SM UB 5
| UB 5 | |
|---|---|
 SM UB 5 in Libau, Courland |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | UB I |
| Shipyard | |
| Order | October 15, 1914 |
| Keel laying | November 22, 1914 |
| Launch | March 1915 |
| 1. Period of service |
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|
| Commissioning | March 25, 1915 |
| Decommissioning | February 19, 1919 |
| Whereabouts | 1919 scrapped in Lübeck by Dräger |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
127 t above water |
| length |
28.1 m |
| width |
3.2 m |
| Draft |
3.0 m |
| Diving depth | 50 m |
| crew |
14th |
| drive |
Daimler diesel engine 45 kW (60 PS) |
| speed |
6.5 kn (12 km / h ) over water |
| Range |
1,650 nm (3,056 km ) at 5 kn (9.3 km / h) over water |
| Bunker quantity |
3.5 t fuel oil |
| Armament |
2 × 45 cm torpedo, 2 × bow torpedo tubes, |
| Dive time |
22 s |
| Build number |
243 |
SM UB 5 was a German submarine of the UB I type of the Imperial Navy during the First World War . During its service time it sank five ships and was scrapped in Germany in 1919 .
In October 1914, the Germania shipyard received the order for UB 5 and began construction in November. With a length of hardly more than 28 m , UB 5 displaced 127 t when surfaced and 142 t when submerged. It was armed with two bow torpedo tubes, two torpedoes, and a deck-mounted machine gun. Disassembled into sections, UB 5 was transported by train to Antwerp and reassembled there. The launch and commissioning took place in March 1915.
First UB 5 was assigned to the U-Flotilla Flanders in March 1915 and sank five British ships with a total of 996 register tons (GRT) under the command of Wilhelm Smiths . The submarine was placed under the fifth sub-flotilla in the Baltic Sea in October 1915 . Due to technical defects, the U-Boot-Schule UB 5 took over in September 1916. Since it was no longer seaworthy at the end of the war, it could not be handed over to the British with the rest of the German submarine fleet in Harwich . The Drägerwerk in Lübeck wrecked UB 5 in 1919.
Planning and construction
After the rapid advance of the German army along the North Sea coast at the beginning of the First World War, the Imperial Navy possessed no U-boats in the narrow and shallow waters off the coast of Flanders could operate. Originally, the RMA required small, purely electrically powered submarines with a displacement of 80 t and a torpedo tube that could be transported by train to the port of operation and quickly assembled there. After the revision by the submarine inspection , the actual construction (Project 34) for the type UB I with 125 t displacement, 28 m length and two torpedo tubes, which the RMA approved on October 5, 1914, was created. UB 5 was one of the eight UB-I boats - UB 1 to UB 8 - for which the Germania shipyard received the order on October 15, 1914 just two months after the start of planning.
The Germania shipyard laid UB 5 on November 22, 1914 in Kiel . UB 5 was 28.1 m long, 3.2 m wide and had a draft of 3 m. It had a drive shaft to which a 45 kW (60 hp) Daimler 4-cylinder diesel engine for overwater travel and a Siemens Schuckert electric motor with 89 kW (120 hp) for travel under water were coupled. This allowed it to reach a maximum of 6.5 kn (12 km / h ) over water and 5.5 kn (10.2 km / h) under water. When traveling above water, it had a range of up to 1,650 nm (3,056 km ) and with one battery charge it was up to 45 nm (83 km) under water. Like all boats in its class, it was designed for a depth of 50 m and, thanks to the many flood openings in its diving tanks, could dive in 22 seconds.
UB 5 was armed with two 45 cm torpedoes in two bow torpedo tubes. An 8 mm machine gun could be set up on deck. The crew consisted of an officer and 13 NCOs and men.
After its completion at the Germania shipyard, UB 5 was prepared for rail transport to Antwerp. To load the boat, three flatbed wagons were necessary for the three sections of the hull and additional wagons for the tower, parts of the upper deck, the machines and the batteries. Assembly in Hoboken took two weeks. Two tugs then transported the boat up the Scheldt using floating boxes and through the Ghent-Bruges canal to the port of operations in Zeebrugge . Another five and a half days were planned for this.
Calls
Oberleutnant zur See Wilhelm Smiths, 28 years old, received his first submarine command with UB 5 and put it into service for the Imperial Navy on March 23, 1915. At the time when UB 5 arrived at the Flemish submarine flotilla set up on March 29, 1915, the first German submarine offensive, which had been underway since February, was in full swing. During this campaign, the German Reich declared the sea area around the British Isles to be a war zone in which all enemy ships were to be sunk. An attack on ships of neutral countries was allowed if they could be identified as enemy ships sailing under false flags .
The preliminary area of operation for the UB-I boats of the Flanders Flotilla was the sea area around the Hoofden . With the expiry of UB 4 on April 9th, the activities of the newly formed flotilla began, UB 5 followed on April 14th. On April 15, the boat torpedoed the British steamer Ptarmigan 6 nm (11 km) west of the lightship Noord Hinder . The 784 GRT steamer was en route with general cargo from Rotterdam to London. Eight crew members were killed in its sinking.
After UB 6 , a sister boat of UB 5 , managed to find a way around the British network barriers and sea mines in the Strait of Dover at the end of June , the boats of the flotilla began to patrol the western part of the English Channel . Fog and bad weather hindered the following activities of UB 2 , UB 5 and UB 10 in the canal. None of the boats could sink a ship. These missions proved that it was possible to bypass the British locks on the Dover Strait.
The tenth mission was UB 5 in the area around Lowestoft-Cromer . In the period from August 12 to 14, the boat sank four British fishing trawlers with a total tonnage of just over 200 register tons. The largest were the Sunflower and the JWFT with 60 GRT each. All four ships - British cutters rigged with ocher red sails - were stopped, boarded by the prize command of UB 5 and sunk with explosive cartridges. These were the last ships UB 5 was able to sink during the war.
After the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 and further sensational sinkings in August ( Arabic incident ) and September, the Americans demanded guarantees for the safety of American citizens on unarmed merchant ships. In response to this, the chief of the admiralty's staff of the Imperial Navy Henning von Holtzendorff ended the German submarine offensive on September 18. Holtzendorff's instructions ordered the withdrawal of all submarines from the English Channel and the Celtic Sea and demanded strict adherence to the price order . Shortly afterwards, UB 5 was subordinated to the 5th U-Half Flotilla in the Baltic Sea on October 6th.
UB 5 arrived at its new base in Libau on October 25th . The attempt to move the boat to Dagerort in November failed due to the bad weather. Shortly after the beginning of May 1916 were carried out by laying Windau had to UB 5 because of the lightening nights after Libau retreat. All missions during this period were unsuccessful. Technical defects led to the termination of the last two operations in July and August 1916. The submarine school received the boat, which had meanwhile been technically outdated and no longer met the conditions of use, on September 21. UB 5 was one of the eight no longer seaworthy submarines that remained in Germany. The other seven were U 1 , U 2 , U 4 , U 17 and the UB-I boats UB 2 , UB 9 and UB 11 . The Drägerwerk in Lübeck wrecked UB 5 in 1919.
successes
| date | Surname | Type | Tonnage (GRT) |
nationality | fate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 10, 1915 | Ptarmigan | Steam boat | 784 |
 United Kingdom
|
sunk |
| August 12, 1915 | Sunflower | Fishing trawler | 60 |
United Kingdom
|
sunk |
| August 13, 1915 | EMW | Fishing trawler | 47 |
United Kingdom
|
sunk |
| August 13, 1915 | JWFT | Fishing trawler | 60 |
United Kingdom
|
sunk |
| August 14, 1915 | White City | Fishing trawler | 45 |
United Kingdom
|
sunk |
| Total: | 996 |
Remarks
- ↑ In April 1906 Smiths joined the IV / 06 crew of the Imperial Navy as a midshipman along with 34 future submarine commanders (including Wilhelm Marschall , Matthias Graf von Schmettow , Max Viebeg and Erwin Waßner ). See: Guðmundur Helgason: WWI Officer Crews: Crew 4/06 . Retrieved January 29, 2016.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Eberhard Rössler: History of the German submarine building. 1: Development, construction and characteristics of the German submarines from the beginning until 1943 . tape 1 . Bechtermünz, Augsburg 1996, ISBN 3-86047-153-8 , p. 59-62, 264 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g Guðmundur Helgason: WWI U-boats: UB-5 . In: U-Boat War in World War I . Uboat.net. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ↑ 6104976 UB-5 . In: Miramar Ship Index. (Subscription required) . RB Haworth. Retrieved March 5, 2009.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Harald Bendert: The UB boats of the Imperial Navy 1914–1918: missions - successes - fate . Mittler, Hamburg; Berlin; Bonn 2000, ISBN 978-3-8132-0713-2 , pp. 13, 30, 42, 43 .
- ^ David Miller: The Illustrated Directory of Submarines of the World . MBI Pub. Co., St. Paul, Minnesota 2002, ISBN 978-0-7603-1345-9 , pp. 46-47 (English).
- ↑ a b c d e Mark D. Karau: Wielding the Dagger: the MarineKorps Flandern and the German War Effort, 1914-1918 . Praeger, Westport, Connecticut 2003, ISBN 978-0-313-32475-8 , pp. 48-49, 51 (English).
- ↑ a b c Robert Gardiner; Randal Gray: Conway's all the world's fighting ships, 1906-1921 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1985, ISBN 978-0-87021-907-8 , pp. 180 (English).
- ↑ Guðmundur Helgason: WWI U-boat commanders: Wilhelm Smiths . Retrieved January 30, 2016.
- ^ A b V. E. Tarrant: The U-Boat Offensive: 1914-1945 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 1989, ISBN 978-0-87021-764-7 , pp. 18, 21 (English).
- ↑ a b c d e Guðmundur Helgason: Ships hit during WWI: Ships hit by UB 5 . In: U-Boat War in World War I . Uboat.net. Retrieved January 30, 2016.
- ^ Gibson, Prendergast: The German Submarine War, 1914-1918 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland 2003, ISBN 9781591143147 , pp. 50,57, OCLC 52924732 .
- ↑ British fishing vessels lost at sea due to enemy action: 1914, 1915, 1916 in date order . Retrieved February 6, 2016.
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