SM U 26

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SM U 26
( previous / next - all submarines )
German EmpireGerman Empire (Reichskriegsflagge)
U-boat U-24 of the Imperial German Navy. Scan of an old postcard my grandparents from 1914 from the estate.jpg
U 24 from the U 26 series
Technical specifications
Submarine type: Two-hull ocean-going boat type UA (U 23 - U 26)
Builder: Germania shipyard, Kiel
Displacement: 669 tons (above water)
864 tons (under water)
Length: 64.70 m
Width: 6.32 m
Draft: 3.45 m
Pressure body ø: 4.05 m
Max. Diving depth: 50 m
Dive time: 85-133 s
Drive: Diesel engines 2 × 900 PS
E-machines 2 × 600 PS
Speed: 16.7 knots (above water)
10.3 knots (under water)
Armament: 2 bow and 2 stern tubes 50 cm, 6 torpedoes
1 × 88 mm cannon
Crew: 4 officers
26 men
Successes: 1 sunk armored cruiser,
1 sunk minelayer,
3 sunk merchant ships
Whereabouts: Presumably sunk by a mine hit

SM U 26 was a diesel-electric submarine of the German Imperial Navy during the First World War .

Calls

The boat was launched on October 16, 1913 and entered service on May 20, 1914. Under its commandant, Kapitänleutnant Egenolf von Berckheim (1881–1915), it was used in the Baltic Sea against the Russian navy after the war began . There it took part in the advance into the Riga Bay in August 1914 as one of several submarines used to secure the German naval forces .

Russian armored cruiser Pallada

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The team of the SM U26

A few weeks later, on September 28th, July / October 11, 1914 greg. , Berckheim managed to torpedo the Russian armored cruiser Pallada at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland 16.5 nm off Russarö . The ammunition chambers exploded on the cruiser and it sank within a few minutes with its entire crew of 597 men. This was the first total loss of a ship in the Russian Navy in World War I.

Berckheim and U 26 also sank three merchant ships ( Frack , Pechora , Semlja ) with a total of 3,700 GRT and in May 1915 the Russian mine-layer Yenisei .

Whereabouts

On August 11, 1915, U 26 ran from Libau on a patrol in the Gulf of Finland. The boat did not return from this voyage. On August 30, 1915, at 6:35 p.m., it was sighted for the last time southwest of Dagerort by the British submarine E9 . U 26 then ran out submerged. The boat probably ran into a Russian mine on August 31, according to other sources on September 4, 1915, off the Finnish coast and sank with the entire crew of 30 men. U 26 could also have sunk due to an average due to technical defects or human error.

The very well-preserved wreck of U 26 was found and identified by divers in the western Gulf of Finland in May 2014; it is very close to where the Pallada sank.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906–1966. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1993, ISBN 3-86070-036-7 , p. 67.
  2. ↑ Bodo Herzog: German U-Boats 1906–1966. Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1993, ISBN 3-86070-036-7 , p. 88 f.
  3. ^ Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars. Urbes Verlag, Graefelfing vor München 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 , p. 15.
  4. ↑ Finnish divers find century-old German sub. Diving video (English; accessed on June 4, 2014).
  5. ↑ A hundred year old World War I mystery solved - SM U-26 has been found. Find report by the diving club (accessed December 8, 2016).
  6. ↑ His fate moved the citizens. Article on the 100th anniversary of the death of Commandant Egenolf von Berckheim in Weinheimer Nachrichten , August 25, 2015 (accessed June 5, 2017).

Web links