesikko was decommissioned because of the obligations of the Paris Peace Treaties that forbade Finland having submarines. Vesikko was lying as a wreck for years. It was eventually put up for sale for anyone willing to buy it. Fortunately former crew members of the submarine managed to rescue and restore it. The submarine currently lies on the island of Suomenlinna and has served as a museum during the summers since 1973. (Wikipedia)

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Team to recover U-boat diver body

2007-10-03T11:45:00.001+01:00

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BBC
october 02, 2007

Michael Hanrahan died during
the dive to the U-boat.

An operation to recover the body of a diver who died while trying to assess the chances of recovering a sunken German U-boat is to take place later.

Michael Hanrahan, a father of four from Dublin, died during a dive at the sunken submarine, 16 miles off Malin Head on the Donegal coast, on Tuesday.

The dive team was filming the U-boat when the diver got into difficulties.

Other members of the team tried to help him - but they were unsuccessful. It is not clear what led to the accident.

Later on Wednesday, a team will attempt to recover the body.

Paul Moore, from BBC Radio Ulster's Your Place and Mine, spent Tuesday with the divers at Malin Head, for a feature he was doing for the programme.

"It was just such a huge shock, because they were just so excited about it and they seemed to know just what they were doing," Mr Moore said.

"It's just such a tragedy for the family."

He said later he was looking at photographs he had taken of the divers.

"I was looking at these photographs and realising that one of these divers was still there, had had this accident and was now dead," he said.

"Four hours earlier I had been talking to these guys - just four typical guys just loving what they were doing."

Derry City councillor Shaun Gallagher paid tribute to Mr Hanrahan.

"He was a gentle giant and a lovely man - we're just devastated," he said.

It is the second fatal diving incident off the north-west coast in the last two months.

At the end of July, Paul Jackson, a police officer from Humberside, had been looking at wrecks off Tory Island but failed to resurface.

The U-boat, which did not see any war action, sank while being towed from Scotland to Londonderry to be scrapped.

Derry City Council plans to raise U-778 and house it in a museum. The boat is lying in about 70 metres of water.

It is estimated there are about 150 such boats lying off Malin Head, all vivid reminders of the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II.

The council said that "because of the depth of the waters involved, the procedure was expected to be highly technical".

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Dive to film U-Boat off Malin Head finally gets underway

2007-10-02T11:42:00.000+01:00

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HighLand Radio
October 02, 2007

An exploratory dive to film a German Submarine sunk at the end of the Second World War 16 miles off the coast off Malin Head will go ahead later this afternoon.

This exploratory dive was post-phoned twice in September due to adverse weather conditions.

It's part of Derry City Council's plans to raise the Second World War U-Boat intact and install it as the centrepiece of a memorial to the Battle of the Atlantic

The Divers will film the U-Boat to assess its current condition for potential salvage companies.

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Saga of a lost sub

2007-09-24T22:49:00.000+01:00

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The Reporter
By Jennifer Gentile
September 24, 2007

Deepsea clue helps sister get closure

The telegram relayed the news every serviceman's family dreads - a beloved brother, son and friend was missing in military action and likely never to be seen again.

Now 93 years old, Lenore Gearhart of Vacaville recalls receiving such a document after her brother's submarine, the USS Grunion, was reported missing in the summer of 1942, at the height of World War II.

"The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that ... Seaman Second Class Lawrence Dale Deaton, U.S. Navy, born in Ames, Iowa, on Feb. 8, 1920, is missing in the performance of his duty and the service of his country," the somber message explained. "The department appreciates your anxiety, but details are not now available.

Gearhart remembers her reaction with clarity - even more than six decades later.

"It was shock, sorrow, grief; I almost had a nervous breakdown," she recalled. "War is a terrible thing anyway, and then to lose someone, it's worse."

The telegram came directly to Gearhart, then in her mid-20s and living in Vacaville with her husband, which left her with the unenviable task of sharing it with family members and others close to her brother.

"We were afraid to tell my mom because she had a bad heart," she said. While her mother took the news better than expected, Gearhart said, "My dad never recovered. He went downhill after that."

For 65 years, Deaton's family and those of about 70 other sailors were in the dark about the Grunion's disappearance.

Named after a family of fish native to the West Coast, the submarine was commissioned in April 1942. According to the Naval Historical Center, the Grunion rescued 16 survivors of the U.S. Army Transport Jack, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat, before continuing on to Hawaii and ultimately Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

After reporting Japanese anti-submarine activity near Kiska in July, 1942, and being ordered to return to the base at Dutch Harbor, the Grunion was never heard from again. Her fate remained a maritime mystery - until recently.

Since a search began in August of 2006, sonar technology revealed a wreck beneath the waters of the North Pacific. The location of the find, at the tip of the Aleutian chain and in the vicinity of three Japanese wrecks, is consistent with the probable resting place of the Grunion.

The Abele brothers, whose father was commander of the ill-fated sub, mounted the search. The story of their quest aired in a segment last week on the NBC's Today Show and is thoroughly documented online at www.ussgrunion.com.

Based in Massachusetts, Bruce Abele said the project owes much to Navy buff and interpreter Yutaka Iwasaki, who found and translated an article in an obscure maritime magazine describing a confrontation between the sub and a Japanese cargo ship.

"It gave us a viable hypothesis for what happened," Abele said, "More importantly, it gave us a location." Armed with more than three hours of high-quality footage and hundreds of photographs, Abele said, "now we're in the process of putting this together in such a way that we can get some ex-submariners to take a look and try to figure out what happened to the sub."

He estimates that about 25 feet of the bow is gone from the Grunion, which is in a generally sorry state.

"To our surprise, it's been crushed pretty badly," he said. "We expected it to be intact."

Explaining how sure he is that he found his father's lost charge, Abele joked, "I'm not 100 percent certain the sun is going to rise in the east, but its roughly equivalent to that." Aside from the wreck's location, Abele said further proof of its identity are the presence of prop guards like those on the missing sub.

According to the Web site devoted to the search, the tale has also piqued the interest of the History Channel, National Geographic, Reader's Digest and numerous other venues.

While the Abele brothers combed the sea for answers, a trio of women calling themselves "The Sub Ladies" conducted a search of its own. The group, composed of Mary Bentz of Bethesda, Md., Rhonda Raye of Cartersville, Ga., and Vickie Rodgers of Mayfield, Ky., each of whom had lost a relative in the tragedy, set about finding the families of all of the Grunion's crew members.

"We're three women who've never met each other and live in different parts of the United States," Bentz said. "It's been a wonderful experience."

Describing the devastating effect the loss of her uncle, Carmine Anthony Parziale, had on her family, Bentz said, "The Grunion went down two years before I was born, but I've known about it all my life. My father would mention him and he would get emotional about it - the same as his siblings." Bentz added that her grandmother, on her death bed, said, "The fish ate my son."

Bentz and her partners reached out to other Grunion families by any means available - including newspapers and radio talk shows.

"It was something my dad would have wanted me to do," she said. "But it was not very long into this project that these men became alive to all of us. All of them are our family."

The "Sub Ladies" located Gearhart via an e-mail from her grandson, Bentz said. One of Gearhart's grandsons served in the Coast Guard, and was well apprised of his family's connection to the Grunion.

When he ventured into the frigid waters off the Alaskan coast, "he'd say, 'I've got a great uncle down there," according to his grandmother.

Gearhart's brother had been married about a year when he disappeared, and his wife had moved back in with her family when he shipped out. Only 22 when he died, Deaton left no children behind.

"At first, I just couldn't get it off my mind; it was hard to take," Gearhart acknowledged, adding, "He was a great person. We were just broken-hearted when he was lost; everybody liked him."

However, at least in Gearhart's case, there is truth to the axiom "Time heals all wounds."

"You get over grief," she said. "I don't feel the real deep sorrow that I used to."

For Bentz and others, the Abele brothers' discovery has afforded them some measure of peace.

"People tell me they're getting sympathy cards, Mass cards ... ," she said. "It's closure - now we know what happened."

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Why raise "U" boat 778?

2007-09-21T18:39:00.000+01:00

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Derry Journal
By Malcolm Tattersall
September 21, 2007

Having read the article on the City Council's ambitious plan to raise a W/W2 German "U" Boat No 778 from the seabed to display it as a static exhibit in the City I feel I must ask why?

It would seem that this submarine has NO links with the city and didn't even surrender in the city. However, this huge project and its vast cost would make more sense if it where a British submarine that was based in the city attached to the former Naval Base HMS Sea Eagle.

There is no denying that the city was an important command post for British Naval Forces during W/W2 and beyond. But perhaps the council should, before committing itself and vast amounts of public money to this project, consider the following:

• Is this project going to provide long term employment for local people?

• Will it be used as an educational tool by allowing people to see the conditions that these submariners lived in?

• Will people be allowed walk onboard including the inside of the vessel?

• Will this vessel give people who visit it the chance to operate some of its machinery?

• Can this vessel provide exhibition space for Community and Business based projects?

• Will this project help to attract investment within the City from outside Big Businesses?

• Could this project help to raise the profile of the City as an International City of the future?

• Can this project raise the numbers of tourists to the City and thus, increase the tourist industry that exists within it?

I am afraid the answer is a resounding NO!!

So would it not make more financial and economic sense for the council to support a project that not only promotes the Cities Maritime Heritage as a Military Port but can also fulfil ALL of the above? A project that involves the restoration of a vessel that was actually based in the City and that during her time there provided local people with jobs?

There is such a project one that ALL councillors are aware of, a project that the council have already stated they would be prepared to support in principle. It is the project to restore the former landing ship tank, HMS Stalker 3515, locally known by those who remember her as HMS Never Budge or 3515 London Road.

I would therefore, urge the council to 'Fully support' this project to restore this vessel and use a project that can bring a community together as a "Common Ground" project, a project that has more to offer the cities communities and their residents than a "Static" exhibit that nobody will be able to use of even walk round!

Malcolm Tattersall (Chairman)
Maritime Steam Restoration Trust
39 Fairfield
HEBDEN BRIDGE
West Yorkshire
HX7 6JB

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U-boat dive postponed

2007-09-19T16:36:00.000+01:00

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Derry Journal
September 19, 2007

An exploratory 70 metre dive to the site of an unique U-boat off the coast of Donegal was postponed this week due to bad weather.

The dive has been re-scheduled for Tuesday, October 2, providing the skilled divers get the right weather on the day.

The U-boat, which sank while it was being towed to Derry from Scotland, is considered to be unique as it is fully intact.

The aim is to make the U-boat a permanent fixture at a new maritime
museum in the city and is potentially a huge tourist attraction for anyone interested in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The divers were due to film the U-boat and forward the footage to experts who will consider whether it will be viable to raise it.

Geoff Millar from Dive North West, who is leading the dive team to film U-boat 778 off the coast of Malin Head, said the weather this week made the dive too dangerous.

Speaking to the Journal yesterday he said: "We couldn't have gone out in the water as the waves were crashing over the top of the pier. This morning it is calm enough but the wind is due to pick up later on and we just couldn't take the chance."

"We have had to sit down and work out the tides, as we need slack water to do the dive. We can only go on the tides and because of that October 2 is the next possible date."

"We had everything ready to go on Monday - all the dive and film equipment and the divers were assembled. It just means that the next time round we don't have to prepare."

"The only thing that could hold us back is the weather, otherwise we will be going for it."

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Dive To Film U-Boat Off Donegal Coast Confirmed

2007-09-13T16:47:00.000+01:00

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Highland Radio
September 13, 2007

It's been confirmed today that a specialist dive will be conducted early next week to film a submarine from the Second World War sunk off the coast of Malin Head.

The Dive is part of proposals to raise the German U-Boat, which was scuttled intact at the end of the war at a depth of 70 metres 16 miles off the Coast of Malin Head.

The idea to raise the submarine was first proposed on Highland Radio and has now achieved international backing.

It's hoped the U-Boat can become a major tourism attraction for the North West and a memorial to the thousands of people killed in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War.

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Looking beneath the surface of the Gallipoli campaign

2007-09-12T17:05:00.000+01:00

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ABC News
September 11, 2007

Most Australians know about the Anzac campaign on the beaches of Gallipoli in 1915.

But what is sunk beneath the surface of our memories is the historic role played by a submarine, HMAS AE2.

For five days, the submarine disrupted Turkish supply lines before it was damaged by enemy fire and had to be scuttled in the Sea of Marmara.

Now 92 years on, an underwater survey has been launched, involving Australian scientists, historians, and a lot of technology, including a remotely operated camera.

This plunge into the past will help determine the wreck's future.

The AE2 was the first Allied submarine to penetrate the Dardanelles. Two previous attempts by two other submarines had resulted in their destruction, so AE2 was going into a very risky situation.

Not only were there minefields blocking the entrance to the Narrows, but there was also a large current flowing out from the Sea of Marmara.

Nevertheless, in following his instructions to create a diversion as the Australian soldiers were landing at Anzac Cove, Lieutenant-Commander Henry Stoker exposed himself in the Narrows, drew the fire of forts along the coastline, and torpedoed a Turkish ship.

The expedition's director of operations, Terry Roach, told Lateline that the AE2 led the way for "the first successful submarine campaign in history in which a series of 15 patrols by British and French submarines sank over 230 Ottoman [Turkish] ships, and completely cut the supply lines of the Ottoman forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula.".

Mr Roach says the AE2 was sunk after buoyancy problems.

"It surfaced inadvertently in front of a Turkish gunboat, and the Ottoman gunboat put three 37-millimetre shells into the engine room," he said.

"So the captain ordered abandon ship, and scuttled the submarine to prevent it falling into enemy hands.

"The crew all got out and they were rescued by the Turkish gunboat, and spent the rest of the war in captivity."

The dive survey will assess the structural integrity of the AE2's hull, so that a recommendation can be made to the Turkish and Australian governments on the future management of the wreck.

Mr Roach says there are a range of options open.

"They range from doing nothing, which is obviously highly unlikely, to a full-scale recovery," he said.

"But if it is a full-scale recovery, it will have to be carefully preserved ashore because the submarine, once it's exposed to the air, will start corroding very rapidly, much more rapidly than it has in the last 92 years at the bottom of the ocean."

The survey team has been diving for two days, and Mr Roach says the team has captured some excellent footage of the wreck.

"It still has the classic shape. I regret to say that since the last expedition in 1998, which identified it, there's been that significant damage to the casing of the submarine," he said.

"This is the superstructure which provides streamlining of the apparatus that is on outside the pressure hull.

"Fishing nets have obviously dragged at the casing and dislodged some of it, and it is markedly different from what it was before."

Mr Roach says the expedition is pivotal to raising consciousness of a little-known chapter in Australian history.

"We want all Australians to be aware of the exploits of AE2," he said.

"We would like to think that it's a tale that could rival the heroism of Simpson and his donkey, the exploits of AE2 and the crew in penetrating the Narrows and starting this campaign."

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Local divers team up to salvage an old submarine museum

2007-09-07T22:56:00.000+01:00

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WAVY-TV
September 07, 2007

A Rhode Island submarine museum has been closed since April after it sunk during a Nor'easter. Army divers from Fort Eustis and Navy divers from Little Creek are attempting to salvage the sub. About 30 of them teamed up with a group of engineers to figure out how they can get the sub back to the surface.

It was once called a "shining star" in the city of Providence, but now The "Russian Submarine Museum" sits in the mud, 30 feet below Narragansett Bay.

Army and Navy divers say attempting to salvage the sub is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Peter Sharpe is one of 13 divers based out of Little Creek working to first stabilize the sub. He says, "The worst case scenario is it rolls on it's side or it rolls upside and then it's nearly impossible for you to refloat it."

Divers are using metal cables to anchor the sub, they'll then drain it next summer and finally bring it to the surface. But, "there's virtually no hope of that boat ever being a museum again," says Sharpe. "With all of the marine growth and organic material you wouldn't be able to go on a tour unless you were wearing a self contained breathing device."

Still everyone agrees salvaging the sub is not a wasted effort. They say divers can learn valuable skills that they can apply to a vast array of diving operations. It's good for both the military and those working to restore it.

The sub is tentatively set to be brought up next May. There's been some talk about using parts of the submarine as a static display, but divers say they won't know it's exact condition until it's raised and inspected.

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Council's plans to raise U-boat move forward

2007-08-28T09:41:00.000+01:00

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Derry Journal
August 28, 2007

Ambitious plans to raise a U-boat from the sea bed in order to display it in the city may be coming closer to reality.

Derry City Council have announced that they are currently trying to secure funding for the project to raise the submarine.

Last year, the Council said that it was looking into plans to raise one of the infamous German U-boats from the sea bed off Donegal to display it in order to recognise the important role the city played in hunting the submarine which preyed on convoys in the North Atlantic.

During the Second World War, Derry’s port was an important command post for British naval patrols on convoy and anti-submarine duty. At the end of the war in 1945, the remains of the German submarine fleet were taken to Lisahally where they surrendered. The U-boats were then taken to various locations off the
Donegal coast and scuttled. Dozens of submarine now lie beneath the sea off the coast.

One particular submarine, U-778, has been singled out as the easiest to raise to the surface as it is not buried in mud. The wreck of U-778 lies 70 metres below the surface 16 miles north-west of Malin Head.

A spokesperson for Derry City Council said that the Museum and Heritage Service is currently working to take this project forward by consulting with the appropriate statutory agencies in relation to maritime and archaeological legislation that exists with regard to the removal of such craft. The Council is also working to seek to identify funding sources to assist with the project.

However, the project could run into problems as salvage experts believe that there must be a ‘tripartite agreement’ between Britain, the United States, and Russia before permission for any salvage work is granted.

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Raise the U-boat: council plans to put Nazi sub in maritime museum

2007-08-20T10:18:00.000+01:00

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The Guardian
By Owen Bowcott
August 20, 2007

Derry hopes to recover one of the many German vessels scuttled off the Irish coast

Sixty years ago the Nazi U-boat fleet that menaced wartime Atlantic convoys and threatened Britain with starvation was scuttled off the north-west coast of Ireland. The sunken hulls and rusting torpedo tubes are encrusted with coral.

Salvage plans are now being explored to see whether one of the German submarines could be raised from the deep and brought ashore. The vessel and its wartime technology could be put on display as the central attraction for a new maritime museum in Derry.

The wreck of U-778 which lies 16 miles north-west of Malin Head, the most northerly tip of the Irish Republic, has been identified as the best candidate for recovery from among the estimated 116 U-boats that litter the ocean floor off the northern Irish coast.

U-778 was built at the end of the war and had never seen action before being sunk.

"It's about 70 metres down," said Geoff Millar, a deep-sea diving specialist who is awaiting instructions to descend to the wreck and film it. "It's not stuck in the mud but sitting on a gravelly bottom. Any recovery operation would take a large salvage platform out to the site and lower slings down to the sea bed that could be slid underneath the submarine and then used to raise it up."

A similar operation was carried out in 1993 when U-534 was raised from the sea bed between Sweden and Denmark at a cost of around £3m. It was later put on display in Birkenhead on Merseyside.

With several Royal Navy bases no longer in use in Derry, the city council is eager to make use of one of the former sites to commemorate the city's wartime link with the campaign in the north Atlantic. A salvaged U-boat, councillors hope, could become a popular tourist attraction giving the city an alternative historical focus to its more prominent sectarian past.

Derry's main port at Lisahally was the command post for British naval patrols on convoy and anti-submarine duty. It was also the scene on May 8 1945 of the mass surrender of the remains of the German U-boat fleet.

Under Operation Deadlight, the British navy was ordered to destroy the surviving U-boats to ensure they could never again endanger international shipping.

The submarines were towed out of Lisahally one by one and sunk. The operation began on November 25 1945 and the last U-boat was sunk on February 12 1946.

Some submarines were scuttled after explosive charges had been placed around hatches and torpedo tubes. Others were used for target practice by aircraft or what was then a top secret ship-to-ship missile, the Squid. U-3514, the last submarine to go down, resisted a wave of strafing and bomb attacks before it finally upended and slipped below the water.

Shaun Gallagher, a Social Democratic and Labour party councillor and former mayor of Derry, has been one of the driving forces behind the proposal to raise a U-boat. "We have written to the Department of the Marine in Dublin to try and establish who has salvage rights for these boats," he said. "We have arranged for dives to take place this summer and for films to be brought back so that people can see what's down there.

"The U-boats are in international waters off Malin Head. There's one [U-778] in very clear water and completely intact because it sank when being towed into Lisahally from Norway. Because no one died on the submarines, they are not war graves.

"All the Enigma code machines were taken off before they were sunk but there's lots of valuable brass and other metals on them. Our plan is to raise one of the U-boats, restore it and put it on display in a former naval site."

A Derry city council spokesperson said: "The Museum and Heritage Service is ... consulting with statutory agencies in relation to maritime and archaeological legislation with regard to the removal of [a U-boat]. The council is also working to identify funding sources to assist this project."

A tripartite agreement between Britain, the US and Russia requires permission from all three former allies before any salvage work is done.

Richard Lafferty, of the diving firm Aquaholics, in Portstewart, County Derry, has been down to investigate U-boat wrecks. "Some are damaged by shelling," he said. "Others are intact."

"Some are in relatively shallow water, about 40 metres deep. They are amazing wrecks that have attracted an incredible amount of marine life. There's soft coral and sponges growing on them with shoals of fish swimming in and out."

Backstory

The Battle of the Atlantic, a term coined by Winston Churchill, was the most protracted but decisive campaign of the second world war. "The only thing that ever really frightened me," Churchill confessed in his memoirs, "was the U-boat peril." The first German submarine attack came on September 3 1939 - the day Britain declared war - when U-30 sank the liner Athenia off north-west Ireland, mistaking it for an armed merchant cruiser. Operating from France's Atlantic ports and directed to their targets by long-range Kondor aircraft, the U-boat fleet threatened to throttle Britain's war effort. In July 1942, 143 ships were sunk in a single month. But improved anti-submarine tactics and the entry of the US into the war tilted the advantage. The turning point came in March 1943 when the cracking of German naval codes used by the Enigma machines enabled the Royal Navy to hunt U-boat packs. Around 3,500 merchant vessels and 175 warships were sunk overall. The Germans lost 783 U-boats.

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Sunken U-boat mystery solved too late for vilified commander of escort ship

2007-08-19T10:25:00.000+01:00

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Daily Sun
By Gary Corsair
August 19, 2007

Accuracy is something R.E. Johnson holds dear, whether he’s playing in The Villages Concert Band, volunteering at the Lady Lake Police Department or manning his ham radio in an emergency.

He’s the ultimate “if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right” guy, which is why he bristles at a grave error that for 59 years followed the submarine chaser he served on during World War II.

“This just shows what the desk writers do to people,” says Johnson, a Village of Del Mar resident. “They ride their chairs at the desk and try to manipulate other people. They make decisions without being at the scene.”

The scene of Johnson’s ire: the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast, where a German U-boat sank the freighter, Robert E. Lee, with a torpedo on July 30, 1942. The Robert E. Lee was being escorted by the USS PC-566.

“As I understand from bits of information I have been given, the PC-566 was criticized for not getting the sub,” said Johnson, who joined the crew of PC-566 in December 1944.

By then — two-and-a-half-years after the incident — mum was the word among crew members. A pall of shame seemed to hang over the PC-566.

“I guess there was not much said about it at that time because the commander of the 566 was not in good graces,” Johnson said.

That’s an understatement. Sixty-five years ago this month, PC-566 skipper, Lt. Commander H. C. Claudius, was reprimanded for the incident, even though he acted quickly and decisively.

“Skipper laid down two 5-ton salvoes, got a ping, dropped another, then proceeded to the Robert E. Lee, and started picking up survivors,” Johnson said.

The salvoes seemed to produce the desired effect. The men aboard the PC-566 saw a diesel oil slick on the water shortly after the depth charges were deployed. Still, no one could say for certain that the sub had been crippled. U-boat commanders trying to escape depth charges often released oil to deceive their attackers.

Claudius always believed he had crippled the sub. The “desk writers” disagreed.

“The naval review board went as far as to say he could not have possibly sunk the sub and sent him to additional training to learn the ‘right way’ to deploy depth charges,” says marine archaeologist Robert Church.

Turns out Claudius and his men were right. In fact, the PC-566 was the only ship to ever sink a German U-boat in the Gulf of Mexico.

The fate of U-166, the sub that sank the Robert E. Lee, remained a mystery until January 2001, when C&C Technologies discovered the U-boat in 5,000 feet of water 45 miles off the tip of the Mississippi River Delta while surveying a route for a 100-mile natural gas pipeline for BP and Shell. U-166 lies just 5,000 feet from the Robert E. Lee.

What became of the U-166 (Germany reported it lost at sea) would probably still be a mystery if not for advanced technology. The sub was located by C&C’s HUGIN 3000 (High Precision Untethered Geosurvey and Inspection System), which utilizes multi-beam bathymetry and imagery, dual-frequency chirp, side-scan sonar, chirp sub-bottom profiler, and acoustic tracking.

Unfortunately, the discovery came too late for Claudius, who died of a massive heart attack in 1981 following a distinguished Naval career. And the men he commanded aboard the PC-566 have also passed on, leaving Johnson as the keeper of the flame of history rewritten.

“I guess I am about the only one still looking down at the grass who was a member of the PC-566,” he said.

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Sunk U-Boat 33 threatening to resurface in English Channel

2007-08-19T10:16:00.000+01:00

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The Hindu
August 19, 2007

The sunk U-Boat 33, which was one of the deadliest submarines in the German Navy's fleet during World War I, is threatening to rise from the depths of the English Channel where it met its own end in 1918.

Lying in shallow waters, the wrecked UB-33 has been disturbed by passing vessels, leading to fears that it could break free from the seabed and rise to the surface to pose a new danger to cargo ships, tankers and ferries in the English Channel, the 'Daily Mail' has reported. Currently, the U-Boat 33 is lying 77ft down, but the official minimum clearance depth is 87ft.

A salvage operation has recently been launched to prevent the submarine from hitting any of the hundreds of ships that cross the English Channel each day. The area is directly beneath the shipping lane used by ferries travelling to Calais and Boulogne.

Trinity House, the institution which marks shipping lanes and maintains lighthouses, has temporarily stationed a vessel over the spot to warn ships and planning to gently move the U-Boat 33 to deeper water. "It has been there a long time, but now the wreck has started to move and it is causing concern as it has once again become a danger to shipping," the daily quoted Trinity House spokesman Vikki Gilson as saying.

"We have had divers surveying the wreck and one solution would be to re-set the wreck in a deeper position. It has been a hazardous job for the divers, but their survey is now complete. In the next few weeks, when conditions are right, we are hopeful we can move the boat."

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Experts complete survey of Russian sunken submarine

2007-07-09T01:19:00.000+01:00

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Novosti
July 09, 2007

MOSCOW - Russian and foreign experts have finished monitoring radiation levels at the site of a 2003 incident involving a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, the Russian Northern Fleet press service said Monday.

The K-159, a November class nuclear submarine with 800 kilograms (about 1,700 pounds) of spent nuclear fuel onboard, sank in 2003 while being towed to Polyarny, in northwest Russia, for decommissioning. Nine members of the 10-man crew died.

The radiation levels, according to preliminary monitoring results, are normal and pose no threat to the environment, the press service said.

Vladimir Vysotsky, the commander of the Northern Fleet, said a decision on whether to raise the submarine will be made after six weeks or two months, when the monitoring data has been completely studied and analyzed.

Subject to technical feasibility, Russia has committed itself to recovering the submarine and safely disposing of its reactors as part of an international agreement set up to assist with the safe disposal of Russian nuclear waste material.

The operation is being carried out under a joint project developed by Russia, Britain, the U.S. and Norway within the framework of the Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation agreement (AMEC), signed in September 1996.

The Russian Navy has been hit by several accidents involving submarines. The worst of these occurred August 12, 2000, when the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank following an onboard torpedo explosion, killing all 118 crewmembers.

In August 2005, the Priz AS-28 mini-sub with seven submariners onboard became entangled in a fishing net at a depth of about 190 meters (about 620 feet) in the Berezovaya Bay in the Bering Sea.

A rescue mission was successfully mounted after three days with the help of the British Scorpio 45, an unmanned deepsea rescue vehicle.

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Riddle of a Confederate Submarine

2007-07-09T00:25:00.000+01:00

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WM.edu
By Joe McClain
July 09, 2007

In its brief career, the H.L. Hunley was a success and a failure. Now, years after its resurrection, the Confederate submarine is a mystery and a research project.

The Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy vessel. On a quiet February night in 1864--six years before Jules Verne's fictional 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea--the Hunley rammed a spar into the stern area, planting a torpedo into the hull of the USS Housatonic, one of the Union ships blockading Charleston harbor. The Hunley's crew reversed its crank drive, backing away from the Housatonic before detonating the torpedo, sinking the Housatonic. The Hunley surfaced to send a "mission accomplished" signal, but like Verne's Nautilus, the Hunley didn't come back.

William and Mary geology student Jason Lunze is no Captain Nemo, but shipwrecks have always fascinated him. As a kid, he would walk the beach near his grandparents' home on Mobjack Bay and pick up Colonial-era pipe stems and other artifacts. His interest in the Confederate submarine dates back to grade school.

"I was aware of the Hunley probably since I was about six years old," Jason said. "One of my first grade school teachers had noticed my interest in shipwrecks and lent me one of his personal books. At that time they were still looking for the Confederate submarine. I thought it rather fascinating but I never thought they would actually find it; it is rather a small article to find lost in a rather large ocean."

"Where" Becomes "Why"
Not only was the Hunley found, in 1995; it also was recovered. In fact, the Hunley is on public display at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston, South Carolina. If you want to see the Hunley, you'll have to go on a Saturday, because during the week, archaeologists are working to preserve the Hunley and to solve the remaining mystery-why did it sink?

"The H.L. Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel, but it was lost shortly thereafter," Jason said. "It was somewhat of a technological marvel of its day, and that can be emphasized by the secrecy in which it was moved from Mobile to Charleston. A special train car was constructed to conceal its identity during its entire journey."

Not all the work on the Hunley is being done in Charleston. Jason Lunze is adding pieces to the solution of the mystery from the College of William and Mary. A geology major and marine archaeology buff, Jason got involved through Rowan Lockwood of William and Mary's geology department, who put him in touch with M. Scott Harris of Costal Carolina University, a William and Mary alumnus who has a record of collaborating with faculty at his alma mater. Harris is temporarily reassigned, working on the Hunley team.

Jason thought work involving the sedimentation of the Hunley might make a good geology project, but Harris told him there was no suitable sedimentation work. "But he had a project on the formation of rusticles within the submarine, and I said that I'd love to work on the project," Jason said.

Bacterial Condos
Scientific examination of the bacterial colonies that create rusticles--and the minerals produced by the bacteria--can provide insight into a number of conditions, present and past, in sunken iron vessels. Jason received five rusticles removed from the sub's interior.

"The samples that I collected from the H.L. Hunley are dead colonies," Jason said. "The submarine was in-filled with sediment, which stopped their growth. This gives us a good view of what the inside conditions were like before the sediment in-fill completely killed off the colonies."

He has been using a variety of nondestructive analytical techniques to examine his rusticles. He has worked with Bob Pike of William and Mary's chemistry department, but does the majority of his work in the Surface Characterization Lab in the Applied Research Center. Jason keeps his rusticles wet, to avoid oxidation. In fact, the entire Hunley hull is kept under water in a preservation tank.

"The samples have to be dry in order to run the analytical techniques," Jason explained. "So I have to dry them out first." The drying process involves placing a rusticle sample in a desiccating vacuum chamber, adding argon gas, which helps the process by displacing air.

Jason, who expects to graduate in 2008, will be busy on rusticle tests for the next four to six months. He will write up his findings in a senior thesis and hopes to have a paper accepted into a peer-reviewed journal. He characterizes his work as "a small brick in the wall of knowledge" on the H.L. Hunley that ultimately may solve the mystery of the innovative warship that accomplished its mission, but didn't come back.

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Soviet WWII sub wreck found in Baltic Sea

2007-07-03T01:43:00.000+01:00

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Reuters
July 03, 2007

STOCKHOLM - A Finnish-Swedish search team has found the wreck of a Soviet submarine sunk by the Finnish navy in the Baltic Sea during World War II.

The Soviet SC305 was fired on and rammed by a Finnish submarine in November 1942, sending it to the bottom in Swedish territorial waters off the island of Aland.

"SC305 went down with the bow into the mud and is in a good shape considering the circumstances," the search party said in a statement. "The origin of the wreck and its marking was verified by film from an ROV (remotely operated vehicle)."

The Soviet submarine, one of many used to prowl shipping lanes in the Baltic Sea during the war, was found at a depth of 136 meters (446 feet). All the 38 crew members were reported lost when submarine sank.

Bjorn Rosenlof, a spokesman for the privately funded team, said it first located the wreck last year using leads to the position found in Finnish archives, but only managed to identify it after returning to get more images two weeks ago.

"When we got the ROV in just right and could read the letters (the submarine's insignia) it was just an incredible feeling that can't be described in words," he told Reuters.

They were not able to dive to the wreck as it was too deep.

The team said it considered the site a war memorial and had only given the exact position of the wreck to Swedish authorities, leaving it to them to decide if the information should be published.

The Baltic Sea is littered with wrecks from both World Wars which saw Russian and Soviet forces battled the German navy for control of the transport routes across it.

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Russia builds monument to K-19 Soviet sub

2007-06-07T17:35:00.000+01:00

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The Age
June 07, 2007

The K-19 at sea

A Russian shipyard is rebuilding part of the Soviet Union's first nuclear submarine, the K-19, which almost exploded at the height of the Cold War, Interfax news agency reported today.

Nerpa shipyard in the northeastern Mourmansk region has begun restoring the 22 metre by six metre conning tower, the raised platform of the submarine, which will then be taken to Moscow as a monument to the famous vessel.

In an episode made famous by the Hollywood movie K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford, the crew faced potential disaster when on July 4, 1961, the submarine's cooling systems malfunctioned and the core of the nuclear reactor reached 800 degC.

They managed to stop an explosion which, at the height of the Cold War, could have been seen by the United States as a hostile act.

The story of the K-19 stayed secret for 30 years, with the survivors only appearing in public in 1991. Eight sailors died in the accident.

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U-boat's mercury posing threat

2007-06-06T18:37:00.000+01:00

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The Japan Times

June 06, 2007

JAPANESE PAIR ABOARD WRECK OFF NORWAY
The fate of a Nazi U-boat that was torpedoed en route to Japan with 70 people on board, including two Japanese men, hangs in the balance as officials debate what to do about a growing environmental threat.

Tadao Yamato and Toshio Nakai were among the passengers traveling with the German crew on the U-864 en route from Germany to Japan with aircraft parts and a toxic cargo of 1,857 flasks of mercury when the Royal Navy submarine Venturer torpedoed it on Feb. 9, 1945, off the Norwegian coast.

When the U-boat went down, some of its mercury cargo leaked and settled on the seabed, contaminating an area covering 30,000 sq. meters. Small creatures and fish from the area have been found to contain high levels of the heavy metal.

Norwegian authorities would like to cover the wreck and surrounding seabed with a thick layer of gravel to seal the mercury in.

But environmentalists claim that given the toxic cargo, the submarine should be raised, taken from the sea and properly sealed.

Officials fear the wreck is too fragile to be salvaged and such an operation could cause more mercury to be released. Oslo has ordered an investigation into whether raising the wreck is viable.

The U-864 contained plans and parts for the production of various Messerschmitt aircraft, submarines and radar. Facing imminent defeat, Adolf Hitler hoped that boosting Japan's capacity would put greater pressure on the United States and weaken Britain. It is thought the mercury was to produce weapons.

Britain was aware of the U-boat's voyage because the Japanese and German codes had been cracked. Some of the intercepted messages can be viewed at the National Archives in London.

Yamato was an engineer from Kobe who had been in Germany since 1940, and Nakai was a naval scientist who graduated from Tokyo Imperial University.

They had studied production techniques in Germany and were traveling home to help build German-designed aircraft. It was one of several secret submarine missions to Japan.

The bottom of the North Sea is a graveyard of shipwrecks. In 2003, the Norwegian Navy found the U-864 at a depth of 140 meters about 56 km from Bergen in northern Norway.

An exclusion zone was established around the wreck after a flask of mercury was found near the boat's keel. There is continuing concern that some of the flasks still on board could leak after such a long time on the seabed.

Tor Sletner, a Norwegian coastal authority, said there had been attempts to raise the submarine, which split in two, but it was too fragile and the mercury flasks were at risk.

Underwater photos show the wreck covered in seaweed, the bow and stern sections 40 meters apart, and the stern plane in a crash dive position.

"We haven't located the bodies because we haven't been able to get inside the wreck," Sletner said.

Some of the flasks had eroded, but it was not thought any had actually started leaking mercury, he added.

Hans Kjelstrup of the Norwegian Navy said the sub's control room, which may contain mercury, has never been found. He said the sub would have contained several pressurized compartments, and there is a possibility that some of the 17 passengers, including the Japanese, may still be in these airtight units.

If the gravel blanket operation gets the go-ahead, the stones will be placed on the area in varying levels from as little as 50 cm to 12 meters, depending on the amount of pollution. This is designed to prevent small sea creatures that fish consume from taking in the mercury.

In his book "Hitler's U-Boat War," Clay Blair describes how the Venturer's skipper, James Launders, tracked the German vessel by sonar while both subs were submerged about 56 km from Bergen.

"With uncanny skill, Launders set up and fired four torpedoes by sonar and guesswork at 18 second intervals from 3,000 yards (2,730 meters), their depth set at 40 feet (14 meters)," Blair wrote.

One or more of the torpedoes hit the U-864. Launders inspected the surface by periscope, seeing much oil and "wood" and what might have been a torpedo or storage canister. On his return to Scotland, he was commended and received a medal.

Karl Vandenhole, who produced a TV documentary on the U-864, said German relatives of the ill-fated crew were not opposed to their loved ones being entombed in the submarine forever. They hope to have a small ceremony at sea if the vessel is eventually covered in gravel.

He said the relatives knew the crew was on a secret mission to Japan but did not know the precise circumstances surrounding the loss of the U-864 until the discovery of the wreck in 2003 and subsequent research.

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Sunken German sub in St. Lawrence River?

2007-06-05T18:45:00.000+01:00

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NewsWatch50.com

June 05, 2007

A Clayton marina owner is hunting a German submarine that he believes may have sank in May 1942 in the St. Lawrence River.

Wilburt Wahl will discuss his search on June 28th at the Seaway Trail Discovery Center in Sackets Harbor.

He'll also discuss the Eagle Wings dive site near Clayton, which he says is a unique and strange geological formation that does not fit the normal pattern of the underwater landscape.

German submarines sank a number of Canadian ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in World War II. How far they ventured up the St. Lawrence River is in question.

Wahl has already recovered an anchor from a German submarine in the St. Lawrence River - he won't say exactly where. The anchor is clearly emblazoned with nazi swastikas.

His extensive collection of anchors also includes ones from a Jacques Cartier bateau, a British ship from 1650, and a War of 1812 ship, according to a press release from the Discovery Center.

His 6 p.m. talk on June 28 is part of the "Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes Seaway Trail" exhibit and speakers series that continues through September 20.

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Major find during WWI sub search

2007-05-31T21:29:00.000+01:00

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Lateline
May 31, 2007

AE2 & AE1

The Navy hopes it may have solved one of Australia's oldest maritime mysteries, the fate of the nation's very first submarine lost off New Guinea in World War I.

A search by HMAS Yarra has ruled out an object previously thought to be the missing sub. It's turned up a more promising find.

PNG correspondent, Steve Marshall, joined and Navy search near the Duke of York Islands in East New Britain Province.

STEVE MARSHALL: Over the past few days, HMAS Yarra has scoured 50 square kilometres of seabed and jagged reef.

This remotely operated vehicle can dive to a depth of 300 metres. It beams back images to Yarra's operations room where retired Navy commander John Foster patiently waits.

He's been searching for the AE1 sub for the past 30 years.

JOHN FOSTER, RETIRED NAVY COMMANDER: I tell you what we've got the best equipment, the best assets that the Navy can offer on this one.

STEVE MARSHALL: The AE1 was sent to New Guinea to fight the occupying German forces.

On September 14, 1914 it went out on patrol and never returned. To this day no one knows what became of the sub and its 35 crew.

An object previously detected by the Navy turned out to be a deceiving rock formation. However out of the tropical depths emerged something much more promising. This coral clad object might be part of the AE1.

SEAN ANDREWS, LIEUTENANT COMMANDER, HMAS YARRA COMMANDER: Apart from the shape, there are two distinct lips on the top of the target that look remarkably like the AE1's engineering and specification drawings. So I think this one's worthy of further investigation by experts ashore.

STEVE MARSHALL: The object was just out of reach for Yarra's Navy divers. However they could clearly see the shape from a safe depth.

SEAN ANDREWS: But then I saw what I thought were the conning towers.

JOHN FOSTER: May they rest forever more. Goodbye AE1.

STEVE MARSHALL: A sunset memorial service was held for those men long forgotten.

If experts do confirm that the objects below me is, in fact, the AEI, the Royal Australian Navy will treat the site as a war grave. Its exact location will be kept secret to protect it from trophy hunters.

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Saving Our Shipwrecks

2007-05-31T19:27:00.000+01:00

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Smithsonianmag.com
May 31, 2007

New technologies are aiding the search for one Civil War submarine, and the conservation of another

One was the Civil War's first submarine, the other was the first sub to take down an enemy ship. One sank en route to attack Charleston, South Carolina, the other sank after defending that same Confederate harbor. One rests somewhere along the shifting ocean floor, the other rests in a well-monitored laboratory tank.

One was the USS Alligator, which sank in April of 1863. The other was the H.L. Hunley, which plunged some ten months later. For all their differences, both Civil War submarines have a rapidly improving science of shipwrecks working in their favor. Advances in that field have helped researchers narrow the search for the missing Alligator and preserve the remains of the recently recovered Hunley.

"It's a good time to be a marine archaeologist," says Michael Overfield of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Since 2004, Overfield has been searching for the Alligator near Cape Hatteras, an area off the coast of North Carolina known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" for the abundance of ships it has consumed. Records indicate that's where the Alligator ended its promising but abortive existence.

Engineered by a French immigrant, the Alligator featured several innovative mechanisms, including a system for removing carbon dioxide from the vessel's interior and a chamber through which a diver could leave, plant a mine and return. The Union Navy considered the Alligator for several missions—most notably, a plan to destroy an important railroad bridge over the Appomattox River—but withdrew the submarine from each of them.

In late March of 1863, shortly after its capabilities had been demonstrated for President Abraham Lincoln, the Alligator headed toward a Confederate harbor in Charleston, towed by the USS Sumpter. On April 2, the tandem sailed full speed into a furious storm. "The Alligator was steering wildly and threatening to snap," the Sumpter's captain later wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. At around 6 p.m., the commanders agreed to cut the line, and the angry waves swept the submarine's signature green hull out of view.

Using letters and other primary sources, Overfield and his colleagues at the National Marine Sanctuary Program refined the search area to some 625 square nautical miles. From there, the crew had several new and improved tools to aid their mission. "It's almost like the computer industry," says Overfield. "Think about where we were ten years ago. Did we think we'd be where we are today?"

One of Overfield's options was a magnetometer, which surveys the floor for any magnetic signal—particularly useful when searching for an iron ship such as the Alligator. He also used side-scan sonar, which throws down an acoustic signal to create a picture of everything beneath the boat.

Though these tools have been around for decades, they are now much easier to control, he says. Others, however, have really emerged within the past five years.

Overfield has used what's known as an ROV—a remotely operated vehicle—to further investigate a large object picked up by a magnetometer. The device scours the ocean floor and videotapes the desired area, sparing the cost and danger of sending out a diver. When he wished to cover several targets of interest at once, Overfield employed an autonomous underwater vehicle. These archaeological stunt doubles can be programmed to search a particular area and are equipped with their own magnetometers and sonar.

Though Overfield's search for the Alligator continues, these tools have enabled him to dismiss certain areas where he once believed the ship to be. "That's not always a bad thing, to say 'she is not there,'" he says. "It increases the likelihood of finding her on the next mission, and that's what keeps me going."

Not far from where Overfield conducts his searchers, marine researchers at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in Charleston work to preserve the Hunley. In February of 1864, the Hunley became the first submarine to torpedo an enemy—bringing down the USS Housatonic, the largest Union ship among those blockading the Confederate harbor. At that time, such an attack required ramming a torpedo into an opposing ship's hull and backing away to trigger an explosion. The Hunley sank on its return voyage, however, and in the end lost more men (nine) than did the Housatonic (five).

More than a century later, a search team led by novelist Clive Cussler located the lost ship. With that obstacle out of the way, the problem became dislodging the vessel safely from beneath the ocean floor. "When you find something, it doesn't always mean you'll recover it," says Robert Neyland, who is head of underwater archaeology at the Naval Historical Center and directed the Hunley's recovery.

In August of 2000, Neyland and his colleagues successfully removed the submarine with the help of a unique system that cradled the Hunley with hard-setting foam, locking the ship in place. Once the sub broke the surface, saltwater sprinklers showered the vessel to protect it from damage caused by oxygen as it made its way to the conservation facility.

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Australian navy finds 'submarine' rock

2007-05-30T19:24:00.000+01:00

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radioaustralia.com

May 30, 2007

The Australian navy's hopes of finding a World War One submarine has suffered a setback.

A remote camera has shown that an underwater object found in waters near Rabaul, on the Papua New Guinea Island of New Britain in February is a large submarine-shaped rock.

Sailors thought they had found the AE1, Australia's first submarine, which disappeared in September 1914, with 35 crew aboard.

But the Minister Assisting the Minister for Defence, Bruce Billson says a further investigation, using underwater cameras, divers and a remotely operated vehicle has proven the object discovered in February was not the long lost submarine.

The disappearance of the AE1 has been one of Australia's enduring mysteries and was the nation's first major loss of life in World War One.

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Australian Navy Divers Survey Wreck of Japanese WWII Submarine

2007-05-23T10:01:00.000+01:00

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Bloomberg
By Ed Johnson
May 23, 2006

Australian navy divers surveying the sunken wreck of a Japanese midget submarine that attacked Sydney Harbor during World War II will present sand collected from the site to relatives of the two dead crewmen, the government said.

The M24 vessel was one of three Japanese submarines that raided the harbor in 1942 and fired torpedoes at U.S. and Australian ships.

Two of the submarines were destroyed and found within days of the attack. The fate of the third remained a mystery until it was discovered by amateur divers at Bungan Head, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of the harbor, in November.

``The submarine is of international historical significance and is presumed to still contain the remains of its commander and navigator, Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban and Petty Officer Mamoru Ashibe,'' said Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull in a statement yesterday. The sand collected from the seabed will be presented to their relatives later this year, he added.

The Japanese raid on May 31, 1942, killed 19 Australian and two British sailors when torpedoes hit the HMAS Kuttabul. The U.S. battle cruiser, USS Chicago, was unscathed.

One of the submarines became entangled in a defense net strung across the harbor and its crewmen blew themselves up along with the craft. The other was sunk by a depth-charge before it could fire its torpedoes.

The discovery of the wreck at Bungan Head has raised further questions about what happened in the hours after the attack, as the M24 was supposed to return to a mother-submarine waiting south of the harbor at Port Hacking.

Ocean Floor

The submarine is lying upright on the ocean floor and is mostly intact, although its shell has been damaged by commercial fishing trawling over the past 65 years, the Australian government said.

Navy divers mapped and surveyed the wreck two days ago and assessed possible battle damage and the status of undetonated scuttling charges, Turnbull said.

The government has declared the wreck site a protected zone to ensure the submarine and any human remains are not disturbed.

``We are committed to ensuring this internationally significant wreck is protected and treated with honor and respect,'' said Turnbull.

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Countersuit over finding Hunley thrown out

2007-05-17T14:06:00.000+01:00

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al.com
May 17, 2007

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge in South Carolina has dismissed a counterclaim in a lawsuit relating to the discovery of the Confederate submarine Hunley.

Author Clive Cussler had sued underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence in 2000. Cussler alleged Spence's claim of finding the sub injured the reputation of Cussler's National Underwater and Marine Agency.

Spence countersued in 2002, saying he suffered as much as 309 million dollars in damages because the discovery was credited to Cussler.

This week, U.S. District Judge Sol Blatt Junior dismissed the countersuit saying the statute of limitations on admiralty claims expired by the time Spence countersued.

Spence says his counterclaim was thrown out on a technicality and a jury next year will decide who is telling the truth about finding the sub.

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Help Support USS Lagarto Documentary

2007-05-15T16:46:00.000+01:00

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Zero Bubble
By Raymond Krause
May 15, 2007

The Wisconsin Maritime Museum is raising money in order to fund the completion of the USS Lagarto documentary which already includes footage of the recent dive on the wreck off the coast of Thailand by the Deep Sea Detective’s Richie Kohler and John Chatterton.

The money raised so far by the museum for the project was enough to fund the 2007 Thailand dive and now in order to move production along, including the addition of interviews with submarine veterans and other experts, they need to raise more money though donations and grants.

The museum is hoping to release the completed Lagarto documentary in time for the 2008 Memorial Day holiday.

If you would like more information about the project or would like to donate money to help out with the post-production, please contact Bob Allen, Development Director at the Manitowoc Maritime Museum at 1-866-724-2356 or 920-684-0218.

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Memories shared by Batfish crew members

2007-05-13T19:00:00.000+01:00

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Muskogee Phoenix

By Bess Warren

May 13, 2007

The last few remaining crew members who served on the USS Batfish during World War II gathered Saturday to honor all lost submarines and their crew members at the Muskogee War Memorial Park.

As recited during the service, a segment of the U.S. Navy branched out to become the Submarine Force in the 1940s. It was during this time that the USS Batfish was built and made her first war patrol.

Members of the original crew were present at the service, although there are only around 15 members left.

“We’re getting to that point where we are getting scarce,” Dick “Hershey” Hosler said.

Hosler, 85, of Endwell, N.Y., was a Torpedo Man Class II, on the Batfish in World War II. Before serving on the Batfish, Hosler was stationed on another submarine named Sandlance along with Jake Fife, who was the executive officer. Fife was made commander of the Batfish upon its completion and was transferred along with five other Sandlance crew members. Hosler was one of those five.

“The big thing for this ship was making history by sinking three subs in three days,” Hosler said. “It gave the Navy the impression that the best way to get a sub was with another submarine.”

All members of the 6th War Patrol of the Batfish received a presidential citation for the sinking of three Japanese submarines during the war. Hosler received that one as well as one while serving on the Sandlance.

“They were both very successful runs,” Hosler said.

The final members of this historical crew gathered on the ship again to take photographs and reminisce about their tenure on the boat.

Virgil “Blackie” Lawrence, 84, Modesto, Calif., recalled a close call one day aboard the submarine. Lawrence had loaded a special, sound-seeking torpedo into a chute. When the torpedo moved out, it only went 8 to 10 inches before stopping.

“It was stuck,” Lawrence said. “If we closed the door it would slam into the detonator and could have blown the other door off and could have flooded the room.”

Being the obedient serviceman, Lawrence followed his commander’s instructions and moved all the other crew members out of the room hesitantly closed the door, which ended up being successful.

“I cleared the room and shut the door before I could faint,” he said. “The captain had more brains than me. He had to make a decision.”

Each veteran had their own unique story, and the camaraderie was evident as they huddled together on the lawns of the park and listened attentively to each person’s recollection of their time aboard the Batfish.

The memorial service, hosted by the U.S. Submarine Veterans World War II and the U.S. Submarine Veterans Inc., included a roll call of 52 lost boats with each one being recognized with a bell toll and a placing of the flag on each memorial monument. The service was concluded with the sounding of the diving alarm and a gun salute by the VFW Post 474.

The USS Batfish is open to the public weekdays and Saturdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays noon to 4 p.m. with a small admission fee. For more information, call 682-6294 or visit www.ussbatfish.com.

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Council to hear U-Boat update

2007-05-09T16:41:00.000+01:00

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Derry Journal

May 9, 2007

AN UPDATE on ambitious plans to recover a sunken U-Boat off the coast of Inishowen will be given to Derry City Council this week.

Council members will hear about the progress of the first phase of the proposed project to raise the German U-Boat discovered off the coast of Malin Head, County Donegal.

A motion to Council (by Councillor Shaun Gallagher) recommended that Council officers investigate the possibility of raising the U-Boat, accessing national and international funding, and cross border funding and the formation of a roundtable discussion with interested local parties.

According to local divers in the North West, the U-Boat is in very good condition and some think that, if raised, the vessel could become a permanent fixture in the city as a tourist attraction and major heritage monument.

Council have written to Dublin’s Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government (National Monuments Section), which, it is thought, is responsible for the U-boat due to its current location. Any proposals are dependant on the Department’s response.

Before any more progress is made, the Department must determine whether the U-Boat is classed as an archaeological object under the National Monuments (Amendment) Act (1994), which covers the protection of wrecks and underwater archaeology.

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April 30, 1945: New Generation U-Boat Too Little, Too Late

2007-04-30T16:45:00.000+01:00

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Wired
By Tony Long
April 30, 2007

1945: In the waning days of World War II, U-2511, under Korvettenkapitan Adalbert Schnee, puts to sea from Bergen, Norway. It marks the first and only combat patrol by a Type XXI Elektroboot, the German U-boat that profoundly influenced modern submarine design.

Luckily for the Allies, production problems and limited shipyard capacity delayed the appearance of the Type XXI until Germany was literally in her death throes. Naval experts generally agree that had the boat been accorded a higher priority in the armaments pecking order and become operational a few years earlier, the Battle of the Atlantic might have turned out very differently.

While on patrol, Schnee had the opportunity to demonstrate the new boat’s ability to elude enemy detection technology. On May 4, U-2511 evaded a destroyer screen and closed to within 500 meters of the British cruiser HMS Norfolk without being picked up by sonar. Schnee went through the preparations for firing his torpedoes, lined up the target ... and then withdrew without attacking. Schnee had received the general cease-fire order a few hours earlier, a fact he mentioned to the incredulous (and presumably relieved) Norfolk's officers a few days later when he met them in Bergen after Germany’s surrender.

If Schnee knew he was commanding a special boat, the Allies realized it soon enough, too, when a number of these boats came into their possession at war's end. The Type XXI would be used as a prototype for the design of the Cold War generation of both U.S. and Soviet subs.

Displacing 1,620 tons and armed with six forward torpedo tubes, the boat's revolutionary technology centered mostly on her ability to remain submerged for up to 60 hours at a time. There were also quantum leaps in sonar and radar technology, an area where Germany had lagged throughout the war. Outwardly, the Type XXI's influence on modern designs can be seen in her streamlined hull, which sets her apart from any other World War II-era sub.

Not that any of that did U-2511 any good. She was surrendered to the British at the end of the war and scuttled off of Northern Ireland on Jan. 7, 1946, as part of Operation Deadlight.

(Source: Uboat.net)

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Lost and found: Chatterton, Kohler dive for clues to USS Lagarto sinking

2007-04-25T21:06:00.000+01:00

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CDNN

April 25, 2007

THAILAND -- When the USS Lagarto was launched on May 28, 1944, the submarine slid into the fresh water of the Manitowoc River to the sounds of a band and cheering from hundreds of residents of this small town in America's heartland.

When the Lagarto died less than a year later in the salt water of the Gulf of Thailand, it slipped beneath the waves and plunged to the bottom, trying to evade an enemy attack.

What the crew likely heard last were the clicking noises of depth charges followed by loud, percussive blasts.

Today, the Lagarto sits upright in 236 feet of water, looking as if a giant hand punched in the hull on the port side.

For six decades, no one knew what happened to the Lagarto and its crew of 86. Two years ago, a British diver discovered a submarine off Thailand, in an area where fishermen complained that their nets were snagging. Navy divers last year confirmed the wreck was the Lagarto.

For the crew's families, the discovery meant they finally knew where their loved ones' grave was located. What they didn't know was how the Lagarto plunged to its death or whether their loved ones died quickly.

To answer those questions, two well-known shipwreck divers journeyed to Thailand last month in an expedition sponsored by the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc to film the wreck and research the sinking.

Film from the expedition will be included in a documentary planned for 2008 chronicling the Lagarto's sinking and the submarine industry in Manitowoc. Some footage is to be shown at a USS Lagarto remembrance ceremony and gathering May 4 and 5 at the museum.

John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, who appeared in the popular History Channel series "Deep Sea Detectives," spent four days diving at the Lagarto last month. Chatterton is returning for more dives in a few weeks.

Chatterton and Kohler spent an hour on the bottom each time they visited the sunken sub. As they slowly descended through the water, the ship came into view, its periscope sticking up, covered in fishing nets and lying on a hard coral bottom. Since the sub was not sitting in sand or mud, they could see clearly.

"It looked like the submarine was sailing through a cloud. It was a touching moment," Kohler said in a phone interview from his New Jersey home.

All the hatches were closed, which meant there was no time for crew members to escape.

The rudder was turned hard to port, and the dive planes were set for a hard dive at the time the Lagarto was fatally wounded. The outer door to torpedo tube No. 4 was half-open. No torpedo was in the tube, indicating that the Lagarto had recently fired.

"The Lagarto went down swinging," Chatterton said.

Testing a theory

For the submarine to dive deep to escape its pursuer, all outer torpedo tube doors must be closed to make the ship watertight.

"If the depth charge detonates near them at the time the (outside) hatch is trying to close, it could blow the inside hatch off its hinges," Kohler said. That would have sent water gushing through the open torpedo tube and into the forward torpedo room.

When Chatterton returns to the sub next month, he's bringing a video camera affixed to an ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, to send into the 24-foot-long No. 4 torpedo tube to determine whether the inner door is open.

Because the wreck is a war grave, Chatterton and Kohler did not try to enter it, and the ROV will not be sent beyond the torpedo tube.

The divers saw a hole about 18 feet high and 8 to 9 feet wide on the port side, near the petty officers' quarters and forward torpedo room. The outer skin had been blown away and the inner hull dented in about 3 feet. The ballast and fuel tanks were damaged.

"But at the same time, the hull really held together. Obviously, it was a very well-built submarine," Chatterton said.

Frightening attack

A depth-charge attack on a submarine could be an excruciating and frightening experience.

Charlie Stewart survived one that lasted eight hours on Mother's Day 1945 on the USS Cobia, a submarine displayed at the museum in Manitowoc. Stewart, 81, volunteers as a guide on the Cobia in the summer.

After attacking two Japanese ships, the Cobia became trapped in only 120 feet of water in the Gulf of Siam, now the Gulf of Thailand, as the Japanese fired off barrel after barrel, he said.

With most of the lights, fans and life support systems off to quiet the sub, Stewart sat silently on a bunk in the aft torpedo room, where a dozen other sailors had sought refuge. As the temperature soared to 125 degrees, the men took off their uniforms and wrung the sweat out of their underwear.

"You'd hear a click, and that warned us that very soon after you'd hear a really big boom. We would hold our head in our knees," he said. "We never knew for sure whether the next boom was going to be the end of us."

Losing a husband

The Lagarto - named after the Spanish and Portuguese word for lizard - was last heard from on May 3, 1945.

A radio transmission from the Japanese minelayer Hatsutaka said it had sunk a U.S. sub in the area where the Lagarto had been on patrol, Kohler said. Military records show that another Manitowoc-built submarine, the USS Hawkbill, tracked down and sank the Hatsutaka. A life ring picked up by the Hawkbill crew from the Hatsutaka is now in the Maritime Museum's collection.

Among the 86 men on board the Lagarto was Harold A. Todd Jr., 25, a Wauwatosa native and lieutenant junior grade who became a father five weeks before the sub was lost. Rae Kinn, who is now 85 and lives in Oconomowoc, was his wife.

Kinn was living with her sister, whose husband also was fighting in the war. When the doorbell rang, Kinn looked out to see a man on a bicycle. In World War II, families were notified not by uniformed officers, but by Western Union telegram.

"I knew somebody was about to get bad news," she said. "It was for me. It took me a long time to open it."

Kinn and her husband lived in Manitowoc while the Lagarto went through its sea trials and the crew trained. She recalls watching as the captain's wife christened the sub with a bottle of champagne before the ship splashed sideways into the water.

The Navy told the Lagarto families only that the ship was missing. More than a year later, the sub and its crew were presumed dead. Kinn held out hope that the dashing young man she called Hal had somehow survived.

Eventually, she and her son moved on with their lives. Still, she always wondered what happened to her first love. When the Lagarto was finally found, "it was a nice kind of emotion," she said.

"That sounds strange," she said, "but it was nice to know where they ended up."

Last year, Kinn attended a Lagarto remembrance ceremony in Manitowoc and saw video shot by divers of the ship she remembered in all its gleaming glory six decades earlier.

"It was sitting upright like it just went down," she said. "There were seaweeds floating around it. It was a beautiful grave site. Much better than a hole in the ground."

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Submarine Cold War Under the Sea History Seminar “How Submarine Intelligence Collection Made a Difference - Lessons from the Past”

2007-04-06T15:14:00.000+01:00

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April 11, 2007, at the Navy Memorial, Washington D.C.

Registration for the 240 seats for the Cold War Under the Sea History Seminar, “How Submarine Intelligence Collection Made a Difference - Lessons Learned From the Past” is filling up fast.

This seminar promises to be an exciting program featuring VADM Roger Bacon, RADM Tom Brooks and Mr. Richard Haver. RADM Tom Evans is the Moderator. The seminar is sponsored by a generous grant from Northrop Grumman Marine Systems in Sunnyvale, CA, one of our Corporate Benefactors.

The seminar starts at 1830 with a reception and the program starts at 1900. The event is held at the U. S. Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave, NW, Washington DC and attendance is FREE but registration is required.

Please call the League at 703-256-0891 or email at subleague@cavtel.net.

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Chile to resume search for old sub

2007-04-05T12:51:00.000+01:00

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TVNZ.CO.NZ

April 05, 2007

The Chilean navy and marine scientists will try again next week to find Latin America's first submarine - a manually operated steel tube that sank off the coast of Chile 140 years ago.

A first attempt to locate the "Flach," designed in the 1860s by German immigrant Karl Flach, failed in December.

"Five days at sea were not enough," the organisers of the search said in statement.

This time, scientists and sailors will spend twice as long at sea with better resources. Sebastian Pinera, a Chilean billionaire who narrowly lost Chile's 2005 presidential election, is helping finance the project.

"The search for the Flach has become a debt which we owe our naval history and which must be paid," said the organisers.

They described the submarine as the first in Latin America and only the fifth in the world to make a successful underwater voyage.

Flach built his vessel at the request of the Chilean government to foil Spain's ambitions in the region. It made several successful test voyages in 1866.

But on May 3 of that year, it sank in the Bay of Valparaiso, 140km west of the capital Santiago. The crew - two Chileans, two Frenchmen and seven Germans, including Flach and his 15-year-old son - all died.

Three days later, the crew of a British frigate located the vessel and tried to raise it. But it was stuck fast in thick mud, some 50 metres (165 feet) below the surface.

Since then, no one has seen it.

The search team identified an area measuring roughly two square miles (5 square km) where they think the vessel lies. They checked 20% of it in December and will start to search the remainder next Wednesday.

Topped by two cannons and an entry hatch, the Flach relied on manpower to move. Crewmembers had to turn handles at the back of the vessel to power the propellers.

Before its launch, only the United States and a handful of European nations had successfully tested submarines.

"There's a high probability we'll find it," Pedro Pujante, a Spanish marine scientist involved in the project, told Reuters.

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The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of How America Broke the Final U-Boat Enigma Code

2007-03-30T13:10:00.000+01:00

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ECN
March 30, 2007

The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of How America Broke the Final U-Boat Enigma Code, by Jim DeBrosse and Colin Burke, Random House. 2005. $14.95. ISBN: 0-375-75995-6. (www.randomhouse.com)

During World War II, my father worked within the U.S. Army’s Signal Corp as part of a code-breaking group at Arlington Hall Station in Virginia. So, I heard many stories about codes, ciphers and cryptography. My dad ensured I received the latest code-breaking and military-intelligence books as birthday and Christmas presents. While on a recent trip, I found this interesting book and once I started reading, I could not put it down. Engineers with an interest in the origins of electronic computers and military history will enjoy this fascinating book. Even if you know much about the Ultra intercepts and their role in the Battle of the Atlantic, you will find new material here and a new perspective on American code-breaking work.

When books discuss breaking the Enigma codes used by German military services, they focus on efforts at the UK’s Bletchley Park and its electromechanical “Bombes,” built to decipher Enigma messages. Only recently have historians discovered the role the National Cash Register Company (NCR) had in building code-breaking machines at its facilities in Dayton, Ohio. Until the mid ‘90’s, most materials relate to the NCR efforts remained classified or buried in unindexed archives. Based on declassified materials and oral histories, the authors have put together the amazing story of how engineers at NCR developed decoding machines that contributed to the defeat of Hitler’s Germany.

In this book, the authors explore not only the technology behind the US-made Bombes but the people involved; from the lab workers who build prototypes and production equipment, to the U.S. Navy WAVES who kept the machines working, to people such as Joseph R. Desch, the chief engineer for the “U.S. Naval Computing Machinery Laboratory” at NCR. Their stories help readers experience the urgency that drives engineers and cryptanalysts to quickly solve problems and create working machines.

Although some history books describe cooperation between British and American code breakers and scientists, this book adds greatly to the analysis of collaborations and tensions between groups on both sides of the Atlantic. At many times in this story, the frustrations experienced by the various teams seem almost palpable.

Americans should understand the large role their citizens played in defeating the German submarines that threatened to cut off supplies to the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, much of the NCR work remains classified and little, if any, hardware from the original machines remains. As of the book’s publication, Building 26 remained in place, but marked only with a 60-word plaque placed by the IEEE. Thankfully, this book illuminates the heroic work of many people at NCR and in the military.

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Zylotech buoys to protect Japanese sub

2007-03-16T19:06:00.000Z

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The Sydney Morning Herald

March 16, 2007

High-tech buoys fitted with video and acoustic equipment, manufactured by Australian company Zylotech, have been purchased by the NSW government to protect a Japanese midget submarine recently discovered off the coast of Sydney.

A 500 metre protection zone was established around the sunken World War II midget M24 submarine after it was found by divers last November, 64 years after it disappeared following a Japanese attack on Sydney Harbour.

The NSW government now has purchased Zylotech's SeaWATCH Long Life Camera Sonobuoy to police the heritage site.

The sonobuoy contains acoustic and video surveillance technology to monitor and alert authorities of any incursion into the area.

In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, Zylotech chief executive officer Nicholas Sikiotis said the exposure the product would gain through the deal could be "pivotal" to securing other maritime surveillance work, such as on oil and gas platforms.

"With the SeaWATCH remote telemetry buoys, Zylotech is able to offer remote offshore multi-sensor platforms as well as seamless integration with land-based camera and vessel monitoring systems, such as AIS, allowing operators to access remote information from a distributed buoy/camera network," Mr Sikiotis said.

"This reference site could be pivotal in gaining further access to a wide range of maritime surveillance and marine research applications, including oil and gas platforms, aquaculture facilities, environmental monitoring, marine mammal research, defence and critical infrastructure facilities."

The M24 disappeared after three Japanese subs entered Sydney Harbour on May 1, 1942, in an attack that killed 19 Australian and two English sailors aboard the barracks ship HMAS Kuttabul.

The fate of the other two subs was always known, one of them blown up by her crew after it became entangled in a defensive boom net, and the other sunk by a depth charge.

But the M24 escaped, and its whereabouts had remained a mystery until a group of divers found the submarine off Sydney's northern beaches.

The wreck now is protected under the federal Historic Shipwrecks Act and NSW Heritage Act.

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SEARCH FOR CHILE’S FIRST SUBMARINE TO CONTINUE

2007-03-14T20:40:00.000Z

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The Valparaiso Times
By Benjamin Witte

March 14, 2007

Three months ago documentary filmmaker Juan Enrique Benítez, working with a team of scientists, historians and Navy divers, took to the waters of Valparaiso Bay in a bid to make history – or at least to uncover it. Their mission: locate the missing Flach, an early submarine prototype (considered Latin America’s first) that in 1866 sank to the harbor floor with 11 crewmembers on board (ST, Dec. 15, 2006).

Going into the five-day, mid-December search Benítez, the driving force behind the odd endeavor, had already dedicated more than a year to the quest. Critics called it a wild goose chase. Still, the eccentric filmmaker was determined and this time around, he felt convinced that the end of his search was finally near. He and his collaborators were finally going to find the elusive Flach.

"I went through a whole series of very, very strong emotions," Benítez recently told the Santiago Times. "Several times we thought we’d found it. All that adrenaline, thinking ‘I can’t believe it. This is incredible. We’re finally going to find this thing that’s been lost for so long, forgotten by history. We’re going to rescue it and give it the place it deserves in history.’"

For nearly a week the team attempted to do just that. Working in pairs, divers descended over and over again into the Bay’s dark, frigid waters. They made some interesting finds. Six times the divers stumbled upon previously unregistered shipwrecks, among them an ornate and well-preserved
century clipper. Aware that the clock was ticking, however, Benítez urged the divers not to waste too much time on the accidental finds. Instead he pleaded with them to stay focused, to keep looking.

In the end, the divers were not able to locate the Flach. As the fifth and final day of the expensive search came to a close, Benítez was forced to admit defeat.

"When we didn’t find it," the eccentric sub seeker explained, "I felt a huge sense of frustration, of deep sadness. Alone in my car, at about 6 p.m., I headed back (to Santiago). The last dive had come to an end. All the reporters were calling me, asking me how I was, how I felt. I didn’t want to answer. I wanted time to reflect on it all."

It was then, during that moment of reflection, that Benítez experienced something of a revelation. Driving alone along Route 68, the gray-haired filmmaker received what he now describes as a direct message from the very man who created the one-of-a-kind submarine: Karl Flach himself.

"The idea (of the message) was that there was no way it would only take me five days to find something so important, in which 11 people died, something that involved such an enormous effort (to build). This search was going to be difficult. Our effort was going to have to somehow measure up to all that... And so I said to myself, ‘go for it. Keep going for it. Stay with it. We’re getting closer.’"

Between 1864 and 1866 Chile and Peru were embroiled in a war with Spain that began when the later seized Peru’s guano-rich Chincha Islands. As part of the war effort, then Chilean President José Joaquín Pérez commissioned the construction of a submarine, only a few of which had ever been built anywhere in the world.

The president’s request actually resulted in two submarine prototypes – one designed and built by a man named Gustavo Heyermann, the other by Flach. Heyermann’s vessel, unfortunately, sank on its maiden voyage. Flach’s sub, however, seemed to work quite well – at least during several days of initial testing.

Designed to protect Valapariso harbor from attack (the Spanish fleet in fact bombarded and leveled the city on Jan. 31, 1866), Flach’s pedal-powered submarine was equipped with two cannons, one built right into the nose of the vessel. Constructed entirely of steel, it was 12.5 meters long, 1.5 meters wide and weighed an estimated 100 tons.

Then, on May 3, 1866, Flach, his 11-year-old son and nine other crewmembers boarded the doomed submarine for what would be its final voyage. Something went horribly wrong and the heavy machine sank to the ocean floor, condemning all 11 people to Davey Jones’ proverbial locker.

Benítez first learned about the tragedy only about a year-and-a-half ago – through a man called Salvador Villanueva, a Chilean inventor he met while working on a television program called "De Mentes Geniales." (Ed. note: the title of the program is a Spanish play on words, meaning both ‘Mad Geniuses’ or ‘Of Brilliant Minds’)

"He seemed to me to be a demente genial (a mad genius), someone who would be perfect for the show," according to Benítez. "Then (Villanueva) said to me, ‘no, there’s something even crazier, even more brilliant that’s located in the middle of Valparaiso Bay. It’s Latin America’s first submarine, which sank 140 years with 11 people on board. And no one has ever looked for it.’"

Benítez, attracted in large part to the sheer madness of it all, decided to do just that – to set out in search of the sub. The result has been months and months of research, fundraising, filming, interviewing and, most recently, actual exploration of the bay. He convinced companies like Subaru and Lider to invest. He brought the Chilean Navy on board. At one point he even visited a psychic, to bring in, he said, a paranormal angle to the story.

"The psychic corroborated everything," said Benítez. "She said to me, ‘I don’t look for objects. I don’t have that ability. I don’t look for trucks, or cargo containers. I don’t look for treasure. And I don’t look for submarines. Because I can’t perceive objects, only people.’ And I said, ‘Inside this submarine there are 11 people who have been dead for 140 years.’ Then she was able to corroborate exactly the same information that we also had; that it was located 50 meters down, that it was near the coastline, etc."

Now, despite his disappointment over the failed December search, Benítez is ready to try again. With the assured cooperation of the Navy, the Santiago-based Universidad Internacional SEK – which happens to have a department dedicated exclusively to sub-aquatic archeology – and the continued support of their corporate sponsors, the team is preparing to resume the search starting in early April.

This time around Benítez is even more confident he’ll finally locate the missing Flach. For starters, the team will be using twice the number of divers and spending twice the number of days out on the water. They’ve also, through trial and error, improved their search techniques, according to Benítez.

"We’re now going to make corrections, improve and optimize our search," he said. "First off, the divers are very motivated. Their instructions usually involve things like going down and removing a mine, things that aren’t all that exciting. Now they’re moved by this very historic, very (Jaques) Cousteau-like spirit. They’re hungry."

The team also comes armed with some new – and potentially valuable – historical clues. Benítez was recently able to acquire a copy of a letter written by the commander of the HMS Leander, a British naval ship that was anchored in Valparaiso Bay on the day the Flach sank. The commander, a man named Michael de Courcy, witnessed the tragedy and, in the letter now in Benítez’ possession, details the exact location the Flach went down.

"This letter is incredible. Incredible," said Benítez. "I have three pages. There are more. Everything’s written here. The inches, the position, it has everything... and the letter comes with a map and a drawing of the submarine."

"We’re absolutely convinced," he added. "The likelihood of finding it now is very high."

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The sinking of a C3 submarine in the Strait remembered in Málaga Film Festival

2007-03-13T20:56:00.000Z

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TypicallySpanish.com
March 13, 2007

An interesting film in the documentary section of the continuing Film Festival in Málaga.

‘Operación Úrsula’, from MLK Producciones, is directed by José Antonio Hergueta, and co-produced by Canal Sur Television.

It tells the story of a republican C3 submarine which was sunk in the Strait of Gibraltar while carrying out a secret mission in 1936. It was hit by torpedoes from a U-34 Nazi vessel, and 37 of the 40 crew on board lost their lives.

The 100 minute long documentary is voiced by well-known Spanish actor, José Coronado, and covers one of the least known events of the Spanish Civil War.

It interviews the families of some of those to lose their lives. Their remains remain on the sea bed.

The film competes against 17 other documentaries in the current Málaga Film Festival.

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After nine decades, lost sub may have been found

2007-03-02T09:51:00.000Z

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The Age
By Brendan Nicholson
March 02, 2007

SEVERAL of Australia's neighbours are building up fleets of submarines — but Australia may have added one to its fleet, with the possible discovery of the nation's first sub in Papua New Guinea waters.

On August 11, 1914, five days after Australia declared war on Germany in World War I, the submarine AE1 was sent to a PNG island, which was a German possession. But on September 14, it vanished without trace, possibly due to an accident, taking with it its 35 crewmen.

Nine decades later, HMAS Benalla and HMAS Shepparton are searching for the AE1, and may have found it.

Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Billson said yesterday he was cautiously optimistic an object detected during the search was the AE1, and further work would be done when "operational commitments permit".

Ancient subs aside, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says that today's navy is not equipped to deal with the regional build-up.

Institute analyst Dr Andrew Davies warned that regional fleets could threaten Australia's maritime movements and the safety of Australia itself.

" Submarines will be able to seriously threaten the operation of surface fleets and commercial trade," he said. "Australia simply cannot expect to be able to conduct major naval operations in waters patrolled by submarines without a major upgrade to its anti-submarine warfare capabilities."

China and India are working on building their own nuclear submarines and China's large fleet of conventional submarines is set to double to 40 in 10 years.

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Sub missing since 1915 may be found

2007-03-01T09:54:00.000Z

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The Age
March 01, 2007

Australia's first submarine, missing with all hands since the start of World War I, may have been found in Papua New Guinea waters.

Veterans Affairs Minister Bruce Billson said he was cautiously optimistic an object detected by the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) survey ship HMAS Benalla on the sea floor off the island of New Britain was the wreckage of AE1.

But he cautioned that it was early days.

"Further investigation using a remotely operated vehicle with imaging capabilities will be necessary to positively identify the object found by Benalla,'' he said in a statement.

"The RAN is looking at options to deploy a mine hunting vessel to the area when operational commitments permit to determine whether the object is in fact a wreck.''

The disappearance of AE1 with all 35 crewmen was Australia's first major loss of World War I.

Like the loss of HMAS Sydney in World War II, the sinking of AE1 in 1914 remains a complete mystery.

AE1's sister ship AE2 is far better known. This vessel managed to penetrate the Dardanelles during the Gallipoli campaign and was lost in the Sea of Marmara on April 30, 1915. AE2's wreckage was located in 1998.

Australia purchased both vessels from Britain before World War I and they were commissioned into Australian service at Portsmouth on February 28, 1914. Both were commanded by British officers with a mixture of British and Australian crew members.

Both set sail for Australia in March and arrived in Sydney on May 24, 1914.

On August 11, 1914 - five days after Australia declared war on Germany - AE1 was dispatched to support operations against German forces on New Britain, then a German possession.

Patrolling off the east coast of the Duke Of York Islands on September 14, AE1 vanished without trace. A brief search revealed no sign of the vessel.

The search mounted this week by Benalla and HMAS Shepparton was aided by the work of retired navy commander John Foster who researched the loss of AE1 over the past 30 years.

His research suggested the vessel sank in a particular area, most likely from an accident rather than enemy action.

Mr Billson said the search was conducted over the last two days using a towed side scan sonar.

He said Benalla discovered what appeared to be a man-made object approximately 25-30 metres long and four metres high.

To protect the site pending a further survey, no further details of the location will be revealed.

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U-boat off Malin Head Salvage Plan

2007-02-28T17:24:00.000Z

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Movilleinishowen.com

February 2007

Geoff Millar, Derry diver, announced that a plan was launched to salvage a German WWII U-boat from the seabed off Malin Head last week. Geoff said "There's a type 1 U-boat U778 that is in pristine condition in 70 metres deep water 16 miles northwest of Malin Head that should be raised. He went on to say "I've spoken to Derry city councillor Sean Gallagher and he is trying to get a motion passed at council promising support. I sought funding from the Inishowen Rural Development scheme some time ago, but they didn't have the resources to help."

Mr. Millar said there is huge potential for tourism. "Divers from all over the world come to Inishowen. "There are more sunken oceangoing liners off the coast of Inishowen than anywhere else in the world. Lots of B & B's near Malin are filled with foreign divers in the summer." he said.

116 U-boats were sunk in deep waters off Malin, after the German U-boat fleet surrendered to British Admiral Sir Max Horton at Lisahally on the Foyle on May 14th 1945. The closest U-boat to the coast is U861, three miles northwest of Malin Head and in water 43 metres deep. Unfortunately it has broken into three pieces and can't be raised. Another vessel favoured by divers is U1271, eight miles off shore in 56 metres deep. It is hoped the raised vessel will be housed in a museum as an educational aid. The German authorities may all be asked to assist the project. So far only two U-boats have been brought up from the seabed and preserved for public display in Europe - one in Birkenhead in England and another in Germany.

For more information visit www.divenorth.com

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German writer of ‘Das Boot’ dies at 89

2007-02-24T10:20:00.000Z

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BostonHerald.com
February 24, 2007

Lothar-Guenther Buchheim

BERLIN - The German war correspondent whose U-boat memoir was adapated into the movie “Das Boot” has died at the age of 89.

Lothar-Guenther Buchheim was acclaimed for his works of fiction and nonfiction, including several about his World War II patrol aboard U-96 in the Atlantic Ocean in 1941. He crafted that experience into the novel “Das Boot,” or “The Boat,” published in 1973.

In 1981, the book was turned into the international hit film starring Juergen Prochnow that detailed the stress of the undersea war.

Buchheim served in the German navy as a reporter in World War II, taking part in U-boat operations for propaganda purposes. He later wrote a short story, “Die Eichenlaubfahrt,” or “The Oak Leaves Patrol,” as well as “Das Boot.” He also wrote a three-volume nonfiction work, “U-Boat Krieg,” or “U-Boat War.” His other works included “The Fortress” and “The Parting,” but it was “Das Boot” that seared itself into the German consciousness and gained worldwide fame.

The U-96 was commissioned in September 1940 and went on 11 patrols without suffering any casualties before it was sunk in March 1945 during a U.S. bombing raid on Wilhelmshaven. More than three-quarters of Germany’s 39,000 U-boat sailors were lost in action against the Allies.

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Retired Submarine, 63, Seeks Loving New Home

2007-02-12T15:40:00.000Z

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Going Coastal
By John Holl
February 12, 2007

AFTER decades of service, the U.S.S. Ling SS-297, a World War II submarine, is docked here along the Hackensack River next to a parking lot and across the street from an auto supply store.

While the Ling never saw combat and spent most of its active career in Connecticut as part of the Atlantic reserve fleet and then as a training vessel, today it is the star attraction of the New Jersey Naval Museum. The museum, which has a building about the size of a double-wide trailer, also has a few deactivated missiles and torpedoes — including one whose nose recently fell off — and other retired vessels.

“We may not look active, but we really are,” Thomas Coulson, the museum treasurer, said during a recent tour of the submarine and the museum.

Since 1972 the museum has paid $1 a year to lease a patch of land adjacent to the river from the North Jersey Media Group, which owns The Record of Bergen County. But last month, Malcolm A. Borg, the chairman of the media group, told the museum that he planned to sell the 25-acre property to developers and that the Ling would have to leave within a year.

There will be no battle, no fights to stay on the site. Instead, the governing members of the museum — mostly retired sailors or submariners themselves — say they see the move as a challenge. Their big problem is where the Ling and the museum will wind up.

The group has spoken to the naval museum in New London, Conn., and written to the operators of the U.S.S. New Jersey, a decommissioned battleship that is docked on the Camden waterfront.

The Ling, a Balao Class diesel-powered submarine, was launched on Aug. 15, 1943; slept nearly 85 men; could reach 21 knots (about 24 miles an hour) and dive to 412 feet; and carried 24 torpedoes, each weighing about 3,000 pounds.

“It deserves to be seen,” said Joseph A. McDevitt, the vice president of the New Jersey Naval Museum. He said he would like to have the submarine and museum moved to the Meadowlands, where it would be easily accessible to people throughout the New York metropolitan area.

But money will be a factor. With the museum having roughly 10,000 visitors a year and an annual operating budget of about $75,000, its backers do not have the money for a move. Plus, moving the Ling out will not be as easy as getting it in.

In the early 1970s, when the Ling was floated up to the museum, backward, the Hackensack River was a different place.

Container ships brought paper for The Record’s printing presses, and a factory across from the museum relied on ships to haul cargo. No cargo ships serve the area now.

“She still floats,” Mr. Coulson said of the Ling. “We’re sure of that. But the river silted up, so we’ll need to get the Army Corps of Engineers in here to dredge the Hackensack.”

Dennis McNerney, the Bergen County executive, called the Ling “a piece of America” and said he was committed to helping the museum find a new home within the county.

If it can happen, moving to a new location might be good for the Ling and the museum. After 34 years in Hackensack, attendance is down, museum officials say. Its Web site, njnm.com, says the museum is open on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. but advises people to call ahead first “to confirm that the museum will be open.”

While the submarine and the museum were open on the first weekend in February, fewer than 10 people stopped to visit.

“If the move does not happen,” Mr. McDevitt said, “the whole thing will be demolished — the wrecking ball.”

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Pampanito declared ship-shape and ready for S.F. museum duty

2007-02-09T15:43:00.000Z

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Topix.net
February 09, 2007

Even the air pressure of the periscope tube -- which helps send it shooting above the ocean's surface -- was checked as part of the makeover the USS Pampanito has been undergoing in Alameda.

That was among the easiest jobs.

Workers at Bay Ship & Yacht Co. also blasted an estimated 40 cubic yards of barnacles and other sea growth from the hull of the famed World War II submarine, which usually rests along Pier 45 at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco.

With the work now wrapped up, the Pampanito is set to leave the dry-dock along the Oakland-Alameda Estuary early today and make its way back to the spot where it sits as a floating museum.

'There were no major surprises,' said David Rasmussen, who managed the restoration. 'Of course, you always have to expect something, but that's part of the job.'

The Pampanito will not travel to San Francisco under its own power, however.

The U.S. Navy removed its propellers when it handed over the submarine to the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, and so tugboats will guide it back across the Bay.

During the restoration the hull got a fresh coat of gray and black paint, making the Pampanito look almost as crisp as it did that November day it was commissioned in 1943.

The cramped interior of the 311-foot submarine also got new paint job as part of the spruce-up, which happens every seven years and will cost about $250,000.

Len Vaden spent Wednesday aboard the boat installing a water heater -- one salvaged from another vintage submarine, the USS Sailfish.

It's a necessary piece of equipment because Boy Scouts routinely spend the night aboard the Pampanito on field trips, said Vaden, who has been volunteering at the submarine for 26 years.

'It's just neat to hear the history and the stories of the guys who served aboard this sub,' said Vaden, a Dublin resident and U.S. Navy veteran.

The Pampanito sank six enemy ships and damaged four others during World War II. Its crew also rescued 73 POWs from the waters of the Pacific after the Pampanito attacked a convoy carrying war materials to Japan -- not knowing hundreds of British and Australian prisoners were aboard.

With the Pampanito now a museum, every one of the approximately two dozen chunks of rusting metal that were removed from the submarine were saved. Some of it came from the gun turret.

'They want to be able to archive it and catalog it,' Rasmussen said about the museum operators. 'They want to know what was there and what we've taken out.'

A Balao class submarine, the Pampanito displaces 2,415 tons when submerged. It opened as a museum in 1982.

'We could not have asked for anything more,' said Aaron Washington, the Pampanito's manager, about the restoration. 'We're extremely pleased.'

The job has been a labor of love, Rasmussen said.

A Navy veteran himself, Rasmussen served aboard another submarine, the USS Daniel Boone, from 1976 until 1981.

'It brought back memories,' Rasmussen said about the project. 'Especially being able to walk everywhere and compare the technology then with the modern boats.'

He considers the restoration a tribute to the sailors from another era.

'This is all about the men who served on the Pampanito,' Rasmussen said.

To celebrate the Pampanito's return to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, the museum will offer free admission on Saturday. For more information on the submarine and its history, visit www.maritime.org.

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Soviet-era submarine sinks near Denmark

2007-02-06T15:54:00.000Z

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nsnet.com
February 06, 2007

A Soviet-era submarine being towed to a museum in Thailand has sunk near Denmark. The Whiskey class sub was being tugged from a Polish shipyard. It began taking on water about 34 miles from the Danish coast, and the tugboat crew had to disconnect the towing cable as the boat sank.

There were no people, arms or fuel on board, and the vessel does not pose an environmental hazard. However, because the submarine sank in a busy area, it represents a potential obstacle to navigation, and authorities have promised to salvage it.

More than 200 diesel electric submarines of Project 613 (Whiskey class) were built in the Soviet Union between 1949 and 1957, based on German Type XXI submarines.

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Her Happy Discovery, the Find of His Career

2007-01-03T12:14:00.000Z

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Washington Post
By Michael E. Ruane
January 03, 2007

Archivist Confirmed That U-Boat Captain Learned of Daughter's Birth Just Before His Death

Archivist Timothy P. Mulligan was back in the stacks that day, running down a long shot.

A National Archives expert on German submarines, Mulligan already had found for a Virginia woman detailed records of her father's service as a U-boat skipper during World War II. But the woman said she still wondered if her father was aware she had been born just before his boat was sunk near Iceland in 1943.

Mulligan knew that the Allies had broken the German naval code during the war, and that the archives had copies of intercepted messages to the U-boats. Maybe headquarters had radioed the skipper about his daughter. Commanders did such things.

Maybe . . .

Mulligan, 56, of Lanham, told the story recently as he approached his retirement today after 34 years of work in the archives. He has written two books about U-boats, helped other scholars research the subject for years, and has written a guide that summarizes the stories of 889 of the German submarines that preyed on Allied shipping during World War II.

But his coup more than 20 years ago -- finding a single decoded radio message for a woman seeking to discover the father she never knew -- was, he said, his most gratifying moment.

Amid the gray filing boxes, on the gray shelves, in the orderly sameness of a records repository, it was a researcher's grand slam.

The story began in 1981 with the release of the German movie "Das Boot" (the Boat), that depicted the squalid and terrifying life of a U-boat crew. When Mulligan was interviewed about the movie for a story in The Washington Post, his comments caught the attention of Reston's Inge Molzahn, a German native whose father, Hans Karpf, had been the captain of U-632, one of hundreds of boats sunk by the Allies in the north Atlantic Ocean.

Molzahn, then 39, called Mulligan and told him her story: She had been born after her father left on his last patrol, but just a few weeks before his boat was sunk by a British bomber off the coast of Iceland on April 6, 1943. After the war, she and her mother left Germany for Argentina. Her mother had remarried, and talk of her father was discouraged. "It was not allowed for me to say anything about my father," Molzahn said in a recent interview in her home.

Now she was desperate for information about the man relatives said she so resembled. She said she had little more than some old snapshots depicting a boyish-looking naval officer in an oversized cap, a handful of war medals and letters her father wrote to her mother.

Mulligan knew that the archives had reams of German naval war documents that had been recovered by the Allies in a castle in Germany where they had been sent for storage. Mulligan, who had a doctorate in European history, had become an avid student of U-boat crews, traveling to Germany to interview hundreds of sailors and writing about the working-class submariners and their skippers.

"It's such an extraordinary form of warfare," he said.

Mulligan, a dapper man who started at the archives in 1972, grew up in the Washington suburbs and has been fascinated by history since he was a child. He speaks in the subdued voice required by libraries, but one which is infused with drama when telling a story. In recent years he has worked at the archives' facility in College Park.

He quickly tracked down data on Lt. Karpf and U-632, a 220-foot-long type VIIC boat with a crew of 48, no shower and one usable bathroom. It was the same kind of boat depicted in the movie. Mulligan turned up one patrol diary penned by the skipper and another compiled by his superiors after he was lost.

Karpf, then 27, had served on two other boats, but had taken U-632 on only two combat patrols and had claimed only two ships before being sunk while stalking a heavily guarded Allied convoy.
This was typical, Mulligan said. Many U-boats failed to survive even one patrol, and others were sunk before firing a single torpedo.

"The most common experience aboard a German U-boat was to go out and be sunk with all hands before you ever fired a shot," he said. Two-thirds of the roughly 48,000 German submariners in the war were killed in action, he said.

Molzahn was happy to get Mulligan's information. "At least it showed details of what had happened," he said. "It's gripping."

But Mulligan also wanted to check the intercepted messages. "I didn't tell her," he said. "I didn't know what I would find." Then working in the main archives building in the District, he began poring over the dozens of messages from headquarters to U-632. Most were about technical details of combat.

But then he found something else. On March 24, 1943, Karpf's flotilla headquarters had sent him a simple message: "Hero daughter born on 18 March. Congratulations." There it was. Fourteen days before his death, the skipper learned he had a child.

"Wow," Mulligan said he thought. He called Molzahn immediately. "Guess what I found," he said.

She was stunned. "It was extremely important," she said last week, a small but crucial piece to the story of her life.

Now 63, she said she has long been grateful to Mulligan.

"For me, he's an incredible person," she said. "He opened this whole door for me, this whole knowledge. I would have never found out all this. That's all thanks to him."

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

A voyage to the bottom of the sea

2006-12-31T11:28:00.000Z

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The Boston Globe
By Ralph Ranalli
December 31, 2006

The USS Grunion in March 1942. The submarine disappeared
later that year. (electric boat co./bruce abele).

This summer, Newton resident Bruce Abele, son of World War II submarine commander Mannert L. "Jim" Abele, and his two brothers discovered a wreck off the coast of Alaska's Aleutian Islands that they believe to be the USS Grunion, their father's submarine, which had been missing since its maiden voyage in July 1942.

Aided by volunteers, the Abele family has located relatives of 64 of the Grunion's 70 crew members to tell them about the discovery. In one case, the family of a missing crewman was reunited with a long-lost sister who had entered a religious order after the nun called to inquire about the submarine. The search effort -- bankrolled by brother John Abele, the billionaire founder of Boston Scientific Corp. -- is to resume in August. The wreck, which is about a mile deep, was discovered using side-scan sonar. Bruce Abele said the searchers will use a robotic submersible armed with video cameras for a better look. "I think we'll be able to identify it [the submarine] in black and white," he said, "but I am still not sure we will be able to figure out what happened."

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Futuristic sub was scrapped in 1936

2006-12-28T11:53:00.000Z

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icWales
By Sam Burson
December 28, 2006

A WELSH historian is hoping to solve the "political murder" of one of the most advanced submarines of its time, 70 years after the clandestine event at a Welsh port.

The X1, a triumph of British naval engineering, would have been a major force in the Second World War, according to Roger Cook, from Swansea.

But it was dismantled unceremoniously off the Pembrokeshire coast before the conflict even got under way.

Mr Cook, who has become fascinated by the history and demise of the X1, on which he is writing a book, is now hoping people from the Milford Haven area may still be able to offer clues.

He says he has discovered that, despite its size and awesome firepower, politicians were always a much bigger threat to the craft's survival than a depth charge could ever be.

The huge vessel was as big a political embarrassment to the UK's diplomats as it could have been a destroyer of enemy convoys.

Mr Cook, from Sketty, said, "It was too good for its own good.

"It was exactly the sort of thing that everybody had just agreed not to build so the Government at the time was never its biggest fan."

According to Mr Cook, who has recently moved to north-east France to work as a historical tour guide, the mystery began some time after the First World War when the so-called civilised countries were desperate to put the brakes on arms races.

Nations were finding military costs growing out of control.

A reduction in the construction of huge battleships was a major issue in diplomatic deals made at the time.

The destructive capability and massive cost of building them meant they were obvious targets.

Britain signed up to the Washington disarmament treaty, as did all the victorious forces after 1918.

But what UK leaders kept under their hats were details of the Admiralty's latest project.

While submarines were not altogether banned by the treaty, their use against merchant ships was - and it was for just this deadly purpose the X1 had been crafted.

It was armed well enough to take on any warships protecting merchant convoys, before catching and sinking the convoys themselves.

No surprise, perhaps, to find that, after her secret launch in 1923, the Government was forced to take a national newspaper to court over pictures of the new craft.

The blurred photos meant all copies of the paper were seized, as the Government barely managed to keep it under wraps. And it was decommissioned in Milford Haven in 1936, dismantled and largely forgotten by the time global conflict broke out again in 1939. Mr Cook believes it would have been a valuable weapon against the Nazis but the timing was all wrong for the British Government.

"(In the early 1930s) they had just agreed this disarmament treaty and what they did was to go and build the biggest sub in the world," said Mr Cook.

"They were pretty anxious about anybody finding out."

George Malcolm, a spokesman for the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport, was thrilled about Mr Cook's book. He said, "Any research done which brings a submarine story before the public is always welcomed by us."

But Mr Malcolm said the X1 is currently remembered as a failure.

He said, "It is remembered mainly as a bit of a white elephant. It was designed to remain at sea for long periods of time and had enough guns to engage a destroyer. It was the biggest submarine in the world at the time but it was tactically flawed."

"If you're going to have a submarine that size, and that well armed, you may as well just have a surface ship."

Constant power failures also hampered the sub's potential.

Its huge diesel engines were forever on the blink and the sub only ever got up to its impressive top speed for a few minutes during its entire time at sea. But Mr Cook, currently completing a book about an alternative ending to the Second World War, is convinced the machine could have been a success, if given just a little bit of TLC.

He said, "What was not foreseen was how much of an impact the X1 could have had just a few years after it was decommissioned in 1936.

"It would have been ideal for use in the Second World War, in the Far East. But it was the unfortunate victim of what looks like a political murder."

Have you known anyone who worked on decommissioning the X1 in Milford Haven in 1936, or where the tonnes of metal and steel went after it was taken apart? Email Sam.Burson@wme.co.uk

The X1 - The silent killer that never was

At the time, it was the largest, fastest, deepest-diving, and most heavily armed submarine in the world.

Length: 363.5 feet.

Maximum Speed: 19.5 notts surfaced, nine notts submerged.

Range: 12,400 nautical miles (surfaced).

Abilities: Could dive with much more control than previous submarines, which often plunged into the sea bed. The craft was much more manoeuvrable underwater than anything that had come before and could surface at will. It was a model which big nuclear subs later came to use.

Weaponry: The first hunter-killer submarine, it carried two twin power-operated gun turrets, operated by power hoists and a control tower, as on a surface cruiser. Hydrophones and active sonar could pinpoint enemies. A mechanical computer would control the firing of the 70lb shells. If anything was too big to attack with guns, a salvo of six 21-inch torpedoes could be unleashed from below the water. It also had four machine guns.

Targets: It was designed to target complete enemy convoys. After disposing of the escort destroyers, the X1 was designed to use all engines to outstrip any fleeing ships.

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Smiley leading efforts to raise funds for U.S.S. Indianapolis memorial

2006-12-28T08:09:00.000Z

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The Daily World
By Nick Schneider
December 28, 2006

A Linton resident is heading up a national fundraising effort to provide the money needed for the construction of a permanent memorial honoring the U.S.S. Indianapolis SSN-697 submarine.

The proposed memorial would be located near the current U.S.S. Indianapolis cruiser CA-35 monument - the other major U.S. Naval vessel that bears the name of Indiana's capital city.

Bob E. Smiley, Ph.D., a retired Indiana State University business and marketing professor, said $100,000 is needed by the United States Submarine Veterans, Inc. (USSVI) - a Hoosier Base organization to move parts from the decommissioned submarine in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state and mount them on a specially designed memorial along the downtown Indianapolis canal walkway.

Smiley, who has lived in Linton since 2000, is the USSVI-Hoosier Base treasurer and chairman of the monument committee.

The USSVI is an all-volunteer 12,000 member organization based in Silverdale, Wash. The Hoosier base is located in Indianapolis and has 118 members.

“We want to have this monument in place alongside the CA-35 cruiser monument so that the folks of Indiana will know that there was more than one warship named for our capital,” Smiley told The Daily World on Wednesday evening.

Smiley, who served on the U.S.S. Toro submarine from 1957-59, said a “pass-through” account has been established with the Greene County Foundation to accept tax-deductible donations to this project.

The U.S.S. Indianapolis SSN 697 is a nuclear-powered Los Angeles-class submarine that was commissioned Jan. 5, 1980 and decommissioned nearly 19 years later Dec. 22, 1998.

The fund drive, which is being done in cooperation with the Indiana Department of Veteran's Affairs and the Indiana War Memorial Commission, started in November and he hopes to reach the goal by Dec. 1, 2007.

Smiley said the U.S.S. Indianapolis submarine is less famous than the World War II vintage U.S.S. Indianapolis (CA-35) Portland-class heavy cruiser. She holds a place in history due to the notorious circumstances of her loss, which was the worst single at-sea loss of life in the history of the U.S. Navy.

After delivering the first atomic bomb to be used in combat to the United States air base at Tinian Island in July 1945, she was in the Philippine Sea when attacked at July 30, 1945 by a Japanese submarine. Most of the crew was lost to shark attacks, as they floated helplessly for several days, waiting for assistance. The Indianapolis was the last U.S. Navy ship sunk by enemy action in World War II.

“We are working to get land near the U.S. Indianapolis cruiser memorial on the Indianapolis canal walk,” Smiley said. “We will bring the external components - that's the sail and the rudder. The hull will be simulated using concrete. It will look like the submarine is sitting there.”

The sea history of the U.S. Indianapolis submarine is somewhat secretive - because it completed its 10 missions during the “Cold War” era, according to Smiley.

This was also the first time that a U.S. Submarine Group Submarine Assistance Team embarked on a British ship in the western Pacific to assist the British in submarine coordination.

After six days of this complex tactical development exercise, three submarines surfaced and lined up with HMS Illustrious for an historic photo. This was a new twist for the submariners, as most are not familiar with steaming in close formation alongside an aircraft carrier. While maneuvering into position, U.S.S. Indianapolis was flying their "INDY 500" checkered flag alongside their United States ensign from their bridge.

To make a donation to the U.S.S. Indianapolis SSN-697 Memorial Fund contract the Greene County Foundation at R.R. 2 Box 38X, Bloomfield, Ind., 47424 or call (812) 659-3142 or e-mail at gcfound@yahoo.com.

The technical numbers behind the U.S.S. Indianapolis-SSN-697

Length: 362 feet (110.3 m) 360 feet (110 m)

Beam: 33 feet (10 m)

Displacement: 6080/6927 tons (surfaced/submerged)

Surface Speed: 15 knots (27 km/h)

Submerged Speed: 32 knots (58 km/h)

Crew: 127-133

Armament: 4 Torpedo tubes for Mk48 or Mk48 ADCAP Torpedoes, Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles, 12/15 VLS tubes for Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles.

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

Sub to remain untouched

2006-12-27T15:20:00.000Z

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The Sydney Morning Herald

By Bob Wurth
December 27, 2006

The Japanese midget submarine lying five kilometres off Long Reef is almost certain to be left in its underwater grave.

Although a final decision has not been made, compelling arguments against raising the M24 have emerged less than a month after its discovery.

These include the danger of explosives that might still be on board, the potential cost, and the possibility of the wreck disintegrating. As well, it is internationally accepted that battle wrecks should remain untouched on the ocean floor.

Australian authorities say there is also unlikely to be an attempt to recover any remains of the two-man Japanese crew, Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban and his navigator, Petty Officer Mamoru Ashibe.

Comments by Itsuo Ashibe, who initially held out hopes that his brother's remains would be recovered, are making the decision to leave the submarine where it is much easier.

Mr Ashibe admitted this week that his wish for a recovery was an impossible dream. His aim now is to sprinkle sake over the sea off Long Reef - possibly on May 31, the 65th anniversary of the submarine attack on Sydney Harbour.

Japan has not called for the M24 to be raised or any remains to be recovered and is interested primarily in securing the wreck site, which is now covered by a Commonwealth protection order under which illegal divers face fines of up to $10,000 or five years' jail.

The project manager for the wreck, Tim Smith, a maritime archaeologist with the NSW Heritage Office, says the final decision will be shared by Japanese and Australian authorities. "Based on international experience, the raising of wrecks is a very complicated and difficult proposition and would cost tens of millions of dollars," he said.

A decision to raise the submarine would be considered only on the basis of a special research angle or a threat to the site. "But no such angle or threat exists at the moment."

Mr Smith said the M24 now lay where it finished its battle, which was an important archaeological consideration. "Leaving a wreck in situ is the first rule of the UNESCO convention [on the protection of underwater heritage]," he said.

Water police are patrolling the 500 square metre protected area and it is hoped that, by the end of January, it will be further secured though the use of remote surveillance devices.

Preparations are under way for a scientific survey of the wreck in a few weeks. An initial survey, based on footage from a navy submersible, said the sub was in generally good condition, bar a large tear behind the conning tower. Its batteries could be seen through the tear and a large section of the front of the conning tower had been ripped away.

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U-boats off the North-East

2006-12-27T14:39:00.000Z

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This Is Hertfordshire

December 26, 2006

IN the Astley Arms at Seaton Sluice, between Whitley Bay and Blyth, is a bottle of whisky that's never to be opened. It recalls a poignant episode in the Second World War. On Boxing Day, 1939, sub-mariner ERH 'Tug' Wilson won the bottle of Johnnie Walker in a sweepstake at the pub. Due to leave within hours on a mission to the enemy-controlled Heligoland Bight, in a U-boat from a group then based in Blyth, he handed the bottle to the landlady, Lydia Jackson, for safe keeping.

But Tug's vessel, Seahorse, never returned. Her fate is a mystery, but up to her retirement long after the war, Lydia kept Tug's prize behind the bar, ready for his return. To ensure its future, she then presented the bottle to the Royal Navy's Submarine Museum. But a symbolic replacement, unopened, of course, remains a treasured relic at the Astley.

Telling this story in the superb opening volume of an ambitious record of every known submarine wreck around Britain, Ron Young and Pamela Armstrong reveal that the North-East has exceptionally strong links with the sinister yet also chillingly-heroic submarine warfare. As they declare in only their second sentence: "This spectacular coastline has been mute witness to momentous events.''

On September 5, 1914, just a month and a day after Britain was drawn into war with Germany, the torpedoing of a British cruiser, Pathfinder, off Berwick, gave her the unwanted distinction of being the first warship in naval history to be sunk by a submarine in the open sea.

Fast forward to November 10, 1918, the day before the Armistice. Sunk with all hands off the Farne Isles, HMS Ascot, thus became, say Young and Armstrong, "almost certainly the last British warship torpedoed in the First World War".

Meanwhile, Blyth had been the Royal Navy's main training station for sub-mariners. Still the base for a flotilla of submarines in World War II, it suffered more losses than any other U-boat port.

But near the coast most losses were of German U-boats. And - such are the whims of history - one yielded another "bottle" story.

On April 16, 1945, U-boat 1274 sank a tanker carrying molasses, in a convoy off the Farne Islands. But an escort destroyer, HMS Viceroy, tracked her down and dropped depth charges, which sent her to the bottom. Among the debris was a bottle of brandy, which was later presented to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

All 43 of 1274's crew perished, entombed in the vessel, which is now a war grave. Young and Armstrong report that it is "still intact, except for the stern end, where, it seems, a number of the depth charges exploded. . . The hatches are still sealed". With the end of the war just three weeks away, 1274, noted by Young and Armstrong as "one of the very last U boats destroyed in Home Waters during the Second World War", added another especially tragic distinction to the North-East coast.

Covering the entire East Coast, including Kent, this meticulously-researched account has separate chapters for the North-East (Berwick-Middlesbrough) and Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The authors have painstakingly pieced together the stories of the 16 U-boat wrecks so far located - seven off the North-East coast, nine off Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

They provide full technical details of the vessels, describe the events leading up to their loss, and list the victims, including, where available, those on ships attacked by the U-boats prior to their own destruction. The present state of the wreck, established by divers, completes the remarkable record.

Prominent in it is a renowned German commander, Werner Furbringer. A brilliant sub-mariner and honourable man, he once nursed his U-boat back to her home port after she had been so severely damaged that she drifted for two days. On July 9, 1918, instructed to attack an ironworks near Seaham, he audaciously took his boat, UB 39, right into the harbour and fired 39 shells, matching his boat's number. He escaped without even submerging.

Although the attack cost the life of a woman walking on the cliffs, Young and Armstrong say: "There is convincing evidence that the humane Furbringer deliberately fired his symbolic barrage over rather than at the town.''

By coincidence, Furbringer and his UB 39 take a starring role in another intriguing drama, seemingly overlooked by Young and Armstrong, but showcased in a small booklet by John Howard, a retired Scarborough headmaster with deep roots in Staithes.

On July 13, 1916, UB 39 surfaced amid a handful of Staithes' fishing boats, one of which sank after the intruders, probably checking that the boats had no spying equipment, tore it apart.

Furbringer assembled a couple of the crews on the deck of UB 39 and took a photograph. The group included a sturdy Staithes character, William Francis Verrill, who, acting as leader, asked Furbringer: "Do you like herring, maister? Francis, chuck him a warp of herrings (clutch of four) ower."

As the U-boat veered close to his coble he warned Furbringer: "Fend off, maister. Ah deeant want mah bit o'coble screeaped. Ah've nobbut just had her pented.''

When Furbringer offered the men a drink of water - after apologising for the lack of coffee or cocoa - William Cole, another redoubtable Staithes figure, a staunch Methodist, chipped in: "You've just sunk their bit o'cobles. Are you trying to corrupt 'em wi' strang drink an all?''

Donating the profits from his booklet to charitable causes in Staithes, including the War Memorial and Memorial Hall, Mr Howard says the U-boat story has been much embellished down the years. But Furbringer emerges as much the same "humane" man painted by Young and Armstrong. Mr Howard writes:

"The submarine commander bade his erstwhile prisoners farewell with the words: "Goodbye gentlemen, I have done with you now.' The Staithes fishermen commented afterwards on Herr Furbringer's unfailing courtesy throughout the whole of this episode." He survived the war, wrote what is now a classic book on his war experiences, and lived to be 93.

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www.schnorkel.blogspot.com

Divers find U-boats wrecked by secret wartime minefield

2006-12-22T10:02:00.000Z

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Times Online
December 22, 2006

NEWQUAY Divers have uncovered the wrecks of three Second World War German submarines off the British coast, shedding light on a British operation that has remained secret for more than 60 years.

Historians were amazed at the discovery of the severely damaged U-boats, which are lying close to each other seven miles off Newquay, Cornwall, because none had ever been recorded as being lost there. After extensive research it was found that they had been sunk in a secret minefield laid after the British intercepted a radio message from a U-boat commander.

His boat had sunk a British destroyer after discovering a gap in the Irish Sea minefield that allowed supply ships in to Cardiff and Bristol. He radioed the news to Germany but his message was deciphered by British Intelligence. The British then laid deep mines to allow ships through but trap U-boats.

Historians were unaware of the minefield until recently, when the relevant documents were declassified.

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