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Mystery german submarine 280 feet down
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Apr 22, 2025
During the first World War, the Germans built large numbers of submarines and many have yet to be found or identified. This was the second #gasperados dive on a UC type 2 minelaying submarine lying in 85 metres (280 feet) in the English Channel. We knew that it was going to be a challenging dive and that the only way to identify the submarine was by scrubbing the props to remove concretion and find identifying serial numbers. Find out how we got on! *More submarine dives:* Enigma of German u-boat wreck solved by divers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo01ty6B3YI 280 feet down - unidentified german submarine - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lSZ3bHkrfs German u-boat lost in 1945 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSRbE4KHnPQ *Highlights* 00:00 Introduction 01:24 First World War German minelaying submarine 04:31 Arriving at the bottom 06:47 Prop scrubbing 21:40 Photos 21:55 Deck gun (88 mm) and mine tubes
View Video Transcript
0:00
identifying the wrecks of submarines is notoriously
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difficult this is particularly true for those from the first world war they were built in large numbers and information
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on their fate is often hard to
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find usually you can tell what type of Submarine It Is by looking at the size
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and then other features such as the number of guns number of torpedo tubes
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and location of
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hatches actually identifying the specific submarine can be much more challenging though normally the only
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place it's possible to find a serial number is on the
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propellers the propellers are often covered with over 100 years of marine
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concretion removing it in order to read the numbers can be physically demanding
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and time consuming work that is made worse when done at any sort of
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depth look yeah okay this video is taken from the second
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dive that we did on a first world war German submarine from the first dive we know that it's a
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UC type 2 m Lane submarine the Germans built 64 of these
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and they're widely recognized as the most successful submarine design in history according to Modern estimates
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they sank more than 1,800 enemy vessels 46 of the 64 built were lost
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during the first world war and there are four serious contenders for the identity
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of the one that we about to dive on it's located approximately 40 m
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offshore and in 85 M of water so getting to it is really challenging and the
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Dives were two years apart I've put a link in the comments section if you want
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to see the video from the first
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dive a key observation though was that the port propeller was was buried in the
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sand and so therefore was inaccessible this left only the starboard propeller
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which was heavily covered in net even though we'd cut some of it away the
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expectation was that there'd be a lot of work to do down
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there here I am on The Descent with my buddy conditions look great and as you
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you can see he's got a bag full of tools that we're going to use to clear and then scrub the
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prop descending to 85 M takes a surprisingly amount of time as you can
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see the water's getting darker and we decided we need our torches to light the way
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there's quite large chunks of this video where nothing very much seems to be happening either I'm ascending
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descending scrubbing props moving around a wreck I don't apologize for it it's giving you
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a feel for what it's actually like to be on one of these Dives but just to let you know that there is more of this
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coming so always a great moments when you've descended down a shotline and you
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realize you're on the wreck next job is to fix our strobes to the shotline to
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make it easy to find it realistically we probably don't need to do it on something like a submarine but it's
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always nice to be able to see them and know that you've got a way home clearly
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marked and there it is it's a beautiful wreck this one really intact I've dived
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it before so I know where we are and which way to the stern
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before we do that though I need to secure the shotline to the wreck this
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just makes sure that it stays where it is doesn't get dragged off possibly by the tide or some of the other divers
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that's what I'm going to use that bit of string for it's known as a waster
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it can be difficult to find things on submarines to tie on to I'm in luck here as there's something sticking on the
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edge of the pressure
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hle I've been a bit of an idiot though that loop on the Rope is designed to make it easy to attach the waer so I've
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got to go back and undo the knot
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without piece of admin complete can now get on with the main job of getting to the stern and seeing what condition the
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prop is it's actually really close and the first thing I noticed when I get there is that loads of the net that we
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cut off last time has actually been moved away by the tides this is really good news makes it a lot easier to get
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to the
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prop there's three blades on the prop and there's only going to be writing in
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between one set of blades that means we need to scrub in three places so we
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quickly divide up who's going to do what
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the most difficult place to scrub is the place underneath it's quite tight that's
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why I've taken off one of my bailout cylinders in order to make it easier for me to get in there
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[Music]
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it's pretty tight though and I smash my head off the prop
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not surprisingly as soon as we start scrubbing the viz disappears
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we're using things that look like very large stiff brillo pads they're actually designed for exactly this task are you
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removing concretion from brass propellers probably not used to dealing with this amount of concretion though
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at this depth this is much harder than it looks and you get fatigued really
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quickly
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[Music] I've come out to give the other diver a go you can see the brill pad there it
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also means that I can take some photos
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with my video lights on it's much easier to see what's going on you can see one
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diver down there scrubbing the prop and you can also see in the left hand side of the video that's the remains of the
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rudder
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down on the SE next to my bailout cylinder you can see one of the
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hydroplanes it must have come off at some point maybe when the submarine sunk
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or possibly pulled off as a result of trolling or fishing action who
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knows
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for
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for
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for
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for for
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that the brill pads aren't making much of an impression on the concretion it's time to up the game a bit with a wire
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brush
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[Music]
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that
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I've scrubbed other one props before and I know where the number should be so I make sure the other diver knows to clean
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in the right place
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[Music] spe
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we've decided there's nothing on the two spaces that are easiest to get to so the other diver is going to have
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another go underneath and see what he can uh do there
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that
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hold
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[Music] oh
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m
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that for
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okay
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oh I want to take okay
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where really irritatingly I've somehow managed to lose approximately 4 minutes of my video which is why it suddenly
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leaps from me taking photos of the prop to me taking photos of the deck gun
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which is actually in front of the conning Tower worth noting though that the deck gun is pointing hard over to
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the port side almost as if it's aiming at something behind it
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as I continue to move towards the bow you can see the mine shafts they're all
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empty which shows that this submarine almost certainly laid its Minds somewhere else it's also notable that
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there's no significant damage in the bower area there are several instances where UC see submarines laid mines and
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then fell victim to their own ones this doesn't appear to have been the case with this particular submarine
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this is the ports torpedo tube which is broken off from the main pressure Hull
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and is lying on the seabed
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this is the very front of the pressure H the submarine you can see one of the hydroplanes on the left hand side of the
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screen for
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we're back at the gun now you can see it's clearly pointing to the port side
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rear one of my theories about how this submarine is sunk is that it was engaged in a surface battle and I believe the
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position of this gun supports my theory you can also see ready use ammunition there on the deck
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the other thing that I think supports my theory about how it's sunk is that there are two large holes in the conning Tower
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once again on the rear port side I.E the same direction that the gun is pointing
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I believe that the crew were engaged in a battle perhaps the battle wasn't going so well for them and they decided to
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withdraw as they were withdrawing they were hit in the conning Tower in two
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places and as can be seen this would have clearly compromised the water Integrity of the submarine and I believe
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LED it to its sinking of course it's equally possible that other things may have created these
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holes some other man-made event such in bottom trolling perhaps then enhanced by
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100 odd years of corrosion who knows but something's got to explain this sub
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syncing and these are the obvious
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contenders the other interesting thing is there's also other holes in the pressure Hull there's an example there
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and the hatch that we'll see shortly is open the one at the front you may have
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seen was closed perhaps the crew were hit in this pressure compartment and
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tried to escape who
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knows that's the hatch I was talking about it goes into the engine room where the submarine's twin diesel engines can
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be
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found my dive is nearly up but before I return to the shotline I have a quick
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look again at the prop where we can see there's a couple of divers still
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working my bottom time's done so it's time to ascend I've got several hours of
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decompression ahead of me and plenty of time to ponder as to what the identity of this submarine might be
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that
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[Applause]
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so the question is what is the identity of the submarine
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that you've seen on this dive and we've dived previously and the answer is
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unfortunately we still don't know for certain the photographs that you saw me
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take and that were taken by other members of the team who scrubed the props after us didn't reveal any numbers
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or letters on the prop which was incredibly frustrating troll through German World
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War I archives though revealed that one of the candidates for the identity of this submarine the
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uc68 had problems with its props and had them changed shortly before it's
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lost therefore our best guess is that the props that were fitted were unmarked
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and therefore that's why we've not been able to see anything on them combined with other information
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it's therefore our belief that this submarine is the missing
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uc68 for
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I hope you've enjoyed my video and found it interesting even if you probably share my frustration that we haven't
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been able to come to a conclusive result please like and share and comment
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and subscribe also don't forget I've got loads of other videos of Deep dive
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similar to this one and I'll hope you take the the time to have a look at some of those as well in the meantime I've
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got another hour or two of decompression to
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do for
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