Searchers believe they have located U-boat in Canadian river

[nobodyofnote]

German U-boat may be at bottom of Labrador river



An important piece of history from the Second World War may be sitting in a river in Labrador.

Searchers believe they've found a German U-boat buried in the sand on the bottom of the Churchill River. The discovery has yet to be authenticated.

Two years ago, searchers scoured the bottom of the Churchill River with side-scanning sonar. They were looking for three men lost over Muskrat Falls.

When they reviewed the footage from that search, they made an unexpected discovery.

"We were looking for something completely different, not a submarine, not a U-boat — I mean, no one would ever believe that was possible," Brian Corbin told CBC News.

"It was a great feeling when we found it."

At first glance, it can be hard to spot the submarine on the sonar image of the riverbed. When you put it next to a drawing of the boat, some of the features become a lot clearer.

"It's 150-feet long, 30 metres, exactly what our side-scan sonar shows," Corbin said.

"So we're pretty sure it is, and we've filed this with receiverships and wrecks, and I think they're confirming that it is possibly a U-boat."

It's unclear how the sub may have ended up that far inland, more than 100 kilometres from the ocean.

The German government says it is possible, but added that it would be "sensational and unusual," that a submarine could have ended up so far inland.

"We do know that German U-boats did operate in that region," said Georg Juergens, the deputy head of mission for the German Embassy in Ottawa.

He notes that a Second World War-era, battery-operated weather station was found decades after being left in Labrador by a U-boat. It is now on display at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

"We must brace ourselves for surprises," Juergens told CBC News, while stressing that the submarine has yet to be positively identified.

More than a dozen U-boats may still be unaccounted for, he said.

If the mystery find is proven to be a submarine wreck, the German government does not favour bringing it to the surface.

"That would be against our tradition and our naval customs," Juergens said. "This site then would be declared a war grave at sea."

He said Canadian policy dovetails with German policy on such matters.

According to Juergens, the Newfoundland and Labrador government is now involved in efforts to authenticate the possible wreck.

If the German government agrees, Corbin wants to head back out onto the Churchill River.

He'll use a remote-operated vehicle to take a closer look – and, he hopes, answer the question of whether there is a submarine there once and for all.

Oddly enough, the story of a U-boat beaching in the Churchill River is the subject of a novel written in the early 1990s.

In that story, the crew defects. Over the years, many have taken this fictional story to be fact.

There have also been other recorded incidents of U-boat activity in the waters off Newfoundland and Labrador.

In 1942, a German torpedo sank the ferry SS Caribou on a run between North Sydney, N.S., and Port aux Basques, N.L., killing 136 people.

According to the Newfoundland and Labrador heritage website, submarine U 587 fired three torpedoes at St. John's earlier that year. Two of them hit the cliffs below the city's iconic Cabot Tower.

U-boats sank four ore carriers off nearby Bell Island in late 1942, killing more than 60.

When the war ended in 1945, U 190 surrendered to Canadian forces and sailed into Bay Bulls, just south of St. John's.

A piece of that U-boat stayed in Newfoundland — its periscope found a home at the Crow's Nest Officers' Club in downtown St. John's, where it remains to this day.

Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundl ... y-725.html (CBC News, 26th July 2012).

Video: http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/NL ... 260521003/

[LWD]

Interesting that they would consider it a "war grave" without more info. That far inland a reasonable working hypothesis is that the boat was damaged enough so that it couldn't make it home so they traveled a ways up the river disembarked and scuttled her. Under international law wrecks in territorial waters are different from wrecks at sea I believe as well. At the very least it would be good to find out just what boat it is if it truly is a uboat.

[Takao]

Did April Fool's come early, or is it late?

The CBC News video shows an overlay of a Type IX U-Boat, but the news story says the length is only 30 meters...A Type IX is slightly less than three time that in length, and it's pressure hull was about twice that in length. Even the smaller Type VII was larger than the 30m length of the "object", a Type VII was about 68m long with a pressure hull of 50m.

I think some folks have had too much Strange Brew to drink, but I highly doubt what the "found" or think they found most likely is not a U-Boat.

Remember the River Foyle "U-Boat": http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17871894

[Aufklarung]

Hi

I agree with Takao. Despite citing U 537 dropping off a weather station waaaaay North of there, the location is somewhat baffling. That's a long way inland to nowhere.

The so called "local rumour" of a sub crew beaching and defecting was actually a fictional book written about 20 yrs ago and in no way a "real" rumour.

The most plausible "not a u boat" theory seems to be a storage tank of some variety. Up to the Muskrat Falls area, the river has carried alot of frieght over 100+ years. Soon to be a large Hydroproject too.

regards
A

[PRZYB]

Did April Fool's come early, or is it late?

The CBC News video shows an overlay of a Type IX U-Boat, but the news story says the length is only 30 meters...A Type IX is slightly less than three time that in length, and it's pressure hull was about twice that in length. Even the smaller Type VII was larger than the 30m length of the "object", a Type VII was about 68m long with a pressure hull of 50m.

I think some folks have had too much Strange Brew to drink, but I highly doubt what the "found" or think they found most likely is not a U-Boat.

Remember the River Foyle "U-Boat": http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-17871894

So it's not a Type IX ?

[Takao]

Not unless a lot of the submarine is missing...

It's about the right size for the pressure hull of a Type II coastal U-boat, but they were very short on range, and the only way one would have made it to Canada was as a war prize after the war. Which I don't think happened.

Maybe it's the "missing" 5th midget from Pearl Harbor!

Or perhaps, they should plaster the area with missing barge posters...

[PRZYB]

??????

[panzerplatten]

But the recent sonar images come from a portion of the Churchill River that is more than 200 kilometres from the ocean —a fact local historians are finding problematic.

The theory that the images depict a German sub is largely based on local folklore stemming from the 1992 novel Hard Aground.

The story refers to a German U-boat captain who is fed up with the war’s bloodshed and scuttles his vessel in the Churchill River, allowing his crew to escape safely.

It’s fiction, says the author, 93-year-old veteran Walter Sellars, who was stationed in Goose Bay during the latter part of the Second World War.

Mr. Sellars returned to the area in the 1960s to reconnect with two Inuit hunters who saved his life in a severe blizzard during the war. They told him about seeing dark shadows moving under the surface of the river.

“I have no other proof at all,” says Mr. Sellars. “I think the present search will not find a submarine there.”

The search team plans to revisit the site next week to photograph the peculiar object using a remote-control vehicle.

Canadian historians and academics who are following the story are anxious to see what comes from the mission.

“I’m always skeptical. This is only based on a shape in a sonar,” said Mike O’Brien, a history professor at Memorial University in St. John’s. “I’m only saying it’s not impossible.”

A spokesperson for the German Embassy in Ottawa told CBC News that about a dozen U-boats remain unaccounted for.

According to the Canadian War Museum, radio communications became compromised halfway through the war and many U-boat captains were warned not to report their whereabouts to headquarters for fear of being intercepted by Allied forces.

“There are some U-boats that essentially vanished without anyone knowing the cause,” said Jeff Noakes, the War Museum’s Second World War expert.

However, there is no evidence of submarine conflict in the Churchill River, and experts are questioning what a submarine would be doing so far from the Atlantic and how it would have sunk.

“I’d be surprised if a submarine wound up there,” said Mr. Noakes.

The search team has submitted its sonar images to the Canadian authority for sunken ships, the Receiver of Wrecks, which is also conducting an investigation.

And until further evidence surfaces, the mystery of the Churchill River shadows is likely to stay wedged between fiction and fact.

National Post jedmiston@nationalpost.com
Mark.

[panzerplatten]

Another bit of news footage that tries to put sonar image in perspective
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=502_1343754207
Mark

[Takao]

I must learn not to drink and watch news broadcasts, with my brain still active.

Yes, it most certainly puts this in "perspective." These guys(newscaster included) would not know a U-Boat/submarine from a cigar.

Newscaster: "...at the bow, those shadows would be the schnorkels, used by the diesel engines to charge the batteries."
Except the schnorkel was never located in the bow, it was located amidships, just forward of the conning tower. Also note the word schnorkels(plural), when U-Boats only ever carried one, so it should have been schnorkel(singular).

Also, I note that the supposed "wires" seem to terminate well short of the bow, instead of running all the way to the bow.

Gentleman who found the submarine: "It's 150 feet long, 30 meters, it's exactly what our side-scan sonar shows."
Except that is way to small to be a Type VII or a Type IX(the submarine shown in the graphical overlay).


Edit: My brain refused to allow me to finish watching the video, maybe later when it is in neutral.

[panzerplatten]

maybe, there's a good chance those cables are probably tree roots!!

[Takao]

or maybe...a parted towline.

[panzerplatten]

very possible, they seem fairly thick in that sonar pic?
what was the original purpose of the cables? diepole antenna, if so surely they could not be that rigid?
Mark.

[Takao]

yes, the cable's were the boat's radio antenna, the were rigged from the conning tower to the bow, and to the stern. No, the were not that rigid.

The larger ones look more like bent piping.

[Aufklarung]

Hi

U-boat search in Labrador river remains murky

A search for a suspected Second World War German submarine in a Labrador river has turned up only a sandy mound of frustration and an unresolved military mystery.

A remote-operated vehicle was used for two days to probe the deep, murky depths of the Churchill River, where a sonar image has suggested that a U-boat may have sunk.

The search over the past week, however, not only didn't add new information to what a prior search had uncovered, it found that the object — first identified two years ago, but not made public until last month — has subsequently been buried by sand and clay that had eroded from nearby cliffs.

Still, diver Brian Corbin says the lack of new evidence hasn't shaken his belief that the object may have been a U-boat.

"We believe what we have is a German submarine," Corbin told CBC News. "We're still getting raised elevation there — there's something there."

The remote-operated vehicle and side-scan sonar technology used in the search launched last week were provided by the Stephan Hopkins Memorial Foundation, a western Newfoundland group that helps recover the bodies of drowning victims.

The theory that a buried mound in the Churchill River appears to match the shape of a U-boat attracted international headlines, as well as some skepticism from military experts.

But Corbin says the new scans did not produce anything to disprove the theory.

"We believe [with the first scan] there was possibly three feet of metal that was detected, so it could be understandable in two years the sedimentation has covered the submarine," Corbin said.

Corbin said his next move is to use a piece of gear called a magnometer, which may provide better detail about the size of the metal object.

"This machine can detect through the sand, and we can use it from above in the boat, 80 or 90 feet [24 or 27 metres], and we believe we can actually pinpoint the end of what we found — the bow and stern," he said.

U-boats had several skirmishes around Newfoundland during the Second World War, including the sinking of the SS Caribou in the Cabot Strait in 1942, and the sinking of four iron ore carriers near Bell Island in Conception Bay in the same year.

There had been no reports of a U-boat as far north as the Churchill River, which is well inland from the Atlantic Ocean. The suspected site, though, is not far from where a military base was built at Happy Valley-Goose Bay during the war. That base survives today as 5 Wing Goose Bay of the Canadian Armed Forces.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/u-boat-search- ... 28508.html

regards
A