SM U 3 (kuk Marine)
 The sister ship SMS U 4 |
|
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | March 12, 1907 |
| Launch | August 20, 1908 |
| 1. Period of service |
|
| Commissioning | September 12, 1909 |
| Whereabouts | Sunk on August 13, 1915 by enemy action |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
240 t above water |
| length |
46 m (modified) |
| width |
4.6 m (modified) |
| Draft |
4 m |
| Diving depth | 50 m |
| crew |
21 officers and men |
| drive |
2 shafts |
| speed |
over water: 12 kn (22.2 km / h) |
| Armament |
2 × 45 cm torpedo tubes, 3 torpedoes |
SM U 3 (His Majesty Submarine 3) was a pre-war submarine of the Austro-Hungarian Navy and the type ship of this class, which only consisted of two boats. The order was placed with the Germania shipyard in Kiel in 1906 and was assigned hull number 135. After completion, the boat was towed to the kuk war port in Pola , where it arrived in January 1909.
It was a two-hull boat with insufficient diving properties, so that it had to be modified several times at the beginning of its service life. The armament consisting of two torpedo tubes was supplemented by a 5.7 cm deck gun in 1915. Three torpedoes were carried for reloading.
history
Calls
U 3 was initially used as a school boat, before the outbreak of war it often made up to ten training trips per month. At the start of the war it was one of only four submarines that were available to the Austro-Hungarian Navy at the time. The main task of the boat was reconnaissance trips from its home port of Cattaro .
No enemy ship could be sunk during this period of use.
Loss of the boat
On August 10, 1915, the boat ran out to carry out a patrol advance towards Brindisi . In the morning of August 12, 1915, U 3 sighted the Italian auxiliary cruiser Città di Catania and shot both torpedoes at him in an underwater attack. However, these missed their target because the auxiliary cruiser had noticed the torpedo trajectories and was able to avoid them. Due to the hard rudder angle, the Città di Catania then succeeded in ramming the periscope of U 3 and walking undamaged, not without alarming the Allied destroyer units in this area of the Adriatic by radio .
U 3 could still surface, but it had become incapable of diving as a result of the impact. The boat tried to escape towards the Dalmatian coast . This was initially successful until it was discovered by the French destroyer Bisson on the afternoon of August 13, 1915 and sunk by artillery fire . The commandant, lieutenant of the line ship Karl Strnad, had previously refused to surrender .
When the boat went down, the commander and six other crew members were killed. The second officer, Frigate Lieutenant Elemer Malanotti and 13 sailors were taken prisoner of war by the Bisson .
The sub-crossing point is at approximately 41 ° 0 ' N , 18 ° 15' O .
Commanders
- Emmerich Graf von Thun and Hohenstein (September 1909 - September 1910)
- Lothar Leschanowsky (September 1910 - April 1911)
- Richard Gstettner (April 1911 - April 1912)
- Eduard Ritter von Hübner (April 1912 - June 1915)
- Karl Strnad (June - August 1915)
literature
- Lothar Baumgartner - Erwin Sieche: The ships of the k. (U.) K. Kriegsmarine in the picture . Publishing house Stöhr, Vienna 1999, ISBN 978-3-901208-25-6 .
- Robert Gardiner: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1906-1921 . Annapolis, Maryland, Naval Institute Press, 1985, ISBN 978-0-87021-907-8 .
- RH Gibson - Maurice Prendergast: The German Submarine War, 1914-1918 . Annapolis, Maryland, Naval Institute Press, 2003 (1931 reissue), ISBN 978-1-59114-314-7 .
- Paul G. Halpern: A Naval History of World War I . Annapolis, Maryland, Naval Institute Press, 1994 ISBN 978-0-87021-266-6
- Erwin F. Sieche: Austro-Hungarian Submarines - Warship, Volume 2 . Naval Institute Press, 1980, ISBN 978-0-87021-976-4 .
- Paul Kemp: The German and Austrian submarine losses in both world wars . Urbes Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-924896-43-7 .
- CH Baer: The War of Nations 11th Volume . Julius Hofmann Stuttgart 1917.