Up next in 10
In the dying days of WW2, a type VIIC German submarine was lured into a deadly British minefield where it was destroyed and all the crew killed.
The wreck of the U-1021 now lies in 52 metres (170 feet) of beautiful clear water making it an incredible, haunting dive. It's a great depth for divers as they gain technical diving skills and appears on many people's diving bucket list.
*Highlights*
00:00 Introduction
05:23 Type VIIC/41 German submarine
09:49 Mark XVII contact naval mine
16:31 Bow and torpedo tubes
22:28 "The Eye of Sauron" - Periscope #1
28:41 Underwater posers!
34:30 Did people survive the explosion?
40:36 Photogenic buddy at stern
48:00 Main hatch in conning tower
54:05 Decompression profile
*Iron Coffins*
In the video I suggest you read Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner. It's a brilliant book and you can get it at this link - https://amzn.to/4bTWBwc
*Kit I Use*
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Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
it's really rare that you get conditions as incredible as this Even better when
0:06
you've got a fantastic wreck to dive Hi this is Dom Robinson and welcome to my
0:12
deep wreck diver channel Today you're going to be following me as I dive the
0:17
wreck of the U1021 a World War II German submarine
0:22
that vanished in March 1945 with the loss of all her crew and was only
0:28
discovered about 15 years ago It's a brilliant dive and one that's on the
0:34
bucket list of most divers in this part of the world as they kind of start their
0:40
journey into technical diving The story of how U 1021 was lured to its doom in
0:46
an underwater minefield is also fascinating and one that I'll be covering during the
0:52
dive So here we are on the boat uh just getting ready You can see how great the
0:58
conditions are That's my buddy uh Scott off to the right hand side In front of me there is Fran There's not
1:04
particularly much room on this boat So because there's quite a long window of slack what we're doing is the first
1:11
divers which is Scott and me are being helped to get in the water by the next divers which is uh which is Fran there
1:17
You can see it's such a lovely day She's she's not even in a dry suit yet but she's helping me get a get our stages on
1:24
which is great of her So I'm pretty much the only person on the boat I think who's dived the U1021 before And uh you
1:31
can look around at the others there and there's there's a a huge level of excitement Everybody knows how great
1:36
this wreck is Uh we all know that the visibility is going to be fantastic Um and we're all just keen as anything to
1:43
get in the water But you know everybody's taking the time Everyone's getting all their gear sorted You can
1:48
see there I am uh on the lift looking out You know look how flat that is It is
1:54
I mean you just don't get days that are any better than this Um so it's it's
2:00
just lovely And there off to my left hand side you can see there's uh there's the shot line and the skipper's going to
2:06
drop me up current of it Uh there you go You can see I'm in and I'm going to look back and have a look at the boat there
2:13
You can see it's it's not the world's biggest boat Uh this was Sax and Mist uh
2:18
operated by Dive Nui out of Nuki on the North Cornish coast Uh really sadly not
2:24
not running anymore Unfortunately that boat last time I saw it was out of the water up on chocks and I believe it's
2:30
it's sold off It may even have been scrapped Uh really sad cuz it was it's a good boat for this kind of thing but hey
2:37
that's life Uh that's what happens Uh this dive is from quite a while ago now
2:42
It's from 2021 So uh you know just I think in that period after COVID when the world was
2:49
slowly returning to normal and we were able to get out and uh and do this sort of thing again So you can see uh I'm in
2:55
the water and uh the skipper has dropped me up current There's there's not much current but I'm slowly drifting onto
3:02
onto the shot line You can see it there just in front of me Meantime I'm I'm just having a look down and and checking
3:07
everything's okay with my gear Uh making sure that the the rebreather is performing correctly all that kind of
3:12
stuff My buddy Scott is is just behind me There you go You just had had a brief glimpse of him The more observant of you
3:19
will notice that I don't have my uh my trademark uh signature yellow gloves on Don't know why I didn't have them on for
3:26
this dive U maybe I'd run out or something like that Uh who knows But you can see I've actually I've got
3:32
underwater here and I'm I'm still drifting And there I am onto the shot You can see that this is a top tension
3:38
shot system So the reason there's two ropes is the one that I'm about to hold on the one that's diagonal that's the
3:43
one that's going down to the wreck The other one the one that's vertical has got a weight on the end of it and and
3:49
the idea is that is uh kind of counteracts a current to try and keep the uh keep the shot um a bit more
3:55
vertical Uh you know they work relatively well Um don't tend to be used a lot for really uh really deep diving
4:03
but um hey this is uh this is kind of this is a 52ish meter dive So those of you uh
4:11
who've seen some of my other videos will have uh heard me refer to um sort of my
4:17
kind of view that 60 m is where technical diving starts Now obviously that's quite a contentious point Um
4:24
plenty of other people will say "No it's 40 m No it's 50 m." Um obviously they're all wrong but um there's no doubt that
4:31
this area this dive 50 to 60 m is is definitely in a kind of gray zone And uh
4:38
you know a lot of people including myself did this as one of their um first kind of deeper tryix dives So it is a
4:46
nice depth You get a decent bottom time You end up having to do a re reasonable amount of deco Um so it is really nice
4:53
as in that kind of transition period I would say Anyway there's a there's a
4:58
good discussion point I look forward to hearing some more about it in the comments So U1021 what is it Well it's a
5:06
type 7C World War II German submarine And these were the workhorse of the uh
5:12
the German Navy in the Second World War They built a huge number of these submarines Something over 700 of them
5:19
And and also uh vast numbers of them were sunk as well You know the life expectancy of guys on these submarines
5:25
was really really poor Um now the interesting thing about um this type of
5:31
submarine is there is still one that you can go and visit and and this photo is of the
5:37
U995 which is almost identical to the U1021 It's uh it's above water in
5:42
Germany You can go and visit it You can go inside it You can go and have a look around I've not done that but uh you
5:49
know I would love to do so The other thing if you're interested in these kind of submarines I'd really encourage you
5:55
to read a book called Iron Coffins It's written by one of the few German submarine commanders who survived all
6:03
the way through the war in submarines It's absolutely incredible account of of
6:08
what it was like on board these things um and how the war changed and how his
6:14
thoughts about uh you know his own life and all those kind of things changed It is just a brilliant book So uh on the
6:21
dive though you can see um I've got to get can see the bottom below me there You can see I'm just putting my strobe
6:27
on at the moment Uh you can also see the shot is not quite on the wreck You can see the wreck uh just through the gloom
6:33
there And what's also really obvious is that's the underneath of the wreck Now uh that's always always a bit
6:39
disappointing You'd much prefer the shot to be on the other side where uh where all the stuff is But hey um I'm actually
6:45
really pleased that it is on this side And the reason I'm really pleased that it's on this side is is one of the
6:51
things I wanted to do on this dive is find the thing that sunk this submarine
6:57
It is known to be here and I've uh I'm aware of it I know roughly where it is
7:02
So what I'm going to be doing is is looking for it And the thing that sunk this submarine was a uh a British mine
7:10
I've already shown you a picture of that type 17 mine These things were in really
7:15
uh widespread use and you know sunk loads and loads of submarines But the
7:21
the interesting thing about them is is how they worked or one of the interesting things about them is how they worked is they were mounted on a
7:28
trolley and they were pushed off the back of a ship uh on the trolley and they would then sit on the when they got
7:34
to the the depth on the seabed they would release a rope or a chain that would hold the uh the sea mine a certain
7:41
depth above the bottom So uh I don't know if you can see in front of me here but on the seabed there is uh a metal
7:48
object surrounded by rocks And that metal object is the trolley from the
7:54
Mark 17 mine that sunk the U1021 It doesn't look like very much when you
7:59
consider the size of the submarine that's just next to it but there would have been hundreds of these mines in
8:06
this area Each one of these mines could have up to 500 pounds of uh amatl So you
8:13
know high explosive inside them And as you can see just one as you'll see later
8:19
on in this video just one mine was enough to blow the uh the front off the
8:24
the U 1021 and kill everybody on board Um 43 men lost their lives when the
8:32
U1021 was uh uh hit that mine So you know incredibly effective weapon Uh you
8:39
could put them down obviously leave them they'd be there for years um if that's what you wanted and uh deny the area to
8:47
uh to to the enemy So in the particular case of the U1021
8:52
um this was as I've already said right at the end of the Second World War So it's not entirely uh known when the
9:00
U1021 did hit this mine It's generally believed to be the 14th of March
9:06
1945 And if you think Hitler committed suicide on the 30th of April 1945 so
9:12
only a month after um this submarine was sunk It's um you know it shows just how
9:17
close to the end of the Second World War this was And later on I'm going to show you the uh the list of the casualties uh
9:24
on this submarine and you look at their ages and then they're all 19 or 20 or 21
9:30
The the oldest person on board this submarine was 30 years old but most of them were were really you know very very
9:37
young men I mean really you know not much off boys And this was if you read
9:43
Iron Coffins um you you know that at this point in time that the Submariners
9:49
the German submariners knew that going out on these kind of missions was uh was not far off suicidal And so you know you
9:56
wonder what it was like for the for the people you know the boys the men who took this submarine out um knowing that
10:03
the chances of them coming back was uh was really really small Um I guess they probably saw it as themselves doing
10:09
their duty I mean these guys if you think about it 21 years old so they
10:14
would have or 19 years old they'd have probably spent most of their life um living under the Nazi regime So would
10:21
have had all the propaganda and all that kind of stuff So so maybe they thought they were you know doing their bit you
10:28
know they thought it was important whatever Uh they ended up dying here
10:33
that this submarine never sunk any ships Um as far as we can tell it never even attacked any other ships It simply uh
10:40
left left Germany It did its workup training in late 1944 It left Germany in
10:47
1945 uh sailed you know really really close to the uh English coastline And once
10:54
again if you read Iron Coffin's book you will you will know that um there's one
11:01
of the chapters towards the end of it is called Hell Above which is him just saying that the entire air above them
11:08
you know whenever they surfaced there was just planes everywhere It was just a horrendous time for the German submar
11:14
submarines And these type of submarines were old designs um they had newer submarines coming out but they weren't
11:20
ready So so they were just sending guys out in these old submarines to do the best they can And in the case of this
11:27
one all to die Now this bit here this is uh this is the break in the submarine
11:32
This is obviously really close to where I've seen that that trolley for the mine And you can see here the the damage
11:39
caused to the submarine where that explosion there has blown all that bit in there It's ripped off the bow that
11:45
I'm going to show you in a second And and as you can see here you can actually look inside You can see the twisted
11:51
metal And obviously anybody who is in this part of the submarine uh they're
11:56
dead You know the instant hit that mine goes off they're all they're all dead The the force of the explosion or you
12:03
know the fact they're 50 odd meters down you know that is that is going to kill them Um so there's no doubt about that
12:09
the people in the further down in the submarine We're going to see uh we're going to see some hatches We're going to
12:14
see we're going to have a look inside it And uh you know I don't think it's as clearcut with that with those people If
12:20
you think about things like the the Kursk you know the famous Russian submarine that um that um one of its own
12:29
torpedoes blew up um 20 odd years ago and the guys survived in the back of
12:34
that submarine for quite a long period of time Um my gut feeling is is is um there were the people in the submarine
12:40
who survived that first explosion and I I'll show you more about that uh later on But here I am here you know just
12:47
surveying the the damage You know this is the pressure hole here So that's designed to withstand
12:53
um down to the maximum diving depth of this submarine was 230 m So um you know
13:01
that's capable of withstanding an incredible amount of pressure So it must have been really thick And as you can
13:06
see it's just been ripped apart by the force of that explosion I mean you can look inside You can see stuff in there
13:12
Some of that is um is brass You know some of it you know this is up near the
13:17
front of the submarine So I guess you're into kind of there would have been some uh crew quarters up here There would
13:23
have been uh the torpedo tubes We're going to see a bit more of those in a minute Um you know so this is
13:30
kind of it carried four uh sorry five torpedo tubes four in the front one at
13:36
the back and this is uh there would have been spare torpedoes that have been all
13:41
sorts of bits and pieces in this area And it's all just utterly utterly uh shredded and ripped apart Just shows you
13:48
I think the force of the explosion Now the reason it's thought that this submarine was destroyed on the 14th of
13:55
March is because there was a vessel in this area that reported an explosion or
14:01
hearing an explosion uh on that date Now obviously uh sea mines did occasionally
14:07
explode for reasons other than hitting um submarines So it may have been something to do with that Um but chances
14:15
are it was uh the submar the the ship was hearing the uh the strike on this
14:20
submarine So in front of me there you can see that is the the bow That was the bit that's ripped off Um I'm going to go
14:27
and have a look at that now You can see uh you can see the torpedo tubes You can also see um some of the casing um on the
14:35
bow as well which is which is relatively unusual I mean it's mainly the uh the pressure hole that survives on
14:41
submarines rather than the casing You can see Scott's up there as well Clearly he's not as interested as I was in in in
14:47
looking into that bit So he's gone he's gone forward And uh but what it does show is just how great the visibility is
14:54
here The other great thing about this dive is because of the depth Uh you can see here you know most of the dive is
15:00
actually shallower than 40 m It just means that there is um you know you got an incredible amount of bottom time So
15:07
you can spend uh the time really getting to know the wreck So you can see uh Scott's up here at the front You can see
15:14
there he's looking at the the torpedo tubes They're really clearly visible there That kind of that rib thing As I
15:20
say there would be four at the front of this submarine Um you can see kind of the top two there You can see the hydrooils off to the left hand side that
15:27
would have been used to uh to control this the up and down You can also even see right at the front of it there You
15:33
can actually see the the casing with the um with the bow and uh and you see
15:39
Scott's got a couple of video lights there which he's using to illuminate parts of the wreck which is which is
15:45
helping with the photography We agreed we were going to do this You can see I've got my camera uh I've got my camera
15:50
with me and uh I I got some brilliant photos of this dive as you can probably imagine I'm going to intersperse my uh
15:57
my video with a few every now and again Um it it just you know fabulous conditions The viz is good and there's a
16:04
whole load of ambient light getting down to the seabed And the seabed as you can see is this is this lovely sand and the
16:11
sand is is reflecting the light back So it just makes for great conditions for
16:16
taking videos and also uh taking photos as well So uh and Scott because he's got
16:22
those nice video lights chucking a load of light on everything It just uh it just helps It makes everything a bit
16:28
less green So uh he's obviously pleased cuz I'm getting a load of photos of him which is uh which is what he wants as
16:34
well But you know this iconic bow here um you don't always get to see this on
16:40
submarine wrecks cuz obviously it's it's not the pressure hull It is the casing So it does rot away and and vanish You
16:46
can see it started to rot away in you know quite large chunks of it But to have this much of it here is still uh is
16:53
still really nice And you can see that looking through that hole on the left you can see actually the door of one of the torpedo tubes Almost certainly um
17:01
there will still be live torpedoes inside these torpedo tubes Um they that's how they carried them and uh
17:08
that's how they made sure they got as many on board and and this was the area in which the U1021 was sent to operate
17:16
So no doubt they would have been uh cruising around looking for opportunities to uh to sink some some
17:23
vessels Um fortunately for the vessels that they never managed it and uh
17:29
instead and this is the really fascinating bit about this story is that
17:34
clearly by this time uh we'd cracked all the German codes We we were listening in
17:40
on them uh you know through Enigma and those kind of things And what we uh
17:46
became aware of is that the Germans thought that this area was clear of mines So they'd um either other vessels
17:53
or whatever had uh reported that or they'd got some intelligence or something like that They believed this
17:59
area was clear of mines So we were aware that they were sending submarines into
18:04
this area So what we then did was we then sent mine layers out and laid
18:11
several fields of mines in this area so that the sub you know absolutely
18:16
horrendous Um you know if you were on board this submarine you think you're going somewhere where there's no mines
18:22
All of a sudden uh you get there and I'm sure we've all uh watched the famous uh
18:27
film Dash Boot and we've heard that awful sound of a mine chain or a mine
18:33
dragging down the side of the submarine Now clearly we don't know if that is
18:38
what happened to the U1021 but you can you can imagine it might be So um all of
18:44
a sudden this kind of awful realization that you're in a minefield and um and
18:51
then obviously the explosion and then obviously what happens afterwards you know absolutely uh horrendous horrendous
18:59
way to die But you know this was war and you know I guess that's what's happened
19:05
That's what happens Now Scott here in front of me he in his former life he was
19:10
a Navy submariner He did 20 odd years in submarines So for him diving on this
19:16
wreck is is particularly poignant He feels a kind of uh kinship with the
19:22
people who were on board the submarine the guys who died So um it is uh I guess
19:28
nice for him or interesting for him to come and do this dive So you can see what we're doing here is we're heading
19:34
back along the submarine So we've been to the bow We're heading uh heading forward and you can see there just
19:40
coming up out of the gloom there is the uh is the conning tower Clearly you know
19:46
that is a really iconic part of any submarine Now interesting enough when the uh submarines in the Second World
19:53
War were first built they all had guns uh mounted ahead of the conning tower
19:58
And you can see there is there is no gun on this uh on this submarine And the reason is is that halfway through the
20:05
Second World War the Germans realized that using a gun on a submarine was no
20:11
longer a sensible thing to do So uh you know the ships were defensively armed
20:16
There was loads of planes there was loads of destroyers So all of a sudden a submarine being on the surface and
20:22
trying to fight was a really bad idea So they removed all the guns Um and the
20:28
only guns that were left at sub on submarines by this point were anti-aircraft guns And uh when we go
20:34
around the other side of the conning tower you will see uh where they would have been mounted And uh one of the
20:40
mounts at least one of the mounts is still on the seabed So we'll see that in a in a moment But before that obviously
20:47
uh the conning tower you know one of the most interesting parts of any submarine Uh all sorts of of of bits and pieces
20:54
here And you can see this is a uh what this is only the pressure hull the actual casing So the bit that gave uh
21:01
submarines often a very or conning towers often a very distinctive shape that is all in that mess of stuff that's
21:07
on the uh that's on the seabed down there or is rotted away So so what you can see here is is the pressure hull and
21:14
you can see the um in particular what you can see is the periscopes and this type of submarine would have had uh two
21:22
main periscopes the one at the the back So the aft one is the attack periscope
21:28
So that one had the really detailed um high magnification optics on it It went
21:33
up further than the other one And that's the one uh it was a smallest one That was the one that they would use for
21:39
launching the torpedoes Um the other one was uh more of a uh sort of wider field
21:45
and that one was used for observation And so it would be used for target acquisition also for checking that the
21:51
everything was clear before they surfaced The other thing that I'm just going over the top of the the the round
21:56
thing that's a radio direction finding antenna So they would use that uh you know for trying to acquire uh targets uh
22:04
you know they would listen in for radio signals and those kind of things So just in front of me there is actually uh one
22:10
of the periscopes You can see I think I'm probably going to go in Yeah there I am I'm just going to go in and I'm going
22:16
to rub the rub the glass So that's the observation periscope and you can see that absolutely incredibly that the uh
22:22
the glass is still intact I always think that looks um that looks a bit like the eye of Sauron And you'll see um quite a
22:29
lot of people have put photos of um of the U1021 online and that kind of eye of
22:35
Sauron photo is one that's uh that's really well known So you can see so this is the observation periscope or
22:42
periscope number one depending on your terminology Periscope number two which is the one behind it is the attack
22:49
periscope and that's uh the one that would have had the better optics As you can see it's it's smaller as well so
22:55
that it would have created less weight So therefore less chance less likely to been observed etc Now the other really
23:01
interesting thing about this submarine is although it was a um an old model an
23:07
old type of submarine it had a couple of things on board it that made it really interesting Um one of the things it had
23:14
on board was a snorkel And um I don't really spend much time looking at the snorkel which is which is kind of a bit
23:21
foolish because it because it is something that's really interesting about this wreck and it's also one of the things that helped identify it But
23:28
the purpose of a snorkel was to allow the submarine to charge its electric batteries whilst underwater Up until the
23:36
snorkel um submarines would have to come up to surface run their diesel uh
23:42
engines charge the batteries and then go underwater So the snorkel is actually to
23:48
the front um of the the conning tower on the port side So on the the side that's nearest the seabed you can just about
23:54
see the bottom of it And and what would happen is that that would be uh the
23:59
submarine would come up relatively shallow They would raise that above the uh the water level and it would allow
24:06
air to be brought into the submarine into the diesel engine and exhaust fumes to be exhausted as well so that they
24:13
could run the diesel engines underwater That meant they didn't have to surface And by the latter stages of the Second
24:20
World War anytime a submarine was on the surface it was really dangerous for them Uh we the allies we had lots of radar We
24:28
had aircraft uh with radar fitted We had aircraft with very powerful search lights so they could operate at night We
24:35
had homing torpedoes Uh we had all sorts of things that just made it really really difficult for submarines So the
24:42
snorkel uh by allowing them to to charge their batteries underwater was a really important capability for them And uh
24:49
going back to iron coffins again So if you uh read the book Iron Coffins uh the
24:56
guy who wrote it um gets absolutely livid that his uh submarine is not
25:02
fitted with a snorkel and uh he goes to great lengths to try and find one and try and get one fitted to his submarine
25:09
because he he understands how important they are to to the life expectancy of his vessel and his uh uh his comrades So
25:17
so what we're doing here is you've seen that Scott is putting the video lights on the on the seabed And what he's
25:23
actually trying to do is angle those up so that they they angle up onto the um onto the conning tower to to get a
25:29
better picture Now uh the reality is there's so much light down here that those uh video lights are just not
25:35
making any difference And you can see there I mean they're just rubbish And it's it's because there's already so
25:41
much light All they're doing is really adding a bit of color um to to that very small amount of the
25:47
wreck So a bit pointless really So having realized it's all a bit pointless I'm going to uh I'm going to go in I'm
25:54
going to pick him up and I think turn them off You can also see that the uh the first of the other divers are in the
25:59
water and they're heading the uh the other way other way down the wreck I mean you just see there how good the
26:05
visibility is Those guys are clearly I mean they've got to be 20 odd meters away from us We can see their torches
26:11
just shows how good uh conditions are Now um some of these other divers they
26:17
they knew I had a camera Not everyone else had a camera so they were or not many other people had a camera So one of
26:23
the things they were really keen to do is to get a photo on this wreck And uh I've I did say to them look if if I see
26:29
you down there I will absolutely get some photos of you Um especially cuz the conditions are so great and all those
26:35
kind of things So uh this is uh this is the two Scots This is George Scott and
26:40
Mark Scotto as opposed to the third Scott who I'm diving with Um here here
26:46
they come They're uh they're obviously uh they're trying to get a lovely position looking really good in the
26:53
water So if you ever see a camera man around and uh you your trim's awful or
26:59
you're uh not not in a great underwater position then uh then you know strongly advise you to kind of get it sorted
27:06
Otherwise you're going to end up with a permanent record of you uh you looking a bit rubbish underwater So uh this this
27:12
bit here you can see all this stuff that's on the seabed This is the remains really of the the casing to the aft of
27:19
the conning tower And this is where the uh this is where the guns are This is where the anti-aircraft guns are And
27:24
that thing in front of me the big thing is uh is one of the uh one of the mounts But these are the two divers that I uh
27:30
that I promised uh photos to So as you can see there I'm directing him into position Um and uh and and saying "Look
27:38
I'm going to get some photos of you." So as you the other thing you can see about this diver is they've uh they've got my
27:45
uh they got my yellow gloves So uh at least I know where they are now It's it's one of those things a few other
27:50
people have uh I'm not going to say copied me but uh certainly do the same as me in in terms of wearing yellow
27:57
gloves And it does mean that you can always uh you can always see hand signals and those kind of things You can
28:03
see there it just shows how good they are how much they stand out So so he's this divers obviously posing really
28:09
nicely in front of the in front of the conning tower and and that's going to make a great photo In fact a load of
28:15
these guys I think used the the photos they got of them They put on their profile pictures and those kind of
28:20
things In fact there you go You can see the first diver who went past me He's he's keen to be in on the action as well
28:26
So so both of them both of them are there The other top tip if you've been photographed is this what I'm telling
28:32
the diver don't point your torch at the cameraman uh it's uh it's rubbish You
28:38
get rubbish photos and all those things What you want to do is point it at something interesting near you so that
28:43
you can uh you can illuminate it So uh that's what I've done Uh I think somebody's videoing me so they're
28:50
videoing me taking photos of other divers So uh that's that's all very nice
28:56
Um in fact I think that's Kev there with the uh with the with the blue G-box So
29:02
they've all they've all poked off which is uh which is quite nice because I want to get back And one of the other things I said to myself I was going to do is
29:08
look in this area here and try to actually find the gun So this uh this
29:15
submarine should have had three anti-aircraft guns a 37 mm uh so you
29:20
know reasonable size uh weapon there and two 20 mm So those are kind of just big
29:26
machine guns And these were actually really uh powerful anti-aircraft weapons
29:31
And there's quite a lot of uh records of uh submarines in this kind of era
29:37
engaging aircraft and shooting them down And there's also quite a lot of records of submarines sinking u as well But I
29:44
think the important thing is you know you might assume that it would be an unequal fight that an aircraft or
29:50
several aircraft would easily be able to sink a submarine And that absolutely wasn't the case You know these were
29:56
these were good weapons The guys who were using them um you know inflicted a fairly uh heavy toll of casualties on
30:03
the um uh you know on on aircraft So it was a it was an interesting time What's
30:10
not quite so uh so interesting is that all of a sudden our beautiful peaceful dive on this wreck has suddenly become
30:17
uh there's divers everywhere And to make matters even worse there's actually a diver over there who is on open circuit
30:24
Now that's really rare on on on you know any of the kind of deeper dives So uh
30:30
it's uh he's obviously uh you know it's really expensive for him He's on some sort of triix uh mixture He's probably
30:37
got twin 12s and a 50% or maybe an 80% deco gas So it's it's a big expensive
30:46
dive for for him also obviously making it really noisy with all those nasty
30:51
bubbles But um no it's it's really uncommon to see open circuit uh divers
30:57
uh diving on try mix doing this kind of stuff So I've I've certainly in you know
31:03
the last 5 years I've never seen an open circuit diver diving deeper than this kind of depth Um so what you can see
31:11
here though is is that I'm starting to go past the uh the conning tower and head towards the stern of the the uh the
31:17
boat As I go down you can see there's this kind of big metal tube on the um on
31:22
the top of the uh the pressure hole And that is uh one of the uh intakes for the
31:28
or is the intake for the diesel engines So that came up just behind the conning
31:34
tower and normally that's where the the air intake would be Clearly with a snorkel that's then moved and and and
31:41
you know pushed up high So uh but that is that's the the air intake So so in
31:46
the submarine where we are now that is uh we're into the engine area here Now the other thing that's going on there is
31:52
is the diver in front of me You can see he's looking through that that big uh that big hole and that's a hatch Now the
32:00
interesting thing about the hatches is we've seen three hatches on this submarine so far There was one forward
32:06
of the conning tower There's one on the top of the conning tower and there's this one here So both the one on the
32:12
conning tower and this one here are both open So you would imagine that this
32:18
submarine is um is you know cruising along at maybe 30 m Um
32:26
it's all the hatches would be closed It hits the mine The mine blows out the
32:31
front of the vessel kills everyone on there Um so how did the hatches get
32:36
opened Now that's clearly a hatch from the one above me Um that's on the seabed
32:43
So somehow that hatches ended up on the seabed Um how how did that happen Well I
32:48
guess there's a couple of different theories One theory is that maybe the um
32:54
the force of the explosion blew the hatches off and blew them open and that's how come they ended up on the
33:00
seabed Now I'll be honest I don't buy that because um to get from the front of
33:07
a submarine to the back of the submarine it's got to go through all sorts of uh compartments and all sorts of uh
33:13
potentially watertight doors and various other bits and pieces that um you know
33:18
for me would reduce the force of the explosion by the time it got all the way down to this end of the submarine and
33:24
and then what it's got to do is is overcome the water pressure outside to blow and you know the actual strength of
33:31
the hatch to blow it out I just don't see that happening But you know I I just I just can't believe there's enough
33:36
pressure in it So for me um what's happened here is that this hatch has
33:41
been opened by people inside the submarine and therefore I think that
33:47
people survived the explosion you know in the conning tower survived the
33:52
explosion in this part of the submarine and and they've tried to escape from the submarine and they've opened this hatch
33:59
and therefore the hatch has been open and has then been you know ripped off by something you know whether it was
34:04
fishing whether it was natural decay of time you know I don't know but it's been
34:10
ripped open and and that's how come it's ended up on the seabed So you know my
34:16
belief therefore is that some guys survived and some guys potentially got
34:22
out of the submarine and were on the surface potentially Um now this uh
34:27
submarine is quite a long way offshore Um you know maybe 10 miles offshore Um
34:33
and therefore to get from the where it was to the shore um that's going to be
34:39
really difficult especially in March when the water's at its coldest So what you can see here is is I'm looking
34:45
inside this uh inside this hatch and it's difficult to see in this video but
34:51
I'm pretty convinced that when I looked in there I could see well you can see there there's a door clearly there's
34:56
there's a hatch of some sort uh whether that is um you know that hatch is not where it would have been you know maybe
35:03
that hatch is evidence of it of it you know being that the explosion traveling through the submarine and that hatch has
35:09
been blown off and and that's why it's on you know in the angle it is sorry the other thing that I I forgot to say that
35:14
I thought was in there was um I think you can see bits of rubber I you know
35:19
and for me those are part of uh some sort of submarine escape um kit so I
35:25
think this was part of the procedure for um or this was acknowledged as an escape
35:31
hatch for submariners So whether um that's just kit that was in that area because that's where people expected to
35:37
escape from Whether that's evidence of people starting to prepare for an escape I I don't know but um you know that's I
35:45
kind of feel that there is evidence for this So um but obviously no one's ever
35:50
going to know And there were no survivors from this submarine So nobody got ashore Nobody was picked up by any
35:56
other vessels I don't think even any other b any bodies were found So none of them washed ashore or if they did they
36:03
weren't associated with this wreck I I don't know if um Submariners had on their clothing something that identified
36:10
them as being from a particular submarine So potentially there is a body somewhere that was uh found at some
36:17
point and buried as maybe an unknown sailor or an unknown German sailor or something like that Um but yeah I kind
36:24
of So when I dive this wreck though what I'm thinking about is what it was like
36:30
for those people who were on this submarine these really really young boys and young men um going to do their duty
36:37
as they saw it uh almost certainly in the expectation that they wouldn't
36:43
survive and then going through this horrendous experience potentially of hearing the mine then the mine explosion
36:50
potentially you know escaping or trying to escape and either being successful and dying on the surface or not being
36:57
successful and drowning you know who knows Absolutely horrendous though
37:03
Um going back to the wreck you can see I've I've pretty much got up to the stern here And you can also see just
37:09
sort of there just to the kind of left of the of the shot that's the rear torpedo And it's important to recognize
37:16
that that obviously these were weapons of war These guys were coming out to do
37:22
uh a job and their job was to sink uh merchant ships and particularly at the
37:28
beginning of the Second World War they sunk an awful lot of merchant ships Famously Winston
37:34
Churchill said that the only thing that ever really worried him during the Second World War was the uh the
37:40
submarine threat and in those kind of 1940 1941 to a certain extent 1942
37:47
um there was a stage when I think the Germans thought they were going to starve us We thought maybe they were
37:53
going to starve us and you know that's what you know this submarine was trying
37:58
to achieve Obviously that moment had completely passed by 1945 This was a
38:04
kind of last throw of the dice by the Germans I mean it wasn't even a throw of the dice cuz it was it was doomed to
38:11
failure You know the amount of kit that we were producing the amount of tanks
38:16
and planes and ships Obviously we'd landed in um in Normandy The Russians uh
38:23
or the Soviets I guess were were you know advancing from the east smashing They'd smashed the German army all sorts
38:30
of places Stalenrad um Kursk you know all those incredible battles So um you know the Germans were
38:39
just really throwing people's lives away really I think at this point Um what you can see here though is you can see the
38:45
the propeller one of the two propellers um very distinctive for Ger particularly
38:51
German submarines is they have the propeller and each propeller has its own rudder So you can see the rudder off to
38:58
to the right hand side there British submarines tend to have two props but only one rudder um submarines this
39:04
period I don't know why that was but um anyway if you're in any doubt this was German submarine that shows uh that
39:11
shows that it is So all the way through this video you've seen me uh seen me taking these photos And at this point in
39:18
in uh in my kind of diving career I was I was wasn't really interested in in videoing I was mainly interested in
39:25
photography So uh the fact that I had this uh video camera attached to my head
39:31
was almost incidental I never thought I would be doing this with this video I never thought I'd be putting it online
39:36
but what I was um was keen to do was to get loads of good photos and I was putting lots of my photos online at this
39:42
at this particular point So uh that's why uh you can see me you can see me doing this all the time For those of you
39:50
are interested in cameras uh what I've got is a Canon G7X Mark II in a Nicam
39:58
housing Um so you know that's a small compact camera and uh the housing costs
40:04
far more than the camera but actually gives some gives some really good results And I've got a fisheye lens on
40:09
the front of it You uh you probably saw that as well Um the Here you go Trying for a bit of an
40:16
arty shot there through the uh through the kind of the bit between the prop and the rudder And you can see there me
40:22
giving uh giving Scott some directions He's uh he's diving me quite a bit So we've done a couple of trips to Malin
40:29
Head together And I always uh always got photographs of him on those as well And so he was uh he was very amanable to
40:36
doing this kind of thing which is which is really nice if you're a photographer Having a a willing uh a willing model
40:42
helps an awful lot And uh and Scott was very willing He he was great or he is
40:47
great Uh doesn't do so much of this kind of diving as he did once upon a time which is a pity cuz he's he's a
40:52
fantastic diver I uh I've all I've loved diving with him and I've done some some great dives those of you Uh obviously
41:00
here's this is where one of the prop shaft comes out of the the hull of the submarine and you can see the submarine is is really on its port side Um
41:07
obviously you got those two um belly tanks on submarines and it does mean that submarines always end up on one
41:14
side or the other Um the other thing you might be interested in is what sort of
41:19
video camera I'm using at the moment So this is the uh the I guess original
41:25
power lens the the dive plus uh which was which is great was a great um
41:31
underwater camera uh underwater video camera I had it strapped to the side of my mask which is uh does sometimes give
41:39
you jerk vision but I was fairly uh good at this point about you know keeping my
41:45
movement of my head down to a minimum Unfortunately like an awful lot of um of power lenses it it did die in the end
41:52
and and what got it were the the rotary contacts So uh that was uh that was
41:58
really sad Um and I then moved on to the Vikita So you'll see more of my modern
42:04
uh videos are done with the Vikitas I've got I've got both ones I've got the original Vikita and the Vikita 2 and
42:11
they're bro both great The only thing with them is that they're they were he they're heavier than the dive plus So
42:17
mounting them on a mask is no or mask strap is no longer really uh feasible
42:23
They're just a bit heavy So uh that's why I dive with a um I mount them on a
42:28
helmet now and that works really well So here I am uh coming back along the top
42:34
of the submarine You can see I'm I'm quite a long time into my dive now 40 odd minutes And this is absolutely what
42:41
you get at this time At this depth rather on a rebreather you just get a whole ton of time Lots of my other
42:47
videos you see me kind of rushing around desperately trying to get things sorted in the you know if it's a 100 meter dive
42:54
you've got 20 minutes on the bottom or or maybe not even that long And you've just got to try and cram as much as you
42:59
can into that That's why I use a scooter and all those kind of things This dive that's not the case I'm just finning
43:05
around nice and leisurely really enjoying myself really chilled taking loads of photos uh of whatever Scott is
43:12
looking at there Uh in fact those are the the uh that's the breather pipe that I mentioned earlier on You can see there
43:19
where it turns up at the back of the conning tower and obviously there's a kind of intake on there And the um the
43:26
anti-aircraft guns would have been mounted on a platform in and around that area as well So one of the problems with Yubot is
43:34
always identifying them And if you've seen any of my other uh videos you'll
43:39
know some of them feature you know attempts we've made to identify Ubot So there were three Mark 7 uh Ubot
43:47
discovered round about the time that the U1021 was And there was a a whole load
43:54
of work that was put into trying to you know figure out which one was which And there's a really uh interesting paper
44:01
produced by uh Dr Axel Nestle and apologies if I've uh if I've massacred
44:07
his name there It's a really interesting paper which analyzes the three wrecks and explains why they were um thought to
44:15
be the you know why they were identified as as as these ones Um the uh the
44:21
paper's available um on yubotet and it's also available on on recx site So if you
44:28
uh are interested in it it's it's really worth five or 10 minutes of your time just to have a read of it And the kind
44:34
of research that goes in to identify these things absolutely incredible So this was only really uh positively
44:41
identified as a U1021 in 2007 So uh you know not that long ago Up until that
44:48
point it'd been believed to have been sunk somewhere else Um in fact you can see here coming along the top of the uh
44:54
the sub that's Fran So clearly having helped me with all my kit in the water
44:59
she's got herself sorted She's the uh the other diver with a camera on this on
45:05
this dive So she's you probably also saw she's got a video uh light in her hand as well So she's coming along She'll be
45:12
uh she'll be getting some great photos And uh Fran Fran does take a really nice photo So um I should probably try and
45:19
get some off her actually cuz no doubt there is one of me somewhere kicking around Meanwhile here we are We're back
45:24
at the coning tower that that there you can see is the uh the intake uh probably the main air intake for the um for the
45:31
diesel engines I've kind of talked about that already And then the back of the coning tower you can see or I'm looking
45:36
there at that's the attack periscope the the number two the one nearest to us and the other one uh the number one the
45:44
observation one is in front of that looking down on the seabed there you can see um I mean how good the visibility is
45:50
also something that might be a gun mount there the kind of that cone shaped thing also um obviously the big uh pressure um
45:59
vessels so that's got loads of compressed gas in and they would have kept those charged So if they ever
46:04
needed to so when they needed to get water out of the the ballast tanks that's where the the compressed air
46:10
would be uh would be used to do that They mounted on the outside of the
46:15
submarine and clearly those ones have uh through the through time have kind of rotted away and fallen off the side of
46:23
the hull and they're obviously uh lying there on the uh on the seabed There's a whole load of them There's all sorts of
46:28
other bits of pipe and machinery uh and all sorts of bits And no doubt under there somewhere is a couple of
46:34
anti-aircraft guns And one of the things is you know it's quite frustrating that I know they're there but I've I I've not
46:42
been able to absolutely put my hand on one and go "Yes this is this is a gun." I'm sure it's it's buried under
46:47
something somewhere or or possibly you know even you know might have been lifted by someone That's a that's a
46:53
possibility as well This uh this submarine has been dive for for 20 odd years And you know people do like to to
46:59
lift odd things even though they would have been they're steel So they wouldn't have survived down here They would have
47:04
um they'd be all rusty and horrible But um uh yeah you probably probably just
47:09
saw a moment ago there sort of three divers heading back towards the shot line And I'm uh definitely starting to
47:16
get to that point in the dive where I'm thinking yeah um I've probably got about an hour of deco ahead of me I need to be
47:24
uh thinking how much decode doer I want to do And I think uh it's a long time ago but I think on this dive we were
47:31
given a total run time and I think that the maximum run time the boat said was was 2 hours So you don't want to upset
47:38
the uh the skipper by um by breaking that So um you know you got to keep you
47:44
got to keep an eye on it There you go You probably saw Scott was looking at me He's giving me that look that you sometimes get from your buddy which is
47:51
like "Come on mate It's time to uh time to head back to to the shot I think uh
47:56
yeah just before I do that I want to uh I want to have a quick look in here Uh
48:01
I've not done it yet This is the I talked about those three uh hatches and the fact that two were open So this is
48:07
the one on the top of the conning tower This would have gone down into the control room This would have obviously
48:12
been where the the skipper and the the lookouts came up and down and everything And you can see there you know there's a
48:19
ladder and there's obviously whatever that thing is there That's uh and there's loads of wires and other boxes
48:24
and all sorts of stuff in there Wouldn't it be wouldn't it be lovely to be able to get in there and go and have a look around Unfortunately that's just not
48:32
happening with with the amount of gear that I've got on me So uh I can't imagine anybody has ever ever been in
48:38
there But there would be uh it would be it would be lovely if we could But hey there there we go Uh maybe somebody will
48:45
at some point invent a mini rebreather or you know some sort of uh small thing that you can use to to get yourself in
48:52
there But it it is really tight looking in there You can see the mechanism of the periscope Um but that for me I think
49:00
is is me thinking this is time to say goodbye to the U1021 and what a stunning
49:06
dive it has been How great how great it was Um you know brilliant conditions
49:12
really fascinating wreck incredible story incredibly sad um incredible time
49:20
in in world history You know second world war all that change all that
49:26
innovation the Yubot campaign went you know first of all the Germans were really successful Then our counter
49:33
measures became really successful And you know if the war had carried on the Germans had an entirely new generation
49:40
of submarines so-called electra boots that were going to come on and that would have I think made a you know a big
49:47
impact as well Fortunately they were never able to get them to see and uh you
49:52
know in any way that that allowed them to be used So that was great um or very
49:58
fortunate I guess And uh you can see you know what I'm doing here is I'm sort of
50:04
I'm heading up but as I'm going up I'm I'm taking some more photos And uh you
50:09
can see you know how good these photos are They really I think capture um the
50:15
atmosphere of and also how good the conditions are You can see the seabed here from easily 10 11 meters above it
50:23
You can see there there's a row of shot of strobes rather uh you know even though the shot is quite a long way off
50:29
the wreck it's uh it's taken us it's it's uh showing us the way home So that's uh that's uh that's really nice
50:36
And uh if you haven't watched my strobe video then uh I' I'd encourage you to do so Shows exactly what's going on here
50:43
Shows the kind of strobes that we use the kind of setups we use how they get put on how they get put off uh and those
50:50
kind of things Um you can see here I'm actually a bit reluctant to leave the
50:55
wreck Um I'm not swimming particularly quickly back towards the uh the shot line And I think the reason is is
51:01
because I know that there's some other divers around and I'm going to turn around in a bit and uh and hopefully get
51:08
a really uh nice photo of them Uh I'm also going down a bit which is probably
51:13
not great I should try and be swimming along at that kind of 42 m level Maybe I feel that's what I need to do in order
51:19
to get to my strobe You probably remember from the descent uh that I was I was looking to go and find that
51:26
trolley on which the the Mark 17 mine was and therefore you know maybe I should have put my strobe up a bit
51:32
higher I was more I guess focus on the seabed than rather thinking I was going to be coming back over the top of the
51:37
wreck But hey a couple of meters doesn't really make that much difference at this depth a few more minutes doesn't make
51:43
that much difference at this depth because uh what it does to you your deco time is is really kind of minimal Um you
51:51
know I've been down here 50 odd minutes by this point So uh it's you know a
51:57
minute or so not really going to change the price of fish There you go That's my strobe Only got a single strobe at this
52:03
point You can see it's mine It's got the green tape on it Um that's that's how I recognize it uh other people as you can
52:09
see there some guy's put his name on with a bit of white tape These things all work And here you go Look looking
52:15
back at a wreck That is just fantastic isn't it And there's those those three divers Uh and uh you can see now I'm
52:22
going to get my camera out and I'm going to take a photo of them And it's a really nice photo I'm really I'm really
52:28
proud of it cuz it's got the three divers it's got the wreck in the background That all uh comes out really
52:34
nicely So um that is that's uh absolutely brilliant Really really
52:39
pleased with this photo And now uh there's the shot There's uh there's Scott Uh he's uh he's got his strobe off
52:47
And we're going to be we're going to be heading back up to the surface now So uh I promised you this at the beginning of
52:53
the dive So these are the names of the people who died on the uh
52:59
U1021 And you can see there it's also got their ages And as you can see there
53:05
is a lot of very very young people on this uh submarine Boys really beginning
53:11
of their lives and uh ended abruptly at the bottom of the sea um in the remains
53:18
of their particular iron coffin So uh incredibly sad All their names are on
53:24
the Yubot memorial in Ke I've not been but it's somewhere else that I would I
53:29
would love to go to as well to kind of I guess uh pay my respects Didn't
53:35
necessarily agree with the cause they were fighting for In fact didn't agree with the cause they were fighting for It was vile but I respect uh their bravery
53:43
and the fact that they probably died a horrendous death So the other thing uh
53:49
people are always interested in is my uh my decompression profile So uh here I am
53:54
I've put it on the screen You can see the you know 50-ish meters You can see the TTS there Takes ages to build up at
54:02
this depth because it's uh it's relatively shallow But by the end of my dive you can see there sort of 40 odd
54:08
minutes 45 46 47 minutes I've got uh 58 minutes TTS And uh up I come And as I
54:16
come up you'll see what happens is I actually it abruptly changes from uh 58
54:22
to 52 And that 6 minute gain is um is when I switched my uh P2 from 1.5 to uh
54:30
sorry from 1.3 to 1.5 And that just not accelerated my deco a bit And there you
54:35
go Rest of my deco takes me uh takes me through to the end of the dive Get up to surface Total run time just under two
54:42
hours So that's the end of uh of this dive It was absolutely stunning Great
54:48
wreck great dive loads to see Fascinating story Um and this is our
54:54
dive team See the four of us who who went out together uh going from left to right That's me Scott Big Jace and then
55:02
uh Fran on the right hand side You can see massive smiles on our face We've had a great day I hope you've enjoyed this
55:08
video And uh as always with any of my videos please uh leave a comment tell me
55:14
what you liked what you didn't like what you'd like me to do next Please give us a like if you if you feel like it That
55:19
would be uh that would be great Obviously subscribe turn on your notifications would be awesome And um
55:26
well but most importantly I hope you've enjoyed it and I will look forward to uh
55:32
seeing you on the next one
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Diving & Underwater Activities
Diving & Underwater Activities