# German submarine menaces the North Sea 61 years after its sinking



## 3rd Herd (19 Feb 2007)

German submarine menaces the North Sea 61 years after its sinking 
By Alan Cowell and Walter Gibbs
International Herald Tribune 
Thursday, January 11, 2007 

FEDJE, Norway: World War II was edging to a close as Kristoffer Karlsen peered from this rocky outcrop off Norway's coast and saw what he took to be a huge explosion some way out to sea. Twelve years old at the time, he could hardly have realized that he had witnessed a remarkable moment that revealed something of Adolf Hitler's intentions toward America in the closing stages of the war, and presaged a potential ecological disaster 61 years later. "I knew it was a submarine," said Karlsen, a 73-year-old retired ship's pilot, gesturing across the choppy gray expanse of the North Sea toward the site of the blast on Feb. 9, 1945. On that day, he said, he was out gathering peat with his grandmother on this island, then, like the rest of Norway, under Nazi occupation. "It was a big explosion but soon after it was calm and there was nothing to see," he said. "But in the German garrison there was a lot of activity." That is hardly surprising. The plume of water and debris, rising 60 meters, or 200 feet, into the air, was the result of a torpedo fired from a prowling British submarine, the Venturer, that struck the German sub U-864 amidships at the very start of a clandestine voyage to Japan.

As the German vessel sank in two parts into more than 120 meters of water, it took with it not only the 73 men on board, but also 65 tons of mercury for the Japanese munitions industry and, some historical accounts say, a newly developed German jet-fighter engine — technology that was supposed to give the Axis powers an edge in the closing stages of the war. Much later there were rumors — and they remained just that — that the vessel was carrying fabled Nazi gold or even Hitler's last will and testament. In 2005, a study published in Britain by Mark Felton, a naval historian, said there had been a longstanding submarine trade between Japan and Germany in aircraft and missile parts, and in information related to the development of an atomic bomb. Eric Grove, a naval historian at the University of Salford in northwest England who has studied the submarine wreck, said: "The idea was to keep the Americans tied down in the East" to draw forces away from the campaign in Europe. "Hitler was getting increasingly desperate," he said.

The long saga of the U-864, however, is far from over. Many of the canisters containing the liquid mercury are corroding. Small amounts of mercury have seeped out and Norwegian government tests around the wreck have detected slightly raised amounts of the metal in crabs and fish, the country's second biggest export after oil and gas. Kristian Hall, an environmental consultant with a Norwegian engineering firm, said the corroding canisters could produce a threat comparable to the disaster at Minamata, Japan, where 27 tons of industrial mercury compounds were released into a local bay from 1932 to 1968, causing nerve and brain damage to hundreds of townspeople whose main diet consisted of local seafood. "If it is not taken care of properly," Hall said, "it could develop into a catastrophe, with corroding canisters beginning to fail one after the other."

Last month, the authorities in Norway proposed entombing the submarine in a sarcophagus, as has been done with other underwater hazards elsewhere. But, Lisbeth Stuberg, an environmental protection officer who is one of the 630 people who live here all year, said many of the islanders want the wreck removed altogether and planned to conduct a torchlight procession on Thursday to protest the plan.
"There are so many questions and no answers," Stuberg said. "If you cover it you do not know the consequences. You are only postponing the problem." While islanders like Karlsen knew all along where the wreck lay, the authorities seem to have paid it little heed until a German engineer and amateur historian, Wolfgang Lauenstein, discovered details of its cargo in the late 1990s and the Norwegian Coast Guard pinned down its precise coordinates in 2003.

Officials in Norway believe that up to a third of the 1,857 flasks of mercury carefully stowed along the keel of the submarine now lie strewn over the seabed, many of them buried in mud, their condition unknown. Cleaning up the mess is a tricky matter. "You can't just go down and pick up the wreck with all the mercury and deposit it safely ashore," said Gunnar Gjellan, a senior official in Norway's Coastal Administration. "At least 20 to 30 percent of the mercury would remain on the bottom regardless."
Gjellan said other options — such as raising the wreck or removing the mercury using a remote-controlled mini-sub — would be too risky because they could simply spread mercury contamination. 

So the plan is to pour up to 300,000 tons of sand down a vertical chute to create a burial mound. The mound would rise about 10 meters feet above the surrounding sea floor, enough to cover the highest points of the wrecked vessel. The sand would then be covered by a half-meter- thick layer of rocks to prevent erosion. "There is nothing temporary about such a solution," Gjellan asserted. "We have been told it would last forever." Walter Gibbs reported from Horten, Norway.


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## karl28 (19 Feb 2007)

3rd Herd    thanks for posting this not sure if you saw  the  History Chanel last month  but they had a sub week  and did a story on this very sub and think sea hunters has done it also .       Apparently  it was the first time  a sub had actually sank  a sub  (British vs U-boat )  it was a great program if you had the chance to watch it .


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## baboon6 (20 Feb 2007)

Don't know if it was the first time a Brit sub had sunk a U-Boat but IIRC it was the first time a submarine had sunk another while both were submerged.


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## jimb (20 Feb 2007)

My question would be.......................

Where can you store 130,000 pounds of anythinhg in a U boat ?  And where do you refuel it on the way to Japan ? 

JImB.


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## karl28 (20 Feb 2007)

baboon6  

Yeah I think your right on the sub killing part my bad  but it was great documentary to watch


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## 3rd Herd (20 Feb 2007)

jimb said:
			
		

> My question would be.......................
> 
> Where can you store 130,000 pounds of anythinhg in a U boat ?  And where do you refuel it on the way to Japan ?
> 
> JImB.



Jimb,

With a little bit of research you would find that the space between the two hulls provides and ideal storage space for bulk cargo. At the end of the Second World War a couple of U boots who had followed instructions to surrender themselves to east coast ports had this transport method discovered by the Allies. In, I Boot Captain: In How Japan's Submarines almost defeated the U.S. Navy in the Pacific 
by Zenji Orita with Joseph D. Harrington there is a complete chapter on this subject. As for the refuelling issues there were two methods. The first being the enhanced range of later versions of both German and Japanese submarines and you have to remember that fuel was only needed for one way. Fuel for the return trip would be obtained with the off loading, loading of materials. The Germans also used a longer range submarine as a mid ocean refueling station. Example of this can be found in both Black May  and Operation Drumbeat  by Micheal Gannon(a Canadian author by the way). I believe the German term for these submarines was "Milch Cow". An on line narrative of Allied operations against this can be found at http://www.usstripoli.com/News_View.aspx?Articleid=1 "The History of CVE" 64.

Karl28,
thanks for the kudos. No, I tend to ignore the History Channel to many repeats verses bang for my buck. Secondly having the text allows myself when needed to "go back to the well". Interestling though you bring the 'Sea Hunters' into this. I have been corresponding a fair bit lately with one of their representatives over a couple of submarine wrecks on the West coast. One in Oregon, the other off the coast of Vancouver island and maybe a third off Prince Rupert. It was a result of this research I came across the posted article.

Edit to add:

On the Japanese bound trip U boats used the port of Saigon to top up with fuel to make it to the Japanese islands.


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## AJFitzpatrick (22 Feb 2007)

On the issue of storage 

Just wanted to added that mercury is very dense at 13.51 g/cc so 130,000 pounds of it would only be 4.38 cubic meters 
This doesn't have to all be in one place either, no idea of the size of containers though. The standard measure of mercury is a flask at 76 lbs/34.54 kg which  corresponds to 2557 cc or a cube approximately 13.7 x 13.7 x 13.7 cm . Certainly there will be spaces like that available on a sub especially since they would not need access to it during the voyage. What all that weight would do to handling and buoyancy I leave to others

Just to show the math
130,000 lbs * 0.454 kg/lb = 59091 kg
59091 kg / 13.51 g/cc = 437871.2 cc
4378721.2 cc /1000000 cc/m^3 = 4.38 m^3.


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## 3rd Herd (22 Feb 2007)

More information on the role of U boat transports:

Hence, by July 1943, Axis submarines were pressed into transport service.  Allied antisubmarine countermeasures resulted in severe
losses, however.  Three of seven reconfigured Italian submarines reached Japan from Bordeaux, but only one of four Japanese
submarines sent to Europe completed the round trip. Because it was too late to build new transport submarines, other large U-boats were
refitted.  One reached Japan and was commissioned into the Japanese Navy, five boats out of eleven arrived at Penang, Malaya, and only
six of eighteen Type IXD/2 boats that departed Penang from 1943 to 1945 ever reached Europe.

U-boats made the trip from the Nazi-held ports of Kiel, Bordeaux, and Kristiansand to Kobe, Japan via the Cape of Good Hope.  On 9 February 1945, the U-864, which carried similar cargo and personnel to that of the U-234, was torpedoed and sunk with the loss of all hands off Bergen, Norway by the British submarine HMS Venturer.  Raw rubber, molybdenum, tungsten, tin, zinc, opium, and quinine were typical cargoes destined for Germany.

The U 234 Saga

A newly-designed breathing and exhaust mast, the Schnorchel, permitted the U-234 to travel submerged for extraordinary distances.
U-234 departed Kiel on its maiden voyage on 25 March 1945, bound for Kristiansand, Norway.  There it loaded important cargo and personnel and departed on 15 April for a submerged voyage which was to take them around the Cape of Good Hope, eventually concluding in Japan. That transit was never completed.

The Nazi order fell on May 7 while U-234 was out of reliable radio contact; she surfaced 10May to receive surrender orders and to confirm them with other submarines. Told to preceed toward Halifax, the skipper actually made for Newport News, Virgina, anticipating less militant treatment for his crew. The Japanese officers committed suicide (sleeping pills) and were buried at sea. U-234 was intercepted on the 14 of May, 1945 by the USS Sutton, a short time later by Coast Guard cutter Forsyth, and arrived Portsmouth, NH, on 17May.

 Among the three hundred ton cargo was three complete Messerschmitt aircraft, a Henschel HS-293 glider-bomb, extra Junkers jet engines, and ten canisters containing 560 kg (1,235 lbs.) of uranium oxide (U235).  The uranium oxide was to be used by the Japanese as a catalyst for the production of synthetic methanol used for aviation fuel.  Other cargo consisted of one ton of diplomatic mail and 6,615 pounds of technical material including drawings of ME 163 and ME 262 aircraft, plans for the building of aircraft factories, V-1 and V-2 weapons, naval ships (destroyers of classes 36C and Z51, and M and S boats), and submarines (Types II, VII, IX, X, XI, XXI, and XXIII). German fire-control computers, Lorenz 7H2 bombsights, Lufte 7D bombsight computers, FUG 200 Hohehtweil airborne radars and bomb fuses were also included in the manifest along with other military equipment and personal luggage. Previous examinations of the voyage of U-234 have centered on the cargo carried by the vessel. The presence of the uranium oxide, for example, has generated much interest and conjecture. However, shifts this focus, and argues that the submarine's greatest value lay not in her cargo, but in the individuals who were accompanying the material to Japan.

Source:
Scalia, Joseph M. Germany's Last Mission to Japan: The Failed Voyage of U-234. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000.


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## safeboy43 (23 Feb 2007)

Interesting....I hate to get scientific but there are some complications with carrying mercury on an aircraft.

From Wikipedia.....


> Mercury and aluminium
> 
> Mercury readily combines with aluminium to form an amalgam when the two pure metals come into contact. However, when the amalgam is exposed to air, the aluminium oxidizes, leaving behind mercury. The oxide flakes away, exposing more mercury amalgam, which repeats the process. This process continues until the supply of amalgam is exhausted, and since it releases mercury, a small amount of mercury can “eat through” a large amount of aluminium over time, by progressively forming amalgam and relinquishing the aluminium as oxide.
> 
> ...



I understand desperate times call for desperate measures but it seems a bit over the top that Germany and Japan would want to use a fuel that would likely destroy their aircraft after a short use...

Just my 2 cents

Cheers


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## AJFitzpatrick (23 Feb 2007)

Was aluminum being used in WWII-era planes?


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## safeboy43 (23 Feb 2007)

AJFitzpatrick said:
			
		

> Was aluminum being used in WWII-era planes?


Yes, they were.


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## Gunnerlove (23 Feb 2007)

You have lost me. What mercury based fuel are you talking about? They said they were sending mercury for munitions and uranium oxide to make fuel. Aluminum was in limited use on planes in WW1 "most" WW2 aircraft were almost exclusively aluminum..

As for where you put stuff like Mercury in a sub why not pull the lead Ballast out of the ballast tanks and replace it with the same weight of the denser mercury. It isolates the mercury away from the crew and does not cut into the cargo capacity or stability of the boat.


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## geo (23 Feb 2007)

Gunnerlove.... 
I believe that is exqactly what was done... which is great, so long as the outer hull in not ruptured.  This UBoat spilled it`s mercury & uranium cargo on the seafloor - exposing the canisters to saltwater... and they are now rusting / corroding out... requiring immediate attention.


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## safeboy43 (23 Feb 2007)

Sorry for the confustion, Gunnerlove.

I was speaking hypotheticly about if the Japanese and Germans used Mercury in their planes as a substance in fuel. If they did that, the fuel tanks and ultimetly the plane would break up because of the corrosive properties of Mercury.


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## reccecrewman (5 Mar 2007)

> I understand desperate times call for desperate measures but it seems a bit over the top that Germany and Japan would want to use a fuel that would likely destroy their aircraft after a short use...



Twitch,
Does it genuinely surprise you that Hitler would do something odd and desperate? I think not.  ;D

Regards


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## safeboy43 (6 Mar 2007)

reccecrewman said:
			
		

> Twitch,
> Does it genuinely surprise you that Hitler would do something odd and desperate? I think not.  ;D
> 
> Regards


Very true. In fact, he almost seemed like one of those guys who would go commit suicide ;D

Cheers


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