The Submarine is probably the Navy’s most formidable weapon, but when it was first invented, nobody wanted to use it because they thought it underhand. The Great War soon got rid of those courtly sentiments, and by the time of the Second World War, Churchill famously said, that the only thing that frightened him was the German U.boats.

The Uboat pens at Lorient and St. Nazaire

Here in the West Country we are lucky to have examples of nearly all types of submarine prior to the nuclear age that have sunk in our waters over the years.Some you can dive on, some are now restricted, and two have been salvaged and put on display.

Three U. boats which are now museum pieces are also included because they are so historically important, and are well worth a visit.

• The Holland
• A.7
• The Untiring
• M.2
• U.995
• Wilhelm Bauer XX1
• U.534
• Holland Gallery
• UB116
• Midget Submarine XE8
• Submarine U.S.S.Pampanito

Recommended Reading

This contribution is by way of Ken Clark, who together with a band of like minded people back in the 1970’s completed all sorts of fantastic projects. I hope to bring you more of his other projects later, as it all reads like a bit out of ‘Boys Own’ Ken will forgive me for saying that the photos are not very good as they are early repros on a printer. When I get the originals I will put them up.I have changed nothing in Ken’s narrative, and only added a couple of pics.

Of the many exciting dives carried out by the group along the South Coast in the 70’s, the clearance dives on Submarine XE8 were to prove the most hazardous. Poor weather conditions encountered during the winter of 1972/3 meant that even sport diving was very dangerous. Therefore, carrying out the hard work of clearing rusting steel cables and tangled ropes from any wreck could be considered as being very dangerous indeed! In hindsight, the work load we set ourselves during the depths of that winter must have appeared to border on madness. A series of strict time schedules and safety procedures had been imposed by the Admiralty as a pre-requisite before any amateur work could be undertaken on wrecks for which they had any responsibility – and particularly a sunken Navy sub! However, we had previously demonstrated from our past record that we were a capable and responsible group.

The return of XE8 to Plymouth, commanded by Lt. Johnny Ruse, Royal Canadian Navy Reserve.

To prove our point, Peter and the group had made a commitment to complete a scheduled workload to clear the sub of debris, whatever conditions were encountered. We’d all dived together off Portland Bill during the past years, and most of us had gained some experience diving among many of the wrecks lying off the ‘Bill’. Diving in the vicious tidal race required considerable care in all but the most calm conditions, but when the tide was running, only the foolhardy ventured within it’s influence. Lying out there in some 30 metres of murky water, was the Miniature Submarine XE8, a derivative of the WW2 – X craft, famous for the attack on the Pocket Battleship Tirpitz when it was anchored in a Norwegian Fiord. This particular version, now lying on the seabed off Portland, was an adaptation built for service in the far east and given the suffix XE. The XE8 was now lying on the sea bottom, directly in the path of the notorious race, located at Latitude 50 degrees 33 minutes 01 seconds N. – Longitude 02 degrees 21 minutes 06 seconds W. From my dive notes and I imagine as a point of interest, I note that the original Officers were Commanders ‘Johnny Ruse’, a Canadian Reserve Lieutenant and Sub Lieutenant J. Benson RNVR. The former Lt.Ruse is now Lieutenant Commander J.C. Ruse RCNVR. At our briefing sessions, I was led to believe that the submarine had been used as a practice sonar target for some years and was now deemed to be ‘excess to requirements’ by the Navy. . . . . Not to the Imperial War Museum of course and certainly not to our little group!

This is how the boat was run on the surface.

Teams of divers arrived at the neighbouring seaside resort of Weymouth to carry out work on most week- ends throughout the year, but many of the dives were often aborted before the hired boats could reach the location, and disappointed divers were forced to return to base time and time again. They were, amazingly, ‘encouraged’ to pay their boat hire fees, whether the skipper had managed to get out of the bay or not! Thus, driving down to Weymouth to work on the Submarine often became a very expensive pastime! Only a small percentage of the planned dives ever actually came to fruition because of atrocious conditions, and it became a work of art for Peter to encourage people to make the long, tiring journeys to Weymouth when in their hearts, they new that poor weather forecasts precluded any diving otfPortland. Nevertheless, a few hardy, perhaps foolhardy divers turned up at the site on so many weekends that a small percentage of successful dives were inevitable.

The Captain ofHMS Kinbrace [left] standing next to the aide of the C in C Portsmouth and the Conunander in Chell [third from left] discussing the lift of HM Submarine XE8.

I usually managed to cajole and persuade a few of my own Polytechnic divers to join me on these weekends throughout the winter, convincing them that even if the dives were aborted, the marvellous hospitality of Brian and Sally King at the Weymouth dive shop, would more than compensate them for the lack of diving. Most of us stayed at Brian and Sally’s dive shop for our B& B, particularly those whom Sally could trust to behave themselves by not messing up her bathroom – and there were one or two diving comedians who were definitely unwelcome! We could leave aJl our diving equipment there in safety, fill our tanks, buy spares and generally keep ourselves up to date with whatever was going on in the area. There was a large, comfortable ‘rest room’ above the dive shop where we all relaxed -post diving, and we could drink, eat Sally’s sandwiches and tell outrageous diving stories into the early hours of the night. It didn’t always feel like we’d enjoyed ourselves though when we were 8 or 9 kilometres off the coast, anchored over the submarine the next morning, but it was a hell of a hardening up process for those of us who stuck it out throughout that winter.

The miniature submarine XE8 finally coming out onto the dockside in Portland.

One of the first priorities – before anything else could be achieved, was to position a buoy over the wreck for identification and for the divers to use for descent and ascent. Peter and the Hampstead lads had arranged for a large buoy to be allocated to them by the Navy at ‘Priddy’s Hard’ in Portland NavaJ Base. This particular weekend, the buoy, which was about the size of a small car, was to be taken out to the site. A heavy steel cable was attached from the submarine to the buoy and it was left in position as a warning to shipping. The fickle British weather was to provide us all with a few unwelcome shocks that winter and after the first of many, Peter rang me to inform me that the buoy had been ripped away from it’s anchor point on the subma- rine by the tremendous current sweeping around the Portland Bill peninsula! Other wreck buoys, put on the submarine over diving weekends, suffered the same fate after violent storms came barrelling through the area. Some were recovered, but one or two were never to be seen again! In between the storms, the cold, grinding work of getting divers down to the wreck went on.

The method adopted to lift XE8 from the bottom of the sea off Portland.

Most dives were hard work and very expensive, but I do remember one particularly pleasant and rather memorable occasion just before Christmas when the weather so was beautiful when we arrived at the dive site, out in to the English Channel, that we took off our clothes and laid out on deck to sunbathe in our birthday suits! The temperature was at least 20c on board so we enjoyed this rare opportunity of being able to top up our summer tan. Those moments were rare though and mostly it was seasickness pills and hypothermia that was the order of the day. I actually took my son out in rather rough weather for his first dive on the sub one day and before we’d left the relative shelter and calm of Weymouth bay he was imploring me to call out the Lifeboat to take him back to shore! I felt so sorry for him, but he stuck it out in good fashion. It was quite rough on that occasion and many of the divers were not actually very disappointed to have the dive terminated by the skipper of the boat before reaching the wrecks site. We did however, take the opportunity of making a dive in the bay to collect some Scallops for our freezers back home. I personally collected a mail sack full, and most of the other lads ended up with smiles on their faces, so the weekend couldn’t be regarded as a total waste of time! I should, just for the record, report that my son declined all future offers I made for him to dive on the sub!

XE8 at Portland Harbour, being lifted out of the water.

One other noteworthy occasion I remember, was when we were clearing cables and debris from the submarine, I dived on that occasion with Rtd. Royal Navy Commander Alan Bax, Director of the famous Bovisand Diving Establishment just east of Plymouth, a channing, well known and popular diving personality within the diving world. Our task on this occasion was to fix underwater blasting gelatine to some particularly heavy old steel cables and simply blow them off and away from the side of the sub. I had of course previously attended one of the Bovisand Explosive Courses for divers, but I appreciated the fact that Alan, with years of experience, was going down to actually layout the pattern of explosive charges and I was actually quite re- lieved at not being tested by the professor himselft We both pulled ourselves down the line to the submarine with some difficulty, looking like a pair of flags attached to poles in the strong current. We just needed to have a good look at the situation before Alan selected what he considered to be his ideal position and began the work of fixing a small charge of the plastic to a length of cable.

Ken Clark and Peter Cornish on board HMS Kinbrace during the final lift of Miniature Submarine XE8.

He finally ‘signed’ to me to get the detonator, previously left on board and I rapidly went up the role-line to the side of the boat, where I was handed the detonator by the lads in the fishing boat. I immediately dived again to where I’d left Alan working, handing him the detonator to be inserted in the charge. We worked our way around the submarine, checking for any other fouled cables as we went, and having completed the job, swam completely around the periphery once again just to check that no other rubbish was fouling our work and then the pair of us headed for the surface as quickly as we could! The boat was then moved away to a safe distance before Alan rechecked his own connections and blew the hell out of the rubbish below with a resounding crack, which brought more than a little froth to the sur- face! We weren’t looking for fish on this particular occasion as we usually did. Our normal system was to blow the job – wait for the fish- then collect the ‘fruits of the ocean’ floating on the surface – dead codlings or pouting for the freezer by the sack load! Half and hour later, depending upon the current of course, we could usually go down again to find that the clouds of mud and rubbish had cleared and we could continue with whatever work we’d set ourselves.

London 1952

In this case, the previously fouled area around the submarine had cleared itself squeaky clean as a result of Alan’s’ deployment of the explosives, and the series of shackles were then expertly at- tached by the rest of the divers. The XE8 was ready for the final lift now, and we all logged the dive down as a compete success. Some time later, it was with some disappointment, if not shock, that I. later learned from Peter Cornish that although the Naval Authorities had checked out our work and deemed it to be a first class job, they were however, not ready to leave the dangerous job of bringing 45,OOOkgs of miniature submarine to the surface in the Portland Race, deeming it to present too much of a hazard to shipping in the area, even if the job was being tackled by a group with a proven pedigree. Peter expressed his shock and unhappiness at the decision, but the situation was softened a little when the Naval authorities asked if we would both like to join the clearance divers onboard the salvage vessel Kinbrace as the they actually hooked their lifting gear up to our shackles and brought the sub to the surface. We were suitably impressed at the unique gesture and very pleased to accept this kind offer by the Naval Authorities.

XE8 can now be seen at Chatham Dockyard.

We both arrived in Portland in Peters car at the appropriate time to join the C & C Portsmouth area and the Cap- tain of Kin brace on board the salvage vessel. We steamed out of Portland that morning and continued out to sea and the wreck buoy. Kinbrace soon anchored up and the dozens of enormous cables lying out along the forward deck were run out through the lifting blocks and over the ‘horns’ at the bows of the vessel. Divers went over to attach the cables, and soon afterwards the winches began to take up the slack as the ship slowly took the weight of the submarine.It was about this time that out of the corner of my eye, I noticed what I recognised as a ‘tribal’ class Frigate coming out of one of the openings of Portland Harbour and heading in our direction. As I watched, fascinated at the spectacle of the warship coming out so cleanly through the narrow gap, a bow wave quickly began to show itself in front of the Frigate as it’s speed increased. The approaching warships presence hadn’t gone unnoticed by the skipper of Kinbrace either, for within a few seconds all hell let loose on board.

Inside the Xcraft.

Peter and I stood as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, squashing our- selves again a bulkhead, as the ships crew went in to action. The signaller was thrashing away on a signalling lamp pointed at the approaching warship, by now just a few miles distant, while a series of various signal flags were run up.The skipper stopped beside us as he moved past,to briefly explain to us that if the Frigate, identified as ‘Ashanti’ had continued on it’scourse, the wave set up by the warship which was certainly travelling at some 30 knots, would have hit us within a short time and sent the 45,000kgm lump hanging beneath Kinbrace plummeting to the bottom! The skipper of Her Majesty’s warship Ashanti, must have been suitably impressed by one or two Anglo Saxon terms offered by the Skipper of Kinbrace. Either that, or he’d learned that the C in C Portsmouth was on board the salvage vessel he’d been heading for at speed. Whatever had influenced him had been rather effective, for soon afterwards the bow wave visibly decreased to a gentle wavelet as the Frigate slowed almost to a walking pace, leaving us all breathing a sigh of relief.

Close up of the hatch.

The rest of the operation to raise the submarine went according to plan, and Kinbrace, with sub beneath it, cruised slowly back to the safety of Portland Harbour. At the Quayside, the cranes already primed and ready, the Navy took complete charge of the situation, and in the glare of reporters, snapping notebooks and waving microphones, Peter did what he always did best, and gave the reporters their weekend stories Me, well I wasn’t finished with the excitement of the day, for Peter shouted at me to move his car across the dock and threw me his keys.I excitedly jumped in to his new company car and drove it toward him, straight under a steel cable that had been stretched across the entrance of the Quay! Peters face was an absolute picture to behold as the bonnet and paintwork was instantly re-styled. Funny, I never did see the television pictures of him standing there – wide eyes and with his mouth open as he watched the front of his new car being trashed!

Preparing the sub for show.

The Sub was later taken to Duxford Airdrome, an annexe of the Imperial War Museum in Hert- fordshire where, under the care of Dr. C.J. Roads. Deputy Director, it was cleaned and refurbished over the next few years by skilled technicians. I never did get to see the sub again, even though I lived just a few kilometres away for a while just south of Cambridge! My admiration and thanks go out to the divers and members of the British Sub Aqua Clubs of:-

Islington Branch, Chelsea Branch, Harlow Branch, Hawker Siddeley Trident Branch, Holborn Branch, llford Branch, Stevenage Branch, Hatfield Polytechnic Branch, Rayleigh Branch, and many others individual divers of the British Sub Aqua Club who worked so hard throughout the project.

Below is the film that the team shot. it was on 8mm cine film,(remember that?) and was later transferred to DVD. Its a bit wonky in places but well worth looking at as it encapsulates the sheer dedication and ‘press on’ attitude of all those involved. I have split the film into two parts as it was easier to upload. I am grateful to Peter Cornish for the film. Update The XE 8 is now at Chatham Dockyard on permanent loan from The Imperial War Museum.

The Type XX1 is truly one of the great submarine designs. If it had come fully into service, it would have posed almost insuperable problems for the Allies. Even though it never became fully operational, it became the prototype for all future conventional submarines, and even influenced the design of the first nuclear submarines. The U2540 was sunk in an air raid towards the end of the War, but was later raised in 1957 by the new West German Navy, and recommissioned as the civilian trials submarine Wihelm Bauer. So what made her so special?

Wilhelm Bauer U 2540.

During 1943 improvements in the Allied A.S.W. equipment meant that U boat losses were becoming unacceptable to the German High Command. What was needed was a true submarine able to operate underwater for very long periods. It would have to avoid detection by radar and sonar, and have enough speed underwater to out run the surface hunters. For years Professor Walters had been experimenting with the effects of streamlining and new methods of propulsion.

Entry into the Submarine.

However his hydrogen peroxide power plants proved to unreliable for operational use, and so he concentrated on streamlining the hull. Cutting down the hydrodynamic drag had vastly increased the battery power of traditional diesel electric boats, and combining this with an anti radar hull coating, a redesigned snorkel and new sonar’s, made the Type XX1 a truly outstanding design. However it appeared on the scene far to late to have any effect on the outcome of the War, and this was extremely fortunate for the Allies, as they had no anti dote to this extraordinary undersea weapon.

Bow view.

Armament comprised of six bow tubes with a total of 23 torpedos. The Type XX1 had a rapid reloading device, which allowed 18 torpedos’s to be fired in 20 minutes, and unprecedented rate of fire for those days. The overall design was based on the outer shape of the Type XV111 but with diesel electric propulsion. On the surface she was powered by two M.A.N. supercharged six-cylinder diesels, and underwater she had two new powerful electric motors capable of pushing her along at just over 17 knots. This was a huge increase in submerged speed compared with her contemporary’s, and made her truly revolutionary.

The torpedo room.

Since the Type XX1 was designed to live and fight submerged there were no deck guns, just four 20mm. Or 30mm. Cannon in streamlined turrets at either end of the conning tower.

The construction was in sections.

The construction methods for this boat also broke new ground. The Type XX1 were constructed in ten separate sections, which were then delivered to the shipyard for them to complete, all except for the third section which had to be fitted with the diesel engines. Of the 752 boats ordered, 119 were built but only 93 were commissioned. None became operational. As the War entered its final months some of these boats were sunk in air raids, 61 were scuttled, leaving just eleven to be surrendered in May 1945.

Raising the U 2540.

In 1983 the Wilhelm Bauer was made into a museum exhibit at the German Maritime Museum at Bremahaven. Even today she looks extremely modern and still retains her air of menace. Inside she has been very well restored with lots of photos of her history, with very informative guides who speak excellent English. Well worth a visit.

Map showing location of Wihelm Bauer.

The William bauer, Donitz’s Stealth Submarine
Extract from The Silent Menace. dvd

Untiring is a Royal Navy submarine of the ‘U’ class. She was built by Vickers Armstrong on the Tyne, and launched on January 20th. 1943.

The Untiring is 196 feet long, 16 feet wide, with a maximum hull depth of just less than 13 feet. This was all supposed to house all the food, ammunition, machinery, and a complement of 31 officers and men. Talk about a steel coffin. The Untiring had a surface displacement of 545 tons, and underwater weighed 740 tons. The submarine was powered by two diesel electric motors, which gave her around 11 knots on the surface and up to 9 knots submerged. She had a three inch gun mounted just in front of the conning tower, three machine guns, and her four 21 inch torpedo’s were all fired from the bow.

Not the Untiring but the United, seen at Plymouth.

After the War she was surplus to requirements, but instead of being broken up she was lent to the Royal Hellenic Navy (Greece) and during July 1945 she was renamed the ‘Amfitriti’. She was returned to England in 1952 but was now completely obsolete, so the Navy decided in 1957 to scuttle her just off the East Rutts and use her as a sonar and asdic target.

I dived the Untiring back in the 1980’s but we missed the main part of the wreck and only saw a hawser. I never dived it again (too deep for me) but my companion on that dive, Steve Carpenter of the well-known dive emporium Sound Diving has, and it’s his impressions that I relate here.

United, same class as Untiring.

The Untiring lies in 55 metres on a sand and silt bottom with a slight list to starboard. You cannot enter the hull but the conning tower is of an open design and you can have a good look around there. Moving towards the stern you soon see the two phosphor bronze propellers still firmly in place and the whole of the hull is covered in a carpet of plumose anemones. At the bow the most recognisable feature are the bow torpedo tubes all with their hatches closed. The visibility is usually very good, twenty feet or more. The tides are pretty savage so make sure you get the slack right.

If any one has any underwater photos or video of this wreck I would be very glad to see it. More dive reports are also welcome.

The Type V11-C was the workhorse of the German submarine fleet during World War Two. There were several versions, but all were about 220 feet long and had a surfaced weight of around 769 tons.

U995 at LaBoe.

Built to fight in the Atlantic, far away from their bases, the Type V11-C submarines had a range of 9700 miles on the surface steaming at about ten knots. Underwater their range was severely curtailed, being only 130 miles at a miserly two knots, but they could dive to a maximum depth of 120 metres.

Gun Armament.

All versions were armed with five torpedo tubes, four in the bow and one in the stern. Gun armament varied, but by the end of the War most had a 88mm gun and four 20mm flak guns in a quad mounting.

The U995 is probably the best example of this class of submarine (there is one other in Chicago) and its location in the pretty seaside town of LaBoe close to the stunning edifice of the Marine-Ehrenmal, and the moving U-Boat memorial, make the visit a delight even if you are not particularly interested in submarines.

U995 Insignia.

Blorn and Voss launched the U995 on the 22 July 1943. A few days later she was badly damaged in a bombing raid and her future put into doubt. However the demands of a severely over stretched U. Boat arm demanded that all possible submarines were made ready and after a huge amount of effort, U995 was repaired and became operational on September 16th. She was assigned to the 5th Submarine Flotilla stationed at Kiel where she successfully completed her work-up.

U995 Bows.

On 25th. April 1944 U995 sailed to Norway in readiness for the suspected invasion. In the middle of May she was attacked by a Sunderland Flying boat. She lost five men in the encounter but was only slightly damaged. Once repaired she then moved to the 13th. Submarine Fleet at Trondheim.

Postcard of the Machine.

The U995 carried out nine patrols in her career, sinking four ships, one of them being the American cargo vessel Horace Bushnell. On February 8th. 1945 Kaptain Hans-George Hess earned the Knights Cross for a daring raid into Kirkenes Fjord were he torpedoed and sunk a freighter. On May 8th. 1945 the War was over and Kapitain Hess surrendered his boat at Trondheim and spent a year in a Norwegian prison camp. (He later became a lawyer in Hanover)

Kapitain Hans Georg Hess.

U995 should have been taken to England, but was in too poor a condition to make the trip so she was handed over to the Norwegian Navy as part of their War Reparations. The Norwegians completely refitted her and returned her to service on December 6th. 1952 under her new name of Kaura, Nato Fleet Number S309. Ironically it was as the Kaura that she later visited England as part of a Nato exercise. By 1962 the Kaura’s operational life was over and she was laid up.

The Engine Room.

It was then that the German Navy Association had the idea of rescuing her and putting her on display. There was some political opposition to this as in those days Germany still was not considered completely rehabilitated, and nobody wanted to give a working submarine back to a country that had been the worlds best submarine nation. In the end these fears were overcome, and in an extraordinary gesture of friendship, Norway, who had suffered terribly at the hands of the German military machine, said that they would be happy to present the submarine to the German Navy Association.

Towed up a newly dug Channel.

The work to turn the battered U995 into a museum took many years, but finally in 1972 all was nearly ready. The U995 was slung beneath a colossal floating crane and slowly towed through a specially dug channel to the beach just in front of the Marine-Ehrenmal memorial at LaBoe where she was lowered into a specially prepared concrete cradle. At her dedication she was visited by many great names including Donitz and Krechmeyer. I would love to know what they were thinking as they walked around this once deadly submarine.

Postcard of the Torpedo Room.

The U995 has been beautifully restored and works very well as a museum exhibit. On one level she shows exactly what a submarine was like and just how complicated and cramped they were. But on another level the U995 manages to connect with that awful past out there in the freezing Atlantic, the domain of the Wolf packs. What it must have been like to fight and die in these steel coffins is almost unimaginable in today’s world. U995 fulfils its aim of being a museum, and also a dreadful reminder of those far off days that all of us hope never to see again.

Ariel view of U 995.

Workhorse of the Wolfpacks
Extract from The Silent Menace.dvd

Commissioned in Hamburg in late 1942, the U 534 is a Type IX C 40 long-range ocean going submarine. She was mainly used as a weapons testing platform, and until the late summer of 1944 was also used as a weather ship in the North Atlantic. During the autumn of that year she left the massive U. boat pens at Bordeaux and sailed back to Germany where she was laid up in Kiel. So far nothing out of the ordinary, just another U. boat. But during May 1945 things changed.

U534 on the Barge.

Germany unconditionally surrendered, and the War was over. However just before the surrender, on May 2nd, U. 534 became the last submarine to leave Germany. Apparently she had been specially provisioned and armed in the bombproof pens at Kiel weeks before, and at the appointed hour she slid silently out of the submarine pens and made her way towards Kristiansand in Norway. Two days later on May 4th, Admiral Doenitz had ordered all submarines still at sea to surrender, but by then U 534 was lying submerged off Elsinore in Denmark. Weather her Commander, Captain Nollau failed to receive the order or chose to ignore it is uncertain, but either way the outcome was to be catastrophic.

Still Rusty.

On May 5th, the day after all German forces in Northern Europe surrendered, a R.A.F. Liberator from Coastal Command sank U 534 off the Danish Island of Anholt. Most of the crew managed to abandon the boat and were soon rescued, but five were trapped inside the U-boat and were dragged down by it. Miraculously they managed to escape their iron tomb, but one died in the ascent, and two others drowned on the surface before the rescue ships could get to them. So where was the submarine going and what was its mission?

Anti Aircraft guns still intact.

U 534 had a range of over eleven hundred miles, so could have easily reached South America. Was she going to carry a leading Nazi to South America via Norway? Or was she carrying treasure looted from the occupied countries to help those Nazi who had already escaped to South America by other routes? One of the crew that died shortly after the U534 sank was an Argentine wireless operator, which suggests that she was indeed en route to South America. The only person who definitely knew was Captain Nollau and he never told, taking the secret to his grave.

At least the Props are Shiny.

As the years rolled on, the rumours became more persistent and the accounts of the treasures supposed to be on board ever more extravagant. More than forty years after she sank a Danish diver, called Age Jensen found U 534 and once again the rumours started to fly. In 1992 a Danish publisher, Karsten Ree became interested in the submarine and decided to mount a salvage operation to find out once and for all what the Mystery of the U 534 was all about. The expensive lifting operation lasted over four weeks with the close co-operation of the Dutch Navy. After five tons of explosives were removed the submarine was moved to Grenaa where she was loaded onto a huge barge and towed to Birkenhead. Besides the explosives there was about two tons of documents. No gold. No paintings and no jewels.

So what was going on? Watch this space.

The Tour.

When I first visited the U 534 she was still in a very poor condition. The Warship Trust had only just got her and took only a limited number of very small groups around personally as the inside of the sub was pitch black and quite dangerous underfoot. I thought this was a great way to see her, almost just out of the sea. Inside the submarine still dripped with water from rain penetration and oozed a film of condensation that shone eerily in the powerful torch light. The menacing dark shadows that lurked at the perimeter of the light gave our small party just a glimpse of what it must have been like in those last few hours.

How to get There

How to get There

Stuck all over the boat wedged into the pipe spaces were old tins of food, bits of newspaper, and the odd bit of clothing. The guides were very knowledgeable, but all the technical guff washed over me because the sheer experience of being in that dark, dank submarine was so evocative. How the crews on both sides hid their fears and endured the dreadful conditions inside the boat must be incomprehensible to people today. No wonder these old submarines still exert such powerful emotions.

When I went to see the sub, no photographs were allowed to be taken inside, but this great website did, and the inside is just as I saw it. Well worth a look.

Uboat 534

In 2006 the Warships Preservation Society went bankrupt and sold of all the land for development and dispersed the ships. The U534 however was cut into sections and moved to a new purpose built museum at the Woodside Ferry Terminal. Below is a link to their website showing times, prices, and how to get there.

U543-the uboat story

Cut into Three Pieces.

Cut into Three Pieces.

A few years after I saw the sub, the whole area was cleared to make way for apartments and houses. The U534 was by now in a parlous state, literally rusting away. There was no way that it could be stabalized to make it into an exibit. Even moving it was cause for great concern as it could just have disintegrated. A very bold move was made to cut it into three pieces and cocoon parts of it so that you could look inside. Some artifacts were removed and put on permanent display at its new home at the side of where the Birkenhead Ferry comes in.

See inside.

Conservation.

When I heard about this I was appalled, but I went to see it in 2013, I found that the Company responsible, had made a very good job of it. The museum is full of interesting small bits and pieces and there is a lot of information about the sub and how they got it up and conserved it. Considering that the sub could have been lost forever, its a job well done.

A very informative museum.

A very informative museum.

The ‘M’ class of submarine were truly remarkable. They were based on the unhappy ‘K’ class, one of the most accidents prone of all submarines. These vessels were steam driven and had to retract their funnels before they could dive.

The ‘K’ class, funnels are aft of the conning tower.

They were all scrapped, but three of the hulls were saved in 1918 to create the ‘M’ class. The M 1 was probably the most extraordinary of all. She had a massive gun weighing 60 tons taken from a redundant battleship. The idea was that she would creep up to the enemy underwater, surface, lob a few shells, and then submerge. It was a daft idea and never worked properly because the submarines fire control system could not operate the gun at its full range.

The M1, with Gun.

In 1925 the M 1 was in collision with a Swedish cargo ship and sunk 15 miles off Start Point with the loss of 69 officers and men. In 1999 Innes McCartney, at the instigation of the Ministry of Defence led a successful expedition to locate her. He was helped by Dick Larn, the well known wreck historian, and the whole thing was filmed by the B.B.C. The wrecks precise location was not released, but in any event at around 240 feet,it would be too deep for sports divers.

The M 2 however is in within the range of most sports divers and is a very popular dive. She was completely different from the M 1 in the fact that she had no gun but carried a seaplane in a deck hanger. (Honestly, you could not make this stuff up.) The seaplane called the ‘Parnall Peto’ had folding wings so that it could fit inside and was launched by means of a catapult.

The M 2, with Hanger.

The aircraft was supposed to be used for reconnaissance purposes but the tactical disadvantages are obvious. The submarine had to remain on the surface for extended periods during the launch and recovery of the seaplane and this made her extremely vulnerable to enemy attack. In the end the experiment was a disastrous mistake. On the 26 January 1932 the M 2 was exercising in West Bay just off the Dorset coast, when she was seen to dive stern first by the captain of a freighter, which was passing by. She never resurfaced and it took the Navy nearly 8 days to find her lying on the bottom in 106 feet of water.

M 2 Hanger with the Peto inside.

An inspection of the wreck revealed that her hanger door was wide open and so was the hatch leading to the control room. It would seem that the hanger door was open before she had properly surfaced and attained full buoyancy. Whatever the reason her 60 officers and men all perished.

M 2 getting ready to launch.

This is another wreck that I have yet to dive as it’s a bit out of my area. Still some of my friends have dived it and one shot some video footage in August 1998, and it’s from this that I make the following brief observations. By the way this wreck has not been put on the restricted list yet and all the charter skippers still dive her.

The M 2 is lying upright on a rock and silt bottom in about 106 feet of water. Since the submarine is 296 feet long with a beam of nearly 25 feet there is a lot to see. The hull is in quite good condition and has appeared to withstand the ravages of time pretty well except for the deck plates, which has great holes in it. Towards the bows you can see the remains of either the catapult or the anchor winches, and the bow anchors are nice and secure in their hawseholes, with the forward hydroplanes still intact.

Launching the Seaplane.

On her sides, the hull is covered with a thin weed, deadmens fingers and plumose anemones. As you work your way towards the conning tower you soon see the gaping hole of the aircraft hanger. You can still go inside but it is quite silted up with quite a lot of steel plate scattered all around. The conning tower rears up very impressively with the remains of the periscope still pointing in vain towards the surface. Swimming down towards the stern the deck plates still look in poor condition, and since there was some salvage done on the wreck in 1932-33 it comes as no surprise to see that the twin propellers are missing, but the rudder is still intact and you can swim right underneath the propeller shafts and it makes you realise that the M 2 was a big boat, roughly the size of a frigate. Back up to the conning tower to play Captain, and a final look into the hangar and that’s the end of the dive. The M 2 looks well worth a visit to me.

The M 3.

Incidentally the last of the ‘M’ class, the M 3, was converted into a minelayer. She carried up to eighty mines and was perhaps the most successful of her class. However as soon as she had demonstrated how good the concept could be, the Navy tired of it, and she was sold for scrap in 1932.

The M class submarines
Extract from The Silent menace.dvd

Over the years many had struggled in vain to make the submarine into an effective weapon.

John Fredrick Holland.

In the end it fell to John Fredrick Holland, an Irish man living in America, to put all the elements of the modern submarine into one hull and make it work. His preferred method of propulsion was the internal combustion engine combined with battery powered electric engines. After several prototypes he developed the Holland Four for the United States Navy and armed it with a White head torpedoed. Although he was not the first to do this, the reliability of his submarine combined with his engineering genius forged the two into the start of a deadly combination. The submarine as an effective weapon had finally arrived.

H.M.Submarine No1.

In1901 the Royal Navy had ordered five Holland submarines. In April 1902 the very first, Holland one, was taken out for its maiden voyage under the command of Lt.Arnold Foster. Although quickly superseded by the A class of submarines, the Holland’s acquitted themselves well and gave years of satisfactory service. In 1913 Holland 1 was sold for scrap, and whilst on tow past the Eddystone she foundered and sank thus slipping from peoples memories.

First voyage.

However in 1981 Royal Navy divers stumbled across the wreck out near the Eddystone Reef and the Admiralty decided to salvage the submarine and place in the Submarine Museum at Gosport. Once the Holland had been lifted from the Reef she was taken to the sheltered waters just off Drake’s Island in Plymouth Sound, where she lay over night waiting for the high tides that would enable her to be safely carried through the Hamoaze and up the River Tamar to the waiting Dockyard.

First View

Once inside the dry dock the Holland was lowered onto a specially made cradle. Teams of divers were sent down continually to monitor her progress, whilst the engineers waited anxiously up top. They had prepared the cradle from the original builders drawings of the Holland, and if they had got it wrong the Submarine could fall off the cradle once all the water was pumped out of the dock. At last every body was satisfied that all was well, and as the last of the water was pumped out of the dry dock, crowds of people started to gather to see the Royal Navy’s first operational submarine emerge. For a submarine that had not seen the light of day for over seventy years the Holland looked in remarkable condition.

Coning Tower Hatch.

Even though her hull had one or two holes, there seemed nothing structurally wrong with her, and the engineers put this down to the fact that she had been lying in nearly two hundred feet of water and so had been out of the reach of the damaging turbulence that storms can so often inflict. Once the engineers were quite certain she was secure they had to remove the thin coating of rust that had so far protected the hull from serious corrosion. As the water jets blasted off the rust the hull started to come shiny clean and gave a hint of what the Holland must have looked like when she was first built. The entire hull had to be scrupulously clean to allow the Fertan preserving chemical to be sprayed on to stop the hull rusting any further and for the metal to be stabalized.

Holland at Gosport.

This was very important, as further treatment would have to wait until she was rehoused at Gosport. Because the hull was so unwieldy it was cut into three and loaded onto separate transporters for her journey at Gosport. Here she was transformed into a superb exhibit. You could go inside and see everything. It was very impressive. Unfortunately it did not last. Something went wrong after a few years and the Holland started to corrode. Nothing the Museum could do seemed to stop it so in desperation the Submarine was placed in a sealed tank until a remedy could be found. To date no satisfactory remedy has been found and the Holland remains entombed in her own iron casket.

Good News:

The problems with the Holland seem to have been solved, and she has now been restored to her former glory and is now once more on view at the Submarine Museum in Gosport.

The Holland comes out of the water for the first time.

The Holland comes out of the water for the first time.

The Holland comes out of the water for the first time.

The Holland comes out of the water for the first time.

The Holland comes out of the water for the first time.

Blasting off the old coating of rust.

The hatch restored.

Cut into three pieces for loading on a lorry. Shows the torpedo tube in one section with a rare photo of the Holland being craned into the water.

Loading, restoration and transportation.

Loading, restoration and transportation.

Loading, restoration and transportation.

Loading, restoration and transportation.

Developed from the basic Holland design, the A class of submarine was the Royal Navy’s first attempt at an all British submarine. Among its innovations were a proper conning tower which prevented the submarine being swamped when running on the surface. Additional torpedo tubes were also added, and the whole boat lengthened by about forty feet, which made it much more stable and seaworthy. Unfortunately, these new submarines retained the Holland’s worst defect, which was a pitifully small reserve of buoyancy.

A Flotilla of A Boats.

Although still largely experimental, the A boats were relatively successful, and some even saw active service in 1914 if only in a training role. However survival became of crucial importance for the crews of these submarines, because at one time or another every single on of them sank at least once, usually with fatal consequences. The A I, rammed by the Berwick Castle, sank with all hands off the Nab, near the Isle of Wight, in March 1904, and although she was raised a month later she was never recommissioned but sunk later as a target.

Submarine A 3

The A 2 was wrecked whilst on the for sale list, and the A 3 was rammed and sunk by the aptly named Hazard in February 1912 with the loss of all hands. The submarine A 4 perished during a collision in Portsmouth Harbour in 1905 when she sank like a stone and drowned all her crew, and on the 8 June 1905 the A 8 suffered an explosion whilst running on the surface and sank just off the Knapp Buoy a few hundred yards from Plymouth’s Breakwater.

Crowley Family

I am gratefull to Naomi Cassidy for the above Photo’s. She is the great niece of Petty Officer John Francis Crowley.

Frank Crowley (right)

The A 8 was successfully salvaged and after undergoing a complete overhaul she served all through the Great War and ended her days being sold for scrap. Ironically the A 7 had been her escort on that fateful day, and nine years later, in January 1914 the A 7 was once again in the same area, exercising in Whitsands Bay.

The A 7.

This time she was engaged in carrying out dummy torpedo attacks on H.M.S. Pygmy in company with a flotilla of six other submarines. On the morning of January 16, the flotilla assumed their attack positions and were ordered to dive to a predetermined depth and then resurface. It soon became apparent that the A 7 was in difficulties, when a large stream of bubbles appeared on the surface over the area where she had submerged. All the other submarines returned to the surface safely, but for the A 7 disaster had finally struck.

The Search for the A 7.

The flotilla commander on board H.M.S. Pygmy sped towards the scene and ordered tugs and salvage lighters dispatched from Devonport with all possible speed. For some reason however, nobody bothered putting a marker buoy down, so when the tugs arrived with sweeping gear they could not locate the stricken submarine. In the end the Navy spent five days continuously dragging the seabed before they found the A 7. By the time divers were ready to go down to the submarine, everybody knew it was a futile gesture. The A 7’s crew had all perished.

Memorial Card.

Memorial Card.

Memorial Card.

Thanks to Naomi Cassidy for the above cards

The news of yet another submarine disaster shocked the people of Plymouth so much that they set up a public fund for the widows and orphans of the unfortunate crew. The Navy was roundly condemned on all sides for its incompetence, and suffered huge embarrassment at the hands of the National Press who made sarcastic remarks about the inability of the Navy to salvage their own submarines. Meanwhile in Whitsands Bay the struggle to lift the A 7 from the clutches of a muddy seabed continued.

Extract from MISSING,the tragic loss of the submarine A7. dvd

Wires had been passed underneath the submarine and fixed to salvage lighters on the surface. Using winches and the strength of the sea itself in a tidal lift, had so far failed to make any impression. The vessel remained firmly lodged in the mud. In the end the huge battleship Exmouth was taken to the scene, and she had a go with her massive winches.

The A 7. Crew.

Wires snapped, and capstans burnt out, but the A 7 just would not move. In the end the Navy, by now in danger of being buried by the abuse hurled at it by a vitriolic press, decided to leave well alone and contented themselves by holding a memorial service over the wrecksite, with a Royal Marine guard firing a salute, and wreaths being tossed upon the calm, silent waters. Thus the A 7 became a fitting tomb for all her officers and crew, and today, seventy six years later, that is how she still remains.

A 7, hatch and periscope.

Of all the wrecks that I have dived on this has to be the most poignant. The phrase a war grave conjures up neat rows of white crosses, somewhere in a foreign field half forgotten. The A 7 is much, much more immediate than that. As you fin down the rope 135 feet to the bottom of Whitsands Bay, the A 7 suddenly and completely presents itself, almost as if she is still sailing towards a new destination. To all intents she is still completely intact, lying upright in the mud, down to what would be her surface marks. Her periscope is up, and her conning tower and nearly all her fittings are still in place. She is instantly recognisable from her photographs, and as you hover above her to stop the mud swirling up and obscuring her, you can on a good day see the whole length of the A 7 laid out pointing into the Bay, as if sailing quietly on to oblivion. Locked inside forever are her Captain and crew.

The Ill Fated A 7.

May their souls rest eternally in peace.

N.B. This wreck is now a prohibited site. No diving is allowed.