Flat (submarine)

Flat

Flat drawing of submarine

Ship data flag  Chile Ship type Submarine Shipyard Playa Las Torpederas in Valparaíso , Chile Keel laying 1866 Launch April 1866 Whereabouts Sunk May 3, 1866

Ship dimensions and crew length 12.5 m ( Lüa ) width 2.5 m displacement 50  t   crew 11

Machine system machine Hand crank Machine performance Muscle strength Top speed 3 kn (6 km / h) propeller 2

Mission data submarine Dive time 8 h Immersion depth, max. 7.5 m

Armament 2 cannons

The Flach was a Chilean submarine designed by the German immigrant and designer of the same name, Karl Flach . He was commissioned by the Chilean President José Joaquín Pérez during the Spanish-South American War to build a submarine to protect the war fleet in the port of Valparaíso . After the prototype Invisible by Gustav Heyermann sank at first attempt on the reason Karl Flach was cared for with the order.

description

Karl Flach with his son Enrique

He designed a submarine that was made entirely of steel and offered space for a crew of eleven. It was 12.5 meters long, 2.5 meters in diameter and reached a speed of three knots . This submarine was only the fifth in the world to have made a successful dive trip. The submarine was propelled by muscle power with hand cranks and had two cannons. The larger cannon was installed in the bow and a smaller one in the tower. It looked like an inflated hot water bottle.

The first attempts in the bay of Valparaíso were successful. On May 3, 1866, the submarine went on another dive unannounced. However, due to an unexplained cause, the boat sank to the 50-meter-deep bottom. On board were the designer Karl Flach, his 14-year-old son Enrique and a crew of nine (two Chileans, two French and five other Germans) who could not save themselves. Two days later the heavy submarine was located in deep mud by the English frigate HMS Leander , which made it impossible to recover.

Rescue attempt

The Chilean filmmaker Juan Enrique Benítez became aware of the second submarine built in Latin America and started a project to salvage the submarine. He is supported by the Chilean Navy with naval divers and academics from Santiago de Chile from the Universidad Internacional SEK . With the help of a side-viewing sonar , they have so far delimited an area of ​​2.5 km².

On April 26, 2007, divers allegedly rediscovered the submarine in front of the port of the Chilean city of Valparaíso. However, this can only be confirmed with certainty after the wreck has been freed from the mud at a depth of 41 m.

literature

• Divers discover 140 year old submarine. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . April 26, 2007 ( sueddeutsche.de ).
• Wreck on the seabed: Divers suspect a 140-year-old German submarine off Chile. In: Der Spiegel . Online April 26, 2007 ( spiegel.de ).
• Bernhard Hemmerle: Johann Anton (alias Karl August) Flach - A German submarine builder in Chile. In: 2015 yearbook of the Limburg-Weilburg district. Limburg Oct. 2014.

Web links

Commons : Flat  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

• Pictures and sketches (Submarine Association South America)
• ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Chile: Hunt for the “Flach”. Researchers look for a submarine that sank in 1866. ) At: DiePresse.com , April 9, 2007.
• Un submarino alemán y un misterio chileno on Deutsche Welle (Spanish)

Footnotes

1. ↑ Wreck on the seabed: Divers suspect a 140 year old German submarine off Chile. In: Der Spiegel . Online April 26, 2007 ( spiegel.de ).