Submarine class XXVI

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The U-Boot-Klasse XXVI was a German submarine project of the German Navy towards the end of the Second World War . Only five boats went into production, none of which was completed.

Conception

After the development of the types XXI and XXIII in submarine construction increasingly focused on electric propulsion, the designs of types XVII, XVIII and XXII by Walterwerke were not pursued any further. As it turned out, the XXI boats that unsuitable for the tactical requirements of the convoy were that saw Kiel family another chance for a "Walter submarine" come and put on 12 October 1943, a concept called XXVI A front . On March 28 of the following year, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Karl Dönitz , decided to have the boat built under the type designation XXVI W (for Walter ). A week later, the naval war command formulated the requirements that the new type of boat had to meet, which was now given the designation XXVI . Then the engineering office Glückauf (IBG) was entrusted with the prefabricated construction and instructed to also prepare the construction of the boats. The IBG designed the production of the Type XXVI boats in the so-called section construction . For this purpose, the construction of the raw sections of the respective boat should take place in a steel construction company and, based on this, the individual sections should then be manufactured at specialized submarine shipyards. Finally, these sections were to be delivered to a large shipyard and assembled there to form a submarine. Type XXVI was designed as a deep sea submarine with Walter propulsion , which was supposed to accelerate it to an underwater speed of 43 km / h. It would have had a crew of three officers and 30 men. On May 26th, the construction contract for 100 boats of this type was given to the Schichau shipyard in Gdansk, which already had relevant experience with the construction of sections through the manufacture of the Type XXI boats.

Armament

The armament consisted of ten torpedo tubes, four of them on the bow. During the development of the German submarines, which were to be equipped with a Walter drive , no torpedo tubes were planned at the stern , because the "Walter boats" had a sealed off turbine room there, which complicated the operation of the rear torpedo tubes. For this reason, Type XXVI was designed with six side torpedo tubes, which were located at the level of the command room, and were directed at an angle to the rear. Each torpedo tube on the boat should be equipped with a torpedo. Reserve torpedoes were not provided, so that the time-consuming loading of the torpedo tubes during the journey was not necessary. It was only possible to pull the torpedoes out of the tubes by about 2.5 m in order to maintain the material - about every three to four days - if some of the bunks in the crew compartment in the bow were folded up. Artillery armament or a tower were not provided for in the submarine class XXVI .

construction

The Main Committee Shipbuilding presented early May 1944 a production plan that a total of 66 boats fertigzustellende einplante for the year 1945, with volume production to begin in May 1945th After a revision of the production times planned by the IBG - eight weeks for the raw sections, six weeks for the construction of the section and seven weeks for the assembly - the number to be produced was increased to 74 boats for 1945. The order for the production of 100 boats - U 4501 to U 4600 - was initially awarded on May 26, 1944 to the Schichau shipyard in Danzig , which already had relevant experience with section construction through the production of the Type XXI boats. The raw steel requirement for the hundred boats was estimated at 46,240 t . On August 27 of the same year, the order was accepted by the Blohm + Voss shipyard . The Hamburg shipyard specialized in the assembly of Walter systems as well as in the assembly of sections. By the end of the war, some sections for U 4501 to U 4504 were under construction. The other contracts were no longer implemented.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ARMOR: Deep and quiet . In: Der Spiegel . No. 16 , 1979 ( online ).
  2. ↑ Eberhard Rössler: History of the German submarine construction. Volume 2, Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-86047-153-8 , page 375
  3. ↑ Rainer Busch, Hans-Joachim Röll: The U-Boat War 1939-1945. U-boat construction in German shipyards, ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3 8132 0512 6 , page 227