U-Boats in the Royal Navy post-May 1945

[Derek Waller]

Dear All,

For the past 6 months I have been researching the topic of the U-Boats in the Royal Navy after May 1945, and it has turned out to be a fascinating story. Operation Deadlight obviously took centre stage, as did the activities at Loch Ryan and Lisahally. But there was much more to it than that, not only the assembly of most of the surrendered U-Boats in the UK, but also the publicity tours, the formal First of Class trials, the use of the German POWs, and the somewhat tense relationship with the Russians.

Using many original source documents from the Public Record Office and elsewhere, and with help from the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport, I have therefore written a paper which is titled "U-Boats in the Royal Navy post-May 1945". It starts with the first surrenders in early May 45 and finishes with the scrapping of the last 7 RN U-Boats, including HMS Meteorite (U-1407), in late 1949 and early 1950.

This comprehensive paper, which has just been published on “uboat.net”, as well as on the website of the Barrow Submariners Association, describes the story of the U-Boats in the Royal Navy in a way that has never been attempted before and is, I believe, well worth a read. It may nevertheless still contain some errors and omissions, so if anyone knows anything more about this piece of Royal Naval history, then please let me know before all memories are lost.

Yours aye

Derek

[Andy H]

Thank you Derek for all your hard work in getting this out to the wider world.

Link to this excellent article is here:-
http://www.rnsubs.co.uk/Dits/Articles/uboat_rn.php

Regards

Andy H

[Xavier]

excellent article, just finished reading it..also a good insight into the beggining of the cold war
( non-cooperation between the RN and the soviet navy, sabotage of vessels allocated to the soviets, etc etc..)
Xavier
Der Autodidakt

[miroslav_cavic]

The Great British machines! Excellent!

[phylo_roadking]

Surrendered German...

[Urmel]

Very good article, congratulations!

Judging by the defects, the Type XXI and XXIII boats don't seem to have been potential war winners after all. Paper spec and reality didn't seem to match?