Explorers find downed German U-Boat off Mass.

[struggle4progress]

Published July 27, 2012
Associated Press

... The U-550 was found Monday by a privately funded group organized by New Jersey lawyer Joe Mazraani. It was the second trip in two years to the site by the team, some of whom had been searching for the lost U-boat for two decades ...

On April 16, 1944, the U-550 torpedoed the gasoline tanker SS Pan Pennsylvania, which had lagged behind its protective convoy as it set out with 140,000 barrels of gasoline for Great Britain, according to the U.S. Coast Guard website and research by Mazraani.

The U-boat slipped under the doomed tanker to hide. But one of the tanker's three escorts, the USS Joyce, saw it on sonar and severely damaged it by dropping depth charges ...

The Germans, forced to surface, manned their deck guns while another escort vessel, the USS Gandy, returned fire and rammed the U-boat. The third escort, the USS Peterson, then hit the U-boat with two more depth charges. The crew abandoned the submarine, but not before setting off explosions to scuttle it. The submarine hadn't been seen again until Monday ...

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/27/explorers-find-downed-german-u-boat-off-mass594059/

[applegrove]

1. They think they found a Uboat up a river in Newfoundland too.

[petronius]

3. That would be quite a mystery! I guess you mean this one in the Churchill River?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2012/07/25/nl-u-boat-labrador-discovery-725.html

Looks pretty far from certain to me, and with no record of an attack it's hard to imagine what sort of accident could sink a sub in a deep river with no one noticing (unless the area was mined?) - but the idea of a defecting crew scuttling a boat and then melting into the Canadian population is kind of romantic...

[sarisataka]

5. Quite a mystery indeed

I think, why would they go so far inland? The only thing I can think of is some sort of intelligence or spy mission. You would think that there would have been some record of it...

Why it sank is another good question. The U-boats were fairly reliable and their crews were ingenious at repairing them and keeping them going. I cannot think of what malfunction would cause them to sink.

An entire crew defecting and never speaking of it? Remotely possible. Most of the German navy had no use for Nazis and tried to stay insulated from politics. Maybe the novel is a confession?

[petronius]

2. Fascinating! I'd love to dive a u-boat wreck some day, but when they say "deep"

I imagine they mean too deep for rec diving. Hope they release some pictures soon.

Although there isn't much on this boat, a site I find fascinating is Uboat.net...

[applegrove]

4. There was a book about Uboat wrecks in the atlantic off North America. Was really interesting. Don't

remember the name of it. Read it 10 years ago.