Unterseeboot

U-Boot generally indicates the German Sous-marins of both World wars. They are especially famous for their attack campaigns of convoys of supply on the basis of the the United States and of the Canada for the Europe.

U-Boot is an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , which means Sous-marin in German; to note that U-Boot is sometimes written U-Boat in English. The term of U-Boot is generally used in French to indicate:

Underwater German of the First World War
Underwater Austro-Hungarian of the First World War
Underwater German of the Second world war.

The successive German navy of war called their submarines by a denomination starting with a U followed by a number.

First World War

The U-Boot were launched in an underwater war " totale" (without reference to the nationality of the ship, and without making difference between civil and military ships) at the beginning of the war. In May 1915 U-20 ran the steamer Lusitania. 1 195 people who perished following this torpedoing, 123 were American civilians (note: the figures given on the page Lusitania are slightly different), of which one celebrates producing theater and a family member Vanderbilt. This event caused a strong hostility of the American public opinion to Germany. The US president Woodrow Wilson threat Germany and requires repair. To prevent that the United States declares the war to him, Germany suspends its underwater war.

However, Germany announced nearly two years later, the January 31st 1917, that its U-Boot engaged a total underwater war again. The American opinion having evolved/moved meanwhile in a direction more favorable to the entry in war of the USA, this declaration was taken as a declaration of war by the Americans. It was a determining factor in the entry in war of the United States at the sides of allied the April 6th according to.

Second world war

The U-Boots were a major component of the battles of the Atlantic, which lasted until the end of the war. The strategy of the admiral Dönitz, Befehlsbaber der U-Boote (ordering of U-boote) was to strangle England which continued the combat against the Nazi Germany, by running the ships which crossed the Atlantic to supply it.

The first months of the war transfer U-Boote to accumulate successes. At the end of 1939, U-47 ordered by Günther Prien, being thwarted of all defenses, penetrated in bay of Scapa Flow (Northern of Scotland), bases naval British Home Fleet , and ran the battleship Royal Oak . The public discovered, in addition to Prien, the others ace of this underwater war whose Churchill says later which it was the only danger that it really feared during the war: Kretschmer, Schepke, Endrass….

With the tactic of the convoys implemented by Admiralty to protect the cargo liners, Dönitz retorted by grouping its gray Loups in pack. When a submarine had located a convoy, it indicated its position to BdU which then launched to the continuation of the convoy the other submarines present in the zone. Once joined together, they then launched murderous attacks on insufficiently protected convoys. While leaving after June 1940 and occupation of France their base of Wilhemshaven for five bases on the French Atlantic littoral: Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, Pallice and Bordeaux, U-Boote increased also considerably their operating range.

At these happy times succeeded soon of the disappointments: the Allies used best the Sonar, they discovered then the codes of the encrypted machine Enigma thanks to the rendering of an inexperienced crew, progress of the Radar made possible the locations on the surface of the submarines by planes whose operating range always went growing.

After the entry in war of the United States, the operation " Clash of Cymbal ( Paukenschlag ) marked the apogee of successes of the German submariners, who ran many convoys with the inexperienced crews which navigaient without protection at broad North-American coasts.

But with the first military setbacks of Reich, and the projections of Combined in the anti-underwater fight, the gray Wolves always fewer and with the crews increasingly more inexperienced yielded ground and ran always less unfavourable units. Dönitz had succeeded Erich Raeder with the head of Kriegsmarine, but that did not make it possible to rectify the situation. The large captains had perished at sea (Prien, Endrass, Schepke) or had been made prisoners, and their successors Rasch, Cremer or Hardegen found themselves soon driven back in the North Sea, to protect the German ships which evacuated the material and the populations of the territories of the East where the Red Army advanced. The new Walter submarine, that Dönitz had called its wishes as of before the war, could return in service in 1945. Its performances made of him a submarine again frightening, but the capitulation occurred whereas the first units had just entered in service.

The underwater weapon was incontestably most dangerous of the second world war: 743 U-Boote were lost and 30.000 of the 40.000 submariners who were useful during the conflict perished at sea. Crack corpses in already élitiste Kriegsmarine, the submariners formed a corporation with share, with its secret codes, its rules and its traditions. The admiral Dönitz, which had been commander of submarine during the First World War, took care to maintain among his troops a spirit friendship freed from a too heavy hierarchical rigor: the submariners did not carry for example not of uniform on board. In its will, Adolf Hitler gave the capacity on the Reich to Dönitz which negotiated the capitulation with the Alliés. He was condemned by the international military Tribunal of Nuremberg to ten years of prison that he purged.

The Kriegsmarine produced several types of U-Boot following the technological changes:

Standard I
Standard II
Standard V
Standard VII
Standard IX
Standard X
Standard XIV
Standard XVII
Standard XVIII
Standard XXI
Standard XXIII
Standard XXVI

Ecological threat

Among the 743 U-Boote lost or run, some represent today a major ecological threat at the bottom of the oceans because of their immersed dangerous cargo or of the presence of mercury flasks in the course of dispersion and at the origin of toxicological contaminations of the seamen circle. (see also Disease of Minamata)

One can quote for example the mediatized example of the U-864, the only known case of submarine run in immersion by another English submarine even immersed to him.

No solution exists currently put aside the hiding under a sand cover for circoncrire the propagation of toxic substances and contaminant.

See too

the Decoy-ships, ship of alleviating appearance, but armed, built for the anti-submarine fight.

Catalog of films

the Boat (more known under the name of Das Boot), film of 1981 on the epopee of a German submarine during the Second world war
Torpedes under the Atlantic film of Dick Powell, 1957; telling the duel in the South Atlantic enters a U-boot and an American destroyer.
U-571 , film of Jonathan Mostow, 2000; American tries to capture the machine Enigma locked up in a seriously touched U-Boot.

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