In nearly all cases of salvaged U-boats, the results have been financially ruinous. So bringing a wreck back to the surface should not be undertaken lightly. The recovery cost is only a small fraction of the funds needed to preserve and display an iron object that has been immersed in the sea for many years. This kind of monitoring could be a cost-effective way to save underwater cultural heritage from criminal activity and its use is likely to become widespread in the next few years. Germany and the UK are among a number of countries currently pioneering the use of satellite monitoring to detect suspicious activity on shipwrecks thought to be under threat. These examples serve as a warning that organised criminals will target shipwrecks of any age for the metals they contain.ĭetailed sonar scans have been taken. And wrecks from the 1916 Battle of Jutland that also lie partly in Danish waters have seen industrial levels of metal theft.
The British cruiser HMS Exeter, which was sunk in the Java Sea on May 1, 1942, has been entirely removed from the seabed for scrap. Hundreds of wartime wreck sites such as U-3523 are under threat around the world from metal thieves and grave robbers. But Denmark has a duty to protect the wreck, especially if Germany asks it to do so. Under international law all naval wrecks are termed “ sovereign immune”, which means they will always be the property of the German state despite lying in Danish waters.
It is hopelessly impractical to recover them all, so leaving them where they are is the only real option. Germany lost over 800 submarines at sea during the two world wars and many have been found in recent years. As such, the wreck should either be left in peace or, more implausibly, recovered and the men buried on land. With the U-boat’s identity correctly established, we now know that it is the grave site of its crew of 58 German servicemen. Part of the RAF’s mission was to prevent any of these new vessels getting to sea to sink Allied ships, and it successfully prevented any Type XXI U-boats from doing so. This was primarily due to enlarged batteries, coupled to a snorkel, which meant they could stay permanently underwater. These were new types of submarines that contained a number of innovations which had the potential to make them dangerous opponents. The detailed sonar scans of the wreck site show that it is without doubt a Type XXI U-boat, of which U-3523 was the only one lost in the Skagerrak and unaccounted for. The sea where this U-boat was located was heavily targeted by the RAF because it knew newly-built boats would flee to Norway this way. But Allied records have helped determine that this newly discovered wreck is indeed U-3523. The otherwise meticulous record keeping of the Kriegsmarine (Nazi navy) became progressively sparser, breaking down completely in the last few weeks of the war. U-boat wrecks like these from the end of World War II are the hardest to match to historical records. The main challenges with such wrecks lie in accurately identifying them, assessing their status as naval graves and protecting them for the future. But sadly, recovering U-3523 is not a realistic proposition.
#German submarine professional
Studying the vessel will be of immense interest to professional and amateur historians alike, not least as a way of finally putting to rest the conspiracy theory that the boat was ferrying prominent Nazis to Argentina. U-3523 lay undiscovered on the seabed for over 70 years until it was recently located by surveyors from the Sea War Museum in Denmark. Several U-boats were sunk and U-3523 was destroyed in an air attack by a Liberator bomber. But to reach their destination, the submarines had to pass through the bottleneck of the Skagerrak – the strait between Norway and Denmark – and the UK’s Royal Air Force was waiting for them. Two days later, the recently commissioned U-3523 joined the mission as one of the most advanced boats in the fleet. The collapsing Nazi government ordered all U-boats in German ports to make their way to their bases in Norway on May 2, 1945.
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